Oh! An extra warning: this chapter is pure fluff.
Hmmmmm. "Fluff" would translate as "WAFF", I suppose. Seeing that quite a few purely WAFFy stories not only get posted here, but they get read and they have praise heaped on them... well, in view of that, I suppose we can take your fluff, Rachel.
Superman hovered just outside Lois’s window, heedless of the pouring rain. He was already soaked to the skin a thousand times over (his suit provided little protection from the torrential downpour), and his hair was slicked back as water slid down his face like a constant river.
Another little tribute to Rachel's love of rain, I suppose!
He was late—it was almost ten o’clock, by the glimpse he had caught of a rushing businessman’s wristwatch as the man had struggled down below with an uncooperative umbrella. Clark had actually been honestly surprised. Flying around all day, in and out of so many time zones that day and night seemed to blur as one, time had slipped away from him, leaving only grey exhaustion in the late hour.
I've never thought of this. But of course this is what Einstein meant about "spacetime" - namely, that time itself is inseparably connected with space. Move around in space and you will lose connection with the time that used to be your own. (Which is why Star Trek wouldn't work, by the way - these people move across enormous distances at incredible speeds, and still they can, at least sometimes, stay in the same timeframe as the people at Star Fleet Commands, far, far away somewhere. That's impossible.)
Fortunately, for all of Clark's criss-crossing of the globe, he almost certainly hasn't moved at speeds even close to the speed of light, so at the very least he hasn't left Lois thousands of years behind him. But he gets torn loose, at it were, from his natural time zone on the Earth, which is another way of showing how he somehow lacks roots on the Earth. How he is falling upwards, away from the Earth, when he allows himself to drift. And how he needs Lois to anchor him.
Of course, he had known and tried to warn Lois that something like that would probably happen, but she just hadn’t listened. And he really had meant to get there on time
I'm glad. He is going to her as Superman.
Clark ran a soaked hand over his face to brush the rain from his eyes, but seeing as his hand was dripping wet it did little good.
He was tired.
It hadn’t helped that it had been night in Hong Kong during most of his work there, and he had returned to Metropolis to be greeted with the sky dumping several tons of water over his head.
More rain images! I don't much like rain myself, but I love reading how you write about it!
He hadn’t hovered there for more than a minute when a light went on inside and Lois Lane walked towards the window—which was interesting, because Clark was sure that she hadn’t seen him floating there. She opened the window and caught his eye.
“Are you going to come in, or are you going to stay out in the rain all night?” she asked, her tone as dry as Clark was wet. She sounded wonderful.
Hah! I love Lois's incredible coolness and Clark's adoration of her!
But instead of immediately moving, Superman didn’t answer at first. He paused, hovering there almost absently as he looked at Lois as if he was using is x-ray vision to look deeper than her skin—down into her very mind. His brow furrowed slightly as his dark eyes studied her, and for a moment Lois felt as if she, instead of him, was hovering outside his personal space and threatening to intrude.
Wow. This is such a mysterious paragraph. I can't help it, I get "Jesus vibrations" from Clark again. And here, interestingly, Lois suddenly feels that perhaps she isn't good enough for Clark - eh, for
Superman, of course.
She didn’t know what sort of conclusion he came to, but after a moment his eyes pulled from hers, and she could have sworn she saw him bite his lip, if only for a second as he ran a hand through his sopping hair.
“What is it?” Lois asked, resisting the urge to mirror his nervous action.
“N-nothing.” But he didn’t meet her eye right away.
Uncertainty. Uncertainty. Where do we go from here?
Instead, his gaze moved down at where the pounding drops were bouncing off the window ledge and onto Lois’s nice dry carpet. As if reading his mind, Lois reached over and picked up a towel from where it was sitting neatly folded on her coffee table and held it forward, as if trying to lure a little animal inside.
Oh, wow. I can see Clark as a freezing, dripping little puppy or kitten, hesitantly jumping into the warm, dry, fluffy(!) towel that Lois holds out to him like a mother hen (eh, sorry about the mixed metaphors).
He stepped forward, touching lightly upon the windowsill as he reached out and took the towel from her. He began to step inside, then there was a blur and suddenly he was standing there, a steam of cloud rising from his perfectly dry being.
Lois’s jaw dropped despite herself. “Wow,” she breathed as he turned around and blew the steam out the window.
But Clark didn't need the towel!
“Oh. That’s all right,” Lois said. “I mean, thank you for not dripping all over the place, and for doing whatever you did, but it really would have been all right. I wouldn’t have made you stay outside or anything even if you did come in dripping wet. That’s why I had the towel there and everything. But I guess you didn’t need it anyway, and I should have realized that you wouldn’t but . . . ” Oh great. Her fourth real sentence of the night and she was already babbling, and Superman knew it, from that bemused, amused look on his face. She cut herself off sharply, reaching out sharply for the towel. “Here. I can take that from you.”
I love her babbling! And Clark does, too!
“Thank you,” he said, handing it back to her. Their fingers brushed, and Lois suddenly felt quite warm despite the chill air that had been let in through the open window.
She realized she was grinning at him like an idiot and forced herself to stop.
I love how she loves him. But she feels that she has to watch her dignity and not get carried away - but of course, Clark sees it all, her elation at seeing and touching him and her attempts at self control.
So much death. So much pain. Even while he fought to save each little, single light of life and hope . . . there was so much he couldn’t do.
How had he coped with it before? It had been terrible, but he didn’t remember it eating at him, tearing at him, choking him.
Logram . . . Luthor . . . what have you done to me?
He wasn’t going to let it stop him. He couldn’t—and he couldn’t let them win. But he was so tired . . .
So moving. This is how Clark has changed, because he gets so deeply shaken at the horror and death he sees after his ordeal at the hands of Luthor and Bureau 39. But this is also how he
hasn't changed, because he keeps flying to the disaster sites to help out any way he can.
But despite all the darkness, there was that hope in the peoples’ eyes. The light of relief that dawned on their faces in the black of the night as Superman came on the scene—never-ceasing. He was ubiquitous, it seemed at times, as he darted here and there to lift and clear rubble that it would have taken days for normal men to sort through, and pinpointed a living soul amongst the ruins that probably wouldn’t have been found until it was too late.
Life. Hope. Tears of joy and reunion. He needed to focus on those. Not on the blood. Not on the darkness. He was seeking the light—showing it to the people to encourage them on their way. He was not fighting the darkness, he was just bringing the light.
So beautiful. When I was a kid, I grew up in a religious family, and my religious grandparents kept giving me all these religious books to read. I kept reading a children's version of the Bible, but as much as it fascinated me it troubled me very deeply too, because I was so frightened by this God of fury and vengeance that this kiddie Bible showed me so many times. (For example, there was a picture there of a small Egyptian child who was being eaten alive by insects. The reason that the child was being tortured to death was that God was punishing Pharaoh for enslaving the children of Israel. The cruelty and unfairness of the suffering that God visited on the Egyptian child shook me to the core of my being. When I came across Superman at age twelve, I think I embraced him so fiercely because he was a "god" of goodness and light, not of fury and vengeance.)
Clark took a deep breath, drawing himself from his thoughts. He had hardly spoken all day, except for that necessary for his rescue efforts. He needed to pull himself out of that tight, firm, unyielding mindset. It was time for him. For Clark Kent.
How interesting. So this is the difference between Superman and Clark Kent to Clark himself. (Oh, but Clark, there is more to it.)
“I’m fine,” he said, and gave an honest smile.
Lois looked at him for a moment and then just shook her head. “And to think I used to believe you couldn’t tell a lie. And I guess in one way I was right. You’re the worst liar I’ve ever heard.”
Interesting. Very interesting. I remember an LnC story where Lois marvelled at Clark's ability to lie smoothly and convincingly to Perry, without missing a beat. In that story, Lois, who didn't know about Clark's Superman identity at the time, asked Clark what else he was lying about. She told him that it takes a lot of practice to lie as well as she had seen him do, and therefore he had to lie about other things, too.
She walked towards him and reached up to touch his face—hesitating only a moment at the intimate gesture before she reached up and brushed at a streak of dirt smeared across his cheek. “You look tired. Do you . . . need to go and get some sunlight?”
Clark could tell she loathed the thought of letting him go, but she asked the question anyway. He smiled faintly. Yes, he was tired, and his whole body felt heavy and slightly achy, but he was content to stay here, just for a little while. “I’m fine, Lois. Thank you.”
I love the tenderness, the way they care for each other that you show us here.
“Can you feel it? Is it working?” Lois asked, sounding anxious.
“Yes,” Clark said, opening his eyes that he hadn’t realized he had closed in pure bliss at the small but blessed amount of energy. “Is that—?”
“A sunlamp?” she finished, a bit bashfully. “Yeah. I saw it was raining again, and I thought you might be tired . . . ” She still sounded a bit uncertain, so Clark gave her a smile and reached over to take her hand in his. He stood slowly, catching her eyes with his own, and suddenly the energy from the light seemed insignificant as he sunk into those perfect, heavenly pools of her soul.
“Thank you, Lois,” he whispered, unable to speak the words in a full voice, but somehow that just made it more powerful.
Thank you.
So beautiful. So lovely.
Thank you.
The words carried more than just a thank you for the light. That was a little thing—petty, small, and quite forgettable. This was an expression of gratitude that swept away those simple words written and left on a lonely coffee table two weeks ago, when Kal-El had left her apartment without a word.
Thank you.
Oh, so moving. The way you turn those words upside down, change their meaning very suddenly. Because when Lois found those words from Kal-El, scribbled on a piece of paper, they signalled heartache, abandonment, bereavement and farewell. Those words were all that he left her when he disappeared from her apartment and vanished from her life, temporarily at least, when he couldn't deal with Superman.
Thank you.
They carried the weight of the white room, the burden of the fears and pains. They carried the spirit of hope despite the despair, and the laughter despite the tears. They carried the sound of a thousand unspoken words of love in a cold, sterile world where all humanity had been replaced by hate—except for the two surviving lights of themselves.
Gratitude for his life, for his hope, for his still-surviving spirit. Gratitude for her smile, her laughter, even her sharp words, at times . . .
Gratitude for the way she furrowed her brow when she thought, or how her eyes lit up with a new thought. For how her gaze drifted towards the window without her noticing, or at times she looked at a bumbling, annoying partner with that odd softening in her expression without realizing it.
Gratitude for a simple word or touch, a little bit of kindness, and for the return of a worthless, worn out pocketknife.
How beautiful, beautiful this is. You don't use the word "love" at all, but you show us the love between these two people so wonderfully.
“No,” Lois whispered back, leaning forward to put her face against his warm chest as she put her arms around him. “Thank you, Kal-El, for coming back.”
Clark -
Superman - took so much from Lois when he left her. But he gave her even more when he came back to her.
She was so small, Clark realized as he gently rested his head on top of hers. How could someone so small be so strong—both in body and spirit? He was supposed to be the strongest man in the world, but he realized—he was nothing without Lois. Nothing. His arms tightened slightly. Luthor had tried to take her last night. On his father’s grave—both of their graves—he’d never see it happen and live to tell.
So beautiful.
“I’m sorry for leaving you, Lois. I’m sorry you worried.”
Lois pulled a box out of the fridge and set it on the counter before reaching in and pulling out a carton of milk. “I know you are. But you must have realized I would worry no matter what kind of note you left. And I realize you thought it wasn’t safe at my apartment. It turns out you were right.”
I'm very glad he says this to her. And I'm happy about her answer, too.
“But that just means that what you do eat you have to enjoy,” Lois nodded, then frowned. “I . . . uh . . . I had dinner, but . . . it burned, so . . . do you mind if we just skip the main course?”
Her face flushed with the admittance, and Clark wondered what in the world Lois might have tried to cook up for him. His heart warmed within him at the thought of the trouble that she had gone to . . . just for him to come.
No. Just for Superman to come.
But you are Superman, Clark.
Lois handed him a piece of the cake. They sat next to each other at the table, and Superman waited for her to start first before taking a bite of his own.
There was a moment of silence save for the stead, and then Superman closed his eyes.
“Oh my gosh.”
Lois swallowed her first bite so quickly she almost choked on it. “What is it?” she demanded, sitting up straight and putting down her spoon.
Kal-El opened his eyes at her sharp reaction, and gave an embarrassed smile. “Nothing. It’s just . . . this cake . . . ” He took another bite slowly, closing his eyes again as he positively savored it. “It’s the best thing I’ve tasted for days.”
How lovely.
Clark looked up at her and suddenly even the richness of the cheesecake was forgotten. Blushing slightly, he took another bite, but didn’t look away from her. Lois opened her eyes and caught him staring, they looked at each other for a minute, the awkwardness palpable. Clark swallowed his last bite, and an awkward grin struggled at the corner of his lip as Lois’s eyes glittered with unhidden mirth. At the same time, each of them gave a stifled laugh, then looked at each other in surprise, and Lois began to snicker.
It was ridiculous. There was nothing funny, but something was hilarious. Clark couldn’t help himself, and a grin grew on his face as he felt a chuckle rising in his chest, and before they knew it the cheesecake was forgotten as they were bent over in downright, open hilarity.
Anyone watching might have thought them both gone mad, for there was absolutely no cause for their mirth, but for the next five minutes every time either of them started to settle down, either Lois would begin snickering madly or Superman’s chin would start shaking from his failing attempts to regain a serious expression and it would start all over again.
This is wonderful. They are so comfortable and, well, so
happy together. And there are no words to convey what they feel, but there
is laughter.
“Maybe it was the cheesecake,” Superman grinned, giving up on the more somber mask for now.
Lois grinned back, realizing that she had never ever seen the superhero looking so relaxed and generally happy, which was wonderful, considering how tired he had looked when he had arrived. He really did have such a stunning, brilliant smile. It looked like it was ready to jump right off his face.
*happy sigh*
“I wasn’t certain about him being behind Bureau 39,” he said slowly, then hesitated. “Clark . . . Clark and I had some suspicions, but nothing solid. We still don’t have any proof against him.”
He is lying again. *unhappy sigh*
Lois looked troubled. “Clark said . . . Clark said you didn’t tell me because you thought I’d believe him. But when I didn’t . . . why didn’t you tell me?”
Superman shifted uncomfortably, and it looked odd to see the superhero looking so out of place—though, Lois thought with some amusement, he really did look quite unnatural sitting at her kitchen table, eating his cheesecake. His reply was serious. “You knew Clark so much better than you did me, Lois. I thought you two were friends, and if you didn’t believe him . . . why would you believe me? It’s not like we know each other that well.”
“That’s what Clark said,” Lois sighed, putting her chin in her hands and frowning at herself. “I guess I was a bit of an idiot.”
That thing about Lois being an idiot for dismissing Clark like that - she needs to repeat it to herself until she really, truly, finally believes it.
Superman gave a distant smile, but didn’t say anything. Lois’s frown deepened. “But that was before. I do know you better now, Kal-El.”
Superman put down his fork, stopping himself from further decimating the remnants of the cheesecake on his plate, which was now just a pile of crumbs and mush. “Lois . . . I don’t think you know me as well as you think you do,” he said, not looking at her
That's true, Clark. She
doesn't know you as well as she thinks she does. So it is up to you to change that.
Lois bristled at that, sitting up straight. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed, suddenly stiff and fiery as an angry cat. “Don’t you dare start that now, Kal-El!”
Clark was completely taken off guard by the sudden defensiveness of Lois’s tone and posture. “What?”
“Don’t feed me that hogwash of ‘we can’t be friends because it’s not safe.’ We’ve been over this. I don’t know if you realize it, but Lex’s interest with me has nothing to do with you. I won’t be any less in danger if you take off and move to China. So don’t you dare do what you did to Clark and try to leave me for my own good! I’m a grown woman and can make those kinds of decisions for myself!” she said, her voice taking on a slightly frantic tone.
He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t. But if he decided to, what could Lois do to stop him?
She’d go up to her rooftop and throw herself off, that’s what. And she’d keep doing it, making him come back and save her until he realized there was no point in trying to run away . . .
I love the way you write her desperation.
Clark swallowed, his eyes drifting into hers again. He couldn’t think when that happened. He didn’t want to talk, but just wanted to sit and stare and sink and lose himself in the essence, the power, the being that was Lois Lane. He lowered his eyes to his hands which were clasped on the table between them.
I love how she affects him.
“I am very grateful for what you’ve done for me, Lois,” he said softly. “You . . . you are an amazing woman. I . . . when I t-think what m-might have happened . . . ”
He was stuttering again; his voice was shaking. Lois reached over and put a hand over his. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s over.”
He is stuttering, and it doesn't make Lois angry. When
Superman is doing the stuttering, it's all right to her.
“Kal,” she said softly. “There are some times . . . when after you have been through something with someone . . . it doesn’t matter if you know all the facts from their life or not. I may not know about Krypton, about your childhood, about your life. I may not know where you live, or why you left me . . . but those don’t matter.” She looked up, catching his eyes in hers and holding them firm. “I know you. I’ve seen your soul. I have seen that, Kal, and it doesn’t matter what little details I may or may not know, because they don’t matter.”
Kal-El actually bit his lip and looked away, pulling his hands away to run a hand through his dark hair as he looked north with some preoccupation. Something tugged in the back of Lois’s mind.
“I don’t know, Lois.”
Lois’s eyes narrowed and she frowned at him for a moment. “Fine,” she said, suddenly business-like as she sat back. “Tell me. How old are you? When’s your birthday? How was it in Kryptonopolis? Did you play sports? Did everyone fly, or what? Is it genetic, or some sort of super-technology?”
Well and good, but this is not what he really needs to tell her about.
Clark hesitated, then took a deep breath as he pushed his plate away from himself. “Krypton . . . was much like Earth. The people were like humans, but the civilization was older, I guess. They couldn’t fly. My powers are genetic, but they are due to the fact that Krypton’s sun was a red sun, and Earth a smaller, younger yellow sun. So everyone just walked around there like people do here.”
Interesting. So you are thinking of Krypton's sun as a red giant, then? To you it an old sun which has ballooned to gigantic proportions as it prepares to die? Personally, I have always thought of Krypton's sun as a red dwarf, a small, light-weight star that shines more feebly than our Sun, and which will not turn into a red giant for trillions of years, if it ever does. But I admit that the science of Supermanology gives us no clue as to which interpretation is the right one!
“Lois,” he said. “I . . . I can’t help but think that . . . part of the reason why . . . Bureau 39 . . . ” He swallowed, clasping his hands under the table to hide his slight shaking, but even as he paused to compose himself Lois’s hand slipped on top of his. He flinched at first, not wanting her to feel his fear, but her small hand intertwined with one of his and didn’t let him go. “I . . . I think that if the people know . . . more about me then maybe . . .”—Lois’s hand tightened on his, feeling his fear in the reflection of her own—“. . . Maybe they won’t . . . be afraid.”
I always thought that Superman's interview with Lois Lane was so boring, because it didn't answer any of the
really important questions. But I concede the point that Clark is making here.
“I’m an a-alien, Lois,” he said, slipping slightly as he whispered the word—as if afraid of speaking it too loudly. “People hung their neighbors in the seventeenth century because of slight discrepancies to the social norm.” He looked away from her. “Fear brings out the worst in mankind.”
“Or the best,” Lois insisted, still holding his hand tight under the table. Fear was like any of the dark emotions of mankind—they tried the soul and spirit, and peeled out the fluff and lining to the truth beneath. “We both haven’t had the easiest time with being . . . afraid. But look at you. You didn’t let it stop you, even . . . back There. And you haven’t let it stop you since.”
I'm afraid I agree with Clark. We do horrible things
because of our fears, but we do great and compassionate things
in spite of our fears.
Was that a flash of guilt across his face as he glanced at her? It was gone in a moment, but Lois was sure she had seen it, and it made her heart ache. He shouldn’t still be blaming himself on things he couldn’t control. The man expected too much of himself!
Clark felt guilty, because he didn't think he deserved the praise that Lois heaped on him. He
had let fear stop him. But only for a while.
His hand squeezed hers back. “It’s taking me time, Lois,” he admitted. “You—you just kept going, no matter what.”
It was Lois’s turn to look away. “I had to,” she said softly.
There was a moment of silence, and Superman’s thumb gently brushed over her knuckles.
So sweet, so intense. I love the way Clark is speaking to Lois by brushing his thumb over her knuckles.
Clark smiled slightly. That was one of the first questions he had asked, and had been quite relieved to find that, yes, he did have parents. Yes, he was born in a very human way, rather than some strange spawning or cell-splitting as was shown on TV for some types of aliens. Family-wise, Kryptonians seemed to be quite similar to humans. He had been surprised how relieved he had been to hear that.
Interesting and poignant.
He was all that was left, except for a side note which Jor-El had dropped about some criminals being held in some alternate dimension called the Phantom Zone, but Clark hadn’t really understood, and had changed the direction of the conversation when his biological father had began a long and completely confusing explanation of it.
As long as they were put away for good, Clark was fine with that. He certainly didn’t want any super-powered criminals flying around.
Hmmmmm. Why does this sound just
so ominous, Rachel?
Clark realized she had taken his long silence for grief and cleared his throat. It certainly was an awful thought—that an entire race and civilization—his race—had been almost completely destroyed. Wiped out. Annihilated.
But it was a distanced sort of grief. Not sharp and painful, like the death of his dad. The death of his real dad—Jonathan Kent, the farmer. The simple man with the stubborn streak, the steadfast morals, the quick council and the deep, pleasant laugh.
How true this is.
With Krypton, Clark had lost something he had never had. It certainly left him feeling empty and as alone as ever, but that was it, though he felt he should have felt more.
A whole people lost. What if something like that were to happen to Earth?
Even the very thought of that made Clark feel sick. The thought of one human life slipping away needlessly made him sick.
He had to stop the pain, the needless suffering . . . He needed to help.
What a beautiful reason this is for the very existence of
Superman, defender of humanity and the Earth.
Wasn’t that enough to show that Earth was more of a home to him than Krypton could ever be? That he was more of an . . . an Earthonian, or whatever, than anything?
But Jor-El wanted him to stay at the fortress, to be trained. To be taught, so that Krypton would not be forgotten. Wasn’t it his duty to let his people live on through him?
Do you know how the war in former Yugoslavia started in the 1990s? It was because a Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosovic, reminded his people of how the Serbs had bravely fought the Turks on the Field of Thrushes back in 1389, and because of that, the Serbs now needed to honor the dead Serbs from 1389 by re-drawing the map of the Balkans, by expelling people of the wrong ethnicity from their homes, etcetera. All because of what had happened in 1389.
So, is it Clark's duty to recreate Krypton on the Earth to honor all the dead people on Krypton? Did the dead Serbs from 1389 get happier because of the Balkan wars in the 1990s?
“We still don’t have to do this, Kal-El. People don’t need to be able to pick over your life like . . . like . . . “
Like scientists over a dissected frog.
Lois swallowed. “Well, you know. They just don’t need to be able to pick over your life like this.”
“You’ve heard the rumors, Lois,” he replied seriously. “People are wondering, especially with me going . . . missing. More than ever, conspiracy theorists are shouting of a possible—a possible alien invasion of Earth. I need their trust, Lois, and it’s safer for everyone if they know the truth.”
Everyone—especially the two of them.
But you aren't being honest with her, are you, Clark? Not in the way that matters.
Clark’s eyebrows shot up. “Spandex brand?”
“You know what I mean!” Lois said, smacking him on the shoulder, but it wouldn’t have hurt him even if he wasn’t invulnerable. “Just—normal stuff—what you like, whatever.”
“Spandex brand,” Clark repeated.
How sweet this is. And how relaxed they are with each other.
“You’re impossible. Fine. If you don’t want to go near the spandex, we’ll stay clear of that, then. Your height?”
“Six four.”
Hmmmm. Physically, this Superman is a lot more like Brandon Routh than he is like Dean Cain. I seem to remember that your Superman has blue eyes, too. (Which is something Brandon Routh
hasn't got, but at least he wore blue contacts for his role as Superman!)
“Weight?”
He hesitated. “Uh . . . now, or what it usually is?”
Lois looked at him with a frown. “What do you mean?”
Superman ducked his head and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I usually weigh about 225.”
“And . . . ” Lois prompted, feeling that his sentence wasn’t quite complete.
He shrugged. “Well, right now I’m a little less than that, that’s all.”
Lois bit her lip and leaned forward to turn off her recorder. “How much did you lose?” she asked, her tone completely changing and making it clear that this was quite off the record.
He shrugged. “Some.”
“Kal-El,” Lois warned.
“It’s all right, Lois. It’s coming back.”
“Stop avoiding the question. You dangled the bait, and I’ve snatched at it. Now tell me.”
Clark gave up, knowing there was no way he was getting away from the question unless he flew out the window without another word.
“215.”
Lois leaned forward, looking into his eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her. “Right now?”
Clark shrugged and nodded.
Lois immediately reached over and took another piece of the cheesecake and plopped it on his plate. She pushed it back to him without a word, though the look she gave him was clear.
I love all of this. How terrible that Clark lost
so much weight at the hands of Bureau 39. Now he has regained some of that weight, but only some of it. Lois is horrified to find out, of course, and now she is going to make him eat more cheesecake to fatten him up a little!
Lois straightened, looking him over with a newly critical eye. “Okay, Flyboy,” she said. “If food doesn’t fatten you up, then you had better be soaking up that sunlight. I want you back up to 225 by next week, understand? If you need to cut back on your work until then, that’s fine. Even you need to watch out for yourself.”
Ten pounds in a week? Surely she wasn’t serious. It had taken him the past two weeks sitting in the sun in Smallville even to get this close to his normal weight.
“Lois, isn’t that a little ridiculous . . .”
Lois rolled her eyes exasperatingly. “Goodness, Krypton. Shoot for the stars, and even if you come up short then you’ll still probably get to where you need to be.” She leaned forward and poked him in the shoulder. “Ten pounds. Next week. I want you back in the peak of health”
Clark felt an odd but pleasant tingle at the affectionate-sounding nickname.
Again, I love it, the way they are so comfortable with one another.
Clark shrugged. “I don’t see why not, if it’s all right with the ch—with Perry.” Oops. He had almost slipped that time. He was getting too relaxed.
He's getting
too relaxed, so he's forgetting to lie to her. *unhappy sigh*
The opening notes of The Scarlet Pimpernel started the movie. They watched in silence, their fingers intertwined and Clark’s head resting lightly atop hers. The tale progressed, and the two watchers’ eyes slid slowly closed, until both unknowingly slipped into the oblivion of peaceful sleep as the rain beat a steady and peaceful rhythm outside of the quiet apartment.
What a wonderful ending.
However, this is the bottom line. Clark needs to tell Lois about his double identity. And he needs to tell her as
Superman. He knows that Lois trusts Superman in a way she doesn't trust Clark. If he respects her, he will tell her about himself very, very soon, and he will tell her as Superman. The longer he keeps lying, the more he keeps abusing her trust.
I remember that Superman flew away from Lois some chapters ago, and then he returned to Lois as
Clark and sat ouside her door for hours. It was heartbreaking to see how she dismissed him as Clark. Even so, I so wish that he had stayed with her
as Superman instead of flying away, and that he had revealed his Clark identity before her eyes instead of playing this double identity game with her.
One thing that hurts me, the biggest Lois fan in the world, is that not so few LnC fans seem more irritated at Lois for failing to see through Clark's disguise than angry at Clark for carrying on his deception in the first place. But how can it be the deceived party's duty to see through the lie more than it is the liar's duty to stop lying?
I guess many people find Lois so unbelievably dense for failing to see through Clark's disguise. Hey, we can all see so perfectly clearly that Clark and Superman are the same person. Honestly, it's so obvious! So what is wrong with Lois since she can't see it? Huh? Huh?
But I think our accusations of Lois are at least partly unfair.
We can see that Superman and Clark Kent are obviously the same person, so we think that she is galactically stupid for failing to see what we can see. But we have to accept that if Superman is to exist at all, if there really is to be a man who is hiding his amazing superhero persona behind something so flimsy as a pair of glasses and a subtly different hair style, then the laws of physics have to work differently in that universe than they do in ours, purely and simply. The difference is that in Superman's universe, Clark Kent's glasses are a sufficient disguise to hide Superman's identity. They really are. They really, truly change Superman's appearance so much that
no one can see that Superman is Clark Kent. Think about it. If Superman existed for real, he would most certainly be the most photographed and filmed person in the world. He would be the most recognizable person in the world. Now, this Superman, whose face is recognized by everyone, works as a reporter at one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world, where he is always surrounded by nosy, sharp-eyed and suspicious people whose ambition in life is to ferret out truths and scandals everywhere. If Superman had existed for real, his cover would have been blown the moment Clark Kent returned to the Daily Planet after he had made his debut as Superman.
Okay. But in Superman's universe,
no one can see that Clark Kent is the same person as Superman. Don't ask Lois to see it. Don't ask her to
see that Clark Kent is Superman.
I admit it - Lois should be able to figure it out. She should be able to notice that Clark is never around when Superman is seen "live". She should be able to notice that Clark is sick whenever Superman is sick. There are a thosuand little details she should be able to notice. She
should figure it out. For all of that, it is Superman's duty to tell her, after all she's done for him. And he should tell her as
Superman, not as Clark Kent.
It is time for Superman to come clean with her.
Ann
