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“We are…just happy to be home.”
There’s a crack in Kara’s voice at the last word.
Clark won’t comment on it. He senses maybe she isn’t really happy—he’s sensed it since the day he met her, actually—but she doesn’t talk about being unhappy. She doesn’t talk about anything, and Clark doesn’t pry.
No matter how badly he wants to know what her little sliver of Krypton was like. No matter how badly he wants to know what her parents were like. If maybe they’d have shared stories of his parents. If they were good.
“I am…also happy,” Clark replies, truthfully.
They make only a second of eye contact. Clark catches the sheen of tears in her eyes, but his own gaze quickly travels toward the window as she stares at the wall behind him, and they fall into an awkward silence.
Because Kara doesn’t talk about anything, and Clark doesn't pry.
His eyes drift from the window to the ceiling, from the ceiling to his scuffed boots.
He thinks briefly about Ma, scrubbing the dirt and grime off of those very boots. Ma, knowing her son, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to slip them back on and go wherever Superman was needed.
Then he thinks of Pa, who’d so gently tucked him into bed. The feeling of Pa’s hand running gently through his hair. The feeling of safe the man’s presence had brought him, no matter the fact that Clark was Superman.
Lastly, his mind drifts to Lois. Lois, who’d sat in the exact spot Kara was sitting now. Who’d painted the most vivid picture of Clark with her words. A man who thought everyone and everything was beautiful. A man who loved and was loved.
Uneasiness settles in him at the thought that Kara doesn’t have a Lois. She doesn’t even have Ma and Pa…yet.
She has a dog. And she has Clark.
Clark, who gives a tight-lipped smile and a nod and keeps his distance because he thinks maybe that’s what she wants, when she says “I’m happy” with unhappy tears in her eyes.
He looks back at her. At the tears threatening to fall. At her hands, clasped together beneath her chin, trembling.
Clearly, she is not happy.
Now, at the desolate look on her face, he wants to tell her that, actually, he’d missed her. That he’d worried about her. That he hoped she was really happy and wasn’t just saying that. But…there’s a lump in his throat.
There’s a lump in his throat, and the words won’t come out, and she isn’t looking at him anyways, and—and—and—
Clark closes the space between them just as her sob cuts through the silence. He hugs her tighter than he’s ever hugged anyone. Her own trembling hands cling to his arm, as if she were afraid he’d let go too soon.
In his arms, she cries. She cries until her head throbs, until she is winded and out of breath. With tears in his own eyes, he holds her close, her head tucked beneath his chin, hoping every fiber of his being brings that safety and comfort and love.
This, he thinks, she definitely needs