Okay, I have to come back here and write some more for the third time. But since I don't feel any quotes of mine can do justice to the the heartbreakingly beautiful way this chapter ends, I'm just going to ask everybody to get back to Wendy's story and read the last 58 lines all over again and consider I quoted them.
And while this chapter didn't take us all the way to the wedding between Clark and Lois, it did bring us the most exquisite marriage of LC angst and WAFF. FOLCs, when have you ever read such an unbearably sad and wonderfully poignant and romantic Lois and Clark relationship story? If you know of another one, please tell me, because I want to read that one, too!
Soo... While I can't improve in any way on what Wendy has already said so masterfully, consider, nevertheless, the way Lois begins to feel guilty about dragging Clark into a marriage which will only force him into
sorting out her estate, tidying up her life, dealing with everything she was leaving behind.
So because she realises she shouldn't saddle her best friend with what can only bring him nuisance and trouble, she offers him - with chattering teeth - one last chance to back out. But then - oh, I said I wouldn't quote, but I just have to!!:
"Lois." Suddenly, he was looking at her. He reached for her other hand, holding both tightly as he gazed at her. His expression was intent, his eyes blazing with... something she couldn't quite recognise.
Speech just seemed to burst out of him. "Lois, I... I have to tell you this. Before we go in there. It... it just doesn't seem right that we do this without you knowing."
Knowing? Knowing what?
He didn't give her a chance to ask the question. The words tumbled out, like water over rapids. "Lois, I love you. I've loved you since the moment I met you. Marrying you... if this was under any other circumstances it'd be a dream come true. I... today's been a nightmare, not just because I hate to see you suffering like this, but because I can't bear the thought of losing you. You... it's breaking my heart. If... when you die, it will break my heart. I love you, Lois. So much that... oh, just so much."
"The words tumbled out, like water over rapids." Yes, indeed. Clark just wanted Lois to understand that he wasn't
unwilling to marry her in any way. But when he was trying to tell her that, the confession of his true feelings for her came tumbling out as if the sluice-gates of his ironclad control had suddenly burst wide open. Oh, Clark. Lois couldn't believe you loved her, and she so, so needed to hear you say it:
"Do you know, out of... everything you did for me today... that - what you just said - probably touched most of all." She raised her hand and, even as it shook, managed to bring it to his face so that she could touch him with her fingertips. "And... I asked her to wait in case I don't get time to tell you this later. I... I love you too. I think... I have for ages. Just too... too stupid and stubborn and blind to see it."
And now, folcs, just read the last few lines of the chapter, too, and consider the way Clark is holding Lois, and the way he is kissing her. The incredible longing he is giving in to, and the incredible tenderness of what he's doing.
But, Wendy and everybody else, I do want to bring up one of my RL concerns here, and that is the mistreatment of women. Just a few weeks ago there was a UN report saying that more women die of male violence than of poverty, starvation, diseases and war put together. And I think we Lois and Clark fans, who are interested in fiction, should perhaps ask ourselves what we think about the expendability of male and female characters in the world of Lois and Clark. Personally I found it quite interesting as well as depressing that Mayson Drake was killed for trying to get her hands on Clark, while none of the potential Lois-snatchers, Dan Scardino and Lex Luthor, suffered a similar fate.
And now that Wendy is telling a story where Lois is dying, and where she might yet actually die, I'd like to remind you that there really is a whole genre out there where fictional women die for our entertainment. Madame Butterfly. Carmen. Aida. The woman dying of cancer in
Terms of Endearment. Little black Sarah, a dying little girl in Africa whom I read about as a child, and who was so happy that she was a Christian, because now she was going home to God. A heartbreaking tale by famous Danish storyteller H. C. Andersen about a poor little beggar girl who freezes to death on Christmas Eve.
What makes many of these stories a part of a genre is that the death of the girl or the woman is seen as something
beautiful. I do think there is no corresponding genre where we are asked to see a fictional male character succumb to disease or poverty or something like that and somehow feel
good about it afterwards. To me, this suggests that we are somehow encouraged to accept, even like, the idea that fictional heroines may very well be struck down by the hardships of life. And I can't help feeling this is very much in line with a much, much broader consensus almost everywhere in the world that women are more expendable than men.
Phew! This got heavy. What I'm trying to say, however, is that if Lois dies in Wendy's story, I'm going to hate it for more than one reason. I'm going to think that this is one more story which treats women as a sort of natural resources whose passing can be mourned, to be sure, but hey - when we've chopped down one rain forest there is always another one waiting for us, isn't there? If we kill Lois then Mayson will be waiting for Clark - oh, she's dead already, but then there is Lana, or Chloe, or - well, there can never be a shortage of women out there, can there?
Ann