Clark straightened slowly, holding on to the doorframe. His face was pale and weary, and a shock of dark hair had fallen down in front of his eyes. His glance darted over the room, surveying each of them in turn.

And then their eyes met. Her heart was sinking to see him there, while something else inside her unclenched and breathed.

"Clark?" she whispered. How? And why? And how?

"Clark!" Jimmy yelped. He scrambled up from among the kids to fling himself across the room at her partner, throw his gangly arms around him and slap him wildly on the back. Clark held her eyes over Jimmy's head, which came barely to his shoulder as he folded him in his arms, and gave her a small smile.

Clark's hands were trembling.

"Hey, Jimmy. Hey, Lois," he said softly. Lois felt her ears prick as she heard the strain under the familiar gentleness. What had they done to him, in the three hours since his page?

And oh, God, what will they do to him still? Clark, why?

Clark took Jimmy's shoulders and held him out at arms' length, searching his face. "You're all right?" Jimmy nodded, wordlessly.

Lois had the sudden, strange conviction she could read the thought that crossed behind Clark's eyes in that moment as he looked at Jimmy. All the years of leaping into loved ones' arms that this boy-man should have ahead of him; the children of his own that should someday fall asleep in his. Then Clark's gaze returned, over Jimmy's shoulder, to her.

Inexplicably shy of the bruised spot on her jaw, Lois found herself turning her head away at first, looking at him sideways. Then she realized that was ridiculous, and she let herself look him full in the face.

And she watched in his eyes that same kaleidoscopic shift she had seen that night in the newsroom, so long ago. Something massive beyond telling stirred, without motion, in their depths.

"Lois," he said softly.

Jimmy and the children watched silently as he came over and knelt in front of her. He brought his head down level with hers. She closed her eyes and felt a rush of dizziness again, and was a bit ashamed to feel hot tears welling up.

Afraid he'll see your tears as some proof of female helplessness? You know better.

Or afraid you'll judge yourself for them?

Oh, Lucy, get out of my head.

"What happened?" he whispered, as if he didn't trust himself to speak aloud.

"About my height, blue eyes, blond mustache," Jimmy said levelly from behind him. "In case you get the chance."

Lois, eyes still closed, was suddenly laughing despite herself, at his sweet underdog machismo. It sounded so, so disturbingly familiar.

All right, Lucy, I get it already.

Then she felt Clark's palms on her cheeks, back well behind the tender spot, his long fingers cradling her head. She felt his forehead press against hers, and his breath on her face. She tried to reach up and cover his hands with hers, but the chains clinked and weighed them down.

"Lois," he whispered, so softly she had to strain to hear him, "Anywhere else? Anything else?"

Mutely, she shook her head within the circle of his hands. "I gave as good as I got," she got out, over the lump in her throat.

"Of course you did, soldier," he said softly. "But I get to take the next one, and the ones after that. Okay?"

"Clark," she heard herself whisper back. "What did they do to you?"

He shook his head slightly against hers, his voice barely audible. "Not here, not now. I'm all right."

Lois opened her eyes. Visibly mindful of the four pairs of eyes staring at them, Clark dropped his hands to his sides, leaned back on his heels, and said, "Hi."

Looking into his dark eyes, she half-laughed. "Hi."

But his face was so pale. What was it they'd done to him, that couldn't be mentioned with six-year-olds listening?

"Oh, Clark, for the love of God, why are you here?"

He gave her a grave smile, and sat back on the floor. He shifted his gaze to include Jimmy as he came up beside them. "I did a low-budget job of hiding my tracks."

Lois leaned her forehead against on the pole, closed her eyes for just a moment, and laughed ruefully. Jimmy looked with some bafflement back and forth between them.

"He set himself up, Jimmy," she explained without looking at him. She seemed to do better if she didn't move her eyes much. "Now maybe he'll tell us why."

Clark ran one hand through his black hair. "There was no other way we could find you." He looked up at the ceiling and smiled wryly. "There's a lot of lead on these walls."

The quiet, matter-of-fact way he said it almost broke her heart. She felt a flash of anger at the Man of Steel for having asked it of him.

Although it had probably, come to think of it, been Clark's idea.

Then belatedly, something in his tone, in the way he was acting, registered with her. Lois looked up at him, at the dark steady eyes behind his glasses, like a young soldier already a veteran. Pale and weary he was, but something else was different.

Then it hit her. The profound, quiet confidence she had seen first in his writing long ago, then in his words and thoughts, now shone unflickering from his every move. He was being himself.

So this is what it takes to pull you out. Exhaustion, and disaster. And maybe torture. Oh, Clark.Then she wondered if he realized that Jimmy would notice.

And then she wondered how much Jimmy had seen and accepted, long ago, easily, without needing a reason.

Then one of the children hiccuped.

Clark looked to the corner and over the small figures huddled there, watching him with wary, solemn little eyes. Lois watched him breathe out, silently, slowly, and realized what a knot he too had been carrying in his heart for months.

"Lois, Jimmy," he said gently, "are these friends of yours?"

Jimmy, bemused, still with tear tracks glimmering on his cheeks, turned around and knelt at Clark's side. "Come on, guys. It's okay. This is my friend with all the fish."

Clark turned, still on his knees, and dug around in his jacket pocket. He produced, of all things, three candy bars, and unwrapped them as the children sidled up to him. She watched his deft fingers on the wrappers; his hands were still trembling slightly. He broke the bars in half, and handed the pieces into three pairs of grubby outstretched hands.

Then he looked down at the little girl chained to the pole, and came up and knelt over her. She was still pulling in the shuddering, too-big breaths; they had become part of the background. She was still sweating, her hair a matted tangle over her face and neck.

With one finger, he made a part in the hair over her face. He brushed back first one side, then the other. He looked down at her little features, as if trying to read something there.

"She's been like this since we got here," Jimmy filled in, coming up beside him, with the old puzzlement in his voice. "We don't know whose she is. She'll wake up to drink, but we can't get her to eat. She's so hot, we didn't want to cover her. As far as the handcuffs…" He threw up his hands. "Whatever she did to them, I hope it hurt."

Clark looked around the room, and she could see him noting the absence of water. And would any more be coming, now? Then he looked back up at Jimmy. "After we get out, some time, she'll tell us."

Then he looked at Lois, in an unspoken question.

She smiled grimly. "David Marshall's father was a mole."

Clark raised his eyebrows. Jimmy opened his mouth to say something about what else David Marshall's father was, but Lois shook her head. Time enough for that later. The kids had learned enough new language from him already.

Clark stood. He had a little of his color back. "All right," he said briskly. "Can you two tell me why the transmitter went out a few minutes ago? And when they'll restart it?"

Lois and Jimmy glanced sidelong at each other. Then, to her amazement, she saw the beginning of a wicked gallows smile on his face, and realized she was smiling back at him.

"Lois torched the diaphragm," Jimmy said offhandedly. Then in a rush, before she could stop him, he added, "And then she beat the shit out of a guy." He looked at her a bit defiantly and then glanced back over his shoulder. "Sorry, kids."

They looked up from their candy bars. There was chocolate all over their faces. Lois rolled her eyes.

Then, belatedly, she thought, Clark knew it was down. Superman must be close.

Close, but alive? Sane? She glanced back over at Clark.

And he was already looking at her, in utter, shameless delight. For a long moment he stared at her without saying anything.

"Lois Lane," he said softly, his eyes twinkling, "you're magnificent. We'll be home for breakfast."

Her heart leapt. "Is he here? Is he…all right?"

He hesitated for a moment. "He's here. But he took some damage. He just needs a little time, to get his…powers back."

What isn't he saying?

Did Superman go mad, after all?

"How much time, Clark?" Jimmy asked softly.

Clark grew very still. He tilted his head. "Why?"

"It's all right, Jimmy," Lois said quickly. "They might not look at the casing for hours." She thought guiltily of how rough she had been, trying to scare him away.

Jimmy got up and ran his hand through his hair, his gangly body visibly strung with nervous energy. He paced a couple of steps toward the wall, and then turned back and looked at her.

"Maybe not," he agreed, "but it may not matter." He stopped and thrust his hands in his jacket pockets, hugging himself as if he were cold. "Lois," he said softly, "you don't remember the part about the chrysalis at all, do you?"

Lois lifted her head from the pole and met his eyes; the word stirred in her memory. "I didn't. But now you mention it…" She shook her head to clear it. "Clark, a lot's happened, since we saw you last."

She outlined it for him, quickly - the wrinkled round things that littered the floor, the huge diaphragm and the hell on the other side, the brooding lopsided object that had come through to their world. "But if it was a chrysalis, I think they were expecting something dif…Clark, what is it?"

For Clark had gone utterly still again. He was looking at Jimmy very gravely.

"Jimmy," he said slowly, levelly, as he stood, "did they mention anything about previous attempts?"

Jimmy pressed his lips together, his eyes distant, thinking. "I don't think so. Why?"

Because, she thought, with a sinking feeling, six months ago, Superman fought a thing he called a larval form, a creature never meant for this world.

As if he could read her mind, as if to himself, Clark murmured, "That battle almost went…badly."

If he has to hear about all of Superman's battles, blow by blow, no wonder he's always so tired afterwards.

Jimmy blinked. "You think it's the same type of creature he fought before, back…"

"…just after the diaphragms first appeared," Clark finished. "At the time, other than destroying things, it wasn't clear what it wanted." He looked down at the floor, pensive. "I wonder now if it might have been a scout."

Her head throbbing, her bones aching, Lois thought, It's almost enough to publish. Though fact-checking this one is going to be hell. She closed her eyes again for just a moment.

The next thing she knew, she felt Clark's grip on her arm, holding her up, and down turned out to be the wrong direction again. Without letting go of her, he dropped down beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and took her weight that way.

Feeling nauseous and ridiculous, Lois was in no mood to argue. "So this one," she started up from her slight leaning angle, as if nothing had happened, "did they expect it to come through in the same form? Why didn't it?"

Then she sighed. "And just so someone's said it," - she glanced back at the children and dropped her voice - "are we all agreed it was supposed to E-A…no, too easy…D-E-V-O-U-R us?"

Jimmy laughed bitterly. "I've been thinking about that for a few minutes now. It might be that. But it also looked like the eggs hadn't made it through too well alone."

When she saw sidelong the look of faint disgust on Clark's face, Lois, looking back and forth between him and Jimmy, asked, "Is this another Monster Channel thing?"

Jimmy swallowed, his Adam's apple spasming just under the skin. Clark looked over at her. "It's also a Nature Channel thing. Do you remember… you know, Lois, this doesn't really change anything. Are you sure you want to hear it now?"

She rolled her eyes at him, and then wished she hadn't. "What, because I don't know where up is?"

"No. Because if you throw up, after the candy bars run out, you'll be that much hungrier."

She smiled queasily. "I don't think there's much in there now, Clark. What is it?"

He ran his hand through his hair. "Do you remember the parasitic wasps?"

Oh, God. No one who sees the parasitic wasps forgets them.

It occurred to her he might have been right about throwing up after all.Despondent, knowing what his answer would be, she said, "The ones that lay their eggs in living hosts?"

Jimmy nodded. He looked like he might throw up before she did. But it was going to be a tight race. "I think they were expecting an adult. Maybe the…invaders decided a chrysalis would travel better. But from the sounds it was making when they dragged us out...well…" He raised his hands helplessly. "So about Superman…I just think the quicker the better."

Clark had grown very still beside her. Lois realized his hands had stopped shaking. "Okay. Change of plans. Jimmy, could you…sit with Lois for a minute?"

She looked up at him indignantly for a moment, and then nearly toppled when he tried to get up. Maybe that wasn't a bad idea either. Jimmy scooted in beside her; his shoulder was wiry where Clark's had been hard and broad.

Clark went over to the door, grasped hold of the industrial handle, set his feet, and pulled with all his might.

It was two-inch-thick steel and barely shifted in its track. She and Jimmy traded baffled glances.

Clark shifted his position around, to throw his weight forward parallel to its tracks. Nothing. He braced his feet against the doorframe and tried again. He let out his breath explosively.

He took a few steps back for a running start, and threw himself shoulder-first into the door. He made it rattle and bounced back a foot or so himself, but it didn't even dent. Of course.

He tried twice more, until Lois couldn't watch any more. Softly, she said, "Clark."

He turned, panting a bit, his glasses slightly askew. Meeting her eyes, he gave her a wry little smile. Then he leaned back against the door and his gaze traveled up around the room, scanning the blank windowless walls, the corners where the concrete slabs met.

She watched him, remembering their frustration when she and Jimmy had done the same. Did he think they expected him – did he expect himself – to come up with a magical solution?

"Clark," she said again, gently, "We looked for hours. I think there's no way out to find."

And then he sighed and looked down at them. Very quietly, he said, "No. I don't doubt you. I was just also wondering about the easiest way in."

Jimmy looked up nervously - as though he had been prepared for death, but not from that angle.

Clark shook his head. "Don't worry, you two. The power comes back quickly. And whatever is back, when it comes to it, will be enough."

He came over and laid one big hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "Tag me in," he said with a half-smile.

Jimmy half-smiled back and gave him his place at Lois' side and scooted round, and they sat there all facing each other. Lois swallowed hard and looked back over her shoulder at the children.

It occurred to her, irrelevantly, that they had never since she first saw them asked to be entertained. If they lived, how different would they be from other children still, for the rest of their days?

She turned back to Clark and Jimmy. Everything had been said. They sat in the bleak and waiting silence, and Lois wondered what crash or scraping sound, or unanimal hunting call, would break it.

Jimmy ran his hand over his eyes and looked down at the floor. Then he took a deep breath and shook his head, briefly, as if to clear it. Lois thought for a moment that he was struggling to keep himself together, and it nearly broke her heart all over again.

But then he looked back up at her, and in his eyes she saw instead a grave compassion that surprised her yet again. He held her eyes, for a few heartbeats, and then shifted his gaze to Clark.

She had said nothing to him about the past week. But it dawned on her slowly that maybe there were many things Jimmy saw and accepted, simply, without demanding definitions or details. Including things that remained to be said. And the fact that the time to do it might be short.

After a long moment, he said softly, "I'm going to take a nap with the kids while we're waiting. Wake me if…" he trailed off, and gave her a little half-smile and a shrug.

"We'll wake you when he gets here," Lois finished for him. She met his eyes for a moment and gave him a grave, grateful smile. He nodded. Then he got up and went over to the corner, curled up and pulled his jacket up over his ears.

It wasn't his fault he could barely get ten feet away.

The children wandered back towards him. And finally Lois turned her head back to Clark.

There in the lull of that bleak night, she looked in his eyes. And the soul whose well-worn, gentle light had warmed her for so long was looking back at her unblinking, in quiet and familiar glory. He smiled slightly and she smiled back. Absurdly, despite everything, she felt a slow joy welling up in her heart.

For this moment, at least, his self-imposed quarantine was lifted.

"Welcome, Clark Kent," she said gravely. "I was hoping you might come."

And then she couldn't help it, and added, "Though I also really wish you weren't here."

"Lois Lane," he replied in grave acknowledgment, "there's no place I would rather be." Then he broke into his smile, and the glory softened without fading, and he reached out and fingered her handcuffs. "But I am a bit upset they think you and a six-year-old are more trouble than I am."

She laughed softly and held them up, clinking, for him to admire. "But still only moderate trouble - it's the long-chain model, see? And this time, the fit's really quite good."

He chuckled; against his shoulder, she felt his chest shaking with it. Then she had to ask. "Clark?"

"Yes?"

"What did they do to…" She trailed off, as he glanced at the corner and then looked back at her solemnly. Was it possible it was Jimmy he didn't want to hear it? So she moved to her other burning question. "Is he mad, now?"

He looked down at her, surprised, then even graver. "I think there was…a little madness. But that was the first thing to come back."

Something inside her unclenched. She sighed. "And then what is it? Strength, then speed, and bulletproofery…" He smiled. "And then heat vision, then the hearing and the x-ray vision…"

"Deep vision," he corrected her, absentmindedly.

She looked up at him. "What?"

He looked at the ground, then back up at her, with a rare flash of his old sheepishness. "Don't you think it sounds better?"

Lois laughed, incredulous. Then she sighed. "And then flight, last of all. The things on the other side of the diaphragm…they did have wings, Clark."

He sighed. "I know. But you can fight a flying creature, without flight, if you have to. You just have to get hold of it once, and then never let go."

She looked back up at him, at his dark eyes behind his coke-bottle glasses, wondering what other things he had seen at the Man of Steel's side. It was strange all over again, to think that with the man whose presence had made her trip on her words and spotlit all her guilts and failings, Clark was utterly at home.

But then, Clark had far less in his soul to be ashamed of than she. Those holy, alien eyes probably found little in him to disappoint them.

"He's very dear to you," she said after a moment. "Isn't he?"

Clark hesitated for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and looked down at her. "He makes you uncomfortable," he replied. "Doesn't he?"

Lois looked down for a moment, thinking. If Clark knew that, it was almost certainly from Superman. Finally she said, "He used to."

He tilted his head. "And now?" There was some catch in his voice, as if her answer were the pivot point in some other faraway conversation.

She looked up at him. It was too late to be too careful, and far too late to keep making bogeymen of things that meant no harm. "Clark, it was never him. He just reminded me of everything I'm not. I never meant to…" Then she understood the other reason it mattered so much that he still be sane. "I meant to apologize. I meant to try, if I could, to be a friend to him."

Clark laughed, sounding astonished, like a man who got back a gift long dreamed of with the change from his morning coffee.

Then he sobered. "He'll understand, you know. If you can't. It's not the first time he's had that…effect." Those eyes that look through everything, and look on nothing of their own. Then he was silent for a moment. Finally he said, "Did you ever buy your own line, about playing the hand you're dealt?"

She laughed. "I mean, everything that in my character I'm not." She looked up at him. "Patient, accepting, forgiving, humble…." She thought of Perry, that day so long ago in his office.

Have you maybe bought into someone else's concept of career advancement?

"God, Clark, when you first came here…how did you ever stand me?"

He laughed, surprised. After a moment he turned to face her, and placed his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes. "Lois Lane," he said solemnly, "you have no idea of what glory I see when I look at you."

Those skulking tears threatened to well up again.

"You are…profoundly, unflinchingly generous. You defend the innocent at any cost. You fight for truth and justice without resting. You're brave beyond words." Then he looked pensive for just a moment, deadpanning. "Beyond all reason, really."

She laughed, with the tears blurring her vision. "And," he added, "you're patient beyond my wildest dreams."

She couldn't help it. "Your wildest dreams are about patience?" She looked up to meet those dancing eyes, and they laughed.

And then he looked momentarily serious again, looking at her steadily. "And you've been my refuge here, since the day you told me to fight you for my bylines."

Her eyes filled up with tears again, remembering. This had not, she reflected ruefully, been a banner day for her self-control. "Then you'll have to accept my apology. For misjudging you so…God, completely. I should have said it long ago…"

He laughed easily. "I chose that, long ago. I never blamed you for a moment." Then he smiled a little. "Which my mother would say makes me equally guilty, of underestimating you."

She laughed and nodded. "And Lord knows, given the choice between guilt and blindness, I'd head straight for the guilt." She looked up at him. "God help us, Clark. Will we get it straight in time to forgive the right things, before it's too late, do you think?"

He laughed.

Then Jimmy shifted in the corner, with the kids piled up on him, and she and Clark both looked over at him. The rise and fall of his chest was deep and regular. "Incredible," she said softly.

"Lois," Clark said after a moment, looking back down at her, "I had some time to think while I was…waiting for the dogs to arrive."

She shivered, thinking of him sitting patiently at a monitor in the dark somewhere, waiting for the doorknob to turn by an unseen hand.

"While pondering the issue of covering my tracks," he said wryly, "I realized two things. I had become…inexcusably sloppy around you, with my…work." He laughed, as if it struck him now as a strange euphemism. "God forgive me. You made it so easy for me. I asked you not to pounce, and then very nearly dangled bait at you.. And that, I know now, was a kind of selfishness."

She started to contradict him, but something in his face stopped her.

"So if you had chosen to search it out, or even to think about it…it was well within your reach for months. I know you were being honorable." He paused. "But I realized tonight," he went on more slowly, as if it were painful for him beyond words, "that you must also have felt that…knowing…would be its own kind of burden."

Lois looked up at him, surprised again at his observantness. And then surprised again still, when she realized that the mention of knowing, after these days of lies and moles and parasites from other worlds, had completely failed to evoke a sense of dread.

After a moment, genuinely curious, she said, "Is it not a burden, for you?"

He looked down at her wryly. "Only sometimes, really. Like in the middle of Mothra."

The unaccustomed ease with which he answered the question made her eyes widen. She realized suddenly, for the first time, that he wasn't feeling his way toward some new balance to replace the old. He was preparing, in some way, to overturn it completely.

He must have seen the understanding in her eyes. "It's all right, sw…Lois. That's why I brought it up. You shouldn't have to want to know. I thought once that if I were free to tell you, everything would be perfect. But I realized tonight that that was just another kind of selfishness." He looked down at her. "What you know, you can't unknow. There is no… I don't know, magical kiss of amnesia, to take that weight away."

He turned and took hold of her shoulders, holding her up facing him, and his eyes searched her face. "And Lois, you weren't wrong. It would, in fact, be…heavy. You might come to regret it."

His words touched her like a finger on a pool of water, the contact at a point rippling through the whole. So many things long quiet were coming to a head here, bright and close around them now, like the all-seeing gaze of the Man of Steel.

Which she had made fearsome, when it wasn't. Like so many, many things.

"So you still wouldn't want me to tell Luthorcorp?" she asked him, wide-eyed.

"I'd ask you not to," he agreed gravely. "Or the Star."

"Or Satan," they finished, together.

She laughed, and then took a deep breath. "Clark," she said as gently as she could, "is it something you're ashamed of? Are you afraid I'll…judge you for it?"

He looked down for just a moment, and then up at her again. "No. It's not. But it might change…quite a lot…about the way you see me. I think you might still want me to leave. And that's all right."

"I didn't want you to leave in the first place," she said mildly.

They both laughed a little, remembering, out of the unforgotten pain.

It's not just machismo you're afraid of, when it comes to men. There's something else there, too. Something to do with…if you'll forgive the term…intimacy.

But believe it or not, Lucy, I can be taught.

"So are you free to tell me? Are you giving me the choice?"

Clark swallowed. His steadiness slipped for just a moment; she saw the flash of fear in his eyes again. "Yes," he whispered. Then he got his control back. "Yes. I should have given it to you long ago."

Lois looked at his face, calm, accepting, ready to lose everything again either way; his shoulders, straight and ready for the burdens back.

And he was right, that there was no telling what changes it might make, for her world, and between her and him.

But there was no road that had no burdens. Not for her, or him, or Jimmy in the corner, or the children sleeping fitfully around him. He had lived long enough with the burden of silence. And if knowing threatened the size of her world, or her concept of him, it was still the case that the truth was no one's lapdog.

And she was tired of making good things frightening, and easy things hard.

"Clark," she got out, and winced as her voice cracked again. Then it occurred to her that that was one last, small, harmless thing she had made fearsome, and she laughed helplessly. "We expect the worst so quickly, you and I. Do you think it's possible, at all, that we just need to lighten up?"

He laughed ruefully, his eyes bright with understanding. "Lois, you have got to meet my mother."

She placed her hands on his shoulders, the chain links clinking as they draped across his chest. She looked into those holy eyes, and said, "Tell me."

Then the door, which was apparently the easiest way in after all, imploded.