hermione7
HHR and CLOIS shipper
Growing Darkness
Lana’s insecurity issues cause her to step off of the moral line. She finds herself going to Lex for advice – a man who admits to anyone around him that he’s emotionally unstable. If any further evidence of this is needed, simply look over Lex’s struggles in Season 3 with his father needing to commit him into Belle Rieve Mental Institution after having a complete breakdown.
Lex often provides her with solutions that are less than honest and Lana never once questions him or his motives, unlike Clark. She does however use any opportunity to jump to the quick and easy path for finding a solution. In “Vessel” and “Zod” when Lana overhears Clark and Chloe talking that they might have to Kill Lex, she’s of course horrified that Clark would consider doing that to Lex. However, when faced with ZOD, she’s the first one to jump to the conclusion that he must die and offers to do so. Clark won’t kill anyone. Instead of killing his former friend like he was ordered to do, he killed Fine which opened up the Phantom Zone and released ZOD. Clark’s moral center will NEVER allow him to kill a human being.
Lana’s morality is blurred. When possessed by the evil Isobel she killed Mrs. Teague using the piece of the magical stone of power which ultimately caused the meteor shower, initiated the arrival of the Kryptonians, and provided Brianiac’s access to Earth to allow him to initiate ZOD’s rebirth. One could forgive Lana for this act had she admitted to it; instead she let the Luthers cover up the circumstances around Mrs. Teague’s death and she then shrouded herself in her victim’s robes and professed her undying love to Clark instead of confessing to murder. Clark who follows his heart instead of his head ignored the bloody stone and conveniently forgot about Jor-El’s warning that the stone had been tainted by murder.
For all that she constantly challenges Clark and his honesty, she herself entered their relationship having covered up the biggest lie of all – one that Clark would have never have approved of had he known the truth. Even worse, this secret was kept and protected by Lex Luther.
Trust Issues
Lana likes to see herself as a highly moral and trustworthy person. People probably assume this to be true because of she always appears to be such a sweet and responsible girl. You have to think that had her parents survived the meteor attack that she might have turned out that way. Instead she was raised by an Aunt who painted a rosy picture of her mother to her instead of the truth that her mother was lonely and angry. One of the only times we really saw Nell was in the PILOT when she was acutely jealous of Jonathan coming into her flower shop with his wife Martha.
You have to think that some of Nell’s bitterness and jaded nature towards love must’ve rubbed off onto Lana growing up. You have to wonder if this stemmed her inability to be alone for one day in her life. Because Lana doesn’t know who she really is as a person, nor does she love herself, she identifies herself by jumping from boyfriend to boyfriend and needs a man to create her identity. The fact that Clark won’t show her who she truly is further muddies her own insecurities. How can she be Clark Kent’s girlfriend if she doesn’t even know who he is? By his inability to trust her, she can’t trust herself to make any decisions on her own.
Clark spends his time in SMALLVILLE wrestling with whether or not he can trust Lana with his secret. Although he tells himself that the reason he doesn’t tell her is that he’s worried what other people would do to her if she did know that he was from another planet, he has deeper concerns and reasons for wanting to keep this truth from her. These concerns pop up frequently in their relationship.
Clark has a dark side to his nature that he knows is something that Lana would never understand. In RED we get glimpses of Clark’s more assertive Kal-El personality and it scares Lana to death. When Clark takes off and abandons everyone in SMALLVILLE at the end of Season 2 in EXODUS, he leaves her tearfully behind knowing that she can never understand the man he feels he has become and would never be able to contain the pain that he was feeling in his heart over the guilt of causing the accident that lost his mother’s baby.
In EXILE when Lana seeks out Clark she calls his parents behind his back to let them know where he’s hiding out. A Red Kryptonite infected Clark seethes a very angry response to her pitiful declaration of love to him, “Do you always betray the people who you love?” At the end of PHOENIX he maturely tells her that they can never be together because he knows that he’s not the man who she thinks he is and that she’ll never accept the darker side of his personality. That side disgusts her. Clark knows that he can’t be with anyone who can’t accept all of him, not just part of him. He does, of course, forget this truth that he faced early on in their relationship which ended up being the core of why their relationship ultimately fails.
In ARRIVAL Lana witnessed first hand how the two Kryptonians single-handedly destroyed the entire police armada who arrived to try to secure their arrival into SMALLVILLE. All of Lana’s fears of anything different than herself and abnormal to nature returned in spades and her deep seeded racism towards freaks resurfaced. When in ZOD she learns that Lex is possessed by the spirit of an Alien and takes her to his ship, she seethes “You’re one of THEM!” Her racism for those who’re different runs deep and when she reveals parts of this hatred towards Clark, it immediately puts him on high alert considering he is abnormal himself.
Clark gave away his powers to be with Lana after sending the two Kryptonians into the Phantom Zone. In his moments of humanity when he didn’t have to worry about Lana and his secret, he was happy. But that was short-lived. In MORTAL Lex Luther sent freaks after Clark in order to see whether or not he was human or alien. Lana was again put in danger and Clark was utterly defenseless other than using his and Chloe’s brainpower to help her out.
When his powers were restored, Clark again knew that he couldn’t reveal his secret to her and their relationship spiraled rapidly downhill.
By mid-season 5 Clark realized he was at a cross-roads, it was either tell Lana the truth or let her go. He decided to tell her the truth in RECKONING. The results were disastrous. Not even 12 hours into knowing his secret Lana went to Lex and he knew that she knew Clark’s secret. The encounter between them resulted in Lana dying. Devastated, Clark returned to the Fortress of Solitude and demanded that Jor-El turn back time so that she would live.
Jor-El knows at this point that Lana was responsible for opening the portal for ZOD’s arrival and appears to deem Lana unworthy of his son’s love, but he leaves the decision to his son. The second time around, he breaks Lana’s heart w/ more lies and creates a chasm in their relationship that they cannot mend. Instead of losing his childhood love, Clark loses his father, a man of immense morality and honor. You can look at how differently Jonathan and Lana acted towards Clark at the deaths of the other in their alternate realities. Jonathan squeezed his son tightly in a loving embrace to help protect him against the rages of pain that his heart was experiencing. Lana on the other hand grabs Clark’s hand at the gravesite for Jonathan’s funeral and then lets go and walks away from him leaving him alone in his absolute time of need.
Throughout season 6 and the end of 5, Lana continues to approach Clark and dangle the trust issue in front of him like a carrot. She passively tests his waters asking if he ever regrets anything, but continues to stay with Lex, using her billionaire boyfriend to get even with Clark. In the beginning of the season we see Lex set up an elaborate ploy in ARROW to find out if Lana is loyal to him or not, Lana employs the same sorts of techniques against Clark. Ultimately they fail because Clark doesn’t fall for mind games.
In Season 6’s HYDRO, Lana realizes with crystal clarity that Chloe is completely in on Clark’s secret. She’s not only in on it, but she has adopted all of Clark’s evasive techniques needed to protect whatever Clark is hiding. Long ago Lana complained to Chloe that she never understood why Clark trusted Chloe over herself and Chloe astutely responded, “It’s because he’s not in love with me.” After Clark rejects her for one last time in the barn after she tearfully begs him to trust her, she gives herself entirely to Lex and accepts his marriage proposal. Considering the audience knows that Lex is hiding a multitude of sins and dark secrets (freak-fest hidden floor 33.1) from Lana we can only guess at how she will react to such deceptions. If she marries Lex before she finds out, she will learn to hate him and long for the rosy lens colored life that she always dreamed of with her idea of the perfect Clark. We will only know as the rest of season 6 unfolds, for the producers of the show promise that the Clark/Lana/Lex triangle angst is not yet finished.
We can only hope that things that happen will cause Clark to want to move towards embracing his destiny to one day become Superman and be strong enough to destroy Lex’s evil plans once and for all. He certainly won’t be able to do that with a woman at his side who he doesn’t trust.