AN: For some peace of mind, I'm going to try to update fanfics at the end of the month in the future. I actually have Excel documents that show the popularity of the fics and will write the ones which are most popular first but hope to update a lot of them monthly. Thank you for bearing with me during this and I hope you enjoy.

Chapter Twenty

20.1

Would there be anywhere in existence where he felt comfortable? Those were the thoughts that had plagued Clark over the previous week. He was seen as some kind of deity and maybe he wasn't human, he wasn't and there was no pretending he could do anymore, but he wasn't some holy spirit people should follow blindly. It was too much. If there weren't people who were throwing themselves at his feet, he was being handled viciously by people wanting to take out his brain.

It didn't afford him any escape and it just felt like everything was swirling around him. He had come back to his house to find it surrounded by people making requests of him, by people wanting him to voice his support on the topics, from people who wanted to ask him questions about other aliens and other galaxies and he didn't know any of that.

It felt like things were getting messed up. Not infamously being taken from behind in a prison bad but…that was the type of thought that shouldn't exist. Clark shook his head and let his body rest as he floated to the ceiling and closed his eyes trying to feel at peace with the world though it seemed nearly impossible to do.

"Honey," Lois asked as she put down a huge stack of letters on the side table. She sighed. She understood how much someone would want a normal life and to blend in and although she sometimes grew fearful that her reputation would make it hard for her to blend into the background, that was nothing compared to this. Lois looked up at the ceiling and smiled. "Needed a new perspective on life?"

Clark laughed weakly before seeing her standing right underneath him. "Sorry, just a little longer, okay."

"Oh, take all the time that you need," Lois said as she sat down on the sofa and lay back so she could look up at him and he closed his eyes trying to feel at one with everything in the room. There were so many things that were fighting for his attention and he could hear everything but somehow - he sighed as his eyes widened as he heard a volcano about to erupt somewhere in South America.

"I'll ju-" he said and she nodded before sitting back up. She had already known when she had agreed to marry him that she would have to come second to his saving the day and the people in the world. Even though such painful things had happened to him, they couldn't erase that from him. He would always be the person wanting to save everyone whether that person was in Smallville or Metropolis or anywhere else.

She sighed as she stood up and looked around for where Johnathan Jr. was. She wrapped her arms around him protectively. She knew not to wake a sleeping baby and especially a sleeping baby who had superpowers but she just needed that closeness.

"Why does your daddy love me so much?" she asked the baby. She knew that although she carried the baby in her belly and given birth to him, somehow she had been proven as Johnathan's mother on the maternity test. She never questioned much but she wondered how that could be. Explanations didn't make as much sense as the feelings that she had with her little boy.

Johnathan yawned and curled in closer towards his mother. Lois shifted so she could sit down with him and she handed him a plush Superman toy. Why was she involved in this? She was always looking for adventure and to see more and experience more but she wasn't special, just intelligent and good at her job. Maybe she was being weighed down with the people asking her why she was important.

Lois bowed her head as she remembered how they had hurt Clark, using Johnathan's safety as the reason they felt that they had the power to….to hurt him so much. She stood carefully before feeling more tears filling her eyes and she tried to walk towards Johnthan's room.

"Hey, are you, okay?" Clark asked as he landed in front of her in his 'super' form. "Here, I'll take him," he said as he held his son close to the red S and Lois looked up at him and grabbed his hand, letting her fingers slide into his as he tried to comfort her. "It was a…an -"

"Can you just hold me?" she asked and he nodded.

"I'll get this little guy back to bed then," Clark said as he took their son carefully and went back to put him back in his little bed. Lois sank into the chair and after a short time, looked up to see Clark wearing a loose t-shirt and jeans without his glasses – why he kept wearing them despite everyone knowing was…it probably was mostly emotional.

"Can you just hold me?" Lois repeated and Clark walked over to her and wrapped her up in her arms, sitting behind her on the sofa and letting her rest on him. She reached a hand up to his chin before smiling and looked away. "Hmm…"

"Something wrong?" Clark asked her and Lois breathed out.

"I just wonder how things would be if you were born normally," she said and saw Clark give a melancholy smile. She had that run around in her mind and she immediately sat up. She looked at him a little fearfully, she hadn't meant to really say that. She knew how hard this was for him. "I didn't mean to -"

"I think that way too," Clark told her and laughed at how that felt. He would have loved to have been born as anyone else was on this planet. He would have wanted to be the same as everyone else out there and then none of this would have happened, no one would want to provide him these opportunities he didn't want and nobody would be trying to cut open his body as if it were some cave of wonders full of medical knowledge.

"Maybe we should just live on endorsement deals now that the secret is out," Clark told her and Lois sighed as she let her body rest into his again.

"Wealth and privilege, somehow you have me feeling sympathy for -"

"Why don't we keep the conversation away from Mr. Luthor tonight," he said and Lois nodded. She hated to admit it but seeing the jealousy in Clark's eyes made her feel a little bit more comforted. She knew that he was the only man in her heart and she wouldn't look at another man the same way but even hearing the man's name brought back memories. Of course, they weren't the same as those memories of the doctor who had separated them after she got amnesia.

Lois hummed, "Even if you were weakened and you didn't have your memory, I would still want to be yours," she told him and Clark leaned down to kiss her forehead.

"Good. Because I may be offered everything that I could want to have but I'm not going to share what or whom I want to keep."

11.2

Clark bowed his head as he stood in the backstage area of the studio. He kept seeing people looking at him and then looking away, looking at him and looking away and he sighed as he put his hands on Lois's shoulders. "Are you so sure that this is a good thing?" he asked her and Lois rubbed his arm in a comforting manner.

"We'll be right here waiting for it to be done," she said as Clark looked over to where their son was and laughed.

"Jimmy really does make a good babysitter," he said as he saw the younger man trying his best with the super baby. It had been a strange transition at first for all of them but now that Jimmy was getting used to it at least they had him to help them. And hearing him say CK was definitely more refreshing than hearing the other addresses people made to him.

"I have to thank him," Clark said as Jimmy saw them staring at him and came over with Johnathan Jr. in his arms.

"Everything okay, CK?" he asked and Clark nodded.

"Just being grateful for your friendship to this whole family," Clark said before taking off his glasses and ran his hand through his hair. "I am not going out in the super suit," he laughed weakly. "I know they expect me to, I know people want me to but I want to prove that I can blend in with regular people."

"Well, maybe soon they will. I'm still dealing with it and I've known you for years. I think Chief just didn't think that he'd be blindsided like that but maybe he'll calm down too. I hope so," Jimmy laughed as a member of the crew came up to them.

"So, Superman," the gofer said and Clark let out an exhausted sigh. "I'm sorry, Clark, they told me to call you Clark," she said and Clark nodded. "So is there anything that you need? Anything special?"

"Just that I might need to leave at any point but I'll be back as soon as possible, you know, saving the world and that sort of thing," he said but Lois moved forwards.

"We might need some extra protection, officers, guards, people who can check bags or suitcases or -" Lois said but was cut off by the crew member.

"Why would we need any of that when we have…" she coughed and gestured to Clark to avoid calling him the man of steel. Jimmy sighed, he looked away knowing that Lois was referring to weaknesses and there must be people who would try to locate Clark with suitcases full of Kryptonite so that they could get the upper hand. He bounced Johnathan in his arms not wanting the little boy to get hurt. If they knew how to hurt Clark then they knew how to hurt his son.

"There are things that hurt Kryptonians as well," Lois said as she folded her arms across her chest. "You might just think that I'm a human woman and nothing compared to my husband but there are some things that I can handle and I'm not going to let my husband get hurt just because you fail to do your job efficiently."

"I will make sure that we have some security," the woman said before turning to Clark. "Is that what you're wearing?"

"I was told that I would be able to appear as my true self if I did this morning show. I was told that I would be able to ease people so that they could accept me into the community and this is who I am. I am an alien, yes, but most of all I'm just a boy from Smallville who came to the big city with dreams of becoming a journalist. That's really who I am."

End of Chapter Twenty

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