It's often a good idea not to comment right after you have read a rich, well-written story, because you have time to think of what remains foremost in your mind when you think about it. It's a way of making the most beautiful trees, as it were, stand clear of the backdrop of the story, the wood.
These are some of the trees from this part that have lodged themselves in my mind:
"He saved my life." She heard someone say. The man stepped forward, the emotions at war within him clearly visible on his face. "I heard his voice and I knew it was him. The way he talks, he doesn't sound like one of us. I used to think he sounded odd, but I don't think I've ever been so happy to recognize anyone in my entire life. He pulled me from the rubble and told me everything would all right. And I believed him."
The stranger. The odd-one-out. Can he be a force for good? And how can we deal with him, and with ourselves, if he is?
"It seems fitting that it was Kal El who killed him," another man responded.
"No it doesn't," came the retort. As one, the entire crowd turned to look at the woman who'd said it. "Kal El is a gentler sort of person than we are. You could see it in his eyes, and like that woman said, in the way he would carry a child. But we made him fight our battles for us. We should have slain our own monsters."
So heartbreakingly true.
He didn't belong here anymore now than he did nearly four years ago when they'd plucked him from his home. Four years later, he still wasn't Kal El. And that may well have been a good thing, but she knew that part of 'Clark' was slipping away. Every wound he received took something away from him. He'd said it himself – he felt like he wasn't whole anymore and for a time, he'd tried to conceal the emptiness behind a mask of anger and ill-temper.
This is devastatingly true. It's the fate of the migrant, the person who has lost his roots and has been cast adrift. When others try to cast him in a mold that isn't his, he will never become what they want him to be. Instead, he will lose what he really is. Because no man is an island, like someone said - John Donne? - and we are what our loved ones, our home and our society make us into. The longer we have been this reflection of our home and the people we love, the harder it will be for us to turn into something else altogether. And yet, at the same time, the identity we got by being a part of our own world will whittle away if we are forced to stay away from home, and it will be harder and harder to reclaim it.
His morbid ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a voice, distinctly feminine and more than a bit anxious, over the background hum of the machines. The voice was familiar, but he couldn't place it, nor could he understand what she was saying.
"Lois?" The way he pronounced the syllables, strangled and strained, hit his ears all wrong. How could he mangle the soft, mellifluous sounds of her name into something so harsh and tinny? His eyes opened a crack and brutal light came pouring in, making him regret the attempt immediately. She would understand. She would turn off the bright lights overhead and he'd see her at last, after four long and empty years, he would finally be able to look at his wife again. He wished she would hurry. The powerful lights were penetrating the thin skin of his eyelids, making him wince.
Clark reached toward the sound of the voice and brushed against a warm hand. He closed his own around it but it only took him a moment to realize it wasn't Lois's. It was most decidedly a woman's hand, but the fingers were too long, almost as long as his own. The palm, just at the first knuckle of each finger, was faintly calloused. The hand under his remained stone still. "No sir, it's just me, Talan," she said.
This, too, is absolutely heartbreaking. Clark, coming back to himself, but being momentarily totally disorientied, can associate a female, caring voice only with Lois. But the woman who is with him - and who loves him with all her heart and soul, in an amazingly selfless way - can't give him that ultimate gift. She can't be Lois to him.
He had taken a life. His actions couldn't have been more justified; it wasn't only self-defense, Kal El had killed Nor to end his reign of terror and the threat against New Krypton. While he had done the right thing, killing changed a person. It was a line one couldn't uncross.
The innocent shall sleep tonight for I will watch over them.
The oath of the Expeditionary Forces rolled around in her mind. She could stand watch over a sleeping world and a wounded leader, but neither was innocent anymore. They knew too much of darkness, they'd seen too much of the ugliness that could destroy a person's soul. Innocence was a quality of the inexperienced – of those who did not have to concern themselves with terrible choices that all had unspeakable consequences.
Clark is so good and pure that he deserves to be as innocent as the truly inexperienced ones. But because he had been called upon to save this world that is not his own, he has not been allowed to stay innocent.
She swallowed roughly around the lump in her throat. "Nor fired on the civilians you were evacuating. You drew his fire by running down a corridor. Nor shot you in the back. He was going to kill you…"
A look of horror crossed his face, his eyes growing wide. "I killed him, didn't I?"
"It was self-defense, sir. He would have killed you and others and he would have escaped if you hadn't," she whispered stridently.
"I killed him," he repeated dully as he stared at her in disbelief. She wanted to shrink from his gaze but there was nowhere she could go.
"You had no choice," she said firmly, but the look on his face told her that he found no comfort in her repeated reassurances.
He lowered his eyes, looking away from her. "I killed him," he whispered again.
He is not innocent any more.
Breathe in and then out.
Over and over again.
Stay alive from one moment to the next.
Keep fighting.
He watched the slow rise and fall of her body, his breaths having long ago fallen into sync with hers. They breathed as one, just like they had, so many times, moved as one. One soul, one body, one life, one heart.
So extremely, poignantly beautiful. This is the essence of love.
The bedclothes were molded to the outline of her body, the sheets at the end of the bed tented by only one foot; her right leg ended abruptly just below the knee. It was just so…wrong. Feet came in pairs, one the mirror image of its mate. And they were joined to ankles, hard shins, flesh, and blood. She had delicate little ankles, slender and fine-boned. He'd always teased her about them, wondering how a person could stand on ankles that skinny. Lok Sim choked back a sob as he tried not to let the memory overwhelm him.
This brings tears to my eyes, too.
What would he have done? In her place, after four years of such horror, four years of such unimaginable pain, what would he have been capable of? Would he, too, have become an agent of death? Would he have given himself to everything evil in this world to spare his love unspeakable torment? He didn't know.
He didn't want to know.
Would Lok Sim have been capable of doing to others, for the love of Enza, what Sur Ahn had done to Enza for the love of her husband? Horrible thought. There are some questions we don't want to know the answer to.
Despondent, he lowered his head to the mattress, right by where he still held her hand, feeling the soft blanket under his cheek. He closed his eyes and let the tears fall, silently at first, but he was soon sobbing. Breathe in and then out. Over and over again. It was all he could manage at the moment.
Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Heartbreaking.
Ann
