Okay, Wendy, I'm ready for part 4/22 now! You realize that we've seen through your ploy now, don't you, of pretending to write a short story as a cover-up for starting a new epic? Sneaky, sneaky. But we know better.
This is a really wonderful story! Sure, it's based on one of the most written and rewritten scenes in all of L&C, but you always have something new to bring to it. And it feels good to really hash through all of the issues that were simmering underneath Lois's rejection of Clark's love, plea for Superman's, and then finally acceptance of Lex's.
The introspection behind the dialogue is just enough to let us feel like the speech is only the surface of everything that is really passing between them, but without overpowering the dialogue (or making us forget what the last person's line was). An excellent balance.
I, like Lois, am a little unclear on what Superman was trying to show Lois when he took her to Pakistan. But maybe that's at least partly because the idea of how much suffering Clark sees and deals with in his role as Superman and how he recovers from it is a theme so often discussed in fanfiction that it has grown old and seems obvious to me. You are going to include Lois actually getting an article published about Pakistan, right? I will be very disappointed if she doesn't manage to convince the DP of the necessity of such an article--and write it in a way that makes people actually read it, too.
Can't wait for the next part, be it the final or not!
