Hmmm, I don't think this development was entirely unexpected since this is a Squidfic, and Squid's Clark can be surprisingly ready to take sudden action...
(And it's not unusual for Lois to be quite fertile, either.)
Well. This doesn't solve anything. As I am forever a Lois supporter, I always tend to look at her side of the situation. Lois very, very, very much wanted to make love to Clark, so there is no way ever that she can blame just him and not herself for her pregnancy.
Still, let's look at the situation that led up to the lovemaking:
"I've missed you," she blurted out before she could change her mind.
"You were the one who left."
Wrong answer, Clark. Lois gives you an opening, a possible way back to friendship and love, and you throw it all back at her by basically laying all the blame on her: Lois,
you were the one who left. It was your fault.
His voice was more than slightly accusatory, striking a nerve. "*You* walked away," she said with a pointed finger and stood up.
He was definitely the one who initiated the separation. He was the one who broke up with her, and maddeningly, he did it for her own sake, or at least he told her so.
“At least I didn’t run and hide!”
Clark keeps accusing her, not admitting any fault of his own.
<<Damn him!>>
This was exactly why she'd stayed away so long. She thrust a foot into a shoe as more of her buried anger seeped to the surface.
Lois gets angry. She is about to leave.
Clark dropped his head. He hadn't meant to say that- to make her angry. But...
He hadn't meant to make her angry, but he had really wanted to say those words to her. Because he put most of the blame for their separation on her, apparently.
He lifted his head and looked at her- really looked.
<But nothing.>
Interesting, Squid. The way I read this, Clark has never really tried to understand Lois's reaction to his breaking up with her. I think he had been telling himself that he had really been perfectly unselfish and done it all for her sake, but instead of being grateful to him for wanting to protect her, Lois had reacted unreasonably by withdrawing from him. Now, though, and maybe for the first time ever, he was really looking at her side of things.
He watched her struggle with her coat, then quickly stood and made his way over to her. His strong arms encircled her waist and he buried his face against her neck.
He is stopping her, but why? To tell her that he was wrong? To apologize? To ask her to sit down with him and talk about what has happened and what they should do about their futures?
"I was a fool," he whispered, then spun her around to face him. She barely had time to think before his mouth covered hers.
He is sort of apologizing, but he doesn't give her time to talk about anything. He goes directly into an assertive-sexual mode. Lois responds enthusiastically. But they don't talk about anything and don't try to solve the underlying conflict.
And look at what Clark says to Lois after they have made love:
"I was devastated," she said simply.
"I know," he admitted as he leaned up on his elbow.
"I wallowed in self pity as long as I could, then let my anger take over. I had to get away."
"Do you know how hard it was to let you go?"
She looked at him then as if he had two heads. "Do you know how that sounds?"
"Yeah. And I know how it felt."
asks
her if she knows how hard it was for him to let her go - after he had insisted on breaking up with her.
Frankly I think that Clark must confront his own motives and try to understand why he broke up with Lois "for her own good", even though she had made it absolutely clear to him that she didn't want a break-up. He must also ask himself why he was angry and disappointed when she severed her ties with him when he insisted on going through with the broken engagement.
Clark must realize that he was really trying to control Lois. He didn't want to be engaged to her, for whatever reason, but he still wanted her to be his friend, he wanted them to be partners at work, he wanted to see her quite a lot on a friendly basis etc. He never asked what she wanted. He never considered that she didn't want to be controlled.
In this chapter, Lois acknowledged her love for Clark. She hadn't come to her own Pulitzer ceremony, but she had to come when Clark got a prestigious award. She knows that it has been devastating to be away from Clark, just as Clark knows that it has been devastating to be away from Lois. But Clark has never confronted himself - never
really confronted himself - with his own contribution to their separation. This is a good example of how Clark is thinking about his situation:
He’d kept the engagement ring he’d bought Lois so long ago. It was a reminder of how easily he could lose everything.
It was a reminder of how easily he could lose everything? No, Clark, that's not the right way of thinking about what happened. Breaking up with your fiancée is not a small thing, not a little accident, particularly not when you insisted on it and she objected.
And see what he is thinking here:
Those tears... that's what nearly changed his mind on that fateful night. It was also why he'd left her apartment so quickly.
Instead of thinking that he was an idiot for breaking up with her and that he should have let her tears convince him not to do it, he is thinking, without any self-recrimination or self-analysis, that her tears almost stopped him from breaking up with her that night.
Lois was right to leave Clark after their night of passion. The way I see it, they can't be together on a permanent basis until Clark really confronts his own reasons for breaking up with Lois. Until Clark does that, he can't be a very good husband to Lois, not in his current frame of thinking.
Of course Lois must keep Clark's baby, and of course she must let Clark know that he is going to be a father. And of course she must let him have access to his baby. But until he really talks to her about his reasons for breaking up with her "for her own good" against her own wishes, I don't think she should enter into a permanent relationship with him.
Ann
