Thanks to Nancy, Beth and Alisha!!!
Last time:
Lois
"She was never there that night," he whispered, kissing my forehead. "Only you. I should have known then..."
The tears streaked down my temples and into my ears.
"What?" he asked. "Did you think I did imagine Lana?"
I shook my head. "No, I never really thought that, but after you took my nightgown off and laid us down, you rolled to the side and I could tell you were looking at me, but..."
"You couldn't bring yourself to watch me, could you? You were afraid of what I'd think after you'd been nursing for so long and the stretch marks, weren't you?"
I nodded. "But then you told me I was beautiful and somehow I knew you were talking about me and not pretending I was Lana."
"I was," he told me. "From the time you kissed me to the time when I woke up and saw you lying on my side of the bed and the sheet was down nearly to your rear end and all I could see was your back and I wondered what would happen if you woke up just then... You were the only thing in my world, sweetheart. You still are. Every time we make love. I don't hear emergencies or anything." He began kissing his way up my neck between words. "Just you. Your heartbeat. The little noises you make. You fill my world, my senses. You're my life."
The tears had picked up a bit. "Clark..."
Whatever I was about to say was lost in his passionate kiss.
We made love again, under the stars, and then Clark pulled a blanket up over us as we fell asleep in each other's arms.
*~*27*~*
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
Waking up with my naked wife in my arms was a dream come true.
Apparently, she was thinking something along the same lines, because she started kissing me as soon as she woke up.
Not that I was complaining.
All too soon, though, it was time to get dressed again.
Lois sighed as she pulled her shirt over her head. "Now when?"
"Back to the future, I guess," I told her, buttoning up my flannel shirt that she looked so good in. "Christmas morning and go from there."
"I have a bad feeling about this," she said. "Something's not going to be right, but I've not got a clue what it is. Maybe the other you decided that 'be nice to Lois' meant leave her when she told him she couldn’t do it anymore on their first anniversary."
"You mean instead of kissing her?" I asked wryly.
She glared at me. "I would have slapped you except I would have hurt myself. I was *not* amused."
I wrapped my arms around her. "I'm sorry for that, too."
She sighed again and rested her head on my chest, her arms finding their way around me. "At some point, you're going to have to stop apologizing, Clark. It's been six months since Navance died. I'm not saying you don't still have some making up for it to do – those breakfasts in bed, the night flights, all that stuff – but I know you're sorry. I know you regret a lot of what happened those first few years. I've forgiven you, have you forgiven yourself?"
That was an interesting question. I believed Lois when she said she'd forgiven me. And all that 'making it up' stuff was stuff I wanted to do for her anyway – because I loved her and I would have done it anyway.
*Had* I forgiven myself?
I deeply regretted a lot of what happened before Navance died. Most of the second year of our marriage was pretty good – from a friend perspective anyway – but the rest of it...
I sighed. "I think that's something I need to deal with another day. Right now, we need to get our lives back."
She nodded against me before lifting her face to mine. "I love you, Clark Jerome Davis Kent." She kissed me softly.
"I love you, Lois Joanne Lane-Kent." I kissed her back.
"Let's go figure this out," she said with renewed determination.
I nodded. "Let's go."
We stepped through the time window onto the same beach and she turned to me with a raised brow. "Trying to tell me something, Kent?"
I shrugged. "That I want to fly with my wife."
She smiled. "I guess I can't argue with that, can I?"
I pulled her into my arms and we took off for Pittsdale.
We hovered near the house and I grimaced. Lois had been right. Something was wrong.
"What?" she asked.
I sighed as I set us down in the trees near the house.
"None of my family is here. You are, but I'm not. Just you and your parents and Lucy and Jimmy."
"Christopher?" she asked fearfully.
I nodded. "He's here." I took a deep breath. "But Nate's not. And there's no place for him – no crib or anything. Our wing has all the lock-down stuff in it so we must have lived here together at some point."
"We must not have been together after Daddy's heart attack," she said burying her head in my chest.
I sighed. "Back we go then, but to what time? Before the heart attack and warn them? After and you convince yourself to come on to me or what?"
"Go to the hospital? Try to corner them while they're alone?"
"Shhh..." I saw something.
I saw the other me land near the house and walk in.
"Did you see that?" I whispered.
"That was you, right? Not Bernie or something?"
"That was me."
><~><~><
"Hi," the other Clark said.
"How're you?" the other Lois replied heading back into the house. "His bag is packed," she went on, without waiting for a response. "He's been waiting for you to get here since about five this morning. He can't wait to see your folks."
"They send their love," Clark told her.
"Send mine back." She handed him a small 'Incredibles' suitcase.
"Are you okay?" he asked after a long pause.
She shrugged. "Fine. Still mad at the other version of myself for putting us all through this hell and wondering at what point does it become worthwhile. I mean, I love Christopher, you know that, but if she hadn't sent us on that wild goose chase with the blonde..."
"Right." He set the suitcase down and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I'm still not real crazy about the other me either. Part of me wishes they would show up again so we could give them what for."
"How is Lana, anyway?" Lois asked, turning away from him.
Clark shrugged. "Fine, I guess. I haven't talked to her in a while."
Lois looked up, surprised. "She didn't take you back?"
Clark shook his head. "Not yet. She understands why I did what I did, why you and I both did what we did, but I still have some groveling to do at this point. She asked me to give her some time."
She turned to look at him. "I hope you're happy when this is all sorted out, really, I do. But I meant it when I said I wouldn't tolerate Lana treating Christopher like the spawn of Satan or something. Talking about your 'real' family or whatever. If I find out she's doing stuff like that, you'll only get to see him when she's not around. Got it?"
He nodded. "I don't think she'd do that, but I wouldn't tolerate it either."
There was a long awkward silence.
"Sometimes I wish he was your son," Lois suddenly blurted out. "I had a dream that night at the cabin and sometimes I wish it had been real."
"What?" Clark asked after a second of stunned silence.
Lois sighed. "Never mind."
"No. What was that about a dream?"
She sighed. "I had a dream that night in front of the fire. That we really had been together in some hypothermic induced haze."
"I had the same dream," Clark said quietly. "At the time, I thought it was with Lana, but she kept morphing into you. The longer we were together, the more it was just you there with me that night."
Lois looked at him with tears in her eyes. "Do you think it's possible?"
Clark shrugged. "He *does* look a lot like me, but there's no way to know what really happened on Halloween either."
"If we ever see ourselves again, we should ask them."
Clark's brow furrowed for a minute, before understanding dawned. "When I talked to him, he said he had two kids with his wife."
"Well, even though the divorce isn't final, I don't see us having another baby anytime soon," Lois told him.
"No. That's not it. He *had* to know you were pregnant by then. And looking back, I know how I took a lot of the things he said – like how I needed to take the engagement ring with me because I'd need it. I thought he meant that I wouldn't make it back to the hotel again before it was time to see Lana again, but what he really meant was that I'd need it to get us out of Latislan – to sell it for the rings and the license and stuff. But the two kids... Do you think he meant Christopher was my son and that at some point, they had another baby?"
She shrugged. "It's possible, I guess."
There was another long silence. "Can I ask you something, Lois?"
She shrugged again. "Sure."
"How are you? Really?"
"Except for Christopher, life stinks. What do you expect?"
He went and sat in one of the chairs. "I know you're probably not going to believe me, but I've been thinking about something for a long time. Ever since Lana said she needed some time. I've been thinking a lot about my life and something Nana and Pop Pop always said keeps coming back to me."
"What's that?"
"Love isn't who you can live with, it's who you can't live without," he quoted softly. "The last six months, without the two of you have been harder than the first six months without Lana were. I mean, I know I see Christopher regularly, but it's not the same. When I saw Lana, every time I saw her, it was like I was going through the motions. I knew I should still be in love with her, but every time, I found myself comparing her to you. And every time, she came up short. I hated that for a while – hated you for that, even though it wasn't your fault. Finally, Mom asked me what had been bugging me and she said something – I'm not even sure what – that made me reevaluate things."
He took a deep breath before continuing. "I'm not in love with Lana anymore, though I guess if she called today and said she wanted to try dating again, I probably would, but I don't think that's where I really want to be. And, I'm not in love with you either, but I keep daydreaming about asking you out – on a real date – and you saying yes, and spending the day together with Christopher and going out at night, just the two of us. I don't think Lana's what I really want anymore. I think I was in love with her, but I know I'm not anymore. And I can't honestly say that I'm in love with you but I *can* say I'd like to take you out, to get to know the real Lois Lane again, to see what could happen between us, whether Christopher is really my son or not." He looked up at Lois hopefully. "Whaddya say? Can we try to make this work for real?"
Lois swiped at the tears on her cheeks. "I would like that," she said softly. "But I swear to you, if you're just killing time until Lana decides to take you back..." She left the threat hanging in the air.
"I'm not," he said standing up. "I promise. I know that doesn’t mean much coming from me, but it's the truth."
She nodded as Christopher came running in to the room, flinging himself into Clark's arms.
Clark and Christopher chatted for a minute, before Clark turned back to Lois. "Would you like to come with us? Spend Christmas with my folks?"
She nodded through her tears. "I'd like that very much. Just let me tell Mom."
><~><~><
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
Tears had filled my eyes and we stepped quietly through the window before they could take off. Clark had whispered the entire conversation to me. It looked like things would turn out okay for these two after all.
But it still wasn't *our* lives.
So back to the time of the heart attack we went.
We watched as the ambulance took Daddy away and the opportunity presented itself. Jessica, apparently, had spent the night elsewhere – something that was different between our universes or timelines or whatever.
I was waiting in the garage when the younger me walked in, keys to the Jeep in her hand.
"Go to hell," she said barely looking at me.
"I don't blame you," I said quietly. "I know you didn't think I was getting you into this mess."
"And don't you ever change clothes?"
I smirked. "Benefits of time travel. For you it's been years since we first met, but it's only been a few hours for me – maybe twelve or so. After we helped you get out of the hospital and saw the wedding in Latislan, we went to a beach to sleep for a while. I'd been up for nearly thirty-six hours by then. We didn't start the whole time travel thing till midnight and I'd been up since about five that morning."
She crossed her arms and stared at me. "So talking me into living on campus and going to Latislan took seventeen hours?"
I shook my head. "No," I said quietly. "We've been a lot more times and places than that."
"Like when."
"The cabin," I told her. "I was the one who made sure it was unlocked and the blankets were on the couch. After I saw you the first time, we went back to when we started and found out that you hadn't survived. You'd collapsed on the porch trying to break the window. Clark barely managed to survive. We went back to help. We fixed the power that night and..." I didn't think telling her we'd turned it back off a couple days later was a good idea.
"And then?"
"Then we went forward and things still weren't right. So we went to Europe. I talked to you, Clark talked to Clark. We watched Navance and we wouldn’t have let anything happen to you if things had gone differently than they did for us. My Clark was the one who helped you out of the hospital while I distracted the guard and then we ran through the streets of Skopje, leading them away from the embassy so you two could get there safely."
"So at what point does this all become worth it? Because I'm just not seeing it. Joe offered to marry me and if I hadn't already been married to Clark, he would have and he and I would have been happy together."
"Probably," I said softly. "But I still think things are more than worth it in the end."
"Is Daddy going to be okay?" she asked suddenly, her eyes full of tears.
I nodded. "He's going to be fine. I promise."
She breathed a sigh of relief, then another of resignation. "What is it I have to do this time?"
"Tonight, after you get home, go to bed. Try to get some sleep and when Clark asks what he can do to help make it better, tell him. Whatever you feel in your heart that you want him to do to help, tell him and then act on it. If it's a night flight or game night or *whatever*, just tell him what you really want in the bottom of your heart."
"I want him to love me," she whispered. "Like Daddy loves Mom. Like Jimmy's falling in love with Lucy. Like Clark loves Lana."
"I know," I whispered back. "And I don't know that tonight's the right time to tell him that, but tell him what he can *do* to help make it better. I don’t think you'll want to have *that* conversation tonight. But be honest with him about what he can do to help in the middle of the night tonight. Trust your heart about what to ask him for. It'll be worth it, I promise."
One other thing. "Oh. And you need to remember one word. You won't need it for a while, but the look..." I hesitated, not wanting to tell her too much. "Just remember 'Superman'."
"Superman?" she asked with a raised brow.
"I promise that's one you want to remember."
"You've promised a lot of things."
"I know."
She sighed. "But you did say the Kerth doesn't come until *after* graduation, so..."
"Believe me when I say that once you've been through what you two have already been through and what you're going to go through to get where we are now, you'll never take it for granted. Never take Mom and Lucy and Dave for granted either. I still miss them every day and I never met Dave until I woke up in the wrong timeline."
"So who's Jimmy with then? If Lucy's not there?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head. "He hasn't found anyone yet. I hope he does."
"I hope so, too."
"Trust him tonight," I told her as I pushed off the car. "It'll be worth it."
*****
TBC
