I Moderate (i_moderate) wrote in we_archive, @ 2006-04-20 21:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | barbara gordon, clark kent |
i_seeall Love is In the Air [Open]
There were a few students at the Institute who Babs had come to expect playful flirting from. Mostly the college students who came in for books or the occasional research help. They were boys, six or seven years younger than her, who liked to do the playful flirting thing with her. She wasn't sure why, she didn't exactly fit that 'hot librarian' mold. She supposed that sitting in the library for hours at a time made them desperate.
Babs didn't mind the flirting, usually it was innocent and playful and she could brush it off by rolling her eyes as she scanned their books. It had never amounted to anything physical, in all meanings of the word. Including presents. Students tended to know that that was a line they were just not supposed to cross. Roses crossed that line. As did Baby's Breath.
Not to mention that she was alergic to Baby's Breath. Babs sneezed, reaching for a tissue before she fully looked around her.
Flowers. Everywhere. All over the front circulation desk. And there was a rather large line of students, mostly male but quite a few females too. Not one of them were actually holding books to check out and the longer she stared, the more the line seemed to be disintegrating into slight chaos.
"I was here first!"
"No you weren't! ...Ms. Gordon! Ms. Gordon, I sent you the roses!"
Babs considered responding very sarcastically 'which roses', but she was cut off when another yell of, "Barbara... did you get the ring? They're real dia--"
Alright, she didn't need to hear anymore. Something was so very obviously wrong here. Babs eyed the throng of students and grabbed her jacket. She could get out the back door before they realised she was going. Seemed like a fight was about to brew anyway.
The streets of The City were no better. In fact, compared to what was going on out here, the school seemed rather tame.
She was stopping traffic. Literally. It seemed as if people just lost all common sense when she rolled by in her chair. They forgot what the street signs meant, where they were going, what they were doing... hell, some people were even forgetting to look ahead as they walked. She was causing accidents and she was very aware of it.
Unfortunately, the events weren't catering to any part of her ego or pleasing her in anway, shape, or form. Babs was instead confused, worried, disturbed, and plenty uncomfortable. Hands reached out to touch, people tried to walk in front of her as she navigated the streets, demanding attention that she didn't want to give. There were no lack of catcalls and shouts out towards her. 'There're flowers waiting for you at home. 'Do you want to go out tonight?' 'How do you like your coffee?' 'How many kids are we going to have?' . It was like having a city full of stalkers.
From: i_dontfly Date: 04/20/2006 19:40:19
He was a speeding blur of light; that is if anyone could adjust their eyes to see anything at all. Confusion and a sense of helplessness rose to swiftly travel through him, stabbing like cold pokers covered in ice. But oddly he was much more concerned for the woman who he had left behind in the alley than he was for himself. Metropolis was a large city, but he somehow doubted that anybody was going to step into a dreary alley without the sun for comfort. And then there was the attacker, who he was certain hadn’t been knocked out entirely.
There appeared to be wall… guarding perhaps, keeping him from escaping, from getting back to Metropolis. Or for god sakes, he would even settle for the North Pole right about now. But none of his wishes or desires were going to step up and throw themselves straight at him, and perhaps somehow, deep inside he knew that. Some part of him knew that there was no going back and the woman, well, she would just have to run, take care of herself, because he obviously couldn’t do that from where he now stood.
But it wasn’t just the unfamiliar scents, the people and buildings that he had never seen before, something was wrong… Traffic was halting in the middle of the road and people were yelling, trying to catch the attention of a woman who he had never once heard of before.
His head turned from left to right, his brow lifting in genuine curiosity. He would have stepped closer into the crowd, but his steps came to a stop when his eyes came to settle on her, who just so happened to be the one woman whom they were all staring at, vowing for her attention.
But as for him, he stayed were he was, strangely silent compared to those who just couldn’t keep their mouths from opening.
From: i_seeall Date: 04/20/2006 20:16:18
Babs couldn't actually run, and because of the crowds she was causing on the sidewalk, making an escape was proving difficult. Truth be told, she was starting to get more than a little angry. This was ridiculous.
"Everyone just move," she finally yelled, her temper seriously getting the better of her.
For a moment there was a stop in the commotion in her immediate vacinity and the crowds parted in a way akin to the Red Sea.
But then, a voice from the crowd...
"Barbara, you can't go! We're getting married! Remember? You promised me!"
The crowds converged again. It seemed like everyone wanted some piece of her. Babs couldn't move. Her car was just about a block down, but there was no way she was getting there.
From: i_dontfly Date: 04/20/2006 20:50:25
Now this was just out of hand, completely…wrong. What exactly was going on with these people? He would call them stalkers, but there were just too many of them to be classified in that particular way. It really was quite ridiculous.
The woman wanted to escape, she wanted them to leave her be. But clearly they were reluctant to participate in her wishes, and Clark continued to watch the scene with a flicker of concern. Soon something would need to be done. He would not allow for them to pounce on the unfortunate woman like a bunch of famished hyenas, as if they were animals instead of educated people.
The last desperate plea from the crowd sent him forward with long confident strides, and soon enough the love struck were being gently pushed from his path, with little force put into his actions. He possessed no intention of harming any of them, but if the first silent warning didn’t get across, something else would surely need to be done.
They continued to crowd inward, but still, he had reached her as he had intended. Blue eyes swept her over, but his inspection was short lived, for he drew closer, questioningly. “We should probably get you out of here.”
From: i_seeall Date: 04/21/2006 06:50:07
Babs normally wasn't the type who liked or needed people to save her from things, but in this situation she was more than willing to make an acception. Whoever this young man was, he wasn't begging her to marry him or holding flowers. This was a good thing.
He seemed to be able to strong arm the crowd somehow to get through and she looked up at him, her face positively relieved. "Thank you. Yes, please."
She'd have run, barreled through the crowd if she could have, but with the chair she wasn't going to make much headway on her own.
From: i_dontfly Date: 04/21/2006 23:56:56
If this has indeed been Smallville, meteor rocks would have been planted with the blame for such an odd phenomenon. But since he was nowhere near Kansas, that theory would have to be thrown out and forgotten.
Still they yelled, hungry for attention that the lady clearly didn’t want to give to them. He could part the crowd without the smallest hint of effort put into his actions, but to get her through the hoard of love struck citizens would mean pushing all of them aside, without bringing harm.
“I can get you away from them much sooner if…” the sentence never did finish itself, for would it not be easier to just get her away from them, without explanation? Naturally there would always be questions when you were in one place one moment, and another the next. But those questions didn’t have to be answered now did they? It would be too fast to see how it happened, and well, some things were better left as mysteries.
The grasping was too fast to see, and the short-timed escape could only be a blur of buildings and speeding cars. But it all stopped once the problem was out of view, in a parking lot where no one seemed to stand.
At least she was away from them, and he could always disappear if needed be.
From: i_seeall Date: 04/22/2006 05:43:58
It had been a stressful day, and not the good kind of stress. The good kind of stress was the kind that came from working on a case that she absolutely could not find an answer to. She didn't mind that. She didn't even mind the stress that came when someone like Blockbuster figured out who she was and tried to kill her.
Babs knew how to deal with that kind of thing. But her mind hadn't compressed this into case status yet. Right now it was still just a big mess with various combined feelings of confusion and aprehension. She wasn't sure how to deal with this yet. It just wasn't normal.
Now she was gone from the crowds, by obvious unnatural means, and the stress did not just instantly disappear. In fact, it increased, just a bit. The world around her had been blured for a few moments, not a completely unusual feeling. She knew people who could do that, but she hadn't been expecting it. Not from this...
Babs looked around the parking lot quickly before looking directly up at her saviour. She blinked, shook her head, and then blinked again. "K-kon? No... Kal... Clark?"
Had something good possibly come out of this completely horrible day? It wasn't Barry, she knew that much. Barry didn't have those eyes. Only Kon-El and Kal-El did, and Kon was about this age. Kon could move like that.
From: i_dontfly Date: 04/22/2006 20:02:33
Somehow, he had gotten himself sucked into this… this city, a city that was in no way familiar or even vaguely recognized. By far, this wasn’t a top notch day and as the clock continued to tick he began to wonder if someone wasn’t purposely messing with him.
He didn’t mind when it came to getting the stranger to where she wanted to be, and it was no trouble at all when he did so. But when she spoke to him for a second time his insides grew colder and he found himself backing slowly away, only to stop once he realized exactly what he was doing.
It would be incredibly foolish for him to flee from her when she obviously knew what so few did. It wasn’t every day that someone referred to him as Kal-El in a city parking lot, without a voice full of threats or a face covered in smirks.
“How do you know that?” He couldn’t hold back the sternness that arose in defense, nor could he contain the shake to his question. “What do you want?”
From: i_seeall Date: 04/22/2006 20:11:33
Babs shook her head once more. Kon wouldn't know who she was, just the name Oracle. Clark though, Clark would have known. He and Batman were the only members of the JLA who knew her actual identity. It wasn't that she didn't trust the others, but that sort of information wasn't such that she liked spreading around.
"Thank you for... that. I don't know what is going on today," she said, before concentrating on his confused look and asking a question of her own. "Which are you? I don't want anything. You don't know me, do you?"
From: i_dontfly Date: 04/22/2006 20:56:39
Nothing, she wanted nothing of him? He found that a little hard to believe. But for right now, he could go with it, although his suspicion wasn’t about to fade into nothingness. Clark, at least this particular one, wouldn’t know her, just as he recognized no one else that he had caught sight of in the city.
“It’s Clark, not Kal,” he answered, somewhat willing himself to relax under her gaze. “And no, I don’t know you, but you obviously know who I am, or something about me.”
He would have remembered her face if he had in fact met her before. But nothing rose to indicate a previous run-in, which meant that his trust would fall in favor of that guarded wall.
From: i_seeall Date: 04/22/2006 21:23:33
Clark, not Kon then. Clark as a... Babs looked up at him intently. He couldn't have been more than eighteen, twenty at most, which was why she'd thought Kon initially. She'd never known teenaged Clark. He'd been in Kansas and she'd been in Metropolis, so it wasn't like she should have recognised him.
"You're... eighteen?" It almost made her want to laugh. The chaos of before was partially forgotten. "You don't even know... I--" Babs stopped before anything else came out.
It was his future on the tip of her tongue. He had every right to know, it wasn't really her secret to keep. Yet, she still hesitated. "Clark Kent from Smallville? I'm Barbara Gordon."