“Don’t worry. I’ll visit a doctor in Metropolis."
Bernie?
And Clark appears in front of her. He is dressed inconspicuously, and he isn’t wearing the glasses, and the hallway is nearly empty, which means they’ll have a brief moment before he will be recognized.
My heart is already hurting...
“I’m not going to do this again.” She looks past him, over his shoulder, to that shaft of light that is her exit, like the light at the end of the tunnel, signifying the end of her life and the beginning of forever. “Trask only found you because of me.”
“Because I was mad at you,” she says. “I was humiliated that you had lied and I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. I was so embarrassed at the radically different ways I treated your separate identities. I was so furious that I had just been starting to trust you--to like you--and then to find out you had tricked me… I was mad, and that’s the reason, Clark. The only reason.”
....
“I’m sorry,” she says, finally.
And THERE it is! Finally, Lois!
Clarks stands in that shaft of brilliant light, untouched by the shadow her body casts; he is a dark silhouette edged in gold, impassive and unbroken. His back is still to her. He does not turn. He does not watch her leave. He does not look for things that might have been. He stands as straight and tall as he did at the edge of that pond in Smallville, while green poison writhed at his feet; strong and self-sufficient and surviving (away from her; apart from her), and for the very first time, Lois begins to believe that maybe he can actually survive this. Maybe he will be all right.
When Perry sees her, he falls still.
Of course she'd go to him. He's family.
“Trask was trying to frame Superman,” Perry explains. “He thought he could be some kind of martyr to the cause. They’re still analyzing the remains, but apparently he had some kind of self-destruct device that mimicked Superman’s heat-vision. His men got away from the blast--until Superman caught up with them a few days later--but Trask made a couple statements about how Superman was threatening him, and then he blew himself up. It was on every channel, really gruesome stuff, and I guess some people would have bought into it--if Superman hadn’t gone back to that building Trask was keeping you at, and released the security footage from that to the media too. The testimony of the Bureau 39 men he captured later revealed more of it, and the depths of Trask’s paranoid delusions.”
<shakes head>
Sicko.
Atop the bag, perched incongruously, is the black and white bear from Smallville.
Clark was here.
To keep Clark safe by staying far, far away.
At this point, even basic contentment is tragically far outside her reach.
Puff pieces, as she once called them.
Still letting Clark into her heart...
I'm seriously worried that Lois is going to become suicidal...
And beside James, as if he belongs there, as if it is not impossible for him to be standing, glasses and all, on the same podium as Superman, is Clark Kent. His tie does not match his shirt, his jacket does not fit, and he is the most beautiful (the most astonishing) thing Lois has ever seen.
And then, right there in front of the world, Superman speaks.
Okay, I'm sitting here crying happy tears. Is this SuperClone? A laser-image, like Martha did in canon?
You CANNOT leave us hanging here. It's just cruel! I need to know more. I need to see Clark's resurrection. I need to see Lois becoming unbroken. I NEED MORE!!!!!!!!
Awesome, just awesome. I can't wait for the weekend!
