“A man who can fly,” Clark found himself saying numbly. He scrambled for something to say. “With a jet pack or something?”
Lois shook her head. “He can fly on his own. He’s tremendously strong…I once saw him lift a space shuttle and launch it into space. He has senses that are superhuman…there are so many things he can do that the rest of us can’t.”
Clark couldn’t speak for a moment. He felt as though the world was closing in on him and his throat felt tight. She knew…and from the way she was talking, a lot of other people knew too.
Glancing up at him sharply, Lois said “I know it’s hard to believe. If someone had told me that a man would be flying around in a blue suit and red cape saving the world, I’d have thought they were ready for the loony bin.”
Blue suit?
“Considering you already said you were from the future, I doubt this is going to change my opinion of you, Lois.”
But it did. Clark felt a growing conviction that Lois was telling the truth as she knew it. Something in the future was going to go terribly wrong if everyone knew about….wait.
“This flying man…what is he called?”
“Well, I named him Superman. If I don’t make it, they may end up calling him something else.”
Superman? That seemed a little…presumptuous.
“And you don’t have an address we can find him at?”
“He just showed up out of 1993. It wasn’t until later that we found out where he came from.”
Clark couldn’t help himself. “Where?”
“Everything I say just makes me sound more and more like a nut.” Lois closed her eyes and sighed. “He’s an alien from the planet Krypton. His name is Kal El, and he’s my friend.”
Clark found himself gaping at her, and again it felt like the air had been slammed out of his chest.
He was an alien? Mom and dad had always assumed he was some sort of science experiment. The thought that he might not even be a human being…
Lois pulled a piece of paper from out of her pocket. It seemed to be a bank statement, but the blank side had been covered with doodles.
Lois pointed to one. “If the flying doesn’t clue you in, this will. He wears this on his chest.”
It was the symbol that had come with his baby blanket.
Clark Kent came to a sudden realization. He was Superman, or at least he was going to be. He was going to use his abilities to help the world, and somehow, he was going to have a secret identity.
The thought of finally being able to use his abilities out in the open, without being afraid of being hunted down, or worse, having his parents hunted down and used as hostages was heady, thrilling.
“The problem is, he thinks nothing can hurt him.” Lois was saying. “And for the most part he’s right. Bullets, bombs, missiles, fire…he’s invulnerable to all of it.”
“You said he was murdered,” Clark said slowly. “So I guess he has some kind of weakness.”
“There’s a rock, a green glowing rock that can kill him. In the future I know, Lex Luthor is going o use it to kill him.”
****************
Clark was staring at her, and his expression was unreadable.
It surprised Lois that he was still sitting here. She would have already been out the door, calling the men in the little white coats. Flying aliens, time travel…she should have just claimed to be psychic.
Still, she hadn’t had a choice. At this point, there was no guarantee that one of the Metro thugs wasn’t going to put a bullet in her skull tomorrow. If that happened, there was no telling what would happen to the future. Lois Lane had been at least partially responsible for what had happened to both Clark and Superman, and part of her regretted the thought that they might be better off without her. Superman had let down his guard for her sake.
Yet it would have been only a matter of time before Lex would have felt threatened by the one person in Metropolis who had a higher vantage point that he did. Lex’s ego had been huge, and his criminal wrongdoings were still being separated out by investigators, although Lois had no doubt that the courts were being closed on the final night.
If Superman was able to survive just one more year the world might be saved. But Lois didn’t want him to die.
“Let me tell you about Lex Luthor,” Lois said quietly.
*******************
The whole day of her wedding had been a blur. From the moment she began to realize she was making a mistake, that she was marrying the wrong man, everything had taken on a weird sense of unreality.
She refused to marry him. That moment was thankfully clear. But Perry breaking in with the police, and Lexes subsequent actions in jumping to his death, those had been covered in a feeling of numbness.
When she and Perry had overheard the frantic cries of the police who were investigating the towers over one officers radio, they’d forced their way downstairs to find a scene of horror.
What happened next Lois would forever after remember only as a series of still images. A cage, glowing a sickly green. A cape, covering a lifeless form. Men trying to open the cage with crowbars.
There had been no key, and in the end they’d had to use specialized equipment to saw through the bars and get to the body. Someone had even thought to rifle through the pockets of Lex’s body, a task Lois didn’t envy anyone.
Lois remembered hearing a shrill, high pitched keening noise, and it was only later that she’d realized that it must have come from her.
She’d been the one to identify the body.
The funeral had been huge. In recognition of his service in the Nightfall incident, he’d been laid out in State, much like a President, or foreign King. Dignitaries from around the world had come to attend the funeral. The crowds had been vast. Every person on the planet had owed him a debt of gratitude.
He’d been superhuman not just because of his powers, but because of who he was. News reporters ran special interest stories for weeks where people talked about the impact he’d had on their lives. He’d been canonized.
And in the vastness of the crowd, there had been one blank spot, one missing element.
Clark Kent didn’t come to the funeral of his best friend.
Lois had been too shell shocked at first to be more than disappointed and hurt. But as time went on, and he didn’t return any of her calls, she became frantic.
She’d broken into his house, and found everything covered in layer of dust.
The Kents, when she called were grief stricken. They admitted that they hadn’t heard from Clark in weeks. She could hear a note of hopelessness in their voices. They believed he was dead.
She filed a missing person’s report, and then for the first time since she was a child she began to pray. She prayed that she would see Clark again, that she would find a chance to tell him that she loved him, that she’d been wrong about so many things.
Lois hadn’t realized how bitterly ironic fate could be. She got her chance to see Clark again. It hadn’t been until Inspector Henderson showed up at her doorstep, with an expression that she didn’t recognize.
He asked her to come with him, to identify someone. It wasn’t until she was at the morgue that she realized what he’d meant.
The body had been in almost perfect condition. It had been left in a freezer, buried in the back of a Lexcorp meat packing plant.
Lois still didn’t want to remember what they had done to him. Lex had obviously planned to send a message. Her mind simply shied away.
It was his face…his hands. The wallet was his as well. Lois didn’t recognize his clothes, but that didn’t mean anything.
Nothing meant anything.
Lois couldn’t remember the rest of that day, or much of what happened the next. She barely even remembered the funeral. The Kents had seemed stunned and disbelieving. It was afterwards that she started her count…listing each day that passed from the time that the life had left her life. One hundred days. Two hundred days.
She moved in with her mother. With Clark dead and the Planet gone, she just couldn’t seem to find the will to get up in the morning. For three weeks she didn’t get out of her pajamas, and her entire diet consisted of chocolate ice cream.
On day two hundred fourteen, the news had gone out across the globe.
Shiva was coming.
****************
The one thing Clark couldn’t understand was this business with two bodies. The rest of it made sense…too much sense. But Lois seemed as sincere in this as she did everything else.
“None of that is going to happen,” he said. “The things you’ve changed…”
“How do I know I haven’t changed it for the worse?” Lois asked, and he was horrified to see tears in her eyes. “I screwed it up the first time, and I’m doing it again.”
“You won’t marry this Luthor guy.”
“If it’s even me that’s running things in 1993. How do I know it won’t be her…the idiot?”
“The idiot?”
“The one person in the universe who’s even more of a screw-up than I am…my seventeen year old self!” Lois grabbed her bank statement and stuffed it back into her pocket. “It’s obvious that she doesn’t have all my memories, or she’d BE me. But what she’s been doing….I’d have thought I had more sense.”
“Then I’ll have to help you.” Clark said. It surprised him how much he found himself believing her.
“You believe me?” Lois asked. Her lip trembled, and Clark felt something come loose inside his chest. There was moisture in her eyes.
She looked away quickly, and grabbed her cup and plate. She gathered his as well, and stood up unsteadily, heading for the kitchen.
Clark followed her. “I’m sorry about everything you’ve been going through.”
He felt a moment of regret. He wasn’t going to be able to share his secret with her, at least not yet. Even if he could trust her in the way she obviously wanted, he’d never be able to trust her seventeen year old self, who seemed to remember at least some things Lois knew.
All he could be for her was a friend, and hope it would be enough.
Lois set the dishes down in the sink, and stood with her eyes closed.
“I was the loneliest person I ever knew when I first met you.” Lois sighed and turned to face him. “I’d spent so much time working to be the best that I’d left everybody else in my life behind. I didn’t have time for friends or family or any sort of life on my own outside work.”
She took another step, and Clark stopped, confused. He wasn’t sure what was going on.
He was shocked when she rushed forward and hugged him tightly.
“I’m so happy you are alive!” Lois said. Her words were muffled in his chest. “I thought I’d lost you today.”
“I’m a little tougher than people think,” Clark said quietly.
“You aren’t tougher than a bullet! If they’d had guns instead of pipes, we’d both be dead! Then Superman would have to go up against Lex on his own. One of us has to make it, to find him.”
Lois was still holding him tightly when she looked up. “I’ve wasted most of my life, and there’s no guarantee that we’ll live to the morning.”
She kissed him, and for the first time in his life Clark found something as good as flying.
