“It might be easier to just seek grief counseling.” Dr. Klein stared at her soberly. “The risks of this can’t be understated.”
Seven hundred days. Lois shook her head. She’d lived seven hundred days without either of the men in her life, and it had left such a void within her that sometimes she felt she was nothing more than a walking shell. She’d had a chance at happiness, and she’d let it slip away.
“I’m your girl,” she said. Anything would be better than living an endless succession of days feeling like she was now. Even if this exploded in her face, at least she’d have made a difference.
Dr. Klein handed her a sheaf of papers. “If this doesn’t work, these won’t matter anyway, but the boys upstairs are a little funny about things like this.”
Lois looked blindly at the waivers before her. No one in history had ever attempted anything like what they were asking her to do, and all they could worry about was liability.
The world was ending in less than a week, and the lawyers were still worried about lawsuits.
All that stood between the world and destruction was the shadow of a dead hero, and the determination of a woman in love.
It was ironic that she hadn’t been able to make her decision until it was too late. She’d been courted by three men- a hero, a villain, and an ordinary man. It wasn’t until it was too late that she discovered who she’d really cared for.
The world needed Superman, but Lois needed Clark.
If everything worked, she’d have both.
If it didn’t, she’d be scattered across the universe, a shower of particles separated in time and space until there were no signs she’d ever existed.
Either way, she was not going to wake on day seven hundred and one with the same sense of loss.
It was time to change the world.
***********
As the straps were placed tightly on her body, Lois grimaced. Whether things worked or not, she wouldn’t have a body to come back to.
A one way trip, scattering her body across the winds of time, but placing her mind in her body at an earlier point in her life. It had been largely theoretical eighteen months ago, but given the need, it had been made top priority, one of a dozen projects to make sure that humanity survived.
At least she wasn’t going to be one of the people on a spaceship, frozen using Nazi era technology in hopes of someday being revived and restarting life on the planet.
She felt numb, her body overwhelmed by adrenaline. She wondered if this was how people being led to the gas chamber felt, this weird detachment from reality. It was as though everything was being filtered through a distant lens.
A sudden bout of nausea, and a stab of fear, but Lois tightened her lips and closed her eyes, trying to block out the sounds of hundreds of people scurrying back and forth
She felt the urge to struggle against her bonds, and stiffened as she felt the pin prick of an injection.
Opening her eyes, she saw Dr. Klein looking down on her sorrowfully. He reached out and grasped her hand.
“We can’t risk sending you back after he died.” He said. “So we’ll try to send you back a little early. Three years maybe.”
That would send her back to the day she met Clark, maybe. Lois found herself smiling. She’d have a chance to do things over, better.
No more “You’re the before, and Superman is the after.”
She felt her anxiety begin to drain away.
The sounds of the massive turbines powering the effort began to blot everything else, and Lois felt herself stiffen.
Something was wrong. They’d never said there would be pain.
She screamed as she felt herself being ripped apart atom by atom, as her essence was flung into the void.
Her journey had begun.
************
Xanadu played softly in the darkness. Lois woke confused, unsure of why this morning was different from every other morning of her life. For the first time since she could remember, the familiar feelings of grief were replaced with anticipation.
The world seemed new again, yet somehow achingly familiar.
Opening her eyes slowly, she was faced with the sight of something she’d never expected to see again. A wall covered in posters- Charlie’s Angels, Einstein, Sting, Woodward and Bernstein, and various ribbons and awards. The smell of a thousand mismatched perfumes.
This was a place that smelled familiar, though not like home. This was just the place her father had made.
Home was the smell of clean aftershave and newsprint and the glint of light off a pair of glasses.
School books and scattered clothing piled all around her. Leg warmers…tennis shoes on the floor with multicolored laces. All it took was one look at the clothes, with their retro eighties styles and her worst fears were realized.
Damn.
She closed her eyes. It was a one way trip, and she’d only been supposed to relive the past three years. Instead they’d sent her back maybe ten years farther than that.
Instead of Lois Lane, respected reporter, she was Lo-Lo, rebel and general screw up. She was in her father’s house, though from the look of things it wouldn’t be long before the argument that would send her out to live on her own.
The prospect of living through it all over again should have been overwhelming, but one thought kept rolling over and over in her mind.
They were both alive.
Seven hundred mornings she’d woken with just the opposite thought, and for the first morning since she could remember, that weight was off her chest.
They were alive, and this time everything would be different.
She’d had a long time to sort out her feelings for both of them, and Lois knew the truth. She respected Superman, but she loved Clark.
In her mind she’d saved them both seven hundred times. She’d been more curious about Lex, she’d fought her way down to the secret lab. She’d warned Clark before Lex had a chance to make him disappear.
This morning, was morning seven hundred and one…this morning she could make it happen. If she had to wait ten years, so be it.
Lois slowly relaxed and slipped off into sleep.
She’d find them both in time.
*************
The voices in the next room woke her. She’d almost been afraid to wake up, for fear that it had been all a dream.
She slid out of bed, wincing at the cold air that hit her. Her father had always preferred to keep his home cold; he claimed it kept down germs.
Lois had just thought he was cheap. It had been a minor argument between them, one of many that had separated them for all those years.
She slid into a pair of jeans, happy to find one that wasn’t too tight. She picked the most mature top in her closet- one that had been wadded up and thrown in the back. It had been a gift, if she recalled correctly, one that she hadn’t appreciated.
She was thankful for it now. Looking at the other clothing in her overstuffed closet made her shudder.
Dressing quickly, she headed for the kitchen. She gasped as she saw who was sitting at the small table with her father.
“Grandma!”
The small, bare Christmas tree on the table was the last piece to the puzzle. She knew exactly when this was now. This was Christmas, 1984, the last time she’d seen her grandmother alive.
************
“Is something wrong,, dear?”
Lois hadn’t been able to stop staring. She’d made such a mess of things the first time around, arguing with her father and storming out of the house. She’d missed most of the day with her grandmother, and by the time she’d come back, the woman had been gone.
Today had been different. The things her father did that had enraged her the first time around were now just irritants, easily ignored in the interests of the holiday.
Lois and her grandmother had talked for hours. They’d played cards, and dominoes, and some of the games that Lois had disdained as a teenager as being too boring. Her father had finally left them alone, slipping off to watch football.
“Grandma….I love you. “ Lois hesitated. “I know I haven’t said it much in the past few years. I’ve been dealing with some things.” Lois blinked, and was surprised to feel tears come to her eyes.
“What’s bringing this all up?”
“Have you been to a doctor, lately?” Lois asked finally. “At your age, it can’t hurt to be careful.”
“I’m as healthy as a horse,” Her grandmother shook her head. “I’ve never been to a doctor in my life.”
“I really wish you would start.” Lois sighed. She wasn’t sure it wasn’t too late already. "I'm going for my first pap smear next week. Come with me. You can get a mammogram, and then we'll go out for Cokes."
“Isn’t that your mother’s place? She’s a nurse…”
“I don’t think we’ve been spending enough time together.” Lois said. “Come with me…show me how not to be scared. You always did that for me.”
Her grandmother sipped her cider, then nodded slowly.
It was Lois’s best Christmas ever.
She’d keep her promise to her grandmother. If it was already too late, this was the only time she’d have left with her.
And there was always the chance of a Christmas Miracle.
***********************
It was almost midnight by the time her grandmother left. Her father grumbled something about going to bed, then stumbled off, leaving Lois to lock up.
She went through her evening ritual as though she’d never left it, checking the doors and windows, making sure all the lights were out and no fires were lit.
It was only as she passed the telephone that temptation began to rear it’s ugly head.
If it was midnight here, it’d be eleven in Smallville. The Kents were probably already asleep. Clark would be home from college, but there was no telling how long he would stay. Today was the only day he was guaranteed to be at home.
She slowly washed the last of the dishes, her mind racing. It was late and only getting later, but she’d traveled across the winds of time to make sure that he stayed alive.
Any changes she made now would make the future unpredictable. Her best bet would be to live her life and leave him alone. Time would play out as it had the first time, and in the fullness of time, he would come to her.
Sure, that would mean ten years without ever seeing him, or speaking to him, or even knowing if he was still alive, but it would keep him alive until the point when she could do something about it.
That would be the noble road.
Deep down, though, Lois’s decision had never been in doubt. What if she’d been sent to some alternate timeline where Clark Kent had never even existed. The physicists had reassured her that she was traveling through her own timeline, but what did they know really?
Before she could second guess herself, she grabbed the telephone and pulled it as far around the corner as she could. She grimaced at the rotary dial. It had been old fashioned even at this point in time. She’d hated it then, and now….now it was almost unbearable.
She knew the Kent’s number by heart. She’d called Martha more times than she could remember, trying to share her grief.
The dial moved with maddening slowness, and Lois found herself fidgeting. What was she going to say. This Martha didn’t know her. This Martha hadn’t developed the easy camaraderie of shared grief. To this Martha, she would be nothing more than a strange teenage girl calling from another state.
At long last the phone began to ring.
One ring. Two. Lois felt herself stiffening, her stomach tightening in anticipation and nervousness. Her palms were sweating.
Three, four. This was a clear sign that they weren’t still awake. Lois felt a sudden stab of doubt. Maybe it would be better to call them in the morning.
It would still be the holiday, and surely Clark wouldn’t go back to college for another week yet.
Five. Lois’s hand twitched. She should hang up now. Call them later, when she’d had a chance to think up something to say, to make some excuse to hear their son’s voice on the phone.
She’d just made the decision to hang up when the distinctive click of the receiver being lifted on the other end came to her.
“Hello?”
It was the voice she’d never thought she’d hear again, not since the tape on her tape recorder had finally worn through from being played over and over again.
Clark Kent spoke again. “Hello.”
