See the last FDK thread for why this is late
.
Was one of those days...
Thanks to the usual suspects...
Last time:
Clark
"Ready to test this?" Bernie asked me.
I nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be." I was nervous. I didn't like leaving Lois by herself. Well, not by herself but without me. "You okay with this?" I asked her, looking down at her tear filled eyes.
She nodded. "Be careful." She stood up and I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close to me. "I love you," she said, looking up at me. "No matter what happens, I will *always* love you."
"And I'll always love you." I was aware that everyone was watching but I kissed her anyway – and not the kind of kiss I'd usually give her in front of people. "I love you," I whispered.
She nodded, tears flowing too fast for her to really respond.
"Um, listen," Bernie said. "I think we should leave from the house – or near the house – and do it in real time."
"It might be a couple hours, okay?" I told her. "In case they're not home or whatever." I wiped her cheeks. "Don't worry if I'm gone a little while, okay?"
She nodded. "I'll try not to."
I kissed her again. And then again.
And then we left.
*~*36*~*
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
"He's going to be fine," Mom said, her arms tightening slightly around me.
"I know," I said, only partially convinced. The time travel thing was practically old hat by now but intentionally hopping universes... I sighed. That was something else entirely.
"Well, I’m going to believe that this is going to work," Martha said suddenly. "I know how much you must miss your kids and we miss our Lois and Clark, too, even though we have you two."
I nodded, knowing that as much as I wanted to get back to Christopher and Nate, saying good-bye to my mom, Lucy and Dave was going to be very difficult at best.
"What do you want to do?" Mom asked me. "If this is your last day here, what do you want to do?"
"Just be with you guys," I told them. "Hang out. Play games or something."
That's what we did. We played a couple games of SceneIt and I sat with Mom's arm around me the whole time.
Daddy stared at the cabinet full of games and movies. "How about Monopoly?" he asked.
"I don't play Monopoly," I said quietly.
A hush came over the room. It was one of many ways I was different from their Lois. She, apparently, played Monopoly the same way either one of us would most things – take no prisoners. She was champ. That didn't surprise me.
"Right. I forgot." And that was one way this version of Daddy was different. He would never have suggested it – he didn’t play either.
Eventually, we settled on poker, but no one's mind was really on the game. We were worried about Clark and Bernie and I was ever cognizant that these moments were quite likely some of my last with this part of my family.
Finally, it neared eleven or so and Lucy was too tired to keep her eyes open any longer. She and Jimmy headed up to their room. Dave, Gina and Ashley also went to their respective rooms. All of them had given me big hugs before they went to bed.
"I'm so sorry, sweetie," Mom said as we sat on the couch together. "I can't keep my eyes open much longer either."
I nodded. "It's okay. I have a few things I want to try to do before Clark gets back – make a list of things that we've acquired since we've been here that I want to take with me, writing down that information for your Lois, those kinds of things."
"I love you, sweetie."
"I love you, too, Mom."
Daddy gave me a big hug and told me the same thing. They headed towards their room and I slowly climbed the stairs to mine.
I took a notepad out and started writing down pin numbers and passwords. I took all the relevant cards and things out of my purse.
Then I made a list of things for Clark to bring back from the house with him – gifts he'd gotten me, mementoes of our time here, of our dates and things. I made a list of things I needed him to go get when he got back. As much as I'd been looking forward to spending the night with him, if all went well, we'd have the rest of our lives to do that. Tonight, I had other things I needed him to do. I made a stack of things for the other Clark. The divorce papers, the marriage paperwork – they'd both need that.
Then came the hard stuff.
Letters to each of them. Not just Mom, Lucy and Dave, but Daddy, Jimmy, Bernie, Ashley and Gina. They'd come to mean a great deal to me while I was here. And Lana and Joe. Those would be hard, too. And this world's Lois and Clark.
I heard 'whooshes' and dual thumps.
They were back.
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
"Are you sure this is going to work?" I asked my brother who wasn't my brother.
He sighed. "I don't see why not, but there's always risk..."
"Right. That's why I didn’t want Lois doing this until we knew. There's something else I didn't tell her I was going to do though."
"What's that?"
I pulled a camera out of my pocket. "I'm going to try to take some pictures of the boys. She's going to have a hard time leaving her mom and everyone. I was thinking some new pictures of the boys might make it a little easier."
"Are you going to be able to do that without being caught?"
I shrugged. "We'll see. If I don't think I can, I won't. Maybe I'll try to snag Sam's camera instead or something. I'll play it by ear."
He nodded. "Do you want me to come with you?"
I shook my head. "No. I'll do this."
We were standing in the woods outside the house. "Go on inside, if you want," I told him. "I'll come find you when I get back."
"You've got the universe codes?"
"Yeah, they're programmed in here and I memorized them."
He looked worried and I wasn't sure I blamed him.
I took a deep breath and started pressing the appropriate buttons. The window shimmered in front of me. "I'll be back," I said with more confidence than I felt and stepped through.
I closed the window and tucked it securely in my pocket. I tuned my hearing in to the house and found familiar, comforting heartbeats.
My sons.
Lois' sons.
I closed my eyes and just listened for several minutes.
I had to make sure that this *was* the right universe though. I used my vision to see the security measures still in place, if not in use. Everything looked right. I looked, carefully, into the room that should have been mine and Lois'. There was a Lois asleep in the bed and a Clark asleep on a fouton. That was a good sign, right? For some reason, they weren't sleeping together. And the fouton was new. Was that good? I looked at other signs. Sam had never rearranged the downstairs master bedroom from when Lois had been on modified bed rest with Nate.
I looked in the garage. There was Lois' wedding/Christmas present I'd never gotten to give her. A little worse for the wear though.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed I was home.
It just *felt*... *right* in a way none of the other universes had.
I flew silently to the veranda outside the boys' room. The door was unlocked and I snuck in – silently, I hoped. I pulled the camera out of my pocket and carefully aimed it at Nate's crib.
He'd gotten so big. My breath caught in my throat as he stirred slightly at the flash. The picture looked okay.
I did the same with Christopher and found tears welling up in my eyes. He was bigger than I remembered, too, but that shouldn't have surprised me.
He woke up slightly. "Daddy?"
I held very still until his even breathing said he was asleep again. I headed silently out to the veranda, ready to go back to the woods and go back to the other universe.
"Who are you and why are you sneaking around my sons' room?"
The other version of me was standing there with a bat on his shoulder.
"Are they your sons?" I asked him quietly, saying the first thing that came to mind. "Or mine?"
I could see his grip on the bat tighten to the point that he was starting to leave imprints on the metal.
I sighed. "Come on." I zipped out to the tree line. "I don't think we want to discuss that there and wake the boys up."
"Who are you?"
I sighed again. "I'm the one who belongs here. I've been in your universe."
"So Lois and I can go home now?"
"No," I said quietly.
"What?!"
I was kind of almost scared. Another version of me mad... Not a good plan.
"Listen, I want to go home," he said menacingly.
"I know. I want to stay, but Lois isn't with me. I wasn't about to let her try this until we knew it was going to work."
"Fine. Then here's what we're going to do. I’m going to go get Lois and we're all going back and you two can turn around and come back here."
I shook my head. "No."
"Yes."
"No." I exhaled slowly. "Listen. You've been here. You know the differences between this world and that one. My *wife* is back there and a much as she wants to come home and see her sons, she also wants to spend *one* *more* *day* with her mom and sister and brother that she hasn’t and never got to know. We'll be back tomorrow night and tell you everything you need to know about what happened while you were here and you can tell us and *then* you can go home. And before you start yelling and threatening me or anything, you don't know how the device works."
He sighed. "You'll be back tomorrow?"
I nodded. "I miss my sons. I want to come home but I'm not about to deny her one more day with her family either."
He looked at me for a long minute then nodded.
"We're making a list of things that you guys will need to know – passwords that we changed and things like that. We'd appreciate it if you'd do the same so we're not hunting down checkbooks and stuff."
He stared at me for long minutes then finally nodded. "Okay. Will you be able to tell us how we ended up like this?"
"We'll tell you everything we know," I promised. "Who here knows?"
"Sam, Bernie, Ashley, Jimmy, Lana, Chad and your folks."
"Lana? Chad?" I asked surprised.
He nodded. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I kinda kissed her Christmas morning before we figured out something was *really* wrong instead of just kinda wrong. And Chad was here so he knows some but not the Krypton stuff as far as I know."
I winced. "I bet that went over well." I glanced at my watch. "Listen, I'm here in real time. So if I'm here an hour, I'm gone there an hour and I've already been gone longer than that all total. Do you have any recent pictures or videos or anything of the boys I can take with me? To show Lois and Sam and Ellen and my – your – folks. We've talked a lot about them, obviously, and I drew some pictures after we realized we were staying but..."
"Yeah. I'll be back in a minute."
True to his word he was back a minute later. "Here."
"Thanks," I said being careful to not actually touch him. "We'll be back late tomorrow night. I'm not sure when. Probably between ten and midnight or so. We'll show up in the theater in the basement. If any of them want to be here, that would be great, but if we want to keep this meeting just between the four of us..." I shrugged, hoping to avoid telling him he was currently married to Lois. "That would be okay, too."
"See you then," he said, backing away.
I situated the device so he couldn’t really see what I was doing – just in case – and then stepped through the open window. I listened for Bernie, but found him heading my direction.
"How'd it go?" he asked, landing next to me.
I shrugged. "I ran into me."
"What did you tell him?"
"Just that we'd be back tomorrow night."
"You didn't tell him about Lana?"
I shook my head. "Nope. I figured tomorrow was soon enough for that. Did my folks get a hold of Lana? Or Jimmy a hold of Joe?"
We took off in the night sky.
"No," he told me. "Not yet."
We flew in silence and landed together on the porch.
"I'm going to crash," he said. "I'll see you in the morning." I nodded as he headed to the room he was sharing with Dave.
I hurried to the room I shared with Lois. She was sitting against the headboard, a notepad on her knees. "Hey," I said as I walked in. "What're you doing?"
"I have a list of things for you to do," she said. "If you don't mind, of course. And things to get."
She'd been crying and I crawled onto the bed next to her. "What're you doing?"
"Writing letters," she said. "I got Gina and Ashley and Bernie done already. They were pretty easy to do. Daddy should be and so should Jimmy. Mom, Lucy and Dave..." She wiped at her cheeks. "Those are the hard ones."
I put an arm around her and pulled her close to me.
"Was it the right place?" she asked.
"Yeah. It was."
"And the boys?"
"They're getting big." I sighed. "I ran into me. He gave me some pictures and videos of the boys. Do you want to see them now?"
She shook her head. "I want to get these done first." She bit her lip. "Just one?"
I held out the camera. "Here's the ones I took," I said. "They're not great..."
She took it and the tears came faster as she stared at the small screen. "He's so big," she whispered as she looked at Nate. "He looks healthy."
"I know."
She flipped to the picture of Christopher. "He looks so big, too." She stared at him for a long moment before turning it off and setting it aside. "Okay, I've got to get these done." She handed me a piece of paper. "Could you? Please?"
I looked at the list. She was trying to cram a lifetime of birthdays and Christmases and other special occasions into one day.
"Of course," I told her before kissing her softly. "I'll head to the West Coast or Hawaii and be back soon."
She nodded. "Thanks. I love you."
"I love you, too."
With that, I took off for later time zones. It took a while but not too long before I had everything she wanted.
When I made it back she was asleep on the bed, notebook half fallen out of her hand. I could see letters for everyone but her mom folded neatly on the bed. The one to her mom... It looked like it had gone through several drafts and was partially finished on the page in front of her. I carefully stacked everything and took the notepad from her, setting it all on the dresser.
I floated her until I could get us both under the covers and for the first time in way too long, I fell asleep with her in my arms.
*****
TBC
