Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Imbroglio (7/?)

She paused at the mirror as she put the window cleaner on the counter. Her hair, which she had once kept at a short bob, was even shorter than she remembered. When she had first seen the new length, and how it seemed to fit her, it had been the first clue that she was outside her own time. Now, she barely noticed it, but sometimes, like now, it was a reminder that she was not the woman that she used to be.

..and tapped a pen against a blank sheet, and tapped a pen against a blank sheet, trying to figure out...

Lois was furious.

After Superman, or Clark, or whoever the heck he was, had left, she had not been able to go back to sleep. Instead, she had done what had gotten her through many times when she was upset.

Now that the kitchen grout was spotless and most of the dust around the house had been eradicated, she was still angry.

Actually, truth be told, she had managed to calm down some after she had finished wiping away the last bits of dust from the living room. Then, as she was moving a chair back into place, she had bumped her elbow quite hard near the edge of a wall. Without warning, a part of the wall had spun, knocking over several bottles of cleaning agents to the floor, to reveal a secret compartment full of flashy blue suits and red capes. It was then that her anger had returned.

Antarctica should be colder than this.

These were Clark’s thoughts as he trudged through the ice and snow in nothing but the black suit he hadn’t worn since his time with the people from New Krypton. The thin material of the outfit should not have been able to hold back the bitter climate of the desolate continent.

Obviously, he wasn’t as powerless as he had originally assumed. He wondered how this could have been, or why he had not noticed before now.

Unfortunately, he found himself unable to fly. There were no blasts of laser vision to melt snow, no freezing breath to turn the patch of snow into a thing sheet of ice.

He wondered how it was that he had gotten here, and in this particular suit, no less. Was he experiencing some form of sleep-flying? It would explain Lois’ claims that he had not been in bed the other night.

“Well, after you fell asleep, you decided to fly around, moonlighting as a superhero. You know, that would have been a very nice conversation to have beforehand, you know? ‘Hi honey, I’m your husband. And oh, by the way, I’m also Superman!’ Didn’t you think that it was even slightly relevant to let me know that the man I apparently married is actually an alien?”

He winced at the last part. He tried not to take the defensive, but the word seemed to trigger some latent feelings of inadequacy. “Look, I’m sorry it never came up over coffee that I’m from another planet, but it’s not really something that I slip into normal everyday conversations! Not to mention, I'm not him anymore!”

“Oh, Clark,” she sighed into the receiver, sounding contrite. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just a lot to take in, and then I found out that you are that crazy guy from the alley, and then there are all these newspaper clippings, and I got to wondering just how in the world I would have been able to survive if Superman hadn’t come swooping in every ten seconds…”

As she continued to ramble, Clark closed his eyes to soak it all in. He had missed this quality of hers, the way she got when she allowed her mouth to run away from her. Although annoying at times, it was a quality that was quintessentially her.

“So then what you’re saying is that you have no memory, whatsoever, of swooping in here like some caped crusader and scaring the crap out of me? Or being all Mr. Mopey and saying things about how you can’t be Superman anymore, or Clark. Or my personal favorite, how you thought you killed me? That's also something that would have been nice to know!”

Clark’s heart stopped in his chest. He had never wanted her to find out. He could still clearly see his hands around her throat every time he closed his eyes. The glassy look in her eyes still haunted his dreams when he had them. He hadn’t even wanted to think about it, let alone confess it to her. And how he could have even told her about it, when he had so carefully tried to keep it locked away, was beyond him.

“And then! As if that little bombshell wasn’t bad enough, you just fly off to where ever it is that you fly off too, with no explanation as to how, or why, not even bothering to stick around!” Lois huffed angrily. “So now, not only have I married Mr. Superhero of the World, you’re now telling me that you’re entangled in some twisted version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?”