In a Better Place, part 7...
***
“I won’t leave you,” he promised.
The tension melted from her. She was far more relaxed by those words than it made sense to be.
So, she probably should have clarified things for him, for them both, just so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Instead she turned her palm over and threaded her fingers through his.
“Good,” he whispered. “Sleep well, Lois.”
And she did. Only dimly registering the warm body which eventually came to lie beside her, or the hand that never left hers. Or that she slept far longer than the time she had allotted herself.
And now...
***
The leopard print lampshade was casting a spotted-glow over the darkened room when she woke.
Lois eased herself up, noticing the arm which was draped over her, and the fact that its owner was sleeping soundly a few inches off the mattress.
She rolled to one side, carefully disentangling from him, and as she had hoped, he slept on.
She knew there were no wires holding him up. She knew that. She had flown with him all night. And before that, he had flown the shuttle into orbit. So, there wasn’t any reason to run her hands underneath him and around while she crouched on the bed. None whatsoever. It was just that she was an investigative reporter, and investigating was what she did.
Her hands hit nothing but air. Just as she knew they would.
Eyeing him closely for any sign he’d caught her testing him, Lois scrambled from the bed. She knew he had to be exhausted. He hadn’t slept since they had arrived. So... that would make it two hundred years and three days since his last nap.
He looked pretty good, considering.
Lois turned deliberately away. Never mind what he looked like. That wasn’t the pressing issue just now.
Of their own accord, though, her eyes tracked back to where he was, floating just above the pillow. He hadn’t left her side. She knew that, despite how deeply she had slept. And she couldn’t remember a time when sleep had been more welcome, when she had needed the reprieve from reality more.
Reality.
Lois snorted and bit back a hollow laugh. She walked a slow circle around the room, taking stock. Reality was many things. But it wasn’t this. It wasn’t a man who slept over a bed. A bed that was borrowed from a props department- stowed away in an attic which was built over a museum dedicated to...
Lois pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. No more flinching, no more pretending otherwise. The museum was dedicated to them.
She wished there was another way to think of it. But if there was, it eluded her. The evidence was piling up. Their trip around the world last night, what they’d seen, what had been clear to her from high up, even without the benefits of x-ray vision...
Add to that the Happily Ever After room, then the room with the cradle she hadn’t been able to force herself to walk all the way into...
Their pasts.
Their future?
Again she was drawn back to the man over the bed, despite her every intention not to disturb him, to let him sleep as long as possible. Because she knew as soon as he woke up, Clark would want to see everything. All of it. The rooms they hadn’t explored yet, depicting the children they hadn’t had, the family tree she had only glanced at briefly, blanching when she’d seen her name and face at the very top, connected to his by a strong, straight line, branching out and downwards and out some more, generation upon generation of smiling Lane-Kents. Some with his eyes, some with hers. Some with the tilt of his head, the jut of her chin and Lucy’s, too.
Lois swallowed hard and stopped her pacing.
Was it any wonder she felt a little crazy? If not one hundred percent crazy?
She tiptoed to the door and swung it open. At some point Clark had put the hinges back on and oiled the squeak.
She listened closely, staring intently into the darkness below. The building seemed empty, silent. Closed for the evening. They had wasted an entire day, then. Not that it would have made that much of a difference. But instead of doing something, anything, they had just slept. Together.
She knew they had needed it, both of them. Still, it went against the grain. Against who she was... or who she thought she was.
God, it was confusing.
Who was she? Plucky, romantic heroine destined to love and marry Superman, have his kids, be immortalized in tacky glory, in a wedding veil with a bow on it?
Behind her, Clark mumbled something and rolled over.
Lois watched, fascinated, as he did so without falling back to the mattress, held up by a cushion of invisible springs.
She almost wished he would wake up now, and distract her from the conclusions she was drawing. Ridiculous, impossible, beyond reason, conclusions that, nevertheless, were clicking into place all too easily. As if all the parts fit and fit perfectly.
She was Lois Lane. Reporter. Respected and slightly feared Mad Dog Lane. She had friends and a family she might sometimes despair of, but they were hers and she loved them- even if it was with an exasperated sort of love. A disappointed sort of love. Her work was her life. Her drive was to set things right. To see justice done and the truth uncovered.
And she imagined many things for herself in that regard-success, accolades, an eventual Pulitzer...
She had her own secret hopes, as well. The fantasy she would never speak aloud. Maybe you would call it finding true love. Not a hearts and flowers sort of love, but a real love, with someone who knew her and supported her. Would never leave her, never judge her and find her wanting.
That didn’t make her unique; everyone wished for that. It was human nature.
But what if... she had gotten what she wished for? Everything she had ever wished for?
On reluctant feet, Lois moved back to Clark’s side, as if he was pulling her into his orbit. It was a fanciful thought, and more suited to the secret romance novel she had on her hard drive, but she knew part of her was seeking reassurance, seeking his closeness which, for whatever reason, simply made her feel better.
Because they belonged together?
Or because they were in this situation together and had no one else to rely on? A foxhole bond. It could be that. That would explain why she couldn’t seem to move too far away, to actually go down the dark stairs, maybe find something to eat.
She had barely had the idea when her stomach concurred loudly. She jumped, startled and flustered, when his eyes opened and found her there, standing beside him, nearly nose to nose.
“Hey,” he croaked softly, his sleepy features somewhat puzzled. “Did you hear thunder?”
“Funny,” she snapped. Or she tried, she was just a little too glad to have the company.
“Time for lunch?” he asked with a yawn, stretching his arms over his head.
“More like dinner.” Lois backed up a pace and tried not to follow the line of muscles moving under his t-shirt too closely. No reason to. He was strong and well built, yes. But so were lots of people, so gawking would be... adolescent and silly.
He caught her staring and froze. She watched as the color crept up his neck and flushed his cheeks. “I’m floating, aren’t I?” he said ruefully.
She nodded.
“And that’s... kind of... weird, isn’t it?” He landed with a slight bounce on the mattress and sat up, his hands messing his hair adorably.
Oh god. Lois drew in a slow, steady breath. Adorably? That word wasn’t even in her vocabulary. Never in her life ever, not even when confronted with the babies of her friends or those little fluff balls at a dog show had she ever, ever used the word adorable. Ever!
“I... I... do that in my sleep, sometimes,” Clark was stammering, obviously misreading her silence. “I know it looks strange. I didn’t mean to... to... well... make you uncomfortable.”
His eyes were everywhere but on her, and she watched as her hands- entirely on their own, without her permission- moved to his hair, smoothing it back down from the spikes he was working it into.
It was soft, lush under her fingertips, and she sank her fingers into it, turning off the part of her brain demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing. “It wasn’t that,” she said, and she almost didn’t recognize the voice as hers, the tenderness in it so unfamiliar. “Don’t worry. On the weirdness scale...” She waited until his eyes came up. And then she nearly forgot what she was going to say at the intent, surprised look in them. “...given time-travel, museums, hair bows...” He crinkled his brow at that, a smile growing in his gaze. “...a man who floats in his sleep doesn’t even register.”
He nodded and didn’t speak. She moved her hands from his hair and stepped away before she did anything else. Or thought anything else. Or started to act like... anyone else.
“I’m so confused,” she blurted.
“How could you not be?” he said in a low voice.
“Right.”
“Want to go find some food?” He had risen and was standing a few paces behind her. She liked how he did that. He didn’t crowd her. She never had to tell him she needed space, he just seemed to know when to back off.
“Sounds good,” she said, moving swiftly back towards the stairs.
“And...” At his hesitation, she turned back towards him. “I’m going to want to take a look around the rest of the museum. See... some things.” There was apology in his tone, but no room to negotiate.
“I figured,” she said with a shrug she tried to make look casual. “I’ll go with you.”
He moved towards her, taking her hand. “It’s dark. I’ll float us down.”
At her nod, he pulled her into his arms, or he didn’t have to pull, not really. At his first gentle tug, she went to him. Into his warmth, his solidness, his goodness. The one thing that made sense, that soothed her, the eye in the storm.
She clung to him, knowing all the reasons she shouldn’t. Knowing what it would seem like to him; how any man would interpret a woman who wrapped herself around him and practically tried to push herself under his skin.
He just rubbed soothing circles on her back, though, murmuring assurances and moving them down the stairs slowly. “We’re going to be ok,” he repeated over and over.
For some reason, in the moment, she believed him completely.
***
Silas stood outside of the kitchen doors listening closely and grinding his teeth. They were back. And arguing over how the stove worked, of all things.
“It isn’t that I never cook, because I have once or twice.” The woman was laughing. “But you offered. You said omelets would be easy.”
“Easy if I could figure out how this thing works.”
“It can’t be that different,” the voice Silas knew as Lorraine’s answered.
"You do know you're enjoying this a little too much, don't you?"
"You have to be smarter than the stove, Superman."
“And we’re back to that,” the man returned dryly. “And again I ask you, how much cooking experience do you have in the current century?”
What were they doing here? Silas wondered for the tenth time in the last ten minutes. Besides the obvious, which was, apparently, making dinner. And that was puzzling enough on its own.
“...can use my vision, but it won’t taste as good.”
“Use your...? Oh! Cool! Do it. I want to watch.”
Silas contemplated his options. Confront them? Demand to know why they were in the museum galley at...he stared at his chronometer in the dark....ten p.m. Once again, just as last night, well past closing.
Or maybe call the family on the zip-com? Call Nate away from whatever he was doing tonight. Probably one of his kids’s games or something. It was hard to keep up. And what would he say, exactly. “Nate, can you come help me get rid of the look a-like couple cooking eggs in the kitchen?”
Silas straightened, squaring his shoulders. He didn’t need his big brother. He would handle this himself. He wasn’t afraid of them. He just wasn’t used to people who broke the rules. Who entered the museum when the sign out front clearly asked for no unauthorized visits. They had never had to do more than that. People saw the sign and obeyed it.
That was the way things worked.
Though, evidently, not for Lorraine and the guy with her.
“See? I overcook them that way. Kind of rubbery.”
“Better than I can do with a stove I actually understand and cookbook with the directions written for toddlers, believe me.”
They were settling down to eat. That gave him a bit of time to prepare how he was going to intervene, what he was going to say when he pushed open the doors, which he was going to do any minute now, and behind which he was definitely *not* hiding.
What would he do if, God forbid, they refused to go? Call the Justice League? Silas frowned. That seemed like overkill for a couple of trespassers who were just hungry, maybe.
He could hire them. Offer them a job. Maybe they were hard up and new in town. Possibly from a far off place, one of the few that didn’t adopt Utopian ideals? He’d heard there might be some of those...
If that was the case, then maybe they just didn’t realize there were programs in place to take care of people. To offer jobs and placements and food. In a sharing community no one had to go without. They just needed to learn how to give and take.
Yes, Silas nodded feeling better. That was it. They didn’t know how things worked. And they needed a little help. And helping Lorraine would be...
He skipped over the thought ‘his pleasure,’ but it would be something he would be really glad to do. And with her amazing resemblance to Lois Lane, he could put her to work, and maybe get to know her a little better.
Spend more time downstairs and less in his office...
Take her home to meet his parents...
The clink of flatware against dishes pulled him from his daydream.
“What do you think this drink is?”
“No idea. It’s good, though.”
“Fizzy.”
“Think they still have Coke? Pepsi?”
“We should check that out.”
Lorraine laughed. “Yeah, of all the things we need to be doing, that’ll be our top priority, finding out if we can buy a Diet Coke here.”
“Or if diet is even still a concept.”
They didn’t seem to be in any sort of hurry to leave. Silas pondered a quick trip to his office to bring down the necessary employee forms. His family had written them out, rather painstakingly, over the years. Maybe he could bring them in, sit down and go over the rules, and ask them to sign. Act like this was nothing out of the ordinary. Just a job interview conducted past hours in the kitchen...
He groaned softly. Was that as dumb as it sounded?
He heard a chair scrape back. Belatedly, just before the door bumped against him, he realized that Lorraine and her friend had stopped talking.
He blinked into the bright light, which now poured from the kitchen through the wide open doors, and at the man standing there, a small smile on his face. “Silas,” he greeted him somewhat sheepishly, “we meet again. You...uh... hungry?”
Lorraine was standing beside the counter, fork poised in mid-air, mouth open. “You work late, don’t you?” she said matter-of-factly.
“Good work ethic,” the man behind him said, clapping him lightly on the back and steering him inside. “I’m really sorry about this, Silas. I know we’re intruding. Um... can I get you anything?”
Silas rallied fairly quickly, if he did say so himself. “An explanation would be nice.”
The two of them shared a long, long look which Silas was reluctant to interpret. It just seemed like... trouble.
“We do need an ally,” the man said finally.
Lorraine looked over at him doubtfully. “He’s a kid.”
Silas felt the heat he knew was on his face. “I’m twenty!” Though actually, when he said it like that, he didn’t help his case too much.
“He’s a Lane-Kent,” the man countered, moving back to his place and tucking into his food. “I’d put my money on him.”
“You don’t have any money,” Lorraine returned dryly.
The man only grinned and went back to chewing.
“I can help you,” Silas blurted, latching onto what he could understand. “With the money thing. If you’d both like a job, the museum can use you.” He studied Lorraine’s friend more closely now. In the well-lit room, he could see, for the first time, that while the man was obviously not Superman material, his resemblance to Clark Kent was more than passable. It wasn’t bad, actually. “I know you don’t really work here. That you’re imposters...”
“Imposters of imposters,” Lorraine said with a sigh.
“...but I can sign you on, and get you some funds to tide you over until payday,” he finished firmly.
“Do you do that for all trespassers?” asked Lorraine, smiling.
“You’re my first,” he admitted.
“Thanks, Silas,” said the man quietly. “That’s nice of you. But we’re looking for help of another kind.”
“We don’t know if we can trust him,” Lorraine hissed, and Silas tried hard not to be offended. They were the rule breakers here, not him.
“We have to trust someone, don’t we?”
“Are you in trouble?” The question popped out of his mouth before he even planned to voice it. “I mean... do you need some kind of... help? You’re new here, maybe? Haven’t figured out how Utopia works?”
The looks they were shooting back and forth between them were making him really uncomfortable.
“We are new here,” the man said at last. “And Utopia is... unfamiliar.”
“In a bizarre, hippy commune sort of way,” Lorraine filled-in, still eating.
“Hippy commune?” Silas repeated, not familiar with the term. He watched as the two of them shared another one of those measuring, silent glances. He did his very best not to squirm. Or to run.
Lorraine sighed heavily and put her fork down. “We need help finding a man named Tempus.”
Silas coughed in his surprise. “I beg your pardon? You want my help finding... the Time-Traveler?”
The man with Lorraine moved to his feet quickly. “You know Tempus?”
“What do you take me for?” Silas answered scornfully, backing away. “Some kind of... idiot? You people keep coming into my family’s museum night after night, doing the strangest things, and still, I offer you a job, I offer to help you... and in return you ask me about... Tempus? You *are* crazy.”
“But you do know who he is and that he time-travels?” Lorraine persisted.
Silas laughed, loud and bitter. “Get out. Both of you. Right now. And if you come back, I *will* call the League and report you. They will be on the look out for you. And you will be deported. How’s that?”
He turned and headed for the doors. “I’m going up to my office. I’ll give you five minutes to clean up. And believe me, I will know if you don’t leave. I’ll hear you-”
He stopped abruptly, biting his tongue. Never mind, they were just a couple of weirdoes. They wouldn’t read too much into that.
“Is that how you’ve found us the last two nights?” the man’s voice reached him. “You heard us?”
Silas didn’t stop walking. “Five minutes,” he repeated. “And I’m not bluffing about the League. My uncle and grandmother are pretty high-up. I shout and they answer.”
“What do you think the League is?” he heard Lorraine ask in a tone he felt was far too relaxed for the circumstances.
“Police?” the man murmured thoughtfully. “Governing body? Something we aren’t supposed to mess with.”
“Maybe they can help us with Tempus,” she said. “They must know him. We should have asked sooner.”
“Let’s cut ourselves a break. We were still putting two and two together. Still are.”
Silas stopped, turning to face them. He was outside the stairwell doors; they had followed him into the lobby. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he ground out, surprising them, surprising himself, as well. He didn’t think he had it in him. “Why are you still here? You’ve had your joke, now go!” He pointed to the lobby doors and took to the stairs at a jog.
“We need to find out what he knows,” he heard from behind him.
“The name sort of touched a nerve with him, didn’t it?”
“To put it mildly,” Lorraine rejoined, her voice echoing in the stairwell as she climbed.
Silas hurried, putting on a bit of speed, not much, just quick enough to get out of their sight. He was trapped in the museum with a couple of crazies. He would call Nate. Call him and tell him what was going on, see if he had any advice on what to do next. Despite his words, the League wouldn’t really jump when summoned. They were reserved for the big stuff. And really, they operated mostly in name only now, ceremonially more than anything. Founder’s Day parades, commemorative anniversary dates, and the like.
“Silas,” the man called from behind him. Close behind him. “We just need a few minutes of your time. Hear us out and we’ll go.”
“You will?” Silas stopped climbing and turned around. “You’ll go... if I just listen to you?” He knew that sounded a little desperate, but he pretty much was. Desperate to be rid of them.
“We will.”
They stood a half a flight below him on the landing. Not even winded. Their eyes imploring him.
Silas sighed. He had been really bored lately. Wishing for something, almost anything, to happen. And now that it was, he was running from it. Or rather, it was chasing him.
“Ok,” he said. “Let’s go to my office. You tell me what you’re doing here. Why I keep finding you. And I’ll show you everything I’ve got on the Time-Traveler.”
“You’ll...” Lorraine’s mouth dropped open, the man beside her gasped and tightened his arm around her.
“You’ve got information on Tempus?”
“Sure,” Silas said, humoring them, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “You get what you want. I get what I want. Deal?”
He was pleased by their quick, silent nods of consent. Maybe he was finally getting the upper hand here. He crooked his head towards the fifth floor hallway and his office. “Follow me.”
***
tbc
