Okay, I really wasn't planning on posting this until some time tomorrow, but I'm going through review withdrawals, so here we are. They are very addicting, aren't they?
Besides, I feel like I need to make up with you guys a bit after the last chapter. So here we go.
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Chapter 4: Stray Cats
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Lois staggered to a partially-shielded toilet in the corner just in time to empty her stomach into the clean porcelain bowl. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast (a bagel and coffee that Clark had forced upon her), and now it was well into the night, so there wasn’t much to lose, but after a couple minutes she sat back onto the floor, pale and shaking herself as she relived the sharp blade cutting into Superman’s perfect, pale skin. His arm twisting in a way that a human was never meant to bend. His usual confidence and easy smile, restrained as it was, contrasting against the pain and terror of now.
She shuddered, trying to push the vivid images from her mind as she rinsed out her mouth and forced herself to drink some water. She was probably dehydrated, and couldn’t afford to let herself become weak. She had to be ready to get out of here.
She sat shakily on a firmly secured, small-cotted bed that sat against the wall and began twisting the thin white sheets between her fingers. A faint, almost-unheard scream made her grow still as blood drained further from her face. She listened hard, thinking and hoping that, perhaps, it was just a memory of his screams haunting her. She heard nothing more, and didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.
They brought her food—a good, healthy selection of steaming chicken soup with bread and fruit on the side, along with a cup of orange juice—freshly squeezed. Their point was understood: Bureau 39 had done their research well. They slid it in on the floor without even entering, but Lois was hardly tempted to eat at the present moment. She almost wished that they could have brought her something horrid—stale bread and rotten meat, perhaps. It would better fit the situation, her mood, and the rolling of her stomach. Still, she carefully lifted the tray and put it aside where it was less likely to get in the way of the door.
Lois must not have turned the water off from the sink all the way—a single, echoing, dripping drop seemed to keep time like a slow and tortured drumbeat. It was driving her mad, but she couldn’t summon enough energy to go and turn it off.
“Come on, Lois,” she spoke out loud, wiping away tears she hadn’t noticed were drying on her cheeks. “You’re going to be all right. They aren’t going to touch you. You just need to be ready. You can do this.” Her words seemed to travel only a few inches from her mouth before falling thick and silent in the bright white air.
It seemed like an eternity before the door opened again. The same guard from earlier entered first, fixing Lois with a dangerous glare as she stood up. Superman was wheeled in next. He was unconscious again. His head lolled limply as the bed on which he laid pulled to a stop. His skin was slick with sweat and his hair clung to his face damply.
The guards lifted him onto the bed, and Dr. Logram leaned over him, adjusting Superman’s now-bandage-covered arm. Lois could see a faint tinge of pink through the white where the blood was already seeping through the linen.
“What did you do to him?” Lois’s voice was somewhat weak. She didn’t know if she wanted to know.
“Ah, well, a tissue sample,” Logram said. “We weren’t going to do it until he had ample time to recover a bit, but your stunt in there…Well, we needed to set his arm anyway, and with the cut already made, we thought we might as well do it now.” He glanced at the untouched tray of food on the floor. “You should eat. We’ll get some down for him, as well, though…Ah, well. I suppose he will need to eat. I guess we’ll find out, hm?”
Lois didn’t answer him. “Tissue sample?” she echoed faintly.
“We removed a portion of his brachioradial muscle. Or, at least, that’s the closest to what it would be if he were human. It will take some time to determine the chemical makeup, but even the structure itself is…astounding.”
He straightened. “We’ll be keeping an eye on him, Miss Lane, but I think you would rather be taking care of him. Ah, I thought so. I suppose it will be good for him to have someone he sees as a friend here. We don’t want to lose him so early in the research. Do make sure he recovers his strength a bit, hm?” He turned and left.
Lois stood there uncertainly for a moment, then sat down at the bedside and caught Superman’s hand. His skin was damp and hot—unnaturally so, even for someone bearing a fever. She looked up to his now flushed face and stood.
She forced herself to drink some of the lukewarm soup—just so it wouldn’t go to waste when she dumped the rest down the toilet. She rinsed the bowl and filled with water and, finding nothing else, tore the cuff off one of her pant legs to dampen and lay on his flushed brow.
She took a deep breath to stave off her own weariness and got down to work. It was going to be a long night.
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Lois woke up with a stiff neck and gritty eyes, feeling as if she hadn’t slept at all. From her watch she realized it was early afternoon—she had fallen asleep just after when the sun was rising somewhere over a glowing Metropolis, when the Daily Planet was beginning to wake up into its busy hive of activity, and Clark Kent was probably bumbling into Perry’s office, wondering where she had got to.
Superman’s fever had fortunately not gotten much worse during the night, for which she was very grateful. She had bathed his flushed face until the early hours of the morning, until it seemed to her that he had drifted from unconsciousness and into an uneasy sleep. He had awoken once, crying and shaking, but Lois and held him until he had drifted back into sleep. She doubted he would even remember it. As for herself, she had been too exhausted even to have nightmares, it seemed.
She felt eyes on her and she lifted her head to see Superman looking at her. As soon as she did, he averted his eyes. He didn’t want her to see his shame and helpless fear.
“Superman?” Lois asked, rising in an attempt to catch his eye again. “How are you?”
Clark swallowed, shutting his eyes. He shifted slightly, and his breath trembled slightly at the shots of pain.
“I’m…fine,” he whispered, and was ashamed as his voice shook slightly. His whole being was shaking. He had spent the last few minutes before Lois awoke remembering what had happened, and staring at the door—petrified at the thought of what might come through for him.
Lois snorted softly. “One thing I can say about both of us, flyboy—neither of us is ‘fine.’ Least of all you.” She adjusted her jacket that she had placed over him the night before to try and keep him warm, along with his cape and the thin sheet on the bed. She sat down next to him, pushing her hair from her face. “I mean, no coffee, no morning shower, and I’m sure my makeup is smeared enough to serve as effective disguise as a servant of Doom. Too bad I don’t have enough for you too, or we’d be able to sneak out of here.”
Clark appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood. A weak smile slid onto his face, but it faltered and disappeared after but a moment. He looked at her, no trace of mirth on his too-pale face. “You look wonderful,” he said, his voice rough.
Lois blinked and blushed despite the absurdity to do such a thing in such a situation as this. Superman’s broken arm lay still across his S-shield, and Lois forced her eyes away from the deep red stain that marked the slightly shivering wrapping. She took his hand and forced a smile onto her face. “We’ll get out of here, Superman,” she said firmly. “I always do, you know.”
“I suppose…” Clark winced. His throat felt rubbed raw. As if understanding his grimace Lois leaned down and lifted a cup of water from the tray—it had arrived on their breakfast tray just before she had fallen asleep. He pulled his hand from hers to take it, but even before he touched the cup his hand was shaking so bad that it would have spilled the water all over the cot. Lois shook her head.
“It’s all right, Superman,” she said. He was able to lift his head, shifting tenderly to rise on his good elbow slightly as Lois brought the cup to his lips. He just sipped at first, before draining the cup like a man dying of thirst.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice slightly stronger as he lay back on the bed. Lois put down the cup. She grabbed his good hand again—she had hardly let go of it since he had come to this room, and it helped her feel anchored—less like she was about to be swept away in the flood of dark dreams that had carried away her reality. “I—I was going to say: I suppose you have a little more experience in the ‘being held against your will’ category than I do.”
“I resent that,” Lois shot back, but was glad for his response. His eyes had taken in a little glimmer of light that she had been afraid might have been puffed out for good. “But you know, I do know a thing or two about situations like this. So you need to eat. Build back up your strength so we can get out of here when the opportunity comes.” She reached down and picked up a bowl of creamy mush that might have been warm some hours before and stirred it. “Mmm…” she said, taking a spoonful of a shapeless mush and holding it out to him temptingly.
Superman looked at her, down to the spoon, and then back up at her, blinking. “I can feed myself, Lois,” Clark said, slightly embarrassed.
“Of course you can,” Lois said. “But you are too much of a gentleman to turn me down, aren’t you?” She brought the spoon forward, so that Clark was faced with the struggle of choice between opening his mouth and receiving a spoonful of gelatinous mass smashed over his face. He chose the one that was the least damaging. The mush tasted bland at best, but considering the rolling of his stomach the lack of flavor was probably for the best. “Besides, I have plenty of experience in this area,” Lois said, sounding a bit satisfied.
Clark lifted his eyebrows—distantly noticing how even that slight movement hurt, but he didn’t get chance to ask before Lois swept in with another spoonful.
“When I went to Met U,” Lois explained, seeing his look. “I found a stray, dirty little kitten.” She saw his expression and turned defensive. “I’m not a softie, Superman.”
“I would never presume such a thing,” Clark assured her.
Lois gave him a suspicious glare despite his earnest expression. “I’m not an animal person,” she continued, “but this little thing followed me home and I couldn’t say no. I had to feed it by hand for a month. He was a naughty little creature,” she added, some affectionate creeping into her tone despite herself.
“What…what happened to it?” Clark asked, his voice still shamefully weak. Still, he was intrigued. Lois always seemed to put out a wall of steel about herself, and glimpsing the compassion lay behind it was always amazing to him. He was quite sure he hadn’t seen a cat in Lois’s apartment.
“He got hit by a car, a couple years ago,” she said with a careless shrug, though the careless façade was thin and Clark saw right through it. “I don’t really have time for cats, anyway, so…” She shrugged again and brought the spoon up.
“So I’m your stray cat?”
“I figure you save cats from trees, so saving the man who saves cats from trees is the next best thing,” Lois said with an emphatic nod. She was surprised to find how easily she bantered with her hero—he always seemed so disconnected, but now he was so vulnerable and so…human. She felt quite comfortable teasing him and bouncing words back and forth between them. It was a very surreal feeling. “It’s just a little safer, seeing as when I take you home with me I don’t think I’ll have anybody knocking on my door to apologize for hitting you with their car, except maybe to ask for car repairs.”
Superman’s expression dimmed slightly. His cast-wrapped arm throbbed terribly, and the reminder of his usual strength brought him back to where he was now. His shivers, which had fallen still, started up again.
He ate as much as he felt comfortable, and drained another cup of water before laying back, feeling exhausted.
“Go to sleep, now, Superman,” Lois said. “Eating and sleeping is about as much as I’m going to let you do for a couple days.”
Clark nodded, but his eyes were drawn almost unwillingly to the door. Lois saw where he looked and her expression turned serious.
“They’re not coming,” she said. “They said they’d give you some days to recover a bit. We’re going to do that better than they think, all right? Now go to sleep.”
Superman was too tired to resist sleep even had he wanted to. He closed his eyes, feeling Lois’s hand slip into his again.
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...........See? Comfort is good, yes? Please review!
