He wanted her to beg him to stay.

She told him to go.

He wanted her to cling, to plead, to hold on.

She let him go (free).

He has never known strength like hers, has never imagined a will as great as hers, and knows he will never experience love to equal what she gave him.

(What she gives him.)

Clark holds a silver ring in his hands, bends all his thoughts toward the planet falling away behind him, and prays that his strength is enough to see him through a life without her in it.

His heart continues beating.

It seems such a small thing, so normal, so everyday, that it staggers him.

The small Kryptonian globe-ship is traveling so quickly that it takes only an hour to go farther than he's ever been before. Past Nightfall, past the distance he traveled toward the sun to tear the Nazis' radiation from his cells (a process not quite as painful as the one awaiting him, when Earth's last gifts drain excruciatingly slowly from him, taking away his invulnerability, his flight, his senses, maybe even the perfect memories he is clinging to so desperately). Farther than he's ever been (if he doesn't count his first trip here, so many years ago, a helpless infant that he wishes, selfishly, had faded from every other Kryptonian's memory, forever outside their attention, forever safe).

And yet, even divorced from the planet that sheltered him, his heart continues to beat. A solid thrumming in a rhythm he knows. A rhythm made all the more familiar by the flights he's taken through space when all he could hear was the rush of his pulse in his ears.

Beating, beating, beating, nudging up against bone and muscle, straining for the ring hanging from his neck.

It is all he can hear as Zara teaches him the Kryptonian language with its deceptive simplicity, it's lack of ornamentation, its dozens of words for duty and responsibility and its single word for love. His Kryptonian heart pounds in a counterpoint to the alien syllables, straining back toward its adopted planet and the multitude of languages each with multiple words for the love he's left behind (the love of family, the love of friends, the love of the woman he doesn't think he can survive without). Clark memorizes and learns and throws himself into this training, hoping that he can save this remnant of Krypton by communication, by hope, rather than military might or royal lineage.

(He learns because he wants to tell Lois he loves her. Wants to swear himself to her in the language of his birth so that there can be no room for doubt or misinterpretation. Wants to pour his love into her through word and deed and thought so that at least a part of him can remain with her.

So that he can pretend he has not abandoned her entirely.)

The language settles in his mind, vowels and consonants, verbs and nouns, thoughts and feelings not his own.

Not of it is enough to drown out the relentless drumming of his stubborn heart.

It is all he can hear when Zara declares him passable and Ching breaks his grim silence to lead him to another room where there are staffs he calls drei. He talks of nobility and danger and tradition, words that pile up like baggage in the corner of the room, heavy and stifling and everything Clark wants to avoid. This is the man who tried to silence his own heartbeat simply to prove a point. The man who advocated killing that alien assassin without blinking an eye.

Clark takes the weapon Ching hands him, and he tries (he has to, because what is the point of leaving everything he cares about behind if he's only going to give up immediately), oh, how he tries, but the brutal totality is anathema to him. His heart flinches away from the violence of the weapon, his mind flees back toward the quietness of his parents' lessons about restraint, building up boundaries and lines around himself.

Ching glowers in discontentment. Zara watches silently.

Clark focuses on the feel of the organ pounding behind his breastbone and wonders if a Kryptonian heart can transform itself, like a phoenix rising from ashes, into an Earthen heart.

Earth is far behind them now. Clark stares at the choice laid out before him and wonders when it will stop being a choice (when it will become, instead, a regret).

Superman's Suit is bold and bright and the very first thing about him that Lois loved.

Clark's suit is muted and quiet but restful and the thing that eventually won Lois over.

The third choice sucks the light out of the room in ebony shadows and bounces it back in the regal blue making up the crest (familiarity made alien). Not the crest of hope. Not the symbol of help.

A royal house.

A dictatorship.

A prison and temptation and corruption all bound together in a mess he doesn't think he (Superman or Clark Kent or Kal-El) can ever untangle.

Clark turns away from the choice and wraps his hand around the ring hanging from his neck.

His body is adorned with bruises from Ching's punishing training, he feels drained somehow, and every thump of his heart feels as if it might be his last (it yearns for all they leave behind), and he is afraid he is forgetting everything. Afraid that with every inch of invulnerability, every measure of flight, every super sense, he's also losing the perfect memory that ensures he carries Lois with him wherever he goes.

Not gone yet, though.

His heart beats, and she is there with him, inside him (Lois, Lois, Lois).

(He has a reason, still, to fight, to try, to stay alive, to hope.)

Around his neck hangs Lois's ring. In his pocket he has a glass vial filled with soil lifted from the cornfields of Smallville.

Lois. Earth.

He clings to them with everything he is, and dresses himself in the costume of a dictator.

The beat of his pulse tingles at his fingertips, throbs against his wrists, feathers along his throat.

(He misses the feel of her hand in his. The excited way she'd grab hold of his wrist when inspiration struck. The tickle of her hair just under his jaw when he held her close and she pressed closer.)

The ship with its appearing and disappearing rooms is swallowed up in the maw of a bigger ship, a palace with a grand hall and too many faces and hanging flags that shift to mirror the crest on his own suit (not the red and blue with its reminders of his mother's nimble hands and his father's quiet pride and Lois's unquestioning acceptance; not the concealing disguise of Clark Kent with his humanness and his job, his friends and his fiancée; black, instead, like the void enveloping him and blue as royal as the king they want to fashion from his puppet limbs).

Clark lets the alien formulas and sobering implications dance around him. He lets his hand be bound to Zara's (wonders if she can interpret the name, the denial, his pulse hammers against her, slower rhythm). He lets them move him and nudge him and push him, a form of clay pliable in their hands.

(He wonders what they will say when they burn the outward clay away to reveal the steel within, bound up in his molten heartbeat. No puppet taken from a strange land, but a statue, already shaped, already cast, already set in stone.)

Union.

The Kryptonian word for marriage.

Clark's arm goes rigid against Zara's. He still possesses his powers. His cells are still gorged on the radiation of a gentler sun than theirs. He could, he knows, tear himself from Zara's weaker hold. Could walk away from their useless plucking at his limbs. Could rip the bulkheads apart and flee this ship in an ebony and blue blur.

He could, he thinks with his heart rushing loud in his inner ear, still change his mind.

Go back. Back to Earth with its golden prairies and azure seas and proud cities.

Back to his parents and his friends and the only life he's ever wanted.

Back to Lois.

(He is deafened to the Kryptonian marriage ceremony by the thunder of his yearning heart.)

Clark holds his every muscle in statue-like rigidity.

And he does not run.

He does not flee.

He stays.

He lets go.

There's a bridal bed. Clark stares at it from his hunched position in a chair (his self-imposed prison), and remembers another bridal bed. Another marriage ceremony riddled through with deception. Another wedding night where nothing was as it seemed and confusion prevailed.

He thinks he would take that clone back in Zara's place.

(At least with the clone, there was not the last remnants of a people depending on his sacrifice.)

"Your heart is not in this," Zara observes after a long time, in English, as if reaching out to him.

Clark can't move. Or rather, he could, but he refuses. He will stay here, shackled to this chair, until some form of reason or logic returns to the proceedings.

"My heart," he says, "is back on Earth. This…this is all just window dressing to get us where we need to go. Right? That's still our plan—to save New Krypton from this Lord Nor and then to let me go home?"

His mind strains past the distraction of his heart toward Zara. The language was easy to learn; the telepathy not so much. Still, he does his best to read this woman who will be, in the eyes of New Krypton, his bride. If he cannot trust her…if she will betray him… Well, he needs to know now, before his cells are weakened and his place here becomes no longer a choice but a prison.

Zara moves to stand before him. "I will do anything necessary to save my people, Lord Kal-El. As I know you will do whatever you must to return to the planet you call home. If we cooperate, we can each fulfill our goals."

"Then I have your word?" He looks up to meet her gaze (and he cannot read her mind, but he can read her eyes, can see her wonder and her zeal and her resolve). "One day, this marriage will be dissolved and I will get to return home?"

"If," she says, "in return, I have your word that you will do whatever is necessary to save New Krypton."

"I will do everything I can to save your world." Clark takes a deep breath. "And then I return to mine."

"Partners," Zara says.

For the first time since the doors shut them up together, Clark rises to his feet. "Partners," he says, then adds, "Not in bed. But in our goals."

"Agreed."

This time, when she takes his hand and he feels his pulse fluttering against hers, they don't need officials or a knotted sash to complete the moment.

Finally, for the first time since he gave his farewell speech to the crowd at the Daily Planet, since he hugged his parents goodbye in Smallville and kissed Lois in her apartment for what cannot be the last time, Clark allows himself to think that this is not the end.

(He allows himself to accept the terrifying truth that his heart will not cease working outside Lois Lane's orbit.)

"A wedding gift," Zara says. "Or a seal on our agreement. Whichever way you look at it, we must leave now."

Clark's brimming full of questions, but the sight of Ching guarding the door to their bridal chambers (the sight of fragility lurking there in his dark eyes before he blinks himself back to impassivity) has stemmed them all. So it is in silence that Clark follows Zara down corridors Ching claims are clear. It is in silence that he sees the small globe-ship where he left behind his Clark Kent clothes and his Superman suit and the last moments he will get to be truly himself.

It is in silence that he allows Zara to think them an entrance and pull him into a room. Not the room where Zara drilled him in alien syntax. Not the room where Ching tested his fading invulnerability by training him in the use of a Kryptonian staff weapon. A new room, one Clark has never seen before.

It doesn't surprise him. This thought technology the Kryptonians possess seems boundless, and he is only surprised that Zara has brought him to a room with nothing in it but two long boxes that look like nothing so much as coffins.

"These are the escape pods," she says in a cool tone. "They store up to forty-eight hours of air, and we are nearing the danger mark. Clark, please focus. Once we open the pod, you and I must distract anyone we meet in the corridors while Ching ensures safe delivery to our chambers. Do you understand?"

"No, he says truthfully.

Zara moves to stand just in front of him, her feet set, her shoulders squared. "I agreed to this against my better judgment, but I saw no other alternatives. Do not make me regret this."

"Regret what? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Remember your promise," she says cryptically.

Then she turns to the box.

Clark looks back toward the door (or at least where the door was a moment ago). When a loud hissing noise fills the room, momentarily drowning out the sound of his heartbeat, Clark turns toward the opening pod.

He's confused. He's unsure. He's wary (it was only a few days ago, after all, that Ching was ready to sacrifice innocent lives for his own goal).

The cover of the pod swings aside. There is a form lying inside, pale and slender and so, so familiar. Dark hair that feels as silky as the wind. Skin so soft when he caresses it. Hands that fit just so in his.

(And always, always showing up where she should not be.)

"Lois," Clark says.

And his heart (so stubborn, so frail) stops dead in his chest.

When Clark first became Superman, he felt like a player entering a stage in the middle of a play and having no script. It was as if he had stumbled his way into a place where there was no direction, no preparation, and far too much pressure. Under the eyes of a crowd, he shifted and fidgeted and stumbled through lines that either seemed too absurdly stiff or too mundane to be part of the legend of Superman being crafted all around him.

He'd felt as if he were lost in a dream where everyone else knew a secret he didn't.

As afraid as he'd been of losing himself, though, he kept going. Kept crossing his arms over his chest (to hide his vulnerabilities). Kept widening his stance (to keep them from bowling him over and leaving Clark Kent forgotten). Kept smiling that formal smile and playing a part everyone else had made up for him (rose to fit their expectations so that they'd never look behind the cape to the ordinary man in his shadow).

Now, he is lost again. Superman fades and shrinks away, and if even he is small and overshadowed, then Clark is even further away (hiding in the darkness of his own mind, shrinking away from the telepathic advances of the crowd staring at him). Kal-El is nothing more than a projection dressed in black and blue, a disguise cardboard-thin and formed of expectations.

(Clark has learned, though, just how strong that disguise can grow to be. He knows that Kal-El can become a person every bit as fully shaped as Superman.)

Zara sets her wrist against his, their fingers entwined.

Partners.

Not spouses. Not married. Not personal.

But partners nonetheless.

Clark smiles a formal smile and pretends he doesn't mind when the people in front of him fall to their knees. He keeps his shoulders squared and his chin up, and he plays the part they expect him to play.

(He lies. Even here, among his own people, he is alone, a deceiver set apart by the lies he must tell, and maybe it has never been his secrets that make him a liar; maybe it is just who he is.)

(He lies, because Lois's life depends on the strength of this deception, and so no matter that he feels like he is transforming into Lex Luthor, all power and entitlement and deception, he will do whatever he must.)

The crowd stares at him and Zara and chants their names. The Elders stand near him and watch with judging eyes. The soldiers hem the crowd in to keep them calm.

All eyes are on him (which means it's safe for Ching to carry a drowsy Lois back to the bridal chambers unwitnessed).

In the hollow shell of his disguise, Clark tries to find something to hold onto.

He can't.

Everything around him is lies and masks and thoughts he cannot read.

Alone in the room with his wife, his fiancée, and a man who could be ally or enemy, Clark feels overwhelmed in a mélange of emotions so great they sweep him up and spin him endlessly in their wake. Kryptonian language swirls through the air around him, thick and clustering like fruit of which he only plucks a few here and there. Just enough to get the general idea. Just enough to realize that it is not only his emotions that are carrying him in a direction not his own, but the situation itself.

Only one thing is clear: there is no going back.

Lois is along for the ride like it or not. His powers are too faint now to carry them back such a great distance even if he had a safe way to transport her. Worse, New Krypton is uninhabitable for her, but seeing as the mothership belongs to the House of Ra, and now of El, she will have to live aboard it indefinitely. They will find reasons for Clark to visit often, unless it is too dangerous and then he will simply have to stay away because (this above all he understands, this cluster of words sharp and poisoned) if Lois is discovered, she will die.

Clark is used to being a man divided: reporter and superhero. Friend and secret-keeper. Human and Kryptonian. Yet for all that, he doesn't think the distinction has ever been so absolute as now.

A part of him sits on a chair (his former self-imposed prison become his haven) pulled up beside the bridal bed he swore he would never occupy. He stares at the woman lying beneath luxurious covers, sleeping fitfully. This part of him has her hand clasped in his and heartbeat pulsing in his ears, and he is jubilant. Relieved. Impatient for her eyes to open so he can drink in all of Lois Lane, rediscover everything he has just spent the last days simultaneously trying to cling to and to let go.

But beyond that, lower and heavier, there is another part of him that is horrified. Petrified. Trapped.

He swore to himself he would not be a puppet, would not act unless it was right, would not allow himself to be irreparably tied to this strange world.

But now there is a hand (impossibly fragile) resting in his. There is a heartbeat (achingly ephemeral) dependent on him. Lois is strong and capable and brilliant, but she is Human and mortal and even further out of her element than he is.

Her life is, as it never has been before, utterly reliant on him.

So he will dance to whatever tune they play. He will earn her oxygen and food and lighter gravity with his obedience to Zara and Ching's demands. He will transform himself from a man of steel to a puppet made of malleable strings.

What other choice does he have?

He cannot lose her (the perfect hostage).

Lois wakes just as they're leaving the solar system behind. Clark has only a moment to watch space recede into an aqua and silver rush of power, to wonder if it is only his imagination that he feels denser, heavier, slower, weaker. Only a moment, than Lois's groan demands all his attention (the sight of her eyes fluttering open makes him feel, so abruptly it staggers him, as if he might begin floating, as if he can still break walls and bend bulkheads should she ask it of him).

"Clark?"

If she did not need him so badly to be strong here, this would break him. Would send him toppling forward, his strings cut, his steel melted, only his finite, mortal self left behind to fold beneath the pressure of his joy at hearing the voice (the way she says his name) that he half-believed he would never hear again.

As it is, it takes all his willpower to keep himself upright, though he bends enough to lay a kiss to the hand cradled between his (to the place where a ring belongs).

"I'm here, Lois," he says (she must never be allowed to feel alone, not when he is here; because he is all she has left now that Earth is so far removed from them). "I'm right here. And so are you. Here. With me."

She smiles at him, clearly having anticipated his response to finding her along for the ride. He hands her the bottle of water Zara left on the table for her, helps her drink through the straw, and tries very hard to bottle up all his words (his questions; his exclamations; his thanks).

"So," she says when he sets the water aside and takes her hand once more in his. "I know you're probably not happy with me, but I had to do this. I couldn't let you go off all alone. Clark, you're so strong, but you're strong because you have people you love, people who love you, who believe in you, who can let you be yourself. On New Krypton, if you'd gone alone, you wouldn't have any of that. And even the strongest man can't be strong all the time. Besides," she tries a mischievous grin, "you know me. You really think I could pass up a story like this?"

"But…what about Perry? My parents? You said you'd take care of them."

"I know, but…" She takes a deep breath and sits up straighter against the pillows. "They're strong, too, Clark, and I know they would rather someone be there for you than to sit and worry at their sides. And I told Jimmy that I was going undercover with Clark."

"It's so dangerous," Clark can't help saying. "If they find you here, they'll kill you. And you can't leave this ship. You'll never even be able to set foot on New Krypton. If anything happens to this place, you could—"

"Clark," she says (does she know how wonderful it is to hear his name, here where he's resigned himself to being a shell of a character he doesn't know?). "I had to come. I couldn't stay behind. So, please, don't be too upset, all right?"

And how can he be? How can he be upset when seeing her lying in that escape pod, even motionless and pale, was the greatest moment of his new life as Kal-El?

(How can he be angry with her when she has no one else besides him? When she left everything behind to be with him?)

"I'm not angry." He moves, then, breaking his vow, and sits beside her on the bridal bed, close enough to put his arm around her shoulders and rest his forehead against hers. And he tells her a truth (Clark's truth, even Superman's truth, but not Kal-El's). "I'm so glad you're here."

And then another truth (a truth that supersedes all his identities).

"I love you."

He leans in to kiss her.

But there is no kiss.

(He wonders if there will ever be another kiss.)

Zara and Ching rise from the corner where they secluded themselves, and interrupt the moment.

"I'm sorry, husband," Zara says coldly, "but certain proprieties must be kept. Infidelity is allowed only in the most extreme of wartime situations, and even then only with licensed concubines."

"What?" Clark and Lois demand together, perfect synchronicity that makes his heart sing.

"I agreed to bring Lois only because she insisted that if I didn't, she would coerce you into staying on Earth. However, there are still rules, and codes of conduct. Lord Nor has a great deal of support, even among the Council of Elders, and one slip could lose us any advantage. Kal-El, our marriage is a great coup. We cannot afford for anything to jeopardize that."

"I didn't say it exactly like that!" Lois sputters just as Ching stiffens even further (if that's even possible) and says, "The Lady Zara deserves a husband who supports her in all ways."

"Our marriage is only for show," Clark says, his eyes fixed on Zara. "That's what we agreed."

"So we did. But you also promised to do whatever it took to save New Krypton—and that includes your fidelity." Something in his expression must move her, though, because she softens and adds, "I don't like it either, Kal-El, but we've made our choices, this is the situation, and we have no choice but to follow it through to the end."

"Wait." Lois shifts on the bed until she's nearly kneeling. "You're married? You two? Already?"

There's something shaken in her eyes, a dark stirring of loss he doesn't like. Clark grabs her hand and lifts it to place over the chain around his neck, reminding her of what lies beneath the stiff royal uniform (the truth beneath the mask). "It was a political ceremony," he assures her. "And it will be dissolved as soon as we stop Lord Nor."

"Well, then." She shakes her head slightly, swallowing hard. "What are we waiting for?"

His powers seep from him slowly and then all at once, powerlessness bleeding into him like tea in hot water, swirling, darkening, changing him at an elemental level (so deeply he is afraid it is as impossible to be Superman again as it is to turn tea back into plain water). He feels slower, heavier, as if every one of his molecules has gained a hundred pounds. Breathing becomes difficult, an arduous task he has to constantly devote part of his attention to. It's easier (safer) to remain still rather than to move (than to dance to their alien tune), so Clark grows cautious, quiet, motionless.

"What's wrong with him?" he hears Lois ask Zara. Not superhearing, just the result of four people being cooped up in one room and the fact that his ears are attuned to Lois, particularly when her voice carries this note of panic.

"He will adjust," Zara says, and he wishes he could believe his hearing is good enough to pick up her voice as well, but he feels the waves of serene calmness (mask over something surging beneath, darker and more volatile) washing up against his mind, a tide carrying her spoken words.

Every day, his mind grows more accustomed to registering and interpreting the telepathic currents swimming all around him.

(Every day, he fears he's losing more of himself, his soul washed away by the constant tide.)

"Clark? You okay?" The back of Lois's fingers brush against the back of his, a subtle contact so welcome, so overwhelming to him, that he probably gives it away to everyone nearby, broadcasting his sudden release of tension without even meaning to.

Behind them, Zara stiffens and closes her mind off in a way Clark hasn't mastered yet. Ching steps closer to her side, grim and displeased.

Clark doesn't care. He has eyes for only Lois. Warm and familiar and human. The only person around for lightyears who wants him as well as needs him. Who loves him (simply because of who he is, not what his heritage is).

"I'll be okay," he says. "It's just hard trying to learn everything."

"You like learning," Lois says (her own superpower, her ability to both discern and proclaim truth, not lessened at all even so far from Earth's yellow sun), "and you're curious about everything Kryptonian. Clark," again her fingers brush lightly, almost accidentally, against his, "you can do this. I know you can."

And he believes her. Of course he does. She named him Superman and made him into an icon of hope and truth, and because she did, he was able to become that model. If she says he can do this, can become a leader and political governor and figurehead for an entire people, then he knows he can. (He never would have come if he believed otherwise.)

But that's what scares him.

He doesn't want to be Lord Kal-El. He doesn't want to rule and dictate and enforce.

As Superman, he's created clear lines for himself that he will not allow himself to cross.

As Clark, he keeps himself carefully hidden behind a façade that governs his powers and keeps his ideals in check.

As Lord Kal-El? He will have no limits, no boundaries, no safeguards.

No powers to remind him of the need for caution. No secret identity to give him direction and steer him from overstepping.

Just an ordinary man given extraordinary power, placed in a high position he did not earn, and given free reign to 'make things better.'

(He's seen that before, and it still haunts him with the memory of bars glowing green with fire.)

"I'm scared," he breathes out, a confession so soft, so timid, that Lois must hear it only because she knows him so well. "I'm scared of who I'll become…without my powers…with all this power."

Her eyes soften at his gesture to the opulence surrounding them. "Oh, Clark," she says. Fondly. Smiling. (Not afraid.) "That's why you're the perfect person for this. Being afraid of what you'll become? That's exactly what will keep you from becoming the thing you're most afraid of."

She doesn't name his phantom (he wonders if she even knows it), but he's reassured anyway.

With Lois by his side, surely, surely, he will not, he cannot, turn into another Lex Luthor.

When he sees New Krypton through the porthole, he is split in two. There is a part of him (childlike; the shadow of an orphan, starved within him) that strains for this small, homely, shadowed planetoid orbiting a larger, brighter, dead planet; desperate to connect and discover and learn everything he can about the family he never knew. But there is also a part (older, wiser, more afraid) that longs for Lois, hidden away in the bridal chamber; longs to gather her close and knit their flesh together, to use her humanness as a way of combating any parts of his nature that might tear him away from Earth and the kindly farmers who are his true parents.

One of his hands reaches forward to the porthole, touching the image of that growing planetoid (he reached forward once before, too, up toward the preserved image, the echoing words, of his father, the scientist). But his other hand moves up to his own throat, to the chain holding what he wants most, the vial of earth and the ring of silver (last time, the hand he'd held between Lois's had slipped away as he stepped in the direction of Krypton and the past made future; he will not make the same mistake now—he has learned not to let go).

"New Krypton," Tre says behind him, pride in his tone and grief in his mind. "Our home."

Their home, Clark corrects to himself behind all the mental walls he knows how to build. But not his home.

Never his.

(But still there is that tiny piece of his orphan soul yearning, now, for Krypton rather than Earth, and he trembles at the realization of just how hard this is going to be.)

It's painful, leaving Lois behind, all alone in a room deep in the bowels of a ship manned only by a skeleton crew. As Clark rides a globe-ship down to a surface shrouded year-round in shadow, he can think of nothing but Lois's brave smile and encouraging words and trembling hands. He has a pinch of soil and an engagement ring and a purpose, but Lois?

Lois has nothing.

His heart quells at the thought until he's tempted to speed back to the mothership and blast his way inside (if only he still could), to fold Lois inside him until his own bones and muscles and lungs and heart can become a personal environment for her, a haven to keep her safe without completely isolating her (if only it were possible).

He thinks of her, come to a foreign place for him and now left behind. His senses are filled with the tight embrace she dared to give him despite Zara and Ching's disapproving presence.

Until the globe-ship lands, and the walls fade away, and he comes face to face with a world in dire need.

He'd thought he knew despair. Hopelessness. Panic. Loss. He's seen the darkest corners of the world, reached down to the most downtrodden of souls, battled evil so great he could hardly bear to look at it.

But none of it compares to this.

People with no hope. Thin and wasted, pale and desolate, a people transplanted to a world dark and grim, subjected to the possibility of a leader with only his own best interests in mind, scrabbling for mere survival while still mourning the loss of an entire planet. They are (worst of all) resigned to their fate. They accept it with solemnity, without the hope or the thought of anything more.

He knows all this, can taste the hopelessness in the back of his throat, because the air is thick with their grim thoughts. Every step he takes is weighted by the sludge of their despair, all of New Krypton a mire of loss and desolation that sinks deep into his mind and drowns him, little by little, suffocating whatever hope he has in himself.

How can he possible expect to be able to help a people so resigned? What can he possibly do (with so little knowledge of their ways and so intent on leaving as quickly as possible) to make a dent in such desperate need? Who is he to think he can affect an entire world and come up with the solutions so obviously eluding them?

As he reels, Zara places her wrist against his, the red on their decorative vests blending seamlessly. For the first time, Clark is grateful for her touch, her presence, her help. She steadies him as he takes his first sluggish steps onto an alien planet. Guides him as he's introduced by the Council of Elders to the people, gathered in a scraggly crowd before the vast fortress hewn into a mountainside and footed by a walled town, all of it covered in a veneer of dusty frost. Stands beside him with faith in her thoughts as the problems are brought before him, one by one, wrapped in the dull eyes of helpless farmers and cowed townspeople and powerless lesser nobles.

Lois. Lois. Lois.

Her name becomes the heartbeat that encompasses his inner world, the anchor that keeps him attached to some tiny piece of hope he can't let himself lose. He forces in a thick breath (smells the scent of her hair), carefully unclasps his hands from the fists that want to form (feels the softness of her skin), keeps his eyes fastened on the supplicants before him (imagines her, curious and intent, ever eager to listen and investigate and throw herself into solving whatever problem lies before her).

He's Lord Kal-El, yes, but that's not all he is. Lord Kal-El, Kryptonian and steeped in their old ways, cannot (for all that he stands before his people as a solution in and of himself) solve anything. But Superman, symbol and hope and figurehead, can keep trying, keep determining, keep standing straight and tall no matter what weight is placed upon his shoulders. And Clark…Clark has Lois and the example of his parents, Perry, Jimmy, all the good people he's met; he has the ability to empathize and identify and connect.

Together, with Lois believing in him and Zara supporting him (even Ching whispering tiny pieces of advice in his ear), Clark will do all that he can.

He will not give up.

(He doesn't think he will ever learn to really, truly let go.)

The fortress is cold and echoing, but large enough for the people to gather and watch a shorter version of his union ceremony with Zara.

"A few words," she murmurs to him below their cheers. "Give them something to believe in."

The language is dense, almost as hard to reach for as the oxygen his lungs beg for. But he has come all this way (has abandoned and left behind and changed all his priorities) to be here. What are a few words now?

"You've survived," he says (he knows his words are accented, his voice strange in this unfamiliar gravity, but they listen). "Against all the odds, you've found a way here, found a way to survive and thrive. I admire your strength and tenacity. And I believe that every people, no matter where they find themselves, no matter what they face, can always rise higher. Can reach further. Can dare to try for better things. Together, Zara and I will help us do exactly that. Instead of just surviving, we will live."

It's not enough. The words seem vague and paltry to him, tiny droplets of water in the desert of need. But the people soak in his words with a silence so absolute it makes him nervous.

There isn't applause when he finishes. Instead, there is a settling, as if the thoughts that before filled the cavern calm and strengthen. As if, even in some small way, he has touched them.

"Lord Kal-El," Zara pronounces (another identity proclaimed to a world before he is comfortable with it).

As one, in a ripple that rocks him back on his feet, the people kneel.

A ruler.

A leader.

A savior.

He is not any of those.

But he can try, for their sakes.

They start with food, and Clark has never valued his early years on a farm as much as he does now. Kryptonians, he discovers, didn't farm, not for centuries before Krypton's destruction, and everything they have learned has been through trial and error.

"Our scientists have determined the best seeds to grow," Tre explains.

"And you've been growing nothing but those seeds since you got here?" Clark asks, a bit too incredulously judging by the way Tre's eyes tighten around the edges.

"Our people are hungry, Lord Kal-El."

"Yes, but draining the soil of all the nutrients isn't the answer."

"Explain," Zara says, intervening in that calm way he has quickly come to value.

So he does, actually leading them out to a farm and bending down to sift his hand through the thin dirt. It's so cold his hands ache, like a bruise deep in his bones. Clark tries to hide it by standing and clasping his hands behind his back. He talks to the farmers, to the scientists, to the botanists, to everyone he can think of until finally there is a glimmer of understanding lightening the air (he takes a full breath for the first time since stepping from the globe-ship).

It's a start.

"The people see you doing something," Ching says tersely when they are back in the fortress. "That almost matters more than whether your new ideas succeed or not."

"It will work," Clark says, dully. He's exhausted already, weary in a way he doesn't remember ever being before, and it hasn't even been a week since his arrival.

Zara studies him for a long moment (he imagines his thoughts laid out there for her to see, as if his mind is a computer screen, left open and vulnerable). "Kal-El," she says, "I think it is time you took a step back and assessed our next priority."

"All right." He sighs. "What do I need to do?"

"We're returning to the mothership."

Clark does his best not to show the depths of his relief, but he thinks the way he reaches out and squeezes her hand gives it away.

Lois isn't in the bridal chambers (he didn't expect her to be). Somehow, she has managed to convince a few of the crew that she is an illegal third child, smuggled into the ship and hidden away to save her life.

"It gives me a chance to stretch my legs and talk to some people," she tells him as she leads him unerringly through the maze-like corridors. "Zara gave me a translator to use in emergencies and I figured going crazy counted as an emergency, so I used it. It's not foolproof, but they think I'm just a little slow, probably because third children aren't allowed to be educated—can you imagine? That's something you'll need to change, Clark, or should I say, Kal-El."

"Please," he interrupts, blinking for possibly the first time since he saw her smiling at him from the hold. "Don't call me that."

Her lips turn up at the corners, though the expression falls somewhat short of being a true smile. "Clark," she whispers. "I know who you are."

He can't help himself, reaching out to thread a hand down the curve of her cheek, just brushing the edge of her hair, sleek and familiar even though it smells different now.

Behind them, Ching clears his throat.

Clark drops his hand back to his side. It's okay. He doesn't need to touch her to drink her in.

When they're alone in their room (the bridal chambers, he thinks again, though with a different connotation entirely now that it is Lois sharing the room with him), Clark sinks down in his chair and scrubs his hands over his face.

After a moment, Lois drags a chair over beside his and begins talking. "Der is keeping me up to date on what you've been doing. She's kind of a gossip, but you'll be glad to know she likes you. She says she's never heard of a Lord pretending to be a farmer."

With a smile, Clark tries to straighten his back. "Well, for now, quite a few of them like me, I think. The hard part will be when Nor gets back from his trip. Zara said he takes hunting trips regularly, but this one was on short notice, probably to hide the fact that he's sending assassins to Earth after lost heirs."

Lois's mouth tightens. "Zara said all that, did she. And when does she expect Nor back?"

"She said he should be back in a week or two, but Ching said he might delay a bit longer to make sure he knows what he's going to be dealing with and to come up with his own plan of attack."

"Oh, really?" Lois purses her lips and leans forward. "Or will he come back early to stop you from winning the support he wants?"

"I don't know." Clark brushes his hand over the chain beneath his suit, making sure it's still there (still hidden). "Either way, it doesn't give me a lot of time to focus on the more pressing concerns."

"Isn't Nor a pressing concern?" Lois asks with an arched brow.

"Yes," Clark admits, "but people can survive a bad ruler. They can't survive a winter that lasts a hundred years, or famine that never ends, or a class system that always leaves a percentage of the population out in the cold. There's so much wrong here, Lois, so many things they should be dealing with, but they're too caught up in their politics and maneuvering. I don't know how to get them to focus on the long-term goal of making this a home instead of just a place to set up camp."

"I think you're already doing it, Clark," she says softly.

Clark straightens once again, lifting his chin. "Right. I'm trying."

Her hand on his knee freezes him. "Stop doing that," she murmurs.

"Doing what?"

"You keep making yourself stiffen up. Like you're still playing a part. I'm here, Clark, and I know who you are. You don't have to put up a front with me."

"I know," he says (but does he? She believes the best of him, she needs to believe that he'll succeed here so they can return to Earth. She thinks he can still, even powerless and cold and aching, do everything that Superman would. She needs him to be strong and competent and brave).

"Clark," she says again, and they both pretend Ching isn't there at the door (just as Ching pretends they are not closer than Zara would want them to be), leaning into him and sliding her hand over his cheek. She's so warm, so soft, so tender, that Clark has to squeeze his eyes closed and picture steel overlaid atop his bones to keep himself from crumpling. "It's okay."

He puts his hand over hers, and soaks in her warmth.

"I love you," she whispers.

Hope is reborn inside him.

(For this, he can endure anything.)

For three weeks, this is enough. Clark plays a part, guided by Zara's steady advice and constant presence, setting himself up as a figure to give the people hope. He learns names and stories and asks questions, rearranges the people until the man who cannot bend his back is no longer a farmer but a sifter inside, the woman with a small child is given light work where she can watch her baby. Small changes, but necessary, crucial. He thinks the thoughts surrounding him are lighter, less mired in resigned hopelessness. He thinks they are beginning to respect him despite the Earthen accent to his words and the strangeness of his ideas.

When it seems too much, everything he still has yet to do and the heaviness bowing his shoulders, Zara arranges for Clark and Ching to return to the mothership. Lois cajoles Ching into giving her access to the Kryptonian records and begins studying their history, learning so quickly that Clark soon learns to expect his own history lessons every time he visits her. She always finds something that helps him, some piece of knowledge that helps him chip away at the stubbornness of old Kryptonian traditions.

(She tells him, again and again, that she loves him, and much as he looks for it, he can see no sign of resentment, of anger, of blame that she is so alone while he is gone so much of the time.)

"How do we change laws?" he asks Zara when he arrives back on New Krypton from his fourth visit to see Lois.

"Why?" she asks him, not quite as serenely as usual.

"Because," he says, "the best way to stop Nor from seizing power is to ensure he can never be in a position to rule. And because there are some injustices that can only be righted by changing the laws. And because," he drops his voice, raises his mental walls, "one day, when we're ready for our marriage to be absolved, we'll need to have a structure in place to allow it."

"I hardly think that should be a priority at this point in time." Zara exchanges a look with Ching, then says, "There have been rumors starting in the outland properties but moving inward. Rumors that you are loyal to Earth rather than New Krypton. Insinuations that you are trying to remake us in the likeness of Earthers."

"What?" Clark swallows, not sure what to say (these rumors are not, he thinks, entirely false, but he doesn't need telepathy to know Zara doesn't want to hear that). "I thought the Council of Elders had endorsed my suggestions."

"Your commands," Ching corrects sternly. "And it's not endorsement so much as patience. They wait to see what happens."

"They wait to see what will happen when Lord Nor returns," Zara says.

They didn't have to wait much longer.

Nor came on the tailwind of rumors and accusations concerning Lord Kal-El and his allegiances. Ching told Clark that Nor had first gone to the farms where new seeds had been planted in weary soil, where water was being funneled through irrigation ditches, where farmers were given their own plots to cultivate for themselves. Then he went to the inner city where wages had been equaled and a day off per each week had been given to all the workers. Lastly, he attended the Council of Elders.

"And?" Zara asks. It's disconcerting, to hear her calmness shaken by the suggestion of nervousness. "Are they still in session?"

"They were when I last heard," Ching says. "But Lord Nor will not risk Kal-El interceding on his own behalf. He will want to leave his own words to fester in the Elders' thoughts and give them time to grow."

"We should hurry." Zara stands and crosses her wrist with Clark's. "Come. If we can get to the session before it concludes, you can speak in our defense."

"Why don't you speak for us?" Clark asks, though he follows her without hesitation. He's grown used to her wrist against his, their disparate pulses playing against each other, Ching at their heels. "You know more about what's going on here than I do."

"Once we were united, you became my voice."

Clark stares at her. "And you wonder why I want to change the laws here?"

"Hush!" Her quick command is accompanied by a mental slap that has Clark staggering back from her. "Say nothing of that now. Lord Nor will attack you in any way he can, and you suggesting that will help only him. We have done what we can to help in the long term. Now, it's time to hold our ground and stand against Lord Nor."

"I thought we were here to help the people!" he hisses. "That's what matters. That's what's important."

"And you can only do that if you are in a position of authority. Being imprisoned for treason won't help anyone. Certainly not Lois."

And here it is. He doesn't know why it surprises him. He knew this was coming, knew it from the moment Ching swept Lois up in his arms and Zara took Clark's wrist. Their hostage, their demands…his puppet-strings.

He is Lord of New Krypton. Supreme ruler in a language that buzzes in his head.

But he has also never been more powerless.

Nothing more than a pawn.

Lord Nor is cold and slimy. He reminds Clark of Luthor at first, but the more he talks, subtlety edged out by blunt cruelty, the less he seems like Luthor and the more he resembles Metallo instead. A brute with some form of cunning, not enough to conceal what he truly is, just enough to make him successful at manipulating others and getting his own way more often than not. Strong and violent and unpredictable, a heart of Kryptonite bleeding outward to poison whoever dares get too close.

He stares into Clark's eyes with scorn, speaks in a sneer he doesn't bother to hide, all condescension and dismissal and threats just barely masked by a veneer of political small talk.

"You stink of Earth," he says.

Clark tilts his head. "How would you know?" he replies. "Have you been there?"

Nor's eyes narrow, danger glinting in pale blue. "Your handiwork is everywhere in the city nowadays. I hear we're not even growing any food now thanks to you. Something about trying some different seeds?"

"I didn't know you worried about the food supply," Clark says evenly, Zara's thoughts steady against his. "From what I've heard, your soldiers have carted away produce from several farms—but I haven't seen any meat from your hunting trip. Did your quarry escape you?"

Zara's wrist tightens against his, a gentle warning.

"Oh, I always get what I go after," Nor says lowly before raising his voice and gesturing around him at the soldiers filling the banquet hall. "Kryptonians survive. You might not know that, coming as you do from…" He cocks his head in a clearly affected air of curiosity. "Where did you say you came from? I mean, all true Kryptonians came here, scraping together a life from the rock and frost without even the benefit of graves for all those we lost. We stuck together and formed a community based on the ideals handed down for generations. But where were you? You weren't there. You didn't help dig this fortress from stone. You didn't give your portion of food to a starving comrade. You didn't shiver with the cold under the starless night. No, of course not. You, the precious El child—you were hidden away. Coddled and protected and weakened."

"Yet here I am," Clark says (he's been warned by Zara and Ching not to allow Nor to bait him into answering questions about his past). "Helping and building and doing all of it with the Lady Ra at my side. You do know my wife, don't you?"

(It makes bile rise in his throat, to play this card, but it's the only trump he has over Nor, and Ching has been glaring at him for some minutes, goading him to pull out all the stops. Better to definitively end this confrontation than allow it to drag on and leave doubt in the minds of everyone eavesdropping on their conversation.)

"Ah, Zara." Nor's eyes rake over Zara in a possessive manner before he clearly dismisses her. "Well, the House of Ra has never had the most discerning taste. And they've been known to change partners."

"I don't believe lack of loyalty is their failing," Clark says coldly.

"And weakness isn't mine." Nor smiles at his men, ringing him now in a half circle. "I'm a soldier, El, which is more than you can ever be, no matter how much that bodyguard over there tries."

A shiver of foreboding races down Clark's spine, a shudder all too visible. Zara stiffens against him (in support or disapproval, he can't tell).

Nor shouldn't know that Ching is training him in the drei. He especially shouldn't know that Clark still hasn't mastered the art of it. Not unless someone's been informing on them.

"Come, come." Tre is abruptly there, Jenn Mai at his heels, coolly observing the proceedings. "Lord Kal-El, Lord Nor, this is no time for arguments."

"You're right," Nor proclaims. "Arguing accomplishes nothing."

When he turns and sweeps away, Clark tries to catch Tre's eyes, or Jenn Mai's, or any of the Elders. He fails.

They all turn and walk away, leaving him and Zara and Ching alone.

"That could have gone better," he admits.

Zara says nothing (admission all its own).

There's something clogging his throat and he can't stop shivering. His bones ache in the heavy gravity, and even returning to the ship's more forgiving atmosphere doesn't alleviate the constant burn in his joints. The negligible weight of the chain around his neck is all that keeps him upright (a contradiction as compelling as the woman who gave it to him), enough to keep him walking with the determined stride of a Kryptonian lord (no human weakness, no Earthen frailty, to make him even more of a target than he already is) until he's safely behind closed doors.

"Steady," Ching murmurs from his place a step behind. For a man who routinely layers bruises over Clark's skin trying to train him in the use of the drei (for a man willing to endanger hundreds of innocents just to keep Clark away from New Krypton), Ching has become a source of comfort in the past weeks. Always there, tireless, unyielding, radiating strength and support when Clark is most exhausted, ready with the Kryptonian word Clark fumbles for or the correct ritual to ensure an Elder's (all too temporary) support.

"You get two days here," Ching reminds him when the corridor is empty of all but them. "Plenty of time to reassess."

Reassess. A strange word to encompass everything these treasured trips have come to mean to Clark. Comfort. Rest. Healing. Peace.

And temptation, too. That above all.

The doors to the bedchambers open and Lois is there. Waiting. Smiling so brightly it reinforces just how dim everything is on this shadowed planetoid. Warm and so welcoming it makes him realize just how wary his people still are of him, always reserved and cautious and shut away behind their mental walls. And quiet—no humming thoughts, overflowing emotions, pointedly voiceless doubts to buffet him on every side.

Just her. Lois. So close. So full of love.

So forbidden.

(How can his promise to Zara be even harder to keep than his resolution to leave Earth behind? Why does this seem so much more a sacrifice than laying aside his other personalities to slip into Lord Kal-El's royalty?)

Zara is there, too, of course, his constant warden. It's cruel, he knows (not to mention dangerous) to think of her that way, but he can't help it. Where Ching is confined to the role of bodyguard, and consequently, mostly expected to stay silent, Zara is Clark's partner. His equal. Always ready to guide him, advise him…caution him against everything he longs to do for their downtrodden people. He's always reminding himself that she has a better understanding of their people than he does, that she wants to save them even more than he does; but he worries that her caution, her desire for slow changes, is a cover for trying to keep him here as long as possible.

Or maybe it's simpler (more selfish) than that. Maybe he just chafes at her always being in the room with him and Lois, policing their proximity, chastising their closeness. In order for him to have excuse to visit the mothership, she usually goes ahead of him and doesn't leave before him.

"It's excusable for me to retreat to the ship," she told him, "seeing as how desperate the Elders are for an heir. Or for any Kryptonian child. Every newly married couple is encouraged to spend a great deal of time together."

Except…she's not supposed to be his bride.

Lois should be his wife, is his wife, in his heart, where the last true bits of himself reside. He longs for her, needs to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her and finally breathe again for the first time in far too long.

"Clark, Zara's been telling me about your meeting with Nor." Lois risks a quick hug, there then gone so fast Clark is left with only the fleeting impression of warmth. "How do you think it went?"

"He didn't seem too fazed," Clark says. "He had all his arguments already prepared, and he didn't react like someone who's just been threatened. He's either way too well-informed or he sees something we don't, some way out of this we haven't planned for."

"Informants?" Lois gives a slow shake of her head. "Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about that. Is there?" She turns to Zara, who's exchanging her own whispered conference with Ching. Zara steps away from her bodyguard just a bit too quickly, her eyes not quite as serene as her features.

"Lord Nor has threatened much of the populace into doing his bidding at one point or another," Ching answers while she composes herself.

"And the Council of Elders is split on most issues," says Zara. "As much as I hate to admit it, they might not all be supportive of our union, Kal-El."

"Nor didn't seem supportive of you in general," Clark points out. "If he's hoping to marry you himself, I'm surprised he's not working harder to court you."

"Once, Krypton was a place where I would have had an equal say." Zara's eyes tighten. "But now, with our low numbers and the need for strong leadership, my voice can easily be drowned out by the Elders."

"Unbelievable!" Lois is instantly outraged, the frustration he knows she feels at being shut away like this easily sparking into rage against any visible injustices.

Not that Clark doesn't agree with her, but he's afraid his own frustration is motivated by selfishness. It'd be so much easier, after all, if he could help Zara take control of New Krypton's leadership and then whisk Lois away, back to Earth.

(But he knows what that would really be: fleeing. Giving up. Running away. And he can't do that. He won't do that.)

(Not yet.)

Clark lets the blessedly English words wash over him, lets the rise and fall of Lois's voice soothe him. He wants her opinion, needs her clear-eyed way of looking through things to the heart of the matter. But their time together is so short, and he's so tired; he wishes they could just pretend that everything outside this room doesn't exist. (Pretend that the fate of an entire world doesn't rest on his quaking shoulders.)

It takes him by surprise, when he looks up at the touch of a hand against his brow, to realize that he's sunk down into a chair, that Ching and Zara have once more retreated to the opposite corner of the room, that Lois is standing over him with a worried frown on her lips.

"Are you sure you're okay, Clark? You seem a little warm."

He feels warm, afire with her proximity and her attention and the wonderful, terrifying way she's given up absolutely everything to ensure he isn't entirely alone here.

"It's warmer here than down on the planet," he says, but catches her hand as it falls away from his brow. Zara would disapprove, but Clark tightens the walls around his mind and presses Lois's soft palm against his mouth for just a moment (imagines that he and Lois are on Earth, and married, and this truly is their bedroom, and he is free to tug her closer, to wind his arms around her waist and press his love into her through fever-hot kisses.)

He shouldn't have.

It only makes it harder when he has to let her go.

"Are you okay?" he asks her. "Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you up here?"

"Paper," she says. "And a pen. And, let's be honest, probably lots and lots of White-Out. If I'm going to publish a Pulitzer prize-winning series on the events here, then I need to start keeping notes."

He tugs her to a seat on the bed, so close their hands hang between them, dancing on the edge of touching. "And are you going to write about everything?" he asks, his eyes intent on the tiny spaces between their fingers.

"Well," he can hear the flirtatious smile in her voice without even looking up (no need for telepathy with Lois, not when their hearts have always been able to connect despite everything between them), "not everything. I suppose I'll leave out the necklace you're wearing."

His breath catches in his throat when her fingers strokes along the line of the chain disappearing beneath his ebony collar.

"What about the union with Zara?" he asks, still not quite meeting her eyes. "Will you write about that?"

"I hadn't thought about it. Why?" There's suddenly an edge to her voice, a tremor in her fingers. "Is the union that important to you?"

"No." Clark gives her a soft smile. "Certainly nothing next to the marriage I'm looking forward to having." When she relaxes at that, he feels his own nervousness returning, joining the near-constant nausea in his stomach to leave him feeling clammy and light-headed. "I guess I'm just curious what angle you're going to take."

"What do you want me to write about?" Lois leans closer. "About how you're ensuring there's enough food to go around? About how you're going up against a tyrant who's only concerned with power? What about how you gave up your whole life to help a people who don't even appreciate you?"

"I didn't give up my whole life." She's so close, so mesmerizing, he can't help but lean forward. Closer, closer, so close he can smell the scent of her hair (and it staggers him to realize how long it's been since he smelled it and just how much of a loss it seems to lose even this constant along with the rest of his powers). "Thanks to you, the most important part of my life is still here. With me. Helping me. Making me strong enough to do this."

"You were already strong enough," she whispers, her breath caressing his cheek, an ephemeral kiss. "But I'm so glad I'm here and not alone in Metropolis with no idea of what's happening or if you're okay."

(She's wrong, so wrong, but he doesn't correct her. Doesn't tell her he's falling apart at the seams, crumbling under the pressure of mortality. Doesn't beg her not to expose his weakness to the world he loves.)

Instead, he just leans close, close, close (but not quite touching), and breathes her in.

And hopes these moments will last him until he can see her once again.

Time blurs into a ceaseless montage of exhaustion and aches and breaths so heavy in his lungs he grows used to rubbing at his chest trying to break them up into small enough pieces he can cough them out. He never has enough time with Lois to make him feel rested or whole, and as the days blend together, he has fewer chances to visit her at all. It chafes at him, makes him snappish and distracted, but there's no choice.

Nor's here and causing trouble. Everywhere Clark goes, Nor has been there first, casting aspersions, seeding doubts, offering alternatives. Clark spends more time straightening out all the misinformation Nor leaves in his wake than he does actually moving his own plans forward. Zara takes to staying with the Council of Elders, trying to provide damage control for Nor's own frequent visits. She starts looking strained, too, her mental walls fraying as Ching grows sterner and grimmer, but Clark doesn't have time to help them.

The people need him. He can't afford to sit down and talk with everyone he meets, like he used to do while traveling Earth, but even the few words he exchanges with the ones who are willing to do more than bow and agree with him are enough to make him long to help them.

They need him. They've lost everything but are trying to rebuild, and instead of helping them, the nobility are trapped in a succession war. Clark starts out listening to Zara and Ching, trying to focus on Nor and the long-term effects, but soon that all falls away. He can't stop thinking about the eyes of the people he meets, gaunt and hollow and resigned. Afraid to hope but wanting desperately to have something to believe in. Hungry for change and looking for faith and convinced all along that grim survival is all that is left to them.

Clark throws himself into traveling farther, meeting more people, instigating more changes, small ones for now, but they will grow and snowball. Already, the first yields are coming in from his suggested harvests, a promising return that has bought him at least some time and faith.

"I'll do what I can," he says, over and over again, as little by little, more people begin to come to him with their needs.

It's a meager promise, but it's the only honest one he can give, and sleep falls away to make sure he keeps it, exhaustion settles in like an old friend, close and presumptive, and Clark ignores the aches and pains in this ordinary body he isn't used to.

(He's weak, so weak, when everyone here is fighting and trying and not stopping, so he powers on, inspired by their own example.)

It scares him, occasionally, when he stops long enough to realize just how long it's been since he's seen Lois, but inevitably, there will be another emergency, another meeting with Zara to discuss how much more support Nor has garnered, another distraction that will keep him on New Krypton longer.

The stars are bright, especially vivid in a dusky sky, and Clark often looks up at them and rubs at his chest (at the breaths walling up his throat and the ring hanging there beside a bit of Earthen soil) before he turns his eyes back to the ground and takes up his burden once more.

It's a harsh existence, lonely and cold and so much longer than he thought it would be, but it sustains him. It gives him purpose.

(It keeps him too busy to realize just how alone he is now and how much he misses his old life, so far away it seems nothing more than a dream.)

"I worry about you," Lois says once, her eyes on the papers in front of her, as if she's trying not to let him know just how serious she is. "You look thin, Clark, and tired. What do Zara and Ching say about that cough of yours?"

"I'm not invulnerable anymore," he tells her, careful to smile while he says it, so she'll hear that he isn't worried (he is, though; this cough hurts, but then, he's not used to pain, so maybe it's not really as bad as all that). "And even though they gave me some inoculations before we arrived, I was bound to get sick eventually."

"You've been coughing for weeks," she says before she looks up and gives him a smile (he hasn't forgotten so much that he can't tell it's forced). "Anyway, if they say it's fine, I guess… What has Nor done now?"

"More of the same." He knows she wants to hear everything, is desperate for news and a way to help, but he spends his endless days doing nothing but worrying about Nor. Here, for just a little while, he wants to think about something else. "Lois," he says, "do you remember any of Perry's Elvis stories?"

Her brow wrinkles. "Some of them. Why?"

"I was just…trying to remember them. Jimmy even told one or two. I guess the Chief was rubbing off on him."

"Lots of things on New Krypton remind you of the Rock and Roll King?" Lois asks, a glint of humor in her eyes.

"No." He actually chuckles (it sounds dusty, makes him wonder just how long it's been since he last laughed). "I just…I'm afraid I'll forget it all."

(Even now, he can't quite remember the English words he's looking for, as if he has to strain past Kryptonian nouns and verbs for the right syllables, the strange sentence order.)

"I wouldn't mind forgetting a few of those Elvis stories," Lois says dryly.

"I know." Clark shrugs uncomfortably. Zara wasn't able to get away to accompany him this time, and Ching went to retrieve some food for them, so it's actually just him and Lois. If only he didn't feel like the air was filled with unsaid things between them. If only he hadn't promised Zara that he'd be faithful.

"What is it?" Lois asks, moving to sit beside him on the bed.

"All my powers are gone," he whispers to his hands. "I just…I don't know if my photographic memory was part of that or not. What if I start forgetting everything, Lois? What if I—"

"I'll remind you," she says. When she hugs him, he falls forward into her, soaking in her warmth and hoping it will calm the cold chills that have become near-constant. "I won't let you forget, Clark."

"Remind me how we met," he says into her neck, his lips playing against her skin (her shiver reverberates across his entire frame).

"Well, I was on the trail of a story, eager to get somewhere, and Perry interrupted to introduce me to some guy he was interviewing. How was I to know that guy would get a job there? Or last so long? Or," her voice drops low, a murmur into his ear, "come to mean so much to me? Because you do, Clark—you mean everything to me. So don't worry about me here, okay? Just do what you have to."

"And then maybe you'll actually take the time to shake my hand?" he teases, still caught up in his memory of that first time he saw her, felt the magnetic pull of her certainty and her intensity.

"Oh, I'll do a lot more than shake your hand," she says, and it's a good thing Ching comes back, then, or Clark would have broken his promise.

But over dinner, Lois tells him more stories, her voice weaving a cocoon around him, a haven he takes back with him so that even when he is tired and beleaguered and out of his depth, he can hear her voice reminding him of everything he has to fight for.

When Nor finally makes his move, Clark is actually relieved. He's tired and his bones ache and it's gotten so hard to breathe. More, the problems of his people keep piling up so high that he feels as if they will crush him. It's easier, in a way, to face Nor and finally have their long-delayed confrontation than to continue picking away at seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

"You're under arrest," Nor tells him, so gleeful that Clark can feel a bit of giddiness himself, tainted with Nor's cruelty and pricking against his mental walls.

"On what charges?" Zara demands, all poise and power—until she, too, is taken into custody.

"For treason," Nor says.

Clark sees Ching slipping away, disappearing to safety, and he's relieved. (Lois will be taken care of; surely Ching will see to that, if nothing else.)

"The Council of Elders will—"

"Will what?" Jenn Mai steps out from Nor's shadow, smirking and satisfied. Clark is buffeted by the strength of Zara's outrage, her betrayal, but it doesn't matter.

The grip on his arms tighten, and Clark lets himself sink a bit into their hold. He's done what he can, after all. Made his suggestions and altered the bit they allowed him to, spoke to people and offered them even the hint of another way. Now, all that's left is to stop Nor, and with Nor himself forcing the confrontation, this is it.

One way or another, this will all end.

(One way or another, he will not be forced to stay here for much longer.)

The trial is a blur. Because Zara is complicit in his crimes, Clark does his best to refute the charges and make a stand that can bear up against the power Nor and his bullied allies are giving to the trial. But he won't lie (can't lie, when there are so many lies already).

He is loyal to Earth. He does want to change things about the Kryptonian society. He would rather be gone from this place.

It's not treason that he's committed, he knows, but it's close enough. Close enough that Nor doesn't need much more than witnesses scared into testifying that Lord Kal-El has spoken of Earth, referred to Earth, compared New Krypton to Earth; a few Elders affirming that Kal-El was indeed hidden away on Earth and only retrieved recently; and Zara's own unwilling testimony that Clark almost didn't accompany her back to their world.

Nor is terrifying. He's brutal. He's self-serving. But when it comes right down to it, he's Kryptonian, and familiar, and an evil they know. If there is one thing Clark knows about people, it's that they will always choose the familiar over the strange.

"Guilty," Jenn Mai proclaims.

"Guilty," the other Elders agree.

Tre sighs and shakes his head, something almost disillusioned in his eyes. "Guilty," he says.

And it's done.

Zara will be married to Nor (a terrible fate for her, he'd wish better, but she's strong and smart and has allies of her own, has built up quiet support in these past months, and Clark thinks he would bet on her over Nor in the long run).

Clark will be put to death, his atoms scattered across the universe.

(And Lois, unmentioned, still secret and hidden, will be safe. Ching is with her; maybe he will be able to take her back to Earth.)

It's not as much as he wanted to accomplish. It's not the end he dreamed of.

(But it's an end, and he's so tired, he cannot bring himself to care too much.)

Maybe he finally can let go, for real this time.

When they take him up to the ship, Clark begins to care a lot. He feels, at once, more awake, more aware, than he has in months. Why are they coming here? What could they want here? His mind is filled with possibilities, with images of Nor gleefully revealing that he knew about Lois all along, that before Clark is put to death, he must watch Lois killed too.

Zara wriggles closer until she can set her bound wrist against his. "Kal-El," she whispers, "guard your mind or you'll give away the very thing you seek to protect."

With a great effort, Clark forces up mental walls, crams his thoughts back behind their wavering defense, calms his frantic heartbeat. His lungs have seized up and he begins coughing, almost retching in his attempt to breath in some air. Even here aboard the ship, where usually his breathing is a bit easier, he struggles for long minutes while Tre stares at him with what looks to be genuine worry.

"Weak," Nor sneers. "And this is what you thought could lead our people, Zara? I thought you a bit brighter than that."

"When you're the alternative, anything would look good," Zara says with cool composure. "But, yes, I do believe that he is an impressive leader. It's a shame your arrogance and selfishness will deprive New Krypton of its future."

"Does he let you talk all the time?" Nor came close enough to casually slap her across the cheek. Ignoring Tre's outburst and the gasps from the other Elders, oblivious to the lead in Clark's surging blood as he fights his captors, Nor smiles down at Zara. "I think a gag will look very appealing on you."

"Lor Nor, I must insist you show some respect!" Tre demands. "Lady Zara is—"

"To be my wife," Nor says. "And I am your ruler now, so you should consider showing some of that respect you care so much about."

Despite the vote Tre cast against him, Clark feels bad for the Elder. The familiar evil is sometimes worse than the strange one.

"Nor," he says, drawing the man's attention. "You're not actually ruler until I'm dead. Why are we up here?"

"I thought it fitting." Nor cocks his head, diverted by this opportunity to gloat. "We could have torn your being to pieces and splatted them across the cosmos from the surface, too, but why give you the chance to become a martyr to the people watching? And why not use this ship you seem so strangely connected to as the means of destroying you?"

Tre fades away, safe for the moment, and Nor is once more intent on Clark, not on searching the ship or asking why it's so important to him. Once more, Clark lets himself relax. He closes his eyes against the pounding in his head, bolsters his mental walls, and lets himself think (in these, his final moments) of Lois.

This will hurt her. It will wound her deeply. Convincing her to go back to Earth without destroying Nor will be hard. But eventually, back with his parents and Perry and Jimmy and the Daily Planet and the people who need her clarion truths…she will heal. She will survive. She'll live.

Please, he thinks, imagining the plea as a bird winging out from his mind toward Ching, wherever he is. Please take Lois home. Keep her safe. Help her live.

They lead him to a room he's never seen before, a room he doesn't remember Lois mentioning when she talked about her wandering walks. There's a man-shaped cage in the middle of the room. The Elders and guards spread out to face that cage while Nor pulls Zara up beside him. Clark is escorted to the cage. He remembers another cage, bigger but scarier, green and searing, keeping him from saving Lois from a fate worse than death. He catches a glimpse of Zara, bound for a similar fate with another monster, and wonders if maybe this was always his fate—to stand removed, caged and isolated, while the people he cares for are claimed by others more genetically suited but morally depraved.

I'm sorry, he tries to tell Zara. This isn't what she wanted, what she left her people for, traveling through space on a wild goose chase on the whisper of a rumor of a lost El son. This isn't what made her able to close her mind to Ching's love and devotion as she bound herself to a man she knew would never love her. I'm sorry.

For an instant, her eyes tighter. There's moisture there, pooling in a refraction of the room's bright lights. He thinks she probably returns his apology to him, but he doesn't need it. She loves her people. She wants the best for them. How could she not have found him and asked him to return with her?

Maybe, in another world, another lifetime, he could have stood at her side and been the ruler-partner she and New Krypton need. (Maybe, but he doesn't think so; he is not suited for this position. His soul is not shaped to be in love with anyone but the oh-so-human Lois Lane.)

They close the bars around him with a clang that rings like dynamite in his ears, resounds through his pounding head, reverberates through his aching bones. The guards are expressionless. Nor is triumphant. The Elders are wary, uncertain, betraying the beginnings of regret.

Too late.

There's so much he should have told Lois. So many things he should have said, so many more stories he wanted to hear, so many moments they could have shared. He wasted so much time on being exhausted, on staying below when he should have been seeing her.

In an instant, Clark sees an entire lifetime laid out before him. A lifetime as Lois's husband, at her side, investigating and writing and helping, buoyed up by her truth and her certainty and her love, and maybe they were from alien worlds, maybe there would never have been children, maybe there would have been sorrows he can't fathom now, but they would have been together. Should have been together.

He doesn't think he could have chosen differently. Doesn't think that once he heard of New Krypton, he ever could have decided not to come and do all he could for them. But oh, he wishes he had never heard of them. Wishes he'd had the chance to live that lifetime with Lois Lane.

Lois. Lois. Lois.

The beloved heartbeat resounds. He can't hear it, not really, not anymore, but he imagines that he can. Closes his eyes on the aliens before him and strains for the heart that made everything worthwhile.

"I love you, Lois," he whispers under his breath, a secret revealed and covered up by the sound of Nor's gloating.

And then there's no more time at all.

His dry skin evaporates. His leaden blood is seared to nothing. His weak muscles disintegrate. His aching bones dissolve.

Scattered across the universe, belonging to nothing and no one, an eternal wanderer, an orphan doomed to never be found (by two kindly farmers, by a gruff editor with a heart of gold and a photographer with more loyalty than money, by a woman who accepted him without question and devoted herself to him without wavering).

Finally, for maybe the first time in his life, he has no choice but to let go. And even so, he cannot let go of everything. Not quite.

Lois…

Then his bones are remade, his muscles stretched back over them, his veins once more filled with life-giving liquid, his skin encapsulating pain and hope in equal measures.

He's alive.

He's still here.

Ching is standing in front of Lord Nor, Tre backing him up, Zara watching with a look of pride there on her features for anyone who knows how to read it. There's noise, so much noise that it overwhelms him, but he can't care about that.

Because in front of everything, just in front of him, barely waiting for the guards to open his cage, dressed in Kryptonian clothes, is Lois.

Lois Lane. Always the first to be where she shouldn't, never able to turn away from anyone who needs her, and always, always able to find another way.

"Clark," her lips mouth, though she carefully doesn't say it out loud. (The sight of that name brings him to life in a way the rebuilding of his body didn't.)

Then the doors are open and he's falling forward, sagging into her. She catches him, bears him up, holds him upright with strength abundant.

Clark lets himself lean into her. Lets himself breathe deep of her scent and her presence. Lets himself savor the feel of her and the warmth of her.

He's been destroyed and remade, but he won't feel complete until it can be him and Lois again, like it used to be, like it should be.

"Lois," he murmurs into her hair.

"Shh." Her hand is a soft caress against the nape of his neck. "It's okay, Clark. It's okay, I'm going to save you."

"You already did," he tells her (and wishes she knew the truth of this statement, made true again and again and again).

Her arms tighten around him. For the first time in ages, he feels glad to be alive.

Clark closes his eyes, and lets everything else fall away.

"A fight." His voice sounds dull as he repeats the words. "To the death."

"You can do it," Lois says immediately. "Ching says you can do it."

Ching doesn't look quite as certain as Lois implies, but he nonetheless nods. "You can, Kal-El. You've mastered the many moves of the drei. If you can bring yourself to absolute focus and make the ultimate move, then you can beat Nor."

"The ultimate move." Clark lets his heavy head sag down, too tired to lift it. "You mean the killing move. Because that's how this ends: a death."

"Yes," Zara said succinctly. "There is no other way, Kal-El."

"No. That's not me. I'm not doing that."

Zara moves to stand straight in front of him, so resolute and imposing that he has no choice to but to look up and meet her gaze. "Kal-El, this is how you save my people. I know you can do this. You must do this."

"Zara." Clark forces himself to his feet, makes his shoulders remain unbowed, ensures his eyes don't leave hers. "I have given up so much for you and your people. My parents, my friends, my job. I've given up Superman and I've given up Clark. I've become Kal-El for you, and I don't regret that choice. I would make that sacrifice for you and your people again. But this, this is the one thing that I cannot give up. I won't kill him."

"Then he will kill you," she says steadily. "And he will marry me, and he will subjugate our people until there is nothing left. And then, since he knows about Earth and since he does not know how to fix the problems here, he will turn his eye to the Humans. Your insistence on his life…will cost billions."

"Zara!" Lois snaps. Her hand is warm around his elbow. "What do you think you're—"

"She's right," Ching says. "Nor cannot be stopped by any more political moves or held by mere walls. He will keep destroying everything in his sight until he is destroyed himself."

"And if you will not fight him," Zara says, "then you will be put to death and he will rule uncontested."

"Give us a minute," Lois says, and stares them down until they retreat to their side of the room (hard to think of it as the bridal chambers anymore, Clark thinks, when so much has happened).

"I can't, Lois," he says. "I've already lost so much of myself here, I can't lose this too."

"I know." Lois swallows, soft and intent as she takes his hands. "But…if there really is no other way…maybe…"

"I can't," he says again, but this time, he hears the desperation in his own voice. Stripped naked and exposed in front of her.

He's afraid (afraid that he can kill Nor, that he will kill Nor, that he wants Nor dead; that he is, after all, just another Lex Luthor waiting to happen).

"Oh, Clark." Lois frames his face in her hands. "You'll stop him. I know you will. And if anyone can find a way to do it without killing him…it's you. I believe in you. I trust you."

(He wants to tell her she shouldn't. He wants to tell her that he feels lost and disillusioned and helpless.)

(He says nothing, because why should she be disillusioned too?)

Training is a nightmare. They have two days to prepare for the duel, to be held at the foot of that imposing fortress on the surface, and Ching and Zara are intent on Clark using every minute to train with the drei. Already guilty at how he has repaid Lois and Ching's desperate bid to save him, Clark does his best.

It's not good enough.

The drei is heavy and awkward in his hands (transformed from a piece of his heritage to a murder weapon). His limbs are weighted and uncoordinated (the limbs of a brute, a savage, an executioner). And he can't breathe. The physical struggle, the exertion, it makes the air catch in his chest and build up into a solid mass that won't break up into smaller pieces. For every few moments of training, Clark spends an equal amount of time bent over wheezing, coughing, straining for breath.

"What's wrong with him?" Lois demands as her hands massage his chest. "I thought this was just supposed to be some kind of Kryptonian cold. It was supposed to go away."

"I don't know," Zara says, perplexed and worried. "I thought his immune system was simply adjusting to our bacteria. But this…it's something different."

"He's been sick with a Kryptonian virus before," Lois says as Ching heaves Clark up into a sitting position against the bulkhead. "Some criminals scraped it off the ship he came to Earth in and infected him with it. He almost died. My d—we had to use Kryptonite to weaken him to the point of death just to kill the virus. You don't think this is the same thing, do you?"

"I don't know," Zara says.

"What kind of virus was it?" Ching asks abruptly. "Did he cough?"

"A little, in the beginning. It seemed like a regular fever until he collapsed. He…he started burning up and…eventually we couldn't wake him up."

"Was his skin tinged yellowish?"

"I think so."

"Zara," Ching says, "you remember when Jor-El and Lara were working on their space travel experiments? The fire fever that infected the eastern cities?"

There's a sudden snap of tension above his head, probably Zara's mental sign of understanding. "Surely not," she says. "That fever died out."

"The cold of space can preserve—"

"What are you talking about?" Lois demands.

Zara lets out a long, slow sigh. "If Clark was infected with the fire fever…if he did survive it…he might be experiencing a relapse. One of the inoculations we gave him could have reacted with the latent antibodies in his bloodstream and…mutated them."

"But…last time, it didn't take long at all for the fever to leave him unconscious. He's had this for months."

"His body's better equipped to fight it this time."

"But…he'll get better, right? I mean, it might take a while, but eventually he'll be okay. Right?"

The silence is so long Clark thinks he'd drift off if each breath didn't feel like it came though a needle of fire in the center of his chest.

"I don't know," Zara finally says. "We never actually cured the fire fever. We contained it, we developed some basic antibiotics, and then…"

"And then what?" Lois says shrilly.

"And then Krypton was destroyed. When no one exhibited signs on New Krypton, we assumed the fever had died with our world."

How ironic, Clark thinks, that it should have survived along with him, another refugee from a burning world, stowed away on his vessel and waiting for the right time to come back. To be saved from extinction.

"How is he going to fight Nor?" Ching finally asks. "The first time he has to stop to cough, Nor will destroy him."

More silence.

Clark feels so bad for them. They went to Earth and retrieved a puppet with strings that tangled and twisted. They returned to New Krypton with a pawn who's cracked and broken. And Lois…she wants a fiancé, a husband, a partner. Instead, she has only a dead man walking.

With an effort just to hide his groans, Clark rolls himself to his feet.

"I'm still here," he tells them all. "And I'm alive. Now, Ching, ready for another go?"

It takes a long time for Ching to raise his drei again, but he does.

Unfortunately, it takes much less time for Clark to lose the match. But he keeps trying. Keeps fighting. Keeps learning.

There's nothing else he can do.

The morning of their duel dawns. Tre arrives with a doctor at his heels. They inject Clark with something that's supposed to keep him from coughing. Clark watches the needle puncture his skin with almost absurd fascination. He knows his powers are gone and that's he's normal now, he wakes up feeling mortal and sick every day, but somehow, just the sight of this tiny needle breaking through the skin that's repelled bullets and bombs hammers it in anew.

Lois holds his other hand and stays quiet.

"It'll be okay, Lois," he tells her when Zara ushers everyone from the room to give him and Lois a last moment alone (a request granted for the man walking to his death).

"How do you feel?" she asks as if she didn't hear him.

"Okay," he says. It's the truth, or at least a version of it. He can breathe, at least, even if the air sits like a miasma in his lungs. He's coherent and more together than he's felt in a while. It's an improvement (or so he wants them both to believe).

"Clark." Lois looks up at him, earnest and vibrant and achingly sincere. "I love you, all right? I love you no matter what. And I trust you more than anyone in the entire universe. So no matter what happens today, I know that you made the right decision. I don't regret any of it and I don't blame you. I love you 'til the end of time."

"And I love you," he says (because how else do you respond to such a blatant carte blanche?). "I've loved you from the beginning and I'll never stop loving you."

"Then come back to me," she pleads, and he thinks she probably told herself she wouldn't say these words because they burst from her like prisoners at the first sign of freedom. "Don't leave me, Clark."

"I won't leave you alone," he promises (and trembles, because now he has no choice but to throw his all into this duel. Zara and Ching wanted a puppet, but they chose the wrong one because he's already Lois's, has been from their first meeting back in Perry's office). "Lois," he says, "tell me a story."

Her face begins to crumple before she exerts her tremendous strength of will and smooths it out. "Do you want to know the first time I knew I loved you?" she asks. "The first day I looked at you with your glasses and your crazy tie and I thought, 'I can't live without Clark Kent.'"

"Yes," he murmurs, leaning down into her, wrapping his trembling arms around her shaking form, relearning the contours of her body pressed against his. "Tell me that story."

"It was the day we went to Smallville, and we danced, do you remember, Clark? We investigated, and I saw bits of who you really were, and then we danced and laughed and played games. And then you were in a lake, and Trask was holding a gun, and there was a gunshot. And I thought you were going to die right in front of me. But you didn't. You were okay. Still there, making sure your glasses were straight, and that's when I knew that I loved you."

"All the way back then?"

Her breath staggers against his cheek. "The day I knew I couldn't live without you…that was when I'd come to your apartment to tell you I wanted to take the next step with you. Do you remember that? And then you came over for breakfast and I think you wanted to tell me your Secret, right, because you were talking to a picture of me? But your parents were in trouble, and when I realized that you were in trouble, that you were willing to protect me even if it cost you your parents…that's when I knew that I would do anything for you. You're the most important person in the universe to me, and maybe that's selfish, but I don't care. I'm human, I'm allowed to be selfish."

"Not selfish." He holds her tighter, hoping her words will be branded into his skin, imbuing him with strength so much greater than the fake health given him by that injection. "Or if it is, then I'm selfish too."

"And the day I knew that nothing could ever tear us apart…" Lois rises on her tiptoes to hug him closer, burying her nose in his neck. "Do you remember the day when all my memories returned to me? When you took me back to the skies and were Clark even while a cape hung around your shoulders? That's the day, when I remembered everything, and I looked at you, I knew that we would last forever. We're forever, Clark. No matter what happens, our love is stronger."

"Here." Clark reaches for the chain hanging from his neck, pulls it free of the blue collar, the red cape (Lois handed him the Suit this morning, and he didn't ask her where she got it or if it was a good idea; just took it and let it remind him of home as he pulled it on), and unthreads the tiny vial of earth. "You keep this," he tells Lois. "It's a little bit of Smallville to remind you that I loved you that day when Trask tried to kill us. A little bit of home to remind you that you're my home, you and my parents. A little bit of Earth, to remind you of that sliver of sky where we kissed beneath the stars."

Lois closes her hand over the soil, then tips her head back and leans up.

Clark made a promise, but he's died and been remade a new man (and Zara left them alone just for this moment).

He bends and cups her cheek in a cold hand and kisses her. Melts against her. Imprints her on every cell of his body so that if he is scattered across the universe, each cell will bear a tiny bit of her, the memory of this woman he would give up everything for.

She kisses him back, fiercely, desperately, a kiss filled with everything but goodbye.

(She let him go once; she isn't letting him go this time.)

Clark holds onto her until he can't anymore.

(For all that he doesn't know how to let go, he is far too used to the feeling of the things he most loves being ripped away from him.)

Nor is cold and confident. The onlookers are silent and guarded.

Clark feels the drei in his hand and feels sick.

The clash, when they come together, is so powerful that for an instant he thinks they have powers and this battle will take them soaring and tumbling through the streets of Metropolis, beneath towering skyscrapers and between huddled crowds of vulnerable people.

But no, this is New Krypton with its frigid shade and deadening atmosphere.

Their dreis tangle and part, meet and scrape against one another, clip and dodge and avert. Clark falls into the rhythm of these moves Ching has drilled him in endlessly for…how long has it been? He's lost track of the days, somehow, forgotten just how many weeks have passed since he was hugged by his parents and forgiven by the people of Earth for leaving them.

Not that it matters. All that matters is Lois, above him, watching the duel on a viewscreen set up for her by Ching. And the people, too, surrounding them and watching their fate be decided before them—not by intellect or reason or what's best for them, but by brute force. By the ability to kill before being killed.

What a strange universe they live in, he thinks.

"Only one of us is walking away from here," Nor taunts, "and it won't be you."

Clark remains silent, conserving his strength. Or that's what he tells himself anyway.

But he knows the truth, doesn't he?

He's not sizing up his opponent. Not focusing on the fight. Not strategizing his next move or anything else he tells himself to make himself feel better.

He's just trying to decide, caught between moments.

To die?

Or to kill?

But his cape swirls around his ankles, bright and garish against the dark stones, a reminder of better things. Of hope and ideals and a world not determined by blood.

He's Superman. Superman doesn't kill. Superman doesn't save people by slaughtering others. There's a time to take a life to save others, he knows that, has worked side by side with soldiers and police, but he's Superman, a figure and an icon and a symbol of better ways.

He's Clark Kent. Clark talks and empathizes and investigates. He tries to make sure the guilty parties are delivered to justice, but he doesn't enforce that justice himself.

He's Kal-El. A lord, yes, ruler and leader and maybe even savior for a few here and there, but he's a diplomat above all, not a killer.

All this time, he thought he lost himself, but he hasn't. Clark or Superman or Kal-El, he's still the same man (the man Lois loves).

I believe in you, Lois said. I trust you. I love you.

I need you.

Clark wields the drei in his hand as surely as he once did a pen. Superman presses forward, herding Nor against a boulder just as he's done to other villains countless times. Kal-El knocks aside Nor's drei and holds his own pressed against the man's throat, ready to dispense justice.

"Yield," he says. "Yield now, and I'll let you live."

Nor's eyes narrow and tighten. "You really don't know our ways. This is a duel to the death, Kal-El, and there's only one way out of here."

"No, there isn't." Clark presses the drei tighter against Nor's throat. "New Krypton has options, possibilities, ones that don't include death or starvation or oppression." He raises his voice, dares to look away from Nor to the people watching. "You have a new world here, a planet full of new possibilities. You can be anything you want to be here, do anything you can dream—all you have to do is decide that you want it. You don't have to be trapped in the confines of the past. You can make your own choices, decide your own fate."

And Clark drops his drei. Steps back. Holds out his hands.

"Nor's right. I'm not from here. I wasn't raised as a Kryptonian. I have another people, another world, that I love. But I am Kryptonian, with blood just the same as yours. It's not royal or noble or destined for rule. But it's red and warm and I have a heart that beats for justice. For hope. For truth. If you want to serve Nor, to bow before his dictatorship and remain steeped in the ways that have led you here to a fate that has so little hope…then that's your choice. But you have others. You can choose to be more, to be different, to be better."

He meets Zara's eyes, Ching's, Tre's, people he knows scattered throughout the crowd.

"I can kill Nor, but that won't change anything. Nor can kill me, but that won't change much for you. The only thing that offers you something different, something better, is if you decide, right here and now, to reach for a better future. A brighter hope. A fate that lets you be the deciders of your own—"

Nor lunges for him. Clark folds beneath his weight, something dark and bitter cracking from the miasma inside him, something lodging itself in his throat so that he's choking, gasping, suffocating. There's pain locked inside him, sharper pain on his jaw, his ribs, his legs. Nor's there, he's aware of him peripherally, but more immediately, more pressing, is the earthquake shaking his lungs and heart and throat until he's dizzy and his sight is bursting with bright sparks.

Then there's a sudden explosion, a concussion of pressure and force that sends Nor tumbling away, the center of his chest glowing. Ching stands over Clark, a drei in his hand, his face expressionless, his stance unwavering.

"Kal-El." Tre's there with a hand out to help ease him up a bit. And Zara, standing behind him, at Ching's side, daring anyone to attack him in retribution.

Talking. Words spiraling around him until he thinks he can see them as streamers of colors and noise. Tre's talking fast, Zara's calm and speaking to the crowds, Ching stalwart as ever at her side.

Clark looks past them all, up toward the slate-gray sky and the stars above that. To the ship hanging there in perpetual orbit, peeling past the bulkheads and searing through the airlocks to reach the room where Lois stands, probably looking back at him in the viewscreen.

"Lois," he whispers out through gasps.

He promised he wouldn't leave her.

(Sometimes, even Superman lies.)

Later, Lois will tell him that Zara ordered him taken to the ship with the excuse that lighter gravity would help him breathe. She'll tell him how Tre refused to leave his side and insisted on the best doctors coming to look him over. She'll say that the old man was completely swayed by Clark's words.

Later, Clark will learn that Ching killed Nor for him (a death, but Clark doesn't care, because Ching is Kryptonian and a bodyguard, a soldier, someone there to protect and save life; he's a Kryptonian who made his own choice for a better future; and maybe there's some element of relief in Clark's acquiescence, but either way, he's not exactly sorry that Nor's gone). That Zara stood to defend Ching's choice. That the people made their own choice then, one backing Zara and Ching, the first noble and commoner partnership on their new world.

Later, Lois will speak of people praying for Lord Kal-El's health and recovery. He will learn that Zara let Tre bring doctor after doctor until they convinced the Elder there was nothing to be done for him. Then she sent Tre back to New Krypton and she sent the ship back to Earth.

"We only had one chance," Lois will tell him (face stiff with affected strength, with concealed fear). "Last time, the Kryptonite killed the virus. This time, only your superpowers could make you strong enough to combat the fever."

Later, she will tell him stories of their travels through space while far behind them, Zara told the people of New Krypton that Lord Kal-El had died (the last gift she had to give him, the dissolution of their marriage and the return to Earth and this shield of his death to prevent anyone from ever seeking him out again). She will tell him stories of worlds they passed and nebulae they parted and all of it meaningless because her attention was solely on him. She will tell him that there were whole minutes he didn't breathe at all and hours where all he did was cough (she will tell him, and her whole body shakes with the memory until Clark wraps her close to him and lets his even breaths steady her frame).

She will tell him that when they entered the solar system, when they opened the bulkheads to let in the sunlight, he finally started breathing again. She will describe the way he gradually grew stronger and healthier until he woke up and looked at her and said her name. Later, she will tell him that that's the moment when she knew everything was going to be okay.

Later.

There is a later now. A future. A future he wants.

A marriage to look forward to. A reunion with his parents and his friends. A world that's warm and bright and has (for all its darkness and its Lex Luthors and its disasters) so much potential.

"Tell me a story," he asks Lois when the globe-ship deposits them into the air far above the spreading quilt of Earth beneath them. He's wearing Clark's suit, Superman hidden beneath, ready and waiting to be needed.

"What story?" she asks as the yellow sun bathes them in its rays. His powers surge within him, reborn and radiant and so familiar that it almost breaks him (he thought he would never feel this again, flight and strength and Lois in his arms with her own draped around his neck).

"Any story," he says. "Every story. Tell me what our life is going to be like."

"Good," she replies. "It will be so good, Clark, just like you."

"And beautiful, like you."

"And happy, like us."

"And forever."

"Tell me a story, Clark," she says now as her mouth draws nearer and nearer his. As his arms tighten and bring her closer. As the vial of earth slips from her fingers to fall back to the soil where it belongs. "Tell me about how we'll be married and win a Pulitzer."

"Maybe instead of telling you the story, I'll show it to you." With one arm wrapped around her waist, Clark uses the other to draw the chain over his neck and pull out the ring he's clung to so tightly and so long. To the hope of it while he wandered the world alone. To the dream of it while he fell deeper and deeper in love with Lois Lane. To the reality of it as she was stolen away and forgot it. To the form of it as she remained a step away, forever out of reach while a world rested on his shoulders.

And now, finally, here in the light of a yellow sun, above the reaches of a farm where his parents are waiting for his return, Clark lets go (lets the ring rest on her finger and the hope reside in his heart).

Lois wraps her arms around him in return (she lets go when he cannot; he lets go when she needs him to; they are a team, partners in every sense of the word) and trusts herself to his loose, enduring hold. Her heartbeat is loud and strong and enduring in his ears.

"Our story," she says.

"Forever," he says again.

And kisses her.

(And this time, he knows, there will always be another kiss.)

The End