PREVIOUSLY IN THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE...
“I guess there is one thing puzzling me,” she said. She rolled onto her side, propping her head up with her hand so that she could look at him. He rolled on his side to face her.
“Shoot,” he said, reaching out to brush a strand of hair behind her ear.
For a moment she was distracted by the feather-like touch. But she quickly gathered her thoughts. “You never met me before I died, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And yet you came back in time to save me. So... why? Why me?”AND NOW...
Clark’s expression turned to disbelief and then he was softly laughing.
“What?”
“It’s just... I can’t believe I haven’t even thought about her since I met you,” he said in wonder.
“Her?” Lois asked cautiously, the warm glow of only a moment ago quickly evaporating.
“Now, don’t get all prickly on me,” Clark said, gently stroking her cheek. “It’s not what you think. I don’t have someone waiting for me back in 1997.”
“Okay,” she said, forcing herself to relax. After all, he was here with her, wasn’t he? He had even married her. So whoever this other ‘her’ was, she couldn’t be a threat, could she?
“H.G. Wells didn’t only invent a time machine,” Clark said, beginning his story. “His machine... well, it can also be used to travel to other dimensions.”
His voice had become serious, prompting a similar response in her - as if understanding that although he might not have someone waiting for him back in 1997, but he was still fearful of how she would react to this story. She could hear it in the slight tremble in his voice.
Automatically, she pulled the sheets tighter around her before turning her mind to what he had just said. Other dimensions? “What do you mean?” Lois asked.
“Other dimensions... One dimension, in particular, running parallel to ours. Much like ours, but with differences.”
“Like you see in science fiction movies?”
“I know how this sounds, but...” He floated about a foot off the bed.
“Uhh... okay,” Lois said, unable to stop herself from running her hand above and below him, just to be sure that she wasn’t seeing things. He may have flown her to Las Vegas, but still... “Okay, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “So... what does this other dimension have to do with you coming to look for me?”
“The Lois from this other dimension came to this one. I met her. And then, later, I went to her universe briefly to help out with a problem there.”
She was dead silent even as her heart rate jumped slightly. “Go on,” she said cautiously after a long moment.
“She and Wells were brought to this universe by an evil time traveler named Tempus. When Tempus brought them here with no way home, they came to find me.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew that I had extraordinary powers and they needed my help to get back to their own universe.”
“Okay. I can understand that. Go to Superman to get help.”
“I wasn’t actually Superman then.”
“You weren’t?”
He shook his head. “She was the one who convinced me to put on the suit. She maintained that I could keep people from knowing that Clark was the one doing super things by having a secret identity.”
Lois bit her lip as she digested that. “So... without a second thought, suddenly you’re flying around the skies just because she wanted you to?”
“I did it because it was what I wanted to do,” Clark said. “Lois, ever since I started developing these miraculous abilities, I’ve wanted to use them for some good. And it was killing me a little more every day that I couldn’t help when I’d see people suffering. She only gave me a way to do it.”
“And she knew this because... that was what the Clark in her dimension did?”
He nodded.
“So then, why does everyone in your time know you’re Superman?”
“The plan backfired. Tempus knew that I was the one with the powers and his plan involved exposing me to the world.”
“You must have hated her.”
“I didn’t hate her. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Then... What did you feel for her?”
He moved, so that he could look Lois in the eye. “I was attracted to her,” he admitted. “And, yes, she was the reason I started searching for you. But she’s not the reason I’m here.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Lois, in searching for you, I got to know you. Not her. You. I talked to your parents and your sister. I talked to Perry and the people you knew at the Planet. I read your stories. I learned everything I could about you, trying to figure out what you might have done, or where you may have gone if you got in trouble in the Congo.
‘Yes, I had feelings for her. But I knew her for... a few days all together. Once when she came to my dimension. And once when I went to help out in hers. But getting to know you from Perry and your family and your writing... I didn’t come into the past to find the other Lois. If that’s what I had wanted, I could have used the time machine to travel to her dimension. Tried to persuade her to come back with me. Instead, I used the time machine to come back in time. I used it to find you.”
“Would she have been... receptive if you’d gone to her dimension?” she asked, instantly picking up on his ‘tried to persuade her’ comment.
“Probably not. In fact, she was the one who told me that she thought any feelings I had for her were meant for you. When I met you for the first time, I instantly knew just how right she was. What I felt for her was nothing more than... a shadow of what I feel for you.”
“Were you two...” Her voice trailed off, finding herself unable to complete the dreaded question.
“Intimate?” he asked, continuing when she nodded in response. “No. Never. She kissed me once, when we first met. Nothing major, just a peck on the lips. I think... she somehow mistook me for the other Clark for an instant. And then we almost kissed on two other occasions. But it never got any further than that.”
Lois fell silent as she attempted to absorb what he’d told her. Just when she thought he’d heard it all, that it couldn’t get any weirder, it just did. Time travel... okay. Flying aliens... maybe. Superheroes... doubtful, but possible. Other dimensions with other versions of her visiting him, making him realize that he desperately wanted to meet her... not a chance.
But, he looked sane enough. In fact...
As she watched him crawl out of bed and walk across the room, she took the time to appreciate the view of that cute little tushy. Tight and hard, muscles rippling as he... Her bottom lip came out in a pout when he picked up a hotel robe and slipped it on. Not fair. There ought to be a law against...
“I’m just going to give room service a call and have them send up some supper while you digest all of that,” he said, looking back at her in concern.
Digest all of what? The fact that there ought to be a law against covering up that delicious, mouth-watering...
Oh, wait. That wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about. “Uhh... yeah. Good idea,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster.
The concerned furrow between his eyebrows deepened.
She gave him a sheepish shrug. Hopefully, he would just think that she was... digesting.
“Anything in particular you want?” he asked.
“Uhh... surprise me,” she responded.
He nodded and left the bedroom.
Surprise me. Had she really just said that? She wasn’t entirely sure just how many more surprise-mes she had left in her.
She let out a slow breath. Alternate dimensions. Alternate versions of her. But wait... When Captain Kirk swapped places with his doopelganger on Star Trek, wasn’t his doppelganger evil? Did that mean this other Lois was evil? No, that couldn’t be it. Not by the way Clark had talked about her. So... maybe not all doppelgangers were evil. She supposed that made sense. After all, if there was one alternate dimension, there had to be many alternate dimensions. So if there were dimensions where she was evil, there had to be dimensions where she was good, too. Didn’t there?
She gave her head a shake. Was she really using Star Trek as her primary research source to understand her current reality? If she wasn’t careful, she was likely to start wondering if she and Clark were going to found a dynasty that would lead the world into some sort of utopian future. Right. Like that was ever going to happen!
Still, even if her doppelganger wasn’t evil, she still wasn’t entirely sure how she should feel about any of this? Should she be angry - feel used as some sort of replacement for the woman he really loved. Should she feel flattered that he met another her and then came back in time to meet her... or rather, save her? Or should she worry that he was really in love with this other her and...
‘I can’t believe I haven’t even thought about her since I met you.’
Warmth flooded through her heart as she recalled Clark’s words, instantly cutting through all the other threatening emotions. He wasn’t comparing them, trying to see if she lived up to what the other Lois was like. No, he hadn’t even thought about the other Lois since he had met her. And the soft laughter and wonder in his voice when he’d vocalized those words made them impossible to disbelieve.
His words told her something else, too. He hadn’t been deliberately keeping this information from her. He just hadn’t thought about the other Lois. Not since they had first met. So could she really be angry with him for an oversight? Quite an oversight, to be sure. But an oversight, none-the-less.
No. Well, okay, yes. She knew she had a temper. And she knew she didn’t forgive easily. But for some reason... she didn’t feel angry - strangely. Scared, maybe. Confused... a little. But...
Still, even if he had had feelings for this other her, even if that was what had prompted his search into the past, did it really matter? She’d had feelings for Paul... Or at least she’d thought she did. Had honestly believed he was the one great love of her life. But she hadn’t thought about Paul, even once, in a romantic way since Charlie... Clark had come into her life. How was that any different from Clark and this other Lois?
Okay, so maybe it was a bit different. After all, she assumed she looked much like this other Lois. So how could she know she was the one he really wanted? That she wasn’t some very strange rebound for him. That, at some point, he might not want her to be more like the other Lois had been?
But how well could he know what the other Lois was like? He’d spent a few days with the other Lois. Other than that, his time had been spent learning about the genuine article. He’d talked to the people who knew her and learned about her through her writing. And never once since they’d met had he given her the impression that he wanted her to be anyone other than who she was.
Yes, the other Lois may have peeked his interest. But she wasn’t the one he’d gotten to know. She wasn’t the one he’d fallen in love with. He hadn’t even thought about the other Lois since he’d come into the past.
No. He loved her. She felt that love in every look, every touch, every kiss. She felt it in the fear that he was going to lose her she’d seen in his face when he’d left the room.
And suddenly she had her answer.
No matter what was in his past, she was his future - just as much as he was her future. The rest would work itself out.
* * * * * * * * *
“I’ve placed our order,” Clark announced. He’d decided to order supper to give her time to think about everything he had told her. She needed that time. He understood that. Still, his heart was in his throat as he returned to the room.
He took a seat on the side of the bed, all the while watching Lois closely. How was she taking this latest revelation? He couldn’t quite get a read on her. She’d listened to his confession intently, asking several questions for clarification. And he’d answered all of them as openly and honestly as he could.
Still, how would she react? It wasn’t that he had deliberately kept this information from her. He quite simply hadn’t thought about it.
“So...” he said, hoping for some sort of reaction. If she was angry, they had to get it out in the open and talk it through before he went back to the future. He couldn’t... he wouldn’t leave her behind either angry or confused.
“So...” she responded, reaching out to play with the lapels on his terrycloth robe, pushing them carefully back to reveal more of his chest. “...can you think of anything we might want to do while we wait for the food to arrive?”
The sultry look she gave him and the way a single finger made a trail down his chest was almost his undoing. He had to force himself to capture her hand before it moved even lower. “Lois, we should talk about what I just told you.”
A small pout appeared on her lips.
“I just think...” he began, ignoring the temptation to kiss that pout away.
“What’s to talk about, Clark?” she said, cutting him off. “The way I figure it is that I owe this other me a lot. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.” A grin quirked the corner of her mouth as her eyes left his to run down what she could see of his bare chest. “And trust me when I say the view from here is fantastic. Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Other versions of me visiting you from other dimensions... Hey, after time travel and flying aliens... piece of cake.”
“Lois...” he said, still not convinced by her dismissive attitude.
“Clark, listen to me. Okay, hearing about other dimension and other versions of me... Yeah, it was a bit of a shock. But you love me, right?”
He nodded.
“And she went home?”
He nodded again.
“I know you had feelings for her - otherwise you never would have looked for me. But never have I felt as if you wanted me to be anyone other than who I am.”
“I don’t.”
“Good! Because I have enough problems being me. I don’t know how to be anyone else. And I know you love me as me. So... I had feelings for Paul before you arrived. And yet you’ve erased those feelings. So you had feelings for her...”
“And you have most definitely erased those feelings,” he said.
“So... as long as you don’t invent another time machine so you can start making trips to her dimension to visit her... I think we’re good.”
Clark smiled. “And since that’s not going to happen... Besides, she’s married now, too.”
“Really?” Lois asked, sitting up a bit straighter. “Who did she marry?”
Clark simply raised his eyebrows.
Lois burst out laughing. “You’re kidding! She married her Clark?”
Clark nodded.
“Well, then, I guess that just confirms it. You and I are meant to be together... in every dimension.”
Unable to argue with that logic, he leaned in to kiss her only to be interrupted by a knock on the door. With a grown, he pulled back, once again straightening his robe and heading for the door, this time with a much lighter heart.
* * * * * * * * *
June 1997
* * * * * * * * *
‘Oh my,’ Wells thought, looking at the carnage around him. ‘This is not good - not good at all.’
* * * * * * * * *
November 1987
* * * * * * * * *
Lois curled up on the end of the plush sofa, legs beneath her, almost lost beneath the folds of the hotel’s complementary terrycloth bath robe. She watched, taking in every movement, every detail, every line of Clark’s body, committing it to memory for the lonely years ahead. She didn’t regret her decision to marry him. Not at all. It wasn’t as if she would have dated anyone else anyway. Not when she knew there was no future in it. But, god, she would miss him when he was gone.
He turned to look at her and she quickly pushed those thoughts from her mind. There would be more than enough time to miss him when he was actually gone.
“Tell me something, Clark,” she said, breaking the comfortable silence between them.
“What?” he responded, putting down his champagne glass and scooting closer to her on the couch. Expropriating her feet, he moved them into his lap.
She smiled, distracted momentarily as he began massaging them.
“You wanted to ask me something,” he reminded her, bringing her mind back to the present.
“Right. Well, according to Wells, your headaches happen after you’ve done something to change the future... or, well, in your case, the past.”
“Right.”
“So... when have you had headaches?”
He smiled. “Good question. Okay, well, let me think... I didn’t have a headache when I went into the past to try to stop you from getting on a plane to the Congo in 1993.”
“When I die?”
Clark nodded, a brief look of pain crossing his face. “Or at least... disappeared. You were working on a gun running story and you boarded a plane to the Congo in 1993. No one ever heard from you again. I searched and searched, but... nothing. I don’t think you even made it to the Congo.”
“Did you ever look into who was behind the gun running? They would be the most likely suspects to know what happened.”
Clark nodded. “I did. But the trail had gone cold by the time I started investigating.”
She nodded, disappointed. That would have been helpful to know. “So... in spite of your warnings, I still got on that plane,” she said. “I mean... when you first went back in time to try to stop me.”
He nodded.
“Okay, so that’s obviously why you didn’t get a headache - your actions didn’t change anything.”
Clark nodded. “Okay, so then my next attempt to find you... I accidently ended up jumping back to 1976 - when you were nine - and rescued you from that tree. It was after that I had my first headache.”
“So... maybe you saved me from dying when I fell from that tree?”
Clark shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it. After all, if I had never come back, you would have survived until 1993 so I didn’t save your life - a few cuts and bruises maybe, but you would have been fine.”
“Well, then, thank you for saving me from a few cuts and bruises. But that still doesn’t explain your headache. Wait... unless...”
“What?”
“When I fell, I snapped a picture of you catching me. That was what helped me remember you when you showed up last week. So what if this time when you came back to warn me, I recognized you and it changed something?”
“But Wells said that nothing I did... at least until the truck incident... managed to save you.”
“True. And I have to admit that I didn’t recognize you immediately when you showed up here. So what if... Maybe I still went to the Congo but then I remembered who you were... my guardian angel... and I did something as a result. Maybe I was more cautious. Maybe it gave me a bit of a jump on my killer and he ended up... I don’t know, getting killed, too, or something.”
Clark nodded slowly. “Okay, so that might have changed things. Someone dying in 1993 who should have lived.”
She nodded. “Probably something like that anyway. So when was your next headache?”
“Uhh... after I told you about date rape drugs.”
“Not after you saved me at the party the day before?”
“No. Why?”
She let out a breath of relief.
“What?”
“Then chances are I wouldn’t have been raped at the party, even if you hadn’t come along - because I would suspect being raped would have changed me a lot. It certainly would have changed my attitude in the future, made me more jaded, less open.” She shrugged. “At least, I suspect it would have. Would probably have seriously changed the way I approached stories. One would think that would have caused some changes to the future.”
Clark cocked his head to the side and studied her for a moment. “That is important to you, isn’t it? That you wouldn’t have been raped, even if I hadn’t shown up when I did.”
She nodded.
“Why? I mean, I know why it’s important to you that you didn’t get raped, but since you didn’t... Why is it important to know that you wouldn’t have been raped if I hadn’t come along?”
She shrugged. “I guess it’s just good to know that I still would have gotten out of it. That either someone else would have stepped in or that I was still cognizant enough to fight back, at least enough to make those jerks think I wasn’t worth it. Or, even that Cat was right and they hadn’t really intended to rape me when they took me out of that party - just humiliate me in some way.”
“I can see that being important to you,” Clark said reflectively.
“Of course, you may just not have had a headache because it had no direct bearing on anything in the future.”
Clark shook his head. “I disagree. Even if it hadn’t affected you, it would have had to change something in the men who hurt you - changed their attitudes and their relationships. Besides, in the future, you will become the investigative reporter you hope to be. If you had been hurt that way, it would have had an effect on how you approached stories. Besides, if something like that had happened to you... I think I would have heard about it.”
“My very own Lois Lane expert,” she said, obviously getting a kick out of that fact.
He shrugged sheepishly. “You know why I did it. I just wanted to try to figure out where you might have gone if you got in trouble in the Congo.”
“Uh huh,” she responded. “Not that you had already fallen in love with me or anything?”
He chuckled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me in some sloppy robe, crying into a tub of rocky road ice cream while mooning over your picture.”
She sat up straighter. “Did you?” she asked, suddenly very curious.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said.
“I think you did,” she said smugly.
“You do, do you? Well, I guess you’ll just have to think whatever you want.” He leaned over, giving her a brief kiss. “Anyway, my point, before I was so rudely interrupted, was that given the research I did on you...” He ignored the amused grin that once again crinkled around her eyes. “...I think I would have gotten a hint if something that bad had happened to you, but I didn’t. So...
“Wait a minute!” he said, cutting himself off. “I remember... I was talking to Lucy and she mentioned something about an incident that happened to you in university.”
“What?” Lois asked, her heart instantly pounding painfully.
“No... It’s not that. Not that you were raped. But... she didn’t know the details, but she mentioned something about you getting drunk one night in your first semester of university and waking up in the morning with your hair cut really short... and, according to her, really badly. You had to go out the next day and get it evened up. She said it ended up being really short.”
“So you think....”
Clark nodded. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? Cat must have been right. The football players who took you out of that party probably never had any intention of raping you.”
“They just wanted to teach me a lesson. So Lucy didn’t know who had done this? Did she say anything about football players?”
Clark shook his head. “From what she said I got the impression you thought you must have done it yourself. That you never were able to figure out what had possessed you to try to cut your hair while you were drunk. But it’s got to be connected.”
Lois nodded. “Well, that’s a relief at least. I mean, not I’d be thrilled with having my hair cut really short. But I can live with that. At least, it’s a whole lot better than the alternative. And it makes me feel a bit more comfortable about the fact that nothing happened to the football players who took me out of that party.” She let out a breath. “Okay, so... you said your next headache was after you told me about date rape drugs.”
“Now this one I think I may have already figured out. Like I said, I read everything you ever wrote and... Lois, originally you didn’t write a story about date rape drugs or solving Angelina’s murder or Stafford’s arrest... none of that.”
“But how...” Her expression suddenly cleared. “I was about to write off everything that happened on Friday evening at the party as just having too much to drink until you made that comment about date rape drugs. So when you mentioned them...”
“I changed the past by getting you started investigating something that you wouldn’t have even considered if not for me and my slip about date rape drugs.”
“I’m not sorry about that.”
“Me either. But I couldn’t believe, when I heard you and Molly talking, that neither of you had even considered that something like GHB might have been slipped in your drink. It wasn’t until after I suggested it that it occurred to me that the problem hadn’t been... well, a problem in 1987.”
“It is obviously a problem in 1987. It was just that no one had ever figured it out before,” she said, correcting him.
“And I know of at least one way that affected the future,” Clark said. “Well, other than alerting women to the danger out there a little sooner - which, hopefully, saved a lot of women from becoming victims to it between 1987 and the mid-nineties when it was originally first reported as a problem.”
“What other effect do you think it had?”
“Bob Stafford... When I came to the past, Robert Stafford was a science advisor to the Governor of New Troy. And a main critic of Superman. He was trying to convince the world to put a moratorium on Superman’s activities, and in the process causing me a lot of grief.”
“So by putting Stafford behind bars, you think I probably made Superman’s life a little easier?”
Clark nodded. “Given that he’s currently serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, I’m pretty confident in saying that he’s not the science advisor to the Governor of New Troy anymore. And I doubt anyone is the least bit interested in his opinion of Superman.”
“Well, that’s what husbands and wives do. Try to make things a little easier for each other.”
“Then you’re doing a fantastic job as a wife.”
“That’s good. ‘Cause it’s my first time, you know. I want to be sure I’m doing it right.”
“Trust me,” Clark said, his voice coming out as a husky growl. “You’re doing a lot of things right in the ‘wife’ department.”
She smiled, even as she gave him a smack when he tried to move closer. “Don’t distract me,” she said. “I want to figure out what other changes you’ve made.”
He sighed and moved back to his own side of the couch, but couldn’t quite resist raising one of her feet so that he could give her toe a light nip causing her to giggle.
But she still refused to be distracted.
“Okay, so when was your next headache?”
“Uhh... after I saved that truck.”
“And we already know what happens because of that.”
“Yeah, Perry gets shot.” His voice and expression darkened.
“Hey,” she said, reaching over to touch his arm. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“No? If I hadn’t saved that truck...”
“Saving the truck was the right thing to do. It just had the wrong outcome. Or... in 1997, does Superman only save the good people? Does he make moral judgments about who should live or die before coming to their rescue?”
“No, of course not.”
“So if you go back to 1997 and people about to die, are you going to insist on jumping forward in time so that you can make sure none of them do something you don’t approve of before you decide whether or not to rescue them?”
“No,” Clark said, finally letting her point sink in.
“Good. Because I don’t like the idea of being married to a man who thinks he has the right to decide if someone is good enough to live.”
“You aren’t, Lois.” He sighed. “I just hope Perry is okay.”
“So do I,” she conceded. “But from what I’ve seen, he’s tough old bird.”
“Yes, he is.”
“He’ll make it, Clark. And after you leave... maybe there’s something I can do to prevent him from being shot in the first place.”
Clark sat up a bit straighter. “You’re right. Just as long as it’s not stepping in front of the bullet.”
“Don’t worry. I promised you I’d survive until we meet. And I’m going to. Nothing is going to stop me from really being your wife.”
“You really are my wife,” Clark said.
“You know what I mean,” Lois said.
“Yes, I do. And I’m going to hold you to that promise.”
She nodded, realizing she’d never given a more important promise.
“Okay, so where were we?” Lois asked.
“Hey, I just realized something,” Clark said.
“What?”
“Well, you made that comment about when we meet... When I first meet you, I won’t know that we’re married, because I should meet you in 1993 when I first come to work at the Daily Planet and yet I don’t come back to marry you until 1997. So the me from 1993 won’t have even met you yet.”
“Huh,” Lois said, a smile growing on her face.
“What?” Clark asked cautiously.
“Nothing... yet.”
“And that means...”
“Just that I’ve got six years to think of a way to have some fun with that. Have you ever wanted to have an affair with a married woman?”
“Huh?”
“Think about it, Clark. I’ll be married to you, but you won’t be married to me. You don’t marry me until 1997. I marry you in 1987. That means 1993 Clark won’t be married to me. So... have you ever wanted to have an affair with a married woman?”
Clark chuckled.
“Never really thought of myself as the cheating type before,” Lois said. “But trying to keep my hands of that gorgeous body of yours for four years... I don’t think that’s happening.”
“Well, if you only cheat on me... with me... I guess I can live with that.”
“Maybe we should have taken the minister up on his suggestion of writing our own vows,” Lois said. “How does that last line go again?”
“And thereto I pledge thee my troth?”
“Right. I should have said ‘and thereto I pledge thee my troth unless I decide to cheat with you.’”
“Well, to keep the language right, it should probably be ‘and thereto I pledge thee my troth unless I decide to cheat with thee.’”
Lois giggled.
“But I should warn you about something,” Clark said, suddenly much more serious.
“What’s that?”
“Well... when I first came to the Daily Planet, I was engaged.”
Her eyebrows rose. “So... I’m going to have some competition. Did you marry her?”
“No - she broke up with me when the other Lois came to this dimension. By the way I reacted to the other Lois, I think Lana knew that I didn’t love her the way a man should love the woman he was marrying. And what I felt for the other Lois doesn’t even compare to what I felt the first moment I laid eyes on you. Besides, she didn’t want me to be Superman. Had serious problems, in fact, with my Kryptonian heritage and made sure I knew it every chance she got. And I get the impression you’re not bothered at all by those things.”
“Bothered that my husband can fly me anywhere in the world in minutes? Nope. Don’t see that as a problem at all.”
“Then trust me when I say... you have no competition.”
Lois grinned. “Well, I won’t after I find a place to bury the body.”
“So... you’re okay with this? I mean, it’s not every woman who has to deal with her husband being engaged to another woman.”
“I’m not every woman. I’m the time traveler’s wife. I’ll just be sure to drop my towel at the first possible opportunity.”
“She won’t stand a chance.”
“Seriously, Clark. I knew we’d have some challenges to work through when I asked you to marry me. So don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”
Clark smiled. “Have I said how much I love you?”
“I think you’ve mentioned it,” Lois responded. “But I don’t mind hearing it again.”
“Well, I do love you. Completely, utterly, eternally.” Releasing her feet, he moved closer, seizing her lips with his.
She indulged him for a moment before, again, pushing him away. “Okay, enough of that. Quit trying to distract me,” she said playfully. “We were talking about when you had your headaches.”
“Oh right.” He thought back. “I think we got as far as the headache after the truck rescue.”
Lois nodded, putting her feet back in his lap with a gesture that he was to continue with his massage. “So when was your next headache?”
“After you got your story about date rape drugs published in the Daily Planet,” he said, giving in to her unspoken demand. “And... after our first kiss.”
“So which thing provoked the headache?” Lois asked. “Hey, Clark! That might be it. That kiss might have been the thing that kept me from going to the Congo.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if I recognized you when you warned me not to go to the Congo, maybe I listened and didn’t go.”
“Of course, the headache could just have been because of the change to the world in general since you made them aware of a new risk to their safety.”
“True,” Lois conceded. “After all, you were the one who suggested I go to see Perry White when Paul wouldn’t print my story. Otherwise, it would probably have been nothing more than a bunch of posters stapled to telephone poles and likely destroyed with time.”
Lois’ eyebrows furrowed, then her eyes widened as an idea began to form. “Clark, tell me again how exactly you tried to stop me from going to the Congo?”
“I met you at the airport and warned you not to go. I tried to tell you that if you went, you wouldn’t be coming back.”
Lois smiled. “Clark, I promise you that I didn’t... or won’t go to the Congo.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because your last headache happened after we made love. That has got to be because I recognized you when you approached me at the airport and by that point, I knew you were traveling in time. And I knew you were my guardian angel. I both loved and trusted you. If you had warned me not to go to the Congo... told me if I went, I wouldn’t be coming back... I promise... I would have believed you.”
“So... you survive!” Clark said, suddenly understanding.
“I survive!”
She suddenly found herself lost in Clark’s arms.
“We did it,” Clark exclaimed. “We really did, didn’t we?”
“I’d say so. Although... I think it’s more a case of you doing it.”
“Us,” Clark repeated. “You took the huge step of trusting me - when you could have written me off as crazy any number of times.”
“Okay... we did it.”
“So... six years?”
“Six years. And then... happily ever after.”
He frowned, seeming to mull that over in his mind. “Happily ever after? I don’t know. That’s a pretty tall order. Would you settle for... weekly trips to The Fudge Castle?” He tried to make the offer sound as tempting as possible.
She considered that for a moment. “Nope,” she finally said. “I want happily ever after. After all, happily ever after at the very least has got to include weekly trips to The Fudge Castle.”
Clark laughed. “Okay, then. Happily ever after, it is. Now... are we done talking? ‘Cause this is my wedding night you know.”
“Got something else you’d rather be doing?”
She giggled when he pounced.
* * * * * * * * *
Lois buried her face in Clark’s neck, breathing in his scent, making it a part of her. During their flight to Las Vegas, she’d been looking everywhere, taking in everything. Now all she wanted to take in was Clark.
She was going to lose him - and it was breaking her heart. Six years seemed like a lifetime. That was assuming that they were even right about her chances of survival. But either way, he would live and that was what mattered.
But that didn’t stop her from wanting to beg him not to go, or to take her with him. But either way, she would endanger his life and she couldn’t do that. If he didn’t go, he would continue to make changes to the past that would probably eventually destroy the time line... probably resulting in his death. If she went with him... if she didn’t do whatever she did in the next number of years... that would change his past, too. And if her printing a story that wasn’t originally published hurt him, how much more hurt would he be if she didn’t publish any more stories? Still, that didn’t keep the knowledge that she was losing him from killing her inside.
Even now, Wells was probably standing outside the door of her room, waiting for them.
Clark blew open the window to her dorm room.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’m going to have to go in fast.”
A second later, he was setting her down in the middle of her room.
The dreaded knock on the door came almost immediately. Lois bit her lip as she watched Clark walk over and open it.
“Oh, good. You’re here,” Wells said in a voice chipper enough to make Lois almost hate the man. “I trust that now that you’ve discussed it, you agree that Clark must come with me back to the future.”
“We agree,” Clark said.
“Good, good. Just one question before we go. Where did you put the other time machine?”
“Uhh... It’s at the bottom of the ocean,” Clark said, giving a small shrug.
“Oh, well... Okay, then,” Wells responded. “If you just want to collect your things...” He began twisting dials on his machine.
“What’s that?” Clark asked. “Where’s the time machine?”
“Oh, right. You haven’t seen this yet. I got it from the future. Much more efficient than the machine I built, don’t you think? Does everything my time machine does. Even has a few extra features.”
“That’s the time machine?”
“Quite so, and if you will just get your things, my boy, and come stand next to me, I’ll open the door to the future.”
“Wait!” Lois said, feeling that this whole thing was moving too fast. “At least give us a chance to say goodbye.” Her voice broke on the words.
Clark was there almost instantly, taking her in his arms as she cried softly against him, unable now to keep up her brave front. Because that’s all it was - a brave front. Inside, she felt as brittle as glass, as if a strong wind was all it would take to shatter her completely.
“Six years,” he said, taking her face in her hands and kissing her thoroughly.
“Six years,” she promised in return.
“Promise me you won’t go to the Congo.”
“I promise,” she said, her breathing unsteady now.
His thumbs gently brushed away the tears on her cheeks.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said.
Unable to speak anymore due to the large lump in her throat, she merely reached up, pulling his head down for one final kiss. It was sad. It was desperate. It was passionate. It said all the things that she couldn’t find the words to express. And all too soon it was over.
“I love you, Lois Lane Kent,” Clark breathed into her ear.
“I love you, Clark Charlie Kent,” she breathed back.
He stepped back, releasing her slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. Finally, only their hands were touching. She could tell that a window of some sort had opened, but she didn’t take her eyes off Clark. Then, contact was broken as he released her hands to pick up his bags.
“I love you,” he mouthed to her one final time before turning towards the window to follow Wells through.
“I love you, too,” she finally managed to get out just as the window closed behind him. Her knees giving out, she fell to the floor, her heart broken. It felt as if a part of her had suddenly been ripped away, leaving a giant hole inside her.
TO BE CONTINUED...
ML
