Clark started to pull away, and Lois blinked in confusion. From her perspective everything had been going very well. Her lips felt swollen, her hair was tousled and they had been laying together on the couch for several minutes. Lois’s hands had just started to roam when Clark started to pull back.
“Maybe we need to slow down a little, “ he said, his voice rough and ragged.
“We could,” Lois grinned, then kissed him again. This kiss was longer and filled with promise. “But I don’t want to.”
He pulled away again, this time with something akin to fear in his eyes. “I think we really need to stop. You make me feel things…”
“That’s sort of the whole point,” Lois said, reaching for him again. He shied back, and a moment later he was standing up.
Lois felt oddly cold, and bereft.
“I don’t do this with girls I don’t know.” Clark said, looking everywhere but at her.
Lois hadn’t expected to be rejected by Clark. She’d risked her life, traveled through time, gone to lengths no other person had ever gone to. The idea that he might just….not like her was devastating.
“I’m not a girl, Clark.” Lois said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And I’ve known you for a long time.”
“But I don’t know you.” Clark said. “Not like I should, if we really were to do….this.”
Lois hesitated, feeling hurt. “I didn’t think it mattered that much to men.”
“I’m not like other men, Lois.” Clark sighed. “I know that everybody else seems to do this pretty casually, but…”
“It’s not casual for me!” Lois protested. “There’s so much I missed out on, waiting.”
“As if that doesn’t put pressure on me,” Clark said soberly. “You’ve spent a long time building this up in your mind. I’d hate to disappoint you.”
Lois frowned and said “I’ve never been disappointed by you, Clark.”
Of all the people she’d ever known, he was the one person she could say that about. He’d always been there for her, and he’d been beautiful.
Cautiously, Clark said, “You’ve got a lot more experience than I do.”
Lois slowly sat up, smoothing down her shirt. “Age doesn’t matter Clark. So I’ve got a few more Kerths under my belt…”
“No. I mean you are experienced…”
Lois frowned, trying to understand why he was putting so much emphasis on….Her eyes opened wide.
“You mean you’ve never…..?”
Clark shook his head slowly.
“Ever?” Lois felt mildly incredulous, but it wasn’t as though he was thirty and still untouched. This was a wrinkle she hadn’t expected.
“It’s not like I haven’t had opportunities,” he said defensively. “It’s just that…this is a big step. I know a lot of people don’t think it is, but it’s important to me to wait until I can find someone to trust.”
“You can trust me, Clark,” Lois said quietly. “We’ll be good together.”
“How do you know?” Clark said. “How long do I really have with you anyway? You dance into my life like this…this…beautiful thing. You make me feel things I’ve never felt before. And no matter what you tell me now, you can’t guarantee that you won’t be gone in the next minute, leaving me with a stranger.”
He looked at her and said, “Do you know what it’s like, having the most wonderful thing in the world dangled in front of you and never being able to reach it?”
Lois nodded. She rose to her feet slowly and approached him.
“I could have reached it,” Lois said softly. “But I didn’t know what I had until it was too late.”
She hugged him, and he didn’t push her away.
“Don’t push this,” he said softly. “I think that the kind of man your Clark was would have said no too.”
Lois held him for a moment and sighed. She remembered waking up in a skimpy outfit, with a headache and Clark’s call of “If you really want me, I’m yours.”
He’d resisted the pheromone then, because taking advantage wasn’t who he was.
She couldn’t blame him for being the same person now.
Lois hugged him again, tightly.
It was probably better that their first time not be on Aunt Opal’s couch anyway. The thing was narrow and covered in gaudy flowers.
She was going to have to watch out. She’d forgotten what it was like to have the hormones of a seventeen year old girl.
******************
Lois felt oddly nervous. They had the rest of the evening together, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Absently she grabbed for the TV guide on the table. Aunt Opal kept stacks of TV guides piled around the corner of one wall, hundred of them, but she’d always kept the current ones on the table.
She flipped through it.
They were still making new episodes of the Jeffersons, Alice, Dallas, The facts of Life, Trapper John, Magnum PI, Dynasty, Simon and Simon…the Cosby show…
Lois froze. There was something about the Cosby show that was important. Something that had been in the newspapers…
She caught a flash of memory; they’d done a two page glossy spread, and there had been some argument in the scientific community…
That was it.
“Clark!” Lois said urgently.
He was sitting in the chair still, watching her.
“Is this right? Is today September 21st?”
Clark nodded. “It’s still 1984, if that’s what you wanted to know.”
Lois looked frantically for the clock, then froze. There was still enough time.
“We have to get to the observatory.”
“Why?”
“You wanted to change the world, didn’t you?” Lois said. “Let’s start by saving it.”
************
Clark felt uncomfortable watching the graduate student fawning all over Lois. She’d been amazing in the way she’d talked her way into the observatory, even though it was after hours. She lied like a professional, and flirted in a way that made him feel a slow burn.
He wasn’t supposed to be jealous this early.
From the way Lois kept glancing at the clock, he knew there was something she was waiting for. She tensed at one point, but it wasn’t until several minutes later that the student yelled out.
“Hey! What are you doing? Don’t touch that!”
“What’s that?” Lois asked sweetly.
In a small black and white television monitor was a flash of light.
The student stared for a moment, then began to shake a little in excitement. He grabbed for a heavy black telephone receiver.
“That’s our cue to leave,” Lois said quietly. “We’ve just made him famous.”
***********
It started to rain again, and Lois cursed. She’d duct taped a plastic bag to her broken window, but it snapped and blew in the wind, and it made the interior of the car too noisy to talk.
The darkness, rain and road construction made streets that should have been familiar strange and foreboding. It was after midnight now, and the streets were deserted.
Lois caught sight of a familiar building, and she turned toward it. It was only as it came in sight that she realized what it was. It was one of the buildings that had been burned by the Toasters in 1993. It stood here now deserted and undamaged, a testament to urban decay.
This building was on the riverfront. Lois felt uneasy. This was the home turf of the people who were trying to kill her.
She started to slow to turn around when she saw a set of headlights appear from behind her. They hadn’t turned in from a side street. They’d simply appeared, almost as though someone was waiting for her.
She made the next turn, and drove, stepping on the accelerator.
The headlights behind her turned as well.
Lois found herself driving down streets that seemed more and more familiar. This was the neighborhood of the Metro Club. Lois found herself sweating as a second car blocked her off from turning on a side street. She felt grateful when she saw lights up ahead. The Metros were less likely to try something in front of witnesses, even if they were their own customers.
The flashing red ahead wasn’t the light of police cars. It was the light of ambulances. Lois barely noticed the cars behind her turning off onto side streets as she became stuck in a small traffic jam.
It was a nightmarish scene. The front of the Metro club had collapsed, and the ambulances were taking bodies out in stretchers. Lois felt sick to her stomach, but given how efficient Louie’s people were, she suspected that the war was over. The metros had lost, and their operations were going to be assimilated into the operations of Louie’s boss.
She was responsible for all of this. It was the changes she’d made, the memories she’d given to her foolish younger self that had started this chain of events in motion.
She headed back for Aunt Opal’s house. She felt like nothing so much as crawling into a bed, pulling up the covers and hiding from the world.
****************
A night of restless, guilty sleep hadn’t helped anything. Lois still felt exhausted body and soul. She’d gone over everything over and over in her mind, trying to think of something she could have done differently.
Maybe if she hadn’t placed that first bet. Maybe her younger self wouldn’t have discovered an unexpected gambling addiction.
What ifs were useless. If Shiva and Nightfall were discovered early enough, then maybe the government could do something even without Superman. But that would mean there would be no need to even develop time travel.
Paradoxes always made Lois’s mind hurt.
Returning to her dorm room for clothes may not have been the brightest thing to do, but Lois suspected that the remaining members of the Metros had better things to do than chase down one small time gambler. Most of them were either changing allegiances or running for their lives.
Lois picked listlessly through her clothing selections. These were a little bit better than the clothing she’d found as a teenager, but not by much.
Her telephone rang, shattering the silence. Lois found herself jerking, startled as the full meaning brought her to panicked awareness.
Did someone know she was here?
Gingerly, she picked up her telephone receiver.
“Lois?”
The voice on the other end of the line stunned her. It was her grandmother’s voice- three months after she was supposed to have been dead.
“Grandma?” Lois said quietly. “What can I do for you?”
“I just had a discussion with your father. He just told me that he hasn’t been paying for my medical bills.” Her grandmother hesitated then said “Where did you get the money?”
Lois had a flash of memory. She saw herself betting on game after game, over and over again, depositing the money, and writing checks to hospitals for surgery and chemotherapy.
She’d won a lot more than thirty five thousand dollars, but most of it had been burned away by mounting medical expenses, paying for doctors and surgeons and medicines and chemotherapy.
Her younger self hadn’t given up on journalism to get rich gambling. She’d practically quit school to help out her dying grandmother.
Lois felt tears rising to her eyes, and then she felt another familiar sensation as she felt herself beginning to drain away.
Her body hit the floor a moment later.
****************
“My mother is going to love you. “ Clark’s voice came from under the hood of the trunk.
Lois blinked in the bright sunlight and wondered where she was. And how long it had been.
“If you’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving in a small town you are in for a real treat.” His head popped up from under the trunk. “Do you want to give me a hand with some of the bags?”
He was visibly older, but still youthful.
“Lois…?”
He stared at her for a moment, and then his lips pursed.
“Oh, it’s you.”
He didn’t seem enthusiastic to see her.
“What’s going on, Clark. What IS all this?”
Clark’s face turned red and he wouldn’t look her in the eyes.
