paradisalost | [Thread] LOIS AND CLARK HOMG

The door swung open, Lois peering out at him - gladly, only him - with one eyebrow quirked upward. She was in her old, familiar robe, which was a strange glimpse of something real to her amidst what she firmly believed was a dream. Albeit a very strange, not-quite-how-she'd-run-a-dream dream. Fuzzy slippers, with what may have been dogs or bleached bears, were currently decorating her feet. Lois figured dream-Clark would be able to handle the slippers.

"I don't think I've heard anyone knock on my door quite like that since Jimmy a while back." She eyed him, shrugged, and reluctantly moved to the side to allow him entrance. "You got here quickly." She would have been suspicious, if she didn't recall how dream-logic made everything make a sort of suspended sense.

Only she was suspicious, and didn't know what to make of the sensation.

Clark blinked, and sighed, taking in Lois's appearance. It was...so different than the way it had been when he had left. Last time he had seen her, her hair had been so short...and here she looked just like back when they first met. It tugged on his heart-strings, and he swallowed slowly to regain his composure.

"Lois," he breathed, wide-eyed, and probably about as loving a look as he could have ever mustered, which was saying alot.

But then the realization hit that this was the Lois before...she didn't know that they were...he sighed, and closed his eyes, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, so customary around her.

This was going to be so very hard.

"A-Are you okay?" he asked earnestly.

Lois swallowed, and reasoned that she was certainly not blushing - she was hot. Which would be her luck - twenty-six and about to hit menopause. Considering the rest of events recently, she figured it would make sense.

Not that it mattered, because this was a dream. And a really bad judge of her psychology, she adamantly told herself.

"I'm just fine, partner. You, on the other hand, don't." She closed the door, turning back to face him. "So if this isn't a dream, like you kept intimating, what is it?"

Clark swallowed, and shook his head, giving Lois a frank look. "I'm fine, Lois, or, I will be...I just need to..." he sighed, and planted a hand on his hip. Of course, it had to be the hand with his ring, and he realized it and shoved his hand into his pocket, hoping Lois hadn't seen. He didn't want to force anything on her.

"This place?" he asked, shrugging. "Nobody knows, other than its called Paradisa, and we're pretty much trapped here..." he gave her a wry smile. "I've done some investigating...and its all really complicated," he said simply, shaking his head.

Did that sound sexist? Was she going to think he was sexist? Ugh, he hadn't had to worry about these things before, when they were married, but now everything was a mess...

Lois latched onto the word "complicated." "Good," she stated firmly. "I like complicated." Complicated meant time - and mind - consuming. Lois couldn't think of anything better - too bad she was still convinced this was a dream she was going to wake up from, neck aching from the particular angle she'd passed out in on the couch.

Still, even this first mystery deserved unveiling. She frowned, pushed up the sleeve of her bathrobe, and pinched herself. A little sharp pain, and she looked up to find nothing had changed. Lois wasn't sure she liked this possibility. She eyed Clark. If other parts of your dream pinched you, would they be able to wake you up? A swift decision no, and an inability to accept the present reality as real, led to a strangely disconnected questioning. "Alright, so this Paradisa - who's here? What's been going on? Why was the little grey person trying to deliver towels?"

Lois could humor a dream, for a while. The ring, thus far, had gone unnoticed.

Clark breathed a light sigh of relief, and smiled. "Well, we don't really know why we're here..." he admitted, and shrugged. "But as for who is here, its really...eclectic," he admitted. "Lots of...odd...things," he mumbled, and looked to her shyly. Should he mention superman. There would go any chance of him getting her back...but if he didn't tell her, she was likely to be even more angry.

"Superman is here," he admitted casually, before going on. "Wait...Grey person?" he asked blinking profusely. What was she talking about?

"Odd things? Come on, Clark, you can do better than that." He written better articles, though likely she wouldn't admit to such without some sort of painstaking process of confession.

"Superman?" Actually, she was still a bit disappointed there, but couldn't help feeling a bit lighter. She didn't know if the interest which couldn't really be professional showed on her face. "What about Metropolis? When did he arrive here? Or you, for that matter." She made a loose gesture to include the general vicinity, implying everything which was part of this intricate dreamscape.

Clark swallowed slowly. "Wh-well..." he blinked. "Superman and I arrived around the same time...about a month ago," he mentioned, hoping it sounded light enough. She didn't need to know. Not yet.

But if it wasn't the most frustrating thing he had ever encountered, he didn't know what was!

He did smile at her reassuringly, though. "This place seems to take stuff from the residents," he explained. "Like...memories, or abilities, that sort of thing," he admitted, looking down as he shuffled his feet.

Her forehead wrinkled as she tried to think of a reason why both Clark and Superman would end up here - if this wasn't a dream, and she wasn't quite ready to admit to being truly awake - at the same time. She didn't ask, however, more interested in the second statement.

"Lose things? What did you lose? What about Superman?" The scenarios which flashed through her mind - on a greater level for Superman, and yet also for Clark - made her wonder (and hope) there might be some version of comforting involved.

Then again... She frowned. The same question could be turned on her. What did Lois Lane lose?

And the timeline... "You both were in Metropolis just a few days ago!"

Clark blinked, and panicked. What did he lose, what did he lose... "I uh...lost my ability to write very well," he managed to lie, giving her a weak, very pathetic smile," that was pretty good, and when he got nervous, he did write pretty oddly.

"Superman lost his invulnerability," Clark was able to say that with ease. Afterall...that wasn't a lie, at all.

He blinked. "Maybe to you..." he muttered, and shook his head. "Er, when I was last in Metropolis things were...different," he mumbled, looking away from her... "Three years later," he managed, and sighed.

"That's horrible!" She didn't clarify what, and seemed to have glossed right over the "three years later" addition to Clark's statement concerning his Metropolis. One detail at a time, and ruthlessly clarified before moving on.

Besides, whatever she was calling horrible had seriously upset her. "Oh, Clark..."

"What's horrible, Lois?" he asked, blinking at her uncertainly.

It was probably all about Superman. He knew it. It was probably how horrible it was for Superman to be without his mighty invulnerability, and Clark felt another pang of jealousy for himself.

Hadn't he gotten past all this!?

To her partial surprise, Lois found herself somewhat awkwardly hugging her partner. "You're a journalist! I can't even imagine-"

Her eyes widened. Wait. If, in a large moment in which she suspended all disbelief, Lois were to accept this 'Paradisa' as a reality, and by existing in this reality, you lost something, and Clark had lost his writing ability, then it stood to reason that Lois could have...

She gave him a 'look.' "For your sake I hope it's just you. You can't have two partners who can't write." Logically, you really couldn't even have one, but there were side benefits to investigative reporting - and plus, just because he couldn't write as well, doesn't mean he couldn't still edit what Lois was already writing...

Though this all presumed this was real, and that one's journalism skills mattered if one could not, as she recalled Clark saying, return home.

Clark almost choked, and he grinned brightly. Lois had always surprised him like this, he shouldn't have been surprised, and he nodded. "Well, I'm sure we can come up with something decent between the two of us," he said grinning, and resisted the urge to pull her into a tight hug and plant a kiss on her face.

Then that hollow pain was back. He sighed, and lifted a hand to his forehead, semi-pinching the skin, but more than anything, just trying to give himself some soft of physical comfort.

"We better, or else it's both of us looking for new jobs when Perry shows us the door, and we've seen how successful that was once already." Which brought her around to the same reason why she'd curled up with the ice-cream and television last night.

Her mind backtracked. "Wait. Did you say three years later?"

He blinked. "Y-yeah, Three years later..." he mentioned lightly.

'Oh please don't ask me about the future,' he managed to think to himself, looking at her warily. God, he loved her, but he didn't know she would take a casual 'oh you know I'm superman and we're married and a mystery baby was just dropped off on our doorstep'. Yeah, that would go over real well.

So the world hadn't ended in three years time - if she chose to believe him. Clark was generally - generally - a good guy, so Lois supposed she could. She wondered what life could be like, but not enough to want to know. The future didn't sell, and knowing what was going to happen was a bit too much like pre-determination. There was a likelihood things could change, in her mind, and you weren't happier for knowing one possibility as you lived the other.

Which was why, perhaps uncharacteristically, she didn't ask about Metropolis, but came back to the safer, more immediate grounds of Paradisa. "So you don't know how you got here, and I assume Superman doesn't either." Lois sat herself on the corner of the bed, the most readily available surface. "Is this some sort of mass... kidnapping?" Who in the world could mastermind a scheme like this one?

Clark sighed, and shook his head. "No, Lois, Superman doesn't know," he stated simply, feeling altogether frustrated with the entire ruse.

He had enjoyed being able to talk to her about his exploits, take her out to dinner in France every now and then, or just for a good fly. Argh.

"Well, I've come up with a few ideas..." he mumbled, slipping into his Superman persona for the briefest moment before realizing what he was doing. "There's Tempus...who has a deep dislike of you, me and Superman, and seems to want to disrupt the far future," he admitted.

"Tempus?" Maybe she should rethink asking about the future. Considering if future events are what had brought her current self, which would, paradoxally, be her past self, here, they may be wroth knowing more about. "Who is this Tempus, and what exactly do they have against all of us? And what makes you think they could do all of... this?"

She made a grand gesture, ending up looking out the room as she did so. An opaque rainbow flashed by the window as she looked out, a young girl running by on said color stream, saying something that sounded... Bright. Or not so bright, considering she was running on the color prism.

"...Scratch dream. This is a hallucination!"

Clark swallowed. "Wh-Well..." he managed tho choke out, regarding Lois with worry. "He seems to think that uh..." he wondered how to put it lightly. "Wh-well that all of us have something to do with making a future Utopia," he mumbled. There, that didn't sound like they got married, nope.

He consciously covered up his hand again, forcing himself to hold his ring in secret. She didn't need to know, but that doesn't mean that he wanted to not wear it, because he felt guilty if he didn't.

"Its neither, Lois! Its reality, I swear! I mean...there's a dragon out there somewhere, its so crazy, I know!" he exclaimed.

"Future Utopia? Don't Utopic societies always..." Lois shook her head. "Clark, this can't be real." She studied him, hoping he'd give off some sort of clue which would give away the surreality of the situation.

Otherwise, she was feeling more than a little vulnerable, and given the circumstances, was torn between kicking Clark out now and dealing with this Paradisa after a good night's rest (and a good little breakdown, but she wasn't going to admit to that) or kicking him out later because he was her partner and he... Well, there was some logic in there somewhere.

"It's probably just some large anamatronic, and we're all on hallucinagins in the hands of some rich, insane genius." Like Lex Luthor. "Or else it's real, and we're still in the hands of something rich in imagination, insane, and genius." Neither option sounded better than the other. The latter simply forwent drugs.

Clark shook his head. "If it were like that, don't you think I..." he trailed off, and shook his head. "Don't you think Superman would have noticed!?" he asked her, gnashing his teeth just slightly. "I don't think he's affected by hallucinogens or anything!" he admitted, still clenching his teeth.

He planted his hands securely on his hips, and sighed.

"I know this is hard to believe, Lois," he admitted, sighing. "I have the advantage of 3 years of ... stuff on you, but even to me its unbelievable!" he explained, hoping to get her to stop disbelieving and start helping him find a way out of here.

"What are you hiding, Clark? You've been biting your tongue since I opened that door! I may not have lived through what you have, but I won't know what this can't be until I've plumbed the depths of what it can!" She sighed, frustrated, crossing her arms and noting part of the frustration was Clark pointing out something about Superman that she should have known.

Not that it should matter, since there were a whole things Lois thought she'd known, and been proven wrong about in recent times.

"I'm sorry," she said, rubbing her forehead. "It's been a bad week, and, sorry to say, you aren't... your three year younger self isn't---wasn't---helping."

Clark sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck, ignoring the comment about him biting his tongue. He would have to ignore that for now. She was none the wiser, still. Thankfully.

"I-Its okay, Lois, I know I didn't do much to help back then, and I'm sorry," he breathed, taking a chance and sliding an eye towards her. He swallowed. Why did she have to be so beautiful!?

"I made alot of mistakes that year," he admitted with a soft sigh, and a shake of his head. Not that she could know the full extent of his mistakes, or that she would have the chance to figure out his secret. No, he was determined to make sure that she knew how much he cared for her, and that he was Superman, soon...

The problem was that last time, he hadn't told her, she found it out. How was he supposed to actually get this out now, after 2 years of living with her knowing!?

He could always try dinner, a movie, and then stargazing from a vantage point somewhere greater than the rooftop in the sky. Though Lois might miss out on some of the romanticism at this particular moment.

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "Clark Kent admits to his mistakes?" Though he'd done so before. Lois let that particular issue drop.

She wondered what he considered those mistakes to be. Experience taught her how differently people interpreted events, and she knew how much more likely she was to give herself slack when maybe it wasn't deserved.

Lois eyed him, noting his glance toward her. "Partners forever, right?" She wasn't quite smiling, but you couldn't accuse her of being less than pleasant as she said those words.

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