---- Chapter 18
Lois sat down on the couch next to Clark, ice cream carton cradled in one arm with a spoon attacking its contents. She'd been wanting to eat the stupid stuff ever since dinner and had finally given in, not bothering to get a bowl since the majority of it had been eaten with the waffles. She was going to have to get that recipe from Martha so she could have Clark make them for breakfast during the weekend.
She frowned, attempting to get her mind to stray from scrumptious food and to the business at hand of getting Lex Luthor jailed. She pulled the file they'd acquired and started looking through it. Lex and Leaky having a business lunch, Lex and Leaky attending a charity fund together, LexCorp buying products from Leaky...
Five pages of business dealings. Five pages of entirely legal and circumstantial happenings that couldn't help them unless they could get transcripts of what the men were saying. She tossed the papers on the table and swallowed another bite of ice cream.
"When I get shot at, Smallville, I expect it to be over something that is actually useful. This? Not falling into that category."
"You know that every lead doesn't pan out. You also know that these things take time, hard work and mot of all, concrete proof. I wouldn't be surprised if we're working on this for another couple weeks before we finish with it. With the other pieces Perry assigns us, we can't devote every minute to this."
Lois glared at him as he took the ice cream with him, eating a couple bites before handing it back to her. "We've already spent the better part of three weeks on it, anyway, and if we wait too long Perry will just make us write it without being able to link Lex to all of it. He wouldn't like it, but once we hit the four week mark of an assignment he starts getting impatient."
"But that would only be fighting half the battle! Sure, we'd get rid of a few corrupt councilmen, always a plus, but we wouldn't be getting rid of the real problem!"
"Preaching to the choir, Lo. I want to take Lex down just as much as you do, but unfortunately we can't spend all our time on it."
Lois sighed and placed the empty ice cream carton on the coffee table, annoyed at the fact that Clark was right. The fact that he was right so often and knew what was going on all the time made her uneasy. It wasn't... natural. She was always right, he was always wrong and frustrated. That was the natural order of things, and the natural order shouldn't be upset. She was going to have to fix this in the near future.
For the moment, though, she was going to have to go with it. Unfortunately, she was in a world where she only kind of had an idea of what was going on and everybody else had a clear view of things with a complete memory. She groaned and pushed herself farther back into the couch cushions. She didn't want to pout, what with being in her thirties now, but this sucked.
"Something wrong, Lois?"
"Is something wrong, Smallville?" She looked at him incredulously. "This sucks!"
"I know this can be frustrating, but the story will come around."
"No, not that. This!" She waved her hands around at everything, as if trying to explain herself with gestures. She took a couple deep breaths to calm herself down. "I'm not who I'm supposed to be. I'm thirty-five, Clark. But my head isn't... it's such an odd thing to have to explain. When it comes right down to it, I'm a transplanted twenty-three year old. I haven't had the chance to change and become the person I hoped to be, which is somebody that had her act together and was the best at what she did.
"I don't remember finishing school. I don't remember becoming the top reporter at the Daily Planet. I don't remember Chloe growing up to become the woman and mother she is. I don't remember growing up myself, because as I am, I'm not ready for any of this. I'm doing my best with Jordan, and God knows she's making the transition a little easier, but Lois Lane of 2008 was not ready to be a mother. Hell, Lois Lane of 2018 probably wasn't ready to be a mother, and then she certainly wasn't when she went back to being Lois of 2008, but at least she had months before giving birth to adjust. I mean, I do too, but she didn't have a daughter already born.
"I've been thrust into something that I don't know how to handle. You know me, Smallville. I don't handle situations I don't know how to handle very well. More often than not I just bull my way through and hope to get lucky, but I can't do that here. There's a little girl depending on me to be a stable influence. If I just bull my way through this time, I'm liable to end up hurting her, and I can't take that chance."
She sat up and looked Clark in the eye, her jaw flexing as she tried to say what she felt.
"I'm not just out of my element, Clark, I'm out of my league. Jordan needs somebody that can make her life better. In 2008 I had just pulled my life together. I had a steady income at a job I loved for the first time in my life. Life was... I don't know, stable, for the first time since my mom died. But I didn't know how to be a role model. I couldn't make a life for somebody dependent on me. I can't do it, Clark."
They sat in silence a moment, Lois drowning herself in doubt about her ability to be a part of the family she was already in. Why had life done this to her? Martha had once told her that life never gave you more than you could handle, but what had she ever done to make life think she could handle this?
"Are you done moping, Lo?"
"Moping? You insensitive son of a... no, I will not insult Martha, but you're a jackass!"
Lois jumped up off the couch and stormed into their bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Of all the bullshit she'd ever had to deal with, having Clark 'Mope Until I'm Stupid' Kent say she was moping was at the top of the heap. Her concerns were legitimate worries, not some stupid whining over how to deal with a high school girlfriend!
She paced for a few minutes, wondering how to make him suffer. They were married, so she could not have sex with him for a long time! No, she was fairly certain that was going to happen anyway. She couldn't do him any physical harm, both because Jordan needed one useful parent and she couldn't harm him anyway. All his issues that she could exploit were thirteen years old, so that didn't help.
Damn it, he was untouchable! She just about threw herself back on the bed, but just sat down when she couldn't decide if a flop would hurt AJ. She really needed to study up on pregnancy and figure out what was good, bad and ugly. Did AJ even have fingers yet? She really needed...
No! Anger. Hold on to the anger. He'd called her a mope and there had to be some way to make him suffer for it, but she didn't have the information she needed. She should write stuff down, so if she forgot again she could at least have some sort of reference, not just for her anger but for everything. She could write down stuff about Jordan, and about her pregnancy...
She shook her head and laid back on the bed, covering her face with her hands. Why couldn't she focus? Why did her rage, the emotion she'd always used as a driving force, keep escaping her grasp? Why did she keep thinking about Jordan or about AJ when she should be thinking about revenge?
Oh God, she'd gone soft. She'd woken up as the person she remembered being in the entirely wrong year, spent four days with a husband she only knew as a banter buddy and a daughter that sported her eyes and attitude, not to mention carrying a child inside of her, and she'd lost her edge. Gone was the Lois she'd been, working to be the best reporter in history. She'd been replaced by Mommy Lois, with the surname Kent.
And she'd moped about it. Clark had been right. Instead of facing her concerns like she should, she'd chickened out and started moping. It was unacceptable. She couldn't be just Lois Lane, reporter with a mission, anymore. She had to adapt, and as much as it pained her, she was going to have to let go of some of her anger so she could focus on Jordan and AJ.
She smiled slightly. If it meant raising her children in the best possible home, so be it. It'd be worth it. She could barely believe that she was so looking forward to raising a family, but God help her, now that she had it, she really wanted it.
How had her mind set changed so much in just four days? She was really going to have to study up on hormones during pregnancy, because that had to have something to do with it.
Now all she had to do was suck up her pride and go tell Clark he was right.
Frowning, she sat up and got off the bed. Apologizing to Smallville sucked. She stood up and walked over to the door, pausing with her hand on the knob before walking out of the room, where she found Clark watching Met U play a college basketball game. She sat down next to him, not making eye contact. Watching the game, she sighed and finally got on with the onerous task.
"So, Smallville, it occurs to me that you may have been right about me moping. There's no definitive evidence, per se, but I was exhibiting some of the classic qualities of a moping session. While I maintain that my worries are legitimate, I realize now that I can't be worried about what I can and cannot do. I need to adapt, and I want to, because I love Jordan and AJ. Who knew I could go through such a transformation in four days, but I have.
"So, I'm sorry. I turned my self-doubt into anger that I threw at you when you pointed at something I didn't want to admit."
Lois looked over at Clark, who had a smile playing at the corner of his lips. She roller her eyes and he looked over at her, finally just grinning. "I was kind of expecting this explosion, Lo. There's not really anything to forgive, and I would have sounded more understanding but you told me to be firm on the anti-mopiness."
"Well, good. Let's put me being whiney behind us and move forward." She thought for a moment, trying to figure something out. "Uh, where do we go from here?"
"There's television watching, work and even sleeping. What do you feel like?"
"What do they have that passes for good television these days?"
"I like a show called 'Hawkeye.' It's a show about the character from 'The Last of The Mohicans' before the book happens. Very good stuff."
"Anything less intense sounding?"
Clark stayed silent a moment, brow furrowed. "Well, they abolished reality television in 2015, so that's not really an option. Sitcoms aren't all that common anymore, but there are still some good ones." He looked around a moment, then stopped and looked back at her. "You know what, how about we just put on some old Scrubs episodes. Hard to beat the classics, right?"
Lois didn't really think of Scrubs as a classic, but then again Scrubs was a very recent program in her mind. The series finale had happened in the not so distant past, if it was still June of 2008.
They spent the next couple hours watching Scrubs and snacking on whatever she found in the cupboards, which was an assortment of chips, popcorn and about ten cookies. She felt much better with something in her stomach; the worries about being a good role model waned some as she lost herself in the show.
Finally, they headed off to bed. Lois changed into pajamas and pulled the covers back on her side of the bed. After the last couple nights, she needed to address something with him.
"I keep starting off on one side of the bed and ending up either in the middle of it or on the other side."
Clark walked out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. "What?"
"I keep falling asleep on the far side of the bed, away from you, and then I wake up on top of you once morning rolls around. It's... odd, to have my body remember sleeping like this and naturally ending up there when in my mind, it's close to being as strange as strange gets. So, I'm thinking I just cut out the middle and start going to sleep how I keep waking up: in your arms."
She turned and started messing with her pillow while she waited for him to finish with his teeth.
"Are you comfortable with that, Lo?"
"Well, against all odds, waking up with you is pleasant. It's nice, and feels good, so I think I'm just going to fall asleep with that comfort surrounding me instead of trying to get myself to stop. If my body likes it, it can't be that bad, I guess. I'm sure drug addicts say the same thing, but you're not being smoked or injected." As soon as she said it, she wished she could take it back. "That wasn't supposed to be a double entendre."
She couldn't help but grin a little as he broke out a very large smile. "Like I can say no to you. I enjoy having you in my arms, so if you're ok with it, I love the idea. I just thought it'd take you longer to be comfortable with it."
"Yeah, well, this is just one of many adaptations I have to make, and not a big one. Like I said, your arms are a pleasant place to be."
She got into bed, and turned to find him already laying there. Eyeing him a moment, the eager glint in his eye making her fight the urge to roll her eyes, she scooted over next to him and laid her head down on his chest, where she always seemed to wake up. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, settling herself in. His arm closed around her, and she smiled a bit before wiping it off her face. Her stupid, traitorous body was enjoying this way too much.
"Goodnight, Lo."
She sighed, her eyes closing before she spoke. "Night, Smallville."
