No! No! No! What have you done?! Not Clark. How can you kill him? Not now! Not like this.
Chapter 4: That Old Name Of Mine
I saw this and here I thought it was all about the "name" not the other stuff. Lois and Clark arguing over whether he was Superman or Clark more.
“Kent.” Luthor’s voice gave away nothing besides his seemingly inherent arrogance. The two thugs standing at either of his shoulders towered over both Clark and Luthor and seemed a fair indication of Luthor’s hostility.
Uh-oh. Luthor's not alone. What does this mean?
Clark was forced to step aside or risk revealing just how solid he was when Luthor pushed past him and down into the living room, his hired muscle shadowing him.
.
.
.
“Not one for basic hospitality, are we, Kent?” Luthor gestured toward the full pot of coffee Clark wasn’t about to offer to share. “But then, what else should one expect from someone such as yourself?”
It's just like Luthor to be so rude as to enter without invitation and then comment on Clark's manners as if HE's the one at fault. It's unfortunate that Bad Guys aren't like vampires and cannot enter your home without invitation.
“There, you see.” Luthor pointed triumphantly at him, his brow quirked. “That. That’s exactly what I mean--you’re not intimidated. You’re not afraid of me. From the first time we met, in fact, when I placed the blade of Alexander the Great at your throat, you’ve been singularly…unimpressed. That’s quite a feat for anyone, let alone a…provincial…like yourself.”
Isn't that part of Luthor's attraction to Lois? That she never was afraid of him? BTW: You've got Luthor's voice down pat. Very well done.
“I’ve never been impressed by bullies,” Clark said, his voice rasping under the strain it took to speak somewhat civilly. “And no matter how much power and money you have, Luthor, that’s still all you are.”
I guess that age old advice of showing the bully that you're not afraid of them, makes the bully lose his power, isn't going to work today.
“Is that a threat?” Clark wasn’t sure if Lois could hear Luthor’s voice from where she was hidden--it was so hard for him to judge how much everyone else could hear--but he hoped she could. And yet, contradictorily, he almost wished, for her sake, that she could not. Hard enough for her to be told that the man she had considered spending the rest of her life with was a criminal; it would be even more difficult for her to face that fact firsthand.
Does he still think that Lois wants to marry Luthor? Didn't she already tell him she wouldn't or was that when she was interrupted?
“Not a threat,” Luthor corrected. “Merely an observation. For instance, if you had recognized the way the natural order of things worked, you would know that--how shall I phrase this?--inconsequential people such as yourself don’t end up with the girl. Or woman, as the case may be. Men like myself, or even Superman, are the ones who end up winning the hearts and hands of desirable women. Which leads me to the reason I’m here now.”
Two things about this paragraph: firstly, OUCH! How to pour lemon juice in an open wound. I don't know if Luthor knows that Clark poured his heart out to Lois only to have her reject him for those very two men Luthor mentions. Secondly, this was when I realized that Luthor didn't know that Clark was Superman if he's referring to him as a person outside of Clark.
“It doesn’t take an IQ as high as mine to realize that you possess quite a bit of attraction for your erstwhile partner,” Luthor intoned. “And it comes as no great surprise that your chances with her are as slim as the proverbial snowball’s. I had thought my greatest rival in securing the affections of my fiancée was the much-vaunted—yet overrated—Superman.”
So, does Luthor consider Clark a rival now? And, thanks, Clark already had that proverbial snowball thrown in his face.
“Oh, she’ll say yes,” Luthor said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s the timing of her answer that I’m concerned about at the moment. You see, I knew she had an odd fondness for her reporting partner, even going so far as to ask me to provide a job for you at LNN when she accepted my offer. But preferring to work with the partner you know is a far different matter than leaving Lex Tower before giving me her answer to my proposal, making her way to Centennial Park at midnight, and meeting up with that former partner of hers. And then, of course, there’s the fact that neither one of you were seen leaving the park, yet here you are, safe and sound in your apartment…while there’s still no sign of Lois. And since Superman’s been busy around the world with emergencies, that leaves out the possibility of him as your mode of conveyance. Quite a mystery for such an unassuming man from Kansas, don’t you think, Mr. Kent?”
A) Luthor is underestimating Lois. B) If Luthor knows that Lois went to Lex Tower but then left without speaking to him, to only go and meet Clark, how come he doesn't suspect the reason behind her motivations?
“Reporters don’t like being followed,” Clark told him calmly. “I knew there were men outside the park, so I avoided them. As to where Lois is, well, I’d guess that if she found out you were having her watched, she’d be none too happy about it.” Silently, he congratulated himself on the complete truthfulness of that answer; if anyone was adept at spotting lies, it’d be the master liar himself, and Clark felt a bit safer with truth as his shield.
So, Clark DID know and still took up into the air without changing into his uniform first? He really had hit rock bottom.
If he could have done it without drawing attention, he would have slid his glasses down and x-rayed Luthor and his henchmen for weapons. Every breath felt perilous; one gunshot and his secret was out.
But he already knows the henchmen have guns because he could hear them when he unintentionally examined their heartbeats and blood rushing.
“I underestimated you, Kent.” All trace of deceptive politeness had been stripped from Luthor’s voice so that only ambition and ruthlessness and calculating menace were left. “I admit that I thought Superman would be the greatest obstacle to winning Lois’s hand. But no matter--I’m flexible. And what is it they say about two birds with one stone? Well, I have a stone.”
So, Luthor DOES consider Clark a rival for Lois's affections. If he only knew that it was he himself which had driven Lois away with his own actions towards Superman by acquiring Kryptonite.
Tension permeated Clark’s body when Luthor’s hand went inside his jacket, and if he had known what was coming, he would have jerked free of the thugs’ grip, would have thrown himself to the side, would never have answered the door. But prescience wasn’t one of Superman’s abilities, and so Clark simply stood there, as helpless as if he were truly an ordinary man, as guilelessly as if he had no Secret, as naively as if he had nothing to fear.
The dagger glowed green, but only for an instant, because in the next instant, Luthor had buried it deeply, agonizingly, astonishingly, in Clark’s stomach, its phosphorescent shine sheathed in his flesh.
How did Clark not feel the Kryptonite's presence? I doubt Lex wears lead-lined suits (although, he might being how much he would hate to be x-rayed by Superman). Is it more, like how Clark lost his abilities on Spencer's island before knowing that Kryptonite was around?
“I’m sure, being the farmboy that you are, that you’ve gone fishing before, Kent. Well, consider yourself the bait and Superman the fish. That makes you the worm, but some few people are always typecast, aren’t they. And Lois? Lois is the prize in this contest. Superman will come to save his good friend Clark Kent, just like always, only this time…” Luthor made a twisting motion with his hand, and Clark felt a cry wrung from him to stain the air and break through, temporarily, the miasma of Luthor’s despair-tinged breaths. Shards of glass were dipped in acid and transmuted into his insides, blanking out sight and touch and awareness of all but Luthor’s voice and the tiny snapping sound as he broke the dagger, leaving the Kryptonite blade ensconced inside Clark’s once-invulnerable flesh.
Let me make sure I've got this right. Luthor stabbed Clark and then broke part of the blade inside of him, but then left it all there. Later on, Lois removes the blade but Clark can still feel pain in his stomach. But if she didn't remove all of the Kryptonite, his wounds wouldn't have started to heal, correct? Then, again, it's hard to know what exactly Lois does when removing the dagger because it's from Clark's delirious POV. Breaking glass always seems to leave hairlike fragments, so is there enough Kryptonite in Clark's system that his Superman powers will never return?
“This time, Superman won’t be able to save you, and Lois will be mine.”
So true and so false all at once.
Um.... not quite, there Clark. He *would've* been alone if he hadn't brought Lois with him on his rescues. He *would've* been alone if he hadn't told Lois his secret.
“Right.” Lois nodded and straightened in her seat. “But I’ve been thinking about taking him down permanently, and I think what we need is for Superman to confront Lex, get him to admit to what he did, and then use the conversation--which we’ll have taped--to get him arrested.”
For the briefest of seconds, I thought Lois meant kill Luthor.
“Is there a way you can sneak past the men he left to watch the apartment? If you can get to a public payphone and call here, as if you want to speak to Clark Kent, then we can let Luthor know that way that his Kryptonite blade worked.”
“You think he’ll overhear the conversation?” Lois asked. She didn’t sound surprised. She sounded grim, determined, and it was everything Clark had hoped for and just enough to worry Superman for her safety.
Does Luthor have Clark's line bugged? I know he could, and easily, as the head of LexComm, but would he?
“He has Kryptonite,” she objected. “If he thinks it will affect Superman, you can bet he didn’t leave it all with Clark!”
“I know,” Superman said quietly. “But I’ve let this drag on too long already. He murdered a man in cold blood today, and if that’s not enough to get him convicted, then nothing will be.”
“There’s no body,” Lois said, and he wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize the irony of her being the voice of rational reason while he advocated the reckless course of action.
“There’s a blade, there’s a witness, and there’s Superman’s word. That, added to the confession we’ll hopefully get on tape and the evidence Clark collected, will have to be enough. It may not put him away permanently, but it’ll give you time to dig up more on him.”
I'm going to have to agree with Lois. Without Clark's body, it will be a hard case to prove.
“Give *me* time?” she repeated, her voice small and confused. He wondered if she was only now realizing that Clark Kent was gone forever.
Clark Kent cannot return if his death is what they have to use to convict Luthor. If Clark survives, Luthor will be set free.
There was great sorrow, knowing that the dream he’d chased his entire life was dead, but there was also a vague sense of relief. He didn’t have to watch every word he said anymore, didn’t have to worry about the right time to tell his secret, didn’t have to come up with excuses and lies. He had to discover who he was anew, now, had to learn all over again what his life consisted of, but he would help more people, save hundreds more, make a difference on a scope he hadn’t been able to countenance before. He wouldn’t write, wouldn’t be able to tell other people’s stories, and that hurt, of course it did, but *this* was his life now. He’d spent years coveting a life he should have known could never be his; now he could stop trying, stop pretending, and just *be*.
No, no, no! Didn't he tell Lois that without Clark Kent there would be no Superman? It sounds like a lonely miserable existence, only living to help others while having nothing available for himself.
No! No! No! You need to come back and fix this. We're not supposed to lose Clark. He's our hero, not this other guy he pretends to be. We want to be happy and live happily ever after with Lois. Please, fix this. Please.
