Walking into the Daily Planet that day had an exhilarating first-day-of-the-rest-of-his-life feel to it. He and Lois were taking the next step. They had an understanding. They hadn't spelled it out in so many words, but everything felt more settled now, and he knew the days of wondering if she would ever be his were over. Granted, for two more days, he'd have to juggle Clark Kent and Superman, but as of Friday, he'd be completely free. Just thinking about it filled him with a nervous excitement, like the feeling he'd had when he graduated from college and set out to see the world. In leaving Superman behind, he was embarking on a new life filled with new possibilities.
Wow. I love the "graduating from collage" comparison here. "Nervous excitement" - I can so feel it. I love how you make Clark's lunkheaded decision seem so right and wonderful, at least to him!
The feelings he'd kept hidden in his heart for nearly two years were finally out in the open and acknowledged, and he felt like he had “Clark Kent loves Lois Lane” tattooed on his forehead for the entire office to see.
Adorable. *sigh*
“Where've you been?”
For once, he was able to manage a truthful answer to that question. Or at least a half-truthful answer, which was still considerably better than his usual efforts. “I had an appointment with Constance Hunter. I had a couple of questions for her about the copycat lawsuits against Superman. She seems to think that most of them will be dismissed.”
I love how he manages a half-truthful answer to her question. Of course, this begs another question... Clark, aren't you going to be honest with her about the fact that you are, or used to be, Superman? Do you think you can will your Kryptonian origins away by never acknowledging them? But if you are going to marry Lois and live with her, how can you keep your "difference" from her? For example, you can't shave using any sort of razor.(In the comics, Clark shaves by reflecting beams of concentrated heat vision off a mirror onto his chin.) Can you keep that and a thousand other little details a secret from her? Are you still going to spend a lifetime lying to her?
It's so ironic to think that Clark is looking forward to being able to stop lying to Lois. But carrying out his plans means lying to her as much as ever, only about different things.
“Well they'd better be! Every last one of them is ridiculous.”
He smiled. Now that he knew Clark was her choice, he found her vehement defense of Superman heartening, rather than threatening.
Oh, Clark. You'll never get straightened out until you stop being jealous of yourself. More importantly, you'll never get straightened out until you stop dividing yourself into two people. You'll never know who you are until you can be one whole person before the woman you love.
And I can't quote all of that office flirting thing, but it was adorable. Oh, Clark is so giddily in love with Lois, and she is in love with her, too.
Mostly, his mind wandered to Lois and the way she'd felt in his arms the night before. Finally acknowledging their feelings for one another had seemed to break down so many barriers – even the ones that had existed in his own mind.
Most of them were in your own mind, Clark. And most of them are still there.
He'd always been a little afraid to let himself hope before, for fear of being crushed by disappointment if she were never his. The agony of watching her almost marry Lex Luthor had never left him, and he wasn't sure his heart would survive something like that again. So he had been cautious in his hopes, cautious in his expectations, but now the time for caution was over, and he could let himself imagine a future with the woman he loved.
Oh, groan. Clark, you could have stopped her from accepting Luthor's proposal, if you had only told you about your suspicions of him
as Superman. In fact, you could have achieved so much more so much sooner if you had only acknowledged Lois a little more as Superman, and perhaps told her that you were leading a double life, and that only the "ordinary guy" aspect of you could ever officially have a relationship with her. You could have told her, too, that unless she could show you love when you were the ordinary guy, you couldn't believe in her love for you.
With another word or two of farewell, they hung up, and Clark was left staring pensively at the phone, feeling uneasy.
Why had he told her he'd already spoken to Superman?
How many times had he used that one, he wondered. How many times had he explained away some bit of information by saying that he'd "talked to Superman?' Each day it got more complicated, more confusing. Superman knew this, but Clark knew that. Superman had been here, while Clark had been there. He'd become a master of compartmentalization these last two years, but always there was the dread, coiled tight as a spring in his gut, that he was going to say or do something wrong. Something he couldn't explain away. Something that was going to expose his double life and put his friends and family in danger. For two years he'd walked that tightrope and woven his own safety net of lies.
Exactly. It is so hard to lie. It is hard work. You have to remember so much - always remember
what lies to tell
when, and to
whom. And you have to appear relaxed and confident all the time, when in fact you have to be constantly watchful and sort of suspicious of the people around you. It's terribly easy to slip up. There are many fanfics which claim that Clark is a bad liar because he is such a naturally honest person, and in these fics, Lois is the one who has to do the necessary lying. In reality, though, Clark must be an an incredibly smooth liar. But his constant lies must be wearing him down, and he must long for a life where he can be honest, no doubt. And that is what this story is really about, of course. Clark, the alien,
needs to be accepted and loved as a human so that he won't feel so existentially alone, and now that Lois is prepared to love him as such, he needs to give her his honest humanity 24/7.
He hadn't needed to lie to Constance Hunter when she called. That was the thing that had struck him most forcefully as he hung up his phone. What would it have cost him to let her give him her spiel about the Superman Foundation? Five minutes at most? Was he trying to save her the trouble of telling him or himself the trouble of listening to her? Either way, it didn't make any sense. It was one thing to justify lying to protect his family, but he was lying out of sheer habit now. Anytime Superman's name came up, it seemed, Clark spun another lie.
Wow. Breaking the habit of lying is going to be so hard. And at the same time he is going to have to keep lying about certain things.
What would it be like not to have to do that anymore, he wondered? What would it be like to go a whole day without telling a single lie to his boss, to his co-workers, to the woman he loved? He wanted that, he thought fiercely. Wanted it with a greed he hadn't known he was capable of feeling. He was like a child with his face pressed against a shop window, desperately wishing for what he saw inside. He could imagine that life; it was almost near enough to touch. And in two days, it would be his.
What a lovely paragraph. Clark is like a small boy, waiting with an almost painful eagerness for the magical gifts of Christmas. (And because he is waiting so desperately, getting what he was looking forward to is not going to be as wonderful as he thought.)
The reality of that was settling over him like a warm blanket on a cold night. He wanted to wrap himself up in it, to let himself relax into it
There is something almost childlike about this, too.
He felt like there should be a brass band playing and fireworks exploding over his workstation, given the momentousness of the thing he was doing, but instead, there was just the usual hum of the newsroom and the usual people bustling back and forth, paying no attention at all to the mundane sight of Clark Kent working at his computer.
Wow. I love this. This is another wonderful insight into the man leading two lives, one world famous, the other modest and mundane.
Clark's heart was pounding as he read over what he'd written. Like his conversation with Constance that morning, seeing those words marching across the page seemed to make his decision that much more real. It felt like he was lining up dominoes one after another, until that final moment when he would give them the push that would send them tumbling into one another and end it all.
I love the dominoes image.
Those words were a tapestry of the vague half-truths that had become a staple of his life over the past two years. On Friday he would wear Superman's suit for the last time as he read those half-truths aloud to a crowd full of reporters. And then he would fly away to freedom.
This is brilliantly written. To Clark, it is his noble Superman persona who is the cause of all his shameful lies. And it is his cowardly quitting that will let him fly away to freedom.
Some impulse he preferred not to analyze made him leave his desk then and head to the roof of the Daily Planet. He spun into the red and blue suit and lifted off slowly, taking a moment to look out over the city. He'd come home to Metropolis when he was twenty-seven years old, even though at that time, it was a city he'd never seen before. In the two years since, he'd put down deep roots there, as both Clark and Superman, and he figured he knew every square inch of Metropolis by now. He paused and turned in midair, his cape swirling around him. Though he wasn't really leaving Metropolis, this view of it would soon be all but lost to him, and he wanted to soak it in…to memorize every detail. To his right, the bay shimmered in the morning sunlight. To his left, the river meandered lazily toward the sea. And between the two, buildings rose up out of a maze of streets and alleys, some stretching eagerly toward the sky, while others rested modestly in their neighbors' shadows. Every peak and valley of that skyline was as familiar to him as the layout of his own apartment.
So beautiful, Caroline. You make me see Metropolis so breathtakingly from this aerial point of view. And you make me feel what an incredible loss it would be to give it up.
He felt a fondness for the city and its people well up in him. The people of Metropolis had welcomed him, for the most part, with trust rather than fear. They had allowed an alien in a red and blue suit to walk and work amongst them. They had celebrated his successes and had bought t-shirts and toys and Halloween costumes adorned with his shield. And when they were hurt or afraid, when they were in need of help, his name had risen to their lips in a desperate cry, and he had always tried to answer them.
As he drifted over the shining city, buffeted a little by the soft spring wind, he wondered for the first time if Metropolis would forgive him for what he was about to do.
Wonderful. Yes, Clark ought to give some thought to that, too. After all, there was a reason why he ever became Superman, and that is because he wanted to help. More than that, it was because he wanted to help and still stay in the same city instead of running away, afraid of getting caught. Are you just going to rid yourslef of those impulses or needs to help, Clark? Or do you think you can help without being seen, and without the people in Metropolis figuring out what you are doing?
By the way, Caroline... that farewell letter from Superman. What did Clark do with it? Did he print it, leaving it lying on his desk? Or did he leave it just sitting there on his computer screen, so that Lois can come back and see it?
This is fascinating, and beautifully written.
Ann
Clark is such a lunkhead. I hope someone knocks some sense into him soon.
!!
. I believe he printed a copy, though, and took it with him... 
