Relative History, Part 10 FINAL
By: C. Leuch
Matt Owens grunted as he swiped across the screen of his tablet, dismissing the story that had been up. It was almost physically painful to read the poorly crafted stories passed for journalism on some of these internet sites, especially knowing that plenty of decent journalists, himself included, were out of work. In his case, at least, it might work out for the best, he thought as he ladled a spoonful of his lunch into his mouth. If he had been employed as a working journalist, he might never have discovered his creative side, and he might never feel as fulfilled as he does right now. Sure, he had always felt some satisfaction at seeing his byline in print, but when his book ends up in bookstores and libraries throughout the country, it will be thrilling in a way that would be entirely new. Until that time came, he needed patience, and if there was one thing Matt Owens had in spades, it was patience.
His train of thought was interrupted by the key turning in the apartment door lock. A moment later Laura entered, causing a grin to spread across his face. “Hey there,” he said, and she raised her hand and smiled in response. “How did it go?”
“Pretty good, I guess,” she said, dropping her backpack on the floor by the door and wandering over to take a seat by him. “Mom and Dad had no idea I had even been there, which is a good thing, I guess. But Jon’s trip to the past was apparently preordained. Come to find out Jenny – you know, Sam’s wife – owes her life to him.”
“What?! How does that work?”
Laura shook her head. “Jon saved her dad when he was there. If he hadn’t been around, Jenny’s dad would have died before she was ever conceived. So the future influenced the past which in turn influences the future. It’s like he created some kind of infinite feedback loop. Time travel makes my head hurt.”
“Yeah, my head hurts just listening to you try and explain it,” Matt answered, picking up his bowl and scraping together the last of its contents. After taking care of it, he looked back at Laura. “What about…that other thing you were going to talk with them about?”
She reached her hand behind her neck and grinned. “They were really happy for me. After the initial round of congratulations and hugs, we didn’t dwell on it too much except to talk a little bit about what my plans are for the next few months. I’m glad I didn’t chicken out, though I thought for a moment I might.”
Matt looked at her for a long moment, then reached for her hand. “So, I just have to ask…why would you have chickened out of it today?”
She put her hand in his and looked past him for a moment. “This probably sounds silly,” she said, re-focusing on him. “Do you remember how it felt when you were a kid and you did something you weren’t supposed to? If you were the honest type, you would get this feeling of foreboding, because you knew something bad would happen once someone found out what you did. You ended up going to great lengths to avoid your parents and other authority figures because of that. Then the punishment would end up being nowhere near as bad as you thought, if you got one at all, but still…it was the anticipation of it that drove you crazy.”
“So…you thought you would be in trouble?” he asked, and she shrugged and bobbed her head. “What we did here – we created life! It’s probably the most precious thing there is. Why on earth would you be in trouble?”
“Well,” she said, diverting her gaze to the table. “It’s all about the rules. I mean, I know we didn’t break any laws or any moral code, but there are unwritten rules to relationships, especially when seen from the eyes of parents. There are certain things that people aren’t supposed to do until they’re married. And even if they do end up jumping the gun, then they should definitely be cautious enough to make sure that they don’t end up pregnant, especially while they’re still in college. You flaunt that rule and the world knows just what you were doing when you were supposed to be studying, or doing whatever upstanding young citizens are supposed to do.”
“You’re an adult…we’re both adults. Adults have sex, that’s just the way the world works.”
She turned away shyly, using her free hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. As confident and brash as she liked the world to think she was, the truth was that underneath it all she was sensitive and shy, vulnerable, and ultimately very charming. This was the side of her that only he got to see, and his heart ached every time she showed it to him. “My head knows that, but my heart? I’m still a student, I don’t have a job, and I still rely on my parents for rent and grocery money. I don’t feel like an adult at all. Even though I’ve grown up enough so that I’m not the same kid I was when I lived in Metropolis, that little girl isn’t that far away, and all she wants is to make her parents proud of her.”
Matt scooted his chair over and wrapped his free arm around her, applying pressure so that she was leaning into him. “Oh, you’re all woman, I can attest to that,” she said in a deep voice, drawing a laugh from her. “And your parents are the most supportive people I’ve ever met. I’m envious of the relationship you have with them. Of course they were going to be happy, because I could never see them being mad about something so joyous.”
She sighed and snuggled into him. “What do you think your parents are going to say?” She asked after a few moments.
“I’m sure they will be glad, too. I won’t be subjected to years of questions about when we might grace them with the pitter patter of little feet, so there’s that.” He smiled as they sat silently for a moment. “I almost hate to ask, but…” he said, pausing as he tried to pose the question as delicately as he could. “Why did you wait so long to tell me about the baby?”
“Because I was trying to convince myself that it was real,” she said quietly. “First I missed a period, but then I told myself that I just miscounted days, or misremembered when the last one was. But after a few weeks I knew that something wasn’t right. The next logical step for a normal person would be a pregnancy test – I could go down to the drugstore and get one of those little stick ones but…I’m only half human, so who knows if it would work right? I mean, I can’t take the pill because my hormones don’t work like normal people’s do, so why would this be any different? If I wanted confirmation, I would have to make an appointment with the family doctor at STAR labs, and there’s no way to be discreet about that. So I put it off and pretended that everything was fine. Then, one night, I was lying in bed and I could hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“The faint sound of a heartbeat, fast but sure. It was coming from me, and if I closed my eyes and concentrated on it, I could hear it clear as day. Then there was no doubt.”
“When did that happen?” Matt asked, hugging her tighter.
“A week or so ago. It’s taken me that long to come to grips with what it means for me, for us.”
“But you’re happy, right? You want this?”
She sat up and looked at him. “I want it more than anything.” She smiled and put a hand on his cheek. “Except maybe you. You made all this possible.”
“I’d say it was mutual,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.
“Well, I couldn’t do it by myself, that’s for sure,” she said, drawing a chuckle from him. “But talking with my grandma helped my come to peace with what the baby will do to all my carefully laid plans, and just relax and enjoy it.”
“Good advice,” he said. Her grandmother sounded like someone he could relate to pretty well. It made him wish he’d been able to meet her. “So…we should probably move up the wedding, huh?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“We could go down to the courthouse tomorrow and go in front of a judge….”
“That’s a little too soon, I think.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Fly off to Vegas?” She looked at him, incredulous. “What? Just because your brother did it doesn’t mean we can’t.”
“It’s just so…impersonal,” she said. “Can’t we just have a little ceremony in a park somewhere, just us and our closest family and friends?”
“It’s winter, and I want to get this done before you get big – er, uncomfortable enough that you won’t be able to enjoy the honeymoon.” He sat up and gave his most charming smile, hoping that she didn’t think he would somehow find her less attractive as she progressed in her pregnancy. She didn’t seem to notice, though. “I know this nice guy who has a really big house we could use for free….”
“I hate the feeling that half my life happens at Wayne Manor,” she said, some her fire returning.
“So, okay, where should we go, then?”
“Metropolis,” she said quickly. “Maybe at the botanical center, or the lodge in Centennial Park.”
“Oooh, sounds lavish,” he said, bringing a sly expression to her face.
“It’s scenic…rustic. You want lavish, we could go to the Lexor, or the restaurant at the top of the Liberty Tower.”
“Let me rephrase,” he said. “Sounds expensive.”
“That’s what parents are for.”
“Why do I get the feeling that this topic didn’t come up during lunch?” He raised his eyebrows, and she waved her hand.
“It kind of goes without saying,” she said. He looked at her skeptically, then stood up from the table, taking his dishes into the kitchen. “Then we can save our money for the honeymoon, I guess.”
“Ooh, there’s a thought.” He deposited his dishes in the sink, then came back toward the eating area, leaning against the wall. “Though, really, where could we go that we haven’t already visited? Your whole flying thing…it’s been very handy.”
She stood up and sauntered over to him. “So all my abilities – strength, invulnerability, x-ray vision – serve their highest purpose in ferrying us to exotic locales for more interesting dates?” She stopped in front of him and ran a finger from his forehead, down past the side of his eye and around his jaw. She loved to play the cynical naysayer, but he knew it was all just an act.
“Until the next alien invasion or giant asteroid, sure,” he said with a shrug and a crooked smile, putting a hand on her hip. “See, I think if you weren’t who you were, if you weren’t super and didn’t have the perspective that went along with that, then we probably wouldn’t have the conversations we did. Without years of verbal sparring over superhero-related topics, I might not have seen how brilliant and interesting you are, and I might not have fallen madly in love. So I guess you could say that your powers brought us together.”
Her smile was genuine. “I probably would’ve been less guarded, and might have ended up dating some loser, or a series of losers…which probably would’ve led me to decide that I was better off all alone. I might have 2 or 3 cats by now and an in-depth knowledge of Jane Austen novels.” They both laughed lightly, and her hand relocated to his shoulder. “Do you think we should tell your parents before the baby comes? About me, I mean, and about Dad?”
He shook his head. He would be lying if he were to say that he hadn’t thought about it. But he wasn’t especially close with his parents, and his mother had a tendency to say things when she shouldn’t. “I don’t think they’d take it well. I mean, they like you, but…Mom once told her best friend one of my more embarrassing kid secrets, and pretty soon every kid in school knew it. Not my favorite memory.”
She absently twisted his shirt in her fingers. “It’s just…Jon and Diane told her folks before the twins came, and even though Diane was not that close to them and they had anger issues in the past, they were totally cool about it. Finding out that their son-in-law could fly also gave them a good excuse to come to Metropolis often and visit the babies, which I think was the point. If your Mom and Dad knew, I could bring them here whenever they wanted to.”
“Maybe I don’t want to share you,” Matt answered, only half joking. She didn’t seem impressed. He sighed. “Look, I’ve known them my whole life, and even though I love them, I don’t trust them with something this big. My Dad is liable to overreact and my Mom won’t be able to resist telling everyone this great new secret she found out.”
“Maybe we don’t tell them, but start dropping clues, the types of things that aren’t necessarily obvious but could lead them to the truth if they really want to find it.”
“Like showing up unannounced at the front door, without a rental car or other means of transportation?” He gave her a knowing smile and moved fractionally closer. That was one of his favorite memories, though at the time he was so happy to see her that he didn’t even think about just how weird of a situation it was.
“If I recall, you didn’t even catch on after that one,” she said, with a wiggle of the eyebrows. She was irresistible when she teased him, and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and capturing her lips. After a few happy moments he forced himself to pull away. There wasn’t enough time to continue down that path, no matter how badly he wanted to.
“What if we give them a smaller secret to digest first and see how that goes? I still haven’t told them that my new friend is the famous, rich, high-powered executive Sam Wayne, son of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. When I tell them, they’ll probably wonder why I haven’t asked him for a job.”
Laura nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a good first step, I guess, and you can tell them that without revealing any of the finer points of your relationship to him and his relationship with me. Then you can see if that causes any issues, if they get that whole celebrity shell shock that some people get.”
“Right. Then if everything goes smoothly we’ll move up to the bigger stuff. ‘Hey Mom, Dad, guess what? I climbed to the top of the tallest building in Gotham to meet Batman, who then took me out to help with crimefighting. Yeah, he’s Laura’s brother by the way. And the girl I’m marrying? She flies! My future father-in-law was born on another planet – how cool is that?’”
Laura pulled a face. “I guess it sounds like a lot when you put it like that. Starting small is probably a good idea.”
Matt raised his eyebrows, then looked at his watch and uttered an expletive. “I need to get back to work,” he said, giving her another quick kiss. “Love you.” He moved to leave, but then stopped, turned back to her, and bent down to kiss her stomach. “Love you, too,” he said more quietly. Laura put her hand on his shoulder, and her expression at that moment made him feel warm inside. They were on the cusp of becoming a family, a real one, and it was scary to think about how everything would change when that did happen. But he knew without a doubt that Laura loved him, and even though she could literally move mountains, he would find it within himself to do the same for her if she asked. And as long as they had that level of love and commitment, they could get through almost anything.
“See you tonight,” she said softly, and he nodded. With that, he left. It would be darn hard to work that afternoon, but he would get through it, and his reward would be coming back to her once it was done.
---
Clark leaned back in his chair and stared as his computer monitor. When Laura had been there over lunch, she had given him videos recorded on her phone when she was in the past, little tributes from his parents meant for him and Lois. He had immediately installed them on his PC, his phone, and saved them in about 5 other places, just to make sure they never got lost. Then, after the anticipation got to be too much, he sat down with Lois in the study and watched them. Then they watched them again. And now that he’d had the whole afternoon and evening to ponder the situation, he wanted to watch them yet again, though he knew that Lois would accuse him of obsessing once he did.
When he had first met Jon 28 years ago, it had been an eye-opening moment. For the first time in his life, there was someone like him, someone he could talk to about all the challenges that came with growing up “super,” someone who would have his back when things weren’t going his way, or could fill in for him on the superhero circuit when he just needed some time off. Even though Jon was only there for a couple of days, it made Clark realize how much better things could be, and how much he wanted someone like Jon in his life. He had only recently found out that Jon’s presence was what made Lois decide that she wanted children, and if he was honest, the same was true for him. If having kids meant having someone like Jon in his life, then he wanted that more than anything, even if it would probably take years before they were patrolling the skies together. It was only as time when by that he realized that the Jon he met in 1997 was, in fact, his son. So many little things added up to prove the point, from happenings that reminded him of stories that Jon had told him, to just his general appearance and demeanor. The photos, of course, were the lynch pin, though even after he got that confirmation, it was interesting to watch things play out, to watch the Crimson Superman come to life and move from a shy, uncertain kid to the confident man he was now, and to watch Jon become a husband and father along the way.
About a week ago, when the first robbery was reported involving perpetrators who disappeared through some invisible pothole, Clark began to suspect that they had arrived at the point in history when Jon would be sent back in time. He had made a vow long ago that he wouldn’t butt into the case when it came around, if only to preserve history, though the fact that Jon hadn’t asked for help had made it easy. He had known immediately when Jon had disappeared – it was hard to dismiss the strong feeling that something was missing, and the fact that Jon never made it back to work that afternoon, coupled with the lack of disasters requiring super attention, only confirmed it. He kept waiting for Diane or Laura or CJ to come ask him for assistance at that point, but to his surprise they didn’t. He mentioned his concerns to Lois before leaving for the Justice League mixer that night, and she advised patience. It was both satisfying and frustrating that his responsible, intelligent children really didn’t need his input and advice to solve problems anymore. In this case they quickly made some headway in putting the case together without his help, though, as he found out, they hardly did it by themselves.
When Laura had stealthily recorded him at the party, he figured something was up. It was only after Laura left and the party had wrapped up that Barry had come to Clark and told him what was going on, and how he was involved, both in the present and the past. As much as Jon’s trip to through time had affected Clark and Lois, it had undoubtedly affected Barry more. First and foremost, it had been a stark demonstration of what his cosmic treadmill was capable of, and led him to contemplate the real dangers that it held, certainly in the wrong hands. On a more personal front, knowing that Superman was married and would eventually have children forced him to rethink his relationship with Iris. Before meeting Jon and Laura, he had loved Iris, but he had resigned himself to a life where she was kept at arm’s length, figuring it would be better for both of them. But if Superman had decided that the danger his wife would be exposed to due to her association with a superhero was dwarfed by the strength they both gained from their relationship, then what was he so scared of? If the Man of Steel could make his relationship work, then surely there was hope for Barry with Iris. The encounter with Jon and Laura also made him think about the potential benefits that could come from simply talking with someone who faced the same challenges in their life. They could be resources for each other, offer support and backup; all the things that Clark had yearned for when he met Jon were true of Barry as well. Clark recalled the Flash introducing himself not too long after Jon left; now he knew why.
Barry had let Clark know that he’d been on the case of the porthole bandits for a very long time, long enough that he’d been able to crack it almost before the first robbery happened. As far as villains went, the porthole robbers were hardly more than a blip on the radar, and they were memorable really only for the technology they invented and the havoc it caused. But the technology had the potential to be revolutionary, and as dangerous as the cosmic treadmill could be in the wrong hands, a portable device that could create shortcuts through time and space was doubly perilous, especially since it didn’t require any special powers or abilities to do so. As someone who had created a couple of hiccups in time himself and learned the hard way what comes from irresponsible time travel, Barry had a vested interested in making sure that this particular case got closed quickly and fairly quietly. Nobody outside of a select group of people would have any idea what had actually happened, or what the device was capable of, and that was just fine with Barry, and Clark.
Now that Jon was back safe and the case solved, Clark had been ready to debrief him, his planned discussion 28 years in the making. What he hadn’t been prepared for in all this, though, would be the role that a simple smart phone would play. He knew that Jon had stayed with his folks, and he assumed they had talked, but he had no idea about Laura’s great plan to share the future with them via video, and was not expecting anything from them upon her return. He had some old videos of his parents that he watched upon occasion, usually when he was feeling melancholy. They generally showed old birthday parties or holidays, or other important moments in their life, such as when CJ and Laura had been born. Those were snapshots of individual moments in time, old familiar memories viewed from a different perspective than those held in his mind’s eye. These videos from Laura were something new, unexpected, and it felt odd seeing them, listening and watching his parents after thinking that all his interactions with them were relegated to the past. It was almost intoxicating, and he found that he couldn’t get enough.
The wait to watch them again through a long afternoon of work had been pure torture, and once he got home he found his gaze often wandering toward the computer. Lois surely noticed, though she was kind enough to not mention anything to him. Her expression had been knowing when she had excused herself for a walk a few minutes earlier, leaving him alone to indulge in another viewing of the video. Now, finally, he could see their faces again, listen to their words, and bask in their affection. His heart raced slightly as he leaned forward and pushed a button on his keyboard to play the video. After a second, a window popped up, and the video started to play.
The first image that came was his mom fiddling with the phone that the video was recorded on, then setting it down and backing up so she was next to his dad. “Hi Honey!” Martha said, the happiness in her voice genuine, just like he remembered. “We’ve had a great couple of days with Jon and Laura. They are such wonderful children, Clark, and we can’t tell you how much we enjoyed having them here. They’re both sweet, polite, helpful, and so eager to please…they really do remind me of you.” She smiled for a moment, then her smile started to fade. “I know from the way that they talk that we aren’t with you anymore, and probably haven’t been for a few years. It’s hard for us to think about, though I can’t say I’m surprised. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” She looked down and swallowed. “Superman may be invulnerable, but you have so much love inside you that I’m sure you were devastated when it happened. But you have a beautiful family who loves you, and you have our permission to move on, to be happy.”
Martha sniffed and smiled, her hand chasing away the wetness from her eye. “Jon and Laura talk about us like revered Gods sometimes, and we had to set them straight,” Jonathan continued with a little chuckle. “I’m sure you’ve told them all the flattering stories and left out the more humanizing ones. And I can tell from their words that you’ve insinuated all the good that’s within you, all the good that Superman does for the world comes from us. It’s a flattering thought, but you deserve so much more credit for all that than we do. We just did what we thought was right, tried to teach you right from wrong. You were the one who wore the suit and faced down Lex Luthor and marauding aliens. You raised those kids, and you did a fantastic job. You and Lois.”
Martha nodded. “You taught them their values and made them who they are. I just wish we could’ve met Sam, too. He sounds like he was quite the handful.” She looked at Jonathan, who bobbed his head. “The future is in good hands, we can tell.”
“Your boy showed us video from your last family Christmas,” Jonathan said. “Between that and the testimonials that Laura brought with her, it felt like we got to meet everyone. And we got to see you and Lois. Your family has so much love…you should be proud. I know we are.”
“And that family we saw in the video, the roomful of men and women, they all knew you are Superman. We heard coded conversations about going to rescues and making excuses, and nobody batted an eyelash. You trusted them with your secret – you, who once told me that you were never going to tell another living soul about yourself. But you let them in, and it’s lead to nothing but love. That’s probably what I’m most proud of. I’m sure you’re not the man now that we know, I’m sure life has changed you, but it sure looks like you’ve learned the correct lessons from life.
“We love you, honey,” Martha said. “Lois, too. And those kids of yours, even though we just met, we love the heck out of them, too. Keep up the good work. And be happy, you deserve that.” With that, Martha reached toward the phone, and the video stopped. Clark stared at the computer for a long moment, unmoving, before finally forcing himself to minimize the window. It was amazing how they always seemed to know just what to say. Even from 28 years in the past, they anticipated what he needed to hear to heal the wounds that their passing had left.
At that moment, he became aware of a hand on his arm, and looked up to see Lois standing behind him, a sad smile on her face. “You couldn’t resist, huh?” she said, and he could only shrug. She patted him a couple times, then went to sit on the small sofa. “I can’t blame you. It was great to see them again.”
“Really great,” Clark said with a nod, turning his desk chair to face her. “And so unexpected. We’ve had decades to digest everything else that happened on that trip, but this…I had no idea.” He gestured toward the computer.
“You have a very thoughtful daughter,” Lois said. “Maybe too thoughtful. It’s almost like she was buttering you up to deliver some big news….”
Clark scoffed, though Lois’s half smile told him she was teasing. “She knows that she doesn’t need to butter me up, especially when her news means that our family will be expanding. And I can imagine she used her trip to the past to talk the situation over with Mom, since she is renowned for giving sound advice.”
“Oh, I’m sure. Though I’m a little disappointed that she didn’t come to me first.”
Clark reached out for Lois’s hand and gave his most reassuring smile. “Can you blame her? You’re her mom, the person who always laid down the law in this family.”
“You were no help there,” Lois muttered, and Clark chuckled.
“I’m just saying, even though we’re all happy that there’s a baby on the way, it isn’t happening under the best of circumstances. She was probably scared of what you’d say. If it makes you feel any better, she didn’t come to me, either, even though we have a very trusting relationship.”
“I guess,” Lois said with a sigh, turning Clark’s hand over. “Well, the truth is out there now, and there’s no going back.”
Clark looked at her for a moment, then hid a smile. “It’s going to be hard to dote on her when she’s all the way up in Gotham City, isn’t it?”
“Terrible,” Lois answered immediately. She released his hand and stood, walking over to bump him with her hip before continuing toward the door. “At least I have reliable transportation.”
“I see,” he said, leaning over to turn off the computer monitor before rising and following her out of the room. “I don’t see her willingly being mothered over the next few months.”
“You might be surprised,” Lois said with a glance over her shoulder. “She still has a wedding to plan and school to finish on top of doctor’s appointments and everything else. This might be the ideal time for a little mother-daughter bonding. My mom and I did a fair amount of bonding when Jonathan came along, if you recall.”
“How could I not?” he mumbled. Even with Ellen living in Metropolis at the time, she practically moved into their brownstone when Lois was pregnant. And although Lois grumbled about it at the time, she also gladly accepted the help, especially in the last few months, when she was generally uncomfortable most of the time. It had been an adjustment for Clark not being able to relax and be completely himself at home, though in some ways it was a precursor of things to come.
“Seems like a long time ago,” Lois said wistfully, quietly.
Clark put his hands on her shoulders and guided her into the hallway. “Then let’s go make some new memories,” he said with one last glance back toward the computer. The message from his parents was a new memory that he would cherish forever. But in the grand scheme of things, everything else that was happening in their ever-expanding family was much more important. Dwelling on the past could make you lose sight of the future, and right now the future was exciting indeed.
***
EPILOGUE
2 MONTHS LATER
CJ put down the screwdriver and leaned back, regarding his creation with a pleased smile. Before returning the porthole device to the Metropolis PD, he had thoroughly reverse engineered it, ensuring that he could build one himself if the mood struck him. After the robbers were busted, he got a list of the stolen items recovered from the apartment from Jon, who had seen the whole stash firsthand. Then he had embarked on a series of theoretical physics discussions with a friend of his who worked at Gotham State. Gradually a picture began to form of what the stolen components could accomplish when put together with the existing porthole device, and he decided to see if he could engineer something that would accomplish what the porthole robbers couldn’t.
Many long nights at his workbench later, his own device was now ready. In addition to being able to move through shortcuts on space in a controlled way, it should also be able to move through time, sending him to where he wished in a predictable fashion, and without having to use any sort of super speed. He had prepared for this moment, of course, rigging up a little camera on a selfie stick with a wired connection in his cave that he could send through the porthole in his place, beaming back images of whatever was on the other side. That way he could test it out and not risk anyone’s safety.
Without further ado, he pushed some buttons on device’s display, and a shimmery porthole formed in front of him. In testing it out, his first stops would be known events from the past, since they found out firsthand that traveling to the past was the easier trip. He picked up the stick, made sure the camera was on, then looked over to his computer monitor and saw the pictures it was sending. Then he approached the pothole, regarded it for a second, and pushed the camera through.
He couldn’t help but smile as he saw the image that presented itself on his monitor. It was the fountain in Centennial Park in Metropolis on a stormy evening in the spring of 1995. Reaching for a remote, he turned on his computer speakers so he could hear the audio from the feed, as well. As he watched, the much younger versions of his parents stopped, obviously engaged in an emotional conversation. The camera was relatively far away from them, so he had to turn up the gain on the microphone before he could hear them speaking. Once he could, though, his heart swelled.
“…I felt ashamed.” Clark said.
“Ashamed? Why?” Lois answered.
“Because I kept pushing you away, even when I promised I’d stop. And if you died without ever knowing why, I’d never forgive myself. Because I love you. And so, I wanted to say…” Clark took a step back and moved to reach for his pocket, but at that moment lightning flashed, and a loud peal of thunder shook them.
Lois laughed. “Do you want to go back?” she asked, but Clark’s face only filled with resolve.
“If the earth opened up at my feet, I wouldn’t move until I’d said this,” he said, then dropped to his knee. “Lois, will you marry me?”
She regarded him for a long moment, then smiled slyly and reached for his glasses, pulling them off his face as she spoke. “Who’s asking – Clark, or Superman?” she asked, and at first Clark seemed shocked, but it quickly passed, and he was soon smiling back at her. They stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity, then the skies opened up and he took her hand. They raced away toward shelter, away from the porthole, and CJ decided that it was time to call this experiment a success.
He withdrew the stick from the porthole, shaking the rain off it as he did. His cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling so wide – that proposal was the thing that sappy TV shows were made of. He’d heard all about it before, of course, but there was something about actually seeing it. Even for two people who showed their love for each other in small ways every day, the proposal stood out for its honesty and simplicity. With a contented sigh, CJ put the stick down and picked up the porthole device, pushing a button to deactivate it. He then pushed a few more, and another porthole appeared. Next stop: the night Crimson Superman was born.
On the screen was the campus of Metropolis University at night, the green filled with people streaming toward the chemistry building, which had recently collapsed in an explosion. Something that sounded like thunder filled the air around them, and a moment later, Crimson Superman, Jon, showed up cradling a middle-aged man covered with blood and soot. As he landed, the crowd seemed to stop, their gasps audible. Jon leaned over and gently laid the man on the soft grass, then looked up, his eyes wide with fear. It was an odd sight for CJ, who was used to seeing the confident hero that Jon has turned into, though her seemed to recall that it had taken him several months to get over his initial shyness. The scene only lasted a moment, then Jon was gone, back into the fire, though he returned again a minute or so later, this time avoiding even glancing at the crowd. CJ watched the cycle repeat a few times until, finally, their dad showed up. CJ withdrew the stick from the porthole and sighed. In some ways that night seemed like it had happened yesterday, but so much had changed since that time, and it only took a look around to confirm that. It had literally been a lifetime ago for him, and a stab of nostalgia knifed through him before he shook his head and refocused. He still had an experiment to complete.
Next came the hard part: opening a porthole to the future. For simplicity’s sake, he decided to direct it to the cave, right where he was standing, 20 years on the future. Pushing a few buttons, the shimmery circle appeared again, though this time it seemed to carry a slight tint. He took a deep breath and put the camera in the hole, and frowned a bit at the image that appeared onscreen. The high tech equipment appeared to be gone, and the cave in general seemed covered with debris. It also looked like part of the ceiling had caved in, he thought, repositioning the camera to get a better look. As he did, someone grabbed it and yanked it out of his hand, rotating it such that it was now looking in the opposite direction from where it had been. There, in the image on the screen, was a younger man with a full beard and shaggy, almost shoulder-length light brown hair, wearing a blank gray spandex suit with padding at the shoulders and forearms. His eyes were a piercing blue, but the lines around them made him appear much older than CJ had previously thought.
“It’s you, isn’t it? Looking at me from the past?” he said, his voice intense, almost angry. A moment later, a gray spandex-covered leg was coming through the porthole, and CJ found himself subconsciously backing away, though he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene in front of him. Next came an arm, hips and shoulders, then, finally, the man that he had seen on his monitor. The man’s intimidating demeanor seemed to soften as he caught sight of CJ, and the then rest of his surroundings. For a moment he seemed almost awestruck, until his eyes landed on the device generating the porthole, and the anger returned. “You need to destroy that thing. You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” he said, pointing at the device.
CJ stood up straighter and set his feet apart, crossing his arms across his chest in his most commanding pose. It occurred to him that at that moment he wasn’t wearing any kind of mask or uniform, he was just Sam Wayne in his cave of toys, but his visitor didn’t seem at all surprised about that. He seemed to know exactly who he was dealing with and where he was, and the fact was that he wasn’t wearing a mask, either, and the clothing he was wearing seemed to be part of a more involved costume probably meant that he was another member of the League. “Why don’t you enlighten me, then,” CJ said, trying not to sound defensive.
“History is held in delicate balance, and when you start playing with time, changing things, time will always try to make it right,” he said, parroting lines that CJ had heard recently from Barry. “And the more you change, the worse it gets. Jon recently went in time, didn’t he? And his actions directly led to your wife’s very existence.”
“How did you know that?” CJ asked with narrowed eyes, but the other man just smiled coldly. He was sure that the story of Jon’s time travel adventure would become the stuff of legend in years to come, the story told at League meetings and family events, to new family members and friends. But that little detail, the fact that Jenny owed her life to Jon, was not something that he ever intended to advertise.
“Because a time anomaly led to her coming to be, time is going to try to reclaim her. The more you mess with time, the more little things you change, intentionally or not, the more time is going to try and correct itself. It will start off as little incidents, close calls that could be shrugged off as bad luck or coincidence – barely avoided car crashes, near misses with speeding vehicles or falling debris while walking, even close calls with mother nature while out on family trips. Barry will warn you about what’s happening, but you won’t listen.” The man took a step forward, and what was intensity in his expression was gradually transitioning to raw pain. “Then, after one particularly memorable trip in time, a triumph of crime fighting that lead to the dismantling of organized crime in Gotham…” he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “There was a gas leak, somewhere under the mansion. It probably leaked for days, the fire marshal thought, settling in the subbasement. All it took was one little spark – nobody knows where it came from – to set off a humongous explosion. You survived, of course, but Mom….” He looked away.
Goosebumps rose on CJ’s arms, and they slowly dropped to his side. “Adam?” he whispered.
“She never had a chance,” he continued. “And my siblings…they weren’t strong enough yet. I barely survived,” he said, pulling up his sleeve to show burn scars. CJ activated his x-ray vision, looking beneath the surface of Adam’s clothing and seeing the scars covering his body. In some places he could see what looked like shrapnel damage, missing muscle and healed bones, and, as his eyes swept down his body, a couple missing toes. CJ gasped, but Adam kept talking. It was all CJ could do to listen past the blood pumping loudly in his ears. “And you might as well have been dead. You lost yourself in the cowl for a while, took out your pain on the criminal element that remained, then you just left….” Adam looked at him, sadness reflected in his eyes for a moment, before his expression hardened.
“I have a hard time believing I could ever become that person,” CJ rasped. “I’ve spent years trying to bring hope to Gotham, to change Batman’s image, make him into someone positive, someone more like Superman.”
Adam’s smile was rueful. “If you lose enough, you’d be surprised what you’re capable of.”
“I’d never abandon you,” CJ countered adamantly, but Adam shook his head.
“I made it clear that I didn’t want you around,” Adam said, turning back toward the porthole. “As far as I was concerned, you might as well have killed them yourself. It took a lot of patience from Grandpa to help me tackle that anger and try to find forgiveness, but the scars will always be there.” He took a step forward, then relaxed, letting his guard down ever so slightly. In that moment CJ could see the shadow of the boy he knew, and the tragedy of the story that was told finally him fully. “Something told me I needed to keep a watch over the cave, that something would happen there, and now I know why,” Adam said, his voice quiet. “We’ve been given an opportunity to set things right, to rewrite the past in a positive way.” He stood up straighter and looked back over his shoulder toward CJ, his features hardening once again. “If you care about your wife, about any of us, about yourself… destroy that damn thing,” he said, pointing again at the device, then he stepped back through the porthole.
For many moments, CJ was too stunned to move, and he could feel his heart beating quickly and heavily in his chest as he stood there. The dystopian future that had just presented itself was almost too terrible to contemplate. But that had been Adam, his beautiful, perfect boy, now scarred and emotionally broken, standing here in his cave, and there was no denying that. There was also no denying the pictures he saw from the other side of the porthole, the rubble and destruction. The story had to be true, as awful as it sounded, and he vowed that he would move heaven and earth to make sure that it never came to be. Without another thought, he strode over to one of the display cases, broke the glass, and grabbed the large mallet that once belonged to Harley Quinn. He then walked over to the porthole device, pushed a button to deactivate it, then threw it on the ground, swung the mallet, and smashed it into a thousand pieces. He swung the mallet a few more times in blind anger even after there was absolutely nothing left to destroy, then stopped himself, putting it down. Next he reached to the workbench for his research notes and schematics, held them over the concrete floor and shot a beam of heat vision, incinerating them. All at once he felt exhausted, the adrenaline that had been fueling him having drained away, and he stumbled over to the chair by the computer, sinking into it and burying his face in his hands, letting the rest of his emotions out. A wave of nausea swept over him, and for a moment he thought that he was going to throw up for the first time since he was a small child, but the moment quickly passed.
As he sat there, the images of the future version of his son passed in front of his vision. The accusation in his words and eyes, the sheer contempt with which he looked at CJ…even in his darkest nightmares, he would never imagine such a thing was possible, especially considering CJ’s relationship with his own father and how much he tried to emulate that with his son. Maybe his future self deserved that contempt, he thought briefly, ruefully, before dismissing the notion. Losing Jenifer, losing any of his children, really would be a fate worse than death for him, and the idea that he would run from Adam in those circumstances was abhorrent. But, what if…? What if the knowledge that he was responsible for those deaths led him to believe that the only way Adam had any chance of survival was staying as far away from him as he could? What if he couldn’t stand to look at himself in the mirror anymore and didn’t want anyone else seeing him, either? What if he secretly wished that the explosion had taken him, too? CJ shuddered. It didn’t matter, he told himself, because that future was gone now, and would never come to be.
It felt like hours passed before he had the strength to get up again, though in truth it was probably only a matter of minutes. He wanted to go upstairs and embrace his family, to hold them and not let go, but he was afraid of what he looked like at that moment, and he didn’t trust his voice. Instead he turned on the computer and composed an e-mail to the Wayne Manor groundskeeper asking him to look into a replacing the natural gas system and all appliances than ran off it with something that ran on renewable energy, ostensibly in a bid to help the environment. He would gladly tear up the yard and install geothermal elements, or ruin his view of the city by installing wind turbines, if it meant eliminating any possibility of the future that Adam laid out coming to bear.
After finally calming his nerves, he switched everything off and left the cave without looking back. Maybe the time was right to start spending less time out fighting crime and spend more with his family. Being Batman could easily become an obsession – Bruce Wayne was the poster child for that – but next to his children and their future, it just wasn’t all that important. Time could be fleeting, and every moment he was able to spend with them was precious. He never wanted to have Adam look at him the way that future Adam had, never wanted him to be think that CJ had anything but his best interests in mind. And he never wanted to turn into the type of person that would run away from his family when thing got tough.
Forcing a smile on his face, CJ laid his hand on the door to the mansion, took a deep breath, and opened it. Sleep would probably not come easily that night, and whatever sleep he did get would probably be filled with horrible visions of a possible future that will now never come to be. But he had survived bad dreams before, survived plenty of questions about what his future held, and he had come out just fine. No close calls would cause him to lose his sense of humor or positive outlook, and he vowed to never lose sight of the important things in life. The future wasn’t written yet, and that was a beautiful thing.
THE END
