Thanks, as always to Alisha, Nancy and Beth.
Last time:
Lois
"I think I want to hear about your lives," Dad said suddenly. "What life did you two have when you went to sleep last night?"
"Our wedding was last night," I told him abruptly. "Our four year anniversary is next week, but we finally had our wedding last night, Christmas Eve. We have two sons and we may have another baby on the way."
Mom's arm tightened around me.
"I have the stretch marks to prove it," I told them, standing up suddenly and pulling up the hem of my shirt.
Dad sat back slightly. "Okay. I wasn't sure what I expected, but not that. I thought maybe you were making all this up or something, some kind of sleight of hand or something with the pillow. A psychology experiment or something, but you can't fake stretch marks like that and you wouldn't, Pumpkin. So that leaves us with you're telling the truth even before the pillow reappears. But I do have one question."
"What?" I asked, surprised he was so accepting so readily.
"Why didn't you just go change whatever it was that guy said he changed?"
Even more tears filled my eyes. "I couldn't." Clark put his arm around me. "When I was ten..." My voice cracked. "In 1995..." I shook my head and buried my head in Clark's shoulder.
"In 1995," he told them, "the four of you went to the cabin. Ellen, you and Lucy came back early because Lois and Sam were playing a hot game of Monopoly."
"I remember," Ellen said quietly. "Lucy and I had a close call with a tractor trailer on the way home."
Clark took a deep breath. "Well, in our timeline, in our lives, it wasn't a close call. In our timeline, you were both killed instantly."
*~*30*~*
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
Sam's face turned ashen when I said that. "What?"
I nodded. "When Lois was ten, her mom and sister were killed by a tractor trailer. That led to a sequence of events eight years later that led to us getting married our freshman year of college. Once the two of them didn't die, that sequence of events didn't happen. As much as we want to get back to our lives, to our sons, Lois couldn't bring herself to go back and make that accident happen and neither could I. Jimmy is one of our best friends but he hasn't found anyone to settle down with like he has Lucy here. And Dave..." I sighed. "Ellen, you'd never told Sam about Dave. You left a letter for him when you died, but it was several years before he looked for him. By then it was too late. So making that accident happen would not only kill the two of you, but Dave and Lucy and Jimmy's baby."
Lois moved away from me slightly and wiped at her eyes. "And what we've learned since then says that our timeline is still out there somewhere, but we can't get to it. We went back to 1994, before the accident happened or didn't happen or whatever, and hoped that we'd get sent back to *our* 2006 because that was before the six different times diverged, but instead we ended up back here. Martha thinks that's because your Lois and Clark are in our timeline so when we went back, we got sent to the only one of the timelines that didn't have a Lois and Clark that was supposed to have one. The whole 'nature abhors a vacuum' thing."
"And that means you have no idea how to get back to your own timeline," Ellen said quietly.
"Right," Lois said in equal tones. "I've missed you *so* much..."
"Oh, honey, my Lois or not... Come here." Ellen held her arms out and Lois scrambled back on the couch next to her.
Just then the window opened again and a pillow came flying through the other side. We heard me saying I'd set it for ten minutes as it disappeared.
Sam sighed. "Okay. I guess that's proof. But now what?"
Lois turned to him. "We were hoping you could look at the doohickey and see if you can figure out if there's a universe hopping setting or something, where we can hop straight to our 2006. And if you can't, if you know someone who can. Because I do love Joe, he's always been my friend, but I can't marry him in a couple weeks."
"And Lana and I used to date, but I broke her heart a long time ago when I married Lois. I know I’m going to break it again, but Lois is my wife," I told them. "I can't be her Clark."
I handed the box to Sam and showed him what I knew of how it worked.
"Okay. I'll see what I can do, but it's going to take time," he told us.
"I know, Daddy. Here's what we were thinking. Tell Lana and Joe what's going on because they deserve to know. Give you a week and if you haven't figured it out by then, call off the wedding and all that. I know you guys have probably spent a lot of money on it, but I just can't..."
"Oh, sweetheart, of course not." Ellen held her closer. "And it's not like we're paying for three hundred doves or anything. It's actually a pretty simple affair here at the house." Ellen looked at me. "And I guess you'd start divorce proceedings then."
I sighed and sat down. "I don't see any other way. We'll know by then if Lois is pregnant again, too."
"If I got pregnant before we left, I'll be ravenous by later today, probably," she told them. "If I got pregnant while we were in a universe where we were married, it'll be a couple days."
"Ravenous?" Sam asked her.
She stood and started walking around nervously. "It's a half-Kryptonian pregnancy thing, I guess. Or it's just how my body works. I think how fast it happens is Kryptonian. With Christopher, I got pregnant Saturday night and it was... Tuesday that I was eating everything in sight. Nate was the same actually."
"Christopher and Nate are your sons?" Ellen asked her quietly.
"Yeah. Christopher is three and a half and Nate is almost eighteen months. And before you start doing the math, yes, I was pregnant when we got married. Remember we told you about the Lois that didn't make it to the cabin?" They nodded. "We barely made it and neither one of us remembered what happened that night. Clark passed out. I got all of our wet clothes off and crawled under the blankets in front of the fire next to him. We didn't remember being together until much later." She sighed. "The whole story of how we got together is a very long one that I don't think either of us wants to get into right now."
"You're not going to start time traveling, Sam," Ellen said suddenly as Sam continued to look it over.
He looked chagrined. "You know me too well."
She rolled her eyes. "Why don't you and Clark go mess with it – but don’t travel with it or anything – and Lois and I will talk for a bit?"
"I'd like that," Lois said quietly, her head resting on my shoulder.
I rubbed her upper arm softly. "We'll figure it out." I kissed the side of her head lightly. "Promise."
"You can't promise that, Clark," she told me. "I know you and Daddy and me and Mom and your parents, we'll all do our best, but there's no guarantee that we'll ever make it home again. Not unless Tempus shows up and we beat the answer out of him or there's some sort of Time Cops thing that keeps tabs on him and shows up to fix things."
"Now would be a good time for them to show up," I said with a sigh.
"You said it."
I squeezed her lightly. "We'll go see what we can figure out."
She nodded and squeezed back. I knew she wanted to kiss me but I also knew that it wasn't a good idea just yet and I knew that she knew that, too.
I let her go and Sam and I headed to his office/workshop area in the basement.
"I love you," I heard her whisper under her breath as we walked towards the door of their room. I turned and held her eyes for a long minute before following Sam.
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
I wanted to crawl back on the couch next to my mom, but I wasn't sure she'd want me there now that she knew more about the me that wasn't really her daughter. From her perspective, I was leaving Joe – my long-time boyfriend who I was marrying in two weeks – for a friend and work colleague – and a married one at that.
Then she held out her hand and I took it. She tugged me to her. "You love him, don't you?"
I nodded. "More than anything. As much as you loved – love – Daddy. I always wanted somebody to love me like he'd loved you and I never thought it would happen, but it did. Last summer..." My voice trailed off.
"Clark didn't love you like that until last summer?" she asked, trying to keep the shock out of her voice, I was sure.
I nodded.
"But your four year anniversary is next week?"
"It's a long story..." I started, not intending to tell her.
"I've got time," she said quietly. "But how about we get some hot chocolate instead of coffee?"
I smiled. "I think the chocolate thing crosses all universes and time lines."
"I got it," Clark called softly into the room.
Mom looked surprised.
"He's got great hearing," I reminded her. "And he was probably half-listening in because he expected that."
"You're right," he said, walking in with two steaming cups of hot chocolate, complete with mini marshmallows.
"That was fast."
Clark winced. "I'd guess I haven't done too much of that stuff around you guys, huh?"
"And not everyone around here knows about you," I reminded him.
"I'll be careful." He looked like he wanted to kiss me. "I won't listen in anymore, promise."
We watched as he left.
"So tell me all about it," Mom said, taking a sip of her hot chocolate. "Perfect," she told me with a smile.
"He makes great hot chocolate. I think it's Martha's recipe."
"Lo-is," she said in that warning tone I hadn't really missed much.
I sighed. "Okay. So I went to Met U for college and decided to live on campus."
"Why?"
How to tell Mom Daddy had a girlfriend? "You and Lucy had been gone for a long time," I reminded her. "Daddy was finally dating again. He went out a few times here and there but never anything remotely serious. The summer before college he went out with this lady a few times and it got pretty serious pretty quickly. I think part of it was the empty nest thing. I'd planned on living on campus anyway, but it wasn't a huge deal to me either way. She moved in that August." I couldn't look at her while I told this part. "She told me I better move out or else. Did I mention that she's an international arms dealer but Daddy didn't know it? Still doesn't?"
"What?!"
I nodded. "Anyway, I moved to campus and there was a clerical error or something..." I paused. Could some future version of us have switched my paperwork too?
"And what?" she prompted after a minute.
"And Clark was my roommate. But I couldn't move home, because of her, and there was nowhere else to live on campus so we lived in the dorms together." I told her about the toga party and the cabin and Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And Latislan.
And the wedding.
And Lana.
And the first few years of our marriage.
And Pop Pop's death and the publication of our names.
And Daddy's heart attack and getting pregnant with Nate.
She said Daddy hadn't had a heart attack in this world – probably because she made sure he ate better than he did in my world.
I skipped over the 'Nate was sick' stuff and just said that things weren't much better than before even though we knew I was having his baby that time.
And how Christopher had nearly been kidnapped.
And starting at the Planet.
Getting the first Van-El story.
"So then last summer, Navance was killed in a coup. I was so sure he was going to leave, to try to make things work with Lana. I wanted him to stay, but I wanted him to stay because he loved me. I knew he loved the boys, I just wanted him to love me." I swiped at my cheeks then took the last sip of my no-longer-hot chocolate.
"He does, sweetheart. I know he's trying to keep his distance because here, Clark Kent is legally married to Lana, but it's in his eyes, in his voice. He loves you, so much."
"I know that now, but it took some convincing," I told her. "We'd spent three and a half years together and most of it he made no secret that he'd rather be somewhere else. Well, after we found out about Nate, it wasn't so obvious he wanted to be back with Lana as much as it was he didn't really want to be with me – you know? Or at least that's what it seemed like at the time. Really, he was closing in on himself because of Nate's health problems, though," I admitted, "a big part of it was just because it was such a difficult time for both of us."
"Health problems?"
I told her about the spitting up, the weight fluctuations, the hospitalizations, the surgery, the gas, all of it.
"He felt guilty. We thought Christopher was his son, but we weren't sure yet. We weren't sure until we went and checked while we were time traveling. He looks just like Clark, but until we watched what happened at the toga party after we left here... He was sure that being half-Kryptonian was the problem, but it wasn't. I know it wasn't. I knew it wasn’t then, it was just one of those things, but Clark tends to take the blame for things that aren't really his fault and then obsess about them. And obsess about them. And obsess about them. Even things that aren't his fault. He *did* break Lana's heart; there's no doubt about that. He let her believe that he cheated on her – which he did, but he didn't know that and he was barely conscious at the time. He obsessed about that for a year. I told him I wanted out on our first anniversary because I couldn’t deal with the total dichotomy in our marriage anymore. I told him about the post-partum depression and how I was certain for a while that the world would have been a better place without me."
"No world is a better place without you," Mom said softly. "Different maybe, but not better."
"That's what finally snapped him out of it. He took me flying that night and we sat close together on one of the big chairs at the cabin because we wanted to, not because we had to keep up appearances. He held me that night as we went to sleep. The power was out," I conceded, "and he didn't want me to freeze, but after the week before... At Christmas, he'd asked me if I wanted a fire. I asked if he was going to keep me warm and he didn't say anything. He just built one. That night, our anniversary, was the first time I'd slept in his arms since the week at the cabin."
I sighed. "But then the whole Pop Pop thing... It was a misunderstanding followed by him flipping out about getting me pregnant and all that stuff..."
"What did he finally do to convince you?" Mom asked.
"I moved out of our room and then got on the colonists' transport. Van-El was there, but there was a guy with a gun and an explosion... I was hit on the head and had smoke inhalation to deal with but was okay over all. After that, he asked me on a date to the cabin. No one knew the whole story yet – not really. Not about how things had been behind closed doors. I told him there was no guarantee he'd see me naked and he said he didn't expect to." A small smile crossed my face. "But we got there and he'd made this incredible dinner for me – all my favorites – and we danced. And danced. Then he fed me this *amazing* chocolate cake that he makes."
"Ah, the way to a Lois' heart is through chocolate," Mom said with a grin.
"It sure doesn't hurt," I grinned back. "And then he proposed. He gave a beautiful – heartfelt – speech about something Nana and Pop Pop always said. Love isn't who you can live with it's who..."
"...you can't live without. Gram used to say that all the time, too," she told me.
"He told me he'd manage to survive if anything happened to the boys, but he didn't think he knew how to breathe without me anymore." A thought occurred to me. "One of the timelines we were in had a Lois and Clark who had a Christopher but no Nate. Apparently, they'd separated after Navance died, but he said that he wanted to try again – for real this time. He said the first six months without Lana had been hard, but they were nothing compared to what the last six months had been without her." I shrugged. "I have no idea what their lives were like the two years before that because they didn't have Nate, but... Anyway, he said he loved me and then he asked me to marry him all over again. Daddy had given him your rings the night before, because he knew I loved them, and he proposed using your engagement ring."
"So did he get to see you naked?" she whispered conspiratorially.
I blushed and stared at the ground.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'," she said with laughter in her voice.
"The wedding was Christmas Eve. We flew to the cabin, but I was a nervous wreck, afraid something was going to happen to the boys so we came home. We woke up here the next morning. Yesterday." Tears filled my eyes. "And we have no way to know if we can ever get home."
*****
TBC
