A/N: There are so many moments in this show I love that could become MOMENTS, and though I don't have time to explore them ALL, here's one for each season. I hope you enjoy!

Season 1: What If...He Bled?

There's blood. Red and thick and swirling through water to create a kaleidoscopic vision of horror. The twin gunshots still echo through the air and she's afraid, so afraid that he's gone and there's nothing she can do, nothing she can write, nothing she can strongarm into her way of thinking. No way to save him.

He stares and stares and stares. At the blood on his hands. At the blood dying his shirt from blue to red (Superman colors, Superman ideals, but Superman's not here, too far away, back in Metropolis, safe and sound), spreading outward in a distorted circle from the wound piercing his chest.

He stares, and Trask falls. A splash, another splash of red, liquid on liquid, and the madman fades away, submerged and gone, his blood the last to disappear beneath the surface.

He stares, and Martha Kent screams.

"Clark! Clark!"

"Oh, my boy!" Jonathan exclaims.

Jimmy's talking, words and words and words, spiraling, diffusing in the coppery air, and the sheriff's voice joins his, radios and codes and requests for an ambulance now, now, out at the Kent farm, it's bad, so bad, get here quick as you can.

He stares, and so does she. Because Clark's bleeding. He's hurt. He's wounded, pierced to the quick right in the front yard of his childhood home, the one that made him light and happy and unburdened, the one he tried to convince her to love, the one that's been growing on her (the one now covered in this bad moment, this tragedy that will overpower everything he tried to talk her into and show her, tainting and poisoning until she has only this memory).

The entire moment is frozen, suspended in amber, saved in every particular to be reopened at a later date when something useful can come of it. She's swathed in sludge, her movements restricted, every beat of her heart sluggish, timed to the delayed realization in Clark's eyes.

And then he looks up. And he sees her.

His eyes crash into hers.

And he falls.

Lois is the one who drags him from the pond. Jimmy's there to help pull him to shore. Martha bends and covers the wound with shaking hands. Jonathan props Clark's head up against his own shoulder.

There's a swirling tornado of motion, busyness and plans and arrivals, departures, EMTs and police, bodybags and crime scene tape. None of it matters, not next to Clark dipping in and out of consciousness in Jonathan's arms. Lois wants to hold his hand, wants to take his flesh and stitch it back together, wants to go back in time to that moment he stared at the blood pooling across the pad of his thumb, and instead of being dismissive, she wants to reach out to heal the papercut. To show that his blood matters, it affects her, he should never, never, never spill more of it than that tiny ordinary cut.

"Mom," Clark slurs. His head lolls, and Lois has to look away. He should never look this weak. He should never be this weak. He's a hick, yes, of course, and not really experienced yet, but oh, he has never been frail. He's always been strong and carefree and unaffected and she wants that Clark back.

"Oh, Clark, honey, it's going to be okay," Martha promises him. Her hands (mother's hands) are everywhere, on his brow, his cheek, his inexpertly bandaged wound, his hair. Lois's eyes follow the movements, a vicarious witness.

"Mom," he says, more insistently, "I threw it in the pond. We're too close."

"Oh," she says, and she unbends enough to share a look with Jonathan.

"Right, son." Jonathan nods, and then, suddenly, he's moving. Standing and pulling and commanding Jimmy to help him prop Clark up between them.

For the first time since that gunshot rang through her ears (it still echoes, resounds, reverberates, a constant ricochet in the confines of her skull), Lois speaks.

"What are you doing? You can't move him. The ambulance—"

"I'll talk to them," Martha says. "It'll probably be Hal. I'll explain it to him."

"Yep," Jonathan says, and then he and Jimmy are pulling, tugging, carrying Clark up the porch stairs and into the house, across the few steps of the living room, to the couch where they deposit him as carefully as they can. Jimmy steps back, pale and shaken (and she should help him, Lois thinks, should try to reassure him, but she doesn't, she can't, she has no reassurance to spare) while Jonathan pulls a blanket free of the back of the couch and covers Clark with it.

"There you are, son," he says. "It's all right. You're safe now. Rachel's got everyone outside and your mom's explaining things to Hal. Don't you worry about anything."

She thinks he's unconscious, submerged beneath the pain of this unnecessary move his parents insisted on, but then he stirs. He tips his head against the couch cushion until he is looking at her. Her and Jimmy.

"Please," he whispers, "please don't hate me. I'll…I'll explain when I can."

"Don't worry, Clark," Jonathan says firmly. "They're your friends. They'll understand."

"Understand what?" Lois demands. Jimmy puts his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off (it doesn't feel like Clark's, that warm weight of steady reassurance and earnest comfort). "What's going on? Why aren't we getting him to a hospital?"

Nobody answers her, but they don't need to.

A little while later (when bones regrow and muscles meld one to another and flesh stitches back together), Lois knows exactly what they were talking about.

The red still stains his denim shirt. There's still blood on Lois's damp dress, and on his mother's hands, and against his father's shoulder, and smeared against Jimmy's side. Stains, clear and vibrant and nauseating.

Lois scrubs and scrubs at her hands in the bathroom, strips off the dress (the one that made Clark smile so soft and sweet and admiring) and lets it puddle in the trashcan under the sink. Her hands are raw, her fingers red, but it's not enough, so she slips into the shower and scrubs all over. Scrubs until the feel of Clark's blood (both his lies and his truths) is only a memory. A tangible memory that refuses to fade, is not ephemeral at all, but envelops every thought in her head.

The water's cold by the time she steps out of the shower and dresses in the clothes she pulls from her bag. A skirt and a blouse and a jacket, armor against the softness and the kindness offered by the Kents. She is Lois Lane, investigative reporter and Kerth award winner and one-day Pulitzer Prize winner.

(She's a fool. She's a dupe. She's an idiot.)

When she emerges from the bathroom, she's ready for whatever they have prepared to stop her. A solder with weapons raised and adrenaline flooding her system and no one to fight.

Because there's no one there. No Jonathan to talk her down. No Martha to sympathize with her and deflect her. No Jimmy to commiserate with and verify that this is really happening. No Clark to lie and lie and lie with that sincere look in his eyes and that warmth in his hugs and that innocence in his manner.

Nobody. Nothing.

Lois walks downstairs to the living room.

Still no one.

Then she hears it, a quiet murmur of voices (secrets, so many secrets all around her, and she didn't see it because she didn't want to be here and she was distracted by bigger concerns and he's never let her see who he really is). Lois follows the trail of whispers until she finds them all in the kitchen.

Clark's sitting at the table. Clark who had a bullet hole through his chest a couple hours before. Clark who bled and bled until Lois thought all she'd ever see was his blood staining her entire life. Clark who's fine. Who's well. Who has no bullet hole in his chest anymore, no blood spilling out, no wound, nothing but the husk of his deception still on exhibit for her.

Those stupid glasses are still there, though. It figures that the bullet hole would disappear but the glasses remain constant.

Martha and Jonathan, arrayed around their son, look up at her immediately. Jimmy, standing over by the sink with a lost expression on his face, stares at her as if looking for a sign, a hint of what they're supposed to do now.

Clark, though…Clark doesn't look up at all. Just stares down at his hands. (Stares and stares, as if he's still in as much danger, as much pain, now as when that bullet tore through his flesh.)

Nobody speaks. The whispers, the plans (the secrets), are all hushed away and hidden now that she has entered the room. Her veins are throbbing, her blood simmering, a hum reverberating through her bones. Liars, all of them, deceivers and con artists, and they did it all with smiles on their faces and friendship in their hands and kindness layered through all their words.

Liars, and she's furious, so angry, so betrayed, so awfully, terribly infuriated that the man she was beginning to think she could trust is the biggest liar of them all.

She's furious.

And she understands.

(Please don't hate me.)

She knows why they lied. She knows why he never confided in her. She knows why he won't look at her. Why his shoulders are slumped and his head is bowed and his eyes are so carefully averted (hiding, always hiding, from her, from the world, maybe even from himself).

The biggest secret the world has ever known. The superhero from the stars here at her feet. Vulnerable. Helpless.

Fragile.

"Clark," she says, and just that word, that name (that knife she chooses so carefully) makes him flinch inward.

But for all that he is a liar, he has never been a coward.

Slowly, so slowly she wonders if he is still hurt and aching, he unbends. Straightens. Stands. Turns to face her. Meets her gaze.

He is neutral. Impassive. A blank expression he probably thinks won't pressure her.

But for all that he carries the world's greatest secret, Clark is a terrible liar.

Beneath the neutrality he tries for, she sees the remorse layering his bones with lead. Behind his impassiveness, she can sense his despair and his desperation. His blank expression gives away all his shattered hopes and dented dreams.

"Clark," she says again (she named him once, for the world, now she does so again, for the few here in this room, for the ones who matter most, for herself).

The bullet hole is gone, the blood cleaned up, the EMTs and police and coroner long gone, but it is only now, with his name on her lips, that he is truly healed.

"I'm sorry," he says when they walk side by side in a field of harvested yellow against a backdrop of green trees. "This isn't the way I wanted you to find out."

"Oh, so you wanted me to find out?" she asks. Blunt, maybe, but she doesn't know any other way to be. Subtlety (the diplomacy Clark exudes) has always been a foreign concept.

"Well…I wanted to tell you. One day." His left hand comes up to massage at his opposite shoulder, just over where Trask's bullet could have so easily torn his life away from him (either by blood or by truth). "I knew I wouldn't be able to hide it from you forever."

"That's generous of you," she comments, and this is more than bluntness, this is acerbity, but she can't help it. It hurts, to know that this man she thought was honest and open and only what she already saw in him was lying to her and hiding things from her and excluding her.

"Lois, I meant, I knew you'd figure it out." He's so earnest (but then, he always has been, and she was still blindsided when that wound of his closed up as if by magic), so intent on her, the sun haloing him and gilding his dark hair silver and gold. "I knew it was risky from the beginning, but…I was just so tired of never being able to stay in one place. I wanted…I wanted to try. I wanted to see if there was any way I could ever…"

"Ever what?" she asks, because there's a lot of ways she could end that sentence, but she fervently wants to know what he'll say.

He stares at her, hesitant and hopeful all at once, Clark and Superman all blurred together into this one desire.

"Belong," he whispers in the tone of voice of someone voicing their deepest, most private wish. Which is exactly what he is doing; she doesn't need to peel back any layers to expose that truth. "I wanted to see if there was anywhere I could belong. A place to call my own. People who'd accept me and my parents for the secret we've had to keep."

Carefully, Lois reaches up and takes his glasses. He makes one aborted movement, as if to stop her, but then freezes. Lets her strip him of his mask (his armor; his disguise; his comforting illusion). Watches with bated breath as she examines the glasses from every angle. Which is only a delaying tactic, of course, because when she is done looking at them, she has to look up and see the man who's left.

The man under the red and blue suit.

The man when the glasses come off.

Clark Kent and Superman and whoever he is in between.

But when she finally looks up, when she stares at the man revealed by blood and bullet and bravery, she sees…Clark.

The man who tried to shake her hand when Perry first introduced them. The man who playfully but firmly insisted on being a partner rather than a lackey. The man who sent her to the sewage plant and who's saved her life.

Her friend. Her partner.

Everything he was before (and everything he still can be, hidden like treasures in their future).

"Clark," she says again. Recognizes anew.

And he smiles.

She never asks what he says to Jimmy. She knows they had their own conversation, sitting on the couch and talking in hushed tones. She doesn't think she needs to know what they said, though. Jimmy's a loyal friend who's able to bear her temper and her aloofness and her crazy demands and still come out relatively sane and willing to work with her. Clark and his super secret is nothing compared to all that.

It surprises her, when he chooses to fly back on the plane with her and Jimmy, but Clark says it's safer for him to seem as normal as possible (and he is more experienced at keeping his secret). It doesn't surprise her that Jonathan and Martha hug her and Jimmy as well as their son, or that they hold him for a long, long moment in the safety of their joint embrace, or that they are slow in drawing away, or that they offer him their love freely and unconditionally.

When he finally pulls away from them, Lois slides her hand through his. Reassurance for him, a promise to Martha and Jonathan. She might still feel a fizz of anger when she remembers certain things about these past months, but Clark is…well, he's Clark, and she'll protect him. She'll look after him.

She won't betray him.

He's nervous on the plane, even bracketed by her and Jimmy.

"You fly all the time," Lois tells him, amused despite herself.

"Not like this!" Clark hisses.

"Didn't you tell those people at the airport a couple weeks ago that flying was the safest way to travel?" Jimmy asks with a sly grin.

Clark shifts uncomfortably. "Statistically speaking."

"So…?" Lois asks expectantly.

"Your sympathy astounds me," he grumbles, and Jimmy laughs.

"Come on, CK, it's probably the only chance I'll ever have to tease you about something like this. You're crazy if you think I'm not going to take advantage of it."

"I'll remember this," Clark promises, but he doesn't fool Lois. His eyes are glowing, a smile curved in the corners of his mouth, happiness keeping him afloat a quarter of an inch above his seat.

CK from Jimmy is as much a gift as Clark is from Lois, and they all know it.

For all that he must have feared, Clark Kent was not subsumed by Superman. Here, sent forth by his parents, enclosed on either side by Lois and by Jimmy, Clark Kent has a place.

He belongs.

Perry covers their story with red ink and brings it out to them. Clark's a nervous wreck, massaging the nonexistent bullet hole, unable to sit still, his eyes on the floor.

"Unbelievable!" Perry judges the whole thing, but then extracts a name for the meteor rock and takes the story to print.

Clark's body sags against his desk. There's a quip on her tongue, her brain already set to tease him, but something about the enormity of his relief touches her.

When his left hand reaches up to worry over his shoulder, Lois catches his hand.

"Come on," she says. "Let's get out of here."

She's lost count of how many times he's walked her home from the Daily Planet. Still, there's something almost surreal about tonight. Knowing that the man walking beside her can fly, can lift her and the Daily Planet building besides…it stands in stark contrast to his ambling walk and the warmth of his hand so lightly grazing the small of her back.

Strength held back and transformed into gentleness (that's who, what, Clark Kent is, the secret behind everything else).

"I'll never tell," she promises the dusk air. A soft whisper she knows he could catch a mile away. "I promise, Clark."

"I never thought you would," he replies. Calm. Supportive. Friendly.

Friendly like Clark. Friendly like Superman. Friendly somewhere in between (not as hopeful as Clark; not as aloof as Superman).

"I can help," she offers. "When you have to duck away. I can cover for you."

His hand brushes against hers. "Thank you." A chuckle covers the heaviness of the moment. "I don't always come up with the best excuses."

"I'll come up with better."

"I don't doubt it."

Somehow they're in front of her apartment already (she'd have sworn they'd only been walking for a few moments). He pauses, waiting for her to start up the stairs to the cold building. Lois pauses, too, not wanting to leave him. She reaches up to touch the area of his chest where he keeps unconsciously rubbing.

"You're sure you're okay?" she can't help asking.

"I'm okay," he says (it sounds like a promise). "The Kryptonite's worn off and the wound's long gone."

"Then why do you keep touching it?" she asks even though it's her hand covering the memory of that piercing hole.

"I guess…" He's wide-eyed, nervous, trembling, even, beneath her hand. The darkness cloaks his form and yet his every feature is outlined in light, glowing and stark against the falling night. "I guess because for a little while, I thought it stole everything I ever wanted."

"And what's that?" she asks.

(She knows. Or rather, she hopes.)

But Clark hesitates. "Lois, I…I think you know that I've always…I've always wanted…or hoped that…you and I…"

"I know," she whispers.

"But Superman's the one who you… I can't be him all the time. I can't live up to that ideal every minute of every day. I mean, I try, but…I'm just…just me."

She steps just a bit closer to him. "That's pretty good. Clark Kent's always been a guy I trust, even when I didn't know why."

"But Clark works, and eats, and takes days off, and watches sports, and makes bad jokes. Superman…he's more real than I ever thought he'd be, but he's—"

"He's you," she interjects. "Superman is the hero, the icon, the beacon that he is because he's you. Because Clark Kent believes in truth and justice and wants to help and is a friend. He's you. You're him."

Clark lets out a chuckle that sounds almost pained. "You make it sound so simple."

"Does it have to be complicated?" she asks, and takes another step forward.

His breath audibly catches in his throat. He goes still, like prey who's finally realized a predator has singled him out. "Lois, I…"

"Clark, you could have died." She takes in a sharp, juddering breath. "You could have died. When I heard that gunshot, I saw this future without you in it. And it was awful. It was lonely, and cold, and bleak, and so, so empty. But you didn't die. You're alive. You're okay. You're still here. And that…that's more important than what name you call yourself or how you think this should have gone."

"Lois." There's a question in his voice, as if he's only now realized how serious she is about this (as if he didn't really think she was having the same conversation he was).

"Clark, I want you in my life. I don't know exactly how, or where this will go, but I know that I don't want to regret missing what I could have had. I don't ever want to envision a life like the one I saw in Trask's bullet."

"I want you in my life too," he says (clear unvarnished truth, stark and unashamed, bold and triumphant like gates swinging wide on a prison, and it drowns out and replaces and erases the ricocheting echo of that awful gunshot).

He stares. At her. At her hand on his chest. At her body coming closer. He stares and stares, but his hand wraps securely around her waist and his breath is heated against her cheek.

She stares, too, until her eyes flutter shut and their lips brush.

And she falls.

(But it's okay: he catches her.

He will always catch her.)