Wow, Shayne! Another amazing part!
She hadn't remembered him as being this impressive before. She'd been more concerned with his role as Lisa's father, but in the space of a moment it occurred to her. This really was a man from another world. He was proof that Earth really wasn't alone in the larger scheme of things.
I love this realization on her part.
It was a shock to realize that she was still attracted to him now. This was the second time in a couple of weeks that she'd been attracted to a man, and Lois wondered if this was what it was going to be like from now on. She'd been a mother for a long time, and she'd shut that part of herself away. It had gotten easier to do that than to mourn for all the missed parties and boys and dates.
Poor Lois! She believes that she has suddenly become indiscriminately horny, so that she is turned on by every rich or powerful man she happens to come across. It is so lovely that her body recognizes that Clark Kent and Superman are the same man, while her mind can't see it.
When he finally landed on a large ledge miles away from where they'd begun, Lois squinted. She could barely see the Kent estate from here.
“We had to come this far?” The thought of her daughter being able to hear things to this distance in a city the size of Metropolis was horrifying.
Lois is beginning to realize how hard it has been on Lisa to have all these superhuman powers.
“My abilities developed gradually,” he said, “but the last time I felt pain was when I was six. How long has it been since she scraped her knee or hurt herself?”
Her thoughts racing, Lois tried to remember the last time she'd had to comfort her daughter from anything other than emotional pain.
“I can't remember,” she said at last.
Even though Lois has taken care of Lisa all her life, and Superman has never been there for her, she now realizes that Superman knows many things about her daughter that Lois had no idea about.
“She was sick as a baby,” Lois said. “Not often, and it never lasted very long. It hasn't happened in years.”
“I was never sick,” he said. “Not even as a child. Being part human must make her a little more vulnerable.”
“Wouldn't you have gotten sick on Krypton?” she asked.
“Krypton was an advanced planet,” he said. “They'd gotten rid of most illnesses.”
The way he said it rang false to Lois, the first false note in the conversation.
Clark is boasting about Krypton. But it is a false boast, an empty boast. He really knows so little about Krypton, and he may have no idea why his planet "rejected" him, expelled him.
“So you don't know if you'd have been sick or not,” she said. It irritated her that he knew these things about her daughter. She'd been living with Lisa all her life, and she didn't know any of these things.
Exactly.
Of course, this was the reason they'd taken the monumental risk of driving cross country to find him. These were things no one else would be able to tell Lisa.
I'm glad she acknowledges this. She and Lisa need Clark.
“I'm not going to do anything unsafe with her,” Kal El said. “Keeping her safe is important to me.”
“She's all I have,” Lois said.
Does Clark have enough empathy with Earthlings to respect Lois's need to stay with Lisa and be the mother to her?
“You came here for a reason,” he said. “Growing up with that kind of power and not knowing what's happening or why…it's terrifying. It's the loneliest feeling in the world to realize that you are the last…the only one like you.”
It didn't sound like he'd grown up on Krypton. Lois nodded encouragingly.
“I don't want her to go through what I…I don't want her to go through something like that.”
He's letting his own pain and vulnerability show, and Lois responds to him more deeply. She trusts him more.
“She's going to have a lot of questions,” Lois said. “What all will she be able to do…what will she need to watch out for. Is there some way to control what she's going through?”
“I'll be there for her,” he said. The look in his eyes was convincing, filled with remembered pain.
“Just…don't shut me out,” she said. “She's my daughter, and I don't want to feel like the third wheel. I want to be involved in any decisions.”
Yes, Clark. Be there for her, but don't shut Lois out.
“Um…just how long will it be before she can fly?”
His expression became carefully neutral. “The first time I flew was the night we met. I was seventeen.”
Lois felt heat rising to her face. He'd first flown on the night they'd been together. It wasn't suggestive on the outside, but it felt that way, as though flying was a metaphor for something else.
Oh, this is so incredibly erotically tense and loaded.
The first time ever that Clark had flown was after he had made love to Lois? What is that old expression again? 'She will make a man out of you.' Well, Lois made a "Flyboy" out of Clark when he had joined his body with hers. Amazing. So unbelievably poetic. The erotic climax is sometimes described as flying. Clark has been flying ever since he first "flew" with Lois. But all his flights since that magical night have been lonely and sad.
Amazing. I love it. I love Clark's "carefully neutral expression" when he told Lois, too. It's interesting that he was so specific. He didn't
have to tell her that he first flew the same night that he made love to her. He could just have told her that he first flew when he was seventeen. Does he want her to understand what an incredible effect she had on him? Is he telling her, or hinting at least, that he wants her back in his life as his lover?
But will it be enough for Lois to be Superman's lover, his pleasurable little hobby?
“I'll have to make sure she isn't doing any unauthorized flying when she's sixteen or seventeen.” Lois said dryly.
She took a deep breath. Girls tended to develop earlier than boys, and so there was no telling what the actual progression was going to be. However, this man knew things about what was going to be happening to Lisa, and furthermore, he was her only link to a world that was reportedly dead.
“Let's work together on this.”
For now, Lois wants to keep her personal relationship with Superman businesslike. But she needs him to be Lisa's father, too.
The sound of wheels rolling against tile behind her startled her, and she turned.
A skeleton sitting in a wheelchair faced her.
Shayne, you gave me such a shock with this! A skeleton in a wheelchair!
There is something so incredibly creepy and evil about it, whether or not you will give us a reasonable explanation for this "skeleton" thing.
Uncertainly, Lisa smiled. Back when she'd been afraid she was crazy, seeing people as skeletons had scared her. It had seemed like sure proof that she was one step away from being taken away from her mother and locked away in a terrifying place forever.
Now, she preferred it to seeing people naked. That had been the most horrifying day of school ever. The discovery that most people absolutely needed clothing had been a shock.
Seeing them as muscles moving without skin had been the worst. All in all, clean bones were preferable to seeing floating guts.
Yup, a reasonable explanation.
“You must be Lisa.” The skeleton had a pleasant voice, even if it did insist on grinning at her.
A grinning skeleton with a pleasant voice! Evil, evil, evil!
“I have a present for you,” it said. “I made it myself.”
Dangling from its bony fingers was a familiar piece of jewelry. It was a bracelet, and it looked just like the one her mother had, the one which had been so fascinating.
Oh noooo!!! No, no, noooo!!!
Well, Shayne, you asked us for some advice about where you should be going with this. It seems to me that this Joshua person is pretty much evil incarnate - okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating just a little, but he completely gives me the shudders. It is also obvious that Clark isn't nearly as good a person as we would expect him to be. Undoubtedly he has been corrupted by Joshua, and specifically, he has been corrupted by the Red K jewelry that Josha has given him. (Or else Joshua just figured out how badly the red K was affecting Clark, and then he has primarily been manipulating Clark while he was under the morally corrupting influence of the red kryptonite.)
Anyway, this appears to be the situation. Clark is a lot more morally ambiguous and weak than he ought to be. He apparently trusts Joshua. Joshua has corrupted him. Now Joshua wants to corrupt his daughter. And by re-introducing Clark to red K, Joshua might be able to make Clark's character take a sharp turn for the worse.
Well, all I can say about this is - Lois Lane to the rescue! She won't be impressed by Joshua, and she can't be affected by the red K. She must be able to figure out that Lisa has some red K again, and hopefully she will manage to figure out where the red K came from, and who gave it to Lisa. She should be able to understand that Joshua is the enemy. Joshua will respond buy trying to kill her. How will Clark and Lisa react if they find out that Lois is in mortal danger? Will they fight for Lois's life even if that means giving up on red K and breaking free of Joshua's influence? Which is stronger, Lisa's love for her mom and Clark's need to protect his daughter as well as his wishful longing for Lois, or Lisa's and Clark's morally corrupting depencence on the red K?
Wow!!! Amazingly fascinating. Shayne, you must continue this!
Ann
