Come to Terms
"Are you crying?"
Lois sniffed, wiping surreptitiously at her eyes before she turned to shoot Clark a hard look.
"I am not crying," she declared, but her words were undone by her puffy red eyes and the choked sound to her voice. Clark grinned.
"You are!" he teased her. "Lois Lane is crying over a romantic movie! Sleepless in Seattle, to be exact."
"I am not," Lois protested, feebly. "I'm allergic to Shelby, here," she said, looking down at the dog, who wagged his tail at the sound of his name.
"Allergies, right," Clark said, disbelief plain in his voice.
"Your mail's here," Lois said, in a clear attempt to change the subject.
Clark craned his head around to look out the window and saw the familiar white and blue truck pulling away from the mailbox.
"How did you know that?" he asked, baffled. "You can't see the window from where you're sitting."
"Shelby heard it," Lois told him, and sure enough, his dog was staring at the window, ears perked up and tail wagging.
"I'll be right back," Clark said. "Don't start the next movie without me."
He shifted Lois's sock-clad feet from his lap, where she'd plopped them at the beginning of their movie marathon. She'd shown up at the beginning of their first day off in nearly two weeks with a big stack of DVDs in her hands, and had convinced Clark to abandon his plans of a day working on the farm to engage in hers. Of course, he couldn't very well say he'd put up much of a fight.
As soon as he stood up, Shelby jumped onto the space he'd vacated and settled down next to Lois with a decidedly blissful look on his face. Clark laughed as Lois sneezed several times in rapid succession, even as she reached over to ruffle the fur behind Shelby's ears.
"Weren't you getting the mail?" Lois asked him, pointedly, and, still grinning, Clark went outside to the mailbox.
When he returned a minute later, he was staring down at a package wrapped in plain brown paper with a puzzled frown on his face.
"What's up?" Lois asked, coming up behind him and looking over his shoulder.
"There are no markings anywhere on this one," Clark told her, brandishing the package. "No return address, no stamp, no post office markings, not even my name."
"Someone just dropped it into your mailbox?" Lois asked, her voice suddenly wary. "Don't open it, Clark. It could be a bomb."
"It's not ticking," Clark said, carefully holding the package up to his ear. Then, Lois's words sunk in and he turned to look at her suspiciously. "Wait a minute. Why would you think it's a bomb?"
"A plain brown package that mysteriously appears in your mailbox?" Lois said, with a shrug. "It fits the pattern."
"What pattern?" Clark demanded. "Lois, have you gotten a bomb in the mail?"
"Once," Lois muttered, and Clark's eyes flew wide open with shock. "Maybe twice. Okay, four times!" she finally admitted, as Clark continued to stare at her, speechless.
"Four times," he echoed, dumbfounded. "Lois-"
"You can't do a good job in our line of work without pissing a few people off," Lois protested, defensively.
"Four bombs," Clark echoed. "Lois, you could have been killed!"
"Would you stop worrying?" Lois asked. "Everything turned out just fine."
Clark heaved an exasperated sigh. "I'm opening this," he announced, as he x-rayed the package, and saw that whatever it was, it was encased in a lead box.
"Smallville, what were we just talking about?" Lois demanded.
"It's metal," Clark told her, rapping his knuckles lightly on the box and hearing a dull, thumping sound. "Thick metal. It's not a bomb."
Lois rolled her eyes. "Shelby, go in the kitchen," she said, addressing the dog. "If Clark's going to blow us all to kingdom come, I don't want you caught in the crossfire."
With a quiet whine and a disdainful look at Clark, Shelby heaved himself off the couch and padded silently out of the room.
"See?" Lois said, triumphantly. "Even Shelby agrees with me."
"That's because you're his favorite person," Clark told her. Catching Lois out of the corner of his eye, he looked over to see her pulling her cell phone out of her pocket. "Let me guess," he asked, wryly. "You memorized the number for the bomb squad?"
"They're number two on my speed dial," Lois told him.
"Who's number one?" Clark asked, curiously.
"You are," Lois replied, absently, still looking at something on her phone. Then, she glared at Clark when he broke into a wide grin. "Not that it means anything," she said.
"Of course not," Clark said, still grinning, as he slowly unwrapped the package.
Beside him, Lois held her breath, her hand hovering over the buttons on her phone. Clark slowly eased the lead box out of the wrapping and carefully lifted the lid, ready to shield Lois in an instant in case it did turn out to be a bomb.
"Well, that was anti-climactic," Lois declared, as they stared down at the large crystal nestled on a pillow inside the box. "It's kind of pretty," she commented, plucking it out and holding it up to the light. "Don't know why anyone would send you a piece of costume jewelry, though."
"It's not costume jewelry," Clark said, quietly, taking the crystal from Lois. "It's-"
He broke off in horror as the crystal started to glow the second it touched his hand.
"Lois, get out of here!" he said, urgently, as it began to pulse with an erratic light.
"No way! I'm not leaving you!" Proving her point, Lois latched onto his arm, staring, transfixed, at the glowing crystal.
Clark opened his mouth to say something, but he never got the chance as the light blinded him. He felt Lois clutch at his arm, and he wrapped his arms around her, to keep her close to him.
And when he could see, again, he found himself staring at the all-too-familiar landscape of the Phantom Zone.
"Now I'm really glad I sent Shelby into the kitchen," Lois said, faintly, as she took in the bleak landscape around them.
She took a step forward, but stumbled almost immediately, and Clark grabbed her arm to keep her on her feet.
"Ow," Lois muttered, limping forward a step. "I think I cut my foot on something."
Clark looked down and saw that Lois was still in her socks, and that one of them looked slightly pink.
"You're bleeding," he said, and Lois rolled her eyes.
"I didn't exactly have time to put shoes on before we were abducted to wherever the heck we are," she retorted.
Clark simply swallowed, hard, looking around them, nervously.
"Do you know where we are?" Lois asked, quietly, seeing the expression on his face.
"I think so," Clark said, softly. "But, I really hope I'm wrong."
"Where do you think we are?" Lois asked, keeping her voice down, like he was.
"It's called the Phantom Zone," Clark told her. "My – my father built it."
"How did Jonathon-" Lois demanded.
"Not my dad," Clark corrected, quickly. "My biological father built this place. It's a prison."
"Who would want to send you to prison?" Lois asked.
"No one good," Clark answered, then his eyes widened in shock. "Lois, behind you!"
Lois whirled around, almost before he'd finished speaking, sweeping her leg around in a low arc and dumping her would-be attacker backward on the ground. Her attacker tried to get up, but Lois hit him with an open hand on the forehead, knocking him unconscious. Then, Lois pulled her attacker's hood back and gasped in shock.
"Clark," she said, urgently. "It's Kara."
"Kara?" Clark demanded, coming over and kneeling down next to his cousin. "Is she hurt?"
"No more than what I did to her," Lois said, sheepishly.
Clark felt for a pulse at Kara's throat, breathing a sigh of relief when he felt Kara's heart beating strong, if a little fast.
"Clark," Lois said, suddenly, and her voice sounded strained. "We've got company."
Clark looked up, quickly, to see a group of hooded individuals standing on a rocky outcropping, nearby, staring down at them. Clark carefully eased Kara into his arms, and then looked around at Lois when he heard the soft shushing of metal on metal. His eyes widened in surprise to see her holding a long, wicked knife, standing defensively between him and Kara, and the group. She held it with an ease that spoke of long familiarity with a weapon.
"Kara had this on her," Lois said, quietly, before he could speak up. "And, yes, I do know how to use it."
"You've got my back?" Clark asked, quietly, after wrestling with his conscience for a moment about letting Lois near the Zoners.
"Always," Lois said, flashing him a brief smile.
Clark stood, Kara in his arms, her head on his shoulder, and he started moving briskly away from the group, Lois right behind him. As soon as they started moving, the hooded figures began to follow them. Lois pushed at Clark's shoulder, urging him to go faster, and Clark broke into a reluctant jog, unwilling to chance leaving Lois behind.
"Would you hurry up?" she snapped at him, giving him another careful shove. "They're gaining on us!"
As if to underscore her point, Clark heard yelling from behind him, and he started to run faster, shifting Kara to a more secure position in his arms. It wasn't fast enough, though, and Clark heard one of the convicts let out a triumphant cry. Clark whirled around in time to see him as he launched himself at Lois.
Lois may have been tiny next to the hulking brute, but she was also faster, and she dodged out of his way, tripping him as he went past, and sending him sprawling to the ground. Clark, who by that time had put Kara down a safe distance away, punched the man when he tried to get up, and he dropped back down, unconscious.
Clark heard a strangled cry from behind him, and he turned to see another convict on the ground, blood covering his legs – and the blade of Lois's borrowed knife. He found himself wincing in sympathetic pain when he realized just what part of the man's anatomy that Lois must have hit.
"They're after Kara," she announced, grimly, backing up until she stood beside Clark. "And I'll give you three guesses as to why."
Clark's blood ran cold at the thought of anyone hurting his cousin, but before he could say anything, one of the remaining convicts spoke up.
"You could always take her place," he leered at Lois. "Yourself for the girl, what do you say?"
White-hot fury filled Clark at the man's words, and he rushed the surprised man, grabbing him by the collar of his robe and heaving him away from Lois and Kara. The man fell backward, striking his head hard on the ground, and he didn't get up, again. The other two convicts ganged up on Clark, but he took them on anyway. He may not have had his powers in the Phantom Zone, but he wasn't going to let that stop him.
Clark grabbed one of the men and knocked him to the ground, pounding on him with his fists. He didn't let up, even when someone grabbed him by the arm and tried to forcibly pull him away.
"Stop it!" Lois barked, suddenly, in his ear, and Clark froze at her words.
Lois released the tight grip she had on his arm, and Clark looked down at the man he'd been beating. The man was battered and unconscious beneath him, and Clark felt sick when he thought of what he'd done. He looked around, to distance himself from the sight, and he saw the other convict in a similar state, nearby, the dark bruise on his temple matching the pommel of Lois's knife.
"We need to get Kara somewhere safe," she told him, firmly. "If there is such a place in this hell."
"I know a place," Clark said, forcing himself to get to his feet and walk away from the damage he'd inflicted.
He picked Kara up, again, and headed off in the direction of the altar where the doorway was, Lois right behind him. They were almost there, when Clark spotted a group of Zoners entering the altar, and he pushed Lois back, urgently. Lois tugged on his arm, suddenly, and Clark found himself being pulled into a small cave, and he and Lois headed immediately as far back as they could. When they got there, Clark set Kara carefully on the ground, and Lois put her jacket behind the younger girl's head as a pillow.
"You know first aid, right?" Lois asked him. "You patch Kara up, and I'll go keep an eye on the entrance to this place."
"Lois, it's too dangerous," Clark protested, quickly.
"Just as dangerous for you, Smallville," she retorted. "I'll be fine, Clark."
She left, not giving him a chance to stop her, and Clark turned his attention back to Kara, who was still out cold. He made her as comfortable as he could on the hard ground, checking her over for injuries and finding none except those which Lois had inflicted on her.
Lois came back a few minutes later, and Clark looked up in surprise when she wearily sat down next to him.
"They left," she said, softly, tipping her head toward the entrance. "They disappeared into that funky place. I'm assuming that's where you were heading?"
Clark nodded, and Lois looked down at Kara.
"Is she okay?" she asked, worriedly.
"She will be as soon as she wakes up," Clark said, not even trying to hide the concern in his own voice.
"I guess we wait, then," Lois remarked, leaning against the wall with a tired sigh.
"Since we're stuck here," Clark said, "let me see your feet."
Lois shot him a puzzled look, and then looked down her legs to see that her once-pristine white socks were now a dull red color.
"They didn't even hurt," she admitted, shifting slightly to put her feet in Clark's lap.
"They will in a minute," Clark warned her, cautiously, and Lois nodded in understanding.
"Just get it over with," she told him.
Clark carefully grasped the top of her sock and started to slowly peel it off her foot. Barely an inch down her foot, he heard a faint tearing sound, as the sock came away from her skin after being glued to it with dried blood. Lois let out a quiet curse, glaring at him.
"What part of 'get it over with' wasn't in English?" she hissed, breathing hard through the pain.
"If I don't go slowly, I'll wind up reopening the wounds on your feet," Clark told her. "Do you really want that to happen?"
He finished pulling off one sock and went on to the other, and at some point, Lois had latched onto his shoulder and was gripping as tightly as she could. She didn't let go until after he'd put both bloody socks on the ground.
"We need to get you some shoes," Clark said, looking worriedly at the mess of her feet. Taking off his flannel shirt, he ripped the sleeves off and wound them around Lois's feet, as meager protection.
"We need to get out of here," Lois told him. "Is that what that place is? A way for us to get home?"
"Yeah," Clark told her. "Lois-"
"Can those creeps get out of here, in that place?" Lois asked suddenly. "Can they escape?"
"Not without mine or Kara's blood," Clark assured her. "Lois, I'm not from Earth," he blurted, before he could lose his nerve.
Lois nodded, surprising him. "I kind of figured that out when you said your biological father made this place," she told him, when he shot her a skeptical look.
"You figured out that I was an alien?" he asked, suspiciously.
"Okay, I didn't completely suspect the 'visitor from another planet' part, but I figured something was up with you," Lois told him.
"It was called Krypton," Clark said, softly.
"Your home planet?" Lois asked, and Clark nodded.
"In the pictures Jor-el showed me, it was this beautiful planet full of crystalline structures," Clark told her. "Everything looked like it was made of diamonds."
"Sounds like heaven," Lois said, absently, and then she caught herself and looked over at Clark, clearly remembering her experience with the Fortress after she and his mother had crashed in the Arctic.
"This Jor-el," she asked, slowly, "is he your biological father?"
Clark nodded, again, and Lois's eyes sharpened, suspiciously.
"Kind of a deep voice?" she pressed, insistently. "Booming and pompous?"
"That's Jor-el," Clark confirmed.
Lois shook her head, clearly amused with herself. "Thought I was in heaven," she muttered, and Clark smiled.
"At least you didn't think Jor-el was God," he teased.
"Why do I get the feeling he'd be flattered?" Lois asked, rhetorically.
"Anyway," Clark continued, "when I'm on Earth, I've got all these powers. Super strength, super speed…"
He trailed off, waiting for Lois to finish his unspoken thoughts, and she didn't disappoint him.
"You're Superdude," Lois said, her tone managing to be both awed and annoyed, and if the situation hadn't been so dire, Clark would have laughed at the amazed and slightly accusatory look on her face.
As it was, he certainly didn't see any need to deny what they both knew was the truth – he couldn't lie to Lois; not here, not when they didn't even know if they were going to make it home, alive. So he nodded, giving her a sheepish smile.
"You rescued me from Sebastian," Lois went on. "He tried to kill me, and you saved my life. Why didn't you say anything?"
"What was I supposed to say?" Clark asked. "Gee, Lois, I heard you were in trouble so I zipped over to your apartment and threw your attacker into a wall?"
"Well, it would certainly have explained a few things," Lois countered. Then, she got a puzzled look on her face. "Wait a minute," she said, slowly, "if you were at my apartment, then who did Jimmy see in that alley? Even you can't be in two places at once, can you?"
Clark shook his head. "That was Oliver," he explained. "He owed me a favor, so-"
"Oliver?" Lois interrupted. "No offense, Smallville, but in what world can Ollie pass for you? There's no way you two look alike."
"He was on a roof and it was dark," Clark said, in defense of his friend. "Plus, he was wearing a blue costume with a hood."
"A blue costume," Lois repeated, slowly. "Like what he wears as Green Arrow?"
At Clark's raised eyebrow, she added, "Did you really think that I wasn't going to find out? Plus, Ollie told me you knew."
"It looked exactly like his Green Arrow get-up," Clark told her, once he was sure Lois wasn't mad at him over his part in her deception.
"Except it was bright blue," Lois said, shaking her head in disbelief.
"With a red cape," Clark told her.
"A cape," Lois echoed, and the corners of her mouth twitched in a smile and he could practically hear the suppressed laughter. "A cape?"
"A red cape," Clark corrected, and Lois snorted out a laugh.
"He looked ridiculous," Clark confirmed.
"Please tell me you got a picture," Lois begged.
"Tights and all," Clark said, matching her grin with one of his own. "It's locked in a box in the loft."
Lois lost it. A small, breathless gasp escaped as she tried to hold back her laughter, and then she muffled the noise with a hand clamped over her mouth. She couldn't muffle all the noise, though, and that was what woke Kara up.
She blinked her eyes, slowly, as she looked around, and then she froze and went pale when her eyes landed on Lois and Clark.
"What?" she demanded, incoherently, as she struggled to sit up. "How?"
Clark helped her to sit up against the wall, and she gripped his arms, tightly, glaring weakly at him.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, angrily. "What is Lois doing here?"
"We had a bit of an accident," Lois explained, "after someone mailed Clark a big hunk of costume jewelry."
"It was the Fortress crystal," Clark elaborated. "Someone reprogrammed it to send me here."
"Who?" Kara demanded. "Who would even know how to do that?"
"I don't know," Clark said, hating how helpless the words made him feel. "Someone sent me – sent us – here, and I don't even know who did it."
"Yeah, well, I don't really care about the who," Lois said, firmly. "I just care about how. As in, how we're getting out of here."
"You said it yourself, Lois," Clark reminded her. "The altar is full of Zoners."
"Not for long," Lois muttered, a determined look on her face. "Gimme that cloak," she told Kara, holding her hand out, impatiently. "I'm going to draw them out of there, and you two are going to get in there and get us the hell out of here."
"Lois, no," Clark protested, immediately. "It's too dangerous."
"No less dangerous than just sitting here waiting for them to come pick us off," Lois retorted.
"She has a point," Kara told Clark, reluctantly. "But," she continued, looking at Lois. "I'll be the one drawing their attention. My feet aren't hurt," she added, when Lois looked as though she was about to protest.
Lois finally nodded, reluctantly, and Kara got quickly to her feet and crept back toward the mouth of the cave. Lois and Clark waited for thirty seconds, timing it on Lois's watch, before they followed, sticking close to the sides of the rocks when they emerged into the bright, harsh sunlight. Out in the open, they bolted across the rough ground, Clark pulling relentlessly at Lois to keep her from falling behind, and they arrived at the altar, both panting hard and struggling to catch their breath.
Almost a minute later, Kara popped into the altar, scaring both of them half to death.
"Sorry it took me so long," she said, not even having the audacity to be winded. "Took me a little longer than I liked to lose the Zoners."
"Can we go home now?" Lois asked, pointedly. "Maybe the 'Top One Hundred Prisons' is a good idea for a Kryptonian vacation, but if it's all the same to you, I'd like to get out of here."
"She's right," Kara said, striding forward to the plinth before the portal. "I'll trigger the portal and you two go through," she told Clark.
"I'll do it," Clark argued, stubbornly.
"You'll both do it," Lois said, decisively, ending any further argument, "and I'll drag you both behind me as I'm going through."
Clark nodded, picking up a rock and slashing at his hand so that blood welled up in his palm. He hissed at the sudden, sharp pain, and Lois shot him a curious look.
"I'm generally a lot harder to hurt than this," Clark explained.
"I'd hate to see you trying to shave," Lois muttered, and Kara stifled a snort of laughter with her hand.
Clark put his hand down on the pedestal and the air between the stones of the portal shimmered a bright blue. When the light died down, the space between the stones wavered like water. Kara pushed Lois forward, keeping her directly behind Clark and placing herself last in the line, and they ran toward the portal. Lois stumbled right as they were going through, as though something had struck her in the back, and as they landed on Earth, Clark caught her when her legs buckled beneath her. He held Lois in his arms when she dropped her head to rest on his chest, limply.
"Lois, are you all right?" Clark asked, urgently.
Lois gave a shuddering sigh, and then she lifted her head, a strange smile on her face.
"Oh, I'm more than all right," she purred, and Clark took an alarmed step back at the predatory light in her eyes.
"Clark, it's a Zoner," Kara said, frantically.
"How perceptive of you," the Zoner possessing Lois said, mockingly. "And I must thank you, children of El. Without you, none of this would be possible."
"Get out of her!" Clark growled, taking a threatening step toward the Zoner.
"Oh, I don't think so," the Zoner said. "I'm getting rather used to this body. And you're not going to do anything to stop me, are you? You wouldn't want to risk hurting your precious friend?"
Clark took another step forward, but froze when the Zoner lifted Kara's knife, still clutched in her hand, to Lois's throat.
"Not one more step," the Zoner said, darkly. "Not unless you'd like your friend's blood all over your hands."
"You'll be out of a host body," Clark said, trying any stalling tactic he could think of. Anything to get the Zoner to put the knife down.
"I can always find a new one," the Zoner told him, smiling that hard, cold smile that looked so strange on Lois's face. "You'll stay away from me, if you want this body to remain unharmed."
With that, she lowered the knife and sped off into the night, disappearing quickly from view. Clark watched her go, frozen to the spot for fear of the Zoner carrying out her threat towards Lois.
"Clark," Kara said, urgently, snapping him out of his daze. "Clark, I know who that is."
"Who?" Clark asked, desperate for anything that might help them get Lois back, safely.
"Her name is Faora," Kara told him. "She's the wife of General Zod."
XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX
Several hours later, Clark and Kara had tracked Faora to Metropolis General Hospital.
"What in the world could Zod's wife want with a hospital?" Clark wondered, aloud, as they stood in front of the main entrance to the hospital.
"People are suffering in there," Kara reminded him, gently. "That's what she thrives on."
"I don't see anyone running or screaming," Clark said, uneasily.
"That doesn't mean she's not hurting people," Kara said, tersely. "Come on."
Without a look back, she strode across the street and through the double doors, Clark hurrying to catch up. He knew Kara had to be annoyed with what she would perceive as a weakness in him, this desire not to confront Faora. After all, he hadn't hesitated in stopping any of the other Phantoms when they had possessed innocent people. But this wasn't just any innocent, he realized, with a jolt. It was Lois. And he couldn't risk doing anything that might get her hurt.
'Even if other people get caught in the crossfire?' his cynical inner voice demanded, sounding strangely like Lois. 'You're going to let other people, innocent people, get hurt, maybe even killed, just to protect one person?'
Then, somewhere in the hospital, someone screamed, and all rational thought fled. Clark ran through the hallways, in the direction of the screaming, and he emerged out from a stairwell to find Davis Bloome lying on the floor, pale and covered in blood, an IV pole protruding from his stomach and sticking out through his back.
The screaming, as it turned out, was coming from a group of patients cowering behind the nurses' desk. A nurse stood in front of them, her hands empty, but still clearly determined to protect her patients. And Kara stood between Davis and Faora, a long gash marring her cheek and her knife reclaimed in her hand.
"Look who's joined the party," Faora said, glancing over at Clark without taking her attention of Kara. "Here to watch me kill what's left of your family, Kal-el?"
"I'm not dead, yet," Kara snapped, furiously.
"Let these people go," Clark said, looking quickly over at the patients to see that, while they were clearly scared, none of them had been physically hurt. "Whatever you want, they've got no part in it."
"I want that one," Faora said, nodding at Davis. "Give him to me and I'll leave these people alive."
"What could you possibly want with Davis?" Clark asked, trying to stall her. "He's just a paramedic."
Faora laughed, a harsh, ugly sound coming out of Lois's throat. "If only you knew," she said, tauntingly.
"What do you mean by that?" Clark demanded.
"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," Faora told him, a strange smile on her face.
"They were arguing," Kara said, quietly. "And then she just stabbed him. She was too fast; I couldn't get there in time."
"I wouldn't call it an argument," Faora corrected her. "Merely a difference of opinion."
"Whatever," Kara snapped. "We're not going to let you hurt anyone else."
"You can't stop me, remember?" Faora reminded her, giving Lois's hand a jaunty wave. "Whatever you inflict on me, your friend feels."
"And she'd rather die than live knowing you were using her to hurt people," Clark said, suddenly, knowing as the words came out of his mouth that they were the right ones.
"Oh, now this is interesting," Faora said, with a laugh, turning to face Clark. "You'd kill your friend to try and stop me?"
"If that's what it took," Clark said, evenly, conviction filling his voice.
"Even your father didn't go to such lengths to justify murder," Faora said. "What makes the son so different, I wonder?"
"I'm not justifying anything," Clark said. "I just know how Lois would choose to live her life. And it's not as your puppet."
"And how could you possibly know that?" Faora asked, mockingly.
"Because I love her," Clark said, softly.
"And, yet, you'd kill her?" Faora asked. "That doesn't sound much like love to me."
"That's because you can't comprehend something like love," Clark told her. "You can't understand how I can know Lois so well that I'd know what she wants without ever hearing her say a word."
"What if I told you I could hear her begging?" Faora asked him. "If I told you that she was begging you to save her life, no matter what?"
"You're lying," Clark said, even as he started to feel the first stirrings of uncertainty.
"Am I?" Faora taunted, seizing on that uncertainty like a Doberman on a bone. "Are you really sure of what she wants, Kal-el?"
Clark closed his eyes, briefly, and took a deep breath, trying to quell the little, nagging voice that kept bringing up doubts. Then, he opened his eyes and smiled at Faora.
"Lois, I love you," he said.
"Lois can't hear you right now," Faora told him.
"Yes, she can," Clark said, determinedly. "Right, Lois?"
"She's powerless," Faora snarled, precariously close to losing her temper. "She can't do anything."
"Are you really going to let some intergalactic hussy take over your body?" Clark asked, still speaking directly to Lois and ignoring Faora completely. "I can't believe you'd just sit back and let her use you like this."
"She can't hear you," Faora repeated, her face gone mottled purple with anger. "Stop talking to her."
"Lois, I love you. You can fight this."
The insult of being ignored must have been too great for Faora to bear, because she charged at Clark, furiously, but a second before she reached him, her steps faltered, and Clark took advantage of her hesitation to grab her by the shoulders and throw them both out of a nearby window.
They fell, the wind whistling in Clark's ears, and he wrapped his arms around Lois's body to protect her from the impact when they landed. And a few seconds later, Clark heard the all-too-familiar crunch of metal under his back, and he winced at the thought of having destroyed yet another car. Then the body in his arms shifted, and Clark snapped his attention back to Faora in time to see her fist speeding toward his face.
He dodged to the side, and Faora plunged Lois's fist straight through the ruined roof of the car. The Phantom snarled in incoherent rage as she tried to extricate herself from the car, but then her whole body stiffened like she'd been electrocuted, and then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed onto Clark's chest.
"Lois?" Clark ventured, cautiously, as she stirred, moaning softly. "Lois, is that you?"
Bleary brown eyes opened to stare at him, blankly, and then Lois whispered, "I heard you, Clark. I heard you." Then she slumped back against his chest, unconscious.
Clark heard a noise from behind him, and he tipped his head back to see John Jones walking toward him. He held up a hand, and Clark saw his crystal nestled in his palm.
"I heard there was some excitement at the hospital and I decided to check it out," the Manhunter-turned-cop said.
"Thank you," Clark said, earnestly. "You saved Lois's life."
"Who had her?" John asked, nodding toward Lois.
"Faora," Kara answered, flying down from the broken window to join them. At the pair of raised eyebrows she received, she explained, "I cleared out the hallway while you were baiting Faora. No one saw you leap out the window, and no one saw me, either."
"I wasn't just baiting Faora," Clark admitted. "I meant what I said."
"Well, it's about time," Kara told him. "You and Lois were making googly eyes way too much last year. It's time you did something about it."
"We were not making googly eyes at each other!" Clark exclaimed, defensively.
"I believe this," John said, "is where I take my leave."
"What about Faora?" Kara asked, immediately, when the older man went to leave.
"I have a heavily-locked vault," John assured them. "She'll be quite comfortable in there, and quite unable to escape."
"We should get Lois home," Kara said. Arching an eyebrow at Clark, she added, "Unless you're comfortable, there?"
Clark rolled his eyes at his cousin and eased himself gently off the car, cradling Lois close to his chest. Then, he and Kara ran back to the farm, and Clark disappeared upstairs to put Lois into his old bed. He gently tucked the blankets up around her chin and watched her sleep for a moment, before going down to the kitchen, where Kara waited.
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX
Lois staggered down the stairs, feeling more than half drunk even though she knew she hadn't touched a drop. Not that she didn't want to, with what she remembered of that prison…
The sound of voices from the kitchen drew her in that direction, and when she entered, Clark and Kara looked up from the coffee cups in front of them, and Clark jumped to his feet with a relieved smile on his face.
"Hey, sleepyhead," he teased, pulling a chair out for her that she sank into, gratefully. "We thought you were going to sleep until noon."
"What time is it?" Lois asked, swiping Clark's coffee cup and taking a healthy swallow, wincing at the overly-sugary taste of it.
"Just after eight," Kara told her. "You've been out for almost ten hours."
"I should get knocked out more often," Lois joked, weakly. "I don't get that much sleep on regular nights."
Seeing the looks traded by the cousins, she added, "I was just knocked out, right?"
"Um," Clark said, hesitantly, and Lois dropped her head into her hands with a groan.
"At least tell me I didn't hurt anybody," she begged.
"Lois, anything Faora did in your body wasn't your fault," Kara said, quickly.
"Oh, God, I did hurt someone," Lois groaned, miserably.
"It wasn't you," Clark told her, firmly. "And I called the hospital, and they said that Davis is going to make a full recovery. The pole missed any major organs, and he's recuperating really quickly."
"Davis," Lois repeated. "Davis Bloome, that paramedic friend of Chloe's?"
"You don't remember anything that happened?" Kara asked, incredulously.
"The last thing I remember, we were about to step through that portal and go home," Lois told her. "Then, something shoved me, and I woke up here."
"So, you don't remember anything that happened after we left the Phantom Zone?" Kara pressed, insistently. "Not a single word?"
"Nothing," Lois told her. "Why?"
Kara didn't answer; she just shot Clark an inscrutable look, which he returned with an uneasy smile.
"I get the feeling I'm missing something, here," Lois said, suspiciously.
"Just Clark being a chicken," Kara said, shooting her cousin a glare.
"Being a chicken about what?" Lois asked.
Kara elbowed Clark in the side, and hissed, "Tell her!"
Clark glared back at Kara, and then turned to Lois with a nervous expression on his face.
"Lois," he started, hesitantly, and then stopped, swallowing hard.
"Yes?" Lois prompted, as gently as she could.
"Will you go to Chloe and Jimmy's wedding with me?" Clark blurted out.
"Clark, I'm already going to the wedding," Lois reminded him. "So are you. We're a part of it."
"I know that, but after," Clark explained, quickly. "Like a date."
"A date," Lois echoed, expecting anything but those words.
"Yeah, a date," Clark said, his face falling a little when Lois hesitated. "You know what, forget it," he told her. "It was a bad idea."
"No it wasn't!" Lois said, so emphatically that Clark looked at her in surprise. "I mean, yes, I'll go to Chloe and Jimmy's wedding with you."
"Good," Clark said, a huge smile breaking out over his face. "Great."
"It's a start," Kara muttered, under her breath, pasting an innocent expression on her face when they both looked at her. "What? I didn't say anything."
"What about you, Kara?" Lois asked. "Are you coming to see the happy couple get hitched?"
"No," Kara said, softly, and Clark stared at her in shock.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"When I was in the Phantom Zone," Kara explained, "I heard rumors about Kandor, and enough of it to make me think that they were more than just rumors."
"What's Kandor?" Lois asked.
"It's a city in Krypton," Kara explained. "It's where I was born, and I kept hearing whispers that Kandor had survived, somehow, when Krypton was destroyed."
"You're going out there, to find it," Clark said, understanding what she was getting at. "To find any survivors."
"I have to," Kara said, simply, and tears glistened in her eyes.
Clark stepped forward and enveloped his cousin in a hard hug, which she returned, enthusiastically.
"Be careful," Clark whispered into her hair, and Kara nodded. "Come home safe."
"I will," Kara promised, and then she gave a surprised laugh when Lois hugged her after Clark let her go.
Then, after Lois let her go, Kara went to the door and opened it, floating into the air. From the doorway, Lois and Clark watched her go, Lois squeezing Clark's hand, supportively, when she disappeared from view. Clark continued to watch the sky for a few minutes after she was gone, and then he went back into the house, where Lois was waiting.
"She'll be back," Lois assured him, and Clark nodded.
"I know," he said. "It's just hard to think that she's going somewhere that I can't follow."
"That's what happens when they grow up," Lois told him. "How do you think I felt when Lucy went to boarding school?"
"I guess I never thought of it, that way," Clark acknowledged.
"That's what I'm here for, Smallville," Lois said, cheerfully. "And, now, I believe we have a movie marathon to finish."
"At nine in the morning?" Clark asked, looking at his watch.
"Can you think of a better time?" Lois asked. "You get the popcorn, I'll start the movie."
Clark watched her disappear into the living room, scratching Shelby behind the ears when the dog immediately followed her, and, too low for her to hear, whispered, "I love you, Lois."