This is a very good chapter, Rachel, and I think you are a really great writer. Considering you are only nineteen, you are a terrific writer.
White rooms. Screams. Desperate helplessness in the face of his pain, his agony. Tears, sweat, blood…
Her reaction came without thought. She spun around, smacking the hand away and driving her elbow into her attacker’s face. There was a yelp and he began to stagger back, but a quick swipe of his feet and he went down. Hard.
Lois froze as she looked down into the blinking expression of Jimmy Olsen.
This is agonizingly well done - you description of how Lois's mental scars from the horrors of her and Superman's confinement in the white room make her react on a primal, primitive gut level, with the most primitive parts of her brain, when she feels attacked and believes that someone from the white room may have found her again. She lashes out, and more than that - she attacks Jimmy rather savagely.
And this - sorry for quoting it all, but it is so well written:
“What do you think you’re doing, Lois?” Perry demanded. Lois winced as Perry put a hand on her shoulder as he knelt down beside her.
“S-sorry,” Lois stuttered. “I—I didn’t mean to. I mean…I didn’t think.”
“Ow,” Jimmy uttered, but managed to talk with a bit of difficulty around the blood. “I—I’m all right.” He looked up through watering eyes and saw Lois, kneeling pale as death at his side. “You should wear a warning sign, you know,” he managed to joke.
Lois blinked, shaking for real now. “I’m sorry. I…I…”
“Can you stand, son?” Perry asked.
“Yeah—it’s not too bad,” Jimmy said, and began to stand with a brave wince. Perry helped him into the chair in front of his desk, and Lois stood unsteadily.
Perry seemed satisfied that Jimmy wasn’t going to keel over dead, so he turned on Lois.
“What was that, Lois?” he demanded.
Lois held onto the desk to try and ground herself and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, but much more firmly. “He startled me, that’s all.”
Notice how Lois is unable to explain why she reacted like she did. That is
not how you would normally react when you are startled.
Then Lois gets herself some information about Logram. I found this totally heartbreaking:
He was from South Carolina. Graduated with a doctorate and did research for a while before heading to Metropolis with his wife and four kids. A perfect family. A perfect home. A perfect life.
And the four kids. The oldest was eleven, the youngest was five. Lois had talked to Henderson, who had met with the family, and none of the kids or the wife had seemed to have known a thing of Logram’s crimes. In fact, the five-year-old boy was an avid Superman fan, apparently, as Henderson mentioned in passing. Henderson had come somewhat late and the boy had trotted into the room wearing Superman pajamas with a towel wrapped around his shoulders and his underwear over the pajama pants.
Logram’s wife—his family—had had no idea.
Lois shivered.
You never could really know a person.
I can see that little boy, in his Superman pajamas with a towel hanging from his shoulders and his underwear over the pajama pants. A little boy of five, who loves Superman. A little boy who loves his father too, I'm sure. And his father, who has just been killed, had spent the final days of his life torturing Superman.
Like you said, Rachel. Ultimately it isn't possible to really know another person.
And I feel so sorry for Lois. She had been caught by ruthless people who wanted to use her as a bait to capture Superman. She had to spend agonizing days in the white room, watching Superman being tortured and broken. She managed to break out of their prison and save Superman, and she took him to her apartment and cared for him. And then he just left, without telling her where he went. Not only that, but he worked hard to keep up the pretense that he is two different people. He worked hard to fool her even now, or maybe especially now. I can see that he has been incredibly hurt and broken by what Bureau 39 did to him, and I can understand that it was horrible for him to hear Lois speak so ill of Clark, but for all of that - it pained me so to see him work his little butt off to lie to her.
And now Lois is on her own. Clark has deserted her, and Perry wants to send her to a shrink and give her story to Ralph. Lex Luthor, the master of evil, has persuaded her to have dinner with him, and the fact that Clark is extremely suspicious of Luthor may in fact
lessen Lois's suspicions of him, because she is determined to think that the farmboy from Smallville is wrong about everything. Now Bureau 39 is probably after her, and Lex might well be in cahoots with Bureau 39. And the police and the military, who are supposedly working to stop this renegade branch of the military, might in fact well be in collusion with them, or at least some people working for them might be. Lois is in danger from Lex Luthor, from the police and from the military, and Perry wants to send her to a shrink and Clark is deceiving her and has deserted her.
But Lois is also painfully, painfully, painfully dense:
“Jimmy!” Lois jumped up. The copyboy stopped short at her desk, in the middle of taking a too-big bite out of a large doughnut. She managed not to wince at the large bruise from her elbow. “Did you see anyone come by my desk earlier? Tall, dark-haired, a bit on the pale side?”
Jimmy struggled to swallow the large hunk of doughnut. He gave her an odd look. “You mean Clark?”
“I saw Clark,” Lois said impatiently. “I’m talking about someone else. No glasses.”
Oh, Lois. You have just figured out that Superman may have come here dressed as someone else, and you have just described to Jimmy what the diguised Superman might look like. And Jimmy noticed such a person coming into the newsroom, namely Clark Kent. Oh, Lois. Why don't you understand that Clark is Superman? How can you be so blind? And Clark, why must you be such a liar?
This is brilliantly written, Rachel, but incredibly frustrating, too.
Ann
Oooh. <Warm fuzzy feeling abounds>
Loved this! Sometimes, Lois in Mad Dog Lane mode can be a good thing!
Great part. Looking forward to the next!