Sorry for the long delay. It has been a hectic month. I tried multiple times to get here and do this and always something came up that needed my immediate attention.
Michael is right. A human being can't take a Bowie knife and stab concrete or steel and have the strength to make the knife blade bend. Tez was superhuman himself to be able to bend the bar he was attacking Clark with. I've always loved that scene, BTW, especially K Callen's expression when she was being Tez.
Also, when I wrote this part, I forgot that I also liked the scene with Jonathan hitting Clark with a baseball bat and it hurting his arms and wanted to do a similar scene here. Too many thoughts to juggle at the time, I guess. To save you all from digging through Chapter 14, here is the changed scene:
Clark remained at the table, staring unseeing at his empty coffee cup. Had he really not realized how hot it was? Was there a possibility Lois was right? How could he forget something as fundamental as being Superman? On the other hand, he had forgotten he’d made love to this wonderful beautiful woman who was trying to help him.
Suddenly, he felt Lois trying to massage his back with some sort of implement. “Oh, that feels great, Lois! I didn’t know I was so tense.” He was a little puzzled and bewildered when he heard sounds of heavy breathing, effort and small gasps coming from Lois. What was she doing that took so much effort?
Lois stopped suddenly with a final cry of “ouch.” From behind him, Lois said. “I’ll say you are tense! Want to see what I was ‘massaging’ you with?” She came around to his front gripping a Bowie Knife with both hands. She dropped it on the table in front of him with a clatter. The blade was bent raggedly at the tip.
Breathless from her physical effort, Lois panted, “I saw that on the shelf in your closet when we went to look at the Suits. I’ve been literally stabbing you in the back repeatedly. It was like trying to knife concrete. Stand up and take your shirt off.”
The first thing Clark did was exclaim, “Lois you’ve hurt yourself!” Reaching out, he took her wrist and held it gently. “Well, at least it doesn’t seem broken. But why did you do that?”
“To show you that you are invulnerable and convince you that you are Superman, of course,” she said matter-of-fact, though still out of breath. “Now stand up already.”
Clark raised his eyebrow in an expression familiar to her, but obediently stood up and removed his shirt. If they had made wild passionate love as Lois stated, she had seen him without his shirt before.
His expression with the lift of the eyebrow gave Lois hope that memory was returning. She accepted his shirt with her good hand and then showed him the knife slits in the back. She said softly, “What’s the price of one shirt if it convinces you that you can save us from Nightfall.”
Clark picked up the knife and held it in his hands and stared at it. He tried to prick his finger, but nothing happened. He pushed harder and the blade moved, not his finger. Then he let it fall to the table in resignation and turned to look at Lois. “All right. I’m getting convinced. But I still don’t know how to be Superman!” Seeing that Lois was transfixed by the sight of his bare chest, he said, “Umm, I’ll go put on another shirt.”
He turned to go and Lois put a hand on his arm to stop him. “You don’t remember your apartment, so look for your shirt in your dresser with your x-ray vision. Just don’t think ‘heat’ and start any fires.”
So today is the day I'm going to work on this. I'm hoping I will finish Chapter 15 this weekend, even if it is shorter than standard, because I'm leaving for a month and won't have computer access.
Thanks for still reading.
regards
Artemis