The Guardian (2/10)
Part II: Invisible Hand
Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant - Seneca
Destiny.
She didn’t have the best track record in that department.
It hadn’t meant love at first sight or a deep-seated calling or a winning lotto ticket. It wasn’t Cinescape. Slo-motion. A Pinpeat orchestral crescendo.
No. For her it had been a mother lost too soon. An errant sister. Distant father.
The anti-Hallmark card.
Every fork in her road had taken her down a rockier path. A right to a cousin’s grave site. A left to a college admissions repossession. A right - psychotic plastic surgeon. Left - Met U disciplinary board. Right...
Watch out, that next step is a doozy.
She was hardly a fatalist. She liked to believe she had some semblance of control - That before she shuffled off this mortal coil, the path she forged would be her own. But at 19, she had discovered that most of the events in her life were of the ‘out-of-her-hands’ variety, with a tendency towards the catastrophic.
A future written in supernovas.
Those around her had pegged her as a lightning rod for trouble - not that she did much to shake off the mantle. She’d boozed and conned and sucker-punched her way to self-fulfilling prophesy- but they were mixing cause and effect. For the most part she wasn’t seeking trouble out. It was hunting her.
No matter what she did - whether she played the perfect daughter or the prodigal - there was always a bullet with her name on it. Destiny had a way of getting the best of her.
It was doing it right now.
On the black and white grid. 23 across.
Lois chewed thoughtfully on her pen, and studied her Daily Planet crossword carefully - more than half the boxes already filled. Around her the Talon buzzed with it’s usual mid-morning clientele - teens and adults alike, with drooping eyelids and monkey’s on their backs. Slaves to the Arabica bean.
Her kind of people.
The three-late-night-shifts-from-perky waitress threaded through the crowd, Lois’ drink balancing precariously on her tray. “Short non fat mocha decaf. No foam, no sugar, no whip,” she announced with a tight, polite smile. She swept away the hair that had escaped from her fraying bun, cringing at the loud bellow that came from a large man three tables over who still hadn’t received his espresso.
Lois made a mental note to always be on the receiving-end of a cup of coffee.
She searched the pockets of her purple knit blazer for some cash, coming up empty. She bent down to grab her wallet from her bag and soon saw a familiar pair of work-scuffed boots clomp their way into view.
“I’ve got it,” she heard him say, from somewhere above her.
Lois rose - her finger quick to the draw; a gunslinger of protest - only to find Clark already pulling a couple of bills from his wallet and paying. He said a thanks and called the waitress by her actual name, which surprised Lois for a moment until she realized that she was in Smallville where everyone knew everyone else. Ye Olde Town of Zero Privacy.
He lifted her mug and held it out for her. “Consider it a thank you, for the other day.”
She took a sip and felt her cognitive cogs groan to life. “I should save your life more often.”
Lois watched him quietly over the rim of the mug without really wanting to, as he shucked off his jacket and draped it on the back of his chair. He was making himself comfortable. Planning to stay a while. An irrational feeling of guilt twisted her stomach, and she glanced at her watch.
“I stopped by Chloe’s house looking for you. Her dad said you’d be here.”
Or maybe not so irrational. Things between her and her cousin had been tense since their car ride the day before. She still didn’t fully understand what the problem was - Chloe had been less thorough with the explanation than she had been with her demands. But Lois did know it involved the farmboy to her immediate right. And that she wasn’t about to rock the boat.
She set her coffee - his thank you - down. “Chloe left for some official Torch business before I woke up. I called and told her to meet me here when she was done.” She hesitated as she considered exactly how much to reveal, ultimately deciding on none of it. “I couldn’t go back to the city without saying goodbye to her.”
“Of course not,” Clark agreed. Folding his arms, he cocked an eyebrow. “So was I your next stop?”
Lois quickly busied herself with 23 across, hiding her guilt behind the front page of the Metro section. Her plan had been to slip out of town without so much as a ‘catch ya later’ to the guy. She assumed from his wry smile, that he knew this.
She hoped he would chalk it up to her ‘innate rudeness’ - his words, not hers. That he’d call her ‘impossible’ or ‘selfish,’ grab his jacket and make one of those Hollywood exits - where the whoosh of the slamming door is followed by whispers from the crowd.
Not that she was much for drama - but it would get his butt out of that seat and put some miles between them.
The last thing she needed was Chloe walking in and seeing them... not understanding that it was just...
Damn. He wasn’t moving.
“What’s a 4 letter word for ‘destiny’?” She changed the subject. Or, at least, thought she did.
“What?”
“It’s obviously not kismet or providence or fortune,” she babbled, tucked safely behind the broadsheet. “And it can’t be ‘fate’, unless Adam Smith’s famed economic manifesto was actually ‘Fealth of Nations.”
He considered this for a minute. “Weird.”
Lois wrinkled her nose. “I know. Must be a typo.”
“No. That’s the answer. Weird.”
“Come again?”
She felt him move beside her, resting his elbows on the table. “It’s the anglo-saxon conception of fate. How past actions continuously shape our futures,” he said. “Their universe was embodied by the World Tree, this gigantic oak that was nourished by the Well of Weird.”
Lois looked up from her paper. “Huh? Like Chloe’s collage-thing?”
Clark smiled, happy to finally have her full attention. “No. Well,” he corrected with a laugh. “Anyway, it was maintained by the three Weird Sisters, each of whom who held a specific aspect of fate in their hands. Most cultures have a similar incarnation. The Romans have the Fatae. The Greeks have the Moirae.”
Clark ended with a self-satisfied nod and Lois rolled her eyes. “Well, thanks for the history lesson, Mr. Peabody, but I said four letters.”
Clark tipped down the edge of her paper and peered over. “Try W-Y-R-D.”
Lois looked at him skeptically and he motioned for her to just trust him. She shrugged her shoulders and gave it a go.
W. Y. R. D.
Perfect fit.
“I’m impressed, Smallville,” she said. And she sort of was. “Just when I thought I had you pegged you go and throw me for a loop.”
He gave her a once-over. “There’s a lot of that going around.” It was beginning to bother her that he looked no where near as uncomfortable as she felt. But why would he? He hadn’t made any promises - hadn’t seen how utterly wrecked her cousin had looked at the idea of them together. He was free to say or do or feel anything he wanted while she was left to squirm at their mere proximity.
She was like a kid with her hand in the cookie jar, and she didn’t even want the damn oreo.
“What do you mean?”
Clark leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “I didn’t know you were a crossword fan,” he said, casually. Lois frowned. That’s not what he had meant at all. Here she was doing all the work and he didn’t even have the courtesy to lie convincingly. Clark scooted closer and craned his neck for a better look. “And in ink? I guess it’s my turn to be impressed.”
He smiled brightly and made their friendship seem effortless. As usual, he didn’t have a clue.
She resumed her cold-shoulder. “What can I say? I live dangerously,” she said as she scribbled away. 13 down. Onus.
Clark studied her pen and after a moment raised an eyebrow. “It’s erasable.”
“I said ‘dangerously.’ Not ‘stupidly.’” 34 across. Incessant. “Besides, I never have been a fan of permanence. I’m sure your frontal lobe can relate, Amnesia Boy.”
Clark blew out a breath. “About that. I think I’m starting to remember some things,” he admitted.
“Really?” A part of her wanted him to stop right there. She had no idea what had happened to him down in those caves, but it had affected him in some profound way - that much was obvious. On their walk back to the farm, he was suddenly excited to know everything about her, and trust her with his own secrets - Like that night on the telephone - the one he had no memory of. The one she selfishly wished he did.
Just when she thought she finally had the game down pat - the rules had changed.
“I had a dream last night - or maybe it was a memory. In a weird way, it didn’t feel like either - if that makes any sense at all. I feel like I’m close to figuring out what happened the other day, but I need your help.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I need you to come with me to Shuster’s Gorge.”
“I can’t,” she said quickly. A small bell-chirp snapped Lois’ gaze from the hand on her arm to the front door. Somewhere in that millisecond she managed to suck in half the room’s oxygen.
An elderly couple shuffled into the cafe.
False alarm.
“Please. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think I can do this without you.”
“I have to meet Chloe.”
“When is she supposed to be here?”
Lois looked down at her watch and frowned. “20 minutes ago.”
Her grabbed her hand and tugged her out of her seat. “Well, then there is no possible way she can get mad.”
Lois put up a fight, but let Clark lead her out of the Talon.
Those Weird Sisters could take a lunch break. Destiny wasn’t going to screw her over this time.
She could handle that just fine by herself.
***
There had been no double-take when the woman walked into the Torch. When she stepped in front of her desk - the added years lending her an intimidating confidence - Chloe hadn’t so much as flinched. Maybe, after that night in the loft, nothing could really surprised her anymore. Maybe next to a time-traveling cousin everything seemed trite and predictable.
Or maybe, deep down, she had been bracing herself for the fallout.
She rose from her chair slowly and silently, and steeled herself before her firing squad.
“What do you want?” Chloe asked.
Lana smiled, a rude twist of the lips. “I want my world back.”
Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant - Seneca
Destiny.
She didn’t have the best track record in that department.
It hadn’t meant love at first sight or a deep-seated calling or a winning lotto ticket. It wasn’t Cinescape. Slo-motion. A Pinpeat orchestral crescendo.
No. For her it had been a mother lost too soon. An errant sister. Distant father.
The anti-Hallmark card.
Every fork in her road had taken her down a rockier path. A right to a cousin’s grave site. A left to a college admissions repossession. A right - psychotic plastic surgeon. Left - Met U disciplinary board. Right...
Watch out, that next step is a doozy.
She was hardly a fatalist. She liked to believe she had some semblance of control - That before she shuffled off this mortal coil, the path she forged would be her own. But at 19, she had discovered that most of the events in her life were of the ‘out-of-her-hands’ variety, with a tendency towards the catastrophic.
A future written in supernovas.
Those around her had pegged her as a lightning rod for trouble - not that she did much to shake off the mantle. She’d boozed and conned and sucker-punched her way to self-fulfilling prophesy- but they were mixing cause and effect. For the most part she wasn’t seeking trouble out. It was hunting her.
No matter what she did - whether she played the perfect daughter or the prodigal - there was always a bullet with her name on it. Destiny had a way of getting the best of her.
It was doing it right now.
On the black and white grid. 23 across.
Lois chewed thoughtfully on her pen, and studied her Daily Planet crossword carefully - more than half the boxes already filled. Around her the Talon buzzed with it’s usual mid-morning clientele - teens and adults alike, with drooping eyelids and monkey’s on their backs. Slaves to the Arabica bean.
Her kind of people.
The three-late-night-shifts-from-perky waitress threaded through the crowd, Lois’ drink balancing precariously on her tray. “Short non fat mocha decaf. No foam, no sugar, no whip,” she announced with a tight, polite smile. She swept away the hair that had escaped from her fraying bun, cringing at the loud bellow that came from a large man three tables over who still hadn’t received his espresso.
Lois made a mental note to always be on the receiving-end of a cup of coffee.
She searched the pockets of her purple knit blazer for some cash, coming up empty. She bent down to grab her wallet from her bag and soon saw a familiar pair of work-scuffed boots clomp their way into view.
“I’ve got it,” she heard him say, from somewhere above her.
Lois rose - her finger quick to the draw; a gunslinger of protest - only to find Clark already pulling a couple of bills from his wallet and paying. He said a thanks and called the waitress by her actual name, which surprised Lois for a moment until she realized that she was in Smallville where everyone knew everyone else. Ye Olde Town of Zero Privacy.
He lifted her mug and held it out for her. “Consider it a thank you, for the other day.”
She took a sip and felt her cognitive cogs groan to life. “I should save your life more often.”
Lois watched him quietly over the rim of the mug without really wanting to, as he shucked off his jacket and draped it on the back of his chair. He was making himself comfortable. Planning to stay a while. An irrational feeling of guilt twisted her stomach, and she glanced at her watch.
“I stopped by Chloe’s house looking for you. Her dad said you’d be here.”
Or maybe not so irrational. Things between her and her cousin had been tense since their car ride the day before. She still didn’t fully understand what the problem was - Chloe had been less thorough with the explanation than she had been with her demands. But Lois did know it involved the farmboy to her immediate right. And that she wasn’t about to rock the boat.
She set her coffee - his thank you - down. “Chloe left for some official Torch business before I woke up. I called and told her to meet me here when she was done.” She hesitated as she considered exactly how much to reveal, ultimately deciding on none of it. “I couldn’t go back to the city without saying goodbye to her.”
“Of course not,” Clark agreed. Folding his arms, he cocked an eyebrow. “So was I your next stop?”
Lois quickly busied herself with 23 across, hiding her guilt behind the front page of the Metro section. Her plan had been to slip out of town without so much as a ‘catch ya later’ to the guy. She assumed from his wry smile, that he knew this.
She hoped he would chalk it up to her ‘innate rudeness’ - his words, not hers. That he’d call her ‘impossible’ or ‘selfish,’ grab his jacket and make one of those Hollywood exits - where the whoosh of the slamming door is followed by whispers from the crowd.
Not that she was much for drama - but it would get his butt out of that seat and put some miles between them.
The last thing she needed was Chloe walking in and seeing them... not understanding that it was just...
Damn. He wasn’t moving.
“What’s a 4 letter word for ‘destiny’?” She changed the subject. Or, at least, thought she did.
“What?”
“It’s obviously not kismet or providence or fortune,” she babbled, tucked safely behind the broadsheet. “And it can’t be ‘fate’, unless Adam Smith’s famed economic manifesto was actually ‘Fealth of Nations.”
He considered this for a minute. “Weird.”
Lois wrinkled her nose. “I know. Must be a typo.”
“No. That’s the answer. Weird.”
“Come again?”
She felt him move beside her, resting his elbows on the table. “It’s the anglo-saxon conception of fate. How past actions continuously shape our futures,” he said. “Their universe was embodied by the World Tree, this gigantic oak that was nourished by the Well of Weird.”
Lois looked up from her paper. “Huh? Like Chloe’s collage-thing?”
Clark smiled, happy to finally have her full attention. “No. Well,” he corrected with a laugh. “Anyway, it was maintained by the three Weird Sisters, each of whom who held a specific aspect of fate in their hands. Most cultures have a similar incarnation. The Romans have the Fatae. The Greeks have the Moirae.”
Clark ended with a self-satisfied nod and Lois rolled her eyes. “Well, thanks for the history lesson, Mr. Peabody, but I said four letters.”
Clark tipped down the edge of her paper and peered over. “Try W-Y-R-D.”
Lois looked at him skeptically and he motioned for her to just trust him. She shrugged her shoulders and gave it a go.
W. Y. R. D.
Perfect fit.
“I’m impressed, Smallville,” she said. And she sort of was. “Just when I thought I had you pegged you go and throw me for a loop.”
He gave her a once-over. “There’s a lot of that going around.” It was beginning to bother her that he looked no where near as uncomfortable as she felt. But why would he? He hadn’t made any promises - hadn’t seen how utterly wrecked her cousin had looked at the idea of them together. He was free to say or do or feel anything he wanted while she was left to squirm at their mere proximity.
She was like a kid with her hand in the cookie jar, and she didn’t even want the damn oreo.
“What do you mean?”
Clark leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “I didn’t know you were a crossword fan,” he said, casually. Lois frowned. That’s not what he had meant at all. Here she was doing all the work and he didn’t even have the courtesy to lie convincingly. Clark scooted closer and craned his neck for a better look. “And in ink? I guess it’s my turn to be impressed.”
He smiled brightly and made their friendship seem effortless. As usual, he didn’t have a clue.
She resumed her cold-shoulder. “What can I say? I live dangerously,” she said as she scribbled away. 13 down. Onus.
Clark studied her pen and after a moment raised an eyebrow. “It’s erasable.”
“I said ‘dangerously.’ Not ‘stupidly.’” 34 across. Incessant. “Besides, I never have been a fan of permanence. I’m sure your frontal lobe can relate, Amnesia Boy.”
Clark blew out a breath. “About that. I think I’m starting to remember some things,” he admitted.
“Really?” A part of her wanted him to stop right there. She had no idea what had happened to him down in those caves, but it had affected him in some profound way - that much was obvious. On their walk back to the farm, he was suddenly excited to know everything about her, and trust her with his own secrets - Like that night on the telephone - the one he had no memory of. The one she selfishly wished he did.
Just when she thought she finally had the game down pat - the rules had changed.
“I had a dream last night - or maybe it was a memory. In a weird way, it didn’t feel like either - if that makes any sense at all. I feel like I’m close to figuring out what happened the other day, but I need your help.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I need you to come with me to Shuster’s Gorge.”
“I can’t,” she said quickly. A small bell-chirp snapped Lois’ gaze from the hand on her arm to the front door. Somewhere in that millisecond she managed to suck in half the room’s oxygen.
An elderly couple shuffled into the cafe.
False alarm.
“Please. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think I can do this without you.”
“I have to meet Chloe.”
“When is she supposed to be here?”
Lois looked down at her watch and frowned. “20 minutes ago.”
Her grabbed her hand and tugged her out of her seat. “Well, then there is no possible way she can get mad.”
Lois put up a fight, but let Clark lead her out of the Talon.
Those Weird Sisters could take a lunch break. Destiny wasn’t going to screw her over this time.
She could handle that just fine by herself.
***
There had been no double-take when the woman walked into the Torch. When she stepped in front of her desk - the added years lending her an intimidating confidence - Chloe hadn’t so much as flinched. Maybe, after that night in the loft, nothing could really surprised her anymore. Maybe next to a time-traveling cousin everything seemed trite and predictable.
Or maybe, deep down, she had been bracing herself for the fallout.
She rose from her chair slowly and silently, and steeled herself before her firing squad.
“What do you want?” Chloe asked.
Lana smiled, a rude twist of the lips. “I want my world back.”