Happy Ficlet Friday! This one was inspired by QueenoftheCapes story, “Youth.” It is also my attempt at Kerth Challenge #1. I do have a series of ficlets in mind for this although they will probably be out of chronological order depending on when I am inspired to write them. If I can find a way to tie in the other Kerth challenges, I will (already have something in mind for challenge #2).
2024 Kerth Challenge #1:
Someone other than Tempus or HG Wells travels through time and accidentally changes something in Clark's past. What is it? (Can be serious, or funny).
Try Not to Change Anything
By AmandaK
Lois Lane stared at the rotary phone as she waited for the operator to connect her to Smallville, Kansas. She was probably going to get in trouble for making a long-distance call without permission but, at the moment, she really didn’t care.
Something had gone wrong.
Something had gone very wrong.
One moment she and Clark had been in the wild west with H.G. Wells, waiting to go back to the 90’s and finally begin their honeymoon, and the next Lois had found herself in her childhood bedroom – and her ten-year-old body. Clark and Wells were nowhere to be found.
After verifying that she was, in fact, in the year 1977, Lois’ next step was to locate Clark and determine if he too had somehow gotten stuck in the past. Hopefully, Wells would be with him and they’d be able to correct this problem quickly and get back to Hawaii and… well…
Lois’ ten-year-old cheeks blushed darkly as she thought about things that a ten-year-old really shouldn’t be thinking about.
The biggest problem she was facing though was how to contact Clark. Her best guess was that he was back in Smallville, likely trying to figure out how to contact her. She had the advantage though in that she knew the Kent’s phone number, provided they hadn’t changed it in the last 19 years. So, while Lucy was busy watching Sesame Street and her parents were launching into yet another argument, Lois slipped into her father’s study and placed the call.
She heard the ring tone on the other line, indicating that the call had gone through, and waited for someone to pick up. She gnawed on her lower lip. What if he wasn’t home? What if he had no idea who she was? What if…
“Hello? Kent residence.” The friendly voice of Martha Kent sounded through the phone.
“Martha!” Lois cringed at her childish voice and corrected, “I mean, Mrs. Kent. Um… hi. Is Clark home?”
“May I ask who’s calling?” Martha inquired gently.
Lois sighed. She had been hoping to skip this part. “Um… my name is Lois. I’m a friend of Clark’s from, um…” she trailed off, not sure how to explain how a girl from Metropolis had met a boy from Smallville. Had Clark ever been to summer camp?
“I didn’t know Clark had any long-distance friends.” Martha commented when Lois failed to finish her sentence. “Where are you calling from, Lois?”
Lois hesitated but decided to answer truthfully. “Uh… Metropolis.”
“I see.” There was a sound in the background like a door shutting and then Martha spoke again, although she seemed to have turned her head away from the phone to do so. “Clark, honey, do you happen to know a girl in Metropolis named Lois?”
“Lois?!” a boy’s voice replied. “Is she on the phone?”
Lois sighed in relief. He knew her. There was one problem solved at least.
“You know her, then?”
“Yeah. We’re uh… we’re pen pals. Yeah, they did this pen pal program at school and we got paired up.”
“Oh, really?” Martha sounded skeptical.
“Really. Um… can I talk to her? Please?”
Lois held her breath while she waited for Martha’s answer and she wondered if Clark was doing the same.
“Alright.”
Then came the sound of the phone being handed over followed by, “Thanks, Mom. Lois?!”
The voice sounded so much younger than she was used to. “Clark? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“You sound different.”
“Well, um…” He lowered his voice a bit and Lois wondered if Martha was still nearby. “I’m eleven.”
Lois sighed into the phone. “Yeah, me too. I mean, I’m ten but…”
“Yeah. Is Wells with you?” Clark asked.
Lois shook her head, then stopped because he couldn’t see her. “No. I hoped he was with you. I don’t know what happened. We were supposed to go home, back to our own time, for our honeymoon. How did we end up here? Like this?!”
There was another sound like a door closing and Clark sighed heavily. Lois figured Martha had left the room because his next words were at a normal volume and less guarded. “I don’t know, Honey. But I’m sure he’ll show up soon and fix everything. We just have to wait it out.”
“Easy for you to say. My parents have hardly stopped arguing since I got here.”
Clark offered a half-hearted chuckle. “Nothing you haven’t put up with before, right? It won’t be long.”
“How do you know? What if it takes him days to realize he messed up? Or weeks? What if he never realizes it?”
“Alright, Lois. Slow down. I don’t know for sure, but we can’t let ourselves panic over what-ifs. We just have to take it one day at a time. The important thing, right now, is that we try not to change anything in our past.”
Lois nodded to herself. He was right. They couldn’t change anything. Except… “Clark!”
“What?”
“We’ve already changed something! I called you! I talked to your mom! I didn’t even know you in 1977!”
“Okay. Okay… um…” Clark sounded like he was fishing for the right answer and trying to stifle his own panic at the same time. “Well, we just won’t change anything else. Okay? We’ll hang up and pretend this call never happened. And then we’ll wait for Wells.”
“What if he doesn’t show up?”
“If he doesn’t show up in a week, I’ll call you and we’ll go from there. What’s your phone number?”
She told him and waited while he wrote it down. “Clark?”
“Yeah, Lois?”
“I wish you were here.”
“Me too.”
“Can’t you just fly here, just for a bit?”
“Lois… I don’t have any powers yet. I didn’t learn how to fly until I was eighteen.”
“Oh… I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
It sounded different, coming from the mouth of an eleven-year-old. But it was still Clark – her partner, her hero, her husband. They were supposed to be on their honeymoon.
This really, really wasn’t fair.
Last edited by AmandaK; 02/09/24 12:10 PM.
