It's very good to have you back here, Rac. As I've said before, I'm here mainly for the Lois parts, and they are beautiful. Consider the opening paragraph:
Lois stared out at the bright red sun, slung low in the sky, as it dipped toward the orange horizon. The water glistened with the reflected sunlight, sparkling and dancing in the tides. The sky overhead was already growing a dark, deep purple and the first stars twinkled above, scattered across the expanse of space that stretched out to eternity. Her toes sunk into the wet sand. Warm water lapped at her feet as small waves broke on the beach. A gentle breeze stirred through the palms, rustling the folds of her sundress.
The bright red sun, the orange horizon, the deep dark purple of the sky... this could certainly be the Earth at sunset, but at the same time it really feels alien somehow. This is how I would picture Krypton. I found that paragraph magical.
And who is coming towards her on that beach, if not Clark?
She looked around the crescent shape of the bay, completely unaware of where she was or how she’d gotten there. A figure approached her from the opposite side of the bay. A slow smile spread across her face as she recognized the long, easy gait of her husband. He walked, barefoot toward her, the hems of his khakis soaked by the sea water. His white, buttoned down shirt was untucked and rolled up at the sleeves. He had his hands buried in his pockets. The wind played with his hair, causing a dark lock to tumble over his forehead. He smiled brightly at her, one of those beautiful smiles that lit up his eyes.
Their meeting is wonderfully sweet:
He reached out a hand to her. She slipped her hand into his and tilted her head up as he bent down. Their lips met in a sweet, gentle kiss. Lois lingered a moment, her eyes closed, her face bare inches from his. She could drink in the wonderful smell of his skin and feel his warm breath. Their fingers intertwined, they walked along the beach.
But...
“Where are we?” she asked. “I’ve never been here before.”
“I don’t know,” he replied nonchalantly. “It’s your dream.”
I love this, how the dream seems real to Lois, and how at the same time she knows that it's a dream. It was so wonderful for her to meet Clark again, and yet he is not with her at all.
She's all alone, and she has to be a hero too:
She buried her head against his shoulder once more. “I can’t do this without you,” she said softly. “I’m not cut out for all this hero stuff.”
He hugged her more tightly. “Yes, you are. I know it’s hard, and it’s not fair. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you to do my job, but there’s no one else I’d trust more with it.”
And somehow he is with her after all:
She looked up at him, her heart aching. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
He nodded as he touched her cheek gently. “You’re going to wake up soon,” he explained softly.
“Stay with me until I do,” she said. “I want to remember this when I wake up.” He remained silent, but continued to hold her.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I will always love you. Nothing can change that.”
And when Lois talks to people she knows, who criticise her for neglecting her son in favor of her journalism and her hero work, I feel this is a parallel with Clark, and his decision to leave his family behind to go to Krypton and fight his war:
“You’re not planning to go back, are you?” Anne asked, her tone suggesting disapproval.
“If I have to, yes,” Lois replied, trying not to bristle. The criticism of her dedication to the story had begun to raise her hackles. Both as Ultrawoman and as Lois Lane, she found herself surrounded by the disapproving – those who knew better than to think she could succeed.
“We all know your work is important to you, Lois, but Jon needs you, too,” Maisie said as she put the container of ice cream in a brown paper bag and rung it up.
“And why focus on a problem so far away, we’ve got problems here that need solving? We can’t take care of the whole world,” Gus added.
There are more parallels between Lois and people on Krypton. Lois is, in effect, a single mother taking care of her son while at the same time often being away to do hero work. And on Krypton, Enza is the only family her niece Thia has left, but Enza often leaves her to go and fight their war:
Reluctantly, Enza stood up and took her young niece’s hand. She hated leaving Thia behind, even if only for a few days, but she was powerless to avoid it. The best thing she could do for Thia was to play whatever role she could in ending this war as soon as possible. As the only family Thia had left, Enza had been thrust into the role of guardian when her brother and his wife had been killed. It was a role she rarely felt prepared for, but she had no choice. She was all Thia had.
The conversation between Lois and Jimmy was moving, and I found this particularly poignant:
“Does it get any easier?” he asked.
She looked at him for a long moment, a faint glimmer of hope in his eye. He was counting on her and she knew that he’d believe whatever she told him at that moment. “I don’t know.”
An extremely important point of your story seems to be that hero work is a terribly thankless and to some extent a hopeless task, but if you are a hero, you simply can't stop fighting for what you believe in.
It must be your compassion that drives you, and compassion is ultimately rooted in empathy, in your ability to feel other people's pain. That's why I found this extremely moving:
“The things you’ve seen, and been through… How do you manage?” He leaned forward and looked up at her.
“It has not been easy, sir,” she replied, folding her hands in her lap. “It’s very hard to hate what you’ve done without hating who you are.”
He chewed his lip, slightly taken aback by her words. He had never thought Talan, who was always so dispassionate, had her own demons to fight. “How do you do it?” he asked again.
“I want to learn how,” Clark replied.
“I am not certain I can teach you, sir,” Talan said, her normally steady voice wavering.
“Do you know what the greatest quality of a human being is? It’s the capacity to suffer, sir. Without it, we have no empathy, no compassion. We stop understanding others and their pain. And we lose our motivation to combat that suffering.”
“All I think about is my own pain, my fears, my nightmares. I’m no good to anyone like this. I can’t help anyone like this.”
“And I cannot show you how to conquer the pain. My only gift is the ability to outrun it. And the price is that I have to keep running from it. Constantly. I will not help you become what I’ve become. I’m sorry, sir.” Her head bowed, she backed away.
All of this is fantastic. So extremely painful and beautiful. The message is clear: you can't be a true hero unless you can understand other people's suffering. And therefore Talan knows better than to help Clark, a wonderfully compassionate hero, overcome his pain.
This is so moving. I can't help wondering, though: This was part 39, so is there an end in sight? Perhaps not. In real life, war and terror goes on and on, and some heroic people do what they can do to stop it, which may not be enough.
Ann
