Wherever You Will Go, Epilogue

Clark/Chloe
Season 6, following my story "Ever the Same"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Read the previous chapter here.
Read the story from the beginning here.

They'd fled Metropolis directly after Lex's speech. Raya had left to find her bondmate, and Clark had swept Chloe up in his arms and carried her hundreds of miles away. He'd planned to find a hotel room in a small town somewhere, but upon reflection, he'd realized her face was too well-known now, and for all he knew Lex was flashing his face on television now, too. Given the content of Lex's speech, he thought it was all too likely.

Before long, he suspected there wouldn't be a person on Earth who didn't recognize his face.

Having thought it through a little more carefully, he put Chloe down in a dim building, and she looked around and laughed.

"What is it with you and barns?"

He dropped down next to her, sitting on a hay bale, but he didn't smile. "We need to stay out in the sticks, Chlo. We can't go into the cities, or people will recognize us. Especially as communications get up and running again, and more people can watch television, people are likely to spot us. With any luck, Raya and her lifemate will be safe, because almost no one knows what they look like. But if Lex really manages to seize power, I have a feeling he'll have our pictures running on every newscast in the world, and printed in every paper from the Daily Planet to the Moscow Times."

She closed her eyes, looking miserable. "We can't just give up and run away forever, Clark. We can't let Lex use this as an opportunity to take over the world. It's our responsibility to stop him somehow. It's our responsibility to help the world recover."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It is. But we might have to do it undercover somehow. Because we can't help anyone if we're dead, or in labs."

"So we have to be on the run for the rest of our lives?"

"I hope not." He put an arm around her, feeling the warm, reassuring buzz of their EM fields intersecting, and closed his eyes at the sensation. It had been far, far too long since they'd been together. "We need to contact Lois and Lana--"

"You mean Hope and Mercy."

"Lois and Lana," he repeated firmly. "We need to see if we can't get them back on our side. Somehow, we need to convince them that you're really you, and that I never wanted to be on Zod's side. They'll listen to us. They have to."

She turned her head, pressing her face against his throat. She touched her lips to his throat, very lightly, and he shivered. "What if they don't?"

"Then..." He swallowed. "We stay hidden. It doesn't matter, not really. Just as long as we're together." He heard the hoarseness in his own voice. "I can't lose you again, Chloe. Not ever."

"I can't stand to lose you either," she whispered, kissing his throat again. He heard the words she left unspoken as clearly as if she'd said them: I love you, Clark. I love you more than anything.

He felt tears stinging his eyelids. "Chlo," he said roughly. "I'm so sorry for all of this. If you'd never met me, then your life wouldn't be a shambles now."

"If I'd never met you," she answered in a soft voice, "then my life wouldn't mean nearly as much."

His eyelids smarted worse than before. "I just wish I hadn't dragged you into all this," he muttered.

"Clark." Her arms went around his shoulders, and she hugged him fiercely. "Don't think that way. I don't know how things would have turned out if we'd never met, and I honestly don't want to know. I'm happy I have you." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "And no matter what happens, I'll be by your side. Forever."

"Yeah," he agreed softly. "Whither thou goest, I will go."

She lifted her head and blinked at him in the encroaching twilight. "Huh? Is that a translation of another Kryptonian phrase?"

"No. It's from the Bible. My mom used to say it to my dad sometimes. It just means that wherever you go... I'll follow."

She looked at him a moment longer, then her hands dug into his hair, and she pulled his head down to hers. He lowered his head without protest, and their lips met. Light, soft kisses quickly gave way to long, intense, desperate ones, and he groaned.

"God, Chlo... I've missed you so damn much..."

"I know," she whispered.

He knew she couldn't really understand everything he'd been through, the forty years he'd endured without her, his frantic need for her. But maybe she could feel at least a hint of it through their bond.

He pushed her backward, onto the hay bales stacked on the floor of the barn. His body settled onto hers, and her thighs parted. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, and even though they were both still fully clothed, it felt so intimate that he couldn't restrain himself, couldn't stop himself from rubbing against her, over and over again. The dimness of the barn began to be lit by the golden glow of his EM field, and his eyes started to burn and smart with heat vision.

He clamped his eyes shut as she ran her hands over him. He'd mostly learned to control the heat vision thing when they had sex, but it had been too long, too damn long, and just the feel of her hands on his body, reaching up under his shirt and touching his skin, was almost enough to make his heat vision activate. He groaned and whimpered and struggled to hold back the reaction.

She caressed him, stroking from his shoulderblades down his spine, her fingers sliding over the small of his back, along the waistband of his jeans, and he writhed helplessly. "Oh, God, yes, Chlo, I can't... I can't..."

She didn't stop, and suddenly the feel of her hands on his skin, her EM field mingling with his, was just too much for him. Sobbing, he opened his eyes and let his heat vision flare. A barn wasn't a good place to let his heat vision go, but he just couldn't help himself. Heat exploded from him, and it felt so damn good that his voice lifted in a long wail of rapture.

At last it flickered out. He wanted to drop his head against her shoulder and rest, but a hay bale was burning, and he heard horses whickering nervously, so he got up on shaky legs and put out the fire. Then he returned to her and dropped back down on top of her, pressing his face into her shoulder. She stroked his hair gently.

"That hasn't happened in a while," she whispered.

"I couldn't help it." His voice was muffled against her shirt. "It's been so damn long, Chlo..."

"It's all right." Her voice was gentle and reassuring. "I don't mind. But if you're having that much trouble controlling yourself, maybe you'd better not touch me much." He could hear the smile in her voice. "I'll touch you, okay?"

"Okay." His voice shook, because the idea of her touching him was more than okay. It was what he'd longed for, what he'd dreamt of, for four decades.

She began to unbutton his shirt. Once she'd stripped it off, along with the t-shirt beneath it, she began kissing and touching his chest. He rolled over onto the hay and let her do anything she wanted, his eyes closed, pure bliss washing over him.

Her lips and hands stroked everywhere, over his ribs and abs and nipples. Eventually he felt her hands sliding over his lower stomach, and then unfastening his jeans, and he moaned. He was so hard for her, and he wanted her so much, that just the feel of the jeans being unzipped over his erection made his cock spasm.

He wanted to rip her black jumpsuit off, but he was so turned on he was genuinely afraid of hurting her, so he just watched as she rose to her feet and stripped off every stitch of her own clothing.

And then she was kneeling over him, totally and completely naked.

"Do you have any condoms?" she whispered.

"No," he admitted. "But I don't guess it matters if you're already pregnant."

"Even if I'm not," she said softly, "we can't not do this."

"No," he agreed, just as softly. "If I don't make love to you, I'm going to go crazy."

And it was true. The need he felt for her was far beyond the human biological imperative for reproduction. They needed each other in a way no other human being could possibly understand. They were drawn together with a force they couldn't deny, any more than magnets could resist their attraction, or a falling brick could resist the pull of gravity.

He gave a long, sobbing cry of pleasure as she took his erection in her hand and slowly lowered herself onto him.

The way sex felt when shared between bondmates was beyond description. And without a condom between them, it was more incredible than ever before. She froze when he was only about halfway in, her teeth bared, and he could feel her shaking. The pleasure was so intense it was almost unbearable. He lay there, his eyes shut, reveling in the sensation.

He'd almost forgotten how good it was, how utterly overpowering it was.

She lowered herself down just a little further, and he could barely stop himself from screaming as sheer ecstasy filled him. He wanted to be inside her forever. He wanted to be part of her, physically and emotionally, for all time.

She continued to press down on him, and at last he was all the way inside her. He sighed and moaned and held perfectly still. He couldn't move right now. The pleasure was already too intense, and moving inside her, he was fairly certain, would kill him dead.

They remained like that for long moments, simply exulting in the heat of the bond, the ecstasy of their EM fields intersecting, the almost tangible emotional connection between them. He could feel some of what she was feeling, like an echo of his own pleasure, and that just made the experience that much more overwhelming.

At last she moved on him, just a little, and he jerked violently and cried out a long string of Kryptonian words, the bonding ritual. They were, of course, already bonded, but he hadn't said the words to her in forty years, and he needed to say them. He needed to hear her say them back to him.

I trust you
To come to me
To find me when I am lost
To save me when I am in peril
To always
Always
Be there for me.

She whispered the words back to him. Her Kryptonian accent was blurry, but he had no difficulty understanding here. He groaned out the rest of the ritual, and she echoed it:

Trust me
I will always come to you
Protect you from danger
Guard you from enemies
And always
Always
Be there for you.

Suddenly their bodies were moving together, hard and fast, and an incredible ecstasy unfurled inside him. He'd felt the pleasure before, but he was always astounded by the strength of it. It was a climax, but not a normal human orgasm. It was pure, unadulterated rapture, endless and overpowering, flooding every cell of his body.

He could feel Chloe's rapture too, filling his mind the way the pleasure was filling his body. Mindful of the need to not alert anyone to their presence, he tried to muffle both their screams by kissing her, but he wasn't sure how successful he was.

As always, the ecstasy seemed to go on and on, endless and glorious and perfect, although he was fairly certain that it only lasted a few moments. At last it faded, and he rolled to the side with a gasp, wrapping his arms around her and holding her against his chest.

"God, I missed you," he said into her hair.

"I know." Her arms twined around his neck. "It wasn't as long for me, but I thought I might not ever see you again, and... well, I missed you too."

"I'm not ever letting you go again," he muttered fiercely. "Not ever."

"Sounds good to me," she answered, and he could hear the smile in her voice. It amazed him that she could smile, even a little, after everything they'd been through, and everything they still had to face. But then again, he thought sleepily, smiles were better than despair. He didn't want to despair, anyway. He still had hope that everything would work out eventually.

And when Chloe was in his arms, it was a lot easier for him to have hope.

They held each other for a long time. He heard her heartbeat and breathing begin to slow, and he knew she was beginning to fall asleep. He wrapped his body around hers, keeping her warm and safe. Even while he slept, he'd make sure he kept his superhearing activated, so no one could sneak up on them.

They were both wanted war criminals, and he thought it was entirely possible they might be fugitives on the run for the rest of their lives. They might never be able to settle in one place, might spend the rest of their days looking over their shoulders, always in fear of being captured.

But right now, Clark couldn't bring himself to feel gloomy or pessimistic about their future.

At long last, he had Chloe back in his arms. And in this moment, that was all that mattered.

-The End-

Read the sequel, Land of Confusion.