“I don’t understand why you’re this suspicious, Clark.” Lois said quietly. “It’s not as though you have anything to hide.”
Clark stiffened. How much did she know? He’d spent his entire life under the threat of surgeon’s knives, of cold, clinical laboratories. His abilities were the one thing about him that was unusual, the only reason anyone would go to these lengths to track him down.
At least they were alone. The last of the headlights were already leaving the parking lot, leaving only vague hulking shapes of trucks through the pouring rain.
“Aren’t you?” Clark asked. He felt a moment of terror for his parents. Had the men in government cars already come for them? “How else would you know all this?”
Lois was silent for a long period. The only sound was the rapid pattering of rain on the car. It was a thunderous sound.
“I’m from the future.” Lois said. Her expression was serious, and she looked him directly in the eye.
A short, bitter laugh exploded from Clark’s chest before he could stop himself. “You really think I’m a fool, don’t you? “
Seeming to shrink, Lois said in a small voice. “I can’t help it. It’s the truth.”
“Let’s say it was. Why would you come back in time?” Clark wasn’t sure why he wasn’t just stepping out of the car and heading for home. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to give him anything like a straight answer.
“Because you died.” Lois closed her eyes, and there was an expression of pain. “You died and you never even knew…”
She was an excellent actress. Even as outlandish as the story was, Clark felt a moment of sympathy for her. She looked so lost, hurt.
“So where’s your time machine?” Clark felt a little guilty for challenging her. He might believe that she was just delusional, that she really believed what she said except for one thing.
She knew about his time in England.
“They sent my mind back into my younger body.” Lois said. “I was only supposed to go back three years, but I came a lot further.”
“So you’re really some withered old crone in the body of an attractive teenager.” Clark smirked.
Lois gasped indignantly. “I was NOT an old crone. I was barely thirty! You little brat!”
“I’m sorry” Clark said, feeling amused. He felt himself relaxing a little. It was hard to see Lois as some sort of Mata Hari, out to pull his secrets out of him.”
“You look a lot like Clark…you sound like him…but he’s so much more than you. The Clark I know has traveled the world. He can order breakfast in three hundred languages. He dances like a dream, and he’s got a good heart.”
Lois stared fixedly out the window. “He stepped in front of a bullet for me. There hasn’t been a day gone by that I don’t feel sick to my stomach at the thought of who I’ve lost. It terrifies me to think that I’ve changed things enough already that you may never turn into that man.”
“It’s all a little hard to believe,” Clark said. The sincerity in her voice was making him feel uneasy. Maybe he’d misjudged her somehow. Maybe she was a psychic, and a little crazy.
“Your mother told me once that you cried at night because of how different you were. I never understood what she meant.”
“Why would my mother tell you something like that?” Clark asked, his stomach sinking.
“You were dead, and we both loved you.” Lois hesitated. “We shared the same grief. I think it aged both of us.”
“Let’s say I believe all this,” Clark said. Part of him was having a growing sense of unease. “Where did you get the time machine? Why come after me?”
Lois’s lips quirked. “I’m not here for you, really. I was sent back to save the world. You’re just a bonus.”
She tried to say something else, but her window exploded.
*************
Lois shrieked as her window shattered, struck by a heavy pipe. Somehow, although she was showered with shards of glass, none of them seemed to cut her.
The rain had let up slightly, and Lois could see five figures outside. Two held a third, struggling figure, and the other two were standing by her car window.
A heavy, meaty hand reached into the window and tried to grab her by the hair.
Another slimmer, younger hand grabbed it by the wrist and squeezed. Clark was reaching across from the passenger’s side seat, but his angle was poor and Lois didn’t see how he was going to be able to keep it up.
She bit the hand in front of her before the owner could think to hit with the pipe in his other hand.
Her attacker shouted and pulled his hand back.
The passenger side door opened, and another figure pulled Clark out of the car.
Lois felt her first moment of true fear. It could all end here. Clark could be dead, again, and it would all be her fault.
Her assailant was reaching inside again. Before he could, Lois shoved her door open with as much strength as she could muster. In this younger, weaker body , it wasn’t as much. All the time she’d spend in Judo had trained her older self’s muscles. These weren’t as strong.
It was enough to get him to stumble backwards, and for Lois to slip out of the car.
He was already up and rushing toward her. Lois jumped back from the pipe he swung. Before he could bring it around, she kicked him as hard as she could in a vulnerable spot.
He’d been unprepared for that. Lois saw another figure coming around the corner, and she tensed for a moment, worried that Clark might already be lying on the other side of the car with his brains bashed in.
It was Clark, and he was heading straight for the two men who were holding the third figure.
Their nerve broke, and they dropped him and began to run.
Lois rushed forward and froze.
Battered and beaten on the ground was Bobbie Bigmouth, his face barely recognizable from the swelling.
He was alive. He stared up at her with one good eye. His words were strangely muffled as he said, “I told you, Lois. Just lemme eat my hot dog…”
****************
Lois could barely look at Louie, whose rage was palpable.
“How stupid could you get? I warn you to quit betting, so you go over to the Metros to bet? What did you think was going to happen?”
There wasn’t anything she could say. She couldn’t claim not to have done it; obviously she had. All she could do was deal with the consequences.
“You know what has to happen now, don’t you?”
Lois nodded. Now that the Metros had openly attacked Bobbie, it was just the first step in a gang war that would definitely involve casualties. People were going to die.
“You’ve got the boss thinking you’re one of those psychics. He’s been following your bets up, times ten. You wouldn’t have a psychic vision of what’s all going to happen with this?”
Lois shook her head. She couldn’t recall having felt this miserable since the day she’d seen them fishing Clark out of the river.
“I think my days of being a psychic are over,” Lois said quietly. “I’m retiring.”
“You need to be careful for the next few days. They may try to get to you, at least until we make things too hot for them.”
Lois nodded.
Louie glanced outside, into the waiting room. Clark still sat outside, waiting patiently.
That’s all he’d done since she’d met him. He’d tried to ask her out the first day they’d met. After that, he’d waited patiently.
“Who’s the mook?”
“He’s the love of my life.” Lois said quietly.
She’d almost lost Clark tonight, and it made her realize that the future she’d known before was gone forever. There would be no first meeting in the Daily Planet newsroom. There would be no witty banter, no getting to know each other….no long nights at stakeouts and conversations about silly things.”
All that existed was right now.
****************
Clark stood as she reentered the room, and Lois found herself moving as if in a daze.
He hugged her tightly, and she felt tears coming to her eyes. She didn’t even know if Bobby was going to be ok. She didn’t know if anything was. His arms around her were exactly what she needed.
One of the things that had shocked her about the Kents was how comfortable they were with touching each other. Her family had been more distant. Lois had hardly been touched at all after the age of thirteen, and she’d been shocked at how much she craved simple human contact.
She’d become more accustomed to it with Martha, but she still wasn’t used to feeling this.
It felt good.
Clark spoke after a moment. “Is it safe for you to go back to your dorm?”
Lois shook her head. “They might be waiting for me. Linda should be ok. I doubt they’ll do anything unless they are sure I’m there.”
Clark was silent for a moment. “Aunt Opal is out of town,” he said at last. “I have a key to her place.”
Lois closed her eyes for a moment and nodded. Sometimes the temptation was too much to bear.
**************
She moved through Aunt Opal’s home as though she was familiar with it. Clark had been surprised when she’d avoided the squeaky step that had always given him trouble. He’d been more surprised when she’d known exactly where the guest toothbrushes were.
She’d been here before, more than once, yet Aunt Opal had never met her.
While Clark made sandwiches, Lois hadn’t had to ask were any of the silverware was. She’d known every drawer and cabinet like the back of her hand.
The cat didn’t know her, but Lois had known exactly how to gain his favor, pulling out his favorite dangling toy and making a quick convert.
She’d even prepared the cat food just as Opal liked it- solid food in one bowl and a special homemade concoction of Opal’s pulled from the back of the refrigerator.
When they’d finished their meal, and Lois had finally stopped trembling, Clark asked the question which had been on his mind since the attack.
“What’s going on, Lois?”
He knew part of it already, from listening in on her conversation with Louie.
“You wouldn’t believe me.” Lois focused on the cat. For some reason she’d been avoiding eye contact with him since they’d hugged.
“Try me.”
“I said I was from the future. But it seems like the process isn’t stable. I don’t know from one minute to the next whether I’ll be here, or whether I’ll wake up and it’ll be the day that I left.”
Clark remembered seeing the knowledge draining out of her eyes. It had been as though someone else had been left behind.
“So what’s left is….”
“The original me. Problem is, it’s not like I’m jumping in time. It’s more like I’m asleep…and she has flashes of my memory.”
“And she’s been misusing that.”
“I was supposed to be in an internship with the Daily Planet by now, making straight A’s and trying to date the editor of the school newspaper. Instead I’m gambling, my grades aren’t doing all that well, and I shudder to think who I might be dating.”
Lois looked up at him for the first time, and said “I’m screwing this all up, Clark. Everything I do seems to make things worse.”
A thought occurred to him.
“How were you going to save the world, Lois?”
“There’s someone else I have to find and warn, Clark. The way things are going, I might not get a chance, so you’ll have to do it. In about nine years a man is going to appear…a very special man. He’s going to have abilities…be able to do things nobody else in the world can do.”
Clark felt a moment of premonition. “What can he do, Lois?”
“You won’t believe me,” Lois said, “But maybe you’ll remember this conversation. He can fly, Clark. And in ten years he’s going to be murdered.”
