part 2-
In his darkest hour Clark had found himself in a graveyard x-raying the massive mausoleum that marked Lex Luthor’s final resting place. Attempting to reassure himself, again, that Luthor was truly dead. That his bones were still there to give testimony to Lois’ disappearance being a different nightmare in the making, initiated by a different source of evil, and nothing whatsoever to do with a very dead Lex.
For reasons he hadn’t understood, after that gruesome midnight excursion, Clark had starting sleeping better. And the dreams had started thereafter.
Lois was safe. In his apartment. She was sleeping close by, her slow, even breathing and her heartbeat weaving a soothing lullaby that filled his senses. It had seemed so real that, on waking, he had sprinted to the sofa, fully expecting to find her there. That first morning, after that first dream, had been like losing her all over again. She came back night after night. Always sleeping in the next room, until he became aware of her. He knew now not to look for her, that despite how real she felt, how very present she seemed, she wasn’t really there. Not physically.
After some weeks, something wonderful happened. She came to his bed. Laid down beside him, all warmth and soft curves and sweet scent. If he stayed asleep, didn’t try to take her in his arms, she was just there. After several nights of this, he pulled her close. Was able to smell her hair, was able to lose himself in loving her. It wasn’t real. He knew it wasn’t, but the dreams came nightly, like a gift to him, making it possible for him to live during the daylight hours. He told no one about them. Not wanting them analyzed or broken down into What They Meant, fearing that close study would stop the magic. If the dreams were a part of the grieving process, or the first symptoms of his losing his mind, he didn’t want to know and didn’t care. What mattered was after a total absence of many weeks, night after night, he slept next to Lois, if only in his own mind.
“CK?” Jimmy’s gentle voice broke into Clark’s scattered patchwork of thoughts. “Your paycheck.”
“Thanks, Jimmy,” Clark grimaced. “But I don’t think I’ve earned it.”
“You put in the hours. Just because you aren’t investigating…”
“We both know that hours are all I’ve put in here. I haven’t written a word, haven’t called a source, and haven’t even turned on my computer in weeks, Jim. I can’t keep taking up space, can’t keep taking the Planet’s charity.”
“It’s not charity,” Jimmy protested hotly, touching Clark with his anger. “It’s what you deserve after…after…” Jimmy shrugged, his anger gone as quickly as it had come. “I don’t know how to finish that sentence, CK,” he confessed lamely. “But you get my meaning.”
“Yeah.” Clark bowed his head and looked away, embarrassed for them both. “You’re a good friend, Jim. And none of us know how to finish that sentence. Maybe if we did, I could leave this desk from time to time, do something productive.”
“You’ll leave when you’re ready, son,” came Perry’s quiet, steady voice from behind him. “And you’ll keep cashing that paycheck if you don’t want me to tan your hide.”
Perry’s hands closed over Clark’s shoulders, joined immediately by Jimmy’s firm grasp on Clark’s arm. For a time the three men stayed as they were; an intimate circle joined by a mutual love of Lois Lane and by a deep affection for each other they scarcely knew how to voice.
Tears ran silently, steadily down Clark’s face. He didn’t know exactly when they had started, or why now. It just felt good to finally let them go, to stop fighting them, to give in.
Perry broke the silence first. “Tomorrow, Clark, I’m partnering you with Jimmy. I don’t care what you write about, just write. Anything. Give me five good paragraphs before quitting time.”
“Ok, Perry.” Clark rasped, grateful for the direction, any direction, in his rudderless life. A reason to get up and come in to work.
“Thanks, Chief,” acknowledged Jimmy with subdued enthusiasm.
With a final squeeze and a stern, “Five paragraphs by this time tomorrow,” Perry returned to his office. Pulling the blinds, he fumbled for the phone, needing to hear Alice’s voice.
Jimmy cleared his throat nosily. “How about dinner, CK?” He made the same offer night after night, and each evening Clark politely declined.
“Yeah, Jim. Thanks. Let’s do that.”
It was reported in the Planet’s morning addition, with great enthusiasm, that Superman had returned to Metropolis. For the first time in months he’d been sighted doing a routine patrol in the predawn hours. No one knew where he’d been, but city officials were quite happy to extend him a warm welcome home.
***********
On her release from the hospital, given only after she’d sworn that all the wine they’d detected in her system the night she’d been admitted had definitely ‘hit her funny’, which was very embarrassing, Lois had headed directly to the Daily Planet. Forgetting all about tracing her footsteps, she headed for the one place she knew inside and out. The one place that was really, truly home. She’d start there. If it wasn’t there or if it wasn’t hers, then she would know how bad it really was. Then she’d figure out a way to…do something.
She’d found Perry, Jimmy, and Clark- or rather their counterparts- in short order. Jimmy was behind the coffee counter in the lobby, cheerfully serving coffee and pastries and flirting with anyone in a skirt. Perry was, from what she could gather, one of the suits upstairs. And evidently a somewhat absent one. His name had been displayed alongside a host of familiar others on the brass plague between the elevators. When she’d asked the security guard about him, he’d said something about ‘always in Barbados’ this time of year. Clark was still Clark, though. She’d almost cried in relief the first time she’d seen him. He had swept into the building a few minutes later than she would have, had this been her building, and jogged right past her, offering a polite, distant smile, as he moved into the stairwell.
Lois stayed close to the Planet. And spent way too much time, for her liking, trying to make sense of the whole thing, playing the sequence of events in her mind over and over, and making comparisons between two worlds that were so similar she could barely believe she wasn’t really home. That this wasn’t some crazy stunt, or sick joke, or bad acid trip without the acid. And she was haunted, continually, by a crazy fear of meeting herself. Of one morning, sitting there holding her steaming cup of coffee, offered to her by a now very chummy Jimmy, and watching her purposeful, sane other self dart into the building, yelling for any and everyone to hold the elevator or else. But now days had passed without any other Lois Lanes revealing themselves. Lois relied on the kindness of one of the city missions for food, a cot, a shower…for everything. She gratefully served meals to the other clients of the charity, as a way to take her mind off things for a time, and to earn a few dollars a day. Just enough to wash her clothes, to buy her coffee, to get her out and around the city. It was no way to sustain a life, whatever kind of life she might have here. And with each visit to the Daily Planet, a regular occurrence as she really had nothing else to do, she came closer and closer to entering the bullpen, to saying hello. She was still a reporter, after all. And if this Tempus was going to be found, she needed the resources of the paper behind her.
She knew that Clark, her own Clark, from her own time or place or whatever would be amused and disbelieving at her caution here. He’d have expected her to kick down the conference room doors on the first day; demanding action, explanations, threatening retribution if all wasn’t set to rights. She’d get to that. For now she was just trying to get through each day- and get past the overwhelming sense that there were no real explanations and that there was no way to set this right. That in reality she was lost, irrevocably.
It was well into her second week of lurking in the lobby when things began to happen. Clark spoke to her.
********
He’d noticed her almost from the beginning. Always in the same place with an air of weariness about her, despite her bright, keen eyes. As the time passed, he had grown more curious about her. Maybe it was the reporter in him. He’d been a new addition to the Daily Planet staff for only a few months and the investigative learning curve had been steep. So it was initially with a detached interest that he began to speculate about her; who she might be, what she was waiting for, what her story was.
And there was something about her. He couldn’t put it into words. But she was familiar, in a vague sort of way. Yet Clark was almost certain he didn’t know her. He was, also, just as certain that she was watching him. She was good at it. If not for his enhanced abilities, he would never have known. Her heart rate doubled when he entered the lobby. And from behind her paper, or magazine, or coffee cup, she studied him intently, until he stepped through the elevator doors. Once they closed, he felt her relax, her heart slowing to its normal resting rate.
In fact, Clark sometimes imagined he could hear that particular heartbeat from anywhere in the building. It was crazy, really. His hearing was good, but not like that. He’d never discerned heartbeats before. Or maybe he’d just never tried. But if he couldn’t pick out, say, Lana’s heartbeat in a crowded room, the woman he had loved most of his life, it didn’t follow that he could somehow just know the one of the mysterious lobby-dwelling woman.
Whoever she was, she stayed in his thoughts, pulling him towards her without words, while he tried to convince himself otherwise.
In general, Clark didn’t approach women. Not when it wasn’t related to work or when there was no one introducing him. He’d grown up in a small town, and everyone he’d ever known had, well, always known him. Since moving to Metropolis, he’d met plenty of people. Friends of friends and associates of associates, that sort of thing. But when it came right down to it, Clark couldn’t remember ever walking up to a woman he didn’t know and initiating a conversation. Which is why, he thought later, he did it so badly.
*********
On the tenth day, he just couldn’t walk past her. As soon as Clark had rounded the street corner headed for the Planet, he had been greeted by the distinct beating of her heart. As soon as he’d walked through the revolving doors, the beating had picked up speed. He found her easily, supposedly engrossed in the sports page. Without talking himself out of it, he headed towards her.
“Do you…come here…um…often?” he blundered. “I mean, that isn’t how I meant it…just… don’t I know you?”
She met his agonized eyes with her amused ones, lowering the paper into her lap.
“You forgot to ask me what my sign is.”
“I’m really…bad at this.”
“You really are. But it’s kind of a relief. If you had walked over here and said something completely smooth and charming, or worse, something just disgusting, or even, I don’t know, something in a Irish brogue, I wouldn’t know that you are, indeed, this world’s Clark Kent. I mean, I know I’m not in Kansas anymore, so to speak, but you, you are still from Kansas, right?”
Clark seized on the one part of that long, interesting, somewhat disconcerting response he could follow. “Yes. I’m from Kansas.” At her nod, he grabbed the chair across from her. “Is that where I know you from?”
Lois looked away. Her face carefully blank. “No,” she finally answered. “And no, we don’t know each other.”
“You know my name is Clark Kent. You know I’m from Kansas, but you don’t know me?”
There was something in her eyes that he couldn’t read. She blinked quickly, clearing her throat, and carefully creasing the folds of her newspaper. “I should have practiced this more,” she said, almost to herself.
Clark had seen enough in those quiet seconds.
“Do you…need help?” Unthinking, he slid his hand across the table to cover hers. As soon as he touched her, he knew. If it was help that she needed, whatever she needed, it would come from him.
She paused just a moment, before smiling down at their joined hands. Turning his palm over and sliding hers into it, she shook his hand firmly. “Clark Kent, I’m Lois Lane. Nice to finally meet you.”
“Lois Lane,” he repeated, smiling back at her. “Can I buy you…” He stopped at the sight of her cup of coffee between them. “Um…pancakes?”
Clark never made it into the elevator that day. Breakfast in the deli across the street led to lunch in the park under the trees. He never pressured Lois for any explanation; somehow sensing that she was working up to it, and not wanting to scare her away. Instead he filled her in on the city, or rather a country boy’s initial impressions of the city, answering her many questions about local and national current events without reservation. The sun had moved behind Metropolis Towers, casting long shadows into the park, when he asked her, “Will you come to my place, Lois?”
“You see how easy this was, Clark. First you pick me up with that suave opening line, and then whisk me off for a day of pancakes and picnics, and now it’s back to your place.”
He blushed to his roots. “No…Lois. I just meant…”
“Yes,” she cut him off. “I’ll come back to your place. I have a story to tell you, Clark. After going around and around with it by myself, I can’t stand it any longer. And I trust you.” She stood up from grass, picked up his jacket she’d been sitting on and returned it to him. “And…I need a friend.”
“Well, you’ve got him,” he smiled broadly, offering his arm gallantly.
Lois had gone perfectly still at his gesture, and something sad had come over her face. But before Clark could open his mouth to ask what was wrong, she had tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, almost as if she needed its support. The moment passed, and she smiled up at him. “What would the world do without Clark Kent?”
***********
“Well,” Clark cleared this throat a bit nervously. “This is home.”
Lois stood on the landing, taking in the comforting familiarity of Clark’s apartment. Different in small ways from the one she had spent so much time in. Yet, really, on the whole, almost exactly the same. Very much like the man next to her.
“I love it,” Lois declared truthfully.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had that reaction before. It’s more typically, ‘you live where?!’”
“So, you’ve done this before?” She knew it wasn’t right, but Lois felt a ridiculous jealousy for the other women who might have been in and out of this domain. To be fair this was not her domain. She had no claims staked in this particular universe. Not that she had claims staked anywhere in her home one, either. Not officially. So…ok, a change of subject.
“What is that?”
“You noticed,” Clark grinned at her. “That’s Mrs. Cranston. She lives next door. An opera singer.”
“What…kind of opera, you think?”
“Well, I’ve never gone and seen any of her performances, I mean, listen, why would I? But if I had to guess, I’d say the Really Bad and Painfully Loud Opera is her specialty.”
“Kind of gives the place a…charming ambiance.”
“That is exactly what I think. And, no, by the way.”
“No?”
“No, I’ve never done this before,” he finished, pulling his eyes away from hers.
“I wouldn’t want you to think, Lois, that anything is happening here. You said you needed a friend. You said you trusted me. I am not going to trifle with that, not going to do…anything. Just…sit, ok? I can make…”
“Tea?”
“Tea, it is.” He waited for Lois to enter the living room, as if half fearing she would come to her senses or that whatever spell the afternoon had woven over them would be broken, and she would leave.
Once Lois came and sat down, he started backing towards the kitchen. “I’ll be in here,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “just on the other side. Make yourself comfortable, this will just take a few…”
The door exploded open with a bang. The chummy atmosphere ripped away by a voice not even Mrs. Cranston could compete with.
“Clark?! Are you home?! Help me with this, will you?”
Facing Clark from her seat on the sofa, Lois watched as all the color drained from his face, and his easy friendliness gave way to…what? Horror? Surprise? Dread, even? No, none of those, not quite. But she didn’t think she’d ever seen that particular look on her own Clark’s face, and really, she just HAD to stop calling him her own Clark. Other Clark or First Clark or Original Clark, O.C., any of those would be good. But the point was that all of her knowledge of her own Clark, drat, of that other guy, didn’t help her read the face of the man in front of her.
“Lana,” Clark gaped, with that look that Lois couldn’t read intensifying even further.
“Are you a statue or what, Clark? You see me here, don’t you? Completely loaded down….oh, we have company.”
Lois, feeling sorry for Clark, though with no clue why, had stood up to meet this ‘Lana;’ not a name she remembered ever hearing from that other guy in that other universe. Better.
“Hi.” Lois used her best fake friendly voice and fake friendly smile. “I’m Lois.”
“Um…” Clark began, moving forward to rescue the packages in Lana’s arms. “Lois, I don’t think I mentioned…”
“Lana Lang.” she swept past a thoroughly burdened Clark and reached to shake Lois’ hand. “Clark’s fiancée.”
“Fiancée? Wow!” Lois’s eyebrows met her hairline. Definitely in a different universe. How many times did she think that to herself in the course of a day, anyway? You’d think that after two weeks of stuff just like this, she would stop being surprised. But this Clark Kent and Lana Lang thing, well, this was bigger than the subway using different sized tokens.
Clark’s eyes, the only part of him that showed from above the packages, were practically pleading with her. She wanted to laugh. Now if this had been happening in her real life…er…her former life, best to get that into her head, she wouldn’t feel much sympathy for him, but this was not her former life and he was not…that other guy.
“Clark didn’t tell you?” Lana was regarding her with well-deserved suspicion, which she had thinly disguised as polite interest.
“Not yet, though I think he was saving it…for a surprise. We have only just met…at the Daily Planet today.”
Lana, somewhat mollified, dismissed Lois as mostly uninteresting. Lois sank back into Clark’s cushy sofa- same one sold in both universes- and did her very best not to laugh right out loud.
Clark deposited Lana’s packages on the landing, something she really could have done herself, in Lois’ unvoiced opinion, and walked back into the room. “Lana, I was just going to make us some tea…” he began.
“Tell me you didn’t forget our reservations, Clark?” Lana interrupted him, holding up her watch for the room to see. “We’re going to be late as it is.”
“I didn’t forget, Lana. But something has come up…”
Lois knew she should help Clark. How she was so positive of this she wasn’t clear on. Knowledge of that other guy didn’t hurt, and the Clark Kent of this world obviously had the same sweetness, the same goodness, and apparently, the same sort of hopeless thing for blondes that weren’t good for him.
She stood and began making her regretful exit. “Clark, I can’t thank you enough for showing me around today. Being new in town can be really tough, and you made me feel…”
She chose her next words carefully, as she had not only captured Clark’s attention, but Lana, obviously gifted with that finely tuned thing that women had for other women- like a whistle only a dog could hear- was riveted on the interplay as well, her eyes shifting between Clark and Lois. “…at home,” she finished, congratulating herself on delivering the right message, one that truthfully conveyed her gratitude to Clark and which didn’t damn him to a long night of trying to explain.
Clark, however, much like her own Clark might have done, undid all of her masterful work in two words.
“Don’t go.”
Lana’s head swung around, brilliantly tossing her blonde hair in its wake.
“Clark, she has to leave. Lois, it was nice meeting you. Don’t trip on our wedding gifts on your way out, ok?”
“Please.” Clark reached towards her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “We haven’t finished. You have something to tell me. And I want to…need…to hear it. And you can stay, have dinner, I’ll cook. And after we’ll go out onto the terrace while Lana…”
“…does the dishes?!” Lana supplied with venom.
“Goes home,” Clark finished quietly, like he’d never heard her, not sparing Lana a glance. “She doesn’t live here,” he added, even though that was somewhat off-topic.
Lois looked long into Clark’s eyes. She knew those eyes, she really did. The same way she knew the hand gently holding her shoulder, the same way she knew this apartment. So much like the originals, only somewhat muted, or muffled. Like she was seeing everything from behind a screen, shadows projected on the wall. Nothing was quite as bright or as sharp. Nothing felt quite as warm or as wonderful. But what was here, in this room, came closest to being real, to being all of the things she had so missed in the hardest, longest weeks of her life. This Clark had no idea what he was offering her. What he was getting himself into. She was bringing havoc to his life, and this was just the first day.
“I can’t be selfish with you, Clark.” Lois decided to go for broke, and address him as honestly as he was her.
“What is that supposed to mean…?”
“Lana,” Clark cut her off in the same gentle tone he had used to plead for Lois to stay. “Please leave, ok. I’ll call you later. This isn’t your fault, but Lois and I were in the middle of something important. I can’t see you tonight.”
“Clark Kent,” Lana’s voice dropped to a deadly level. “If you are asking me to leave you here alone with that woman, if you are asking me to go so you can be with her, what am I supposed to think?”
<Think about not tripping on the wedding gifts on your way out?> Lois suggested inwardly. Though she knew the thought was undeserving. If this was her Clark, if the shoe was on the other foot…
“That I’m asking because it’s important, Lana.” Clark removed his hand from Lois, evidently feeling a fragile confidence that she was going to stay. He moved towards the stairs, opened the front door politely and pointedly. “I’ll call you,” he repeated.
“Do NOT bother!” Lana spat, removing the ring Lois had been trying to look at, while trying not to be obvious. Clark had nice taste. In jewelry.
The door punctuated Lana’s exit with a slam.
“I just took apart your life,” Lois stated, disbelieving, into the silence. “I just stood here while you kicked out the woman you love so I could tell you a story that is going to make you run screaming into the streets, wishing like hell you could have these last five minutes back. And you know the worst part?” Lois wiped the tears that at some point had started blurring her view of the man in front of her. “You would think that would be enough reason for me to leave. For me to beg you to catch up with her while I disappear. But I’m not going to do you that kindness, Clark. I’m going to be like…a barnacle…a…something sticky you can’t shake off…”
He stopped her in a way entirely different than that other guy would have done. He lowered his voice, whispered, “Thank God for that, Lois. Stay. Stay as long as you want.” And he stepped across and took her into his arms. Lois fell into him, and cried until she slept.
***********
Clark stood absolutely still in his living room, lost in the sounds of Lois’ breathing coming from the next room. After she had drifted off, he had eventually worked up the nerve to carry her to his bed. His heart pounded now just thinking of it. That had just seemed so…right.
Clark shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it any further. He didn’t want to think at all. The light on his answering machine, indicating a waiting message, flickered furiously at him in the dimly lit room.
“Play me,” it blinked with menace. “You’ve got it coming.”
And did he ever.
At some point during Lois’ breakdown, Lana had called. He had taken less than a second to turn the volume off, erasing her shrill voice from the room as simply as he seemed to have erased her from his life this evening.
Clark moved with excruciatingly great care into the kitchen. Lois’ steady, even breaths assured him she’d be out for a while. But after that?
He sat down at the table, absently reaching for the tea he’d finally gotten around to making. At this time last night, he’d sat right here across from Lana, happily, he’d thought, discussing the wedding. Lana Lang was all the family he had. She had always been a huge part of his life, of who he was even. Until today.
Clark put his mug down and dropped his head into his hands. Today, it seemed, he had simply, albeit temporarily…forgotten her. A bit of an oversight, Kent, he chided himself. But in spending the day with Lois, Lana had…slipped from his mind. That didn’t necessarily have to mean something. It could just be one of those crazy things that happened from time to time. Like falling in love with a woman you knew nothing about at the first touch of her hand…Crazy like that.
Clark stared out the window into the night. Lana was no doubt waiting up for him to call. Despite the theatrical taking off of the ring, she’d rightly expect to hear from him. He was lost, he admitted to himself. Lost but for one clear thought that shook him to the core: That the woman who had stayed, the woman who was here now, was the woman who belonged here. That one thought, in the swirl of others surrounding it, made perfect sense to him, and yet he had no idea why.
tbc-
