Rac, I'm sorry I haven't replied sooner. And you won't get very much feedback from me, either.
This is Clark's gruesome reality at the start of this chapter:
‘It’s going to be all right.’
The words echoed in his head as he wondered what had possessed him to utter them in the first place. Nothing was all right. The words whispered to soothe a small boy held in his arms weren’t going to change anything. It was nothing but sympathetic noise, without meaning, murmured without conviction. The boy had survived, as had three others. Four people out of more than fifty. The boy was alive, but the world as he knew it didn’t exist any more.
After having been helpless to stop a massacre, after being unable to save more than four people out of more than fifty, Clark longs for Lois:
He just…he wished Lois were there. There to remind him that not everything good was eventually broken and dirtied. To remind him that not every day ended with regrets about what he hadn’t done and what he couldn’t do. To remind him what it was like to feel happy and content and complete. To make him feel like Clark Kent again.
Possibly at the same time as Clark is longing for Lois, she has an intense, exquisitely beautiful dream about Clark. I would like to quote it all, but I'll have to just pick out my very favorite parts of it:
Lois looked up at the night’s sky, scattered with countless gleaming points of light. What might well have been the last warm breeze of a lingering summer rustled the drapes. She closed her eyes, still seeing in her mind the constellations that pointed to his star.
Her breath caught in her throat, a shiver running through her, as she felt a pair of arms slip around her waist. Anxious to relinquish the burdens she’d carried for so long, she allowed herself to collapse into his embrace, her body limp. She knew he’d catch her. He would hold her for as long as she asked. He would hold her forever. His strength was enough for both of them.
We saw Clark long for Lois, to feel better because he was embraced by her love. But here, it is Lois who needs to be held and supported by Clark. I find it so beautiful.
She leaned back, letting her head rest on his solid chest, listening to the reassuring ‘thump’ of his heart. A sigh shuddered through her as his lips brushed against her neck in a soft kiss. She felt the tingle of gooseflesh appearing on her arms. “I wish this were real,” she murmured quietly, her voice small and thin.
“This feels pretty real to me,” he whispered close to her ear, his breath warm against her skin.
I love this too: Lois
knows that being in Clark's arms isn't real. Clark agrees, in a way, but he asks her to take comfort in her dream anyway. At least, that is how I interpret his words to her.
She knew this. She knew him. In every sense of the word. The gentle strength of his hands, the smell of his skin – like sandalwood and soap, the soft sigh she could elicit by running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. These were touchstones to her – the things she used to define reality. She moaned against his mouth and felt his arms around her tighten. Her heart tripped and stumbled out of rhythm and she wondered at how something so remarkably familiar could still thrill her so completely.
I find this paragraph absolutely exquisitely beautiful. The wonderful choice of words, which are so beautiful in themselves, and the many alliterations - the smell of his skin, like sandalwood and soap, the soft sigh, the nape of his neck. These words speak of gentleness, of vulnerability, of a loving softness that is careful not to hurt another person's vulnerability.
Her breath hitched in her throat, his name escaping her lips in a strangled cry.
“Clark!”
She sat upright in bed in the darkened room; her skin still flushed, her heart still hammering against her ribcage. Lois exhaled slowly and closed her eyes. It had been a long time since she’d had a dream that intense. It had felt so real. He had been so real. Tears pricked her eyes. How could it feel like she was losing him all over again?
This reminds me of a scene from - was it last chapter? Clark was on Krypton, and ascended the stairs to a palace in the mountains, and there he met Lois. But the sweet and beautiful dream of Lois turned into a nightmare of utter loss, clearly worse than this.
While Lois had her beautiful dream about Clark, Clark did not seem to dream about Lois. Instead he was reliving the torture he suffered at the hands of Lord Nor:
He remembered being forced to kneel, thinking the pain shooting up his leg and surging throughout his body was enough to kill him. It had crashed over him, making it almost impossible to recognize the gun barrel pressed against the base of his skull, or Nor’s voice, mocking him in what he promised would be the last few moments of his life.
But death had a funny way of overriding pain. The physical agony of pain may have been without limits, but death invaded all the senses. It had a taste, bitter and acidic in the back of the throat. Its acrid stench was palpable and stung the eyes. It settled cold and hard in the gut and gnawed away at everything from the inside out. Sometimes, it echoed loudly in the ears. Other times, it whispered seductively. Soothing and calm, it coaxed him to simply let go. To float gently into oblivion. It promised an end to the pain, to the harsh, hard, rudeness of reality.
This paragraph is vivid and awfully memorable. And coming so soon after the wonderful paragraph describing Clark and Lois's gentle love, your description of death is - I don't know what adjective to use, except to say that it burns itself into my senses. Its acrid stench. The bitter and acidic taste of it in the back of the throat. The way it settles cold and hard in your gut and gnaws away at your insides. The contrast here, the contrast between gentle love and hateful, cruel death is so stark and unshakable.
He knew death, making its acquaintance over weeks spent so close he felt like he could reach out and curl his fingers around it. It was no abstraction to him; He could give the concept form and weight and substance. Even with all the death he’d seen as Superman, it had always remained a specter. It was a shadow – darkness incorporeal – that he had to fight without ever seeing it or touching it. Now, it seemed to whisper in his ear, taunting him, tallying his failures. It was deep inside him, burrowed deep in the darkened void it had carved into him, and he couldn’t purge his soul of it.
The following paragraph is even more quietly overwhelming. Here, death becomes not only real, but palpable, tangible. Before, when Clark was Superman, death could never touch him the way it does here.
“Esteemed Councilors, friends, citizens of New Krypton,” she began. “It is with great sadness that we address you today from the settlement at Silban. We are a people who have not known easy days. Our lives are fraught with difficulties and peril in the best of circumstances, which these certainly are not. But even in the depths of despair, we have demonstrated time and again courage, compassion, and an unfailing commitment to our beliefs…” With poise, grace, and eloquence she exhorted her people to not lose hope.
Much of what you write has the quietly overwhelming power of the best kind of poetry.
“You are no warmonger,” she replied resolutely. “This blood is not on your hands.”
“Yes it is!” he snapped angrily as he turned around. “It doesn’t matter if I spilled it or if I just wasn’t there to stop it. Do you have any idea how many dead bodies I carried out of the rubble here?” he demanded.
Clark looked at her through a film of tears. He closed his eyes and turned his head heavenward, his jaw clenched to keep the sob from escaping his lips. He drew in a deep, slow breath, trying desperately to hang on to that last thread of control. But as he exhaled, a tremor ran through him. He buried his head in his hands, his chin touching his chest. His body shook as he fought the tears. He felt Zara wrap her arms around him. He wanted to push her away, but he couldn’t. He stood awkward and rigid and still in her embrace.
When Lois isn't there to comfort him, he accepts Zara's embrace instead.
“I’m sorry,” he said over and over, hoping to buy the absolution he couldn’t earn.
“There is no weakness in this,” she whispered. “There is only the strength of your compassion.”
He’d been told so many times that it was his gift to feel the pain of others. That it made him more human. But how could something so brutal, so damaging, be a gift?
This is so interesting. You have referred before to the way Clark hurts at seeing the horrors of war, and you have said before that this is a gift. Is that because a military leader who grieves for the victims of war can never allow himself to be brutal?
I found this very interesting, too:
“When you’re not in Kinwara, you do most of your patrols in Metropolis, don’t you?”
“This city is my home,” she replied.
“But you’re too closely associated with it. Make rescues in Shanghai, be a presence in Moscow. You cannot allow them to keep ignoring you. Don’t be too obvious about it, but take the public relations battle to their turf.”
“You really think that’ll help?”
Dalton nodded curtly. “I believe it will.”
China and Russia were blocking any attempt to send sizable international forces to Kinwara to help its suffering people. But really, if Ultrawoman devoted all her time to America when she wasn't trying to help out in Kinwara, how could she expect China and Russia to really listen to her and take her urgings seriously? I think it is a very, very good idea that she should try to make a few rescues in China and Russia as well.
Your story also show us a couple of very disagreeable people. The contemptible traitor, Daros, and the monster of evil, Rae Et. These people don't interest me too much... but of course, if they were part of your world, you couldn't ignore them.
Even though I've been so slow at leaving FDK, I'm nevertheless looking forward to more of this, Rac.
Ann
It's time to investigate the old way with out powers.
