Rating: K+
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Smallville, etc.
Summary: 'Luthor' and the Earth2 portion left me a bit unsettled. I can't wrap my mind around an unredeemable Clark especially when I saw signs that he could be redeemed. So, I came up with a quick, 4 part (maybe 5) series of observations from both worlds. This part deals with consequences of the RWClark telling AULois about his Lois and their love.

Author's note:

Thank you, thank you, thank you all for your wonderful feedback. Ya'll are just amazing! I'm STILL a little rusty, so I hope you enjoy. There's a little bit of fluff in this one. I was in serious need since we've had a serious lack of new SV eps. Hope this all makes sense. Let me know what you think.

The Two Worlds, Two Words Series: She Will

His stoic profile was in perfect contrast to the firelight's soft glow.

Having long given up on the idea of ever sneaking up on him, she made no effort to conceal her presence, and was thoroughly perplexed when her light touch caused him to jump unexpectedly. It was as if she'd startled him from a different world into their own.

Which, given recent events, perhaps she had.

That split-second reaction morphed into relaxed shoulders and a soul-catching sigh of peace that came from somewhere deep inside of him. His eyes drifted closed and the tight line of his lips eased into a curl.

Lois Lane took that as a clear sign of encouragement.

Fingers feathered through the thick hair grazing his neck as one hand slipped over his shoulder, down the hills and up the valleys of his chest, tracing lazy, haphazard patterns against bare skin.

Until she found his heart.

Instinctively zeroing in on the sensitive spot behind his right ear, Lois planted a soft, teasing kiss before whispering, "Now, how do you expect me to relieve all the frustrations of my day when you won't stay in bed?"

Clark Kent grinned as he laced his fingers through hers and leaned back into the fortress of her arms. "You're a highly creative woman, I'm sure you'll think of something." Though his voice was gravelly, his lips were smooth against her skin as he kissed the back of the hand he was holding. His other hand slid up her arm as if trying to capture her embrace. "Though in truth, I hope you never do."

Despite his best efforts to keep his tone light, Lois noted the subtle frown creasing his brow and instinctively knew the troubles of a week past were the cause of his pensive mood. She was actually surprised it had taken this long for everything to really sink and crash in on him.

There had been signs this was coming, of course. With Clark there always were. Moments when she'd been eagerly sniffing out a story only to look up and find him watching her with an unreadable expression. Or times when, out of the blue, he'd silently approach her, pull her into him and kiss her as if that act alone was keeping him upright in a tilting world. Then there were the little notes he'd been leaving her. Spontaneous reminders that Lois Lane was the center of Clark Kent's world.

It wasn't that she minded this obvious show of devotion, because she didn't. And it wasn't that he hadn't told her what had happened there in that other world, because he had. But details were missing in the broad brushstrokes of the tale. And as any good reporter knows, a troublesome devil is always lurking in the details.

Lois steeled herself to lure that very devil from the shadows of Clark's thoughts.

Gently kissing his cheek, Lois hugged him tightly from behind, willing her love to seep into him. To comfort him. To buoy him. "After that energetic workout we had earlier, I thought you'd be out till noon tomorrow, which to every other man on the planet would be noon of next week." She smiled at his warm chuckle. "Whatcha doing up?"

"Couldn't stop thinking." Clark answered as he tugged on her hand, bringing her around the chair and into his lap.

"Thinking, huh?" Snuggling into his warmth, Lois's teasing eyes met his as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "It'd better be about the top fifty ways to pleasure your oh-so-insatiable girlfriend."

Adoration danced in Clark's crystal blue eyes as his fingers slipped through her hair and twirled a strand or two around his finger before sliding down the long column of her neck. All the while, his intense gaze followed his own movements only to land on her lips as his thumb traced their graceful arch.

He smiled his response. "I was going for a hundred, but hey...if my oh-so-insatiable girlfriend wants to lower our standard..."

In spite of his otherwise distracted mood, he knew no matter the crisis, no matter the struggle he faced, he'd always make time for this. For her. For them. He'd be forever lost if he didn't.

A flash of a grin as a dark eyebrow hitched, Lois's fingers found occupation in playing with the hair curling around Clark's ear. "Nah. I think I like things just the way they are."

"Me too." Clark whispered as he pulled Lois into a tender, lingering kiss.

He breathed her in and felt the silent burden he'd been carrying just float away. Still unspoken, still unaddressed, it didn't matter. Lois Lane was in his corner. Somehow, they would make sense of an insanely upside down world.

Together.

Sighing, he reluctantly released her. The strong jaw flexed and relaxed under Lois' softly roaming fingers when she pulled back to gaze into his eyes. Seeing. Knowing. Understanding.

"So, what is it, Clark?" Lois asked gently. And accurately. "What aren't you telling me about what happened in Lionel's world?"

A surprised eyebrow rose. "How did you..."

"Oh, I can always tell when you have another woman on your mind." Lois teased.

"Well then..." Clark's lips quirked. "...it's a good thing the other woman was you."

Lois chuckled, leaned in and planted a rewarding kiss on his lips before pulling away with a knowing, "Nice try."

The questions and doubts of the past week came rushing back. It was time. Time to pull her into his center of his struggle. Time to reveal his heart and soul. Not that she couldn't see them anyway. She could. God, how he loved that she could. That she knew him like no else. That she never badgered or questioned. She just gave him space and patiently waited until he was ready to share himself completely.

Which, in this case, was now.

Clark's sigh was deep and heavy with resignation as his gaze shifted to the fire's flickering flames. "I was thinking about what happened there, how different things were. And..." Clark paused, struggling, before he putting his week long battle into words. "...I can't help but wonder if I did the right thing."

Lois tilted her head as her gaze focused on her continued exploration of familiar territory - the dimple in his chin, the random freckles on his chest. "Well, I guess that depends. What did you do?"

Lois wasn't the only one exploring familiar territory. Clark's strong but gentle fingers absently caressed the back of her neck, sending unintended, but delightful shivers down her spine. "I told Lois about us, the way we are together." His voice lowered to an intimate, gravelly whisper. "Lois, I told her I couldn't live in a world where you didn't love me."

Her gaze snapped upward. Eyes met. Smiles softened. "Oh, Clark..."

Clark swallowed hard as harsh reality hit him once more. His haunted gaze instantly returned to the fire. "And then I left her. And sent him back."

"Oh."

And there it was. The lynchpin tying all the unspoken moments of the past week together.

"How could I be so selfish? And cruel."

"Were you?" A nonplused Lois asked, prompting his doubt-filled eyes to lock with hers. "Clark, I know you. You must have had a reason to tell her those things."

"I did." Clark nodded as if he were suddenly seeing past circumstances in a different light. "She was...afraid of me. Which is pretty ironic, because she wasn't afraid of him." A thought made him pause. Then prompted an unintended confession. "Then again he probably never kidnapped her from her own engagement party."

Stunned, Lois Lane blinked three times in rapid succession. "Kid...engage...what? Ok, whoa. I'm not quite sure which to tackle first, the kidnapping or a sparkly on the digit." She waved her unadorned hand in the air. Contrary to her own words, a grinning Lois dove right in like an eager child on Christmas morning. "So, who was it? Who was I engaged to?"

"She..." A chagrinned Clark emphasized. "...was engaged..." His eyes slipped closed and winced as he anticipated her reaction. "...to Oliver Queen."

Silence greeted then news. Then...

Lois burst into laughter. "Riiight. Now, I see why you've been keeping the details of this little adventure to yourself."

"Oh, really."

"Uh-huh." Lois nodded confidently. "It appears that you, Smallville," Lois tweaked his nose playfully. "...do not like the idea of me and Ollie. Together. In any world."

Clark quickly conceded the point. With a correction. "Actually, I don't like the idea of you with anyone other than me. In any world." Holding up a cautious finger, Clark still wasn't willing to give Lois a complete victory. "But that's not why I took her from him."

"No?"

"No."

"Ok, home wrecker." Lois smiled wryly as an eyebrow rose in challenge. "This had better be good."

Clark sucked in a deep breath and began. "I needed the mirror box and Lionel said Oliver had stolen it from him, which didn't totally make sense, and Lionel Luthor is certainly not a man that can be easily trusted, but this was a different world and it wouldn't be the first time Oliver took something that wasn't his in the name of heroics, so I went looking for him only to find you...no, actually her...and him at the Ace of Clubs getting ready for their engagement party and, well..." Lois was desperately trying not to laugh as Clark's adorable, rambling explanation. "...I couldn't help but overhear what they were saying and...you know, when they got ready to kiss I just uhh..." Clark's gaze shifted guiltily.

Lois giggled again. "You just couldn't help yourself from swooping in and saving her lips, huh?"

Clark's eyes narrowed and his 'I-hate-how-you-know-me-so-well' look appeared with a vengeance. "I was trying to get back to you."

"Kudos. Looks like you made it." Lois quipped. Glancing around the room as if looking for something, Lois pursed her lips. "Now, where is that America's Most Wanted list..."

Clark chuckled and dropped his head in embarrassed resignation. "You just really love to bust my chops, don't you."

"Absolutely." Lois declared definitively before her chuckling turned into a coo. "Awww, Smallville...I understand your need to keep these lips...exclusive." Lois captured his downcast face between her hands and planted a forgiving kiss that soothed the pout on his lips. "For the record, had I been there, I would've kicked Tess' ass into another universe for even thinking she could touch any version of what's mine."

Clark sobered instantly at Lois' unwitting quip. "She wasn't happy with him, Lois."

"Who? Tess?"

"No. Lois. With Oliver." Sadness crept back into his eyes. "She wasn't happy."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because I know you, universally consistent as you are. I know how you look when you're in love. Truly, deeply, head-over-heels, one thousand percent in." Warm fingers caressed her face. His smile deepened. "Lois, you look at me and everything about you...from your eyes, to your smile...everything just..." He sighed, his eyes glowing with a happiness that came from deep within. "...shines and dazzles."

As if to prove his point, Lois let loose a breath-stealing smile and made his heart flip over and stop. Her breathless observation was delivered with a rare coyness. "So, I shine and dazzle, huh? That's mighty poetic of you, Mr. Kent."

"I told you I had it in me. You just had to look deeper." Clark reminded her softly.

"And so I did." Lois replied.

"And what did you find?"

Lois' sigh was deep and contented as she languidly wrapped her arms around his neck. "A love I can't live without."

His smile slipped away as another truth made its way from one universe to another. "But she is, Lois. And while she said and did all the right things with Oliver...it was like..." Clark swallowed hard, unable to think about his Lois - any Lois - as anything other than blissfully happy. With him. "...like she'd given up. Like she'd decided that what she had was the best she ever would."

"So you decided to show her what she was missing." This time, Lois wasn't teasing.

He didn't reject the thought outright, but he couldn't embrace it either. Not fully. Not yet. And he wasn't quite sure why. "I was trying to convince her I wasn't him. That I wasn't Clark Luthor. That's why I told her about us so she could see I was different. So she would know she didn't have to be afraid."

"Wait. You said she wasn't afraid of him before, and that she didn't cut him any slack. So, besides the obvious kidnapping issue, if she knew it was him or thought it was, why was she afraid?"

"She thought he was Ultraman. Which, I never quite got a handle on all that meant in that world, but let's just say she wasn't the first one to say no one who saw his face ever lived to tell the tale."

"Wow. Ok. So, Ultraman was ultra-scary."

Clark's breath caught in the center of his chest. And that would be the reason. The reason he'd been struggling the past week. Why he couldn't reconcile his actions in that world with this.

Here, time and time again, he'd denied his own desires in favor of protecting the ones he loved. There, he opened himself completely. Without hesitation. Without fear of the consequences. He should have been afraid. Given the circumstances. Given the players.

So, why then, wasn't he?

He'd told Oliver once that he couldn't reveal himself to Lois, to give her everything she'd ever wanted, only to rip it away from her. He simply loved her too much. Yet, with time running out and no words left to spare, isn't that exactly what he'd done?

Or was it something altogether different?

Clark's steady gaze met and held hers. Now, it appeared he too was ready to meet his own devil.

"Just how bad was he, Lois?"

Lois' expression softened. "Well, he threatened to kill Tess. And he was bad enough that we felt the need to protect ourselves. But beyond that, I really can't say..." For some reason Clark wasn't satisfied with that answer. "Like I told you, he dropped into Watchtower and I went flying across the room. When I approached him, thinking he was you..."

"He wasn't."

"No, Clark. He wasn't."

"But could he be?" The unexpected hope in his voice contrasted with the uncertainty in his eyes.

"I don't...know." Lois answered slowly, honestly. Doubtfully. "Clark, you're two different men with two different lives and two completely different sets of experiences. You had the Kents, a loving, supportive family that tried to protect you from the Lionels of the world. He was raised by one worse than we ever knew." She shrugged helplessly. "Who knows what Lionel did to him in the name of Luthor."

"He branded him." Clark revealed unexpectedly.

"What?"

"When I met Tess in the barn, she knew I wasn't him because I didn't have a scar on my arm. One that Lionel gave to him."

"But you're indestructible." Lois stated the obvious then immediately came to the obvious conclusion. "Which means..."

"...Lionel either used Green K or Blue." Clark finished her thought then added a level of meaning to the discovery. "Either way, Clark felt every searing second of it."

"Oh, God." Lois breathed as horror filled her eyes. "Clark, that's..."

"The least of it, I'm afraid." Knowing her questions before they even had a chance to form, Clark's deepest, darkest fears came rising to the surface. "The beating he gave me before I was able to get back to you...it may not have been the first. You know, Lionel was actually disappointed in him for not trying to murder him in all those years. He said that's how he knew Clark wasn't his real son. That he wasn't a true Luthor. How impossibly messed up is that?"

Not waiting for an answer, Clark continued. "And the situations I found myself in, Lois, the way I was expected to act..." He paused, shaking his head in anguished disbelief. "...I think he might have had extended exposure to Red K. For how long, I don't know. It could have been years. And, from my own experience..."

"Back in high school." Lois supplied, making sure they were on the same page of Clark Kent's varying and bizarre history. "When you ran away from home."

Clark nodded, grateful for the raw honesty of their relationship and Lois' non-judgmental take on his life. She truly was one of a kind. And he truly was the luckiest man in the universe. "Lois, the longer I was exposed, the more numb I was to my own humanity. There was no guilt, no remorse, no thought of the consequences. Just this overwhelming desire to act out and destroy everything around me."

"Just like Clark Luthor."

The more Lois heard the more it all made sense. The more she felt for the gentle Clark who, by some horrible twist of Fate, had been crushed and forced to carry the Luthor banner. For perhaps the first time, she wished she could reach across the universe and hold him.

"Yes. But like you said, I was lucky. I had mom and dad. Two people that forgave me and loved me back to myself." Clark's gaze returned to the fire. He swallowed hard as pained doubt entered his expression. "Who does he have?"

Suddenly, everything blurred into a single point of clarity

It would have been easy, so very easy, to just close the door on that world and chock it up to another chapter that was over and done. But it wasn't that simple. Not for Clark Kent. Because he'd lived it. He'd been crushed by the weight of a father's loathing. He'd lived the loneliness of an outcast. And tasted the disdain of a love he couldn't live without.

He'd felt the hopelessness of that world.

And in feeling, he identified.

He became that man in the mirror.

And now, he was crying out for that man to be saved.

"Huh."

That one sound prompted Clark's curious attention. "What?"

"You know what I think?" Lois asked the proceeded to tell Clark though he didn't inquire. "I think you want him...to have Lois."

"What?" An incredulous eyebrow rose. "No, Lois, if he was as bad as you say, as bad as I think...that's just..." Clark shrugged away her suggestion, but couldn't shake the hope in his eyes.

"What? Cruel? Selfish?" Lois countered, gently throwing his own words back at him. "Think about it, Clark. Those things you told her about us, maybe you didn't tell her because she was afraid of you. Maybe you told her because...let's face it...you and I together are so..." Searching for the right word, she landed on the only one that made sense. "...us. And there's a part of you that can't stand the thought that there's a Lois and Clark somewhere out there that doesn't have this." She dipped her head till she captured his gaze. "I think you wanted her to see for herself what could be possible so she wouldn't give up. On love, on herself, but most importantly...so she wouldn't give up...on you." Her lips tilted knowingly. "Him."

Clark's brows knit in contemplation. "Maybe."

A gentle hand caressed his face. "That isn't selfish or cruel. Honey, that's love."

Still the doubts remained. "But what if what I did creates the opposite result? At least, she'd resolved herself, and if not entirely happy, at least she was content. What if I made her hope for something that just isn't there?"

"It is."

Clark blinked up at her, surprised by her sudden confidence. In truth, Lois was a bit surprised herself. "So...what now? Suddenly you're Clark Luthor's champion?"

Lois shrugged. "You said it yourself. She was about to give him another chance."

"Given that she hated him, my assumption might have been drawn more from fantasy than reality." Clark admitted, his eyes narrowed in thought.

Convinced now herself and relentlessly unwilling to accept his hesitation or excuses, Lois soldiered on. "You also said he wasn't a true Luthor. No matter how bad he was, there was still a grain of goodness in him. And knowing Lois Lane as I do..." Her lips tilted at her own joke. "...she is the perfect person to find it."

"Agreed." Clark consented. "But..."

"Besides, I was destined to love you, Clark Kent. And if I am universally consistent..." Lois let the thought dangle, then issued a gentle command. "Ask me again."

Confusion flashed through Clark's expression. "Ask you what?"

"What you really want to know."

Clark swallowed the lump in his throat and once again marveled at just how amazing she was. How she could take all of the frazzled threads of his scattered thoughts and not only weave them altogether into a beautiful portrait, but also hand it to him tied up in a perfect bow.

"If he had someone...someone to see his potential and instead of beating it out of him or testing him with mind games and drugging him into submission, if there was someone to just...believe in him...to love him in spite of it all..."

"Just...someone?"

"You." Clark corrected. He should have known she'd wouldn't let him dance around the heart of it all for too long. "If he had you. His own Lois to look deeper, could he be redeemed?"

"Yes." Her breathless whisper held a ringing note of triumph.

"You sound so sure."

"Clark, if I didn't have you and then suddenly I did and you showed me this, what we could be together..." Lois chest hitched with a deep sigh as her hands gravitated to his beloved face. "...I wouldn't stop until I found you again. Even if it meant going to the pit to Hell and dragging you back kicking and screaming."

His chuckle held more than just a note of admiration. "I believe you would."

"So will she."

"But..."

"I looked deeper, Clark, and it changed my life."

"It made a world of difference in mine." Clark admitted, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. "But still, Lois, they aren't..."

Lois stilled his final denial with a finger against his lips. "I can't live in a world where you don't love me." Lois whispered Clark's words back to him, then issued a challenge. "Now, tell me that doesn't make you want to defy every Luthor in a million universes for just one chance to have us."

A slow smile spread across his lips and his blue eyes sparkled with unabashed adoration.

"It does."

Lois rewarded him with the gentlest kiss full of the deepest love.

She pulled back. Their shining eyes met. Her smile spread until it dazzled.

And with a faith beyond herself, she echoed his hidden hopes with just two words.

"She will."

Tbc...