Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Another Lois (8/25)

You can find the Another Dimension, Another Time, Another Lois[/i] TOC here.

Where we left off in Part 7 …

Smallville.

Lois’ eyes went wide. How? She had never written a story on Kansas. She had never traveled through the state, never even gave the state a second thought until Clark Kent. She hadn’t even made it through the entire ‘Wizard of Oz’ book, and Lucy had been obsessed with ‘Little House on the Prairie’, not her. There was no logical reason why Lois would have ever looked at a map of Kansas. There was no reason she should have this information bouncing around in her head. Okay, Smallville might be a real place, but Clark Kent was certainly not real. End of story.

She cleared the screen and went back to cleaning her desk. She needed a distraction. She needed a story. She needed some fresh air. She needed a Double Fudge Crunch bar, a whole box of them. She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out… nothing.

Darn! Her top box was empty. Lois picked up the box, flattened it, and tossed it into the recycle bin. There sitting on top of her second box of Double Fudge Crunch bars was a piece of notebook paper. She tossed it onto her desk and pulled out a candy bar. She would hit the gym tonight. Dan was out of town, so she could spend an extra hour on the Stairmaster.

Lois tore open the candy bar with her teeth, spit out the tab, and stuck the chocolaty goodness into her mouth. She sighed, finally relaxing as the smooth silky flavor filled her taste buds. She glanced down at the paper she had removed from her drawer.

Her hand fell from her mouth and what remained of her candy bar dropped to the floor.

At the top of the piece of notebook paper was written in her handwriting: [i]Clark Kent is real. Research Tempus to rescue Clark from dying in the past. H. G. Wells will help you.

Part 8

Lois’ hands began to shake and she pushed her chair as far away from her desk as she could. “No,” she told herself out loud. “It can’t be.” It must be a coincidence. It couldn’t possibly be the same guy. It couldn’t.

No. No. No. No,, she thought.

Clark Kent wasn’t real. He was her partner in her dreams. He wasn’t real.

Then why had she written herself a note, telling herself that he was real? A note she didn’t remember writing, despite it being in her handwriting. Her hand went to her mouth. Was Clark real? And if he was real… What did that mean about Superman?

No, she told herself. Even if Clark somehow had once existed in an alternative universe, there was no possible way that Superman was anything more than her fantasy. He was just too wonderful, too special, too perfect, too out of this world to ever have been real.

But what about Clark? His apartment existed. His hometown existed. Why didn’t he exist? She stood up and walked to her desk, leaning over to read the note without actually touching it.

… rescue Clark from dying in the past.

Tears formed in her eyes and she wiped them away. Clark died? In the past? Clark didn’t exist because he had died before he was supposed to? He was supposed to be here? At the Daily Planet? As her partner? But for some reason he died, stopping that event from ever happening? Was that what she was telling herself in the note?

No, that couldn’t possibly be right.

That was insane.

But then, how did she have these memories?

Clark was a figment of her imagination. Just like Superman. Well, okay, not like Superman. Actually, he was the opposite of Superman in many ways, but imaginary just the same.

Lois nodded to herself and went to retrieve her chair. Back at her desk, she wadded up the piece of notebook paper and held it over her trashcan.

But…

What if he were real?

Her heart started to beat a rhythm she had only felt since Clark had kissed her lips and told her goodbye.

She loved Clark. She might not admit it to herself in her dreams, but she loved him. If he were real…

Lois flattened the notebook paper on her desk and tried to press out all the wrinkles.

If there were a way to save him… to make it so he did exist…

Eduardo walked by and Lois flagged him down, glancing again at that strange note she had pulled from her desk drawer. “Hey, Eduardo, you ever heard of someone named ‘Tempus’?”

Her colleague shook his head. “Tempus isn’t a ‘who’, Lane, but a what.”

“A what?” she repeated.

“Tempus means ‘time’ in Latin. Didn’t they teach you anything in school?” he told her before continuing on his way.

“Apparently not,” she snapped back. Like Latin was something she would ever need in 1995 Metropolis.

“Research ‘time’...” Lois murmured to herself as she reread the note. “…to save Clark?” How did one research ‘time’? What had she been thinking when she had wrote that? Why didn’t she didn’t have a recollection of writing the note?

Lois focused again on the line Clark Kent is real. Oh, if that were true? Research Tempus to rescue Clark from dying in the past. Clark was real, but he had died in the past? How had he died? How could he have died in the past? Researching time would save Clark? And how could researching time save someone who had already died? Why would she phrase “time” as “Tempus” if she didn’t know that Tempus meant time? And why in the world would a dead science fiction author – not to mention how? – help her save Clark?

Okay, she would pass on the “Tempus” and “H.G. Wells” references for now and instead look at the rest of the note. The handwriting wasn’t all that clear; it certainly wasn’t hers either. She pressed her lips together. She pulled open a different desk drawer and removed her magnifying glass, hoping she might be able to read the note more easily if the letters were larger.

After studying the note a while longer, she came to realized several things. First off, the characters on the right side of the note were numbers.

Secondly, the person who had written the original note was of European origin. She recognized the tail at the top on the number ‘one’ as well as the lowercase ‘g’ appearance of the number ‘nine’. Not to mention, the ‘zero’ with the line through it and the seven that looked more like a backwards capital ‘F’. Claude used to write his numbers like that. Whoever wrote this note was from Europe. Americans weren’t taught to write like that.

Thirdly, the numbers were cased together in groups of four numbers: xxxx – xxxx. Was it a phone number? No, phone numbers had seven not eight digits to them.

Fourthly, and perhaps not lastly, some of the words on the left hand side of the note were possibly names. Jamesison? Thurtonian? Marianna? People’s names? Place names? Ship names?

Lois sighed, rubbing her temples. She was not going to figure out a way to save Clark today; that was obvious.

She needed to get out, get some fresh air, and clear her head. What had Perry said? Church was having a pre-trial hearing? Yes, she would go to that.

***

“Mr. Church, are you bitter about your time in jail?” a reporter asked Bill Church, Jr. as he walked out of the courthouse.

Lois’ jaw dropped and her feet freezing on the bottom step. What in the hell?

“No. No. I’m certainly not bitter,” answered Church. He spotted Lois on the edge of the group of reporters and made a beeline to her. “Ah! Lois Lane!”

“Don’t tell me you made bail?” she said, stunned.

“Bail?” Church chuckled with glee. “No. They’re dropping the charges.”

“What?!” she roared.

He winked at her. “All you need is a good lawyer,” he replied, pointing back at his resident Intergang crocodile. Bill Church, Jr. continued down the courthouse steps, talking to the swarm of reporters surrounding him. “Anyway, I’ve just signed to write a book about the whole experience; it’s called Why This is The Greatest Country on Earth.”

Lois rolled her eyes and shook her head. Here was another billionaire able to get away with kidnapping and attempted murder. Why was she surprised? Lex had…

Lex? Surely Lex hadn’t been like the Churches? Lex had been a good man, an honest businessman, a philanthropist. He wasn’t someone who would kidnap or murder…

Except he had.

Lex had killed Max Menken.

In cold blood.

Right in front of her.

Suddenly her thoughts gravitated to what Lex had said to her that night he had visited her apartment, following his discovery of her undercover work at the Metro Club.

“I only know that if I were a smart reporter looking for answers, looking for the source of all the problems in West River, I wouldn’t look any farther than Toni Taylor,” Lex had said.

Lois had taken him at his word and hadn’t looked any farther. Why had she done that? She never took anybody at his word, especially a man. Yet, Lex had always had a way of making her do just that by telling her what he had thought she should do. And she had done followed his suggestions, like she had no brain cells of her own.

God, Lois said to herself as she shook her head, you’re blind when it comes to men.

After Toni had ended up in prison, the Riverside district had all been bought up by Lex – and at fire sale prices at that – and he had moved forward on his own redevelopment plans. Until his death.

Lois shook her head. It was at times like this, she wished Lex were alive, so she could ask him for the truth. But Lex was dead. A light bulb came on above her head, making her eyes pop. Lex may have been dead, but Toni Taylor was still very much alive. It was about time Lois paid Clark’s old flirt a visit.

***

The year inside had not been good to Toni Taylor. Gone was the casually confident woman who had coolly taken over the Metro Gang from her brother Johnny. The brother had been killed when the Toasters had come in to do some damage at the Metro Club. Lois and Toni themselves had barely made it out alive. Lois shook her head.

Johnny had survived in her dreams. Lois didn’t know how the addition of Clark Kent to the equation had changed things so drastically. Clark had told her that he had saved Toni in the fire, too, and that was why she had offered him a job as bartender. How had Clark had time to save both of the Taylors? Lois knew that Clark was wonderful, but did he have secret powers as well? Was he an ex-navy SEAL or something? He certainly had the body for it.

Lois pushed all thoughts of Clark out of her head. She wasn’t here to learn about Clark. She didn’t even want to think about Clark at the moment. She was here to learn about Lex Luthor, the real Lex Luthor.

She sat down at the table where the ex-head of the Metros sat. Toni’s well-coiffed hair had been cut short and there was a scar across her cheek which had been added since the last time Lois had seen the woman. Toni’s eyes also had developed a hardness that Lois didn’t recognize.

“Well… Well… Well… If it isn’t the late, great Lola Dane,” Toni scoffed with a sneer at the reporter. Lois and Toni had never been friends, even without the addition of Clark Kent.

“Hi, Toni. I wanted to ask you about your relationship with Lex Luthor,” Lois said, getting down to business.

A slow curl of a smile came to Toni’s lips as she leaned back in her chair. “Ah… I was wondering when you were going to discover your idol was made of brass instead of gold.”

Lois swallowed the bitter taste that suddenly appeared in her mouth. “What do you mean?”

Toni chuckled. “I heard he was shot and died in your arms, dying trying to save you.” Her laughter became harder, more harsh, almost evil. “A bit anticlimactic for such a man, don’t you think? Ironic?”

“How?”

“Come on, Lola.” Even after learning Lois’ real name, the woman had refused to call Lois by it. “You wouldn’t be here if the scales hadn’t finally fallen from your eyes.” Toni had hit the nail on the head with that remark. “You want to know my relationship with Lex? Officially or unofficially?”

“Unofficially?” Lois echoed, a chill making the hairs on her arms stand-up. Then she remembered what Lex had told her. “Lex said that you had offered him a partnership of sorts.”

Toni shook her head with pity. “I didn’t offer Lex anything. I thought at the time I had been the one in charge but, the truth of the matter is, I was putty in that man’s hands. I had fallen into his carefully orchestrated trap. Lex got what he wanted out of our relationship and left me with the trash to be picked up.”

Lois pulled out her tape recorder. “Do you mind?” she asked, knowing this was probably a story she would learn more from on second hearing.

Toni shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like he can follow through on his threat from the grave, can he?”

The reporter turned on the tape recorder.

“I loved Johnny. It was Lex who convinced me that I’d do a better job at managing the Metros. He wanted to get rid of my brother as head of the Metro Gang. Johnny was running it into the ground by not moving with the times. Lex wanted to build a ‘Riverfront Redevelopment’ project on our turf. Johnny was giving him a hard time.” Toni rolled her eyes. “Johnny was really good at being a thorn in someone’s side if he wanted to be. Lex came into the Metro Club one night for a late pick-me-up…”

Lois’ brow furrowed in confusion. Pick-me-up? Lex wasn’t into drugs, was he? No. Not Mr. In-Control. “Do you mean a drink?”

Toni laughed heartily from her belly. “Oh, Lola, honey. Did you really think our waitresses dressed that way for tips alone?”

Lois’ shocked expression made Toni laugh harder. “What? You didn’t know you were being groomed to be a gentleman’s companion?” She smirked at Lois’ discomfort. “I wonder what little Miss Innocent Reporter would have done with a solicitation charge?”

The reporter took a deep breath. Toni wasn’t done with her story, and Lois desperately wanted to hear it. For now, she would discount the idea that she had actually gone undercover as a call-girl instead of waitress as pure payback for putting the woman in jail and not really true. “So, Lex Luthor came into the Metro Club…” Lois led Toni back to the topic at hand.

“And we hit it off. He invited me back to his penthouse for dinner later that week and discovered we had mutual interests in the West River. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I’d come to his penthouse for a late night supper as we daydreamed about getting rid of Johnny and making the Metros go legit. Then one night Lex suggested we stop fantasizing and make it a reality. It was Lex who gave me the four prototype ‘Toaster’ guns. It had been developed and discarded by a division of Luthor Weapons a few years before.”

Luthor Weapons? Lois made a note on her pad. That – at least – was a fact she could double-check. Perry would want independent corroboration of Toni’s story.

“I had caught four guys trying to set fire to an old warehouse and hired them to torch West River,” Toni continued. “— but the whole plan had been Lex’s.”

“If that were true why haven’t you told this story before? Why didn’t you tell anyone about Lex’s involvement at the time of your arrest?” Lois responded, defending her old boyfriend.

“When he visited me while I was tied up at the torched garment warehouse, Lex insinuated that he could have me killed in prison if I said anything,” Toni explained with a shrug. “After he died I figured what was the point? Legally it doesn’t change anything – accusing a dead man of a crime.”

“Why tell me, then?” Lois asked warily.

Toni sighed. “Lex and I were seeing each other during the time he was also dating you. I should have been suspicious when he tossed you that rose.” She shook her head. “That’s how gentlemen used to choose companions at the club, by offering her a rose. If she accepted it, then it meant she accepted everything that came with it. If she didn’t, then the man would have to try elsewhere. It was Lex’s way of telling me that we were over and he had moved on to his next conquest.” Toni scoffed at herself.

Lois thought about that rose she had caught from Lex at the end of her song. Had he really expected her to bed him after that? Was that the real reason he had stopped by her apartment after her shift at the club?

“And I had thought he had done it so others in the club wouldn’t know we were lovers,” Toni finished.

Lois raised a brow. “Are you saying that you and Lex… had progressed past dinners?” This really shouldn’t shock Lois. Had she actually thought Lex had been as celibate as her during their relationship?

A sly grin crept to the corner of Toni’s mouth. “As you know, there was nobody quite like Lex between the sheets.”

Lois’ jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe that, at least not in a positive way. Lex had been so reserved, so cold. She then informed Ms. Taylor, “Lex and I hadn’t… we weren’t intimate.”

“But you and Lex dated for months,” Toni remarked.

“Yes,” Lois almost whispered as she looked away.

“Why would he bother with you?” Toni inquired. “What were you to him? You weren’t rich. You didn’t have anything he wanted.”

Lois pressed her lips together at the offending statement, refusing to dignify it with a response.

Toni studied Lois. “Good God! By not giving yourself to him, you presented a challenge to Lex, a puzzle for him to solve.”

“Excuse me!” Lois snapped. “Lex loved me!”

Toni raised a brow. “Lex Luthor didn’t know the meaning of the word. He used someone until he had gotten from them what he needed and then he discarded her like trash.”

“Really?” Lois took in this information with a grain of salt.

“Really. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Miranda – you know that perfumer who created that Revenge drug – once or twice in here before she got killed. She had a similar experience with Lex.”

Lois gulped as Toni chuckled. She hadn’t heard of Miranda’s death and then made a mental note to look it up in the archives.

“You presented Lex with a problem: your goodness, your naiveté, your quest for justice, your dogged search for the truth. Could he form public opinion through you? Well, obviously he could. Could he make you turn against everything you held most dear? Would you hand your very soul to the devil without knowing it? Pity he died before ever finding out.”

“Lex was not the devil,” Lois said, getting more uncomfortable by the minute in this room as if the walls were closing in on her. “He never would have treated me like that!”

Toni sighed. “Why not? That’s how he treated me. That’s what he did to Miranda. And I bet an extra year in this hell hole that we weren’t the only ones.”

The guard entered the room. “Time.”

Lois grabbed her recorder and switched it off. “One last question,” she said, standing up. “Do you know a Charlie King or a Clark Kent?”

Toni shook her head and shrugged as the guard led her back to the door. “Should I have? Did they work for Lex?”

“No,” Lois replied, closing her notebook. “He doesn’t exist. Neither of them.”

***

“Lois!” Perry called as she returned to her desk after a detour to the Fudge Castle. “Honey, did you hear?”

Lois stared at the Chief with confusion. Hear what? Had she missed some big event because of her Toni Taylor interview. Looking at Perry with interest, she waited.

“Bill Church, Jr. They set him free on a technicality after that bastard kidnapped me!” Perry growled.

Oh, that. With a resigned sigh, Lois nodded. Old news. “I heard.”

Her boss raised a curious eye brow at her reaction… or lack thereof. “Doesn’t it make you want to do an exposé of the D.A.’s office?” he suggested lightly.

“Not really,” she replied honestly.

“Not really? Then pray-tell what are you working on that holds more interest to you?”

Lois continued to stare at Perry, unsure if she wanted to share her latest findings about Lex yet or if she wanted to wait for more concrete facts.

She remembered Toni’s accusations of Lex.

Lois felt as dead as the man who literally died in her arms. A man, whom, until recently, she thought she had known, but now knew had been using her. What was more humiliating was that others had known about Lex’s character and hadn’t told her. She lowered her gaze from the Chief without a word. Of course those who knew weren’t the type of people to confide in her in the first place.

“Lois, honey? Is something bothering you?” Perry asked softly. There was no fooling her boss.

Actually, after her interview she felt more raw than her usual hard-boiled self. Lois stood up without another word and brought her tape recorder into his office. She rewound the tape, hit play, and left as Perry re-entered. “I’m going to find Bobby,” she informed her boss.

If anyone knew Lex’s true nature, it was Bobby Bigmouth.

***

Lois stopped at her favorite Italian restaurant and bought a four-course meal. Then she sat in her Cherokee, waiting for Bobby to appear. She had left messages at all of his message spots. The food smelled heavy as her earlier ice cream sundae, with the works, upset her uneasy stomach. She needed to feed Bobby well if she wanted him to tell her all that she wanted to know.

Was this why Superman had come into her dreams? To show her the truth that she had been blind to before? Was Superman her subconscious’s way of telling her to review all of her interactions with Lex? That made sense. Her subconscious wanted to make sure she didn’t miss the information as it reviewed it, so it had concocted this superhero fantasy it knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. What she didn’t understand was how Clark had become tied into these memories.

“Lane! An appetizer and tiramisu? What have I done to deserve the royal treatment?” Bobby asked from her backseat, a cannelloni already dangling from his lips. As usual the man had entered her car without a sound.

“Bobby!” Lois gasped and then waited a moment for her voice to catch up. “Have I thanked you recently for not being evil?” Her hand clutched at her chest to calm her heart.

Bobby’s eyes closed suspiciously as he folded the food bags within his arms. “You called me to thank me?”

“No.”

He relaxed a bit. “Do you need more information on that boyfriend of yours? Dan?”

Dan? Lois thought blankly, having no idea about whom Bobby spoke for a moment. Oh, Scardino. Between Clark and Lex she had forgotten all about him. She placed a fake smile on her face. “No. As I’m sure you already know, Dan and I are fine.”

“I don’t doubt it. I heard the man finally kissed ya. About time,” Bobby replied, less nervous about her taking back the food she had brought him.

“Is anything that happens within my apartment walls actually private?” she snapped.

His lips curved upwards. “He also kissed you at the restaurant last night, Lois,” Bobby reminded her.

Oh, right. Lois decided to switch the channel back to the one she wanted to focus on. “What have you heard about Lex Luthor’s involvement with Max Menken, the Toasters, and Toni Taylor?”

Bobby took a forkful of pasta and studied her as he chewed – unusually silent. When he swallowed, he finally spoke, “A four-course meal for information over a year old about a dead man?” He sounded suspicious again.

“I hoped the more food, the more you would tell me,” she admitted. “I need to know.”

“There were rumors around the time that Luthor was shot that the Boss had also been killed,” he told her.

“The Boss? Bobby, why didn’t you tell me?” she inquired.

Bobby shrugged. “You never asked.”

Lois ground her teeth. “Tell me everything you know, Bobby. Did Lex lie to me?”

“Yes,” he stated baldly.

“Did Lex date other women while we were together?”

He stopped eating and gazed sadly at her. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you warn me? Why did you let him play me for a fool?” she sputtered, in disbelief. She had always thought of Bobby as… well, maybe not a friend, but at least a friendly source.

“You didn’t want to believe it.” He was digging back into his pasta.

“If you say ‘love is blind’ I’m taking the tiramisu back,” she warned him.

“No, not love. Ego. Your pride wouldn’t listen,” Bobby clarified. “You wanted to believe the line he fed you, Lane, because his attention made you feel important. If it’s any consolation that towards the end, his last few months, he had cut most of his ties with the other women.”

“He had?” Lois felt a little flicker of hope that she hadn’t been a complete sucker. That Lex had at least been honest at the end about loving her. Then she caught the disclaimer and her heart sunk. “Most?”

“Well, there was Mrs. Cox and the Japanese twins.” Bobby shrugged. “Perhaps they had been just employees…”

“Japanese twins?” Lois echoed.

“Yes, they were his live-in concubines. I heard he had them sterilized when he had hired them, so he could have his way with them whenever, wherever, and however he liked.” At her expression which must have been full of revulsion, he clarified, “Mind you, they were just rumors.”

“Can you get me their names?” she asked, her jaw muscle twitching. It was another lead. She had no desire to ever speak to Mrs. Cox. She had always hated the woman. She believed the feeling had been mutual.

“I’ll ask around,” Bobby replied hesitantly. “They didn’t speak English.”

Lois glowered at him, not wishing to be discouraged and also not wishing to discuss her deceased boyfriend’s sexual habits. Thank God she had decided to wait with Lex. “Did he have anything to do with Max Menken’s boxers and my dad?”

“Gee, Lane, I thought it was well known that Menken wore briefs,” Bobby retorted with a chuckle. Then he held up his hands in self defense. “Sorry, it was too tempting. I had heard of the two of them meeting on several occasions. Apparently Menken was the middleman between Luthor Weapons Division and …” He paused as he gazed at Lois with sadness. “A doctor who was working on Luthor’s super soldier project.”

Lois forced the bile in her throat back down into her stomach. So, Luthor was behind the cyborgs her father was working on for Menken. The boxers must have been the test study. Was that why Luthor offered to go before the Medical Ethics Board on behalf of her father? He didn’t want to lose his Dr. Frankenstein? She was glad her father had turned state’s evidence at the end and ended up in Witness Protection. She only hoped it was enough to save him from Luthor’s grasp. Those cyborg boxers were still at large.

She realized that Bobby was oddly silent as he watched her. “You okay, Lane?” he asked between bites.

Lois waved away his concerns. “Tell me everything. Tell me about the women Lex used to get what he wanted.” She wanted to hear about everyone, but she would start with the painful stuff first.

A half smile appeared at the corner of Bobby’s mouth. “This is starting to sound like more than a one meal meeting.”

Terrific.

***

Antoinette Baines. Miranda. Toni Taylor. Lena Harrison. Mrs. Cox. The Japanese concubines. Gretchen Kelly, MD. Diana Stride. Claudette Wilder. Amber Lake. Lisa Rockford. Lois Lane. And those were just some of the women Lex Luthor’s name had been linked with during the few years before his death. The ones that Lois had recognized. Lex had also screwed over lots of men. Lois didn’t think quite as literally, but who knew? This Lex Luthor was complete stranger to her, so perhaps.

Dr. Kelly had been Lex’s personal physician. Lois had met her after Lex’s death. Odd woman. Now the strange possessiveness the woman seemed to have over Lex’s body made more sense, if she had known him intimately. Lois shivered in disgust. She had always wondered if the good lady doctor had been involved when Lex’s body went missing from the morgue. Not enough interest to check it out, just a stray thought. It still wasn’t something she really wanted to check into.

Lois finally opened the last lock on her front door and went inside her apartment. She closed and locked the door before heading directly into her bedroom. She pulled out that pink nightgown and robe set and threw them into the trash. Even though she had never worn them with Lex – thanking God every minute of every day for that! – she doubted she would ever be able to put them on again without vomiting.

She peeled off her clothes and stepped into a shower as hot as she could make it without scalding her skin. Lois scrubbed her entire body until her skin hurt. After drying her hair and getting dressed into sweats she had bought after Lex’s death, she went through all of her clothes, stacking them into three piles: worn while with Lex, never wore around Lex, and couldn’t remember. The first and third piles were going to be washed or dry-cleaned again. The dress she had been wearing when they had first kissed would die a fiery death. Luckily, her clothes from hostage night at the Daily Planet were “evidence” and already out of her reach. She hoped they had met a similar end.

Lois had hired professional cleaners – or actually Perry had hired them for her – after Jimmy had attacked her, so her apartment surfaces had already been industrially cleaned. She now removed fabric cleaner from under her kitchen sink and went to scrub down every seat, sofa, and chair Lex had touched in her apartment while they had dated. She knew she was being paranoid, especially after all this time, but she knew she wouldn’t feel comfortable in her apartment until it was done.

She had done the same thing to her rug after the pheromone incident. Then she had rearranged her furniture to remind her less of that night.

When every piece of fabric seating had been cleaned, Lois went into the bathroom and threw up the bile that had been sitting in her stomach all day. She couldn’t hold it in any longer.

She wished that Clark were there to hold her, take care of her, to tell her it was over, and her life could only get better now that Lex was gone. Only Clark wasn’t there. He’d never be there.

Lois leaned against the wall next to her toilet, pulled her knees to her chest, and let out the tears she had been holding in since she had come across that note this morning. She missed Clark with every fiber of her being, which was crazy because she had never actually met Clark. He didn’t exist. How was her life supposed to get better without him?

*** End of Part 8 ***

Part 9

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