In a Better Place, from part 5...
***
“Married.”
“Could you say something else? Just one other little thing else? Just so I know you’re still in there and not just a sitting corpse?”
That, at last, earned her a blink. And then a half smile, which slowly turned into a full smile, which eventually climbed into his eyes and lit every corner of his face. “How about... wow?” he asked.
“Wow is... fine.” She hadn’t meant for that to come out so high and squeaky. “I think I’ll sit now.”
And she did, without ceremony, precisely where she had been standing.
And now...
***
Silas Kent moved with a show of reluctance from his date’s car to the doors of the Superman Museum. “Sorry about this,” he said again to the beautiful woman he had just rushed through dinner. “I have some paperwork. I just remembered.”
She raised one eyebrow and floored it. Or at least that would have been the effect if the city’s no speeding technology hadn’t been activated. And it always was, preventing rash acts, such as hers, from ever occurring. Still, it couldn’t stop her from thinking of speeding away, which she most definitely was.
Silas watched until she was out of sight. He hadn’t exactly lied. He did have paperwork. He always did. It just wasn’t quite as urgent as he had made it out to be. How could it be? Standing guard over the family legacy was a pretty dull job. Interesting only if you liked relics. And Silas didn’t.
He was doing what was expected of him, though. A part of what went into being a member of the family. A two year commitment to be on the premises during operating hours. And in the last year to more closely supervise the hiring of look-alikes. Most especially after the last Lois Lane debacle. For some reason the Museum had taken to hiring women who, while they resembled her, didn’t seem to understand there was a pretty tight code of behavior expected from those impersonating her.
Lois Lane did not sit on the laps of visiting dignitaries, no matter how handsome or how single. She didn’t sing and do Wanda Detroit on request; the family was most adamant about that. And any jokes that she was not actually Lois but Lois’s clone were strictly forbidden.
Some things, no matter how much time had passed, were never funny.
Silas sighed and moved into the lobby. The clone incident was what had gotten him dragged away from his studies and into the drab office on the fifth floor. His mom and dad had insisted he put off his senior year and take his turn. His brother and sister had made their sacrifice. His cousins, as well. So, he was needed. It was up to him to be a constant reminder to those who ran the day to day operation here that the life stories of Lois Lane and Clark Kent weren’t merely for entertainment and cheap thrills.
Silas knew that first hand. He was most definitely not entertained. And never, ever thrilled.
He steered around the yellow elevators. After the first six months of being nauseated by the color, he had started taking the stairs. He would take care of the few outstanding items on his desk, maybe call his sister and thank her for the set up and beg her not to send him on any blind dates ever again.
Elise would be concerned and disappointed. There hadn’t been anything wrong with Nicole, there just hadn’t been enough right to spend the rest of the evening forcing conversation. Fending off questions about what his family gatherings were like, and if it was true all the superpowers had been diluted over the last six generations and there were no new super members among the younger family members, if all the genetic throwbacks were really gone.
Silas was just outside the stairwell when he heard voices. He stopped, surprised. A glance at his chronometer told him it was well past operating hours.
‘...the phrase ‘Wild Horses couldn’t drag me’ mean anything to you?’
‘Don’t want you... seeing it...just now, in... frame of mind.’
‘But you saw it! You better believe I’m...’
A man and a woman, from what it sounded like. And by their tones, definitely arguing.
Silas hastened his steps, a smile playing on his lips. At least this was new. And maybe he could tell it to his sister and distract her from her inquisition over Nicole.
He jogged up and swung out onto the second floor ready to demand an explanation from the trespassers, only to find the hall empty and the lights off. He moved quickly, opening and closing doors. “Hello?”
A voice answered, but it wasn’t directed at him.
“...besides, don’t even know... it’s real.”
‘You said you thought... future... our future...’
Silas stopped and listened harder. They were on the third floor, not the second. Evidently having some sort of lover’s spat. They had picked a strange place for it. The Happily Ever After room.
Though come to think of it, he could see how a couple might argue there. Hard to compete with the perfect, complete love of legendary soul mates.
Maybe that was why he rarely dated?
Silas pushed that thought from his head as fast as it entered. That was his mom talking.
He went back into the stairwell, realizing now that he had heard them all the way from the lobby. Better than average hearing was his claim to the super gene pool. Other than embarrassing him from time and time, and leaving him with almost no illusions as to what people really thought of him, it was an ability that had never really come in handy. He’d never bothered to mention it. Those in the extended family who were still gifted were rarer and rarer these days. And so often it was expected they would seek leadership positions on the Family Council or serve in the Justice League. Neither of which Silas was interested in. And besides, it was just hearing, so it wasn’t as if he was shirking his duties.
He was here, wasn’t he? Back to fill out more forms and now to run two disgruntled lovers off the premises.
‘...going to have to go through me...’
The man’s laughter floated down the stairs. ‘Not really going to be a problem, is it?’
Silas was on the landing when he wondered if he should call out a warning and let them know he was coming. He didn’t want to walk in on anything too intimate. But he had no sooner opened his mouth when he heard an urgent, whispered, “Someone’s here.”
No need then. He must have been noisier than he’d thought. “Hello?” he called once more. “Visiting hours are over. We open again at nine a.m.”
As he opened the door, a gust of air blew the one lock of hair he could never seem to control off his forehead before dropping it back down again.
The place was empty.
“Ghosts,” his brother Nate would have said in an eerie voice, laughing. “Either that or you’re losing it, Silas.”
But it hadn’t been ghosts. Tendrils of smoke drifted lazily from newly extinguished candles. Someone had just been here.
“Oh, come on.” Silas raised his voice. “I know you’re here. And frankly, I don’t want to have to find you.”
There was no answer, not that he had really expected one.
“There is only one way in and out from this floor, you know,” he offered conversationally. “It was designed like this so you have to see the Lane-Kent wedding before moving up to the fourth floor and seeing their children’s photos. No putting the cart before the horse, as my grandmother would say.”
That did earn him a response, though if it hadn’t been for his enhanced hearing he might have missed it. A startled gasp from the man. A very feminine... moan?
Silas blushed hotly. What were they doing? And please God, don’t let it be what it sounded like.
‘Forget to mention that?’ a hissed voice sounded from... overhead?
Silas jerked his gaze up. Nothing. An empty ceiling. And of course it was. What had he been expecting? Arguing ghosts?
‘You didn’t ask,’ snarled the woman’s voice.
Silas couldn’t keep the frustration from his own tone. “I can’t leave until you do, so give me a break, will you?” He pushed opened the door and hit the central switches. The lights came on and the display sprang into view. Having seen it a thousand times, he ignored it, stepping right through the illusion of being a member of the world’s most relieved wedding party, and searching for his own party-crashers. “I know you’re in here.”
He almost walked right into them. They were so close he couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t seen them until he was nearly on top of them. The man was looking at the wedding couple, the lights throwing his face half in shadow, but not enough to disguise his wide-eyed stare. The woman was standing in his embrace, her head on his chest and her eyes tightly closed.
“I told you,” she said mournfully. “I knew once you saw this it would be too weird.”
Silas cleared his throat loudly. Only the woman glanced his way. He took one look at her face and reconsidered the ghost scenario on the spot.
***
“I’ve heard about you. You’re the Lois who looks exactly like Lois.”
Clark felt Lois step out of his arms, heard her speak, introduce herself as Lorraine in a low voice to the employee who had caught them trespassing. He didn’t try to follow. Didn’t try to explain their presence or apologize.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t look enough. At her. And himself. His mom and dad, Perry and Jimmy...
Her dress. And that smile. For him.
He was holding her in the picture almost exactly as he had been minutes before, when he had grabbed her and headed inside, pressed her up against the ceiling in the dark to hide them.
Clark swallowed hard. Lois hadn’t wanted him to see this. She had fought him tooth and nail down eight flights of stairs. Barely stopping to take a breath, filling her arguments against them coming in here with everything but the kitchen sink.
And if he hadn’t heard the man’s footsteps on the stairs when he did, she no doubt would have taken up arguing the kitchen sink as a last resort.
Initially, he had assured her he wasn’t going to rush to judgment. He wasn’t going to come take a look and start making wild assumptions about them, about where they were, or when. None of that. He simply wanted the opportunity to see what she had seen. To be on the same page as she was. He would gladly take her through the Smallville exhibit. The only place he’d been today that she hadn’t. But for now, it was the HEA room or bust.
By the time they’d argued down three flights, she had shoved her way around him, attempted to block the stairs. He had thought it was funny. But she hadn’t; not when he’d merely floated over her and kept going.
The colorful cursing had started there. Threats on his life, his position as her junior partner at the Daily Planet, his father’s crops and his mother’s hats.
Still, he’d kept going. The closer they had gotten, the louder she had. And he knew, in a corner of his mind, she had a legitimate argument. A sound one. Seeing what she had, looking at it, might make their relationship even more awkward than it currently was. And they needed each other. Needed to be able to trust each other, to work together so they could find their way back to where they had come from.
He had agreed with that last. Of course they needed to trust each other, to be able to work together. But Lois had already seen it. And she had told him about it. So weren’t things weird enough already? How would his seeing it make it more so?
Clark stood there now, looking at a man who was him, only light years from him, wrapped around a woman who was her, only so much more her than he’d ever seen, and he knew... Lois had been right to try and stop him.
They were married.
Pictures could be doctored. Photos easily distorted. This whole effect could just be a work of smoke and mirrors, magic and pixie dust, whatever the late twenty-second century had to offer.
But it wasn’t. He knew it the same way he had known Krypton. Lois was his wife. Or... she would be. And nothing, not one thing he could ever remember, had ever felt better than this. It was all he could do to keep his feet on the ground, to keep the joy from his face, because if she saw it, it would send her into a blind panic.
When he had learned his parents’s names, been given the answers to all his questions about his origins, he had thought he had all the missing pieces.
But that had only been part of it. This was the other part of who he was.
Lois Lane’s... husband.
She hadn’t been kidding. Things were going to be so much more than weird.
***
“Stop staring!” Lois snapped for the third time. “This is Silas. He works here. He thinks you’re a brick wall.”
Clark finally turned. But when he did, it took everything in her not to scream at the way he looked at her. Almost as if he was seeing her for the first time. As if they’d never met. He ran his eyes over her in a way that was embarrassingly intimate. Did he even realize?
Probably not. He was dazed... dopey-looking.
“Hey!” She was past caring how she sounded to the stranger standing next to her. “Pay attention.”
“Sir,” Silas spoke in a low, soothing voice. “Can I get you something? A glass of water? A... chair?”
“N-no,” Clark said, proving that he could speak. “Sorry. I’m... fine. Just...”
Again his eyes trailed back to her. Lois steeled herself as they practically crawled all over her, seeking out the ‘Mrs’ part, probing for the hidden bride underneath, no doubt. Wasted effort, she could have told him. He wouldn’t find her.
“I told you so,” she spat. And she had. She had told him every way she knew how and some she had just made up on the spot. But the big, dumb ox had just kept coming, lumbering down the stairs like a... love-sick out of control... locomotive.
Lois drew a couple of deep breaths in and out. Screaming would not be good. Not good. Really, really not good.
Though she couldn’t think why not right now.
“You know...” She swung back towards Silas, catching him off-guard with a bright smile she hoped didn’t look too unhinged. “...I could use that glass of water. And a chair. With a cushion, please.”
“Uh.” He frowned a little. “Sure. Ok. But then I’m going to need to run you two off. Sorry about that. The family is funny about people being here unchaperoned.”
“The family?” Clark said, and Lois tightened her hands into fists and concentrated on not hitting him. They were already making quite the impression.
“Yes,” Silas said with an easy smile. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but this place is actually watched fairly closely, we don’t want it to... Well...” He voice trailed off and he rolled his eyes. “...cheapen the memory of our ancestors, I guess.”
He laughed a small laugh. “Sorry. You’re catching me on a bad night. Generally, I can pull that off a little better.”
“You’re... a member of the... family?” Clark said, taking a step closer to Silas, the dazed, dopey look coming right back.
“Can I get that water?” Lois interjected. “I’m just so, so thirsty! And that chair? My legs are cramped.”
Silas grinned. “You do a great impression, you know? A lot of people play her too sweet, and my grandmother swears she would hate that. I’ll be right back, Lorraine.”
As soon as the doors closed behind him, Lois grabbed Clark by his shirtfront and shook him. Or she tried. It was kind of difficult shaking a brick wall.
“Clark, come on. Let’s get out of here. He’s gone. You can just zip us away before he gets back.” She pulled his arms around her, and put her arms around his neck. The position he had used when he had floated them up to the ceiling earlier. “Come on,” she coached again, because he was still just standing there, though he held her closely to his chest. She tensed and waited for lift off, but instead his hands moved from around her waist, traced lightly up her spine, and settled in her hair, which she would swear he was... smelling.
She pushed away, shoving him and nearly hurting herself with the effort. He let her go immediately, a dark blush staining his cheeks. “I told you!” This time when her voice climbed the octaves towards hysteria, she didn’t rein it in. “And now you’re going to be... weirder than you already are, and that’s weird, Clark!”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I won’t... do that again.”
She approached him much more carefully. “Let’s just go.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to. Silas is coming back and he’s... family, Lois.”
“Clark, I swear to God-”
“I’ve never met a member of my family. Ever. I have no blood ties to this planet. Or I didn’t. Until just now.”
“Listen to me.” She moved towards him again, taking his face in her hands and bending his gaze to meet hers. She softened her voice when she saw the turmoil in his eyes, and worse than that, the hope blazing from them. “Listen, Clark. We’re getting sucked in. We’re forgetting Tempus. He has some sort of agenda, and I think it includes preying on our weaknesses. Manipulation, pure and simple. I’ve been thinking about it. The Lane Family wing takes every worst memory of mine and... memorializes them. And you- yesterday you didn’t know where you came from. And now, ta-da, you do. And this... here...”
“It’s real, Lois.” He whispered it, but the words slammed her in the chest just the same, filling her with something close to panic.
“No. No, Clark. It isn’t. You said you don’t have any family members, something I guess you’ve missed your entire life.” She waited for his nod, then continued. “So, isn’t it more than a little suspicious that this guy, Silas, waltzes in and announces he’s one of them?”
“The pictures of the children upstairs,” he said in a maddeningly calm voice. “You saw those?”
“Fakes. Just like these. Just like the whole place.”
“How many?” he said softly.
She blinked, confused. “How many... what?”
“Children.”
She didn’t want to meet his eyes, but she couldn’t look away. “I don’t know.” At his skeptical look, she added. “I didn’t go very far inside. I saw the sign over the door... and a bassinet with a... a... blue blanket with your...” She faltered. “S-thingy on it. And I ... ran.”
He nodded, moving his hands to cover hers, pulling them from his face and lacing their fingers together. “I know how crazy this is. Let’s just take a minute. Regroup.”
She shook her head. “We need to get out of here. I think this place is casting some sort of spell over us. It’s mind control, Clark. Think about it. We’ve been here a day and a half and we’ve hardly left the building. Haven’t tried to find Tempus. Haven’t done anything but wallow in our own personal issues. Whatever Tempus is trying to do, it’s working, don’t you see? That’s why we have to leave and leave right now.”
“Silas-” he said.
“-is in this up to his neck,” she returned.
“How can you be so sure?”
Lois tried to close herself off from the longing she heard in those words.
“Because.” It was hard to answer under his gaze. “Because I’m sometimes... lonely. I always have been. And you, too, right? So, what better way to tie us in knots than to introduce the idea that we’re bonded by this... fairy tale, all perfect love?”
“How would Tempus know you were lonely?” Clark asked gently. “I didn’t know that about you, Lois.”
“Tempus had my diary, remember? I don’t know how, but he obviously has it memorized.”
He took a deep breath and moved away. She saw the way his shoulders sagged and she knew she had won, though the victory felt hollow somehow.
“Besides that,” she said. “Did you get a load of that bow I’m wearing on my wedding veil? Seriously. A hair bow? In what universe would I wear such a thing? Can you really imagine?”
He turned and looked at their wedding picture. Their *doctored* wedding picture, she reminded herself. “I think it looks nice,” he offered.
“It’s hideous and so far out of character it may as well be a bright, neon sign flashing ‘Not Lois, Not Lois.’”
“I’ve never seen that look on my face, either,” he added, and she found herself admiring how detached he sounded now. Back to business. “There is definitely a too good to be true element to all this. But in the attic you sounded like you believed this. You asked if I... loved you. And when I said... what I said.... you told me you thought we were in the future.”
“That was... temporary insanity.”
“The mind control thing?” he asked, swinging around and looking at her closely.
“Exactly.”
They stood in the bright lights of the wedding party with the silence stringing out between them. Their mood a sharp contrast to the joyous expressions on the faces of their loved ones. Their fake loved ones.
“How could this not mess with our heads?” he said aloud. And she nodded. She knew to her bones exactly what he meant.
He cocked his head to the side, a pensive look coming over him. “Silas is coming back.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Maybe we should talk to him. Question him. We might get something from him.”
“I’m not up to it tonight,” she said forcefully, hoping he would believe her. She suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of him being hurt any more. “Please, let’s just-”
She didn’t have to complete the sentence; she was in his arms and out under the stars in a blur.
***
tbc on Tuesday! And thank you for hanging in!
