"You know, is that really important?" Clark says, desperately hoping she'll think it isn't.

"Uh, well since you seem to want to change the subject pretty badly, yeah, I think it is."

Sighing, he leans back against the sofa. It totally figures Lois would dwell on this, and not the fact that he'd told her was an alien with superpowers.

"I was trying to impress you," he says quickly, eliciting a laugh from Lois.

"Showing off, huh? Why? I mean, from what Chloe told me, I was pretty much head over heels for you from that lipstick."

"You were," he affirms quietly.

"So why the big show?"

He shrugs. "I dunno. Sometimes red kryptonite does that to me," he says, hoping that will be enough of an answer, but knowing, with her, it won't be.

Sensing there's something he's not telling her, something he doesn't want to tell her, Lois presses further.

"We jumped from the Daily Planet, right?"

"Yeah," he says, and Lois picks up on his wary tone.

"Where'd we land?"

"Lois, I just told you I'm from another planet," he says, a hint of exasperation in his tone.

"Yes, you did."

"And this is what you're focusing on?"

"Well, seeing as you seem very reluctant to answer me, I can only guess that means you're hiding something. Something that I definitely would want to know, being as I was a part of it. Don't worry, though, I still have plenty of questions about the whole space thing. So, I'll ask again. Where did we land? In my dream it was at Oliver's. Is that true?"

Rolling his eyes, both in frustration and realization that he's not going to get out of his, he finally mumbles, confirming, "It was Oliver's."

"What?"

"We landed at Oliver's apartment," he says, only a bit louder this time, but seeing the look that suddenly comes over Lois' face, he knows she heard him.

Her wide eyed stare quickly turns into a gleeful laugh, taking Clark by surprise because that's definitely not the reaction he expected to his admission.

"Oh my God. You were jealous of Oliver!"

Feeling the heat creep up the back of his neck, he crosses his arms over his chest stubbornly and avoids all eye contact with her.

"I just didn't know any other place to land," he grumbles in an attempt to dissuade her from her all too accurate guess.

"Oh right, Smallville, because there aren't any other rooftops in Metropolis," she responds sarcastically, still giggling. "Just admit it, you were jealous!"

"If I admit it, will you drop it?"

"Maybe."

"Why is it so important to you?"

"Because it is!"

"Not good enough."

Narrowing her eyes and biting the side of her lip – he always loves when she does that – she responds in a slightly teasing tone, "Fine. I'll confess if you do."

He takes a moment and glances over at her, the daring expression on her face making his pulse race just a bit faster. Deciding to take her up on her challenge, he turns slightly, raising his eyes to meet hers.

"Fine. I was jealous of Oliver. Your turn."

Lois grins victoriously at this statement before, being true to her word, beginning her own confession.

"Okay. I'm not normally a petty person but I do get a kick out of the fact that while you were supposedly pining for Smallville's perfect little pink princess, you were, in fact, fighting off the green monster, which, I guess is strangely appropriate considering, with regards to Oliver and me."

This time, it's Clark's turn to chuckle.

"What?"

"Smallville's perfect little pink princess? Gee Lois, sounds like I wasn't the only one with jealousy issues."

"Please. I could so take Lana Lang," she retorts, and Clark silently notes the lack of denial on her part.

"No doubt," he responds, more than a little pleased that her feelings for him seem to go as far back as his for her, even though neither had been remotely ready at that time to fully admit them to themselves, let alone each other.

They sit in silence for a few moments, a silence Clark is relieved to find is a comfortable one, particularly in light of the night's revelations.

"So," she ventures, erasing the quiet between them, "it's …a lot to take in."

Clark nods in agreement. "I know."

"Which…is probably why I got on the whole Valentine's rehash. I just…I guess I needed a minute to process it all."

"Only a minute, huh?" he says, his tone slightly teasing.

"I am Lois Lane. I don't get thrown off my game for long," she reminds him, a hint of a smile on her face. "I do have one question, though."

"Just one?"

"Well, no, I actually have about a billion questions. But, just one, for now anyway."

"Okay."

"Why tonight?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's kind of out of the blue."

"I'm not really sure there is a perfect time to tell your girlfriend you're an intergalactic traveler," he responds dryly.

She chuckles lightly at that. "Granted."

"You know, you're the first person I've told. Willingly, anyway."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I wanted you to hear it from me before you found out any other way."

Lois nods, and reaches out to brush some wayward hair that had fallen over his forehead out of his eyes.

"Thank you."

"Thank you for not running screaming from the room," he answers, his light tone belying the very real fear that Lois could sense in him. A fear he must have to live with on a daily basis, she realizes with a hint of sadness.

"Did you really think I would?"

He looks at her for a long moment, a smile lifting the corner of his lips.

"No," he says softly. "And as for why tonight, honestly I don't know. I didn't plan it. I've been hanging out with you too long apparently, because I'm becoming impulsive."

"Hey, don't knock it," she quips lightly, moving closer to him and reaching over to take his hand. Intertwining her fingers with his, she gently places them both in her lap, a familiar gesture with a significance not lost on Clark given what he had told her tonight. For all of Lois' loud and blustery ways, it was always her quiet affection that seemed to speak volumes.

They were okay.

"Is it lonely for you?" she asks quietly. "Knowing you're home planet is just…gone?"

He finds himself slightly startled by her question, mostly because he couldn't remember anyone ever asking him that. Sure, he thought about it a lot, but when the few people that knew had found out about his origins, they were mostly curious about his abilities.

But she was concerned about him. And in that moment, he didn't think he could love her more.

"Sometimes. If I let myself really think about it, it can be kind of overwhelming."

"The responsibility," she states simply, nodding slightly in understanding.

"Yeah. And, I know I have people here who love me, who care about me…but growing up, there were times when I felt, I don't know…I guess…disconnected. Like I didn't belong."

As he finishes, he looks up at her and notices the tears in her eyes at his words.

"Not so much anymore, though. I used to resent it all so much, my abilities, not being human. I wished for so long just to be normal. I resisted every attempt my biological father made to teach me about my Kryptonian heritage. I just wanted to be like everyone else, you know?"

She nods in understanding. "So, what changed?"

"I guess…I grew up. And I realized that my biological parents gave me up so I could have a chance at life, even if it had to be on a different planet without them. Throwing that away…it would be disrespecting the sacrifice they made for me."

"So basically, you stopped feeling sorry for yourself?" she asks, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Pretty much," he responds, a brief smile flirting on his lips.

"I thought I noticed a distinct decline in the number of mopefests you've indulged in the past couple of years," she teases.

"Thanks to you," he says softly, gently squeezing her hand.

"Now wait a minute, I can take the credit for the downturn in broodiness for the last five months or so but…"

"Way longer than that," he interjects, cutting her off. "You were always…different, Lo. I had grown up in this protective bubble, which was understandable I guess. No one knew about me, really, except my parents and a little later, Pete, but he had moved away by the time you showed up. To everyone else, I was just the good-natured, polite son of Jonathan and Martha Kent. But the minute I met you, you not only popped that bubble, you shattered it into a million pieces. And it annoyed me and it frustrated me but…I hated it when you weren't around. Not that I admitted that to anyone," he says, receiving a smile from her in response. "You made me see things, think about things, in a completely different way and more than that, you refused to indulge in, as you so eloquently called them, my pity parties. And I think," he continues, "meeting you, in a way, it made me start to accept who I am."

"Clark, you had amnesia when we met," she counters.

"Well, it wasn't exactly amnesia. I was kind of taken over by my Kryptonian identity. Kal-El."

"Wait, Kal-El?" she asks, and Clark nods as he sees the hint of recognition in her eyes.

"Yeah, the same Kal-El that killer couple was looking for a few years back. It's my Kryptonian name. When you found me in the cornfield, I had just been sent back. I, well, Clark anyway, for lack of a better explanation, was still in there, just buried pretty deep inside. When, as you put it, my synapses were all firing again, I didn't remember much from my time as Kal-El. Only two things, actually."

"What?"

"I remembered flying. And I remembered you. At the time, I wasn't sure why only those two things stuck with me, but now I think I know. The flying, well, I'm afraid of heights, but as Kal-El, I flew without any hesitation."

Her eyes wide, she can't resist asking, "How did it feel?"

"Amazing," he replies, wonder in his voice, "and even though I haven't quite mastered it yet…it's that memory that makes me wanna try."

"Makes sense," she says. "So, why do you think you remembered me?"

He looks at her for a moment, quietly taking her in before answering.

"Because you were fearless. The truth is, Lois, that Kal-El is a part of me, of who I am. And I never wanted to accept it because I was scared of it, scared of what that part of me could do. But you weren't. You just took it all in stride that night, and when I met you later on, when I was back to being, well…me, you took that in stride too. I'd known you less than twenty four hours and already you accepted all of me, without even knowing the whole story. After living with this secret for years, I hadn't even come close to where you were in a day."

"And heaven forbid you let me win, right?" she teases lightly.

Clark can't help but laugh at her remark. "Something like that. Not that it happened overnight. I still resisted Jor-El's attempts at starting my training."

"Jor-El?"

"My biological father."

"Yeah, you mentioned that before, but I thought you said that both your biological parents died?"

"They did," he answers, only seeing the confusion on Lois' face grow by the second. "But I can still talk to him…well, not really him obviously…or, I could anyway. Before the Fortress was destroyed."

"Fortress?"

"Yeah, in the Arctic. It was sort of a replica of my home planet."

"So…you did get to see a little bit of Krytpon, I guess, huh?"

He nods, "I just wish I had appreciated it more while it was there," he says, and seeing the quizzical look she's giving him, continues, "Part of that whole resentment thing I told you about."

"Ah…don't know what you got til it's gone, right?"

"Basically."

"What was it like?"

He looks at her for a moment, trying to find the right words to describe it, when it occurs to him that he doesn't have to.

"You know. You've been there."

"Um, I think I'd remember being in the Arctic in some Fortress that looks like another planet."

"You were…after the plane crash you and my mom survived."

She leans back against the sofa, her eyes gazing off into the distance as she thinks back to that time. Suddenly, she looks at him with amazement.

"The palace of ice?" she whispers.

He just smiles in confirmation.

"That was your Fortress? I thought I died and went to heaven. I guess I died and went to Krypton…or a reasonable facsimile anyway," she says with a lilting laugh.

It wasn't until she said that that he realized how much that thought meant to him. How much it had meant to him since she had confided it to him in the hospital, even if she didn't understand fully at that moment the implication of what she was saying.

His Kryptonian home was her heaven.

As she always did, Lois once again made him look at things, in this case the Fortress, in a different way. And suddenly he misses it all the more. In that moment, he makes a silent vow to himself to revisit it, and see if anything can be done to restore it.

"You said it was in the Arctic?"

Her words snap him out of his thoughts.

"Was being the operative word, but yeah. Why?"

"It's just that…you'd think I would have been freezing. But I wasn't. I felt warm. Safe. I knew I was gonna be alright. I mean, I know I was kinda out of it but, I was conscious enough to realize I was in a palace of ice, you'd think I would have felt the cold."

As he takes in her words, it strikes him that that very thought had quietly nagged at him since she had first told him years ago.

The feelings she described, they didn't make sense. Though the cold didn't affect him, it should have affected her. Especially with the already weakened condition she had been in.

After all, she was human. He had seen firsthand how the cold of the Arctic had almost killed Chloe. He could still picture her shivering and calling for him to help her. She would have died had he not defied Jor-El…

And then it hit him.

He looks at Lois, his eyes widening, as the full force of the realization dawns on him.

Jor-El had protected her.

He had given her warmth. He had made her feel safe.

He had watched over her.

And in that moment, despite all the issues he'd had with Jor-El over the years, Clark knew beyond the shadow of a doubt.

His father had done that for him.

For his future.

In one swift move, slightly startling Lois, Clark reaches out and grabs the black box off the table.

As he hands it to her, he utters one simple, yet absolute, phrase.

"It's yours."

She looks at him strangely for a moment, then arches an eyebrow.

"Am I actually gonna get to open it this time?"

He shrugs, grinning. "I had a few things I needed to tell you first."

"A few? That might be the understatement of the year, Smallville," she says, before turning her attention to the box. She slowly lifts the lid, her mouth opening in a silent 'oh' as the silver and turquoise bracelet comes into view.

"Wow," she says breathlessly, and Clark can't help but smile at her reaction.

"You like it?"

"Like it? I know I'm not usually all girly about jewelry and stuff but damn, Smallville, this is gorgeous. It's so…unique. Different. It's …perfect," she finishes softly, allowing her fingers to gently graze the silver band. Her fingers grasp it and she lifts it from the box, slowly slipping it on her wrist.

The moment the band settles onto her skin, a small light begins to emanate from the turquoise stone in the center. It lasts for only a few moments, moments both Clark and Lois are watching with complete fascination. When it fades, etched lightly in the center of the stone is a symbol.

"What is that?" Lois asks, still awed by what she'd seen.

Taking her hand, Clark looks down at the symbol.

"It's a Kryptonian symbol," he answers softly, his finger gently running over it. He lifts his eyes to hers, a breathtaking smile now gracing his lips.

"What does it mean?" she asks, looking at him expectantly.

Reaching out, he cups her cheek tenderly, drawing her closer to him. He leans toward her, and the moment before his lips meet hers in a passionate kiss, he whispers the answer she's waiting for.

"Destiny."

Yes, there had been times in his life when Clark Kent had hated the word 'destiny'.

But in this moment, when he was holding the embodiment of that word in his arms?

He couldn't think of any word more beautiful.

The End