Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK - After the Fall (2/2)

And now you have...the rest of the story.

Framework4, I can now comment on your feedback for part 1 without spoiling the story...You're right, had Lois been thinking clearly, she should have gone to Henderson. But she had been so thrown by Clark's state, that she had narrowed her focus for assistance to medical personnel. Fortunately, Henderson took it upon himself to intervene at his first and only opportunity to do so. So you and I were thinking along similar lines of who could best help Clark; too bad for him that Lois hadn't been with us.

I'll also point out that Clark's thinking must still be at least somewhat muddled at the end of the story... If it weren't, he would have realized that the crowd at EPRAD would not be representative of the general population: After all, those who feared Superman would be far less likely than others to choose to go anywhere that they knew Superman would be, and so would be underrepresented in the EPRAD crowd. But I'm not about to tell Clark that!

As always, all feedback welcomed. :-)

Delightful ending.

Wow, Metropolis is sure a Wild West kind of town! There must be tons of "suicide by cops" out there! In real life, I believe that a policeman using lethal force doesn't happen quite as often as this makes it seem.

Of course, then I re-read the sentence a little more carefully:

So, whew! The Metropolis PD isn't filled with a bunch of trigger-happy cowboys.

And another thing... (By the way, thanks for the links. This quote is from one:)

I always wondered if Superman gets PTSD. He sees so many horrific things.

But based on the list above, he must feel he has some control of events (well, perhaps not of the event but he can control what he does to help). And of course, after he tells Lois his secret, he gets much help and support from her.

An excellent fic, Lynn. You brought up some very good points.

Very well handled! I thought Henderson's talking-to to Superman was excellently written. Clever to have used Nightfall to get Superman going again... what would have happened if he had lost his memory in this story?

Surely with Clark's desire to help all he can, it is totally plausible that he would get PTSD, and especially after the incident with Nor. But ultimately, he would see that the world needed him. And so does Lois.

Excellent fic!

Framework 4, thank you!

Iolanthe, LOL at your first reading of the sentence in question. I had actually thought quite a bit about how I wanted to phrase that sentence -- I wanted to make it sound like Henderson and at least some of the police officers he knew had "been there, done that," without making it sound as though such shootings were a commonplace. I guess I succeeded -- sort of.

I've often thought that one of the myriad examples of the show not being terribly realistic was Clark's being able to brush off all the horrors he has seen as Superman. After all, unlike emergency personnel, he presumably has had no training in handling such stresses and, as you point out, he doesn't have very many people to "vent" to. (At the start of the show, he had only his parents, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons he was so close to them, even as an adult. Later on, as you mention, he also had Lois.) Chalk it up to super resiliency, I guess -- although he does not appear to be particularly psychologically resilient in other aspects of his life.

MozartMaid, thank you! I figured that Clark would only come out of retirement as Superman for something really big, something that the human emergency personnel couldn't handle, and I couldn't come up with anything bigger than Nightfall. Good question about what would have happened had Superman lost his memory -- Would the story have tracked more-or-less with All Shook Up, or would he, even without his memory, still have feelings or other symptoms of depression or PTSD, but just not know their cause? Either way, it would not be good.

Joy,
Lynn

Hi Lynn,

Sorry to be so late to the party.

Interesting idea. I have to admit that I kept struggling with the idea of "Clark wouldn't react like that" but then again, the idea that he might overreact isn't totally outrageous.

I thought you did well in describing Lois's attempts to help Clark work through his issues. I guess my favorite part of all was when Henderson called him on his behavior. However, it's probably a good thing that Clark wasn't hit with such an aggressive approach until he was past the worst of his depression. I wonder if it might have pushed him over the edge again.

Thanks for the upbeat ending.
Bob

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your honest feedback! I do value feedback of the "This didn't work for me" variety as much as I do the "Good job" type feedback. Of course, the latter is always more fun to receive, but the former is what will help me to improve my writing.

Could you be more specific about which of Clark's actions or reactions seemed out of character to you? Was it his killing of Nor, his extreme emotional reaction afterwards, or something else? Did you feel that I hadn't provided any motivations for the actions which seemed OOC to you, that the motivations provided weren't sufficient to justify his actions, or that his behaviors would have been out of character regardless of any motivations that could possibly have been provided? If you have any other suggestions for helping me make future stories better, I'm all ears! (Or given our communication medium, perhaps I should type, "I'm all eyes!" )

Joy,
Lynn

Hi Lynn,

In case it wasn’t clear, let my say first that I enjoyed the story. However, I did struggle with Clark’s reaction.

1. When I read any story that is set in what is generally the canon LnC universe, I have different expectations for Lois or Clark’s actions based on where they are. I expect very different behaviors depending on whether it is S1 or S4. Since this story is set in S4 I expect a high level of rapport between Lois and Clark. Recently I’ve been working my way through the DVDs. I’m currently in S3 and I’ve been watching the trust develop after Clark’s bonehead proposal. (Bonehead, in my opinion, since he didn’t first tell his real identity.) But by this point in the overall LnC story, they have learned to communicate and support each other. I have trouble with Clark’s feeling of isolation. He’s been through tough times before and, in my opinion, learned to look to Lois and his parents for support.

Yes, I know that killing someone is different, but he’s dealt with death before. In fact, one could argue that he killed the doctor, nurse, and Spenser Spenser at the end of “Ordinary People.” He also had to deal with Mayson dying in his arms during “Lucky Leon.” He’s been around death and even participated in it.


2. He killed Nor in battle. He knows that this wasn’t murder of any kind. He was in a fight for his life. Sure, Clark killed Nor. However, he didn’t intend to kill Nor and it wasn’t like he approached the battle with the intent to kill. When Clark did kill him, I can see him being upset, but his reaction seemed extreme.

If he had lost his temper and killed a human that had no real defense against his super powers, I think I could see this kind of reaction. But Clark didn’t kill a defenseless foe.

Once the initial shock wore off (I’d guess a few hours or a day at most) then I’d expect Clark to start working through what happened. I’d expect depression, nightmares and even some time away form Superman, but in this circumstance I had trouble with the level of reaction that he showed. I can see him struggling, but he’s been through too much and has too good a support system to think of killing himself.


So, that’s it. I can imagine S1 Clark feeling isolated and suicidal. I can see S4 Clark get this way but the situation would have to be extreme. How about this... Imagine if he were in a situation where he accidentally killed Lucy. What if, in her shock, Lois blamed him for Lucy’s death and refused to see or even talk to him? Now THAT could produce a suicidal Clark. (I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t read anything that angsty.)

If the original incident would have been one such as above, then I could see Clark’s despair being so extreme. If the incident also created a rift (hopefully temporary) between him and Lois so that he didn’t have her support, then I think I would have had an easier time with his reaction. I guess it all comes down to the fact that I can’t see him being that affected by Nor’s death in this circumstance.

Bob

Hi Bob,

Whew! That's good to know.

That is a good point, and one I agree with. My vision for the story (which I apparently hadn't succeeded in getting across) was that Clark had so withdrawn into himself that he was all but unreachable; had anyone but Lois tried to break through to him early on, they would not have succeeded. It was because of the rapport that she was able to get him to stop repeating his mantra and take his first baby steps back into the world.

No arguments here!

I had thought that that had been horribly out of character for him, especially that he even cracked a joke about Spencer Spencer being a broken man. I had figured that his doing that was so OOC that although the villains were frozen solid, they couldn't really have been killed; just sort of cryogenically frozen and ready to be thawed once they were safely in police custody.

But he didn't kill her. And he still felt guilty that his inactions had permitted her death.

I don't think he does, really, at least not at first.

Which was at least part of the reason why he reacted so strongly. He had had no intention of killing Nor when the battle had started. Nor's taunts about what he would do to Lois made Clark go berserk and made him behave in a way that he would never ordinarily condone. It was his lack of control as much as the death of Nor that had him so freaked out.

I should have had him flash back to his S1 comment to Trask, "That's not how I work," as well as his telling Ching, "I've never believed in killing. I've closed my mind to Kryptonian instincts like that." He was afraid that since he had lost control once and killed someone, he could do it again.

That would be an incredibly powerful story. Not one I would wish either to read or to write (too angsty for me, too), but incredibly powerful.

Fair enough. Thank you for taking the time to provide such a thoughtful and detailed analysis.

Joy,
Lynn