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Lois Lane; Intrepid Reporter (thatlanewit) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2013-04-21 14:12:00

Entry tags:

clark kent/superman, lois lane

WHO: Lois and Clark
WHAT: Dealing with a hunt gone horribly wrong and then even worse choices made afterward
WHEN: Sunday evening/Monday morning
WHERE: side of the complex
RATING: TBD!

It probably said something that Lois Lane hadn’t spoken out loud since she’d arrived in the medbay waiting area for any news on how Dick or Rose were doing. She’d sat in the woods with the unconscious boy for a few minutes after Clark had gone to bring Dick to the medbay and in those minutes of answering people’s inquiries on the boards had made a decision she had a feeling she’d always come to regret. But there was no taking back giving the child over to Loki and then in turn Guy. There was no changing the fact that the side of the complex now had the blood of a child splattered across it or that she’d had a part in the ending of that child’s life.

It was so easy to say monster and believe the creatures they were hunting were evil in the middle of hunting classes or when one was trying to eat her friends, but the boy hadn’t looked evil when he’d finally been knocked unconscious and was laying on the grassy floor. He’d looked like a child. He had been a child and no doubt had only attacked them because of what they had done to his mother. Part of her wondered if it was all part of a trick considering the Rakshasha’s were shapeshifters, but just because something shapeshifted didn’t mean it didn’t have feelings, emotions. It didn’t mean it couldn’t feel pain, right? Just because it wasn’t human that didn’t mean it didn’t deserve a chance to live.

She’d headed out to the area where Loki was supposed to have dropped off the kid, wondering if maybe they could bury him properly at least. It wouldn’t atone for much but maybe it would help some to at least do that for the dead boy. When she arrived in the gardened area there was no trace of the kid’s body, only blood where he had been slain. It had splattered against the wall and pooled on the walkway tiles, leaving a mess that no one seemed intent on cleaning up.

Lois stared at it for a long time, uncertain if cleaning up what was left of the child was honoring him or if leaving it there to dry would be. In the end, she couldn’t leave it for anyone else to do and gathered supplies from the lobby kitchen to start washing it away. The amount of blood and the way it patterned on the ground gave a good impression of exactly what Guy had done to it. The child hadn’t had an easy death. He’d definitely been tortured and that just made the whole thing a lot worse.

She had her own injuries that needed to be taken care of, scrapes along her arms and legs that needed to be cleaned, and she was fairly certain there was something along her back that was making her hurt and was bleeding if the way her shirt stuck to it was any indication. But she wasn’t leaving this spot until she got rid of every last piece of blood that was strewn across the ground.

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ex_savior698
2013-04-21 11:35 pm UTC (link)

They had agreed to draw some lines. That was the only reason why Clark had fought so hard against telling Lois that there was no way he was going to let her go on that hunt, let alone without him. She needed to do this. Lois needed to step out into the world, even the darker and dangerous parts, so that she could handle something without him babysitting her. Clark got that. He also understood how important helping people was. It was what he did every day. It was why he chose to become Superman. Who was he to tell Lois that she wasn't allowed to go out there and do the same thing? She had been training and she had been in this world long enough to understand how risky getting involved in the hunting field was. Lois wasn't any different than anyone else here. She had more than enough right to hunt if she wanted to, so there really wasn't much that Clark could do to stand in her way. That didn't mean he wasn't going to keep an eye on her. Clark didn't have to physically be there to make sure that everything was okay. Super hearing had it's advantages and when it came to Lois Lane there wasn't a thing on this planet that could keep him from listening out in case she needed his help.

And she had. The hunt that Lois, Dick, and Rose had taken on had rounded into an unexpected turn. It seemed for a while like they had things handled, but after that second Rakshasha appeared...

Clark had showed up just in time to get Dick and Rose back for medical treatment. He'd brought Lois back as well, but doubled back to the hunting site to attend to the mess left behind by their hunt. No mess meant no questions. No questions meant no one came looking for answers. Clark had spent a lifetime keeping people from digging up things that he didn't want them to find. Anything that might have led the civilian world back to theirs? It definitely fell into that category. Once he was sure there wasn't any evidence left behind that was even mildly worth looking into, Clark immediately flew back to the complex. It was just as he was circling around the building and preparing to head inside that he spotted Lois outdoors, standing over what looked like...blood?

Quickly, Clark landed just behind her and stepped up to look at the mess that she was kneeling over. Lois was injured, but it was clear that this wasn't her blood. There was too much of it. Far too much. Though still worried, knowing that Lois hadn't been attacked again in his temporary absence brought on a small wave of relief. Very small. He still didn't know who the blood belonged to. "Lois? What happened?"

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thatlanewit
2013-04-21 11:59 pm UTC (link)

He’d asked such a simple question and for the life of her Lois Lane couldn’t get herself to speak. That was an odd occurrence alone considering she could usually talk enough for a room full of people, but no matter how hard she tried to formulate words, no sound seemed to want to come out of her mouth. She kept scrubbing away at the blood, not caring that doing so was causing her knuckles to get scraped up in the process.

If she hadn’t gone and asked for a hunt this would never have happened. Rose and Dick would never have signed up along with her. Rose wouldn’t have picked the Rakshasha case. Her friends wouldn’t have been as severely hurt as they had been and she wouldn’t have knowingly sent a kid to his death. And from the amount of blood and spray patterns on the ground and walls it hadn’t been a merciful death. This world was so very different from her own, and for all her talk and belief in being able to handle it, at not needing to be babysat when she went off to do her own things, time and again she was constantly proving that she did need the help. Maybe if she didn’t fight so hard against that helping hand the events wouldn’t have transpired the way that they did. But what had happened couldn’t be altered and she was going to need to deal with the consequences even if Lois Lane had no idea how to do so at the moment.

Death was part of life and in a war it was inevitable that others would die, she knew that. One couldn’t grow up the daughter of a General and not have been taught that lesson, but that didn’t stop the sick feeling in her stomach. For all the classes she’d taken, actually being in the field and taking on monsters was entirely different than she’d imagined. This hadn’t been taking on criminals or busting illegal activities. It had been facing an evil head on that looked human, that used trickery to do so, and somehow killing it.

What the hell had she been thinking when she decided to take on a hunt? Lois wasn’t even sure she knew the answer to that question anymore.

She knew she needed to say something, but there was no way in hell she could handle looking at Clark as she did so. She didn’t want to see the disappointment she was sure she’d see in those blue eyes of his once he knew.

“I had Loki bring Guy the boy.” Lois paused in her scrubbing and gestured around to all of the blood. “I’m guessing you can tell what happened next.”

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ex_savior698
2013-04-22 01:59 am UTC (link)

The boy. The Rakshasha that Lois had been incapable of killing. Had she known that Guy was going to finish the job for her? Clark looked down at the mess, the sight of all that blood making his stomach twist unpleasantly. Clark had seen blood before. Maybe more than most people had in over several lifetimes. But this type of blood? It wasn't accidental. It was the type of blood that had spilled out of anger. Hatred. The darker side of humanity all lashed out toward a single target. From the looks of it, the Rakshasha hadn't put up much of a fight. Something told him that it didn't get much of a chance to do so.

Clark knelt down beside Lois and gently wrapped his fingers around the wrist of the hand that had been so hellbent on scrubbing away at the red that had stained the ground around them. "Stop. Look at me." Clark knew that the hunt had spooked her. How could it not have? She had watched her friends get ripped apart at the hands of a monster that she had never faced before. It was her first time out on the job and it had gone horribly. Now there was this. Whatever had happened, Lois had been smack in the middle of it all and the outcome had clearly been an extremely unpleasant one.

"Why did you send the boy to Guy? What did he say he was going to do?" Clark knew that Lois had been upset, but had she been upset enough to condone something like this? He was worried. Not just about the others, but what Lois might have done. If she had really backed this kind of chaos...

No. She wouldn't have. There was no way that boy had survived this. Lois wasn't a murderer and she wasn't the type of person who would just stand by and let something like this happen. Something was wrong. "What did Guy do to you? What did he do with...?" He didn't need to ask. Clark already knew. The boy was dead. There was nothing he could do to save him. The thought brought on a sharp twinge of anger, but Clark didn't let it show. He'd deal with Guy later. Right now, Lois needed him.

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thatlanewit
2013-04-22 02:18 am UTC (link)

Lois still wouldn’t look at him and when he wrapped his fingers around her wrist she’d nearly pulled away. She didn’t deserve that touch of comfort, she didn’t want it right then and there, but she didn’t have the strength of mind to do much about it. Clark’s questions only made the uneasiness in stomach grow and she knew it was the guilt eating away at her. She’d known the boy was going to his death, but she hadn’t expected something like this.

“When Dick killed the woman...he just pushed the knife into her gut and she disappeared. There was a scream but it wasn’t.” She kept staring at the blood. It hadn’t been like this. Just one moment the woman had been there and the next she’d been gone. “He said he’d do what no one else would. I thought he was going to be like Dick. Brass in and gone.” Obviously she’d been wrong about that idea. And really, considering Guy had threatened to burn everyone the last time he’d been so emotionally vulnerable maybe she should have known better. But she hadn’t been thinking. Not really. She’d watched Rose be gutted, Dick’s arm nearly chewed off and while she hadn’t been able to lay the fatal blow to the boy a small part of her did know he wasn’t supposed to live. Wasn’t the whole point of them going out that day to kill him? How the hell did anyone live with this after they were finished?

“I didn’t expect him to do it like this.”

She did pull away from Clark then, scrubbing even harder at the ground. “I don’t know where he is now. Maybe he disappeared once Guy was...” Done torturing him as that was clearly what had happened. Monster or no monster, the child hadn’t deserved this ending.

“Guy didn’t do anything to me. I made the choice. I did this. Me.” There was no one else to lay blame with what had happened and Lois Lane always accepted responsibility for when she’d done wrong. She wasn’t one to cry, hated doing it in front of anyone. It made her vulnerable and she hated feeling that way, but somewhere in the middle of all that she had been saying the tears had started to fall and blinked them back in frustration as they clouded her vision. “I basically killed him myself.” And she was never going to get over that fact.

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ex_savior698
2013-04-22 03:59 am UTC (link)

It was a lot to take in. Even more so after everything that had happened with Rose and Dick. Lois had willingly handed this child off to be killed by Guy. Clark could understand the necessity of hunting to a certain extent. It wasn't easy for him to accept that there were things out there that had to be killed, but he could understand it. There was no justice system for monsters here. No prisons that they could lock them up in, no successful way of keeping the bad things that went out and did terrible things to people from getting out there and doing them all over again. As much as Clark hated it, he understood it. This, though? It was a step too far. That child could have been given to a family. A decent family that knew how to take care of one of his kind without anyone getting hurt. No one had to kill him. And the torture. The torture...

He didn't need her to look at him to figure out that she was crying. Clark could hear the break in her voice and he could see the sudden shift in her demeanor. The silent anger that had quickly clouded it's way through him momentarily subsided in exchange for another wave of worry as he slowly began to figure out what had happened. The kid had been the last part of her hunt. Finishing him off was part of the job and Lois hadn't been able to do it. That was why she had sent Guy after him, wasn't it? That didn't make it right. It didn't make Clark anywhere near okay with what happened either, but it didn't look like Lois needed him to make her see how horrific the situation was. Stooped down in a pool of blood, Lois had been given a front row seat to far more than a brush with brutal reality.

"You should have waited for me," Clark said in a surprisingly even voice. "I could have - I would have found a way to..." He didn't know what he would have done, but it would have been better than this. Anything would have been better than this. "You should have waited," Clark repeated quietly.

It was too late now. There was nothing that he could do. There was nothing left except a big mess and somehow Lois was the only one who had been left behind to clean it up. Once again, Clark grabbed her wrist, urging her to leave the blood alone. "Lois. Look at me."

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thatlanewit
2013-04-22 04:25 am UTC (link)

She didn’t want to look at him, not with tears streaming down her face and his words echoing in her head. She should have waited. Maybe if she’d done that everything would’ve turned out differently. The kid would still be alive if nothing else. She wouldn’t be on her knees scrubbing her knuckles raw to try and get rid of his blood. At least she’d stopped doing that when Clark had caught her wrist again and she at least turned toward him, dropping the rag onto the floor, but she still wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“I shouldn’t have taken a hunt, but I can’t change that I did. I can’t put back together anything after everything that’s happened.” And god how she wanted to reverse time and stop the chain of events that had occurred. Technically she could if that Legion ring worked like it was supposed to, but Lois had seen enough sci-fi films to know that never worked out well for anyone. Who knew who would end up dead if she even dared try that. She looked back down at the blood on the ground and couldn’t contain her sobs.

“I can’t get rid of his blood.”

Lois finally looked up at Clark. “I don’t know what to do here, Clark. This place its so different from home. I can handle corrupt politicians and crazy experimentation and I can accept that we’re not alone in this universe and a whole slew of other things. I can learn all about what needs to be done to take down the monsters of this world and I want to help. We’re supposed to help. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? And so I tried to help. I thought this was helping but...he was just a kid.”

It was such a convoluted mess and Lois didn’t have a clue how she was going to make any sense of it or what her next step was supposed to be. “I don’t know what to do.” She locked her eyes on him, practically pleading for some kind of help. She was exhausted, both physically and most especially mentally. Not to mention her back was killing her, but her physical wounds could wait. She was more concerned about the ones she couldn’t see and how the hell she was supposed to heal those ones.

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ex_savior698
2013-04-22 08:39 pm UTC (link)

He wanted to agree with her. Hunting was dangerous and she walked into enough of that on a regular basis already. Then there were situations like this one, where the lines between black and white began to blur and everything went to hell. Agreeing with her would have been easy. Telling Lois that she should have stayed home, that she should have taken a hint when he expressed his concern at her before she left, that she wasn't ready. It was the right response. It was what he should have said, but Clark couldn't bring himself to do it. Not only because of his promise that he wouldn't overstep on what she did with herself - hunting included, unfortunately - but because he didn't think that Lois could take a round of told you so's right now. She was broken. Defeated. Done. Standing here and scrubbing away at this mess was all that she had left in her to do right now and Clark could tell that she wasn't going to be able to finish it off on her own. She shouldn't have had to. Guy should have been out here. He was the one responsible for this. He was the one who had decided to cruelly rip into that creature.

"I'll take care of it," Clark said, looking to the blood decisively. He'd be able to clean it up quickly enough. Heat vision. Super speed. By the time he was finished, no one would know what had happened here. He put a hand on her shoulder, careful to avoid brushing at any of the wounds that had etched themselves into her back. This was the part of the world that he had hoped to protect her from. It didn't look so complicated from the news room, but the reality was that doing the right thing wasn't always easy when lives were on the line. Lois had never experienced that first hand. She had never been put into the sort of position where she had to make a call on someone's life like this before. It was never easy and sometimes, like today, the consequences took an unbearable toll on the person calling the shots.

Finally, Lois looked at him. Seeing her cry, somehow, was far worse than knowing it. "You learn from this. It's all you can do now." Careful still, he squeezed her shoulder in what he hoped was in a reassuring way. "And you remember." She would. Clark knew that she would.

He hated it. He hated that all of this had happened without him there to help keep things from spiraling. Clark hated that Lois was hurting, he hated the sight of all of that blood, and he hated knowing that there was absolutely nothing that he could do to make any of this better. Clark may have had a huge arsenal of abilities at his disposal, but none of them were worth anything if he couldn't find a way to make this right.

He wanted to hug her. To wipe her tears away and tell her that this was all going to be fine. But it wasn't fine. Nothing about this was. Instead, Clark took her hand into his own, noting the abrasions along her knuckles from where she'd been furiously scrubbing at the ground, and pulled her to her feet as he climbed onto his own. "Come on. The blood can wait. You're hurt." Her injuries weren't life threatening, but Clark didn't want Lois here anymore. Being around all of this wasn't going to help her. He needed to get her away. He had to.

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thatlanewit
2013-04-22 10:09 pm UTC (link)

He shouldn’t have needed to take care of it. That was what Lois kept coming back to, and while she’d let him help her up, she hadn’t moved from the spot, gaze back on the ground and at the horror drenching it. For all the time she had been trying to clean up the mess, not much had been done. The rag she’d been using was more red than white, but that was about the only change that had occurred. The ground and walls still looked like something out of horror movie. Maybe Clark would stand a better chance at somehow fixing everything to look like it had before Guy had killed the boy, but Lois doubted that she would ever be able to see this spot the same ever again. Clark was right though, never forgetting was about the only thing she could do in regards to what had happened and she meant to remember it. Lois had a feeling she really didn’t have much of a say in that. The sight of this place would be etched in her memory for a very long time.

“Not the medbay.”

Anywhere but there. Her injuries weren’t severe, and while Lois knew she needed to get the cuts and what felt like a nasty gash cleaned and bandaged to hold off infection, she didn’t want to go there. She was sick of hospitals, which honestly for most people would’ve meant not getting themselves into the kind of situations she got into on a daily basis to avoid the place, but for Lois it just meant keeping plenty of bandages and various medicines stashed in her and Clark’s bathroom. If it wasn’t broken or severely bruised than there wasn’t any need for professionals. Besides, the doctors had enough to concern themselves with considering Rose was probably still in surgery, who the hell knew what was going on with Dick’s arm and there had been the guy from River’s ship brought in earlier in the week. She didn’t want to take attention away from any of them.

Nor did she want to see Guy anytime soon. Or the Doctor. Or a million other people. Not yet. Not with the blood of that boy on her hands and clothes. No one else needed to deal with what all had happened. That was her cross to bear.

“I lucked out in the injury department this time.” Well. At least with physical ones. “There’s no reason to bother them. They’ve got enough on their plate.”

Lois glanced back at Clark, wiping at her face with her free hand. She didn’t seem to have any more tears to shed, though her body still shook from time to time as she let out a ragged breath. Exhaustion was winning out and she doubted she’d be on her feet much longer if she didn’t get a cup of coffee into her system soon. “I can get the ones on my arms and legs. If you can just help me with the ones on my back I’ll be good to go.”

And then...well, really she had no clue what the hell to do after that. Heading to the medbay waiting area to wait around for news was probably the option she’d push for, but her body might have other ideas.

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ex_savior698
2013-04-24 01:09 am UTC (link)

He could understand why she didn't want to go to the medbay. Everyone else was probably crowded in there now, either working at trying to save Rose's life or waiting to see if her life was going to be saved. Lois was in no shape to be around other people right now and that environment was already stressful enough. They weren't going there.

Clark kept a steady grip on her hand. With her current detached behavior, Clark was half afraid that she was going to give up and fall over if he decided to let go. "Okay," he agreed, "not the medbay." He would take her back to their apartment. It was quiet there, they'd be alone, and it was far enough from all this blood that Lois wouldn't have to force herself to look at it anymore. At least, physically she wouldn't. Mentally, it would take a lot more than a trip upstairs to keep the memory of all this blood from engraving itself into her mind.

She had lucked out in a way. She wasn't laying in the hospital this time, but those wounds on her back still looked deep enough to warrant some concern about their condition. Clark gave Lois' hand a squeeze, gave the bloody mess splattered along the side of the complex one final hard look, then he led the way back to their apartment. They had enough medical supplies in there, the last he checked. And if they somehow ran out? It wouldn't take him more than a minute to check out into the nearest store. They didn't need to go anywhere near the medbay right now. Clark was a fairly poor substitute for Martha or Rory, but Lois wasn't dying. He could handle clean-up and wrap duty. If she needed more care than that, he'd make it in point to bring Lois down to them once they were finished with Rose and Dick.

They didn't run into anyone on the way up, which Clark found himself feeling incredibly grateful for. He didn't particularly want to talk to anyone else right now. And if he didn't want to talk to anyone, he knew that Lois sure didn't.

Once inside of their apartment, Clark made Lois sit on the couch and instructed her to take her shirt off. He grabbed the med supplies from the bathroom, along with a soft washcloth soaked in warm water, and set them up on the table behind the couch. "Rose is going to be okay." Clark looked over at her, knowing that he could at least reassure her in this way. Martha and Rory were good at what they did. He had every faith that she was going to come out of all of this in one piece. "Dick, too. They're in good hands."

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thatlanewit
2013-04-24 01:47 am UTC (link)

Getting from outside to their room had moved in pretty much a blur for Lois and thankfully Clark had been there or she might have passed out in the elevator. Or at the very least wound back up in their apartment and collapsed on the bed without changing out of her clothes and left her wounds unattended. And that would have only exacerbated her withdrawal tenfold if she’d woken up still covered in the boy’s blood.

She’d done as Clark instructed and sat down on their couch, her shirt laying in a crumpled heap on the floor. She didn’t even want to wash the thing. Throwing it away seemed like the only way to sufficiently get rid of its presence. Which was possibly a little dramatic, but Lois thought maybe in this one instance that dramatics were an okay response. If she wasn’t going to be able to erase what had happened from her mind, nor did she want to, then at least she could get rid of the constant reminders in their home.

Removing the shirt had caused her a good deal of pain, and from the blood stains on the back of it, Lois had a feeling she’d been correct in her prior assessment that one of the cuts was a little deeper than the rest of marks that criss crossed her arms and legs. Moving so that she was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest and back exposed to him Lois focused on Clark’s voice, seeking the comfort she so often found in it. She wanted to believe what he was telling her. She knew just how good both Martha and Rory were, and considering Martha was also a good friend of Rose’s, Lois knew the doctor would do everything in her power to save her friend. Waiting for an outcome, whether good or bad, was going to be hard though.

“They have a better chance because you were able to get them to the medbay quickly,” Lois finally murmured. What would have happened if Clark wasn’t one to listen to her every movement? Dick might have been able to wait a bit for medical treatment, but Lois knew that Rose would have bled out long before any sort of ambulance could have made its way to where they’d been. “For all of the stalker jokes that people make, Clark, you doing your super hearing thing on me has saved me and others more times than I can even count. Even if you shouldn’t have to do that.”

Not that her saying that would ever stop him from listening for her safety. Lois doubted there was anything that could stop him from doing so. While she was definitely never attempting a hunt ever again, she knew she couldn’t promise not to ever do anything dangerous in her life ever again. Give her a week and she’d sniff the next big story in the wind and go barrelling off after it. That wasn’t going to change and she had a feeling Clark knew that. Though she didn’t want to start taking for granted the fact that he did have her back. That would prove to be both stupid and dangerous.

“Is it bad?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him and trying to read his expression in case he tried to sugarcoat the truth. Lois doubted he would, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Plus the movement helped keep her from falling asleep.

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ex_savior698
2013-04-28 05:29 pm UTC (link)

She said that he didn't have to look out for her all the time, but Clark knew that wasn't true. For multiple reasons. First and foremost, Lois Lane was constantly looking for trouble. And if, by some miracle, she wasn't? Trouble was looking for her. Lois was tough and he knew that she could hold her own in most situations where other people wouldn't have been able to, but he sometimes wondered how she managed to survive on her own with the stuff that she got involved with sometimes.

Her ability to get herself into a sticky situation wasn't the only reason he went out of his way to keep an eye on her, though. "I want to. If something happened to you -" He frowned. Something had happened to her. She got shot once before and, back then, it had been Lois on the operating table instead of Rose. And now? There was this. Lois may not have been in a life or death condition here, but she was hurting in more ways than one. "- if something happened to you, I'd never...I wouldn't know what to do." Nor did he want to find out. He couldn't bring himself to think about it. So he'd keep looking out for her. Maybe he wouldn't always be there to stop the bad things from happening, but he could at least make sure that the bad things didn't take her away from him.

Clark looked down at the medical supplies thoughtfully, then he shook his head. No, definitely not thinking about it. He picked up the washcloth first, knowing all too well that the wounds across her back were first priority. After applying a little peroxide, Clark took a seat next to Lois on the couch and quietly looked over the raw skin on her back. It could have been worse. Much worse. But that didn't make what he saw better. The Rakshasha had left it's mark on her. Several marks, in fact. The only thing that Clark could even compare her back to right now was a scratching post and, honestly, that only made her wounds look all the more painful.

"They're deep," he told her honestly, "you're going to have to be careful with your back for a while." She'd have to sleep on her stomach and she'd have to be particularly careful with what she chose to lean against when she sat down. He'd have to make it in point to set up some pillows along some of the stiffer chairs between here and work in case Lois forgot. "You might need to go see Martha tomorrow. I think they'll be okay without stitches, but I'm not the most qualified person to be making that call." And he didn't want to be wrong.

"This is probably going to sting some." It wouldn't be worse than what Lois was already feeling from her injuries, but sanitizing the scratches on her back wasn't going to be a pleasant process. Clark folded the cloth in half and carefully dabbed it against the top part of one of her scratches, taking extra care to avoid pressing down on the open wound too hard in the process. He'd try to be quick about cleaning her up, but he couldn't make any promises. Not if he wanted to do a good job.

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thatlanewit
2013-04-28 07:15 pm UTC (link)

It had taken all of her willpower not to turn away when Clark had talked about wanting to watch out for her. For all of their conversations about her needing to be more careful or the dangers she faced on a constant basis, actually seeing the array of emotions displayed on his face when he’d said he wouldn’t know what to do was jarring. He’d carry on doing what he did, wouldn’t he? Keep on being the strong, selfless man that she loved. Her death couldn’t stop him from doing that, could it? Not that she was planning on dying anytime soon, but...

Lois had known love in her life. Her mother had never been one to give up a chance to tell anyone in her family how much she cared for them, but once the woman had died instances like those had been far from common in her household. Lois knew her father did love her and her sister, but the General had never been one for emotions once Ella Lane had passed away. Even in her cousin’s side of the family it wasn’t an emotion shown all that often. Except between her and Chloe, but until Lois had moved to Smallville, keeping up with Chloe had been a phone call here and there during the year. Possibly a few weeks spent together during the summer. She’d seen how the Kents loved one another and the hardship they’d both endured when Jonathan died.

But right there, glancing back at Clark, Lois didn’t think she’d ever truly known the depth of his feelings for her until that precise moment. He was still talking, something about her injuries, but she barely paid attention to any of that, confident he’d take care of them as best he could. Not that she didn’t bite her lip against the sting once he started sanitizing the scratches. She watched him work until she couldn’t anymore and then turned away, staring off at nothing in particular.

“You’d be okay,” Lois finally started, not entirely sure she even wanted to have this conversation. “Maybe not at first, but you wouldn’t let it destroy you, Clark. Eventually you’d pick up the pieces and build your life again.” She looked back at him, hoping he was done with the cleaning part because she wanted to have this conversation while looking at him if she could. “And not just because I’d come back from the grave and kick your ass if you didn’t, but because you couldn’t turn away from the cries of everyone needing your help forever.”

She caught one of his hands in her own, squeezing gently as she reached up to touch her other hand to his cheek. “You wouldn’t want your death to break me--” Not that she was entirely sure it wouldn’t. The thought of losing him was one that she lived with everyday, Seal or no Seal, and while Lois knew she’d take it hard, probably harder than anything else in her life, she thought she’d keep on going through the motions until the day she died. She wouldn’t ever love again, but like hell she wouldn’t work to keep his legacy alive through her own means. “--so mine can’t do it to you.”

It was such an easy thing to say, but living it was probably infinitely harder. “It’s not something I want either of us to deal with. Ever. But.” It wasn’t as though they lived forever. “I don’t want to be what destroys you. I will kick your ass so hard from beyond the grave if that happens.”

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