If you read the last chapter and you're still reading this, then you don't need any more warnings
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Thanks for all the reviews. This *is* still my first fic, and the reviews certainly are helping me overcome my uncertainty here. I'm very flattered that so many of your positive comments and that you're enjoying the story and my writing so far. You completely make my day. Thank you.
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(From Chapter 8):
“I’m here,” Lois said brokenly. “I’m here, Superman.”
Clark choked as he struggled against the pain and the shaking of his body for air.
Behind her, Logram took the scalpel and cut deep into Superman’s leg.
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Chapter 9: Life is Pain (Anyone Who Says Otherwise is Selling Something)
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“Lois!” Superman screamed out her name as he arched against his restraints.
“Shut him up!” Logram shouted over the hoarse cry. Matthews looked around, flustered; most of the clean cloths that had been on the table were now nested around Superman’s leg, quickly soaking with his blood.
Matthews grabbed one that was clean but for a dark stain in the corner from Clark’s blood. Superman’s scream had already died—he didn’t have enough air in his lungs to go on long, but as Logram cut deeper the superhero gasped an almost breathless scream. Matthews looked uncertain for a moment, then with a glance at Logram he moved forward to press the cloth into Superman’s mouth, moving to clutch his jaw to force his mouth open.
Lois realized what he intended and jerked to her feet, standing over Superman like a looming storm ready to strike down with death and destruction on any unwise enough to not to flee for cover.
“What do you think you are doing?” she spat like a spitting feline. A very big, angry feline, which was near pressed to insanity at the moment from her raging fury and helplessness. Superman screamed harshly again and she clenched her hands to keep from dropping down beside him again—holding him, whispering and pleading for him to be all right, for him to know that she was there for him.
But she could not allow this. She pulled every ounce of her Mad-Dog Lois Lane persona together and leaned forward. Her expression was terrifying even as her eyes were stained from tears of inner torment—or perhaps even more so. She was drawing the line here, if she had to use this little doctor’s blood to mark its place.
The short doctor quailed under her gaze, taking the rag and wringing it between his sweating hands as he took a step back. Lois wanted to flay him—to rip him to shreds with her fingernails. Her fingers actually curled as she was tempted to do just that despite the guard that was now standing right behind her like a shadow in the dark.
Lois actually started towards him, and the guard’s hand clasped around her arm painfully. She turned towards him, ready to unleash her fury on him, but at that moment both the soldier and the mousy doctor were saved as Superman began to cry beneath her protective wings, his voice too spent to make any stronger sound.
Anger banished by an overwhelming pain that pierced straight to her heart, Lois immediately let her fist drop and tried to pull away from the guard. When he didn’t let her go she twisted her arm out of his grip—careless of the bruises it surely caused her—and dropped down to kneel at Superman’s side, clutching his shoulder with one hand as she reached to his face with her other.
“Superman, Superman,” she called his name. She kissed his pale brow, his cold cheeks…his trembling chin, murmuring his name. She closed her eyes and huddled close to Superman, listening to his weakening gasps for air, at the faint whimper that he couldn’t stop but couldn’t give manifest as a full cry as the blood loss and kryptonite took its toll on his battered body. She couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t move, she could fight…all she could was hold on to him and do nothing. It was the helplessness—the inability to do
anything—that made it all too much for her. Lois buried her face in his neck and cried.
She didn’t even notice as Logram placed a vial dark with blood both inside and out on a tray. She didn’t look up as the kryptonite was taken away and placed back within the bag and the green light vanished, leaving only the white rags and blinding light that were stained deep with the color red like splattered blood on freshly-fallen snow.
Her mind was too far in white shock for her to notice when Logram finished stitching up the rough cut on Superman’s leg and bound it tightly—only how Superman’s breathing hitched again at pain the movement caused—and she clung to him tighter. She didn’t notice how the blood immediately swept through the bandages like a red wave over white sand, and how Logram swore and bound it with more layers. She didn’t notice as Logram turned away, wiping his bloodied hands on the last towel that Matthews had meant to gag Superman with.
She only knew how she couldn’t move. She couldn’t fight. She had to stay still. And she was aware of him. Of how his body lay limply, too spent to brace itself against the pain. Of how his eyes were squeezed shut, of how his hands had clenched so tightly so that his fingernails broke the skin of his palms and he bled. Of how his tears began to dry on his face even as the whimpers in his throat faded into soundless, tearless shuddering sobs that shook his weakened frame. Of the whimper that caught in his throat as they pulled the wound closed and began to stitch it shut.
They called to her, told her she needed to stand—that they were taking Superman back to the white room. She didn’t hear them, only felt the cruel hands that tried to pry her away from him—the only other living being in this vague and faded world. She fought, but it was weak and animalic—without skill or even logical goal, and they easily overcame her. They held her back from Superman as they wheeled the bed in front of her, and her legs moved mechanically—though she leaned unconsciously forward so that the guard was half-carrying her as they stepped out the door, down the hall, and into the white room.
All she had eyes for was him.
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TBC....
