Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HerePart 224Part 225The winter weather this year in Metropolis was crazy, almost as weird as last year. Lois wondered if Luthor was boiling the aquifer again. He wasn’t. Thankfully, he was still locked up in jail awaiting trial, but still it made Lois wonder. It was freezing during the night. In the morning, it was cold enough for frost to form on the windshield, yet warm enough by the afternoon that she wished she had brought her light jacket instead of her heavy coat.
By the time they arrived at Happy Hollow, WandaMae’s rest home, it was a bright sunny day. She and Clark found Tad’s sister actually sitting outside, wearing a bonnet. Black for mourning, of course.
“Mrs. Lincoln, you have more visitors,” the nurse announced.
Lois eyed the frumpy red-headed nurse twice, before reassuring herself that with Lex Luthor alive, Gretchen Kelly would have no reason to try to reanimate his clone.
So,
why would someone steal the clone’s body?
Had it been Luthor, trying to knock down the charges against himself by removing evidence?
As this had been a minor detail to her psychic flashes and not the reason that they had come to visit WandaMae, Lois pushed that question to the side and focused on WandaMae.
“Ms. Waldecker, I’m Clark Kent and this is Lois Lane. We’re from the Daily Planet. Can we ask you some questions about your brother William?” Clark asked.
WandaMae allowed Clark to take her hand, but not to shake it. She turned it in a more genteel manner with the back of her hand pointing upwards. “Tad,” she murmured wistfully, letting go of Clark’s hand. “Poor, poor Tad.”
Clark gave Lois a glance, almost as if he couldn’t believe she had been right.
Really, Clark? After all this time and he still didn’t trust her judgment? Lois ignored Clark’s ignorance and focused on WandaMae. “Yes, WandaMae,
Tad. Have the authorities come to speak with you?”
However, WandaMae wasn’t paying Lois any heed. She was staring at Clark with dumbfounded admiration. Lois understood the attraction. Clark was a handsome fellow, but he was
Lois’s handsome fellow.
Lois tried again. “WandaMae?... Mrs. Lincoln?”
WandaMae blinked and glanced over at Lois. “Oh, Miss Lane, so good to see you again.”
Clark stiffened. “Again?”
“And you, too, Mr. Kent. How is Superman?” she asked, looking at Clark and giving him a wink. “It’s such a shame you weren’t able to save Tad this time.”
“Me?” Clark said, his voice squeaking.
WandaMae shrugged. “I meant Superman.” She gave Clark another wink. “It’s so nice to have him here again.”
“What do you mean by ‘this time’?” Lois asked her.
“This go-around,” WandaMae explained without clarity.
They stared at her.
Did WandaMae recall the first time Clark had come to Earth?
Before he came back in time? Lois had thought only she had these memories of that future, even if they were limited to flashes.
“At least this time Tad survived the lightning strike. Last time…” WandaMae’s voice faded with a sniffle, as she brought a lace handkerchief to her nose. After a minute, she regained her composure. “Last time, he wasn’t so lucky.”
That wasn’t quite how Lois had remembered it.
“Mr. Waldecker has been struck by lightning before?” Clark asked with curiosity, almost as if they were there for a story.
“Three times now,” WandaMae said with a bob of her head. Her brow furrowed in thought, before nodded. “Yes, three times.”
“
Three times?” Lois repeated.
“Three times?” Clark gaped. “Can you tell me about the other times?”
“I wasn’t there, dear.” WandaMae patted his hand. “The other two times happened at the same time, same place, and same date as this time. Each time he suffered a different outcome.”
“I don’t understand,” Lois said. “I thought he was only struck the one time.”
“Yes, one strike each time.”
Lois felt as if her brain had turned into Chopped Suey. WandaMae wasn’t making any sense. How could Tad have survived three lightning strikes at the same date, time, and location? Was
that the real reason he had visited his folk’s grave?
“Why do you call him Tad?” Clark asked.
“Even though my brother was named William Wallace after one of my sons, I called him Tad, which was what Abe and I called Thomas, another of our sons.” She raised her handkerchief to her mouth again. “Sadly, both boys died before their father was...” She swallowed. “Murdered.”
How could her brother have been named after one of her sons?
Lois shook her head. Why was she trying to make sense of this woman’s words? WandaMae was living in a mental institution because she thought she was Mary Todd Lincoln.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Clark said.
Lois stared at him. This woman was
not the former first lady.
WandaMae patted Clark’s hand. “Thank you, Mr. Kent. That was very kind of you to say.” She leaned slightly closer to him. “I do wish you had been around back when my husband was shot, but I understand that God works in mysterious ways. There’s a reason that you were brought here instead.”
Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, Clark lowered his voice and whispered to WandaMae, “Do you think that I’m…?”
“I saw you duck under the table and burn that imposter’s shoes,” WandaMae explained as if this wasn’t a huge deal. “You were my hero that day.”
Clark glanced at Lois with a shake of his head. He had no idea to what WandaMae was referring.
Unfortunately, Lois did. Kind of. Vaguely. “You remember that?” she probed.
WandaMae pulled her gaze off Clark and turned her eyes to Lois. “Of course. You were very brave, too, following Broom Hilda and I, and attempting to save me from being abducted. Despite you having been caught, you were a far superior hero than Tad.”
Lois felt herself staring at WandaMae again. So, she hadn’t been wrong about Tad… William Wallace Waldecker receiving powers from Superman and turning himself into Resplendent Man. “Um… thanks. What happened the third time?” she asked.
“This is the third time,” WandaMae said, leaning closer to Lois to whisper. “I’m curious to see how it turns out. Aren’t you?”
Lois nodded slowly.
“I’m sure everything will turn out much better than last time.” WandaMae raised her handkerchief up to her face again. She wasn't faking the tears threatening to escape her eyes. Whatever happened the last time felt real to WandaMae.
Lois had no idea what happened last time. She opened her mouth to ask more but WandaMae continued.
“Let’s not dwell on the past,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Everything will turn out fine, Ms. Waldecker. Being that you’re such good friends with Lois… Ms. Lane…” Clark started to say.
“Oh, we’ve never met until today,” WandaMae corrected him. “Well, not in this lifetime.”
Clark’s face lost its color. “Back in the time of Lincoln?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Clark,” Lois said, nudging him. However, she kept an eye on WandaMae just in case.
“Heavens, no!” the woman exclaimed. “Although the North could’ve been well-served by a news writer of her caliber.”
“Thank you,” Lois said.
“Ms. Lane and I met two lifetimes ago,” WandaMae said, standing. She held out her hand to Lois. “It’s good to see you again. Thank you for caring so much about Tad to reassure yourself on both his and my welfare. However, it is now time for my afternoon tea. I wish the both of you the best of luck.” She let go of Lois’s hand and shook Clark’s again. “Good day.”
They watched her, in all her hoop-skirted glory, disappear back inside Happy Hollow Rest Home, too stunned to ask any further questions.
Lois turned to Clark. “Do you know about this third time?”
He appeared as baffled as she felt.
Then, again, Clark had said that he couldn’t recall her previous future in more detail than that she would die in some horrible natural disaster. Was there another future with a worse ending than that natural disaster? Or was that the future to which WandaMae had been referring? Tad hadn’t died in that future; he had become Resplendent Man. Was there another probable future? One neither she nor Clark had any memory of whatsoever? How was that even possible? Then, again, how was any of this possible?
A horrible thought struck her. Had there been a future where Superman
hadn’t come to Earth?
Lois closed her eyes and took a deep breath, taking hold of Clark’s hand. She didn’t even want to contemplate such a future.
Yet…
What could’ve been worse than whatever that natural disaster was that Superman needed to stop?
Nightfall?
No. That was a hoax perpetrated by Lex. The tsunami? No, that would’ve happened before the date when Tad was struck by lightning. What then?
Lois had no idea.
“Did she answer your questions?” Clark asked as they headed back to Lois’s Jeep.
“Not in the least. Actually, I’m more lost than I was at the cemetery,” she admitted. “Do you think she was right about the three lifetimes?”
Clark seemed skeptical. “Do recall that she thinks that she’s Mary Todd Lincoln.”
Lois nibbled on her bottom lip and thought about that aspect. “Perhaps the same phenomenon that unlocked these flashes of my previous life… previous future, also freed her to see the memories of her past futures.”
“So, you think she’s sane?” he asked.
“Lucid,” Lois said. “If anyone other than you knew about my…” She cleared her throat. “— memories, it’s possible that I could be sharing a room with WandaMae before too long.”
He nodded in understanding. “Do you have any memories of a past life?” he asked.
“Just the one.” She grinned. “Where I’m me and you’re you, but we do everything differently.” She chuckled.
Clark pinched his lips together but didn’t respond. He seemed bothered by her joke.
She turned the key in the ignition. “Does it bother you that I have this ability, but you don’t?” she asked.
He smiled reassuringly. “I’m glad of any forewarning of danger,” he said, without really answering her question.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. It was annoying enough when the people she interviewed didn’t answer her questions clearly, but did Clark have to keep using the technique on her?
“I’m talking to Clark, not Superman,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“It’s just us, Clark. You can be honest. Does it bother you that there’s something I can do that you can’t?” she repeated. It wouldn’t really surprise her if it did. Men had been scared for centuries that women gaining power would emasculate them.
He rested his hand lightly on her arm. “No,
minha, it doesn’t bother me. I swear.”
She gasped.
“What?” He glanced around. “Did you see something?”
“You swore!” she said with mock consternation before bursting into giggles.
“Very funny,” Clark said without humor. “I swear.”
Continuing to laugh, she said, “No. No, Clark, you don’t.” She turned the car out onto the street.
“Well, I take oaths and make promises,” he corrected.
“Yes, you’re good at making promises. Keeping them, not so much.”
Clark still acted as this was a serious conversation. “I try my best.”
At the light, Lois nudged him. “Lighten up.”
“Lighten up? You just accused me of not keeping my promises and using bad language!” he retorted.
Lois had to cover her mouth to hide her guffaw. It didn’t work. “You, Mr. Kent, do
not use bad language.”
“Well, no,” he explained. “It’s bad.”
She wiped the tear off her cheek. He was too much, and while she was driving too.
“You could follow my example, you know,” he said with earnest.
Lois looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He couldn’t be serious. Yet, could anyone’s expression be deadpan that long? Then again, he was Superman. “Soooooo not happening,” she said, just to make sure he knew the truth. “You don’t even eat junk food.”
“Is that supposed to be a critique?” he asked.
“I’m not taking living advice from someone who doesn’t know how to live.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I live.”
“No swearing. No junk food. No premarital sex.” She rested her case.
“Again. You’re saying it as if it’s bad that I don’t do those things,” Clark replied.
Lois shook her head. There was no way he was winning this argument.
He crossed his arms. “I eat chocolate now,” he grumbled under his breath.
A cake donut with chocolate frosting every Monday did not count as ‘eating chocolate’.
“Join me for a hotdog and I’ll get off your case,” she said.
“I eat hotdogs,” he said.
“A regular hotdog, not one of those organic all-beef ones,” she stipulated.
Clark stared at her with disgust. “Do you know what’s in those?”
“Junk,” she replied. “Don’t you have a steel stomach or something?”
He patted his chest. “Do you know why I look the way I do? Because I don’t eat that ju… cra…
junk.”
“No, because you’re
you. I bet if you ate only junk food for a month you still wouldn’t gain a pound,” she said.
“I’m not taking that bet!” he harrumphed, his lips pouting too much for him to be serious. He must be teasing her back. “You know, you can be a real b…
witch sometimes.”
Lois laughed, nudging him. “Only sometimes?”
“I’ll eat a hotdog, if
I can buy it,” he said.
“A real American hotdog full of preservatives and crap?” she asked.
“Ugh. No.” Again, he didn’t hide his shiver of disgust. “One from Germany. They taste better.”
She thought about this, cut through traffic, and pulled over to the side of the road into an impossibly small spot in one try. “If you include a beer and a piece of chocolate cake, you’ve got yourself a date.”
“A beer?” He threw his hands up in defeat. “Lois, it’s lunchtime!”
She smiled, unbuckling her seatbelt and opening her car door. “Not in Germany.”
“Lois,” he was saying when she shut her door with him still inside the car. She could hear him grumbling as he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door. He joined her on the sidewalk. “Lois, it’s the middle of the day.” He lowered his voice. “I doubt Perry would appreciate it if we flew to Germany for beers and würst. We’re supposed to be working in Metropolis, covering Metropolis.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she replied innocently, taking hold of the lapels of his jacket.
“You want me to swear, eat junk food, and play hooky?” he asked.
“Live a little, Clark,” she said. “We played hooky once before and if I recall correctly, it was kind of nice.”
He took hold of her waist and tugged her into the alley, pulling her up against his chest.
Lois gasped seeing the fire in his eyes a moment before his lips crashed down onto hers. Perhaps her memory of what it felt like on that love potion wasn’t skewed after all.
Clark spun her around and, kicking aside a garbage can, pressed her against the brick wall. He lifted her arms above her head and held them there as he proceeded to kiss her. She couldn’t move, even if she wanted to.
She didn’t want to.
He kissed down her neck to that spot he had found the night before that turned her kneecaps to jelly. Now, he was literally holding her up.
“Oh, Clark,” she moaned, trying to shift her neck to reach his mouth. Her body was starting to sizzle under his touch.
“You want me to take you here, now?” he asked, his voice rough with passion. His body pressed against her as he continued to nibble down her neck.
She could feel all of him. She wanted more.
“
Oh, God…”
“Is this what you really want, Lois? Hot sex in the alley?”
She gulped, a cold chill washing over her. She had been about to say ‘yes’ until he reminded her of where they were. He was right. She wasn’t thinking.
Lois tried to pull her hands free and he let her go. Cupping his face, she whispered, “I want you.” She kissed Clark softly. “But not here.”
“Then, you’ll have to wait,” he said. With a sharp nod, he stepped away from her, but held eye contact. “This is one promise I’m keeping.”
She closed her eyes. He was right. She was pushing him. She deserved this rebuke.
Suddenly, Lois was cradled in his arms, wind rushing through her hair. She opened her eyes and saw Superman smiling at her as the ground disappeared beneath them.
“But…”
His smile turned sheepish. “I can’t resist a date with Lois Lane,” he said. “Even if it means breaking some of the rules.”
***
“So, I heard a generous annoymous benefactor came forward and offered to cover the cost of William and WandaMae Waldecker’s stay at Happy Meadows until the man regains his memories and can support them again,” Lois said. She leaned into Clark’s arm. “Anyone we know?”
He returned her knowing smile. “Perhaps.” Directly in front of them, a Christmas wreath fell out of a worker’s hand as he hung it on the gate. Clark caught it before it hit the ground. Holding it up to the man, Clark passed it back with a large smile. “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Kent,” the worker replied.
Clark turned to gaze upon Lois who held loosely onto his elbow once more.
“You know that guy?” she asked after they had walked further down the snow-lined street passed a group of children building a snowman.
“This is the orphanage we visited last Christmas,” he reminded her.
Lois glanced around. “So it is!” She laughed at her mistake. “Do you still think you’ll be able to take the night off?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Santa?”
Clark just knew that she was testing him to see if he was going to break his promise to give her a Christmas to remember. He hadn’t been able to think about anything else. Well, at least, when he was alone. He couldn’t draft plans with Lois around. She was too much of a distraction. Just thinking about his plans for Lois was a distraction.
“As a matter of fact, Santa has already delivered his gifts to the children,” he reassured her, pulling her closer. “This time last year, I discovered the most wonderful, soft luxurious Teddy bear. You give it a squeeze and…”
“And it tells you that it loves you,” Lois responded.
“Oh, you’ve seen them?” he asked. “Well, he says ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘I love you’, actually. They were just the gift for orphans. I know…” He cleared his throat. “
I would’ve loved a bear like that after my…” He took a deep breath.
Why was this so hard? He had spoken about his folks’ death numerous times over the years. It didn’t affect him anymore. Yet, whenever he spoke to Lois about them or his time as an orphan, his chest felt different, tighter, and he couldn’t get the words out.
Lois slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. “I love you, Clark.”
Such a pronouncement could only be followed by a kiss.
“I have one,” she said after his mouth left hers. His expression must have shown his bafflement because she continued. “— of those Teddy bears. Clausy, the bear Santa gave me last year.”
“Oh. Oh!
Santa gave you a bear that said ‘I love you’?” Clark repeated with a wince. He couldn’t have been that stupid, could he? She had just been getting over her Superman crush and letting Clark into her life again. So what did Super Santa give her? A bear that professed his love for her. He was the king of mixed messages. “I’m so sorry, Lois; I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
“You’re
sorry?” Lois gaped. “You don’t love me.”
“No. Of course, I do… I mean Superman shouldn’t have…” he tried to explain.
“
Superman didn’t give me a Teddy bear, Clark.
Santa did.”
He glanced around to make sure that the kids couldn’t overhear him. “But you know that Santa was…”
“What do I look like? An idiot?” she asked.
Clark decided not to answer that question. It was rhetorical, wasn’t it?
“Clark, I love you. I do,” she went on after an awkward silence where Clark realized she had wanted him to answer that question after all… in the negative. “But I fell in love with Superman first. A large segment of my heart belongs to him and him alone. You’ll have to deal with that, if we’re ever going to continue with our relationship.”
“Um… Lois?”
She held up her hand. “Hear me out,” she said before lowering her voice. “Even though you didn’t want me to love Superman, I did… I do! Even though Superman said that there could never be relationship between us, he never denied loving me. I knew that he would love me until the end of time, just as I will love you. Do you understand?”
Clark placed a hand to his throbbing head. Yes, he completely understood.
Having a secret identity was hell for a hero, but not having one was worse.
That talking about himself in the third person with a person who knew his secret was darn confusing.
That if he had told her his secret earlier, he could’ve avoided this headache.
“It was important to me to hear, through this innocent gesture, that he still loved me,” Lois continued. “This is why I’ll always cherish Clausy. He’s a physical reminder of your love, even when the rest of you is acting like a blockhead.”
“Lunkhead,” he automatically corrected before closing his eyes in embarrassment. Sometimes, he wished his brain cells were faster than his mouth.
Lois chuckled and squeezed his hand again. “The one and only, Chuck.”
Clark decided to return to the topic at hand. “I thought you decided to change the bear’s name to Clarkie.”
She shook her head slowly as if trying to recall that conversation. “No. Clausy isn’t Clarkie. He’s Clausy. Clarkie is someone else.”
Dread filled him. Who or
what had she decided was Clarkie? “Who?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“What?” Lois asked, shaking her head as if she hadn’t been following their conversation.
“Never mind,” Clark murmured. Some things were best not known. “Anyway, the Superman Foundation ordered a whole shipment of the bears to be distributed to orphanages around the country.” They stopped in front of a toy store window where the bears were prominently displayed. “The toy stores somehow got wind of the Superman Foundation’s purchase and it’s now the toy of the season.”
“Trendsetter, you,” Lois said, nudging Clark with her elbow and grinning at him. “Better this than some stinky Space Rat.”
“That’s for…” Clark sucked a breath of air. How did Lois know about Space Rats? “Space Rat?” He cleared his throat as he figured out the best way to ask about the nefarious toy.
Lois waved away the subject. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it does,” he said. Only, she didn’t know how much. “Tell me.”
“Just a dream I had last night about these horrible ugly toys that spit a drug that made people childish and greedy,” she said. She nodded to the display. “I much prefer Clausy bears.”
“A dream?” he whispered.
She tilted her head, inquiringly.
“Thank goodness!” he said, trying to laugh it off.
“More like a nightmare,” she said, accepting his explanation. She started to laugh with him as they continued down the sidewalk.
Clark sighed. The last thing he needed was another Space Rat epidemic.
Several years before he had come here, in his old dimension, the Space Rats had been the Christmas toy sensation. Just as Lois suggested, the Space Rats poisoned the population of Metropolis. First, driving the children insane with greed, and then affecting their folks. It was discovered later when the police had closed in on him, the toy manufacturer had dumped his Space Rat formula into the city’s aquifer. By then it was too late. There was no cure. Once people drank the stuff, even diluted as it was in the water, it affected them longer than the aerosol spray had. Using the city’s water kept infecting the population with the drug.
Metropolis declined quickly after that with the effects still having a profound impact on his old city when he left. People became paranoid and violent. The city council even recommended that Christmas be cancelled in the city the next year. Tempus preyed on that mood in the city, convincing everyone that the gun laws be changed, so that people could purchase guns at the corner convenience store. Ammunition kiosks and vending machines popped up all over the city. People started carrying guns everywhere with them. People didn’t know who was a criminal, a law-abiding citizen, or in law enforcement. Crime skyrocketed as chaos ensued.
Clark hadn’t known if Superman was really having an effect in his old city or if the people were finely getting the drug out of their systems. He left too soon to discover the truth.
He sighed again. He had abandoned his old Metropolis in order to help this one.
“Everything okay, Clark?” Lois asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“Yes. Fine,” he mumbled.
“Clark, I thought you were done lying to me.”
“I was just thinking about the impact such a toy could have on Metropolis,” he said. “What could even Superman do to fight it?”
“Well,” Lois said thoughtfully. “In my dream, Superman saved the city as he always does.” She smiled proudly at him. “We discovered that boiling the drug would negate the bad aspects turning it into a harmless liquid high in vitamin C.”
Clark scoffed. “If only it were that simple.” His eyes widened.
Boiling the aquifer? Could the solution really have been that simple? He would have to try…
Only, this was his Metropolis now. He wasn’t going back to his old dimension. Going back meant failure. It meant a life without Lois. There was no going back.
***End of Part 225*** Part 226 Comments
