Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic In time, Somewhere 8

Of course going into his room was out of the question. Lois could see that Clark Kent didn’t even consider it. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t an era where women reporters went into male locker rooms. This was a different time, and she had to adjust to it.

Instead, he offered to buy her lunch. As much as she would have preferred to pay for her own meal. Lois was actually grateful. Even though she only had a couple of days to go, hopefully, her funds were limited and every bit helped.

“I haven’t done this before,” he said, offering his arm as he escorted her down the hallway. His forearm felt firm and muscular through his sleeve, more like what she’d have expected from a farm hand than an actor.

“Escorted a woman?” Lois asked.

“Been interviewed. I’m not exactly sure what would be of interest to your readers. My life seems perfectly ordinary to me.”

Lois smiled up at him. “Don’t worry. Part of a reporter’s job is to ask the questions, then cut the story down into just the interesting parts. It’s a little like being a sculptor.”

“Like Michelangelo saying he just chips away everything that didn’t look like David.”

Lois blinked. That was an educated response. Her impression of the past was that people were mostly poorly educated and poorly read.

“I wouldn’t have expected the son of a farmer to know anything about Michelangelo.”

He stiffened almost imperceptibly, but relaxed a moment later and smiled. “We’re not all ignorant rubes in the middle of the country. I’ve talked to enough people from Metropolis and New York to know what you think of us.”

“I thought most people from Kansas were in one room school houses,” Lois said. Although she wasn’t really writing the story he thought she was writing, it might make an interesting piece if she got back to her own time.

“You know more about me than most people,” he said, frowning.

“I don’t know a lot,” Lois said. “Just a little preliminary research.”

“I know Robinson wouldn’t have told you anything. He doesn’t particularly want me speaking with you at all.”

He’d agreed to the interview. Why would he have done that if he had something to hide in his past? Surely he wasn’t really so naïve as to believe she wouldn’t ask. Of course, this was an era where no one had ever seen an investigative report on television or even on the radio.

It would be more than a quarter of a century before people would panic when they heard the War of the World’s broadcast.

“I don’t really know much more than the bare basics,” Lois said. She prodded. “I wouldn’t have expected a one room schoolhouse to have provided more than the basics.”

“Smallville got lucky,” he admitted. “The schoolmarm was college educated and very dedicated in her work. I was in the top of my class.”

Going to college wasn’t very common in these days, as far as Lois could recall. Even high school was only really coming into its own now.

“She taught me Greek and Latin and German,” he continued, “As I was the only student she thought might make it to college.”

“I would have thought college would be hard to afford for a farmer,” Lois said. “From what I understand farming isn’t all that profitable.”

“The better everyone gets at farming, the lower prices go,” Clark admitted. “It’s a difficult life. The farm became much more profitable after I was old enough to help out, and there were a few good years.”

“So you went to college?”

“I went to Fairmount College in Wichita,” Clark said. “It was only twenty miles from Smallville and I was able to visit my parents once a month.”

She’d never heard of Fairmount; of course it might have gone out of business in the next one hundred years.

His steps faltered. “I sometimes think that if I hadn’t been so selfish, I might have been able to protect them.”

“From typhoid?” Lois asked.

He looked at her sharply. “I’d be very interested to know where you get your information.”

“I understand there was an outbreak four years ago,” Lois said.

“I was…traveling between semesters,” Clark said. “I’d always been good at spotting contaminated foods. My parents said I was their lucky charm. There was a church social….some of the food was tainted. Almost a third of the people there died.”

“If you’d been there you’d have gotten sick too,” Lois said.

Shaking his head, Clark said, “I’d have known.”

“Nobody could have known,” Lois said. “You’d have eaten just like everyone else, and you’d have been sick too.”

Clark stared into space. “It took them a month to die. With everything I can...” He hesitated and glanced at her. “I couldn’t save them no matter what I tried.”

Lois patted his arm. “I’m sure you did everything you could.”

“You are very easy to talk to,” Clark said. “It would be easy for a person to tell you all their secrets?”

“You have secrets?” Lois asked archly.

******************

“I haven’t told anyone about my parents,” Clark said. “I’m not sure I’d be comfortable having it be public knowledge.”

They were sitting in the hotel dining room, which seemed elegant.

“It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that theater patrons would be interested in,” Lois said. “I’ll try to be discreet.”

“You seem very, experienced at this,” Clark said. “Much more than I would have expected from…”

“A woman?” Lois asked archly.

“From someone working on the theater section of the paper,” Clark said carefully. “You aren’t much like what I would have expected from a theater columnist.”

“What would you have expected?”

Clark sipped his wine. “In my experience, theater patrons tend to be very careful about how they dress. They change clothes several times a day.”

This again? Lois should have made up an excuse about losing her luggage. It was substantially true anyway.

“They tend to be much more reserved and demure.”

“It’s a new century,” Lois said. “Maybe it’s time for women to stand up for themselves, get the vote.”

“You are a suffragette?”

“Absolutely. It won’t be long until women get the vote, I can guarantee you.” Lois hesitated. “You don’t approve?”

Clark smiled, and what had been a handsome face became considerably more so. “My mother was a suffragette. She always said that she had more sense than my father and he didn’t disagree with her.”

“I’m sure he was a wise man,” Lois said, allowing herself a small smile.

“It just seems refreshing,” Clark continued. “To meet a woman who cares more about matters of substance than about looks.”

“I’m sure there are other modern women out there,” Lois said, taking a drink from her glass. “They can’t all be throwbacks to the last century.”

“Maybe I haven’t spent enough time in the big cities,” Clark admitted.

Lois shrugged. She picked at her food.

“You don’t care for your food?”

“I’m not used to food that’s this…rich.”

He looked sympathetic, and Lois grimaced. He probably thought she was too poor to appreciate the menu, but that wasn’t it at all. Everything was made with real ingredients- real fat, real sugar, real lard. It tasted delicious, but she wasn’t sure her stomach could take it.

If she didn’t follow him to her own time in two days, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to fit in her one dress.

Although only of average height in her own time, and thin, compared to the other women here she was tall. The people were all slightly shorter, but much thinner than she was used to.

“That’s a pity,” Clark said. “Good food is one of life’s pleasures.”

“I’ve heard that it might not be particularly good for your health,” Lois said. She winced internally as he took another bite. This food was a heart attack on a plate.

He smiled. “I’m not worried.”

That smile again. It bothered her that she noticed it.

Normally she was able to dismiss handsome men as being shallow or vain. Clark though had none of the preening arrogance she’d come to expect from handsome men in Metropolis.

Actors in general tended to have that strange combination of arrogance and insecurity. Clark….for some reason she was thinking of him as Clark now instead of as Clark Kent, seemed to have none of that.

She hadn’t met anyone as comfortable with himself in a long time.

Maybe it was just because he was the only one not assuming she was a whore, but he seemed like a very reasonable kind of person.

For the first time Lois began to feel a little guilty that she was eagerly awaiting the complete disruption of his life.

*****************

“My mother miscarried a number of times,” Clark said. “My birth was her last chance….by the time I was born she was in her forties.”

A few glasses of wine were leaving Lois feeling a little flushed, but fortunately Clark seemed perfectly willing to do most of the talking. Her biggest worry was that he would ask something about modern 1912 Metropolis that she didn’t know.

However, he seemed more than happy to talk about himself. It was almost as though once the floodgates were opened he couldn’t help but talk.

She had the impression that he rarely talked with anyone about his past.

“She always called me her miracle. When I was young she always told me that I’d come on a shooting star.”

“That’s nice,” Lois said. ”Your parents sound like the kind of people I’d have been fortunate to know.”

Clark looked down at his plate, which was now mostly empty. “They made me who I am today.”

“So why theater?” Lois asked. “Most people don’t go to college these days to learn the stage, do they?”

“I wanted to be a writer,” Clark admitted. “But of course, that’s a difficult profession in which to gain entry. Journalism seemed a good alternative career.”

Lois simply sat and stared at him with one eyebrow raised.

He looked down at his plate again. “After my parents’ deaths, I was consumed by guilt. I should have saved them. If I’d been there, I could have. When Robinson offered me the chance to be someone other than me, I jumped at the chance.”

“How did he even find you?”

“A medium he trusted told him,” Clark said. “I had no idea I even had any talent in theater, but I’m told that I’m quite good.”

“I’d like to see that,” Lois said.

“I’ve arranged for a ticket to tonight’s show to be waiting,” Clark said.

At her look of surprise he said, “Surely you can’t write about the troupe without seeing a sample of our work. Otherwise all you have is hearsay, and that would be doing a disservice to your readers.”

Ah…the fake story.

There was a good chance that her new dress wouldn’t be ready in time. The last thing Lois wanted was for Clark to see her as a homeless woman, even if at the moment that’s exactly what she was.

When had she begun to care what he thought about her? She didn’t really care what anyone here thought about her, other than a general sort of irritation at their troglodyte customs and their insistence on thinking she was some sort of prostitute.

Yet Clark was already seeming more like a person than anyone here.

What she needed was to step back, to be a little more objective. She couldn’t afford to let her feelings get involved. He was her ticket home, nothing more, and she’d have to remember that, even if she was beginning to feel a little guilty about it.