Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic The Long Road Home Part 39 - Comments

Thoughts?

Maybe I'll be more coherent later.

Ann

Ok, that was quite a heartbreaking and gloomy part, but you expressed the characters' thoughts excellently in terms of what each are going through.

So, are they going to grow apart, slowly and over time?

Looking forward to the next part!

Rac, you continue to earn your nick - you are definitely a master story-teller. Lois and Clark's agonizing journey continues. Although it might seem like a step backward, I still think they're both headed in the right direction. Clark may not have done everything right, but I think they're both overlooking how well Clark dealt with the situation. No flashbacks to New Krypton, no blackouts or paralyzing fear during the crisis. That's progress!

Lois thinks so, but although I think that Lois is correct in assuming that something is going on with Clark, his mid-night thoughts seem to be leading him back to Lois, not away.

Great part. I really loved how Clark realized how traumatized Lois was by his time away. She had to be so strong and although the Kents and Dr. Friskin helped her, she didn't have someone like Clark to hold her when she needed to break down. I hope Clark steps up again and that Lois lets him.

I wish I could give as coherent and incisive feedback as BJ just did. Alas, no. So here's the gist:

Much angst.
Lois hurting.
Clark hurting.
Agonizingly long and torturous time ahead.
Life is uncertain.

Excellent chapter.
Agree: Rac = Master Storyteller.

More soon, please!

But also Master of Angst.

Would a child without Clark's powers be such a tragedy? I know they are worried about more serious damage, but if the child merely lacks Clark's powers, how would they know if it was the Kryptonite, or just an accident of genetics?

I'm going to be a little more coherent now, but before I discuss your fic I will talk somewhat extensively about another fic which deals with the same general premise as yours. This general premise is that Lois endangers her child(ren) in order to save Clark. And in that other fic, which I'll be talking about entirely from memory, Lois and Clark's children die because Lois saved Clark first and tried to save their children later.

In that other fic both Clark and the children were powerless, perhaps because the person attacking them had just taken away their powers by using kryptonite on them to kill them. (The person who attacked Clark and the children was Tempus, who was trying to make sure that Utopia never happened.)

As soon as Lois realized what was going on, she used her Ultrawoman powers to try to save her family. Surveying the scene, she concluded that Clark was the one who was in the most immediate danger. If she didn't save him right away, he would never make it. Making a split-second decision, she decided that the children could hold out a few seconds longer while she saved Clark. But it turned out that the children were dead when she had saved her husband.

In this fic Clark never - and I mean never - forgave Lois. It wasn't just that his smile never again reached his eyes when he looked at her. No, he never gave her a smile again. What's more, he could hardly bear to look at her again. I don't know if they were officially divorced, but Clark moved away from her and avoided her. Indeed, he didn't just avoid her, he avoided society as a whole. I think he became a hermit of some kind, never really again being a real member of humanity, but still helping out at catastrophes as Superman.

That fic left me with three indelible memories. One memory of Clark's bottomless grief. Another memory of Clark's bitterness and anger directed at Lois for failing to save his children - for choosing him over his children. Clark could never forgive Lois for that. It didn't seem to matter to him that it was Tempus who had killed his children, and that Lois had done almost her utmost to save them. Clark could never forgive her for not doing her absolute utmost to save them by choosing them over him. Lois had done her very, very best to save all of her family, but it hadn't been enough, and Clark could never forgive her. He really seemed to direct most of his anger and hatred at Lois, who had tried to save his children, and not at Tempus, who was the one who had actually killed them.

My third memory of that fic is of Lois's incredible grief. Interestingly, while Clark seemed to hate Lois for failing to save his children, Lois didn't hate Clark for being so unspeakably hard on her. Lois didn't hate anyone in this fic, she just grieved.

I can't accept Clark's terrible anger and inability to ever forgive Lois in this fic, but I
can understand his heart-shattering, debilitating grief. Clark is one of the few survivors of a dead people. In some respects he is worse off than a holocaust survivor, because there are far fewer individuals left of his people. Clark, then, can be seen as one of the last hopes of his dead people. Almost an entire people from another solar system have placed their hopes on Clark's shoulders, and it is up to him to see to the continuation of their race. When Clark's children died in that fic I have been talking about, all his people died a second time. He failed them. He failed them by failing to keep his offspring - his people's offspring - safe. And it was all Lois's fault, which is why he could never bear to look at her again.

This fic was so negative, at least to me. It was a fic that created a situation that could never be rectified, so that the only way to make things better was to undo the original Tempus attack altogether.

Let me repeat that I have been retelling this fic from memory. It could be that Clark was not as starkly unforgiving of Lois in the fic as I remember him to have been.

I think, Rac, that you are going to show us a way for Lois and Clark - perhaps not least for Clark - to deal with a similar situation. I think you are going to show him that even if the most horrible thing happens, if he loses his child, he can stop blaming Lois for it. He can love her again for real. He can acknowledge that she was doing her very best to save her family, all of her family, but because she is only human she doesn't have any divine knowledge of what would be best to do. And sometimes there is no way to save everybody. There just isn't, and blaming a person for failing to do the impossible isn't going to make things better for anyone.

I think, Rac, that you are going to make Clark understand and accept many things about the frailty of life and the impossibility of perfection. I think you will make Clark love Lois again. And I'm not at all sure that you are going to kill or disable the baby they are expecting.

Ann

Those two *need* a vacation. No, I think I do!

This has certainly given them a setback from all the progress which they had made since Clark's return, so much progress in communicating with each other and trusting each other. They really need to talk to each other and hold each other and help each other get through this. It sounds like Clark is trying to turn around his wrong thinking, but he also needs to talk to Lois and show her his love is constant, despite this, and hopefully he will very soon. What they need is some serious smooching!

They're back to not really talking Don't know why, but this line cracked me up completely.

Michael

Clark is starting to bug me. It's time for him to get his head out of his ( ) and look at Lois. Does he want his wife in his life or not?

Realistic portrayal of emotions in this part, Rac. But sometimes in a marriage you just have to pretend your partner is alright and ignore the pain you observe. Keeping the facade going, especially if it is a long wait for an answer as this is, is the way to get out of it both together.
Humans have been doing this for a long time when some tragedy happened in an early part of a pregnancy. The trick is to not confront each other until there is an answer.
Looking forward to the next part.

Artemis

Thanks for your comments, everyone and sorry for my delay in replying. As it turns out, the Fourth of July is only fun when you're in America. Abroad, as a US government official, you're supposed to go to swanky, boring parties with people who don't care that it's your Independence Day and shake a lot of hands and engage in a lot of small talk. It takes up a lot of time and it's way less fun than going to a barbecue.

Ann, sorry for making your emoticons cry. I know the intolerable waiting is cruel to the characters and not terribly nice to the readers, either. But I hope to try to convey as accurately as possible the hell that waiting can be.

Thanks for your comments, DW. It's good to know that you thought the characters thoughts and feelings were well expressed. Will they grow apart? I suppose time will tell...

Thanks, BJ, and you're right. Clark's performance was the very essence of heroism. After New Krypton, that should be seen as no less than an extraordinary achievement. But how can it not be overshadowed by what they've just learned?

Thanks for your comments, Iolan. I know this part was angst filled. More is coming up soon.

Cookiesmom, I take your point that a kid without superpowers isn't really a tragedy (the world is full of them and most of their parents seem perfectly okay with it), but I think what Lois and Clark both know is that this kid, were he or she to be without powers because of this event (as opposed to because of an accident of genetics), may well feel cheated out of his/her destiny. S/he would have a whole family of heroes and s/he would just be ordinary. It might be a pretty tough thing to deal with.

SJH, I'm not sure a vacation would help right now. I think they just really want the waiting to end. Which is ironic and painful because when Lois was pregnant with Jon, what she really wanted was for Clark to be able to experience that with them. As for Clark having his head stuck somewhere, I think he's currently in a lot of pain, too. I know it makes him frustrating as hell, but I hope it's realistic, too.

Evelyn, I think you're right about their needing to talk and to be there for one another, and that Clark is really working hard to short-circuit the unhelpful thinking. Thanks for your comments.


Michael, I'm glad you liked the line, it's kind of how I imagine Lois's sense of humor works, even when there isn't anything terribly funny about her situation.

Hi Artemis. I'm glad you thought the portrayal of emotions here was realistic. I don't know that either one is really capable of ignoring the other's pain, but at this point, I don't know that Lois is capable of really trying to alleviate Clark's pain. He has realized that no matter how much this sucks for him, it's worse for her and he needs to step up.

More is on its way (and Happy 4th of July to all the American FOLCs. To the British FOLCs, no hard feelings ).

Rac