This is my take on Lois's thoughts before, during, and after the reunion in 10x19 (Dominion)! It's one of my favorite Clois moments, so I just had to write about it.

Three weeks, two days. It had been three weeks since Clark had gone into the Phantom Zone and two days until their wedding day. Lois laid in bed staring up at the ceiling trying to imagine that Clark was sleeping soundly next to her. Reaching out her hand however, all she felt were soft cotton sheets. His side of the bed was unnervingly cold and all she wished for was to wrap herself up in his arms.

Snap out of it, Lane. She knew that wallowing here in bed wasn't going to bring him back any faster and neither was moping around. She had been through this before when the General was deployed. All she had to do was keep her head up, have faith, and push through the day. He was the Blur. He was her Clark. He was going to make it out of there.

Rolling out of bed, she took a long shower and relished in the hot water, urging it to wash away all of her fears and worries. Her imagination projected an image of Clark behind her, running his hands along her body… but she propelled the fantasy out of her head. She missed him terribly, but she had to stay strong.

The problem was that Lois had never been in this situation. Sure, she had missed the General and worried about him when he was overseas, but that pain and fear was nothing compared to this. She had never been in love with another man before Clark, or never truly in love. Missing him was like missing an entire part of her heart and soul. As strong-willed and independent as she was, this emptiness she felt wasn't something she could cover up with a sarcastic remark. This just hurt.

After drying off, she walked over to the dresser and looked for something to wear. Rummaging through a mix of her clothes, she found a shirt that made her smile. It was the flannel shirt that she had taken from Clark the first time she stayed at the Kent's farm. She chuckled recalling how flustered he had gotten when she entered the bathroom while he was still showering. Poor, innocent Clark didn't know what to do.

Lois slipped on the flannel over her underwear before pulling the fabric to her nose. She had stolen the shirt years ago, but there was still a lingering scent of something that was purely Clark Kent that was integrated into the cotton. It calmed her more than she thought and she let out a gentle sigh. She ran a towel through her hair once more before throwing it on the bathroom counter, pulling her hair up into a messy bun, and making her way out to the kitchen.

She searched the fridge for something to eat before sighing and pulling a tub of Rocky Road out of the freezer. She sat it on the counter and looked out the window at Metropolis. It really was a beautiful night and had been a gorgeous morning, but she had spent most of the day either in bed or on the couch. Tess had pretty much banned her from Watchtower today after her three-day stake out there. For once she was happy to not have been at the Daily Planet today either. Lois had claimed a day off today for wedding preparations, but that really wasn't the case. Everything was ready for the wedding, save Clark, who she still had faith would return before Sunday, so she just wanted to take a day for herself.

Carrying her pint of ice cream, she made her way over to the dining room table to take a look at her final to-do sheet. Taking a bite of the delicious dessert, she put the carton down and scanned the list only to stop dead in her tracks. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone standing by the front door. She couldn't make out who it was, but she was too afraid to turn her head and look. She didn't want it to be a dream. But as she looked up, she realized it wasn't.

"Clark," she said softly. He stood in the middle of the room with a small smile on his face, hair looking disheveled, but showing no signs of injury. Lois thought her knees were going to buckle, so she quickly made her way to him before she fell over. She buried her face in his neck and ran her fingers through his obsidian hair. His strong arms held her flush against his solid body and she thought she was going to completely melt into him. Pulling her head away to look at him, she planted a long, firm kiss on the mouth she had missed so much. He kissed her back eagerly and she felt as if her heart was whole again. All of the emptiness, fear, and doubt were washed away by his lips on hers.

"I knew you'd make it," she murmured. Clark brushed a piece of hair off of her cheek and stroked her skin with his thumb.

"I told you I would," he replied. His cerulean eyes flickered away from her after a moment or two of some much-needed gazing and grew curious as he looked around the apartment. "What happened to taking the time to merge our lives together? Finding the right place for everything?"

"Oh, you know me. Waiting isn't exactly my strong suit. So I guess, nervous energy equals power unpacking," Lois rambled. After the third day of waiting for Clark and Oliver to come out of that zone, she decided that she would start unpacking their boxes. She couldn't just come home to this empty apartment every day and she needed something to take her mind off of waiting for him to come back. She had actually just finished putting the finishing touches on the place two days ago, so the apartment was as new to Clark as it was her.

"What'd you do? Enlist John Jones and Bart?" he asked jokingly. "There's no way that you could have..." The realization that he had been gone longer than a couple hours hit him like a freight train. She could see it in his eyes. Lois knew that time in the Phantom Zone moved a lot slower than time on Earth, and she wondered just how long he thought he had been gone.

"How long were we gone?" he asked softly.

"Three weeks."

"We were only in there a few hours. The crystal ... crushing it must have altered time," Clark said, processing his time jump. "So a few hours for me was almost a month for you. You waited all that time."

"Well, the League decided that it wasn't safe to send any more people in after you, so Tess and I took turns camping out at Watchtower trying to re-establish contact with you and Oliver," Lois explained. "I, uh brought the pillow with me for downtime, because... well, it reminds me of you now. Silly, huh?"

Lois recalled all of those nights after work, sitting patiently by the gate, clutching the Whitesnake pillow to her chest and praying that Clark would appear at any moment. She constantly monitored the frequency connection, trying impossibly to re-establish contact with him, but failing every time.

"After three hours, Tess was supposed to-"

"Blow up the gate. Yeah… Tess and I had a little unexpected heart to heart about your secret plan that may or may not have involved me pulling a gun on her. I brought her around to seeing things my way," Lois rambled. Clark's eyes bulged at the gun reference, but she ignored it. The truth was that she was still hurt over the fact that he didn't even tell her that the gate was supposed to be destroyed. He didn't tell her that he could've been stuck in there for all of eternity without even saying goodbye.

"I just... I wish you could have had a little faith in me, too," Lois said. His eyes softened at her words and he brought his hand to her arm.

"Lois, I didn't want you to have to make that kind of choice. I was trying to..." Clark tried to explain.

"Protect me? I know. But you're part of me now, Clark. A half of a whole. So, in the future, if there's even a chance that the mission might claim my better half, sign me up... Because I'd rather be in some sand-blown purgatory with you than in the hell of not knowing if I'll ever see you again," Lois said. "And it was hell."

"Lois, I am so sorry. I try to make choices using my human side, but sometimes my Kryptonian side takes over. I try to control the situation. Instead of hiding that side, I should try to help you understand it," Clark admitted. His puppy dog eyes were turned on full blast and though Lois knew he didn't even know how persuasive that look was, it worked every damn time.

"Promise to put that in your wedding vows," Lois said. A look of fear suddenly struck his face and his jaw dropped open.

"Wait, the wedding!"

"Yeah, T-minus two days, Smallville."

"You didn't postpone it," Clark almost asked wearily. Lois let out a sigh and shook her head before she reached out and cupped his cheeks.

"No. I couldn't. Believing that you would come back to me was the only thing that kept me going," she said. Worried that he might want to wait, she immediately dropped her hands. "But if you want to postpone, that's fine."

"Lois," Clark said incredulously as he cupped her cheek. "There's nothing in this world that could prevent me from walking down that aisle." A smile broke out across Lois's face and she pulled his lips back to hers. This, right here, was where she wanted to be for the rest of her life.

"So… do you like the apartment? We can totally move things around if you don't like it," Lois said hesitantly.

"It's perfect, Lois," he said without moving his eyes from hers. This caused Lois to roll her eyes at him, but she couldn't keep the smile off of her face.

"You haven't even really looked around yet! Come on, I'll take you on a tour," Lois said, grabbing his hand and beginning to pull him towards the big window where she had set his telescope up. However, Clark resisted and instead pulled her back towards him. Her eyebrows drew together in confusion.

"Can you show me tomorrow? Right now, I'd really just like to take my fiancé to bed," he said with a small smile. He brushed a piece of hair from her cheek and Lois almost shuddered at the feeling of his fingertips on her skin. Three weeks had definitely made her lose perspective on just how compelling a simple touch from him could be. Nodding, Lois wasted no time capturing his lips in a searing kiss, one which he responded equally, if not more, eager to.

She pushed the jacket off of his broad shoulders and wrapped her arms around his neck as his hands moved to the backs of her thighs before easily lifting her off the ground. Lois wrapped her legs around his waist as he began walking toward what she could only assume to be their bedroom. Honestly, he could've been taking her to the counter and she wouldn't have given a damn. At this point, she just needed him in any way, shape or form she could get him.

His mouth slowly traveled from her lips down her neck, leaving a lingering trail of fire burning along her tender skin. They found their destination at the hollow of her neck and she couldn't help but let out an audible gasp. Her fingers threaded through his hair and slightly pulled, urging him to make his way back up to her mouth to which he happily obliged. Caught up in the incredible feeling of his lips on hers, she didn't even notice they had reached the bedroom until her back hit the matress.

Finally free to let go of his neck, Lois let her hands roam downwards and under the hem of his shirt before pulling it over his head. God, she had missed his body. Sure, her previous boyfriends had all been good looking with a set of washboard abs, but none of them held a candle to Clark. The solidness of his muscles combined with his soft, unblemished skin was something that still left her breathless after all of these years. But at the current moment, it wasn't even about that. It was just feeling and knowing that he was here. Alive.

Three weeks was nothing in the army. She remembered the General, before he became a general, leaving for deployments of twelve or more months. That was hard for her, especially after her mother died, but she found that that feeling was incomparable to the emptiness she felt over the past month. It was as if her world had stopped turning completely. With her father gone, she had to put up a strong front for Lucy. That's partially where her sarcastic nature came from. It was easier to deflect emotions with cynical comments and jokes rather than actually deal with how she was feeling.

That just didn't work in this case. Missing Clark was like missing part of herself: the part that gave him a hard time about his wardrobe choices or about how even though he was a superhero, that didn't excuse him from forgetting to clean up all the soot he tracked in the house after putting out an apartment fire. He was the person that made her Lois Lane, someone that she hadn't seen much of in the previous weeks.

"Lois?"

Clark's voice snapped her back to reality, but when she looked up, he had a concerned look on his face. Well, at least that's what she thought. Everything was a bit blurry at the moment and it took her a moment to realize why. She was crying.

"Lois, what's wrong? Did I hurt you?" Clark asked worriedly, immediately rolling off of her and scanning her body for injuries. Lois shook her head, but could not formulate a response nor stop the waterfall of tears from cascading down her flushed cheeks. The emotions of the past few weeks were finally catching up to her and had burst out like an overflowing dam.

"Lois? Lois, you're scaring me. What's wrong?" Clark asked anxiously. Mustering up all of the self-control she had, she managed to respond.

"Clark, I… thought I'd never… God…" Lois choked out between sobs. Before he had a chance to say anything, she flung herself on top of his chest and wrapped herself around him like he was going to disappear at any second. She buried her face into his neck and let the hot tears roll onto his skin, not giving a damn if she was acting like a mess right now. She wasn't a weak or weapy woman, but everyone had their breaking point. Hers just happened to involve the love of her life.

"Oh, Lois… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for leaving you," Clark murmured. His breath was hot in her ear, another reassurance that he was really here. She felt his arm tighten around her lower back as his other hand clutched her head to his chest. He deftly pulled her hair out of the bun it was in and smoothed her hair out. He brushed through her auburn locks with his fingers rythmically knowing that it was one of the things that helped relax her when needed.

"I'm here now. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere," he said along with more words of comfort and reassurance. Despite his words, Lois couldn't stop the steady stream of tears that leaked from her eyes. Thankfully though, she was no longer sobbing. She wasn't a fan of crying, especially ugly crying, and this was probably the hardest she had cried since she thought Chloe had died.

It took about another five minutes of loving whispers and caressing touches for Lois to finally calm down enough to speak normally. Her eyes were red and raw, her throat soar, and her body exhausted from all of the energy she had just expended. When she finally got the nerve to peel herself away from Clark's shoulder, she found him looking at her with a heartbroken expression.

"I'm so sorry, Lois," he whispered. It seemed he was trying to keep his own emotions at bay. She knew he felt guilty for not telling her about his plan to destroy the gate, being away for three weeks, and now making her cry, but she wasn't going to be able to handle it if he got emotional too.

"I know, I know, just the thought of losing you… it finally hit me," she said hoarsely. "I've kind of been sort of a shell of a person the last couple weeks and all my emotions are catching up to me."

"You're not going to lose me. I promise," he said roughly. "I'm never going to let that happen."

Lois nodded meekly and Clark reached over to wipe away the remaining wetness on her face. He kissed her gently, almost tentatively, and Lois responded before sliding off of his chest and pressing herself to his side. She hooked her leg over his, tangling their lower limbs together and placed her head against his chest. Listening to his steady heartbeat, Lois closed her eyes and let her hand gently caress the side of his stomach. In turn, he returned to the task of stroking her hair and placed a kiss to the top of her head.

"I sure know how to kill a mood, huh?" Lois asked. She felt the low chuckle rumble through his chest and smiled.

"This is perfect, Lois. You're perfect," he said, placing a comforting hand on her arm. The steady beating of his heart was calming and was quickly drawing her into a much-needed sleep. However, before she could completely fall out, she found herself being moved off of his warm body. She cracked her eyes open to find Clark picking up his discarded shirt and a tremor of nervousness went through her.

"Did you hear something?" she asked hesitantly. She didn't want to be selfish, but she had also just gotten him back. The thought of him leaving again left her feeling cold. Seeing her expression, Clark gave her an assuring smile.

"No, I'm just going to turn the lights off and take a quick shower. Tess made it pretty clear that she'd kill Oliver and me if we were out tonight," Clark said. "Just give me a few seconds."

True to his word, just ten seconds later Clark was climbing into bed with a a damp head of hair and turning the bedside lamp off. Lois was immediately pulled back to her previous position and sighed as she felt all of the tension and stress from the day melt away. Clark had a habit of being both the source and the remedy to most of her worries, but she wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. A simple life wasn't in the cards for Lois Lane, and neither was a simple man.

"Thank you."

Lois frowned and looked up in the darkness to find Clark gazing at her lovingly.

"For what, Smallville?" she asked.

"For waiting," he replied. Her heart swelled for him. Clark had a history of having loved ones leave him. They were too alike in that aspect.

"Always, Smallville," she said before leaning up to kiss him. "Thank you for coming back to me."

"Always. I love you."

"I love you too."