7

It was Christopher who broke the stunned silence and tension. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, he looked up at Chloe.

"Mom, what's going on? Did I sleep too long?"

Clark watched Chloe think lightning fast through her response, probably picking the right mix of truth and lie. "Sweetheart, Aunt Lois just got in. I...I think it's best if we went back to our room and got sleep there."

Their son nodded and got to his feet, crawling over Chloe's legs to do so. "Bye Uncle...I mean Clark. Aunt Lois, I missed you," he added, smiling.

Lois didn't smile back. "I know Christopher, but can you give me and Clark some time to talk?"

He considered that and nodded, "Okay, mommy, come with me."

Chloe spared Lois a glance, hopped out of the bed, and grabbed Christopher's hand. "Lois, I can explain."

"I can fill in the facts for myself, Chloe. I never thought you'd be like this."

"We'll talk. I don't think I can do anything justice as tired and full of adrenaline as I am," she said, pulling their son out the door.

Clark stood up, feeling that a talk this serious couldn't work in a supine position. "I can explain too."

She nodded and crossed her arms over her chest. "I knew, you know. I've always known."

He couldn't stop from gaping at her. "What?"

"I suspected at first when Chloe left to Singapore so suddenly; there had to be a reason for it. Then three months later, the quickie marriage and then Christopher almost like a shotgun and a 'premie?' It was too much. I mean, at first I assumed Ollie and a moment of weakness, but it lined up so well with when we had been broken up. I wasn't one hundred percent sure until Dinah let something slip to me over the phone. Ollie covered for Chloe and he let Dinah in on all of it and, a few months after Christopher was born, she told me."

Clark blinked. "You knew?"

Lois sighed and brought a hand to her temples. "Yeah, I definitely knew all this time. I don't know what I was waiting for. Maybe for Chloe to woman up and tell you, maybe I was waiting for you to actually get it. I couldn't imagine how you hadn't."

"She was married to George and, frankly, we haven't really seen them that much. Chloe was keeping her distance and I didn't visit because I couldn't explain to George just popping in. Besides, as blond as he is, I was assuming if he weren't George's then Oliver was possibly the next best candidate. Christ Lois, why would I think it? We've been sleeping together for eight years and you've never gotten pregnant. I figured the Kawatchee were wrong and I wasn't compatible."

Lois nodded. "I've been on the pill the whole time. I just...I didn't tell you."

He stepped back a few steps, the truth almost like a blow dealt by Doomsday or Darkseid. All this time? After she'd hinted at wanting kids after Conner had stayed with them. Why wouldn't she want them? Was it him and, if it were, which part-the alien or the dork that was so far beneath her? "What?"

"I did want kids, believe me I did, but I couldn't be selfish like that. Like I said before our engagement party, the world needs you more. It needs you every minute of every day. You can't be distracted with a family. It's part of why I never told you about Christopher, I think, deep down, and it's why I stayed on birth control. God knows I wanted the picket fence with you, even if I'm not the mother type, but it's not your destiny."

Resentment began to surge through him. "You didn't ask me. You didn't even let me know. I spent all this time, almost a decade, thinking something was wrong with me. I...you should have at least let me know what you were doing. And who are you to decide what my destiny is."

"I'm not but it's obvious. The Fortress told me as much and, even if it hadn't, I can see what you mean to people, what you meant starting from the day you saved the president. I can't interfere with that. I just can't."

"But what if I wanted someone to? What if I wanted more than just working all the time, being on patrol more than I'm even at the DP? I can decide to take a break sometimes. I can decide if I want a family or rest. I...ever since Evan back during senior year, it's something I've seriously thought about."

She stepped forward and started to reach out to him; he rejected her overtures and her back stiffened. "You can't have entanglements like that. It'll distract you."

"I...Oliver has Connor, as fucked up as that is for his relationship with Dinah. For all intents and purposes, Bruce has adopted both Dick and Jason. Others of us have lives. We have things outside of the Watchtower."

"They're not you. I...you're more powerful than all of them, except maybe Diana. You need to always be ready."

He sighed and started to pace a little. "Lois, I really loved you."

"Past tense noticed," she said tightly.

"Yeah, true. I really loved you once, but I don't even know when I fell out of love with you."

"Was it tonight? Because you know you have a son now and you feel you owe Chloe and him something?"

He stopped and nodded. "Somewhat, but this is about us. We're broken. Maybe we were never right to start. You hid things from me, about Christopher and about the birth control, but it's more than that."

"Like what?"

"What do you really see when you see me? You do realize I'm more than Kal-El and my powers. Hell, when I came to pry you out of our apartment for the wedding, you said I was godlike. Do you really think that?"

She looked away and didn't answer for a long while. "You can fly and run faster than anyone but Impulse and The Flash. You crush coal into diamonds and shoot lasers basically from your eyes. You're better than I am, than any of us are. I realized that early on, when I witnessed on the sly things you could do. Once I had your powers and could hear all the people begging for help, I realized how big your calling is. I wanted to be a part of that and I think I have been, especially with helping you hide and cultivate 'Clark Kent.'"

"I'm both, you know. Ever since Davis killed Jimmy, I haven't been able to decide which I am: Kal-El or Clark Kent. For the longest time, I thought I had to cut off human emotions, I had to circumscribe myself to just you as a tether and make an act of everything else. It's awful."

"So you're basically saying that I'm awful, that I did this to you?" she asked, glaring at him.

"No, I made that choice, but you helped foster it. I...I am that dorky farm kid to an extent, the one who loves his mom's apple pie, the one you had so much disdain for. I am a bit like Jaime even now. Some days I feel the furthest thing on Earth from a god or even a hero. I'm not perfect. Can you understand that?"

She shook her head. "You're better than the rest of us, and I've just been lucky to be near that. You can't tell me that just because you have a son now-one you don't even know except for Christmas cards and a few trips to Asia-that it changes your mission."

"No, I'm saying that I've felt hollow for a long time. I hate pretending I don't know you at work. I hate trying to beg you to marry me when it's clear you have massive hesitations and have for almost a decade. I'm just tired of hiding. I know I have to have a low profile out of uniform. I'm not a moron, but there has to be a better way than what I've become. I can't deal with putting on an act all the time."

"All the time?"

"Yes. I have to put on a bit more bravado to be Superman, have that booming voice, be a boy scout even if I'm fallible. When I'm Clark Kent, I play up the nerd to level ten, and no one knows me. I won't let anyone know me."

" I know you."

"If you knew me, you wouldn't have made decisions for me about things as big as our life together or children, whether it be Christopher in my life or a family of my own."

"Chloe sure as Hell didn't tell you anything."

"I know and I missed five years of his life-first word, first step, first time showing his strength-all the things I should have been there for, and I know I'll never get that back. I hate that and I resent her for it, believe me, but I can understand a bit that she was trying to save your feelings, that she wanted to give me what she thought I wanted."

"And that was?"

"A life with you. She stepped aside for me and Lana and then for me and you and, frankly, neither relationship made me truly happy."

"You think you'll get it with her when she lied to your face and kept you at arm's length for years?"

"I think I want to try. I...maybe this is naive, but I want to think that what we were able to make together in one night, that Christopher is more than by chance. I really want to believe that. I want a family; I want to feel human again after a decade of denying that. I can't do that with someone who thinks I'm a deity. I just can't."

Tears started to well up in her eyes and, when she spoke, it was very quiet, somber. "I love you."

He shook his head and bent down to kiss her cheek. "You love Kal-El and I'm more than that. I'm sorry, Lois."

Pulling back, she yanked the engagement ring she'd worn for eight years off her hand. "Then so am I. Goodbye, Clark. I...I think I'll ask Perry for my own chance to be a foreign correspondent, maybe even back to Kenya. I can't see you in the halls. I can't be near you and not feel horrible."

"Lois-"

"No, I can't. Clean break is what I need, like over the Blur and Zod. Like I said, goodbye."

With that she picked up her bag and marched out the door, leaving Clark to pass the ring between his fingers as he let himself wander, deep in thought.

George volunteered to take Christopher to breakfast, maybe a bit of curiosity egging him on. After all, civilians never saw Watchtower and, to be fair, it was a sight to behold between all the technological advances from the Lanterns and Thanagarians. He was being civil with her in front of her son and she appreciated that, that he could still give Christopher the support and kindness he deserved. Christopher hadn't been complicit in any of it, and he loved George as dearly as any son loved a father. He needed George too, which made everything she wanted with Clark all the more complicated.

Well that and Lois because, after all, she was always the back pocket girl, only on call when his relationships collapsed as she had been six years ago.

Speaking of her cousin, Chloe was hardly surprised when she found her knocking at her door. "Lois, hey," she said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "Do you want to come in."

Her cousin glared at her. "I think I should."

"Alright," she said standing back from the doorway and watching her cousin enter and take a seat on the foot of the bed. "So how does a conversation this unwanted start?"

"How about with 'I knew about Christopher because Dinah told me five years ago.'"

Chloe paled. "You did?"

Lois nodded. "I told Clark I knew the timing was never right for it to be George's, even if you claimed he was just six months old."

"You never said anything," Chloe said, struggling to keep her voice even. All that time in Asia, all that time away from the people she loved and the League. All of that was pointless because it didn't spare Lois's feelings worth a damn.

"I didn't want Clark to know. I didn't want Christopher in our lives. I mean, clearly he was a mistake."

Chloe bristled at that. "Excuse me?"

"Oh come on, Chlo. He was a fluke. Clark isn't supposed to have children-"

"He's not, huh? Says who?"

Lois rolled her eyes. "Clark says the same thing but I can feel it. Having children is a selfish thing. Can you really see him sitting through a school play or a parent-teacher conference when there's an Earthquake in Venezuela or a bomb threat in Paris? The world needs him more than he needs to see a mangled version of Oliver."

She shook her head at her cousin. "I was wrong about you. I wanted so badly for you to be the one because you were what Clark wanted more than anything. I knew that much. He was more gone on you than he'd even been on Lana."

"I know."

"And I wanted it to work because after I was a royal bitch in sophomore year and we salvaged our friendship, I wanted to be there for him no matter what. But he deserves more than what you've given him. He's human too, as far as the Kents raised him. He had a life of dates with you and with Lana before that. He had time to himself to do things with his dad when Mr. Kent was alive or to relax with Oliver, Bart and the others. He needs that. I...he needs his son, and I was wrong to hide him. I know that now."

"I don't really understand either of you when a calling's that important."

"I...once I could heal people. I was the one who saved you at Reeve's Dam."

"You're a meteor mutant?"

"Technically my DNA's probably still weird, but my power's been muted. I can't access it and haven't been able to for eleven years, but I know what it's like to have a power that you could use, theoretically, all the time to save lives and change fate. I had to learn I couldn't be someone who did that 24/7, that there was a time and place for it. When I started as Watchtower, I learned the hard way I couldn't be Big Sister and always work. It made me a person I didn't want to be, someone I loathed. It's why everyone switches off now and we don't have just one person. It's too much. People get exhausted, Lois."

"But Clark-"

"Even Clark, maybe especially him cause, frankly, he's pretty damn sensitive to everything. I...a lot of him is still that cut-off, isolated kid I met in his loft by first day in Smallville. I know you don't think I can't see Clark's destiny, believe me I've seen it in living color."

"What?"

"Fate helmet showed me, but the big thing is that I can't understand how you can't see him and what he needed all this time."

"Me neither because all this 'I want a normal life' is out of nowhere to me."

"Then you didn't really know him," Chloe replied.

"Do you know him now? You've barely talked to him in six years. You think you're what he needs? Bullshit. He's a different man now, Chlo."

"Then maybe he's not supposed to be cut-off like that. I...something horrible happened because I made a huge mistake over Davis and Clark never got over it. Maybe I can fix it now, even if it's a decade late. I owe him that."

"So you and Christopher just move into his life? After all this time?"

"I don't know. It's incredibly complicated but my whole relationship with Clark has been since I was thirteen years old. I want to try."

"How pleasant for you," Lois snarked.

"I never wanted to hurt you. I...you're not wrong exactly about Christopher. I don't think Clark meant what happened. I mean, I always thought he was using me to replace you and stop his loneliness for a night. I really still think that even if he claims otherwise."

"I see. Why'd you say yes?"

"Because you'd left him and, frankly, I have my weaknesses and he's mine the way Kryptonite is his. He asked and I couldn't say no, especially when I really believed you were over."

Lois nodded. "I was just tired of him begging for a ceremony. I needed a breather."

Chloe shook her head. "Then if you've had eight years of cold feet, it wasn't meant to be."

Lois stood and glared at her. "J'onn's taking me back to Metropolis. I am asking Perry to relocate to Kenya for a while. I...don't contact me. If I ever feel like talking to either of you , then I'll do it, though, I wouldn't hold your breath, Chlo. I thought we were sisters."

"If you really believed that," Chloe said, her tone even. "Then you'd never have started dating him, knowing how much he meant to me. You'd never have encouraged him to take my desk at the DP. So many things you wouldn't have done to step on me. Goodbye Lois, I hope you find what you're looking for."

With that, Lois stomped off to whatever destiny awaited her.