Lois nodded. "You don't look a day older than my Clark."

Her Clark. His past self, who was her husband, who at this very moment was assisting with the cleanup operations around Japan. The Clark who was the father of her baby.

He had been that Clark, once, but not anymore. That Clark had belonged to Lois -- still belonged to her. The Clark he was now belonged to Lori.

I think I would like to see a vignette of Lois packing up CJ's birthday present as an older woman, knowing that even when she would pass on, she would rise again as Lori.

She glanced once more at the time traveler, but he showed no sign of regaining consciousness. Resisting, with difficulty, the base but very understandable urge to kick him a third time, she started down the slope, picking her way with care, toward the road that she could see perhaps half a mile away. Once there, maybe she could flag down someone who would help her.

And if, as she feared, she was no longer in her own time, maybe she could still get some help. Perhaps she could find someone who could fix the control device and help her get back home.

She seized the front of his shiny tunic and yanked him toward her, driving her knee into his crotch with every ounce of strength that she could bring to bear. He screamed, doubling forward, and she grabbed for the control device.

Feebly he hung on, stumbling forward a few steps and clutching at the injured area. Her own equilibrium was thrown off by the shift in her center of gravity, caused by the almost full-term baby, and Lori fought for balance as she yanked at the control. Tempus resisted as she tugged, and then lurched clumsily after her. Together they tumbled from the window onto a grassy hillside.

She staggered as her feet hit grass and stones, and her hand encountered the rough bark of a tree trunk. She caught it, managing to stay on her feet, and pivoted clumsily around to see Tempus only feet away, still clutching the control device and grasping weakly for her. Her knee had obviously done some good, for his movements were weak and uncoordinated, which, considering her own condition, was a good thing. Taking advantage of her enemy's apparent lack of any scientific fighting skills, she slapped him across the bridge of the nose with the flat of her free hand and followed it up with a kick to the spot where her knee had already connected once.

He was spreading the tiny drop of blood on a slide when a flicker of motion at the corner of his eye made him look up. The rectangle had appeared again, only this time he could have sworn that it had acquired an eye.

The eye was brown, he noticed now, and was, to all appearances, human. It looked up, down and around, like Alice looking through the tiny door into Wonderland, and then the little rectangle vanished again, blinking out as if it had never been.

"Do you remember," Lori said cautiously, "what H.G. Wells told you and Clark on your honeymoon night, just before you went into the past to undo Baron Tempos's curse?"

"He told us several things," Lois said, with equal caution. "Which one are you talking about?"

"He told you that your souls were intertwined, always together, never one without the other. Soulmates."

Lois was staring at her, and there was comprehension in her eyes. "You're —"

Lori took a deep breath like a diver ready to plunge from the cliff into the churning water below. "I'm you."

"I don't want to eat your dinner," Lori objected.

"The chicken's not dinner," Lois said. "That's my snack. I don't cook very well — but I guess you know that."

"Clark is very easy to love, as I'm sure you know. We were married two months later."

"I guess he decided not to waste time," Lois said. "He does learn if you hit him over the head often enough. Did he tell you about me right away — about having my soul?"

Lois gave Lori a little push toward him and she was suddenly flinging herself into his arms. He wrapped them around her, burying his face in her hair.

"Lori," he whispered. "Oh god; I thought I'd lost you."

"I was so afraid I'd never see you again," she said. He could feel the little shivers shaking her body.

In the room beyond, he was aware of his mother and father getting abruptly to their feet. He hugged Lori again. "I guess Mom and Dad don't know the whole story?" he said.

She shook her head. "They just got here."

"Then I think we'd better tell them what's going on before they kill me," he said, looking up to see his mother's irate face. Lois, on the other hand, looked surprisingly calm. In fact, she was smiling.

"Martha, it's all right," Lois said. "It's not what it looks like."

Martha Kent stopped her advance on her son and glanced at Lois. "Then, what is it?" she asked. "Is this the other Clark again?"

"No," Clark said.

"Maybe you'd better explain," Lois said. "You'd probably better hurry, though. My Clark could be back any second."