Chapter 7

May 25, 2042

Metropolis

"Catching up?" Elle asked incredulously.

"Shhh," Lois replied, wiping the tears that had brimmed and coursed down her cheeks. "Wait until your father goes to sleep. It's…hard to talk about…and weirder than you think." She forced a brief smile.

Elle's mouth nearly gaped. She shook her head and her eyes grew misty. In a hushed tone she muttered, "But everything seemed so perfect in Metropolis."

Pain building inside her, Lois pulled Elle close to her and hugged her warmly. Fighting the lump that had formed in her throat, she whispered hoarsely in her ear, "When he goes to sleep we'll talk and I'll explain it all." She released her daughter and sniffed, began prattling about the kitchen until the light went out in the master bedroom. She waited a few minutes longer and then said, "He's asleep by now. Let's go into the other bedroom."

Extinguishing the lights in the kitchen and living area, Lois headed for the bedroom, followed by Elle. On her way there, Lois closed the door to the room where Clark slept and then flipped on the light in Elle's bedroom. Two twin beds sat side-by-side in the room. "Two beds?" Elle remarked. "Do you sleep here?"

"Yes," Lois replied. She sat on one bed and took off her slippers, gesturing for Elle to sit on the other. "I've been sleeping in this room for almost twenty-one years."

"What?" Elle shook her head as if to clear it but there was no mistaking what her mother had just said. "So for over twenty years you and Father have slept apart? Why?"

Leaning forward, she rested her forearms on her legs and looked into her daughter's wide, confused eyes. "Let's get the easy questions out of the way first, okay? The explanation for them is a bitch! Just ask away."

A troubled frown crossed her face and she mimicked the posture of her mother. "Why are you two sleeping in separate rooms?" she began.

"Because your father doesn't know that I'm his wife. He thinks I'm you."

"Me?" she responded in shock, drawing upright. "Then who does he think I am?"

"He thinks you're my daughter, Elle." Lois replied matter-of-factly.

"But I am your daughter."

"But your father believes you are my daughter with Superman; his step-daughter."

"Wait," Elle replied, thinking it through for a moment. "Does that mean Father doesn't know he's Superman?"

"Not for twenty-one years." Elle looked up at the ceiling, closed her eyes and slowly shook her head while taking a deep breath. "I know it's confusing, Sweetheart. Your father believes he's mild-mannered Clark Kent, freelance reporter with ties to the Daily Planet. And he also believes that I'm his biological daughter, Lara." She paused. "And that's why I've been sleeping here for the past twenty-plus years."

Appalled by the revelations, Elle returned to her position on the edge of the bed, eye-to-eye with her mother. "So what does he believe happened to you…his wife?"

"He believes his wife ran off with Superman, leaving him and their older daughter Lara to raise you."

"So he thinks he's a normal man, that you're me and that I'm the illegitimate child of Lois and Superman; is that right?"

"Exactly." Lois looked down and then back into the eyes of her daughter. "At first, it almost sounds comical until you consider how insidious the whole thing is." Her eyes began to well. "Forget all the covering I had to do early on; all the excuses and lies I had to tell. For twenty years he has resented your existence and even though he's good-hearted and has tried to be a good father to you, you are a constant reminder of why the woman he loved has left his life forever." Tears traveled down her cheeks. "He tried not to see you as the byproduct of his wife's infidelity, but in his words, 'he's only human' and carries feelings of resentment – especially when you're around." She paused. "It's why you're not around very often."

"So Superman...?"

"Left with his wife twenty-one years ago. He won't say much in front of you but he hates Superman. He accuses Superman of using his alien powers to steal his wife from him." Lois took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's the reason you won't find any stories about Superman over the last twenty-one years. Superman just disappeared to all but a handful of people; some believe he died and others think he left for another galaxy."

"Mom; before I came here I flew over the city for a while. I even went to Suicide Slums and everything seems so idyllic. Seeing the city like that I just knew the future you told me about had come to pass. How did everything become so serene without Superman?"

Lois smiled sadly. "It started with the things that Pete Ross did during his two terms as President that got the country back on its feet. I like to think that the example your father set for mankind left an impression on a generation of people and it guided them. But it's not this way everywhere in the world; just mainly in this hemisphere." She paused for a moment. "Also, the remnants of the Justice League have been very active," she said and then added, "You're a part of the JL now."

"I am?"

Nodding, she continued. "Diana Prince really stepped in to take you under her wing and Kara helped you master your powers." She paused. "Your father doesn't trust Kara but has a huge crush on Diana Prince, by the way."

"My father has a crush on Wonder Woman?"

"Well technically in his mind, your father has a huge crush on Lois Lane-Kent; my father's the one with the crush on Wonder Woman," she said with a humorless chuckle.

Elle sat quietly, running through all the ramifications of her father's dementia and its impact on her mother. "My God, Mom; how did this happen?"

"That's the difficult part to explain," Lois replied. "Settle back; it's a long and confusing story." She shifted position and pulled her legs up and folded them beneath her. "It began about a month after you left us in June of 2021."

Lois began an incredible story that commenced with the state visit of Madam Yu of Taiwan; the event that Elle had previously learned resulted in the assassination of Pete Ross and the return to power of Lex Luthor. "Your father thwarted the assassination attempt. Luthor was under such close scrutiny after the video landed in the hands of the Justice Department that he was later caught ordering the assassination. He ended up being arrested and sent to prison."

"Well, that was good; right?"

"Of course it was good, Elle, but making sure that Pete was safe may have been the cause of what happened to your father."

She continued to tell of an establishment that the Justice League had been watching for some time. "It was a fight club in Nevada, near Las Vegas. The team thought it was a recruiting center for an Apokoliptian named Granny Goodness. She was or is the leader of a band of female warriors from Apokolips called Furies that serve as Darkseid's elite personal guards."

Elle nodded. "Father had told me a little about Darkseid several months before he left. He told me to be alert for him because he is devious and possibly the most dangerous threat to Earth that he ever faced."

"Did he mention Granny Goodness or the Furies?" She shook her head. "DeSaad?"

"No."

"I guess it doesn't matter. If they resurface, J'onn will know and can bring you up to speed about them." Lois took a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. She then told her daughter of the collaboration between Intergang and Darkseid's minions and how the fight club was actually a recruiting center for human Furies. "Darkseid still has designs on mankind; even after your father kicked his ass the first time he showed up."

"That's when he first appeared to people as Superman; right?"

Lois smiled and nodded but her smile faded quickly. "In the morning hours on the day Madam Yu was making her visit to the White House, the Justice League raided the fight club in Las Vegas. They thought that Darkseid's second-in-command; DeSaad, was arriving to pass judgment on Granny's latest recruits. The team naturally wanted to get rid of them. DeSaad did arrive but he wasn't the only VIP who showed up that night. And shortly after DeSaad arrived, Diana gave the signal and the team began the operation."

Elle repositioned herself on the bed, lying on her side with her head propped up by her hand. She curled her knees up a bit and listened intently.

Covering only the important details, Lois told Elle that the raid seemed to be progressing fine as they quickly located Granny, DeSaad and Mannheim. DeSaad did not put up much of a fight but Granny did. "She nearly killed Shayera before J'onn came to her rescue. Bruce cornered Mannheim and they went toe-to-toe for a while but Mannheim was no match for Batman." Mannheim did, however, have an ace left up his sleeve. Intergang thugs were everywhere and Oliver got bogged down trying to take them all out. Hal Jordan ended up having to bail Oliver out because Mannheim's thugs suddenly produced Apokoliptian weapons." Lois went on to explain that the team had no idea that Mannheim's men possessed the high tech weapons and before long, the team had to pull back and regroup a bit, leaving Diana, Shayera, and Bruce isolated. After regrouping, they quickly pushed forward with another assault to free Diana, Bruce and Shayera.

"Diana had ripped the motherbox from Granny, her device for opening a transport portal to Apokolips. She used her lasso to secure Granny and J'onn fought off her two Furies that had been brought in to fight that night. Hal was taking out the Intergang thugs while Oliver and Shayera were mopping up. But no one could locate Bruce."

"Where was he?"

"Darkseid had surprised Bruce and transported him to another part of the facility where they fought. Darkseid was getting the better of Bruce though."

"What about Father?" Elle asked.

"He had just finished thwarting the assassination attempt and flew out to Nevada. He knocked Mannheim unconscious and then scanned for Bruce while the others finished off the remnants of Intergang." She paused and then began again. "This is where it gets a little weird. Your father spotted Bruce and rushed in to help him. He just reacted without thinking and flew into Darkseid, knocking him backward but causing your father to instantly disappear. It was about then when Hal and J'onn arrived."

Elle sat up. "So where did Father end up?"

"According to J'onn, your father was caught in Darkseid's Omega Sanction, sending him to constantly-changing alternate realities. What J'onn says it's a fate worse than death. Each reality is worse than the one before it and your father was trapped with no way out."

Cocking her head, a frown formed on Elle's brow. "But he's here now or does he think he's in an alternate reality?"

"Well yes and no. The funny thing is, Bruce was the only one prepared that day for Darkseid. He never had a chance to use it earlier because he was surprised by Darkseid but he had a gun with several bullets made of a substance called Radion that would kill Darkseid. When your father flew into Darkseid and knocked him down, Bruce scrambled to his feet and pulled the gun on Darkseid. He was going to kill him just as J'onn and Hal arrived. Darkseid was pretty beat up; first by Bruce and then by your father flying into him. Before Bruce pulled the trigger, J'onn stopped him. He looked into Darkseid's mind and realized that Darkseid had trapped your father in these alternate realities. Darkseid told them that if he died, the Kryptonian would die with him. So in exchange for his life, Darkseid released your father from the Omega Sanction."

"So the Omega Sanction caused Father to lose his memories."

"Not really," Lois replied. "When your father was released, he was alive but weak and disoriented. At that exact moment when everyone's attention shifted to your father, Darkseid transported himself from Earth. But as he disappeared, he kept your father's mind trapped and left him with corrupted memories; the ones he's had for the last twenty-one years." She shifted in a more comfortable position. "The way you saw him tonight is the way he's been ever since that day." Elle began to say something but stopped. "Go ahead; I'm sure you have a lot of questions, Sweetheart."

"Do you know if there's any way to get his mind freed?"

Lois shrugged. "The JL has been working on that steadily ever since that day. Hal called up the Green Lantern Corps to search for Darkseid. When Kara and Diana weren't teaching you, they've been searching for him. J'onn has done more than all of them put together trying to track Darkseid. They've come close several times but just as they are about to corner him, he disappears. Holding your father's mind makes Darkseid a big target but it also makes him virtually unstoppable if he ever reappears. Without you and Kara here, he'd probably have come back by now."

Clenching her teeth, Elle posed another question. "What if I returned to the past right now, Mom? I could warn Father and the team about Darkseid; then they'd be prepared to face him."

Lois lay back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. "I've been playing with that scenario in my head ever since that day, Elle. I knew you'd be returning some day and that seems to be the simple answer. But I'm worried by that too."

"Why?"

"Because I'm here now; I'm not dead. Your father and I raised you and you're a wonderful daughter; you make me proud every day. You are loved, Elle and even though your father doesn't realize you're his daughter right now, he treats you well and does everything he can for you."

"But what about you? I can't imagine being married to a man I love for twenty years but not being able to love him…you know, the way a wife should love their husband. Not being able to hold him or touch him or him touch me – but yet to be with him every day; it has to be horrible for you."

Tears pooled in Lois' eyes and then ran down the sides of her head and disappeared into her thick locks of hair. She tried to answer but only made a croaking sound before rolling over and burying her face in the pillow, sobbing. Elle moved to her mother quickly, hugging her from behind. "I can fix this…you have to tell me what you think I should do." She stroked her mother's hair. "This can't be the future you expected."

Eventually Lois gained control of her emotions and turned to face her daughter. "That's just it, Elle. I don't know if this is the future I learned about the night you were born or not." She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "In that future, I lived for almost 650 years. Twenty years is nothing compared to 650. Maybe your father does regain his mind…maybe soon. If something changes in the past, it will alter this timeline. What if this is the one that I learned about that night? That's why I afraid of sending you back, Elle."

Still kneeling at the side of her mother's bed, Elle realized the full insidiousness of Darkseid's act. She said softly, "I can't believe that this is the future Father told you about; even if it is a short span in your entire lifetime." She wiped a tear from the corner of her own eye. "Father would have told you to expect it; I'm sure of it. Seeing you two together as an adult, I realize how deeply he loved you. You've always been the center of his universe, Mom. If he knew you had to suffer through this even for a year, he would have told you to expect it. I just know he would, Mom."

"But the world is changing, Elle. It's slowly changing into what he told me it would be like."

"But you don't know that for certain though," Elle replied. "Maybe it got better but the improvements won't continue. Maybe it has reached the height of change. You said the rest of the world hasn't changed the way Metropolis has." Lois didn't reply but instead just shrugged her shoulders. It was obvious that she had considered every angle of the matter over the last twenty years. "Maybe I should travel to the future and see."

Lois shook her head. "No Elle; if you do that you won't be able to return and intervene without creating imbalances; ripples from the time you return and forward into the future."

She nodded knowing that her mother was right. They sat quietly for a moment as Elle processed the situation. "We need to talk this through, Mom. There's no way this is that future. Let's get up and have some coffee, okay?"

Rising up, Lois sniffed again and swallowed. "That's a good idea. We'll go over everything and maybe we can find the key event that caused the divergence. This is one time your father won't be able to help us."

Elle rose and helped her mother to her feet. They headed for the door and glancing back at the two twin beds, she remarked. "For a second, I thought I had a sister when I saw those beds."

"Well," Lois muttered as she headed to the kitchen in the dark, "that would have been nice but you know better than that. No use dredging that up too."

"What do you mean?" Elle asked as she followed her mother into the kitchen as Lois found the lights. "When I was growing up, I always wondered why I didn't have a brother or sister."

Lois had retrieved the coffee carafe and was heading to the sink but Elle's question stopped her dead in her tracks. She stared at her daughter for a moment. "You don't know? Are you kidding me?"

Surprised by her mother's reaction to the benign question, Elle was speechless for a moment and struggled to answer. "Uh…well, no. Was it because it was dangerous for you…I mean, physically…because Father's Kryptonian? I don't mean to pry, Mom…if you don't want to talk about it." She broke eye contact and went to the cabinet to retrieve the coffee. "I always suspected that maybe after me, something happened to you and that getting pregnant wasn't possible."

Lois frowned as a thought crossed her mind. "And you never asked your father…even after I was gone?"

She nodded. "I asked him once after you died. He was tucking me in bed," and she chuckled. "I was twelve years old; too old to be tucked in. Father had become pretty withdrawn emotionally by then and he hardly ever mentioned you because it seemed to make him worse. But I knew that he was miserable that night and tucking me in bed was something he just needed to do. That night we talked a bit about you and I asked him why you never had more children. He told me that he didn't know for sure but believed that I was proof that miracles were real. He said that everyone just knew that you two could never have a child but you did. He said that you were both just grateful you had me and never expected another miracle to happen."

She stood at the sink envisioning the tenderness of that moment between her daughter and husband. A lump formed in her throat thinking about it and the difficulties Elle and Clark experienced. But then something began gnawing at her. Something that Elle had said years ago that had seemed out of place or odd. It was something minor but not minor; something said in passing and Lois strained to remember.

"Anyway," Elle continued, "that was the last and only time I asked him. There really was no reason to ask again."

Lois filled the carafe and then poured it in the coffee maker, flipped the switch and coffee began brewing. She turned back to face her daughter. "Elle, the reason we never had more children was because of a decision I made." She paused and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the kitchen. "Two weeks after you were born, Jor-El convinced me that for the sake of mankind I shouldn't have more children. He said that the influence of human traits would be greater in subsequent children and that the human race had not evolved sufficiently to risk having super-powered beings on Earth that lacked control over their emotions. He said that I should allow him to sterilize me or I to cease physical relations with your father. Some choice, huh?"

"Jor-El said that?" Elle stared blankly at Lois. "Where was Father when that happened?"

She smiled sadly. "In the Fortress bedroom sleeping next to you."

"I don't think Father ever knew that," she muttered, still staring blankly.

"He did, Elle. Not while it was happening but later on. I told him." She stared into the sad eyes of her child and then turned, opened the cupboard and took out two coffee mugs.

"He couldn't have known," Elle mumbled. "If he knew, he…" she trailed off.

Lois turned back to face her daughter. She tried to smile reassuringly but knew that it was more a grimace than a smile. "Sweetheart, he just probably didn't know how to tell you."

"But I would have known, Mom," she pleaded. "I would've been able to read him; I would have heard it in his voice and seen it in his face that night." She moved close and stared intently into her mother's eyes. "I would have known, Mom."

"Sweetheart," she began. "You father is a good man…a great man. But he spent most of his younger years deceiving people about what he was. He deceived me for years."

"But that was before you really tried to see; wasn't it Mom? When you began to really love him, didn't you know when he wasn't telling you the truth?" Lois didn't respond. "You even told me so. You told me that he would make up the stupidest excuses for things he did that you knew weren't true. You knew when he was lying and when he was being truthful; so did I."

Reaching out and stroking the side of her face, Lois shook her head. "Elle; I told him and that's not something one forgets." She turned back to the coffee pot and began pouring two cups of coffee. "I had always felt guilty about keeping it from him but I figured I could do it. Then you arrived and I didn't tell him about you at first because you asked me not to say anything to him. But I hated keeping these things like that from him and all this guilt kept building up until one day after you had left I told him everything. I told him about you returning from the future," she turned back to face her daughter and handed her a cup, "and about what happened that day at the Fortress. So you see, Honey; your father knew." She sipped at her coffee. "Let's go sit down and figure out what else has to change, okay?"

Lois led Elle to the couch and they sat, placing their cups on the coffee table. "I've wondered about this for twenty years, Elle. I don't know where to begin looking. Is it after Pete's saved or before? There wasn't much time between your father saving Pete and then confronting Darkseid." They sat quietly. The din of the city beyond the terrace had faded and silence reigned. "This is going to be tough; I don't know where to start. I've thought about this for nearly twenty-one years and…"

"Wait!" Elle interrupted excitedly. "You said after I left you told him about what happened at the Fortress." Lois nodded. "Mom, that's what happened in this timeline. In my timeline I would had never come to visit you because I wouldn't have known about the future until I lived it." She frowned. "Is it possible that in my timeline that you never told Father about what happened with Jor-El?"

"Is it possible?" she replied incredulously. "Let me see: your father thinks that his wife left with Superman, that I'm his daughter, that he's just a normal human dork, and you're asking me if it's possible I kept a secret from him? Of all those possibilities, I think me keeping a secret from him is the most possible."

Still excited, she asked, "So what happened after you told him?"

"He got angry with Jor-El and buried the Fortress under snow…oh my God! That's it!" Lois cried, slapping her hand on the couch. "That's what I was trying to remember just a few minutes ago. You told me a long time ago that you visited the Fortress only once before and it was before I died. I remember asking if your Father had to dig the Fortress out first before we could get in but you said it wasn't covered in snow at all; that we just flew in there! I knew that something was odd about that."

"You're right! He didn't have to clear out any snow but what does that all mean?" Elle asked.

"Don't you see?" Lois asked. "Whatever the divergence point in the timeline is; it has nothing to do with that video file because I never told your father about that day in the Fortress before I died in your timeline but I did in this one. Because of that, the two timelines have to converge somewhere before you showed up at the park…so sometime before your second birthday! Something significant occurred before then that changed the future." She took Elle's hands in her own. "All these years I've wondered where to start looking for the point where the two timelines converge. This is fantastic because now we only have two years to backtrack through. Of course, it's two years that happened over twenty-one years ago."

"I've got an idea, Mom," Elle exclaimed. "I went to the Planet before I came here and saw all those articles on display. Why don't we go there and look through archives for some significant event that could have triggered the divergence; wouldn't that make it easier? Father said that it had to be something significant."

"Yes! Great idea; now you're thinking like me," Lois replied, smirking as she jumped to her feet. "Let me go put on some different clothes. We have to figure it out tonight, Honey. This has to be it! Once we figure out the event that caused the divergence, you can go back and warn your father."