Is that Lois the before or the after? Is she somehow both, or only a lie, or everything he’s ever dreamed of? It’s so hard to know, to differentiate them, because he wants her to be his Lois, wants it all to have been real, slivers of truth amidst boulders of deception, but he is only now realizing just how easy it is to be deceived and he does not want to fall back into that (into her) trap again so easily.
I loved you're insight into Clark's perspective here. That conflict. On one hand, he does want to believe her feelings were real, that that would make things better. But on the other, she went in intending to hurt him, and would have done it either way. Obviously she would have never done it if it would have hurt Clark in the long-run, but she still put his public well-being over his personal one. He didn't get a say. I like that he does still love her, because her intentions were good, and I think he knows now how much hurting him hurt her regardless of whether those romantic feelings were real or not.
At the same time though, it's interesting to see Clark's confusion over Lois being the person he fell in love with. We know she is, and I think it's Clark's little glimpses of that Lois as she told her story (that she did have good intentions) and walked off crying and needed to be in the know that gave him those hints that maybe things are better than he's assumed. But Clark knows Lois better than anyone, and just as Lois understood Clark without realizing it for some time, I think Clark knows Lois enough to understand on a level (even if only subconsciously) who she really is.
It's just a big sloppy mess. I'm sure you have good things in store, but right now it hurts my brain trying to sort it all out!
He’s slower to rise, until he hears a scream--not the creature’s, but a human’s. A child’s. A man’s. A crowd. People. They need him. They’re vulnerable and scared and so very mortal, and he can’t save Lois (can’t save himself), but maybe he can save these few. Maybe he can keep Metropolis’s skyline standing there against the sea and the sky, the Daily Planet building still erect and rebuilt.
Uh-oh.
This is so heartbreaking, so hopeless. I love that Clark's doing what he can though! He's being the best hero he can be, but the chances aren't good and Lois is nowhere to be found and these people need him. It shows his true colors very well.
I can't help but feel like Tempus's visit with Lois into the future, with his intentions, created that world she saw-that she saw the effects of all of this. That because of Lois, there was a Utopia, but that this mess with Doomsday would create that one time Clark wouldn't be able to save Lois. On that note, how did Clark know who Tempus is?
