Chapter 2Clark was exhausted. Not physically exhausted—he’d only been awake for thirty-seven hours and had spent a few hours less than that rescuing people and securing structures in Jakarta. And as he cleared debris and rubble from the roadways of a small village in a more rural part of Indonesia—the more immediate threat to life now gone—his thoughts and emotions finally caught up with him.
The last few weeks had been...beyond painful. Wonderful and bittersweet and rewarding and...excruciatingly heartrending.
When Wells had shown up two weeks ago, his foolish heart had leapt at the idea that maybe Wells had found her—his Lois. But instead, it had been distressing news from
her universe. Tempus and time windows and mind control, and worse, her Superman had gone missing.
He wanted to pretend he hadn’t spent every day since she’d left thinking about her, the woman who had changed his life so drastically. That he hadn’t scoured the planet looking for her likeness, hoping beyond hope that
his Lois was still just lost—not dead. He wanted to pretend that being Superman, being the hero she’d wanted him to be, was enough. That he didn’t need love, that he didn’t need
her—his Lois.
He wanted to pretend his reasons for agreeing to help Wells, help the other Lois, were altruistic. That his once again foolish heart didn’t just want one more chance to see her, to be near her.
But he couldn’t pretend his motivations had been entirely selfless.
Had he known, though...had he known how agonizing it would be to see her again—married and missing her husband who was not him, how unbearably hard it would be to meet them,
his parents—alive and missing their son who was not him...
His breath hitched, that constant, dull ache in his chest piercing him again with the intensity of his losses. He didn’t want to feel anymore.
Wells had brought him home more than a week ago, spouting off optimistic vagaries like “I never say ‘impossible’” and leaving Clark waiting for answers. The hope Wells had left him with made Clark furious all over again, and he took his anger out on a giant, ragged boulder that was blocking one of the main paths to the river where the villagers got their water.
Before Wells had shown up, Clark had convinced himself that he was just fine living out his lonely existence, content with being the best superhero he could be. Because it was good—finally being able to be himself, not having to hide or be ashamed of his powers, being able to use his gifts to help people.
He had been just fine, indeed. Clark scoffed at himself as he cleared a fallen tree, taking a moment to cut it into usable firewood and kindling.
He couldn’t help but wonder if seeing...
them, seeing what his alternate self and his Lois shared, had made it hurt all the more. It was one thing to know what you were missing, to feel the ache and the loneliness of it, but it was another thing altogether to see it.
In his characteristic overly cheerful tone, Wells had said that if he could find this universe’s Lois, he’d be back in two days—because time travel could work that way, even if Wells spent weeks searching, as long as he didn’t cross his own timeline. But it’d been nine days now. And that little ember of hope had died out far more painfully than anything he’d felt.
Clark took a deep breath and tried to focus instead on what was in front of him; it seemed to be all he had anyway—his work as Superman. The emergency personnel and those whom he’d rescued in Jakarta had been grateful for his presence, his help. But he couldn’t deny that he got more out of helping here in the smaller villages, that his heart healed just a bit more.
Around him, the village leaders were hard at work, setting up an aid station for their community. One of the matrons, Mentari, caught his eye and gave him a grateful nod, and he dipped his head back in response. He paused to feel the brief surge of joy that went through him—it was the same every time someone thanked Superman. He was meant to be doing this—helping. It filled his soul in a way he hadn’t thought possible, gave purpose to the way his life had played out, and it helped dull the hurt of his loneliness.
Maybe it was fanciful or a bit of revisionist history, a romanticized interpretation of the meaning of his life—why he’d been orphaned twice over and left to an existence that had always made him feel less than, despite how much Lana had claimed to love him. If this was the path he’d needed to take to become the man, the Superman he was today, then it somehow felt worth all the pain of his past.
And yet, he knew firsthand that his life could have been far, far different. A
full, idyllic childhood, a fulfilling career—two, in fact—and a woman who loved him for whom he was, who made him complete.
Still, as much as it hurt to know what he would never have—that his childhood will always have been the way it was and that the one person he was destined to meet would exist only in his memories, an inexact copy of his happily never after—he wouldn’t change things now. He wouldn’t wish to have never met Lois Lane. For all the heartache and loneliness he’d gained, he would still rather have this, have people like Mentari and her husband grateful to have him here, using his gifts to help them.
Eventually, Clark found himself with less and less to do, and he admitted to himself it was time to go home. He stopped at his apartment for a shower and a change of clothes—opting for jeans and a black t-shirt, since he never had been terribly comfortable at the Planet in the Superman suit, nor did he prefer his tailored suits, not anymore. He was really only a token reporter nowadays, though Perry took him to task every time he referred to himself as such.
Already writing up the events of the earthquake and its aftermath in his head, Clark flew over to the Planet building and landed on the roof, then headed downstairs to the seventh floor. For the first time in...more than a year, he actually felt that little jolt of excitement again when he entered the bustling newsroom floor. That fluttering in his chest that told him he was right where he was meant to be.
Of all the things he missed about his former life, he missed being a journalist the most. He swallowed hard and hurried over to his desk along the north windows, away from the rest of the bullpen. He did wish that he didn’t need to be a bit isolated from the other reporters, but things tended to run more smoothly when he wasn’t right there in the thick of things. Both Mr. Olsen and Perry both had tried to assure him otherwise, but he knew it was true.
All the same, Clark was grateful that they’d let him stay on staff and still write, and he was even more grateful that Perry—after his year as mayor—had decided he belonged back in the newsroom, as Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Planet, not in politics.
In Clark’s three years at the Planet before the other Lois had shown up, he and Perry hadn’t been terribly close, but Clark had respected him as his boss and mentor.
After Lois...
It had been a tough conversation with Perry when he’d tried to explain that Lois was...just gone. The gruff old editor wouldn’t accept it, not after he’d seen her with his own two eyes, he’d said, not after he’d spent years agonizing over what he could have done differently, how he could have stopped Lois from going to the Congo in the first place. So Clark had told Perry everything; it’d seemed the simplest solution, though it’d been almost impossible to explain.
Then he’d told Perry he’d look for her, for this universe’s Lois. He’d argued that they hadn’t exhausted all possible resources yet, that Superman could still go over there and look for her personally. After all, if Superman couldn’t find her, then no one could. So foolishly confident, hopeful. Clark hadn’t forgiven himself, but Perry had. Somehow.
After that, and after a year of working closely—Superman in partnership with the Mayor’s office to reduce crime—Clark felt he could count Perry as a friend and confidant. Pretty much his only friend. And with Perry back in the editor’s office, Clark could at least pretend he was a journalist again sometimes.
As he settled into his office chair and waited for his computer to boot up, he glanced in the direction of Perry’s office. The blinds were drawn, which didn’t happen often, and Clark had an unusually strong urge to X-ray through them and see who was in there with Perry that required such privacy. But Superman didn’t do that sort of thing.
His computer screen was a bit too bright, and the cursor blinked at him for his password. He needed to get his article written up anyway, before too much of it was old news. Before he could open a new file, though, his interoffice messages flashed loudly from the top left corner of his screen. He frowned slightly. No one sent him messages.
<<
Clark, come see me right away when you get back from Indonesia. —Perry>>Clark glanced back at Perry’s office and the closed blinds and frowned, wondering if he should interrupt him. But the message had said “right away,” and Perry rarely messaged him. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should take two minutes and write up his article first or not, but then with a sigh, he signed back out of his computer and got up to head to Perry’s office.
Once he approached the door, he knocked softly and extended his hearing just a bit.
“Clark, if that’s you, c’mon in,” Perry said.
He swung the door open slowly and came eye to eye with his boss. “Chief, you wanted to see me?”
It was only when Perry didn’t answer right away that Clark noticed the older man holding his breath, his eyes a bit worried as they seemed to appraise him, as though assessing his mood.
“I’m fine, Perry. It was a relatively small earthquake. I’m... I helped a lot. I’m okay.”
The shake of the older man’s head was almost imperceptible, but his brow furrowed and his eyes shifted to the opposite side of his office.
Clark’s eyes followed, stopping as he met the curious gaze of a young woman about his age, with dark hair that fell almost to her shoulders and deep brown eyes that looked...so familiar and yet...different. He inhaled sharply.
It was her.
It...couldn’t...it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.
He looked back at Perry and saw the shine in the older man’s eyes as he nodded this time, ever so slightly. But Perry had been fooled before—he’d believed the other Lois and his long lost reporter to be one and the same, misled by that thread of hope he’d held for so many years and the impossibility of an exact double from another universe. Could Perry be so sure?
Could Clark be so sure? What if she was just...another Lois? But why? And where was Wells? When there was Lois, there was Wells. Why wasn’t he here?
“H-hi, I’m Lois...Lois Lane.” Her hesitant yet not timid voice pulled his attention back to her. She stood, tugging slightly at the hem of her T-shirt to straighten it out, and she put her hand out. “You’re Clark Kent?”
“I...” He nodded dumbly, still not sure if he was breathing. “Yeah, Clark Kent.” Not quite taking his eyes off hers, he reached out, his fingers lightly brushing hers as he took hold of her hand.
A strong surge of tingling and warmth and energy instantly flooded him, almost knocking him off balance. Time seemed to freeze as uncertainty and relief and hope rushed at him. To him? Within him? Into him? And a blanket of what he could only define as power more potent than the heat from the sun coursed across his skin and, while it was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, it almost felt...familiar.
Lois gasped softly, and his eyes snapped back to hers. He hadn’t even realized he’d looked away. Her eyes were wide with some sort of surprise and understanding, but they were also brown and deep, and he found himself lost in them.
Clark was suddenly out of breath, overloaded with too much emotion, too much feedback, and he nearly stumbled back as time finally returned to normal.
“It’s you,” they whispered simultaneously.
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