In a Better Place, from part 15...
***
Clark paused, considering. “Do you float in your sleep, Silas?”
“I... that’s... not the same as flying.”
“I figured it out when I was eighteen years old; it is the same. If you can float you can fly.”
He watched the words sink in, watched as their meaning found their way into Silas’s eyes and moved across his face as dawning comprehension. “But... if I can fly...”
“...you’re the new Superman.”
And now...
***
Madge heard the commotion in the hallway and jumped to her feet, beating Anna to the door by two paces. She threw it open to find a dirt-streaked Petal standing side by side with an even filthier Hank. Between them they were lugging a burlap bag just about big enough to hold...
“Tell me,” she said quickly. She didn’t even want to hope, didn’t even want the beginning of hope, if it was going to be squashed.
“Bones, Madge,” said Hank. And though she didn’t understand it, it was enough for her to know. The Tempus option was no more.
“Bones?” she repeated, shutting the door on a number of curious faces from offices both downstairs and above.
Madge had informed the elders of the latest developments, and while the news hadn't actually killed anyone, it hadn't stayed secret, either. Like a match to dry kindling it had spread through the building, and all day Madge had listened to the anxious voices of the gathering crowd outside her door. She couldn’t look at them now, couldn’t stand to. She knew it was cowardly, but that’s where she was.
Hank upended the bag in his hands and emptied its contents directly onto her desk. They hit the surface with a loud clatter.
Madge peered over her glasses, studying them. “Bones,” she said.
“Human,” Hank supplied, still in that dead tone. As if there were speaking of nothing more consequential than lousy weather. “A man’s. And since PDTS sent Tempus where there were no other humans...”
“That narrows down who the owner of this femur might be,” she finished mildly, tasting bitter defeat as she did so.
“Pretty much.”
“Well.” She pinched the bridge of her nose just under her glasses, exhaling slowly. “This is... a set-back.”
“You see? That’s exactly what I thought, standing there in that cave, seeing the signs of skirmish and half-digested human remains. ‘This is a set-back,’ I said to Petal. Didn’t I, Petal? Of all the bad luck-”
“Hank.” She quelled him with a look she had never used on him before, a voice rich with censure.
He stopped, clamping his jaws tight around the next words she knew wanted to come out.
“PDTS reports they may have underestimated the aggression of the natural predators,” said Petal into the charged silence.
Hank made a noise. Something between a curse and a laugh, but he said no more.
“This is just another closed avenue,” Madge said to them. “And, yes, we had high hopes for it, but it’s just one more...” She hesitated over the words ‘dead end.’ They came a touch too close to the literal truth. “...unusable option.”
She checked Hank for his reaction. And despite the rage glimmering right beneath the surface, he smiled at her... faintly. “Well put.”
She relaxed. She still had him. And as long as they stuck together...
“What’s our next move?” asked Petal, gamely playing along.
“Get the bones ID’ed,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Are you kidding me?” Hank exploded in exasperation. “Boss, the world is ending. For all intents and purposes, it already has ended. And you want a positive ID on the human bones of the only human in all of the Dakotas? You’re handling me, Madge. And giving me busy work isn’t going to fool me into making me think there is anything more we can do.”
“Are you quitting?” she all but roared. “Are you telling me to quit, too?”
“It’s over,” Hank said. “It just is. And no one could have tried harder to--”
“Don’t you dare try to make me feel better,” she hissed. “Yell at me, but don’t you dare condescend to cheer me up.”
“I am not condescending! You did all that you could! We all did. He got us, Madge. Before whatever it was got him, he got us. We’re done. And I’m going home to see if I can hold my wife one more time.”
“Do not put it past Tempus to plant these there,” she declared, rising from her seat and waving a clavicle at him. “We have underestimated him in the past, and the price has been hellish!” she thundered. “ID them! Now! Take them right down and do not come back until you can tell me for sure these are his.”
Hank walked over to the desk and swept the bones to the floor. “These... are... his,” he said. “And I’m going home to my wife.”
“Hank!” she called after him, but the door was swinging closed behind him, shut with such force it shook the building.
“I’ll take them,” said Petal, moving quickly to gather them up. “I’ll take them right now.”
Madge looked into the pleading eyes of her assistant. Her assistant who, like Hank, no doubt knew this really was nothing more than busy work. Nothing more than an attempt to stay in motion under the onslaught of the inevitable. Petal knew it. But she was pretending not to. For Madge’s sake, and maybe for her own.
“Thank you, dear,” said Madge quietly. “And then after that, go on home, ok? Be with your family.”
Petal’s chin trembled but she stayed dry-eyed and defiant. “I’ll go when you go.”
Sweeping the bones back into the bag she left the room. The crowds outside parted to let her pass, and from their expressions Madge saw that they knew.
They had lost.
“Go home,” she said quietly to the assembly. “We’re done for the day.”
***
Lois found him exactly where she had expected to. The museum was empty. Silas had posted a sign thanking everyone for their interest, but asking they respect the early closing time. Her steps had echoed up the stairwell, so she knew Clark would have heard her coming, if he hadn’t been so absorbed in the display.
She read the sign over the doors- Generations Room - gathered her courage and kept going.
"I think we just need to rent out a billboard," she said by way of hello, enjoying his start of surprise. “Our picture and our location. A big red arrow. Just tell the Peacekeepers exactly where we are." She bent slightly at the waist, catching her breath, running her fingers through her wind-tangled hair.
Clark moved away from the holophotos. "Can I get you a chair?” He smiled when she scowled at him darkly.
“You can get me a billboard,” she puffed. “Or fly to the center of the city and do some barrel rolls, or... sky writing.”
“Or we could just ask the Family Council and the Justice League to work together to put the word out.” His hands dropped to her shoulders as she straightened, rubbing tense muscles. "Would that work?"
"Yes.” She let her head lull back. “Those Peacekeepers are here, Clark. Somewhere. Not fifty years in the past. They are... now. In Utopia. And you know they have to be-"
"- searching for us," he filled in, and what he was doing with his hands was so good she let the rest of her body lean back against him as well. .
"Ok," she said after a blissful minute. "Let's get going. Let's do it."
"Silas already is."
"He is?" She straightened and turned to face him.
"We decided the same thing. And that it would be easier if he was the one to tell everyone.”
That should have been good news, but there was something in his eyes, deep and troubled.
“What did you find in the family records?”
He shrugged. “Nothing which indicated any of the Lane-Kents ever knew of or encountered Tempus."
"They might have and not realized who he was." She covered the hand on her shoulder with her own, squeezing gently. “What’s wrong? Besides the really obvious?”
He looked past her, over her head. "You and I didn’t mention him in our records either."
"Our records?"
"Yes." This time his eyes flicked back to her briefly, before darting away.
"Oh."
“Silas and I read through... everything.”
“I guess you’re way ahead of me now. On the whole life story thing.”
He cupped her cheek in his hand and said nothing, though the look he studied her with spoke of many things. Tenderness, most pointedly.
“You want to fill me in?” she whispered. “On how it all turns out?”
“Do you want me to?” he returned in an equally low voice.
She bit a corner of her lip, considering. The silence stretched between them.
“I stuck to our kids stuff mostly. Gave the bulk of our records to Silas,” he continued. “I let him read it. Still, it was... harder to see than I thought.”
She swallowed convulsively. “Because it’s that bad?”
He laughed softly, his thumb stroking under her jaw, a simple touch making her slightly dizzy. “Because it’s that good.” He dropped his hand and moved around her.
She stayed where she was, trying to remember why she had run most of the way from the library and up four flights of stairs, what they had been talking about that was so urgent. It took longer than it should have.
“So...ah.... you and I never mentioned Tempus?”
"I've been trying to think why we wouldn’t have. And I don't know. Would we lie to protect Utopia's sense of security?"
"Like Utopia does now?” She shook her head, coming to stand next to him. “No. No way. You see how vulnerable that leaves our family.”
His arm slipped around her waist and she let herself do what he was doing. Let herself really look. “Our children and their children.” She pointed towards the family photos, pleased that she sounded so matter-of-fact. “If we don’t tell the truth, we leave them vulnerable. Like... baby seals... just laying in the snow waiting for Tempus and his club. So, no, Clark. We wouldn’t have left Tempus out on purpose."
His shoulders relaxed and he exhaled slowly. "That's what I wanted to think. But maybe we changed, Lois."
"Or maybe someone changed our records. These people can time-travel. They can hide themselves. How far out a notion is it that they might alter our papers after the fact?"
"That makes a twisted kind of sense, actually."
"So does Tempus."
That got his attention. He tore his eyes from the faces in front of them and looked at her. Hard.
"I'm not saying I'm going to join forces with him..." she began.
“Then I can put that worry out of my mind?"
"But he had a point. There are things here that need changing. Things that aren’t right."
He turned to face her and she felt the loss of his arm around her. “What did you learn at the library?”
"I think Tempus was just a regular guy. He just felt out of place. Once I narrowed down the earliest year of his legend, I did a search for missing persons. Utopia has one and only one. It coincides with that same year.”
Clark straightened. “Who is he? Or... was he?”
“Robert Smith. Pretty dull and nondescript. He lived alone, worked quietly at his job as an accounts manager. His co-workers reported him lost after he had missed two days work. He’d never done that.”
“When was this?”
“Fifty years ago. His one distinguishing characteristic was his apparent obsession with the works of HG Wells, most especially the Time Machine."
"Maybe he built one?" Clark guessed, then laughed. “That sounds absurd, but...”
“We’re getting used to absurd,” she acknowledged. “And it’s as good a theory as any. He did something, that’s for sure, because he disappeared."
"Which was when the legends started?"
"And when the Ministry was outed as unnecessary," she returned.
"You think he was the one who pointed that out?"
"And in return they turned him into a comic book character so no one would be the wiser."
"That's one way to make someone... less scary."
"Whoever these so-called Helpers and Peacekeepers are, they haven't done Utopia any favors by suppressing the truth."
"Devil's advocate, Lois," he said, putting out a hand to stop the pacing she hadn’t realized she was doing. "What if Utopia had known all this time? How would they have lived?"
"They would live like we all do. Aware that the world is sometimes a dangerous place."
"This is a little more serious than having some vague sense that bad things can happen," Clark argued. "This is... world-ending stuff."
"What about when nuclear weapons were new? Remember all the drills? Kids being taught to climb under their desks? Fall-out shelters being built in backyards..."
"Exactly, Lois!" Clark ran his hands through his hair. "I don't want my kids brought up in a world like that. Fearful, paranoid..." He gestured towards the family portrait. “What kind of life is that?”
"A real one!" Lois argued back. "People still married, still had kids, were still productive and happy. No one quit. No one gave up and declared it too scary, too hard to live."
"People rose to the occasion," Clark said slowly, reluctantly. "They adjusted."
"Yes," she said. "Yes, Clark. That isn't happening here. Utopia isn't real. It's a lie. They aren’t giving its citizens a chance."
“Lois, this is still our future at stake. Our family’s future. Whether or not Tempus is crazy or has a point, we have to stop this.” He moved back to the holophotos, pointing towards one in particular. “These children are ours. Ours, together. If we don’t get back, they’ll never be...” His voice wavered and broke, and he turned away quickly.
She moved towards him swiftly, encircling him in her arms, pressing her cheek between his shoulder blades. She could feel his pounding heart, his trembling.
“Sorry,” he choked out. “I just... got to know them today. Read their words, learned their names, saw their faces and... they’re real, Lois. As real as we are.”
“They’ll be born,” she whispered. “They will. We’re going home. Soon. Today. And the future will unfold as it’s meant to. It will, Clark.”
He stilled in her arms, his hands coming up to cover hers where they lay against him chest. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She lost track of the long minute they stood in just that way. She cleared her throat. “I... uh...”
“Yeah?” he prodded, turning until his dark eyes met hers.
“When we get back, I think we should... you know... at least go out to dinner. Maybe some dancing.... first date stuff.”
His surprised laughter warmed her considerably. “You mean we aren’t going to get married right away? Have a huge multi-generational family? How about on the second date, then?”
“Second dates are more like movie dates.”
He sighed dramatically. “Third date, Lois, and that’s my final offer.”
“As long as you bring flowers. And chocolate. A lot of it.”
He looked thoughtful; a slight frown appeared between his eyes. “Just how much chocolate are we talking about? I live on a junior partner salary, so...”
“I’m offering you a lifetime of happiness and you’re worried about the cost?” She glared at him, catching her breath suddenly when he moved his hands into hers, his eyes turning serious, liquid, emitting some sort of superpower he had never told her about, but which held her still, unable to move, blink, look anywhere but at him.
“This is going to be weird, isn’t it?” he asked gently. “When we get back.”
“We’re learning to live with weird,” she all but breathed. “Weird is what we do.”
“So, we’ll be fine?” The question was full of hope and a longing she hadn’t seen from him before. Something he had obviously been careful not to show her.
She nodded mutely.
“Because the lines are blurring for me, Lois. Then and now. Who we are and who we’ll be. You’re my wife, but you aren’t. I’m your husband, but not yet. It’s getting... confusing.”
She nodded again, too flustered to speak.
“Is it the same for you?” He asked it softly, gently, loosening his hold on her as he did so and stepping back. Something she had come to recognize was very typical of how he was with her. Never crowding her, never forcing her, never pushing. Support offered, freely given, no expectation in return.
So, she threw herself at him.
She threw because if it was going to happen, it was going to have to be that way. And she threw, knowing he would catch her, always. Forever. Catch her.
He did and the last thing she saw was delight, gratitude... love... shining in his eyes, pouring out to her, as he arms closed around her and his mouth moved to hers at last.
So many things had been hard to believe. So many discoveries had knocked her off balance, sent her reeling, tumbling without a compass. But the one that had been hardest was the idea of herself as some kind of new Eve of the new Eden. She saw herself as many things, but the idea of Lois Lane as revered and adored wife and mother...
At the first slow touch of his lips on hers, the first tentative brush of tongues, she believed. All of it. Every last bit. She pressed herself against him, against her destiny, her future, her love. She couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t take him in enough.
He sighed, murmuring her name and other wordless things she didn’t try to follow. She didn’t need to. She understood them on the deepest level.
“What... are we doing now?” she asked after a time, her voice full and husky.
He nuzzled her jaw line, tugged on her ear lob with his teeth. “I think we’re kissing.” The words filled her ear, making her knees give way. He held her up easily. “Am I wrong?”
“No.” She shook her head, tried to find the thread of thought which had prompted the question. “I mean... what are we doing... now?”
“Oh.” He leaned his forehead against hers and she enjoyed watching him struggle to remember. “We’re... waiting... to be rescued,” he said after a minute. “Silas is getting in touch with Elise and the Justice League. Those changes you wanted are happening, Lois. Right now.”
“So...” She met his eyes directly. “... we just sit and wait?”
He nodded. “I know that goes against the grain-”
“So we could go upstairs for a little while?” she rode over him, momentum was on her side, and she wasn’t letting anything stop it.
His mouth opened and shut. She pressed another kiss against it. His eyes closed. “We didn’t sleep all night,” he said in a strangled voice, “you must be... tired?”
“Not really,” she said sweetly.
“Thank God,” he said fervently, He wrapped her up in his arms, returned the kiss she had just given him plus a few more with interest, and floated them up and away.
***
Madge wondered if she was just imagining it or if the ground really did feel less solid under her feet.
“Are you feeling quite well?” sweet Fredrick had asked when she had called to tell him she would be delayed at work... again.
“Just fine,” she had said, wanting more than anything to share her anguish with him. .
But the fear was bad. So bad and so enormous, Madge couldn’t imagine trying to put it into words. If she could, if she succeeded at voicing it, the darkness that would come out of her mouth, its depth and its dimension, would sit between them for whatever time they had left.
And it wouldn’t be long now.
Hank was gone. Wanting every last, precious minute with Elise. As much as she hated how they’d left things, she hadn’t dared call him to see how he was doing. If she did call, she might find out that Elise was no longer...
Madge sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She knew it was cowardly, but she didn’t think she could stand knowing it had started. That the descendants of Lois and Clark were winking out all over Utopia.
Madge sat up and went back to looking listlessly through her files. Petal had yet to return from the lab. Accurate testing couldn't be rushed. But it seemed more than likely the PDTS had done their job a little too completely.
Madge scanned their latest communiqué which came complete with apology and references to formerly unknown predators in the wilds of the Dakotas, which they were now cataloging for the data base. All signs pointed towards one of those predators solving the Tempus problem once and for all.
It was ironic; and wouldn’t Tempus love that? He was gone just when he was so desperately needed. And he wouldn't be around to see he had finally succeeded.
Madge didn’t even look at the monitors any more, though the cabinet stood open just behind her. It was too discouraging. The signals, the lifelines of her world, were fading.
Is that what they would do? All of them? Just fade into nothingness, erased because their history was gone, their founders no more, and therefore the society built on their principles was dead?
The very few of them whose life work it was to prevent such a thing had their own personal theories. Some more alarming than others.
Odias Sinders had always held to the most catastrophic Armageddon scenario. The foundations would break apart. The sidewalks tear open. The sky fall. Total and complete destruction. The death of a world.
Petal and Hank subscribed to the idea of falling asleep in Utopia and waking up in a war zone, or rather a gun culture similar to twentieth century America, though there was hardly a difference. Everyone armed to the teeth and fearful to the point of paranoia.
It wasn’t an attractive option, but most of them would still be here. Though not here in their offices. The Ministry of Peacekeepers would be no more. Its entire purpose defeated, therefore rendering it obsolete. Thereby rendering Madge's entire life’s work... pointless.
Madge tried and failed to force her thoughts from the cliff they’d been trying to drag her over all afternoon. She honestly didn’t know the repercussions of a Tempus victory. No one did.
None of them had ever really thought it would come to pass.
Her own theory was that they would be left as a society of people, still whole, still intact, still kind and law-abiding. Just simply with no memory of their founders. As if a large-scale computer virus had wiped the hard drive. Any memory of Superman and Lois Lane, their ideals, their descendants, their impact on the society that had formed because of them, would simply vanish.
It would be no less devastating than the bricks crumbling to dust. The Lane-Kent’s place in their culture was so central it was impossible to imagine how it would look if they were just extracted. They would lose their underpinnings.
But the rest of them would still be here.
Confused, maybe. Uncertain, probably. But still present. Still living.
Would Hank remember he had once loved a woman named Elise? Would mothers remember they had once held children? And what would form in place of the enormous holes in the fabric of Utopia?
She didn’t know. She had never wanted to find out.
Anna bustled into the room bearing more coffee.
Madge had long since lost her taste for it, but she appreciated her assistant’s need to do something.
“Go home,” she told the younger woman again.
“When you do,” Anna answered again.
“In a little while,” she assured her.
She would work as quickly as she could and then join her sweet Fredrick at home. She knew it was probably a waste of time, a senseless act, but if her world was heading towards a massive memory wipe, she wanted to go on record with everything she knew. Just on the slim chance her holodisks would survive.
She looked into the recorder, speaking as plainly and calmly as she could. “Tempus is not a legend. He is real. My job and the job of others in the Ministry of Helpers and Peacekeepers has been to contain him. We have not. And it appears that he has succeeded in his goal to destroy our world. With that in mind, I, Margaret Hathaway, am making this record of our past....”
It would take some time, but she wouldn’t leave until she had covered everything she knew of Superman, Lois Lane, and what they meant to her people.
***
tbc on Saturday. Thank you for reading.
