Hi everyone! Thanks for your wonderful comments.

Maria, thanks for commenting. I'm glad you enjoyed the scene with Lois and Jon. As for Daros, I'm afraid history is replete with examples of military commanders too arrogant and short-sighted to do their jobs properly (then again, history also has plenty of Eisenhowers, so it's a mixed bag). People like Daros can be extremely dangerous.

Terry, thanks for your comments - very prescient, as always. I agree that what Clark is facing is a darkness inside himself that is unlike anything he's ever had to battle before. And of course, you ask if Talan has the ability to be the emotional anchor Clark needs. We'll just have to wait and see, I'm afraid.

Liz, thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the story.

Hi Carol. That was exactly what I was going for with Clark's dream, so I'm happy to hear that it worked. I don't think Clark as he is right now, would be able to wrap his mind around what Lois is going through. When we leave a familiar place behind, it's easy to forget that the place we left and the people in it will continue to change, even while we're away. Distance allows us to idealize the things that matter to us.

As for any mental link between Lois and Clark, I'm going to have to come down on the 'no' side of the fence on that one for several reasons. One, the mental link they seemed to have in the NK arc on the show appeared to be the result of the telepathic abilities of Kryptonians. 'My' Kryptonians aren't telepathic because I seriously doubt that any society of telepathic beings who can simply intrude on each others' thoughts (the way Ching did to Zara several times on the show) would be civilized. If you couldn't retreat into your own thoughts ever because someone out there could be 'listening in,' you'd go insane. Two, even if they were telepathic, being separated by billions of miles would ostensibly prevent any sort of telepathic communication between Lois and Clark. Three, I'm just really mean to my characters. I want to force them to find hope when they have no earthly reason at all to hope. I want to make them dig deep inside to find strength they didn't know they possessed.

Hi Ann. I was hoping you'd appreciate the dream sequence. It definitely draws on the fables of Kryptonian society, which Clark seems to be at least vaguely familiar with. I wholeheartedly agree that the Earth and its inhabitants are truly marvelous and miraculous things. It doesn't matter how you think we got here, we are a wonder in this immense, immeasurable universe. I wanted to convey that Krypton, in its own way, was also a marvelous world. A world of people who accomplished amazing things, who had a culture and a civilization which was worth saving. It's all the more senseless to Clark that a people who have lost so much already are gambling with the little they have left.

As I mentioned above, I think one of the things that keeps Clark going is the belief that Lois is all right. I think if he knew what she was going through, if he even had an inkling of it, it would tear him apart even more. He has to idealize the world he left behind for the sake of his own sanity.

I feel - I think humbled is the right word - to know that you're rooting for these characters to be strong and do the right thing, but that, even if they are weaker and frailer than we'd hope, you think that you might be able to forgive them, even something as terrible as infidelity. I suggest that no one read too much into the previous sentence; it's just my random musings on Ann's comment and not a hint as to what's in store.

As to what Talan has given up to merely get through each day - it is an awful lot. I think she is disconnected and detached, because there's no way she could do what she does otherwise. And I think she wouldn't wish that on anyone. She knows that compassion and grief are two sides of the same coin and that if you try to short circuit your way through the grieving process, you'll lose your ability to be compassionate. Even if she's made herself colder and more distant, however, I can't bring myself to fault her for her choice. She doesn't have a single tragedy to grieve, she has an entire career worth of horrors she'd have to deal with, with no end in sight.

But the $64,000 question is whether she can remain emotionally unavailable and stunted. She said before that peace of mind comes at the price of constantly having to outrun her nightmares. So what happens when she can't run anymore?

Lois, of course, has taken the exact opposite approach to dealing with tragedy. She's connecting to what is most human about her in order to counter the inhumanity she sees every day. In that sense, she's an extraordinarily powerful character. She's fighting to find and protect the good in a world that can be so incomprehensibly cruel. Jon makes this possible because, in a sense, motherhood is exceptionally simple - it's about unconditional love (obviously, everything else about it can be very complicated, but the love of a parent for a child should be eternal and unchanging).

Finally, I really like Lok Sim and I thoroughly enjoy writing his scenes with Thia. They're such a welcome relief from the angst.

Thanks for your comments, everyone! I very much appreciate them.


Rac