Tears began rolling freely down his face. He sat up, scooting over next to her and lifted her body up into his arms. She was so beautiful, even now.
If Lois had remained dead in this story, I could never have allowed myself to appreciate this scene in any way. I would have been too busy defending myself from it. But as it is, I can be almost swept away by the beauty of the fact that Clar's picking up Lois and holding her even though she's dead. Dammit, DJ, even though I
know she's coming back, I can still feel my eyes tearing up, and I feel almost -
almost devastated.
It's not just death-of-Lois stories that I can't stand - I'm having a very hard time standing the gloating of criminals. So I found it hard to concentrate on this, but it did indeed provide an explanation:
“Me? This is your fault. You shouldn’t have found her, Clark. If you had just left well enough alone, she’d still be alive. It’s your fault she’s dead. I’ve been living here, in this time, for the past few years. I really like the decadence of this particular era, but I also stayed to keep an eye on things. When I noticed that Superman had shown up in New York for no apparent reason – you know they plaster stuff like that on every local television station there is - I took a quick trip back into the future and found Utopia alive and well. I knew then that you had found a way to remember her, and you had found each other - again. Ugh! So you left me with no choice but to remove her from the picture entirely.
And then Clark apparently built the time machine, but dense slobs like me needed to read through this passage twice to understand that the time machine construction had actually taken place:
he knew what he had to do now. The decision had been made for him. There was no other choice. With that knowledge, his pain began to ease and he flew back to Metropolis.
**********
If only he’d just built the time machine sooner and taken them both back, fixed their past; this would never have happened. Lois would still be here with him now. He needed her. Clark knew he couldn’t live without her, didn’t want to live without her...and he didn’t have to.
But before Clark starts rectifying the time line, he asked to see Mayson:
“I asked you here so I could see you one last time; apologize to you before I leave.”
He knew he was doing this more for himself than for her. She wouldn’t know what he had done, but he would have to live with this decision. He needed to see her one last time.
I like it that he asked her to come and see him. Even if he did it more for himself than for her, I still think it was the right thing to do.
He explains things delicately to her, too:
“Leave? Where are you going?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Superman has something to do, something that has to be done, and I won’t be coming back after I leave.”
Mayson turned away from him, her eyes tearing up. “How can you do this to me? How can you propose to me one day, and then a few days later tell me that you are leaving and never coming back? Clark, I love you. I’ve come to terms with the other half of your life - Superman. Please, don’t let him take you away from me.”
It would have been easier if she had been mad at him. She had the right to be mad. This, her pleading with him not to go, this was almost unbearable. “I’m sorry, Mayson. I really am. But this is something that I have to do.”
I really like Mayson here. I can never root for her, because she was an obstacle to Lois and Clark being together, but she was never a bad person in any way. In this passage, I admire Mayson for not being angry at Clark.
And this is heartbreaking:
“I hope whatever it is, it’s worth it.”
It was. Clark knew it was, but that didn’t make this any easier for him. “Me too,” he told her softly.
And this is almost unbearable:
He wrapped her in his arms, holding her one last time. He knew that he was trading one life for another, but Lois wasn’t supposed to die. It had been Mayson who died in an explosion, not Lois.
At least neither Lois nor Mayson will be burdened by the knowledge of the horrible choice Clark had to make:
She wouldn’t know, he told himself. Neither Lois nor Mayson would know. They wouldn’t know what had happened, what he had done. But this wasn’t actually something *he* was doing. He was only correcting something that Tempus had done. He kept telling himself that, over and over. It was the only way he could face what he had to do.
Like Hamlet, or Hamlet's father, would have said: O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
“I know that I haven’t always been honest with you, but please know that I love you; and that this hurts me more than you’ll ever know,” he told her softly.
I'm glad he told her that he loved her. Thank you.
She wrapped her arms around him tighter, not wanting to let him go.
“Goodbye, Mayson,” he said, pulling away from her. He kissed her gently on the cheek and then stepped away from her, spinning into his suit. He smiled sadly at her and flew out the open door behind her.
“I love you,” he heard her whisper softly. Then he was gone, shooting up through the clouds.
Poor, poor Mayson. What a lousy card the fates had dealt her. And poor, poor Clark. Speaking about lousy, he would have to feel like a louse, or worse. But he had to do it. And DJ, you wrote this scene beautifully.
Then Clark finds Tempus in Ellen Lane's house, apparently drinking a cup of tea. Think, Clark. Why would Tempus be sitting there? He must be waiting for you. Why would he be waiting for you? Because he wants you to capture him? He wants to be punished? He wants to go back to prison? Eh... don't you think there's another possibility, Clark? How about he's set a trap for you?
But no, Clark doesn't think that far. He walks blithely into Ellen Lane's house to confront Tempus. Interestingly, in Caroline's recent story, If I Were You, Clark blundered with similar naïveté into Luthor's lair, never worrying about the possibility that Luthor had asked him to come there because he had arranged a trap for his arch-nemesis.
Thank goodness, though, H.G. Wells has survived, and he comes to Clark's rescue.
I'll leave it to others to comment on the details of Tempus' escape from prison and H.G. Wells' time window. But I did think it was strange that Clark couldn't save Lois from the explosion that killed her. Here's why:
“The one thing I don’t understand is why I couldn’t save her? I can fly around the world in a matter of minutes, why couldn’t I move fast enough to save Lois from that explosion? It’s like something...I don’t know, almost like something prevented me.”
Wells was nodding his head. “The curse.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your memories should be coming back, now that we’ve successfully stopped Tempus. Remember your wedding night, Clark? I came to your apartment to stop you from, uh, well...” Wells broke off, blushing.
That curse! I'm sure I hate it even more than Clark and Lois do! That curse will never make it into a story of mine, if I ever manage to write another one!
“So when Lois and I...” Clark broke off, realizing what had happened. “By finding her and reuniting with her, I condemned her to death.” His knees buckled and he sat down hard on the ground. It had been his fault.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, my boy. There was nothing you could have done. How could you have known? You couldn’t. And now it’s all behind you. We’ll take you back to your own time and it will be as if nothing ever happened.”
Poor Clark! Not only does he have to feel guilty of condemning Mayson to death, now he has to feel guilty of having brought about the death of Lois!
“Will it? Will I remember this?” Clark felt like he had already begun to forget some of it. It seemed foggy, not real.
He's already forgetting! Well, good thing. Some things are definitely best forgotten.
“There is always a past, and always a future, but there is also always a *present*. One spot in time that is the reality of the universe. This is the time that you came from. True, Tempus went back in the past and changed things, but from your *present* mind’s perspective you went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning with different memories, everything had suddenly changed. I have a feeling that because of the strong connection that you and Miss Lane share, your minds simply rebelled.”
I'm not absolutely sure I, the space buff and to a lesser extent, the science buff, am buying what you are saying about there being a sort of absolute *present* in the universe. ("Give me a fixed point and I shall move the universe", is what Albert Einstein is supposed to have said.) On the other hand, I
love the idea that Clark and Lois's minds rebelled when Tempus tried to take away their memories of their married life together!
Wells began to walk back towards the time machine. Clark looked at the time machine. Something was nagging at the back of his mind. It seemed important. Hadn’t there been something he’d wanted to ask Mr. Wells? Clark closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. He was sure there had been something he wanted to do, but it just wasn’t coming to him. So many memories were changing or slipping away...like a dream that he was quickly forgetting.
Clark is forgetting that he is about to redirect the time stream to a path where Mayson will be dead. I'm very glad that he's forgetting. Clark is such a truly good man that he shouldn't have to live with the burden of Mayson's death on his conscience.
Lois was standing there in a doorway just out of Clark’s reach. “Goodbye, Clark,” she said. Goodbye? What? Where was she going? “I love you,” she said through tears. Clark started towards her and then, suddenly, the room began to stretch in an unearthly manner. As the room continued stretching, Lois was being pulled away from him.
Oohh! The room is stretching! I love the weirdness!
What was happening? Clark started running towards her, his arm extended, trying desperately to reach her. He began running faster and faster until finally he was flying, but still he wasn’t any closer.
Clark was running faster and faster, but he wasn't any closer... I know what this is. It's a nightmare, right?
Lois, no! He reached even harder, and she reached out for him, too. For one brief, hopeful moment their fingertips almost touched; if he stretched just a little more maybe he could grab hold of her hand.
Ah! That image from whatever episode it was where Clark and Lois's hands are reaching for each other!
But then a figure appeared in the shadows behind Lois and grabbed her, wrenching her away from Clark’s grasp. Lois, no! Lois! The figure pulled her away from him through the doorway into weird shimmering, swirling air. Clark continued to struggle, trying to get to the doorway; but, before he could reach it, the door slammed shut. She was gone.
Oh no, what a nightmare! What a horrible nightmare! It was
almost the same nightmare that Clark had in the opening paragraphs of this story, wasn't it?
But that opening nightmare was more than just a nightmare. It was Tempus, taking Lois away from Clark for real. This dream, on the other hand, is clearly subtly different. Perhaps this
is just a dream?
He shook off the cold chill that had settled on him and reached over in bed to wrap his arms around Lois. But she wasn’t beside him. He immediately sat up feeling around for her, scanning the room for her. She wasn’t there.
NOOOO!!!!! She isn't there? She's really gone?
“Lois!” he shouted.
No answer. God no, he thought, what had happened?
“Lois!” he tried again. He headed for the doorway on a dead run to go look for her and almost knocked her down as she came walking into the room.
“Oh! Clark! You scared me. What’s wrong? I’m right here, stop yelling; you’re going to wake the neighbors.” Lois told him.
Oh god, thank god, she's back! She's alive and well and she's back! And they are back together!
Clark relaxed. What *was* wrong? Well, he’d had a nightmare, but he just had the nagging feeling that it was more than that. Like he’d come close to losing her, somehow. It all felt like a bad dream, and he didn’t want to think about it anymore. She was here, and she was safe; and that was all that mattered.
Yes, Clark, this time it really
was just a nightmare.
“It was nothing, honey, just a bad dream. I’m sorry I scared you,” he said, pulling her into a close embrace and kissing her deeply.
“Mmm, didn’t get enough earlier, huh? On second thought maybe we shouldn’t worry about waking the neighbors,” she said, giggling, searching for his mouth again with hers.
Clark couldn’t have agreed with anything more.
Me either, so get kissing! And don't let kissing be the limit, if you know what I mean. The curse is gone, remember? On second thought, don't bother remembering, 'cause everything is fixed so you don't have to worry yourselves 'bout nothing no how... Just get on with that, you know, what you were about to start doing. Hey, how can we have a Utopia if you don't have any little children, hmmm?
This has been a truly fascinating ride, DJ. Great story!
Ann
