Lovely! An old new Sue fic!
This fic shows Sue's ability to be completely inside her narrator's head and see everything that is going on from the narrator's point of view. Sometimes that makes the readers smile, or at least it makes
me smile, because I know more than the protagonist:
I don't try to hide the irritation in my voice. After all, he did abandon me halfway through dinner last night. Sure, he was paged by a source and had to leave. Clark almost always has a reasonable excuse for ending our dates early.
His excuses aren't always lame!
I give him a skeptical look. "And you'll stick around for the entire date? You won't suddenly decide to adopt a puppy or buy gym socks or renew your driver's license?"
But sometimes they are, and Lois knows they are, but she hasn't figured out why he keeps abandoning her and has to come up with excuses. Hah! I know more than she does!
But because I am an LnC TV show illiterate, I didn't recognize or even remember the episode that is the inspiration for this fic, and therefore I didn't know what was going on here:
I barely have the words out before Superman drops the doll and grabs my shoulders. For a dizzying couple of seconds I think Superman has finally realized that he's desperately in love with me. He pulls me decisively against him and turns us swiftly. I want to say something, but there's a roaring sound in my ears and the world feels pink and fuzzy around the edges. Almost as quickly as he grabbed me, Superman releases me.
Wow! If you don't know what is going on here, that description packs a punch, I can tell you! Suddenly I'm
being Lois, locked inside her head, desperately trying to understand what is happening to me and failing. And suddenly I can almost forgive her/me for not seeing through Clark Kent's many miserable excuses.
Then the oddest thing happens. Superman makes an odd skipping motion and then hesitates, as if he's feeling as out of it as I am. He bends down and picks up a camcorder that appears to be smoking. He glances around and then directly at me. His mouth opens like he's about to say something, and then he shrugs and walks away, still holding the camcorder.
Here, of course, I should have realized right away that Superman - Clark - has lost his superpowers. But I didn't realize it, not straight away. I could see, like Lois, that something had happened to him, but I didn't know what. (I have to admit that it didn't dawn on me that Clark's powers were gone until they manifested themselves in Lois. Then when the truth dawned on me, I had to go back and read that part again, marvelling at how Superman's "odd skipping motion" had to mean he was trying to take off and couldn't.)
Even after that, I was still very much inside Lois's head, feeling her discombobulation. (What a word! Gotta love the English language for coming up with such a word! Thanks for teaching it to me, Sue!)
I'm about to enter STAR Labs when I hear my name called. I turn around to see Superman jogging across the plaza toward me. We get through Security a lot faster than any of my previous visits to the Lab. There's a perk of being Superman that I don't think he shared with me.
But here I was sort of wondering if Lois shouldn't be wondering why Superman was jogging instead of flying. On the other hand, I can see her attributing his jogging to a desire to acknowledge to her that she is now his equal, so that it is no longer quite proper for him to carry her. But since she can't fly, he politely jogs with her.
Dr. Klein stares at me in open-mouthed horror for a few seconds. Then he turns accusingly to Superman and asks, "You didn't tell her?"
Yes, well, Superman is usually open and honest with Lois, isn't he? :rolleyes: (Maybe he can't help deceiving her because she seems to enjoy being deceived?)
"There was a quarry, not far from where I grew up. That was one of the greatest boasts that you could make at my high school - that you had jumped into the quarry."
"You went to high school?" My eyes are wide open now. "Here? On Earth, I mean?"
For a second his expression looks horrified and I wonder if he's regretting his decision to tell me this story.
But while Clark enjoys playing his two-personas-game with Lois and Lois enjoys being fooled by it, Lois doesn't tolerate any slips on Clark's part, because then he is going to spoil the game. No wonder Clark is horrified.
I close my eyes and try to picture Superman as a teenager; free and happy as he subverts both the law of gravity and his parents' rules. For some odd reason I'm imagining that his parents look like Clark's. I can easily imagine Clark coming home dripping wet and pleased with himself, even though he knows he's about to catch hell for being reckless.
Of course, there is a joy in seeing through Clark's identity game, too. Lois is close to seeing through it. On the other hand, I don't know if she is being closer now than she was before, or if she has been teetering on the edge of clarity all the time.
After I get home, it takes me almost half an hour to work up the courage to climb outside my window. My knees shake as I crawl out onto the ledge. I take a deep breath and let my feet dangle. I can't do it. I know I can fly - really I do, but I just can't jump.
What a description! You put me in Lois's head
and body now! I can completely feel what it would be like to try to jump from that ledge!
And now Lois is going to take Clark flying, right? Or maybe she'd prefer to whisk Superman off his feet?
Ann