InsaneJournal

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Lois Lane; Intrepid Reporter (thatlanewit) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2012-11-18 14:36:00

Entry tags:

clark kent/superman, lois lane

Who: Lois and Clark
What: Lois gets hurt. Clark deals with it.
When: Starting out Monday afternoon and then eventually heading into Friday afternoon
Where: a street in Lawrence and then the hospital
Warnings: violence and angst

When Lois looked back on the events leading up to the moment, there wouldn’t be anything she could pinpoint as to being out of the ordinary. Work had been normal, full of drawn out phonecalls, finicky copy machines, a few articles submitted, and the usual banter with Clark followed by their coworkers jokes and amused looks. She’d left work in high spirits, remembering there had been an outfit she’d seen in the window of a baby boutique the week prior that she wanted to get for her future goddaughter. It shouldn’t have taken her more than a ten minute detour on the way back to the complex and considering it wasn’t even dark yet, Lois didn’t see any reason not to stop off for the dress.

There were the usual people out on the street. Commuters heading home, high schoolers heading to the local diner for an afternoon snack, and others hurrying for some last minute shopping before day turned to night. She picked up bits and pieces of conversations as she walked with the dwindling crowd unable to stop her mind pulling at the tidbits to create scenarios of what might be happening in these people’s lives. She’d done it since she was little, a way to pass the time in doctor’s offices or her father’s office while she waited for him to be done with work after school or when she waited for news of her mother’s failing health. It was a habit she never had been able to break, not that she had tried all that hard to do so.

Maybe if she’d been paying attention to the rest of her surroundings she would have noticed something off, but the maybe game was one no one could ever win in the long run. Not that she would have seen the bullet coming anyway. It wasn’t as though she had supersenses or reflexes. She was simply human.

The light turned red and the crosswalk sign flashed for the crowd to start moving, but the usual dance of the commuters was broken as Lois felt something hit her in the shoulder. Later, she wouldn’t be able to remember if she’d heard the first shot echoing through the air before it hit, but that didn’t really matter either. All that did was that the bullet had connected with it’s intended target.

She stumbled backward, pain erupting in her body as screams broke out around her. The crowd parted, scrambling away as another shot rang through the air, but Lois was already falling as the second bullet impacted just below the first. She could taste blood in her mouth, vision beginning to swim and she did the only thing she could think of before she felt the pavement underneath her body.

“Clark.”

She hoped he heard her, wherever he might be, and as she lay on the ground, gasping for breath, all she could think was that Clark was never going to let go of the fact that he had been right. Lois just hoped she would still be around to hear his lecture as she tried to stay conscious and figure out how to get herself behind something in case whoever was shooting wasn’t finished yet.

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ex_savior698
2012-11-19 10:56 pm UTC (link)

The most satisfying thing about writing a story was getting a chance to actually write it. Most of the time, if a good lead didn't have enough factual information to support what a reporter wanted to say, there was no point in even pursuing trying to write it. Any decent editor would rather jump off the top of their newspaper building than let anything that broke the laws of reporting into their paper – and for good reason, most of the time. Fortunately for one Clark Kent, today he had all of his ducks lined in a row and his story was good and ready to be pieced together and sent up for review. It was a good story, centered around the positions of some of the people who had noticed the strange occurrences here in Lawrence. At first, everyone in the office had deemed it a piece only worthy of some newspaper hellbent on fantasy, but once Clark started getting his facts straight, the story certainly seemed to have enough information backing it to warrant a little attention. News reports of strange attacks, police reports, civilians who suddenly started behaving oddly, missing persons cases doubling...

Yeah, it was a good story. It was also one that Clark knew someone else had probably been working on writing themselves. How could they not? There was so much information out there for them to dig their heels into. Eventually someone – and someone good - was going to end up looking into everything that was going on. And when they did? They'd find themselves being buried elbow deep in information that they couldn't handle. Like the fact that Superman and Lois Lane were real. But was there really any need for them to go poking around if someone else, like him did it first? If he covered the story in a convincing way, Clark could hide the important things. At the same time, he'd raise public awareness to the idea that they needed to be careful, because whatever happened next could very well happen to them.

He was hoping that the way he wrote the story in itself would imply that a secret organization – like a gang, for example – were to blame. People would buy that. And if they did? It would give them more time under the radar, which was something that everyone who had fallen through that seal needed, in Clark's opinion.

Fingers spread out across the keyboard, Clark typed in his opening statement, then looked down at the notes in his lap, referring to them as he went along. When he was finished, he'd send the whole thing over to Lois before he tried seeing how it went upstairs. If there was something important that he missed, or if he needed to word something differently, Lois would probably be able to help him figure out what it was. She was the only other person at the paper who really knew what was going on ; she was the only other person who would understand what he was trying to do, once she saw what it was that he was writing.

Lois. Clark leaned back in his chair and looked to her empty desk. She was gone for the day. Probably off shopping. Or, worse yet, looking into that Moriarty case again. Lately, it seemed like every bit of trouble that Lois got herself into was always one step more dangerous than the last. How Lois got herself tangled up with Moriarty's old gang so easily, Clark would never know. He was sure, however, that it was going to be hard for Lois to let a story like that one go, even after notifying the few authority figures they knew they could trust here about what was going on. It wasn't in her nature to let go. Lois would keep digging and digging, even if it meant that whatever she pulled out of the dirt would come at the cost of her own life.

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