It had been hours, hours back in the honeymoon suite, watching the news to try to find out what had drawn him off, hours wondering if he would even come back here. Lois sat with her laptop open, trying to concentrate on something else, anything else. But her eyes kept moving restlessly from the screen to the doors open onto the balcony, to his glasses sitting on the coffee table.

When the room's door opened, it startled her to see him dressed in his usual buttoned up, long-sleeved shirt and neatly pressed gray pants. She stood quickly as he stopped just inside the door.

Lois gestured at the new pair of glasses on his face, "Those don't work as well." She could see the blue of his eyes through them.

"I know," He reached and drew them off, his eyes never leaving her. Lois felt her breath quicken. Superman stood before her. Superman – and she knew more about him, and less, than she'd ever realized.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice low and concerned.

"Yes," she said, then, "no. I don't – " her words cut off abruptly. She gazed at him; three feet separated them but she could feel him, feel his every breath. "I'm in love with you."

Warm and sweet as honey fresh from the comb, her words filled him, from the toes on up until a small laugh broke out of him. Joy was spinning his head – of course, Lois wouldn't beat around the bush. Of course, she'd cut right to it.

She came closer, stopping just before him, turning her face up to him. Her beautiful face; he'd seen it in a hundred different moods, from fierce to tender. "Would you," her voice quivered and that tremor speared him to the core, "tell me your name?"

His own words surprised him, "Clark Kent."

She frowned and shook her head in frustration but froze when he took her hand. "There's more. There's a lot you need to know, Lois."

"I want to," she said.

The distance between them had been collapsing by degrees, now only an inch separated their bodies.

He nodded, a small movement. He saw her hands come up, felt them lay gently on his chest.

"Kiss me, Clark," she whispered.

He touched her face, slipping his fingertips along her cheek as his head bent. At last, at last, he felt her trembling lips under his, her warm breath rushing into him, her arms around his neck, her heart beating against him. Nothing mattered more than this, more than her…

As their feet left the ground to fly to the Fortress, three other pairs of feet touched Earth's surface. General Zod surveyed his new planet, and found it good.

The last son of Krypton was no longer alone.

There had been so much he hadn't known about himself before his father died. There were a hundred things he could never share with his mother; she worried so. Jor-el and Lara – weren't really here. He never forgot when he spoke to him, that he talked only with memories. Never before had there been someone to whom he could tell it all.

Lois was awed by the Fortress, cautious in the midst of its powerful strangeness, but nothing outweighed her curiosity. Always she wanted to know more. How had he carried this part of Krypton here? When had the planet died? How old had he been when he came to Earth?

She concentrated to follow his explanation of relativistic travel, how, during the first three years of his life, as he crossed the cosmos, the universe around him had aged thousands of solar years.

"Could they see us?" she asked. "Your parents? Could they see Earth?"

"Yes."

"But it was three thousand years ago?"

"That's right."

She laughed in disbelief, "They must have thought you would seem a god to us."

He nodded, "They did."

"That's – " she paused, shaking her head slowly, but smiling at him, "There are a lot of incredible things about you – but that's the topper." She laughed again, "And you landed in Kansas?"

A slight smile touched his lips, "Yes?"

"Nothing," she straightened her face deliberately, "I'm just being a big city snob when you definitely win the who's-got-the-more-cosmopolitan-origins contest. From what you're saying, Krypton must have been millennia ahead of Earth."

"It was. It was an ancient, magnificent civilization, a million years old." He looked around the crystalline Fortress of Solitude. "Now this is all that is left. I am all that is left."

Such infinite sadness humbled Lois; it frightened her. She had some awareness of his burden as hero, but this weight she had not understood. How utterly alone in the universe he was. She could not stand the despair tingeing the air, so she tossed off, "And you get stuck with this lot of animals just because you look like us. That really is tragic."

He smiled, "No, you're wrong, Lois. You don't even believe that yourself. You couldn't, and be who you are. I've seen your courage, and your compassion. It's why you go after the truth the way you do."

Lois looked away from his intense gaze and his smile grew wider, "You're blushing."

"I am not!"

"Lois, I can feel every change in your body temperature."

"Well, that's cheating and I don't like it, so stop it." She waved a hand before her face as if she could wipe away the pink on her cheeks. "How'd you make your skin cool – by the river? That almost threw me off the scent."

He took her hand in his, "Simple biofeedback," and his fingers cooled while his palm stayed warm.

"That's creepy," she said. "In fact, there's a lot creepy about this. You sneaking around with a secret identity - being Clark Kent."

"I told you, I am Clark – "

"You know what I mean," she interrupted. "You're not really the guy who trips over himself every five seconds. It must be so strange for you to act like that."

He laughed a little, nodding. "But I… I really like it sometimes," he confessed.

"Why?" she was laughing too, warmed by his touch, amazed at this sudden closeness.

"It can be a relief to just be the average nobody, to not be noticed. I can almost feel – normal. Besides," he stepped nearer to her, reaching up to brush her dark hair back over her shoulder, "if I hadn't been that Clark, I would never have met you."

Lois' heart was pounding as she put her arms around his shoulders. She felt the warmth of his body heating her as she caressed his face with her fingers. Going up on her toes, she kissed him. The passion with which he returned it melted her against his steel body.

He pulled back to look at her, and said, "Sometimes, I think I crossed all that space, all that time, just to meet you, Lois."

Lois Lane had never really cared about much in the world, just her career and herself, her own sense of honor. She acted as if she was an extraordinary person, precisely because she knew she was not. She worked so hard to make up for being ordinary. But when he spoke those words, she touched a truth more profound than any she had ever believed in, than any she had ever believed possible. She couldn't help but be surprised to discover that she had a special destiny after all. Every step of her life had led her to this moment – to him.