part 4-
“Come on in, Superman,” called Henderson from inside his office.
“I got your message.” Clark sat carefully on the edge of the offered chair. “Is there news?”
“Yes and no.”
Something inside Clark’s gut clenched. He steadied himself, breathing deeply, not taking his eyes off the Inspector’s, and waited.
“We’ve finished.”
“You’ve finished looking through all the tunnels, the sewers?”
“Yes. It took awhile, but I can honestly say this department has mapped out every nook and cranny of Metropolis underground.”
“And?” He had to ask. If there was anything he needed to hear, he needed to hear it quickly.
“She wasn’t there. No sign of her. And using Bernie Klein’s instruments, there is no indication there was ever any kryptonite of significant proportions down there.”
“So…”
“So, another dead end.” Henderson smiled bitterly. “Or, on the bright side, we know of one more place she isn’t.”
Thank you, Inspector, for your work…” Clark began.
“I know it’s hard,” Henderson interrupted him quietly. “I’ve sat with enough victims’ families. You think you want to know, that you need…”
“…closure,” Clark finished for him.
“Right. But then when you think you might get it…” Henderson shrugged.
“You know it’s the last thing you want.” Clark said, mostly to himself. “If you had found her…her body, then I would know that there was no more Lois Lane. At this point I thought it was the not knowing that was killing me.”
“We aren’t going to stop looking, Superman. The bay is a big job, and the high-ups will have my head about the expense, but…”
“No.” Clark cut him off. “I’ve looked. Every inch and more than once. Below Metropolis, all those lead pipes, well, that was my last reasonable hope.”
“And it’s come up empty. So now what?”
Clark laughed an empty laugh. “So now I go back to the Daily Planet, sit at my desk, picture her waltzing in with the story of the century. ‘The Year I Spent Invisible’ by Lois Lane, something like that.”
Henderson looked at Superman for a long time. Long enough for the silence to bring the superhero back from his own thoughts.
Their eyes met.
“Oh.” Superman said. “Oh…”
Henderson shook his head at him. “Be careful, ok? Grief is a funny thing. It pops out at you, and not everyone can afford to let his guard down.”
“Inspector…” Clark tried, but realized he lacked both the energy and the inclination to spin a reasonable explanation. He stopped. “Thanks,” he said, standing up and reaching to shake the other man’s hand.
“I’ll keep you posted and you do the same for me, ok?” Henderson dismissed him with a curt nod.
Clark paused only a moment with his hand on the knob. Smoothing his features into a bland mask and setting his shoulders, Superman walked out the door.
***********
“So,” began a teasing voice. “I get this mysterious message that my husband has to work late, rather than come home and spend our first anniversary with me.”
“Hello, Lois,” Clark grinned into the phone. “I had hoped to hear from you.”
“The thing I found most interesting about the ‘working late’ excuse…?”
“Yes…?”
“Is that seeing as how my husband also happens to be my partner at work, I can’t see how he has to stay late, when I’m home pouring over the cookbook, with no knowledge of any late-breaking stories.”
“Lois Lane-Kent, if you are pouring over a cookbook, then my name’s not…”
“It’s an illustration, Clark. What are you doing there? What’s happening? Has our corrupt senator crumpled?”
“Ah, we arrive at the true point of this call.”
“Don’t make me ask again.”
“No, Lois. It’s much more boring than that. Mr. White caught me before I got to the elevator. Seems you and I are behind on our expense account paperwork, and the suits upstairs are having this meeting tomorrow, so….”
“So, you’re going to be there a while.”
“Hardly. Now, the average man might be here a while. You and I have really let this go, Lois…”
“My bad influence.”
“But your guy is just sitting in the lobby, nursing one of Jimmy’s lattes, and waiting for the rest of the staff to leave. Then he’ll head back up and do a bit of…super housecleaning.”
“My hero.”
“And I’ll be home as soon as I can. And we can still make the dinner reservations, though the show may be a wash.”
“That’s ok. You were the one who wanted to see it.”
“I know. And when am I going to get you to agree to go with me ever again, if not on the anniversary of the day you married me?
“Better luck next year, Superman.”
“I’m watching the last of our stragglers leaving the building now, Lois.”
“So, I guess you’ll be going up and getting that little thing done. Good. I’m hungry.”
“Ok, this won’t take long, so be ready.”
“When am I not?” she teased him softly.
“And don’t you dare eat anything before I come home! Hey…what’s that I’m hearing? Problem?”
“Our neighbor. She’s singing. Again.”
“Looks like a job for…”
“Your mean wife. Just get home, silly.”
“I’m half-way there, Lois.”
Clark snapped his cell phone closed and jumped into the elevator just as the doors were closing.
“Excuse me,” he murmured apologetically to the petite woman he’d nearly knocked over.
“I was on the phone and didn’t want to miss the elevator. It’s a long wait…”
His voice trailed off as he got his first real look at her.
At his sudden silence the woman frowned. “You’ve heard about it not being nice to stare, right?”
“Your hair….” he started. It was long, down to her waist, parted in the middle. Nothing like the short cut Lois had taken to wearing since the wedding.
“My…what?”
“And how did you…? We were just talking and I could hear Mrs. Cranston in the background, so….”
“Ok, look, mister, I don’t know you. Let’s just make this a brief and boring elevator ride. You get off on the next floor and no more talking about my hair or Mrs. Cranston or whatever else that doesn’t make sense that is no doubt going to come next.”
She stopped his heart. He knew that face so well. Despite the vastly different style of hair and clothing, he knew her inside and out, had her memorized. She was unmistakable.
“You…you’re Lois Lane.” He took her face between his hands, mindless of how crazy that might seem to her. “You’re…my Lois?”
A thousands emotions rolled across her face; a parade of outrage, anger, confusion, annoyance, and very briefly, relief. In fact, if he wasn’t so well versed in his wife’s expressions, he might have missed that last one entirely.
“I’m not anybody’s anything!” she flared. But before the words were even out of her mouth, he was grinning shamelessly at her. “You are her,” he breathed. “Welcome back, Lois Lane.”
***********
At the sound of the key in the lock, Lois leapt up from where she’d been reading to pass the time. Clark entered, followed by a very angry woman.
“You’re late and you’ve brought me a clone.” Lois gasped, the book dropping from her hands. “Not a gift every woman dreams about for her anniversary, but hey, if she can stay here and cook and clean while I chase down leads, then…”
“Lois…” he cut her off softly. That always worked. She’d get nervous or angry and get going and the words would fall everywhere, but if he got quiet, she stopped, without fail. He knew it probably hadn’t worked that way for the other Clark. If he had gone quiet during a rant, she probably took that as unspoken permission to talk until day was night. He didn’t provoke the same amount of passion in Lois, good or bad, that the first Clark had. Something that was no secret, but that he really hadn’t understood…until now. “Lois-” He ran his hands through his hair and tried to think how best to say what had to be said, “-this is…Lois.”
“Oh.” Lois sat down quickly. “Oh. Well. Hello. I’m Lois, too. Lois Also, I guess you could say the full name was. And, well, I’ve been borrowing your universe, seeing as how you weren’t using it. But I guess you’re…going to be needing it back?”
“I have no idea what this is about,” snapped the long-haired Lois Lane. “I was going back to work after…well, let’s just say a long stay in some place extremely unpleasant, when this…man-” She jabbed her finger in Clark’s direction, “-kidnapped me from the elevator! All the while babbling about Lois Lanes and parallel universes and saying that I was his.”
That last word had ended on a high dramatic note. It filled the room.
“Is she yours, Clark?” Lois asked from her place on the sofa. “You know for sure?”
Clark stood between the two women. Afraid to move away from the Lois Lane on the landing, certain that if he did, she would bolt. And wishing with all his might he could move towards his wife on the sofa, hold her hand, look into her eyes, and tell her…what?
That he loved her, but when he’d run into the other Lois, she had slammed into his heart like a hammer? And, by the way, ‘Happy Anniversary, honey’?
“Is this some sort of slavery ring here? I mean, he says I’m his, and you, his wife, you are his wife, right? You just ask if he’s sure?! Does he do this often? Are you people into something…sick?”
“Are you telling me you haven’t noticed it?” Lois demanded, rising from the sofa, walking slowly back to the stairs.
“Noticed what?” her counterpart growled.
“That we have the same face,” Lois stated plainly.
“I want us all to sit down, please,” Clark interjected.
“Well, look who found his voice…”
“I know what you’re doing, you know. You’re scared and confused and you’re covering with anger and bravado. Am I that see-through?” Lois whirled back to Clark.
He smiled at her gently. “Do you want me to answer that?”
“Let’s sit, Lois replied. “You too, um…Lois.”
***********
The two women sat as far as possible from each other on the sofa. Clark resisted the urge to continually look back and forth, comparing point by point. It really was uncanny.
“Was there a man with a magic window?” Lois finally asked, almost certain of what the answer would be, but needing to ask, just the same.
“It was gunrunners in the Congo, actually…Lois.” The words were dripping in derision.
Lois felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She stood quickly, moving to the kitchen.
As she brushed past him, Clark reached out for her, grabbing her hand and pulling her to a halt. “Lois, she’s just…she doesn’t know.”
“Clark.” Her sad eyes met his pleading ones. “You don’t have to tell me. If anyone here knows how she feels, almost exactly how she feels, it’s me.” She blinked quickly, smiled a shaky smile at him. “You didn’t answer me before, though. Is she…yours?”
Clark inhaled, ran his hand up and down her arm in a comforting motion. “Yes,” he finally breathed. “And it was like you said, Lois. I just…knew the instant I…”
Lois nodded quickly, held up her hand. “I got it. Don’t draw me a picture, ok?”
“This doesn’t change things, Lois. You are my wife.” He promised softly. And she knew he meant it. That never, ever no matter how powerful the pull, would he ever leave her for…her. If it cost him every ounce of strength, of resolve, of…whatever he might need, he wouldn’t go to her. He wouldn’t be with the one meant for him. He would stay. Even if it killed him.
“This changes everything, Clark. You know that. You’re just too good, too sweet to let yourself say it, or even think it.” She stepped a deliberate pace back from him. His hand fell to his side. She moved into the kitchen.
“I’m making coffee,” she called over her shoulder. “Why don’t you two get acquainted?”
**********
The last thing Lois Lane expected to see, after taking her time reentering the living room, was an odd looking man in a bowler hat engaged in nervous conversation with her husband and her counterpart. “Clark, who’s...?”
The effect of her entrance on the man was astonishing. He dropped his hat, dropped his jaw, stammered and sweated and very nearly swooned.
Clark grabbed him quickly, leading him to a chair. “Sir? Are you all right?”
Long-haired Lois had come to her feet; she stepped deftly around the huddled little man and reached for the coffee Lois was still holding in her hand. “I don’t know what kind of a place you people are running here,” she told Lois softly, with a searching gaze.
Lois smiled. “Trust me, it’s even weirder than you think.”
Clark had been ineffectively patting the stranger on the back, like he’d had a coughing fit or had swallowed his gum.
“Who is he, Clark?” Lois asked, coming over to save the poor little man.
“He said he was…” Clark shook his head. “Remember when we woke up this morning and I said, ‘good morning, wife, what do we have going on today?’ and you said, ‘not much that I know of’? And I agreed that today was the perfect day for us to celebrate our anniversary, since nothing…big…was happening?”
“You’re babbling,” sputtered the other Lois. “I saw your face when he got here. Who did he say he was?”
“HG Wells.” Clark straightened from his soft pounding of the figure in question.
“The writer?!” both Loises chorused.
“And time traveler.” Though he had spoken them quietly, those words went off like a bomb in the room.
One Lois slapped her forehead and collapsed dramatically onto the sofa. “You spend a few years in a prison in the Congo, living on mangos and water, and after you finally tunnel your way out, you find everything makes less sense here than there.” She picked up her coffee and sipped some cautiously, “I was in the sun too long.”
“He’s come to get me,” Lois said disbelieving, sinking into the nearest chair. “I’m going…home.”
“Yes, quite,” interrupted the little man they had all momentarily forgotten. “Ms. Lane,” he stood and bowed stiffly, “and…er…Ms. Lane,” he nodded to the woman on the sofa.”
“Call me Lane,” she offered agreeably. “Everyone in prison did.”
“Well…” HG didn’t seem to know exactly how to respond to that. “So, you’ve been away. And you,” he turned to Lois, “have been…on an adventure?”
Clark clenched his fists, moving swiftly away from the assembled group. “An adventure?! Your people dropped her here without a clue as to why, or with any idea if she was even going to get back, or what she was supposed to do in the meantime. Do you have any idea how scary that was for her? How horrifying?”
“No, no, not my people.” HG paled and moved to stand a bit closer to Lois. “I imagine it was Tempus, my dear?”
Lois and Clark shared a long look. ‘This is it’ the look said. Months of digging had turned up no references to that name whatsoever. Eventually they’d decided there wasn’t anything to find, and that most likely, he wasn’t coming back. To appease Clark, Lois had agreed to wear a transmitter at all times. His worst fear was that she would be taken out of the world, and he’d be left with no way of knowing it. Like her own Clark must have been.
“What’s a Tempus?” interjected Lane from her perch on the sofa.
“A mad man.” HG turned to her eagerly, apparently glad to have an audience that seemed to be listening. “He is an inter-dimensional hoodlum, and the one thing, the one person he hates above everything, is Superman.”
“I give up,” snapped Lane. “Start to finish, none of this makes a bit of sense.”
“She’s right,” Clark added. “Why if he hated Superman would be bring Lois to me? Give me the best year of my life?” He turned his eyes back to his wife and reached for her hand.
“You weren’t Superman, Clark,” she reminded him quietly. “He was.”
“That’s it exactly. Lois, you are the one true love of the Clark Kent of your dimension. That fact is well established over all time and space. Tempus seeks to defeat Superman by hitting him where he is weakest, and that weakness, is you.”
“He said this was ‘just for fun,’ those were his words. For me to ‘have a nice life.’”
“A life apart from the man you were meant to be with.”
Clark pulled Lois to his side, placing his arm around her shoulders. He asked, so she wouldn’t have to. “Did it work? Is Superman…is Clark Kent defeated? Is that why you’ve finally turned up to sort this out?”
“He has great strength, Lois.” Wells clearly sought to remove the look of terror that had come into her eyes. “And while he is not destroyed, he is deeply unhappy. But that isn’t why I’ve come.”
“So ‘deeply unhappy’ isn’t enough for you people?” flared Lane, as if she knew more than a little on the subject. “From what I can follow, you time-dimension travelers have messed with these people royally. She is here with him, but there’s another him who loves her and this guy,” she pointed to Clark who was still holding Lois is a tight grip, “marries her, but now has to stand by while you send her back. Cosmic Soap Opera,” she spat.
“Why are you here?” Lois asked.
“Because I let this happen to all three of you, all four of you, really.” He turned to include Lane. “I was away…distracted. Not following up on you as I know I should. Until…until this morning over breakfast, when I got a reading that there might be two Lois Lanes in one place, I didn’t have any idea that things had gone so terribly awry. Tempus usually leaves a much bigger ripple in the time-space pond, so to speak.”
“I can go home.” Lois turned into Clark’s embrace.
“Do you want to?” he asked hesitantly. “After everything, Lois. Do you want to go?”
“Perhaps I wasn’t direct enough on the ‘one true love’ thing,” HG began timidly. “If this Lois Lane is that for the other Clark Kent, then….”
All eyes turned to Lane, who was watching them with equal parts fascination and skepticism. “What?!” she demanded.
“That isn’t to imply that it’s going to be easy,” Wells stated.
“You said you knew it when you saw her,” Lois whispered into her husband’s ear.
“But, Lois-“
“Like I knew when I saw him, even though I didn’t exactly realize it. And he once told me that from the minute we were introduced, even though I barely looked at him, he was done for.”
“I know what you’re saying, Lois. I know all of this. I knew when we got married that how I loved you was different from how you would ever love me, that you weren’t going to love me like you did him. And that was ok. It was enough just to have you here, in my home…” He lowered his voice, drawing her away to the terrace, “…in my life, in my bed. Without you this world wouldn’t have a Superman, just a lonely reporter with a complex the size of Metropolis.”
They were facing each other on the terrace, where it had all began for them. Where the gloves of civility had come off, and the real honesty had started.
“Then we foiled him, didn’t we? Tempus brought me here to destroy my future with Superman. And instead, I had a year with one of the kindest, most generous men I’ve known in two worlds. And together, we figured out how to be a family…how to be happy, and how to bring Superman into being.”
“You’re going,” Clark rasped.
“Look at the score,” she teased him. “Two Loises for you and none for him?”
“I can’t let him get off that easy,” he agreed in a choked voice. “When?”
“The sooner the better, I think,” she breathed. “Before it’s too hard.”
tbc-
