You can find the
Another Dimension, Another Time, Another Lois[/i] TOC here.
Part 1 A/N: Flashback dreams will be [i]italicized.
Part 2Lois floated up and over the city in the arms of this handsome stranger, a handsome stranger who ate a bomb, saving the space shuttle Prometheus. Then he lifted up her and the colonists and took the whole spaceship to the space station. He flew. He was strong. He was modest. That bomb didn’t faze him.
She borrowed a space suit from the station and in his arms he flew her back to Earth. He hadn’t worn anything – other than his blue suit, his uniform. A bright blue skin-tight suit with cherry red shorts, which brought her attention to his muscular body, and the “S” crest on his chest. Too bad that big red cape covered his derrière.
She sighed, wishing she could cuddle up to him and kiss him. Oh, but he was above such petty, human drivel – he was too important, too perfect to waste time on romantic notions like that. He was amazing. He was bigger, better, and braver than any man she had ever met. He was her own personal superhero. He embodied the word ‘super’. Yes, that must be his name: Superman.
“I’ll be around,” he called to her.
He better be! He was hers!
Those men had burst into the Daily Planet and put her – Lois Lane, defender of the people, Constitutionally-protected fourth estate – through the wringer! Hooked her to a lie detector. Please! Like she knew anything about the man to begin with. Superman. An alien? Well, if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck, the chances are pretty-good it is a duck. And Superman looked like no green-skinned alien, but – then, again – no man on Earth could be so perfect.
Especially not what’s-his-name, her clumsy, mud-brown eyed, junk-food eating, example of a Neanderthal “partner” – the way he had rushed into the Messenger warehouse to ‘save her’. Give her a break! She rolled her eyes. How could Perry assign her – Lois Lane, three-time Kerth award winner – a partner!?!
Lois had never believed in aliens. That was ridiculous. Small, silver-eyed, telepathic green fellows. Please! She lived in reality, not in fantasy-land. But Superman, she moaned. He could make her believe in anything. Anyway, he was Super-MAN, not SuperAlien.
She and Mr. Green Jeans were up in an airplane. Those psycho-military-rogue-government types were using them for bait. They wanted to kill Superman! Like Superman would hone in on her? Please! She could never be so lucky. They were going to throw her from the plane? She needed to distract them. Hack-from-Nowheresville was crushing on her. She could use that to her advantage.
“I want to kiss Clark good-bye,” Lois told them. She took her “partner’s” head in her hands and pressed an impressive kiss onto his mouth. He fell for the kiss, hook, line, and sinker. She could say one thing about Smallville, he sure could kiss. “Take the one on the right,” she whispered into his ear after the kiss.
Lois was falling, falling, falling. “Superman! Superman! Superman! Superman!” Oh, this was ridiculous. She was going to be a splot on the ground. Henderson wouldn’t find one bone intact with which to identity her. “Superman! Superman! Superman! Help!”
Suddenly, he was there, and she was there in his arms. He heard her. He rescued her. He was real. It wasn’t a one-time meeting. He was hers! She was definitely his.
“You do read minds,” she murmured, breathless just being in his arms. Okay, and also breathless from having been pushed out of an airplane at twenty-thousand feet without a parachute and screaming her lungs out the last thirty seconds, but she would never admit that to anyone.
“Not really. But I do have pretty good hearing,” Superman replied with a smile.
Was he teasing her? Did he have a sense of humor? Did he find her suggestion ludicrous? Thank God he couldn’t read her mind. The things she had been thinking about him since he had first taken her into his arms… Oh, to actually do some of those things with him. She wondered if he was a man. Did he have all the parts of a man? If so, would he float if they made love? Would he move so fast…? Stop, thinking about these things, Lois! You’re a grown woman, for Pete’s sake. You’re Lois Lane, not Cat Grant. You’ll never make love with Superman.
Superman set her down on the roof of the Daily Planet. There was a missile headed straight for them. Bureau 39, Jason Trask, shot a missile at Superman! How dare he?! Superman rushed up to intercept it. The bomb exploded, and when the smoke cleared, Superman was gone. Missing. Disappeared. Forever.“No!” Lois screamed, bolting straight up in bed. She was breathing so hard, she was almost panting, gulping for air. It had just been a dream, a fantasy, a nightmare. Her skin still tingled from where Superman had held her. He was unlike any man she had ever encountered. “Huh.”
She had never thought of herself as the school-girl fantasy type. Romantic, definitely. But superhero fantasy?
Crazy, Lane. Just plain crazy. She didn’t need a man to rescue her.
Lois fluffed her pillow, lay her head back down, and closed her eyes.
***
Perry came out of his office and even though Lois was waiting on hold, she flagged him down. “Hey, Chief, you ever hear of a covert government agency called ‘Bureau 39’?” she asked him.
With curiosity, he stepped closer to her desk. “You got something on this ‘Bureau whatsit’?”
“Thirty-nine.” Lois shook her head. “I heard about it somewhere. Just wondered if it really existed.”
“What does it deal with?” he asked her.
She looked down and shifted her pencil around on her desk. “Aliens,” she mumbled.
Her boss’s eyes bugged, then he spotted someone coming down the ramp towards Lois’s desk. “Jimmy!” Perry yelled and the photographer jumped. “My office. Pronto!”
Lois was thankful for the interruption. She couldn’t believe that she told Perry about something from her dream. What was wrong with her?
Jimmy asked her with his eyes if she knew what was up. She shrugged her reply.
She watched the office, but the door was shut and she couldn’t hear her boss shouting. Usually Perry only shut his door when he screamed at his staff.
A package arrived. Curious and tired of bad music, she hung up her phone. She cut through the tape at the bottom of the box and lifted off the lid. Inside was the most hideous mobile/statue thingy with pictures of a bunch of floating eyes and an upside-down mouth. Lois raised a brow. What the hell? She picked up the attached card.
Anyone can send flowers, Dan.She pressed her lips together. Well, that had been a waste of money. Hopefully, he hadn’t paid much for it.
Lois was about to drop it in the trash when said gift-giver appeared next to her desk.
“Hi. I see you got it.”
She smiled politely at Dan and placed the ‘thing’ on her shelf instead. She would get rid of it once he was gone. “Oh… uh, yeah… Thanks. You shouldn’t have.” She hoped he never did again.
“I thought this would be something you could really appreciate,” he replied.
How? She wondered and moved on. “Well… So…”
“So, if you remember, a while back we talked about us maybe going out,” Dan said with ample amounts of Scardino charm.
Lois remembered him wanting to go out with her and her not being sure. “Dan, I’m flattered, I really am. It’s just… I’ve been seeing Clark…”
“
Who?” Dan exclaimed.
“Huh?” Lois had no idea why she had said that.
Clark? Who was that? Then she remembered. He was the man from her dreams. No, not the man
of her dreams. That would be Superman. Clark was that hick reporter from Smallville of all places. The one she had kissed on the plane. Why would ever consider dating him? True, he had been one hell of a kisser, but he was a figment of her imagination. Why would she tell Scardino she was dating him?
Her expression must have been muddled because Dan appeared concerned. “You okay, Lois?”
“Yeah, fine.” She shook her head and tried to concentrate on Dan. “Let me think about it.”
“Okay,” he replied hesitantly.
Great. The one decent guy to ask her out since Lex… Actually, Dan was the
only guy who had asked her out since Lex had… It seemed like men were intimidated to follow in the footsteps of the third richest man in the world… since Lex had died in her arms.
Lois didn’t want to think about that, about Lex dying, about what might have been, about his last words being that he loved her.
And here she was already scaring Dan off.
Jimmy and Perry emerged from the Chief’s office.
Thank God! A distraction. Then she felt a pang of remorse, because her photographer looked as if someone had run over his dog.
“Lois,” her boss said and then noticed Dan. “Agent Scardino.” Then Perry dismissed the DEA Agent out of hand.
“Jimmy, what’s the matter?” Lois asked. Her friend did seem a bit paler than normal.
“My doctor’s been murdered,” Jimmy told her.
“Alan Golden. They found his body this morning,” explained Perry.
“He just called me yesterday. Left me a message on my machine. I was gonna call him back today…” Jimmy’s voice faded.
“Lois,” Perry hinted with just her name.
“I’ll look into it,” Lois reassured him, grabbing her bag.
“Chief, I want to go with her,” Jimmy insisted.
“Now, Jimmy…” Perry resisted.
“Please, Chief, I’ve known Dr. Golden my whole life.”
His boss patted Jimmy on the shoulder. “All right, son. Go ahead.”
“Thank you.”
“Sorry to hear about your friend,” Scardino said to Jimmy before turning back to Lois. “They say that good things come to those that wait. I’ve got time.”
She smiled at him. Good, she hadn’t scared him off completely. What was the matter with her? Creating fake boyfriends? “Come on, Jimmy.”
***
The Chief stood at Lois’s desk with Jimmy, Lois, and Sarah – the latter being another life-long patient of Dr. Golden.
Lois and Jimmy had stopped Sarah from being kidnapped when they went to interview her. Sarah was twenty-two, just like Jimmy, born at Fort Truman, just like Jimmy, and had a rash on her arm that reoccurred every year, just like Jimmy. Something was certainly going on. The other patient, G.E. Mallow, who Dr. Golden had been trying to reach, had disappeared, according to Detective Wolfe.
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to go home, either of you, until we know what’s going on,” Perry was saying. “Lois, why doesn’t Sarah stay with you until the police are able to catch that blond guy Jimmy chased off?”
Lois felt uncomfortable. There was nothing worse than invasion of her privacy, especially by a psych major. She wanted to sneer at the suggestion, but everyone’s eyes were on her. “Can’t MPD find her a safe house?” she suggested, hating that it sounded like a whine.
“And lose the story, never. Jimmy, you’re staying with Alice and me.” This was not an invitation but an order.
“Thanks, Chief.” There really wasn’t any other response acceptable.
They all looked at Lois again.
Fine! “Sarah, you can stay with me.”
“Thanks,” Sarah murmured gratefully.
“As long as you don’t analyze me,” Lois continued through pressed lips.
Sarah raised a brow and leaned forward towards Lois. “Just how long have you had this fear of self-discovery, Lois?”
Lois stared at the young woman.
She couldn’t be serious. Oh, God! She is serious. The reporter glanced at her boss with a loss for words.
Perry and Jimmy exchanged a look. Then Lois watched as the Chief faded away with a gesture that read, “I’m not touching that one”.
Thanks, Perry.
***
“You know, he didn’t seem that special to me. Except for the flying and the uniform, he could be any ordinary guy,” said Clark from behind her as she was trying to get the sketch artist to get Superman’s look just right.
“Ordinary? Give me a break,” Lois retorted before leaning in to examine the drawing closer. “What we’ve got here is an example of human evolution, before and after. Clark is the before. Superman is the after.” She glanced over her shoulder at Clark and his crooked glasses, his tie over his shoulder, his jacket slipping off his shoulder as he munched on a cake donut, with his hair a mess. “Make that the way, way after.”
Perry was pacing around the packed conference room of the Daily Planet. “Last night our publisher called me into his office and asked me one question. The question was: ‘How come the Daily Planet hadn’t nailed down the Superman story since it literally dropped in our laps?’ Now, I took this as a personal criticism and I assured him that each, and every one, of my staff would chip in. Would not rest until Superman was ours. Now, is that clear?”
“No!” Lois stammered. “You can’t be serious. I’m the one Superman flew with. I wrote the original piece. I found him.”
“Actually, he found you…” Clark corrected her.
“Thank. You. Kent,” she replied tersely. “Perry, this isn’t fair. I should have the exclusive on the follow-up. Those are the rules.”
“The rules are off,” Perry rebutted her. “This is too big.”
“But he’s mine!” Lois demanded, almost whining as she stood up. Then she realized everyone in the office was looking at her and had interpreted her words as she had said them, not as she had meant them to mean. “Mine… as in my story. Story, mine.”
She could hear Clark chuckling behind her. Wonderful. Just what she needed. Smallville thinking he was better than she was, that she was a joke as far as Superman was concerned.
“From now on Superman is fair game. Every reporter for himself…” Perry said, and then turned to Lois. “Or herself.”
Lois turned around and sat down on the table. “I’ll find him,” she said more to herself than to Clark, who was sitting next to her.
“How? He could be anywhere. Mars. The north pole.”
“I’ll find him,” Lois assured her colleague.
“What if he doesn’t want to be found?” Clark asked her.
“What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t he want to be found?” Just like some hack reporter to come up with a crazy idea like that.
“What if all this frenzy isn’t what this guy expected? Maybe he’s gun-shy,” Clark suggested.
“That’s ridiculous. He has no reason to hide. Especially from me,” Lois responded. Superman couldn’t possibly think that she would ever hurt him? Expose him? Would he? Not her? She would never do that to him. Not even – and she couldn’t believe these words even passed through her mind – not even for a Pulitzer.
Cat Grant walked up from where she had obviously been eavesdropping on their conversation. Just like a gossip columnist. “Mmmm-huh. Wait a minute. I get it. You and Superman joined the ol’ Zero Gravity Club up on the space station, didn’t you?” Cat laughed as if even the thought of this was preposterous.
“Excuse me?” Lois told her through pressed lips.
“Oooh. It’s okay. Don’t worry. You’re secret’s safe,” reassured Cat. “No one would believe it anyway.”
Lois turned away from the skank and saw that Clark was laughing at her. She couldn’t believe it. Was that what Clark thought of her?Lois opened her eyes.
Another dream. Another Clark dream. Another Clark dream about Superman. What was it about this man her subconscious could not let go of?
Lois fluffed her pillow and shifted her position.
Sometimes she dreamed of Superman. Sometimes she dreamed of this fictitious partner Clark. Sometimes she dreamed of them in the same dream, but never at the same time.
Some horrible dreams were just regular dreams with neither man.
It was strange that she never dreamed of Dan Scardino. Of course, with all these men in her dreams, she should probably keep the real ones real.
Lois closed her eyes. Maybe this time she would tune in to Superman and just Superman. There was nothing like being humiliated in one’s dreams, well, better than in reality. Superman would never humiliate her. She closed her eyes again and pictured that sexy man in blue, hoping her subconscious would take a hint.
Lois heard that there was a bomb threat. She jumped into a Metro cab and rushed down to the scene. She had just gotten there, pushed through the crowds and had approached the old City of Metropolis Post Office when the bomb exploded. She was knocked to the ground.
No! Had Superman just gone in there? She thought he had. Surely a man who could swallow a bomb could survive. Couldn’t he? But a building falling on him? Her head hurt, but as usual, she pushed past the pain and focused on the story.
Where was Superman?
As the smoke cleared, Superman stepped out the door. He seemed a little fazed, more surprised than anything, but certainly uninjured. Only his uniform – his cape slightly tattered around the hem and covered with dust – showed any evidence that he had been in the building when it had exploded.
“You’re hurt,” he said to her, touching her forehead with a bandage. He had just been blown up in a building, and he only thought of her safety. She would never find anyone more super than that.
There was Clark, talking to the MPD bomb squad. When had Clark arrived? Where did Superman disappear off to? No, wait, it had been Clark who had been concerned about her head. Why… how had she confused the two men?
Someone had blown up Superman on purpose?
“That poor man,” she murmured.
“What man?” replied the ever-clueless farmboy.
“Superman. He comes here to help us… Can you imagine how he must he feel?”
“I think so,” said Clark.
Actually, that was a strange thing for Clark to say. Had he been attacked while trying to help someone? Did he really know what it was like to walk Superman’s boots or was he just conjecturing – supposing – making conversation?
Had Lois been ‘attacking’ Clark since he arrived at the Daily Planet? Was that what he had meant? He had only been trying to help Lois, and she had done nothing but put him down, insult him, and try to hurt him – not physically, of course, but emotionally, mentally, or self-confidently. Was that even a word? Self-confidently? She shrugged.
Why had she been doing that to Clark? Maybe she should stop? She considered that.
If Clark couldn’t handle her ribbing, he might as well find out sooner rather than later that he wasn’t ready for the big leagues. She would stop when he gave up or when he proved to her that he belonged. So far, he had done neither.***
“You know I can tell a lot about you from the way you organize your kitchen,” Sarah called from where she was preparing a bowl of cereal in Lois’s kitchen. “I’m taking this course in applied psychology…”
Lois, her lips pressed together as she held on to the two big curlers in her hair, rushed into her kitchen to refill her coffee mug. “Sarah, I warned you not to analyze me.”
“Oh, right,” replied Sarah uncomfortably as Lois left the room again. “That’s exactly what I would have said about you from the way you organize your kitchen,” Lois’s houseguest called after her.
The reporter stopped long enough to unroll her curlers and shoot a nasty look at the young woman. The doorbell rang, and Sarah volunteered to answer it. Lois just shook her head and continued back into her bedroom.
“Hi, is Lois home?” Lois heard a familiar male voice ask Sarah.
“Maybe. Can I tell her who’s here?” responded Sarah.
“Yeah, I’m a friend,” said Dan.
Crap! She needed to get out there and intervene but only half of her hair was styled and she didn’t yet have her skirt on. Lois hurried to finish getting dressed as she continued to listen in on Sarah and Dan’s conversation.
“A friend? A boyfriend? A friend friend. Or
just a friend?” Sarah grilled him.
No, no, no! Sarah wasn’t allowed to chase away the only man who had asked her on a date in the past year. Lois hopped out of her room, putting on her shoes.
“Gee, if I had known that there was going to be a test, I would have studied,” Dan gave back to her houseguest as much as she was giving to him.
Sarah laughed.
“Who
are you?” Dan asked as Lois rushed to the door.
Lois nudged Sarah away, explaining, “She’s a friend.”
“Just a friend,” Sarah clarified before Lois could send her away with a ‘leave us alone’ look.
“What are you doing here?” Lois asked Dan.
Dan walked past Lois and into her apartment without invitation, sitting down on her sofa. “You’re working on that murder of that Dr. Golden, right?”
“Ah… well…” Lois stammered at his rudeness, suddenly wary about having wanted him to drop by unannounced, and exchanged a perplexed expression with Sarah, who appeared concerned. Was Dan there in an official capacity?
“Well, I’ve been assigned to investigate a shipment of a drug called Tysian from Metropolis General,” continued Dan.
“Yeah… So?” Lois inquired, crossing her arms.
Good for him. Did this mean he’s staying a while longer in Metropolis? Or what? Why is he telling me this? What did it have to do with the price of eggs? Or, more importantly, her story?
“So, I thought you might be interested to know that Tysian is a highly regulated drug that was ordered by Dr. Golden. Only – it turns out – that his signature was forged on the order form,” Dan finished.
A-ha! Their investigations were crossing.
Again.“Why is Tysian so heavily regulated?” she asked.
“Well, nothing good,” Dan explained. “Too much of the stuff can lead to an overload in the brain synapses, causing death.”
Yep, not good. Why would Jimmy and Sarah’s doctor, or someone impersonating their doctor, order Tysian? She wondered what the standard use for the stuff was and why was Dan Scardino telling her about it. Had Dan come to her apartment wanting for them to work together again? Like they had with Resurrection? Lois thought that was a big no-no for government agents? Of course, Dan was known for breaking rules. Or was he just here to ask her on a date? And this Tysian lead was just a way to soften her up? Before Lois could ask him any of these questions, her phone rang. She shut the door and hurried to answer it.
It was Jimmy, calling from the office.
“Jimmy! What’s up?” she asked him.
“I’ve dug up some information on Mallow,” Jimmy replied.
“So what
are you doing here?” Sarah asked Dan. “Really?”
At her intense expression, Dan stood up. “I was just giving Lois some information about her case.”
Dan came over to Lois on the phone. She asked Jimmy to hold and looked at Dan expectantly.
They stood there for a moment just looking at each other. Did Lois really want him to ask her out? Did she really want to accept?
What would be the worst that could happen? No, don’t think that! What could be the best that could happen? No, don’t think that either. She should never raise her expectations.
“You know what you two are doing is classic,” interrupted Sarah between mouthfuls of cereal, indicating the two of them with her spoon. “You’re both thinking the exact same thoughts, but you’re hoping that the other person is going to talk first.”
Lois shot her houseguest a glare.
“Um… Lois, there was something else I wanted to discuss with you…” Dan took another glance at Sarah.
“I… uh… left something in the bathroom,” Sarah said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder as she finally realized her presence was hurting more than helping. “Excuse me.”
With a sigh, Dan glanced at the phone on Lois’s shoulder. “I’ll catch you later,” he told Lois.
She felt sad at his departure; it had been nice to have a man look at her that way again, like her input was important. That was just how Clark looked at her. She shook this thought out of her head.
“So, what did you find out about Mallow?” Lois asked Jimmy on the phone, with a wave at Dan as the DEA Agent shut the door.
***
As Lois drove to meet Perry’s old navy buddy, Sailin’ Whalen, her mind drifted back to her dreams from that morning.
Lois sat at her desk when her sister waltzed in wearing her – Lois’s – grey suit.
Lucy started out by giving Lois a hard time. “Who called me last night, in tears, because she had stolen a story from Clark Kent?”
“I did not steal Kent’s story,” Lois defended herself.
“You stole it,” repeated her sister. Lois could never pull a fast one on Lucy.
“I competed for it. And I won!” Lois retorted, putting her own spin on the facts.
Lucy didn’t buy it.
“I stole it!” Lois confessed, mortified by her behavior. “I have never stolen a story before in my life. How could I do that? It’s him! It’s Superman!” Yes, she would let the blame fall where it belonged. It wasn’t her fault. “I mean, ever since he held me in his arms… there’s something between us, Lucy. I know it. There’s this connection.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Lucy told her.
“I am ashamed of myself. I’m ashamed of myself.”
“And you’ll never do it again?” Lucy coaxed her.
“I won’t. Never again,” Lois promised.
“And you’ll apologize to Clark Kent?”
“Not in this millennium,” Lois guaranteed her.What was it about that Clark fellow that got under her skin? Why would she break all her steadfast rules to steal his story, admit it to her sister, but not to the man himself? She was a cut-throat journalist, but she had never been
that cut-throat. Had she?
Even her dream self knew she was too obsessed with Superman. Lois scoffed at this. Two versions of herself, and both were enthralled with a hot man in blue tights and a cape – she sighed – a man who could literally sweep her off her feet. This was bad. Really. Really. Bad.
*** End of Part 2 *** Part 3 Comments
