He looked around at the unfamiliar settings. Giant trees soared high overhead, their branches filtering the light from the red sun. The ground under his feet was carpeted in thick grass and brilliantly colored flowers he didn’t recognize. He knelt down and touched the earth—soft, warm, and wet beneath his hand. He certainly wasn’t on New Krypton.
I just love when a skillful writer paints a vivid image of an alien world. You are doing that here, Rac.
Suddenly, he found himself in a clearing. He spun around, looking upward at the vermillion sky and the mountains jutting out against the horizon in the distance. He headed toward them, running until he was breathless. In the valley below the mountains, he followed the wending path of wide, placid river toward its source in the foothills.
Beautiful, particularly this, the vermillion sky. But there is also something about the fact that Clark is running towards this place, whatever it is. He is running towards it, as if he can't wait to find the peace or the joy it will offer him.
He continued through the hills until he found himself at the base of a steep palisade of ivory-colored rock. Improbably, a staircase had been carved into the side of the cliff, tracing up the sheer rock face to the ridge hundreds of feet overhead. He made his way up the staircase and followed the path along the ridge. He looked out at the verdant valley spread out below him and the forest that lined its edges, but felt compelled to continue. He didn’t even know where he was going, but he somehow knew there was somewhere he was supposed to be.
Ivory-colored rock, a vermillion sky and a verdant valley. How beautiful. But there are steps that have been carved into the side of the cliff, and you make me think of that Kryptonian legend that you told us about a little while ago. The legend about the palace or the town that had been cut into the face of the cliff, and the legend about the palace in the sky.
Opposite the edge, he could look in on the courtyards and gardens of a palace built on the mountain. Its spires and towers soared clear above the mountain’s heights. The path widened and he found himself walking through a covered corridor under soaring columns and arches. Warm sunlight filtered in between the columns, casting long shadows on the ground in front of him. He could hear a fountain bubbling somewhere nearby, probably within the maze of gardens hidden from view.
There is something magical and dreamlike about this.
He followed the corridor as it curved along the side of the cliff. The canopy ended and there was nothing overhead except the rose-colored firmament and the setting sun. He found himself on an immense semi-circular balcony overlooking the valley below.
And he has found the heart and center of his beautiful dream:
A slender woman in a dark blue gown leaned against the balcony’s wall. He would have recognized her anywhere. Her raven-dark hair. The curve of her neck. The elegance of her long, tapered fingers. A mild breeze stirred the trees overhead, causing a soft shower of tiny, white blossom petals to fall upon the balcony. She turned to look at him; the silken fabric of the gown’s skirt rustled slightly, the slit along one side giving him a tantalizing glimpse of one long, perfect leg. She smiled at him and he suddenly felt like he would never be cold again.
It's Lois. You make her the center of this uneartly, serene beauty, like a marvellous jewel.
Clark closed the distance between them in long, quick strides and took her outstretched hand. Curling his fingers around hers, he drew her into his arms and held their joined hands against his chest. He looked down and realized for the first time that he was wearing the formal robes and heavy black mantle he was forced to don for ceremonial purposes. She slipped one hand around his waist and placed her head upon his shoulder, sighing contentedly. “Dance with me,” she murmured.
The introduction of the "formal robes" and "heavy black mantle" that he was "forced to wear" for cermonial purposes adds a low, barely perceptible, ominous sound of graveness to the previously pastoral, beautiful scene.
He smiled as he kissed the crown of her hair. “We need music.”
“Fill my heart with song,
And let me sing forever more,
You are all I long for,
All I worship, and adore,”
She sung softly. He closed his eyes, still holding her hand against his heart. Their bodies swayed together.
Suddenly the alienness of the scene is gone, and all we can see is Lois and Clark, dancing to their favorite jazz music.
“Do you still love me?” she murmured.
Do you still love me? Yes, she has to ask. Because she hasn't seen or spoken to Clark for a long time.
“Until the end of time,” he replied.
Until the end of time. Yes, he will love her forever. But will his and her forever last long enough for them to se one another again in the land of the living?
A sudden rumbling caused him to still. He wrapped his arms around Lois protectively as he looked up at the darkening sky. The ground beneath them continued to shake. He watched, terrified, as the cliffs started to crumble. Lois looked up at him, fear shimmering in her dark brown eyes. “It came sooner than we thought,” she whispered.
Maybe not. The world seems to be coming to an end already.
“No.” He shook his head, holding her as tightly as he could. Clark pulled her away from the edge of the balcony as it began to crack and fall apart. He tried to protect her body with his, but what good would it do against the force of a shattering wall of rock? The world was literally crumbling all around them. He closed his eyes, wishing he still had his powers, that he could just fly them to safety.
The world was literally crumbling all around them.... Because this is
Krypton. Clark and Lois are on Krypton. And while they are still Clark and Lois, they are Jor-El and Lara at the same time. And they are just experiencing the death of planet Krypton.
“I love you,” she whispered against his chest.
“Lois, I’m so sorry,” he murmured. The sounds of the mountain cracking and splitting open at its seams thundered around them.
Is this what her love for him has brought her? Only the taste of death and desolation?
He nearly fell out of bed as he sat up with a start. His heart still pounding so loudly he could hear nothing else. He gulped in a lungful of air and looked up at the ceiling, trying desperately to figure out why he’d dreamed them onto Krypton, reliving his parents’ deaths. Intellectually, he’d tried to understand what they must have gone through, but nothing prepared him for the terror of living it out in his mind, of imagining the world coming apart in a vicious explosion of fire and chaos. Even his encounters with the Nightfall asteroid hadn’t prepared him for this.
Superman comic book canon, Superman movie canon and possibly LnC canon have it that planet Krypton was destroyed because it literally blew itself apart, exploding like a bomb. Since I am a lover of astronomy, I know that there is no force in the universe that can make stable, habitable planets blow apart like bombs. It is physically impossible. On the other hand, global, planet-wracking catastrophes
are possible. A case in point is Earth's sister planet Venus. Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth is, and judging from its distance from the Sun, it should be considerably hotter than the Earth but still borderline habitable, at least for bacteria. Instead, Venus is a scorching hot world, four times hotter than boiling water, and completely uninhabitable. What has happened to it? One fascinating theory is that Venus may have been suddenly wracked by giant earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that released absolutely huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the planet's atmosphere and caused a runaway greenhouse effect, making the planet four to five times hotter than it was before.
My point is this. Sudden, all-encompassing global planetary catastrophes
can happen. Imagine being Lara and Jor-El. Imagine watching the death of your planet, knowing that you and everything you have ever known and loved are going to die with it. The thought of it is too horrible to comprehend.
Jor-el and Lara hoped - because there is no way they could have
known - that their son would survive the death of their planet. But in his nightmare, Clark, too, succumbed to his planet's fate. In Clark's dream, Jor-el and Lara's last wish was thwarted, because their son was killed on their dying world. And Lois's dream was thwarted, too, because her husband died from her, or rather, brought her with him into the dark oblivion of death.
But that was just a dream - and Clark was alive:
He’d been spared his parents’ fate. He’d been spared the terrible deaths that had claimed them and the countless other victims of Krypton’s destruction.
And now, he thought humorlessly, he was a victim of Krypton’s salvation. On a geologically stable, quiet little planet, the surviving children of Krypton seemed hell bent on tearing this new world apart, even if they had to do it without the assistance of crumbling continents and volcanic fury.
What a bitter, painful observation this is! Are intelligent beings hell bent on destroying themselves? Is that what we are best at - ensuring our own destruction?
As a lover of astronomy, I'm only too aware of how rare and wonderful the Earth is. And, truly, how rare and wonderful
we are. If we destroy the Earth, where should we go instead? Where is New Earth located? And if
we are destroyed, if we become extinct, who will replace us? Make no mistake, we are indeed a wonder of the universe. If we destroy ourselves, we will have destroyed one of the marvels and miracles of the universe.
Clark took comfort in the fact that no amount of destruction wreaked on this world could ever touch Lois. She was safe. She was protected.
You haven't made me feel that Lois has been in any physical danger on the Earth, even though she has certainly been under the most severe mental strain. And it may still be possible that something could hurt her. Kryptonite, perhaps?
When Clark talks to Talan after his nightmare,you make me feel... well, you make me feel that it is possible that he might sleep with Talan and be unfaithful to Lois. I hope you won't make it happen. Both Clark and Talan are sufficiently honorable persons that I think they would feel very bad about themselves afterwards. And I wonder. How would Lois react if and when she found out?
On the other hand, given the circumstances.... Clark is so, so alone, so aloof, and he has the deepest respect for Talan. Maybe she could offer him some comfort... I don't want it to happen. But if it does, I think I won't blame Clark too much. I just hope that he will be able to get back to Lois afterwards, not just in the sense that he will be able to return to the Earth. I hope that he and Lois can rediscover their love for one another, and that they can learn to trust one another implicitly again and that they can find a new way to be relaxed and comfortable around each other. Because no matter what happens between Talan and Clark, Lois and Clark have been apart for so long that being together again will not be easy.
I found the scene with Lois and the President of the United States so painfully convincing, too. The President finally agrees to offer
some kind of help to Kinwara, but not too much of it:
"Yes, I wanted to let you know that I'm appointing a Special Envoy to Kinwara to investigate the situation there," he said as he sat down on the corner of his desk.
This is better than nothing, to be sure, but it is not nearly enough. And the President does it just because he needs to get Congressman Pennybaker to stop hounding him for a while:
Don't even get me started on Pennybaker; nice guy but he can be a pain in the butt when he wants to be."
And back on Krypton, Clark is again thinking that it would be so good if he learnt how to meditate so that he could become immune to his own pain and suffering - so that he can rise above his own humanity. But Talan will have none of it:
It was in a voice straining to the breaking point that she'd urged him not to turn his back on what made him human.
And like Clark, I really wonder what the mastering of this meditation technique has done to Talan:
So did that mean that she believed that she'd rejected her own humanity? What had she given up in order to be able to do her job every day?
And how would it affect Clark if he changed himself the way Talan had changed herself?
What would he have to give up in order to live without the fears that haunted him? Could he simply excise the unwanted memories like a tumor, leaving the rest of himself intact? Talan seemed to believe he couldn't. So what would he be losing? If he were able to bury the anguish he'd suffered and pretend that that sort of pain never occurred, would he still be the same person?
Would he still be able to be Superman?
Would he still be someone Lois could love?
Somehow I get the feeling here that
Talan wants Clark to remain the man that Lois can love. I feel that
Talan is looking after Clark's faithfulness to Lois, his faithfulness to Lois in a deeper sense. Yes, it will be a blow if Clark and Talan can't stay away from one another and become intimate. Still, that might be forgiven. But if Clark were to excise his own humanity, would he ever be able to find his way back to Lois again? Somehow, I don't really think he would, and Talan doesn't want him to lose that.
But then, if Clark loses his own humanity, he may also lose the pain-laden compassion that could be the difference between longtime war or longtime peace on New Krypton.
All he wanted was to rest. He was so very tired. The fears that chased him had worn him out and he couldn't keep running any longer. He just wanted to make them go away.
But Clark may reach for just this solution after all - the solution that will soothe his own unbearable pain, but which might also dash New Krypton's hopes for the future. And it might destroy his own future with Lois, too.
If Clark is reaching the depths of despair right now, Lois is able to find joy with Jon:
Her little boy amazed her. He disliked peas and loved peaches. He dragged his teddy bear, Binkie, around everywhere by the ear. He thought the bubble bath was the greatest thing ever invented and fell asleep more easily when she sang to him. Jon had his father’s big brown eyes and everyone told her that the tiny frown on his face when he concentrated was pure Lois Lane. When he laughed, she forgot what sadness felt like.
Being with Jon, giving and receiving unconditional love, makes everything bearable and all right for Lois:
She smiled wistfully. It didn’t matter to him that she wasn’t always fast enough or strong enough. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t stop a war half a world away. It didn’t matter that she didn’t always manage to save everyone. That people still got hurt. In his eyes, there were no wrongs she couldn’t fix. No hurts she couldn’t soothe away. He was still giggling when she lowered him into her embrace.
How horrible it is that Clark hasn't been able to see his little son even once. Oh, I wonder, Rac. Will Clark ever get back to Lois and Jon? And if so, how old will Jon be when father and son meet for the first time?
“Please read a story with me, Lok Sim,” Thia asked.
The towering sergeant smiled down at her. Despite his size, there was a natural gentleness in his demeanor and his movements that seemed to put everyone around him at ease. “Of course,” he replied. He stooped down to pick the little girl up, hoisting her into his arms easily. “Have we read about the lost tribe of the Northern Desert yet?” he asked as he carried her into the apartment.
I love this portrait of Lok Sim and his sweet gentleness. Somehow, I think of Lok Sim and Thia as a sort of Kryptonian version of what Clark and Jon could be, if Clark can return to the Earth.
But Talan is going to launch a big military offensive and sending many soldiers to their deaths:
She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply, thinking of the soldiers in the barracks around the camp. They were nervous and afraid and they had every right to be. They were also young and not fully aware of how deeply this war was tainting their lives. But they were courageous, too. They fought for one another as much as anything else. She hoped those bonds forged over months and years of hardship would keep them alive, but there was no doubt in her mind that they would sustain casualties, probably heavy ones at that. Sending men and women to their deaths would always be the very worst part of her job. And it never seemed to get any easier.
Will it be worth it? Will they defeat Nor? Will New Krypton become a better place?
Last but not least, I so wonder about Clark and Lois. I felt that Clark was very close to breaking here, Rac. What will happen to him?
I am, as always, looking forward to more of your story, even though the impending horror of war, and the horrors that a traitor could cause, make me feel just a touch wary about where your story is going right now.
Ann
