Nicely done, and pretty intense so far. Lois' reaction is believable, and seems to work well in context.
But the story also plays to one of my pet peeves when it comes to TOGoM variants. Everyone makes a big deal of Lois' suffering, and rightly so. But for all so-called insensitivity to her grief that Clark supposedly displays, everyone tends to under play Clark's point of view.
Now, everyone knows that I'm an obsessive Lois fan and generally don't give a hoot about Clark, but I think that most writers tend to too easily dismiss Clark's motivations when measured against Lois's grief (which, for the sake of story is usually overplayed).
Even in this story, Lois calls Clark's reasoning 'weak'. Clark thinks that his life is over. It doesn't matter that he's not physically dead, to his mind, Clark Kent died that night. There is no more Clark Kent. And that's a pretty devastating situation.
So, his logic that, since Clark Kent is effectively dead, it makes sense that he should allow Lois, and his other friends, to grieve naturally and adjust to life without him. Even seeing Lois reacting in a manner that surprises him still doesn't change one hard fact. To his thinking, Clark Kent is dead, and revealing that his body wasn't killed doesn't alter the fact that Clark is still gone.
Why would he think it would be kinder to tell Lois that he's really Superman and so Clark wasn't actually killed, but since the world thinks that Clark was killed he can never be Clark again. So... Clark WAS killed.
This logic is valid and Clark should 'fight' more for his decision even in the face of Lois' righteous grief and anger. Until it occurs to him, or Lois that Clark could be brought back by some ridiculous miracle, he has to live with the death of Clark Kent, and so does everyone else.
So, future TOGoM writers, remember, Clark has a legitimate point of view also. So lets not let Lois run roughshod over him just because he believes that she'd be better off with a lie than with a reality that she can't actually benefit from.
Tank (who will now slip back into his 'all things Lois' mode)
