I own nothing.
----
Clark Kent woke up in the Watchtower infirmary. How had he gotten there? He remembered going to work that morning... there had been a homeless guy... and then Jimmy...
"Jimmy!" he shouted, sitting up far too quickly. He put his head in his hands.
"Easy, Smallville," said a woman's voice to his left. "Jimmy's fine. We were more worried about you for a while - there was a lot of kryptonite in that knife."
He was confused. If he was in the Watchtower, what was Lois doing there? And if he was dressed as Clark Kent, why was she talking about kryptonite?
Almost as though she were reading his mind, Lois rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Smallville, you think I hadn't figured out you're Superman? Your disguise stinks - and I work with you every day! Sure, I was waiting to see what kind of cheesy romantic way you were planning on telling me, but I'm not stupid." More quietly, she added, "Besides, even if I hadn't known, you almost dying today would have tipped me off."
"There was that much kryptonite?"
"Okay, one: kryptonite knife, Smallville. It was a weapon specifically made to kill you - and anyway you ended up here after just being near it, so, yeah, there was that much kryptonite. And two: the only reason you're still alive is because of a girl from the future - a future in which you were dead from this attack."
"I don't brag," said the girl from the doorway. "But I think I did good today. It's exceptional to see that you're well, sir," she told him in all seriousness.
"Uh..."
Lois shrugged. "Apparently, they talk differently in the future."
"What did I say wrong?"
"Never mind, Gen," Lois said. "Clark, this is Gen - the girl you owe your life to."
"Not at all," Gen said. "If anything, it's payback for the debt I already owed him. I mean, yeah, he died before I was born, but if he hadn't saved my dad's life a couple years ago, I wouldn't even exist."
"Who's your dad?" Lois said.
"That would be the Question," she said. "Jimmy Olsen would like to see you, if it's okay. Fate already checked him to make sure there were no hidden triggers. J'onn said he can erase his memory of what happened today if you'd rather, but I think it'd be better to talk to him, personally."
"Of course," said Clark.
"Good, because he's right here," she said. "He's trying to pretend he isn't listening in on this conversation, but he really is. Oh, don't run away," she said, grabbing Jimmy's arm and pulling him into view.
Jimmy just looked awkwardly at the floor. "I'm sorry," he muttered eventually.
"Don't be," Clark said. "It wasn't your fault."
As they got over their awkwardness and started to talk things over in earnest, Gen quietly slipped away. Bobby Black-and-Blue took her place outside the door; he'd told Gen he would, since she was going to meet her mom for the first time since she was four. He wanted to tell Superman about the sharpening spells cast on the Swiss Army knives at the manufacturing plants that made them effective against him, anyway.
----
Booster Gold was familiar with all of the women on the Watchtower - intimately familiar, in fact, although not in the way he'd like. Each and every one of them had turned him down - he was intimately familiar with the view from behind, as they walked away. So when he saw the girl in the trench coat talking to the Question, he knew there was somebody new. Somebody who hadn't turned him down yet.
Which meant that he had a chance with her.
He started walking over to her, only to be stopped by the Flash. "Whoa, there, Booster," he said. "Bad idea, let me tell you."
"Why?" Booster said. "Does she not like boys or something?"
"Honestly, I have no idea," Flash said, still resolutely steering Booster away from the new girl. "But coming up behind her? Bad idea. She tends to attack first and figure out what's going on later. Last time somebody snuck up on her, she threw him into a wall."
"Was it you?"
"No, it wasn't me! Why does everybody think it was me?"
Booster shrugged. "So what else do you know about her?" He snuck another glance back at her, just as she turned around. She had no face, but then, he'd kind of gotten used to Question, and anyway, he remembered that one time in the future, when his ex-girlfriend had made him go to this fashion show, and none of the models had faces, and she said it was a poetic thing. He actually thought she was really hot, even with the no-face thing. "Where she's from, what's her name, all that stuff."
"Her name's Gen," Flash said. "I don't think it's a codename. She's from the future, but not as far in the future as you, and anyway, her future was really a bad scene, so she came back to keep it from happening. Question trained her. And beyond that, I don't know," he said. He knew, of course, who her parents were, but she'd asked them not to tell everyone. He supposed it had something to do with the conspiracy theory. Or, were they supposed to call it a theory anymore, now that they knew it was real?
"She's a time traveller? Like me?"
"Not really like you, Boost."
"Yeah, well, I'm one of a kind."
----
Gen had seen the blond man with the star on his chest looking at her, and he hadn't flinched away like most of the others. It was... confusing. "Who was he?" she asked out loud.
"Who was who?"
"The one with the gold visor."
"His codename is Booster Gold. His real name is Ted Kord, although it was difficult to discover, because his robot, Skeets, laid a very effective false paper trail. Like you, he hasn't been born yet."
"Hm," Gen said. "Interesting. There was no record of this Booster Gold in my time, although he could simply have naturalized." She watched him walk away with Flash.
"Uh oh," said Question.
"What's wrong?"
"I recognize that look," Question said. "It'll be hard enough explaining you to your mother. How do you expect me to let her know there's a possibility to have Booster Gold for a son-in-law?"
----
"Any progress?"
"None. She is untraceable by magical or mundane means. We can't even get our hands on DNA to test if our theory of her parentage is correct."
"That wouldn't be an issue if you had followed the correct procedures and had your liaisons tailed."
"Explain to me exactly how I was to know-"
"Enough! These petty arguments will get us nowhere. Do we have no leads at all?"
"Maybe... I think they may have just given themselves up. Our agent watching Helena Bertinelli, AKA Huntress, just watched her answer an untraceable call and then go into one of those infuriating blackout zones."
"How does that help us?"
"It's the blackout zone we tagged as a probable base of operations for the Question. And... before she went in... she bought a pregnancy test."