This must be what Clark felt like that day.
This is what he must have thought was happening when he walked into the Daily Planet, straight into the firing squad.
Like the world had vanished beneath his feet. Like every rule and law of nature had been broken, remolded and shaped to oh so perfectly and neatly destroy the life he’d oh so carefully built. Like Earth itself had risen up in revolt against him.
This must be what he feels like every day. Each moment facing a quaking world, all stability gone, unable to find any form of balance. Facing the unknown while reality shakes him like a mouse in the jaws of a cat, and the lives of everyone he loves teeter on a fragile precipice.
Beautiful description of Lois getting how Clark felt.
Well you definitely caught me by surprise, and I would say sucker punched is the nicest way to put how I feel.
Just when I thought things might be turning around, this happens.
Oh. Clark. and Lois.
Horror hits harder and longer and more devastating than the earthquake. Fear (as big as Nightfall, as vast as Superman’s silence, as debilitating as Clark’s death) assails Lois like a disease. Like a virus that attacks and drains and steals and wounds (and kills).
Because Jonathan and Martha were standing outside.
Because they promised to wait there for her until she was done shopping. Because James was there with them. Because they were in the open.
Unprotected.
In danger.
Because the only things left to Clark (the only people he loves and daily saves the world for; the only people he will talk to and for) were all in one place. And if they are gone (if they were taken from him while they waited for Lois, of all people), then Clark will not be the only one broken and crushed. Superman will be broken too. Superman will be devastated. Will be cut loose from the Earth, ripped from his only tether.
And there will be nothing at all left to save, no alter ego to keep him here.
And all because of Lois.
Again.
She gets it.
But Superman is gone. Vanished. Dead. Transformed, in an instant, in the blinking of an eye, back to the haunted, dying remnants of Clark Kent. It is Clark who kneels there before his parents, beneath the eyes of James and Lois (and the onlookers and the other victims and the cameras sure to come), unveiled. Stripped naked and exposed once more to everyone.
“Clark,” Lois whispers with a half-step forward. But it’s too little too late (and there is no comfort to be found), and when he turns to look at her, she does not see the devastation she expected. She does not see heartbreak or anguish or pain.
Instead, all she sees is emptiness.
Bleak, hopeless emptiness.
And she did not realize how much she depended on his last slivers of hope until they are gone.
Beautifully written, devastating and hopeless to read.
Your schedule of posting is obviously your own, but I hope you will take pity on us and update with finding out Martha and Jonathan's fate soon. This angst level is off the scale right now.
