part 3-
When she woke up Lois hoped maybe it had all been a nightmare. That once she got out of bed and moved into the living room, the world would have straightened itself out. Clark would look up from their story notes and tease her about kicking him out of his own bed and leaving him to do all the work. He’d know that after a meltdown the size she’d had this evening, she’d be hungry. Something would be cooking, or waiting in a take-out container scrawled with words in a language she couldn’t read. She would be home.
Lois shivered and pulled the covers closer around her neck. She’d put it off; the getting up part, the finding out part, the knowing part.
“Lois?”
She opened her eyes reluctantly. Clark was standing next to the bed at a respectful distance. He had tucked her in, she remembered that. And he had stayed until her hiccups subsided; doing no more than rubbing her back with slow, gentle circles. Lois would have thought she was cried out by now. That now the real Lois Lane- the one still trapped on the other side of that crazy window Tempus had taken her through- would spring to life; find that depraved head-tricking monster and start laying down the rules. Instead, the tears she’d rid herself of so forcefully and unceremoniously on Clark’s shirt were back.
“I…I’m sorry,” she croaked, hating the sound of her misery, her weakness.
“Don’t be.” Clark moved to sit beside her. “You’ve obviously had it coming for a while. And you’ve found a safe place, a place to let go.”
“You have no idea how right you are,” Lois sobbed, once more taken into his embrace.
“I told you I wanted you to stay, Lois. And I meant it. Will you…tell me where your place is? I could pack you a bag? Or… or move your car. Notify a roommate? Or a…boyfriend?”
“All I have in the world…” she faltered, the rest of that sentence died in the warmth of his chest.
Still, he wouldn’t have been who he was if he hadn’t heard it.
“…is all I have on me.”
“You aren’t alone anymore, Lois,” he told her.
Lois closed her eyes. She was tempted to surrender to the exhaustion and just fall asleep against him once more. Let the sun come up and another day start before she’d have to tell him who the crazy woman in his bed was.
“I’m from another universe,” she blurted.
She wasn’t really sure how a sane person would respond to that. How she’d expected this Clark Kent, who didn’t know her, to react to that. In fact, she had no expectations whatsoever. But he had gone so still against her, his hand no longer patting, his arms no longer rocking, his soft, warmth now a hard wall. And she would swear he wasn’t breathing.
Well, for a conversation starter it was a shocker, but when she lifted away from him and looked into his eyes- all that stuff about having no expectations aside- what she hadn’t expected was…anger.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” His tone swept a chill into the room.
“Funny? No…I know it sounds weird, but…”
“Who told you?” he demanded, dropping his hands from him in apparent disgust. “Who do you work for? Are you…government? Or…or some friend of Lana’s trying to make a point?”
After hurling that baffling array of questions at her, he spun on his heel and stormed off to the living room.
She followed, completely bewildered and eager to set his misconceptions straight, despite not having any idea what they might be.
“Clark, I don’t know…”
“No?” He whirled on her. “You know who I am. You’ve been watching me walk in and out of the Daily Planet for days, Lois, if that’s your name. You know I’m from Kansas. You know I have a weakness for…for…that I like to help. You make it more than easy for me to…feel like…to bring you home! To kick out my fiancée! You sleep in my bed….I am so stupid! Lana always said if I wasn’t more careful…You aren’t a friend of hers, are you? She would NEVER risk anyone knowing, and she’s not an actress, unlike present company.” He gestured to her with a mock bow, lightly applauding. “You were really good, now get out.”
“Clark…”
“Go back to your own universe. Take your tragic brown eyes, your body to die for, your face that launched a thousand ships and…get back into your own ship. Get out.”
He strode towards the terrace, throwing the doors open.
“I know you don’t have any proof. I’d know if you were wired. There isn’t such thing as a silent transmitter, not to me.”
Lois was pulled towards him, towards his anger, and the despair beneath it. Qualities she knew all to well.
“I promise you…” she began, raising her hands in supplication, stepping out onto the terrace, backing him into a corner. “I have no idea…”
“Got a camera?” He seemed to be looking through her to her soul, lowering his glasses and sweeping her figure head to toe with a look so withering she nearly cringed from its intensity. “No? Too bad, Lois. You’re gonna be kicking yourself tomorrow.”
And with that he shot into the sky.
“Just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any weirder,” Lois whispered into the night, watching the rapidly hurtling figure until it disappeared.
It was some time before she remembered how to get her feet to move. How to turn and walk in careful, deliberate steps back inside. Given the way things were going, the world could just decide to turn everything upside down on a whim. Lois gripped the chair backs and the kitchen counter as she went, just in case. She moved towards the coffee maker, took out the filters, started working. The machinery of her mind, so long bogged down in the mud, and just then shut down utterly for more than a minute, geared back up. Started to hum to life, started to move, really move for the first time in weeks. Like it had taken her mind a while to follow her body through that window. Well, it had found her. Lois Lane was back.
“Well that explains a…LOT,” she declared, as she watched the coffee brew.
She found his laptop with ease, cracked his code word, and got to work. If this world had a Perry White, albeit an absent one, a Clark Kent, a Jimmy, and now a Superman in the rough, so to speak, it stood to reason that there was a Lois Lane out there somewhere. She’d start there and get moving. The time for feeling sorry for herself was over.
************
“Mrs. Ellen Lane’s room, please,” Clark smiled broadly at the very bored lady behind the desk.
She wasn’t having any of it.
“Visiting hours are over, Mr. Kent.”
“Ms. Gladys, I know. Work took a bit longer today and I couldn’t make it any sooner, but…” Clark presented the bouquet of flowers he was holding with a flourish, “I’m here now, and I won’t stay long.”
He waited while she judged his fate. A game they both played with straight faces.
From behind the desk and down the hall came a glad squeal.
“Clark!”
“Hey, Luce,” Clark threw the still deliberating Ms. Gladys a wave and caught Lucy Lane in his arms.
“Oh, man, it’s about time you made it,” Lucy complained, in that way she had of sounding so much like Lois it broke his heart, and at the same time had him seeking out her company all the more.
“That bad, huh?” he whispered, setting her down under the reproving glare of Mrs. Gladys.
Lucy took his arm. “Walk with me to get a Coke before we go in, Clark. I’ve just done my time and I’m not ready to charge back in there without fortification.
“What is it now, Lucy? She hates your new job? Disapproves of the new hair…” Clark stopped and pondered it a bit himself. “What color is that, anyway?”
“It’s ‘champagne’, you idiot. And it works with my own tones and highlights.”
They shared a grin.
“So if it isn’t this week’s hair color and it isn’t this week’s job,” he teased her, “must be…”
“His name is Greg,” Lucy let out a long excited breath. “And, Clark, you should see him.”
“Oh, yeah, Lucy, I bet I’d really love him on sight. What color is his hair?”
“Shut up.” She elbowed him, as they waited in the cafeteria line. “And he doesn’t have any, except on one side, but we are not talking about his hair.”
“Thank goodness for small favors,” Clark muttered loud enough for her to hear as he paid for their drinks.
“He’s an artist.”
“Oh, Lucy. If Lois were here, she’d have just the right response for that.”
“You should have heard Mother’s,” Lucy agreed darkly.
“The thing is, I will. You and Greg will hop on out of here, and I’ll be with your mom hearing all about it and more.”
Right on cue, a young man with half a head of hair came strolling up.
“You hitting on my baby?” He glowered at Clark.
“Greg!” The same squeal that had greeted Clark earlier was now turned on the not quite bald-headed man.
Clark sat and sipped his drink, enjoying the scene, imaging how Lois would have described it to him if she was still here. Since, if things were different, she would be the one sitting right here, and not him. And the thought of Lois, watching this guy smother her little sister in serious kisses while she seethed not-so-silently, warmed his heart. Lois Lane was still a gift to him in that way. He looked at the world through both their eyes now, combining her natural skepticism with his own bent towards idealism. She had given him that ability. And she’d given him a new family. Granted, they were an unusual bunch, and he still thanked the currents that had blown his ship to the Kents and not here. But when he had started coming around, drawn by their tie to the woman he’d lost, they’d welcomed him. He was Lucy’s big brother now. Something he might have become anyway, if things had been different. So he got to hear all the complaints, all the secrets, all the things that Lois would have known.
With the big brother role firmly in mind, Clark spoke up, having given Lucy and Greg what he considered a generous amount of time to relearn each other.
“Hey, you, kid.”
Greg was surprised enough to take his face off Lucy’s. Lucy smiled a secret smile in Clark’s direction, this being something they’d done a few times before.
“Huh?” Greg grunted.
“So, you’re an artist? Care to tell me if you can support my sister?”
***********
He had left his apartment to Lois Lane and flown all night, staying high above the clouds, never touching down, not even to visit places that always brought him comfort. Clark hadn’t passed over the now derelict Kent farm, something he’d taken to doing since the sting of his parents’ deaths had faded enough for him to remember how once he felt loved and welcomed there. How those acres below, now vastly overgrown and inhabited only by wildlife, had once been home. He hadn’t touched down on his favorite island or mountain top, either. Last night hadn’t been about sightseeing, or revisiting old haunts. Last night he’d been moving for pure speed, trying to outrun the voices that told him he was different, freakish, and had, at last, been found out. Lois Lane, who he’d only known a day, had hurt him more deeply than he could remember being hurt, not in years. Not since life stopped in Smallville, Kansas. He had let Lana go for her. In the quiet hours under the stars Clark had tried to feel some real remorse for that. And he still hadn’t found any in the cool light of this Metropolis morning. So maybe that woman had done him one favor. She’d confirmed for him what he’d long suspected. He wasn’t meant to be married.
He had done a foolish thing in front of her. Clark had never flown in front of anyone. Not even Lana, who knew that he could. But in his desire to get away from her, and, to be honest, his need to throw his anger in her face, he had done it. It had felt great. Maybe he’d do it more often. Stop trying so hard not to be what he obviously was. And if the world couldn’t deal with it, then so what? Clark Kent had played it safe for thirty years. And it had just taken one day with Lois Lane to show him how sick of it he truly was.
“Clark,” the Daily Planet’s esteemed and somewhat nervous editor hailed him as he stepped off the elevators.
“Yes, Mr. Sorenson?”
Clark trotted over to his side, acutely aware that Lois’ heart was drumming away behind the conference room door. He should have been surprised to find her there, but he wasn’t. Deep down he had known that they weren’t finished with each other, yet. A quick glance confirmed she was inside, and she wasn’t alone. She was with the Daily Planet’s most elusive executive. A big-wig who had once been something of a legend in reporters’ circles, and he was hanging on her every word.
“Perry White is in town,” his editor told him in hushed tones. “Flew in unexpectedly from Barbados last night. Have you met him?”
“In my first week,” Clark answered equally quietly, a fist of dread forming in his gut. “At a press dinner.” She was a reporter, then. And she’d turned him over to his own newspaper. Now he was supposed to what? Give an exclusive? Interview himself? Or maybe just pose for pictures. ‘Flying Man Works At the Planet’ declares the Planet.
“Well he’s here. And for him to show up downstairs,” Mr. Sorenson continued with great gravity, “means something big is cooking.” He seemed a tad disappointed by Clark’s non-reaction.
“Ok,” Clark replied. He wouldn’t make this easy for them. She had no proof. Just a crazy story, and he planned to laugh right along with everyone else. He wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his slacks. “Anything you need me for?” he asked, all innocence.
“He wants you in the conference room. He’s been there all morning; said as soon as you showed up, you were to come.”
Mr. Sorenson had obviously done a little sweating of his own.
Clark smiled like a guy without a care in the world. “Well, great, then I’ll just head on in.”
“And Clark?” Mr. Sorenson stopped him with a look. “When you find out what’s going on, will you come and tell me?
***********
When he’d met the legendary newspaper man, during his first overwhelming weeks in Metropolis, Clark had been bowled over by the man’s larger than life energy and charisma. The contrast between then and now was remarkable. It was a shaken and red-eyed Perry White who stood up to shake his hand.
“Kent, come in, son. Introductions are in order.”
Before Clark could contradict him, Lois had jumped to her feet, flashing him a message with her eyes that he couldn’t decode. “Lois Lane.” She thrust her hand out. “And we’re going to be partnered up for a while.”
“Lois and I have been talking all morning, Kent, and she has quite a story to tell.”
He just bet she did.
“And we’re going to be partners?” Clark clarified, wondering if he should be flattered he was getting a by-line in his own media storm.
“Just until Lois gets her feet wet, gets back into the swing of things. After that you kids can vote, see if it works for you.” Perry stood, moving towards the doors. “Lois, honey, you took ten years off my life when you went missing. Couldn’t bring myself to get back into the swing of things, kind of like a General who can’t send his troops into battle anymore.” Perry sighed. “Taking that promotion seemed easier than…Well, I don’t think I know half the people working here now. And I’m certainly as unknown to most of them.” He turned quickly, opening the door, the wistfulness gone from his voice. “I can’t tell you what it does for this old news hound to see you back where you belong.”
“Thank you for hearing me out, for agreeing to lend me Clark. We’ll make you proud.”
“The first story I want to see in print is the one you just told me. ‘Lois Lane Returns from the Dead.’ Good luck to you, Kent.” He chuckled, a bit of the old Perry peeking through. “If I remember right, I think you’ll need it.”
The sound of the door closing echoed loudly in the now quiet conference room.
He’d take the offensive, Clark decided, rather than waiting silently for the axe to fall.
“I give up, Lois.” He moved to the coffee maker, nonchalantly. “What’s the game?”
“I’m glad you asked, because I was up all night figuring it out, and I’ve got it boiled down to just two things.” Lois moved to join him in a cup. She was a completely different woman than the lost and heartbroken one he had taken her for. “And you have to admit, Clark, there isn’t anything too imposing or difficult about just two things.”
“Ok.” He drew a deep breath, took a sip from the mug he was holding. “Do I sit for the two things?”
Lois pointed him to a chair. “We’ll do my thing first, then you.”
“Oh, is one of these things my thing? One for each of us?” He smiled widely at her. “You didn’t make that clear before.”
“You think I don’t see through that, don’t you?” Lois asked sweetly. “You think I don’t know you’re scared to death and covering?”
“Why, Lois, whatever do you mean?” He leaned an elbow on the table, waiting her out, the picture of polite, bored attention.
“Ok, Kent, I can’t do this all day. Right here, right now, cards on the table.” Lois rapped the table sharply with each word.
“When I flew off last night, Lois,” he supplied mildly, “that was pretty much my cards on the table. The next move is yours.”
“That’s fair,” she agreed suddenly. “So get ready, Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas by way of Krypton…”
“How did you…?” he gasped.
“I’m going first remember? I am from another universe, don’t you roll your eyes at me. When I told you that last night, before you flew off the handle, well, literally, what I meant was I am an inter-dimensional time traveler…er… I think. No, I know. I am from a parallel world where there is a Metropolis, a Daily Planet, a Jimmy Olsen who doesn’t serve coffee, a Perry White who wouldn’t leave the newsroom for any promotion, and a Clark Kent who is more infuriating than you are.” She ticked each of these items off on her fingers like a grocery list. “I was shoved through a portal… or a worm hole… or a tear in the fabric of space and time… or a something.” She glared at him.
Undeservingly, he thought, as he had smoothed his astonished features to a careful blankness. “That was two weeks ago, more or less, in this time zone, and you, Clark Kent, are my last, true hope.”
Breathless, she plopped down, grinning at her poker-faced partner. “That was the first thing. My thing. Now, let’s do yours.”
“I’m an alien from Krypton,” he started smugly, matching her tone, certain he had the stuff to win the strange game they were engaged in. “I can fly, you saw that, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I can lift anything…”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. I mean the real stuff, Clark.”
“Did I interrupt you?” he demanded. “And I don’t think you’ve got it, Lois. I can….”
“Melt things with your eyes, freeze things with your breath, knock asteroids from the sky, I got that part. Why aren’t you Superman?”
“How did you? Wh…what the…what the… heck is a Superman?!”
“I love that. You don’t curse do you? He doesn’t either.”
“Ok, I give up. I’m trying to play this game, and you keep sliding off in a different direction.” Clark stood up under the pretense of pouring more coffee. “What was all that with Mr. White? About your having worked here before and being back from the dead?”
“That was the truth,” Lois sighed and jumped up, as if needing to be on her feet to think. “I didn’t mislead him. I just didn’t tell him that particular truth isn’t exactly my truth. It’s hers.”
“Hers?”
“The other Lois Lane, the one who belongs in this world. I looked her up on your laptop last night. I decided there had to be one, and that instead of trying to avoid her, I should find her or what became of her, see if I could borrow her life, so to speak. She’s been missing in the Congo for almost five years, never found. And it would seem she has been completely forgotten.” Lois’ voice trailed off on that last part. “She was a reporter of some merit,” she frowned. “Why haven’t you heard of her?”
Well…” he shrugged, “…because I’m the new alien in town?”
“So are you up to speed on what’s going on here?”
“Not in the slightest, no.” Clark sat back down, ran his fingers through his hair, and said almost to himself, “I’ve been monitoring your heartbeat since you started talking. Something I’ve practiced in interviews. Maybe it isn’t fair, like being hooked up to a lie-detector and not knowing it , but your heart rate doesn’t indicate that you’re….” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, and changed tact. “But no one believes a delusion more than the delusional person. It is their reality. You wouldn’t be lying if you really believed all this.”
She was studying him closely. He looked back only briefly. He didn’t like what he thought he saw in her eyes. Honesty. Truth, burning pure and brightly on her face. It just was not possible. There was no way, no way. It made no sense. The whole thing was too ridiculous to be real. But, then again, so was he.
“I told you it was just two things, Clark,” Lois ventured quietly, moving to sit across from him once more. “I thought if you and I could each tell our one big thing, our thing we couldn’t tell to anyone else because it would get us committed, or on the cover of Science Digest, or worse, then we could help each other tackle what comes next.”
“And what comes next, Lois?” Clark leaned across the table, all pretense of indifference dropped. “You aren’t turning me in? I’m not tomorrow’s headline? This isn’t an elaborate, insane ruse to…to…well, I can’t think what it would be for. And…” he hesitated, didn’t know how wise it would be to voice it.
“Say it,” she commanded.
“You’re not crazy?” he asked flatly.
“You can trust me.” Lois blew out a breath, shaking her head in silent answer to the question she had to have known he would ask. “I told you I trusted you, Clark, and I meant it. And that was before I knew how very much we have in common.”
“That I’m not from around here.” He smiled wryly. “Just like you.”
“Those are the two things!” exclaimed Lois, triumphantly, “How much crazier does a time window sound than a spaceship? If you can drop in from the sky, why can’t I drop in from another dimension?”
“You brought up a… Superman.”
“Ok, maybe there were three things, then. But that one is for another day.”
“Superman is for another day?”
“Later, Clark, when I know you better. I want to know what makes you…different from my own Clark. What makes him put on a cape and why you haven’t done the same.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lois. And that has pretty much been the case since hello.”
“But you believe me,” she stated with conviction. “Clark Kent, you believe me.” She dared him to say otherwise.
“I don’t know you, Lois,” he started to protest. “I really don’t. Despite what I felt when we met or…when I look at you. When I was holding you in my arms last night and you seemed so hurt and completely lost, and I felt like maybe my life…had…a purpose.” He closed his eyes. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to impart that last bit of information.
Lois sat back with a thump in her chair. “Clark…you and I…I…” she ended that on a sigh. “I…I don’t know what to say to that. I know that when I’m with you, I feel safe and at home in a way I haven’t since my life was ripped into ‘before’ and ‘after.’ But my life isn’t here. And my heart is… committed.”
“To your world’s Clark Kent.” He wasn’t sure how he knew this. He just did. It would explain the strange pull she had on him. Maybe he could somehow feel the feelings of his counterpart. If there was a guy out there who was, basically, him, it would make a strange kind of sense. The same way Lois Lane, despite the wild story, made a strange kind of sense. “You said I was your last, true hope, Lois.” He moved further from her, finding the other side of the room easier for conversing with her. “What did you mean?”
Lois studied her hands on the table before answering. “I didn’t know you were…from outside the universe before last night. And I’ve known Clark, my Clark, for a couple of years. I’ve been dating him for a few months. We were serious. But he never told me about that part of himself.”
“I can tell you why he didn’t,” Clark answered quickly, eager to extinguish the hurt that had flared behind her eyes. “Lana Lang had known me my whole life. When I told her, she gave me this look. And in many ways, that look never left her face again.”
“I see,” Lois replied thoughtfully. “But you wanted to know why you’re my last hope. And it isn’t because I knew you were stronger and faster than anyone else here. That won’t help me. It’s simpler than that. I need to find a man named Tempus, the man who brought me here. I need a job. Being a reporter is who I am. I need a friend. And a place to stay until I can figure out if…I’m staying. If you can be my friend-,” She moved across the room to stand in front of him. “-and it’s asking a lot, then I can stay sane. If I can tell you the truth, level with you in a way that I couldn’t with anyone else here, then I can be real here. If I’m only real to me…”
“…it’s lonely as hell.” He laughed softly at her surprise. “Finally, Lois Lane, I know exactly what you mean.” He extended his hand, taking hers in his. “Nice to meet you,” he said quietly. “Welcome to my world.”
tbc-
