The thing of it is: Clark isn't expecting a hug. He doesn't look back on his life as some great tragedy that people should feel sorry for him over. It is what it is; everyone has their trials, their strengths, their weaknesses: the good things, the bad things. His life has been different, and it's had it's challenges. But it's been good too. He'd had his parents for seventeen years, and then he's had his mother since then. Her absence, in it's own way, his hit worse than Lois.

He'd only had Lois for about a year and a half. His mother has been his touchstone his entire life. It was her heart he would focus on to find peace. It was her eyes that had always brought him back to earth, and her voice telling him the things he needed to hear.

"Well, the last year and a half or so, I figured out a way to stay in one place and still... do what I wanted. Help people. Save people. And given that the people who seemed to have a problem with it are dead, in a tube, and... now calling me a friend, I might give it a shot again."

He turns a quick smile on her.

"Still sort of figuring that out."