Great chapter, Rachel!
His powers were a part of him. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed them. He had never realized that even though the powers didn’t make him who he was, he was incomplete without them.
But this is what he had always wanted—to be just Clark. To live as a normal man—not worrying about others, but only himself. To be able to let Lois know him as “just Clark,” and not to have to worry about anyone else.
These two quotes underscore what I keep saying about Clark - he so much wants his superhuman powers, and at the same time he so much wants to be just a regular, normal guy. He wants to be amazingly special and gifted, but he wants to be perfectly normal at the same time. He wants to have his cake and eat it. Aren't we all like that?
Superman was going to come back, and nothing—nothing—was more important than helping others. To keep them from the pain, the loss, and the terror that Clark had got to know so intimately.
But as much as Clark wants to be just a regular guy, his nobility, altruism and empathy mean that he
needs to - he
must - be Superman, so that he can use his powers to help others.
He looked towards his room, seeing upstairs and through the floor and the walls to where a couple suits that he kept here at home hung limply in the small cubby hidden at the back of his closet. Waiting.
Waiting, like the rest of the world.
I love this imagery.
“You may have been raised as a human being, Kal-El, but you are not one of them. So to this life we have sent you—to be among them, yet alone.
Jor-El speaks to Clark and gives his son many much-needed answers. Good. But I don't like how Jor-El tells his son that Clark can never really be a part of humanity. That is what Lara said to Clark in Superman II, and that is what made Clark first shed his powers for Lois and make love to her, and then, after reclaiming his powers, it made him obliterate Lois's memory of his double identity and their lovemaking. And because he violated Lois's mind like that - and because he seemed so smug and happy about having so utterly rejected her - I decided I would have nothing more to do with Superman after that. (I changed my mind when Clark seriously cleaned up his act in the comics in 1990 and later in LNC.)
To rule over them, yet never as a tyrant.
What? Jor-El has sent Clark to Earth to
rule over humanity? Excuse me?
I feel bad about this Jor-El, and I sympathize with Martha's fears when she learns that Clark has been contacted by his biological father. The scene with Martha and Clark makes me think about Superman Returns. In that movie, Superman turned his back on everything and everybody on the Earth, including his aging widowed foster mother who had lovingly raised him since he was a baby, and his pregnant and amnesiac ex-girlfriend. You make me feel that your Clark is
considering the option of leaving Martha and seeking his roots in space, but you also make me feel that your Clark is never going to desert Martha like that.
Your Clark is also thinking and obsessing about Lois all the time. I'm glad he does that, because I very much dislike his decision to just leave her. Yes, I know he did it because of his concern for her, because he felt that his friendship with her put her in danger. Even so I dislike his decision. I want him to come back to Lois, and I want him to stop lying to her! Please make him do that
soon! Ann
