Table of Contents ~~~Part 29~~~
Lois hated waiting. Hated the not knowing. Hated the what ifs. And she hated the damn clock in the hospital waiting room for ticking far too loudly and grating on her nerves. The air was stuffy and hot, too. But maybe that was because she was pacing. She should stop and sit. Or something.
She picked a chair against the far wall of the room so she could keep her eye on the door. The chair wasn't comfortable, but that wasn't a surprise. There was a stack of tattered magazines to her left on the next chair. She grabbed one and flipped through it, but she didn't see more than flashes of colors. She tried to focus on an article. A silly one about decorating living rooms. Reading would keep her mind off... all the stuff she didn't want to think about.
Only, the words were swimming. Or maybe they were blurred. Or both. Lois blinked, trying to focus. She just had to concentrate.
Lois slung the magazine back to the chair and buried her face in her hands. There was a violent flash of red. She shut her eyes tighter, but it wouldn't go away. Red. Blood red. Clark's blood. Luthor's blood.
She threw her hands down and opened her eyes again. She didn't want to see it anymore.
She felt so... *helpless*. Damned helpless. There was nothing she could do. She had to sit. And wait. And try not to remember the last time she'd been trapped and helpless in a small, humid room. Nothing had changed, had it? Nothing. She was still trapped. Still helpless.
But it hurt more this time. Because Clark was hurting and there was nothing she could do. What if the doctors couldn't do anything, either? What would she do then? What on earth would she do then?
Lois shook head. Violently. She couldn't think like that. Clark was going to be fine. She didn't have to worry. At all. He'd be fine. And as soon as he was fine, they could finish their investigation, wrap things up and make sure that everything was set right again. Then she wouldn't feel helpless or trapped or scared.
And Luthor. He'd be... He was dead. He couldn't get to her anymore. No more concrete cells. No more running. No more hiding. He was just... gone. And she was free.
Somehow, she still didn't feel liberated.
It wasn't at all fair. Years of torment and pain and horror and fear and more than anyone should have to bear in a lifetime. Luthor had given her all of that and more. There was finally a face and a name to put on the monster who had stolen three years of her life. Her pride. Her confidence. Her identity.
Everything. He'd been the man who had taken everything from her. And as soon as she'd known who he was, he'd been gone again. Dead, mercifully, but...
If only she could have... punched him or something. Spit in his face. Made him suffer for everything he'd done to her. If she could have stood face-to-face and told him that he hadn't won. That she'd survived.
There was no chance of that now, though, and the disgusting irony of it all was that she was going to be the one to clean up his mess for him. There was still work to do. Lots of it. Research. Evidence. Investigating.
That would keep her busy. She wouldn't have to think about the Congo, the cell, the jungle, Luthor. It was what she'd always done before, thrown herself into her work. She could still do that. She was still Lois Lane. And Lois Lane never gave up a fight.
She straightened in her seat, wiping at her eyes and snuffling. Yes, Lois Lane was a fighter. She would make sure everything stopped, that order would be restored and... whatever else that needed to be done.
"I... um..."
Lois started at the interruption, her eyes darting to the door. It was the woman, scuffing her shoe against the tile and clearing her throat nervously.
"I didn't mean to... interrupt, Loi- I mean, Ms. Lane. I just... well, they told me to wait in here..."
Lois scooted back further in her chair, trying to look a little more unaffected. She cleared her throat. "You're not interrupting anything. Sit anywhere you like. I don't own the place," Lois said with a shrug of her shoulders.
She watched as the woman chose a seat a dozen chairs away from her. She'd killed someone. That was... Lois couldn't even imagine how that must feel, to have pulled the trigger and just... shot someone.
The woman turned towards her and caught her staring. Lois dropped her gaze to her own hands. She was fidgeting, and now she was the one being stared at. Where had this woman come from, anyway? Out of the blue, she'd come running and barreled into Clark. She'd known Lois's name. She'd run away. Yet she'd obviously come back. She'd shot Luthor.
Lois was surprised to find she didn't envy the woman that. As much as she would have loved to exact her own revenge, killing someone just...
Lois shook her head. She couldn't think about it. But she could find out just who this woman was and how she knew her name. "Hey."
The woman looked up, though she didn't say anything. She still looked a bit shaken. Lois felt a twinge of sympathy, but she quashed it. She couldn't afford to get emotional when she needed answers.
"Just who are you, anyway? Who do you work for? And how exactly do you know my name?" Lois narrowed her eyes at the woman to let her know she was serious.
Lois watched as the woman sank down a bit in her seat, examined her fingernails for a good long moment, and finally looked back up. "My name is Elle Daly. I work for... worked for..." Elle shifted nervously in her seat again. "Look, Ms. Lane, please don't take this the wrong way. I never meant any harm. I just... There's no real good way to say this..."
"Just say it, already." All the hemming and hawing was making Lois more edgy than she already was.
"I worked for Lex Luthor. My job was to watc..."
Lois couldn't breathe. All the air escaped from her lungs, and the rest of what the woman was saying died away. Luthor. She'd worked for Luthor. She'd... what if she was here to finish the job? Wrap up Lex's loose ends? What if...
They didn't allow guns in hospitals, right? Security or someone would have taken it from her. She hoped. She really hoped.
But she had to stay calm. Collected. She had to show this Elle woman that... show her something. Show her... that Lois Lane wouldn't be a victim anymore. And Lois Lane most certainly wasn't going to die.
"Ms. Lane?" A hand touched her arm and Lois jumped out of her seat.
"You." Lois rounded on Elle, pointing an angry finger at her. "Stay away the hell away from me, you hear?"
***
Elle flinched at the finger aimed in her direction and took a good five steps back, away from Lois. She could have bloody lied to her. Why hadn't she lied? Bloody brilliant plan, Elle. Telling her she worked for the man who had just tried to kill her not three hours ago.
"Ms. Lane, I promise. I-"
"Stay away!" There was a mix of fire and fear in the woman's eyes. She.... she didn't have the right!
Elle seethed. Any trace of fear she'd had a second ago was gone. "Stay away?! You want me to stay away? Do you even realize that I saved your bloody life? Twice!"
Hah. Lois was stuck for words. Good. That would give Elle some to think of what the heck to say next. Elle could almost hear the gears turning in Lois's mind, trying to find a way to apo-
"Twice?" Lois's voice was shaky, frightened, but there was still an undertone of anger.
Good going, Elle. Her and her big mouth. "Uhm... Well, you'd probably rather not know. I think." She hoped.
Elle watched Lois's face change. Oh boy. Lois's anger must have won some internal battle against her fear because the woman was irate now - trembling, but definitely more angry than worried. Elle swallowed and stumbled back a few steps as Lois advanced on her.
"Tell me," Lois demanded.
"No." Well, that had sounded... not very assertive. Elle cleared her throat. "No, I won't tell you."
Lois narrowed her eyes and took another step towards Elle.
Elle shuffled back another few steps... and felt something hard at the back of her legs. How on earth had she retreated all the way to the chairs against the wall already? She didn't have to wonder any longer what a mouse felt when cornered by a cat. She tried to edge back further and ended up sitting, with a very intimidating Lois looming over her.
She didn't wait for Lois to ask again and blurted everything in a rush. "I've been on stakeout for the last eight months... waiting for youtogetbackfromtheCongo and IdidnttellLexIsawyouattheairport."
"W-what?" Lois's face contorted, as if she was trying like hell to hold on to her anger.
Elle swallowed again, waiting for the proverb fairy to fly by and drop the other shoe on her head.
"You... h-he...I... I..."
Now would probably be the wrong time to congratulate Lois on her pronoun knowledge, wouldn't it? Maybe she could slink away unnoticed...
"The whole time... h-he was... he... he knew I would come back." Lois staggered backwards, horror written plainly on her face.
Elle said nothing.
"He knew... of course he knew. He'd had the cell and the... oh, God. And he..."
Elle felt her sympathy creep to the surface. Lois wasn't making a lick of sense, but... Elle could tell how upset Lois was. "Ms. Lane?"
Lois's eyes flashed back to hers. "Y-you... you're not here to..." She backed further away. "Why are you here?"
"I'm waiting for... uh... someone. The guy. The ATF agent." Elle shifted uneasily in her chair and waited for comprehension to make an appearance. "The other guy who was shot."
Ah, there it was... still mixed with confusion, though, as if she were trying to remember something. But apparently she hadn't been able to, and she focused her attention back on Elle.
"You shot Luthor."
Elle swallowed. "I did." And it wasn't something she cared to remember. Ever. The sickening thud of the bullet hitting his chest, the echo of the shot reverberating through the warehouse, the dead silence the second after. She hadn't been able to scour the images from her head, either, no matter how much soap and water she'd used to scrub her hands clean.
"And the guy... who is he?" It sounded as if Lois was on autopilot, gathering clues, facts... and she was going to glue them all together and discover... something.
"The ATF agent?" She'd already said...
Lois nodded curtly.
"Pete Romero," Elle tried cautiously, not sure where Lois was headed.
"Romero... Romero... that's Spani- no, Italian, right?"
Elle had no idea why she was on edge. Lois wasn't threatening her anymore...
"ATF... Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms..."
Elle nodded even though Lois was no longer looking at her. This was like waiting for the jack to pop out of the box. That bleeding music setting nerves on end with every note. Elle hated that; the damn thing surprised her every time, and listening to Lois on the edge of some kind of epiphany reminded her exactly of that.
"They knew. They knew about everything. They were there. In the Congo, and..."
Lois's eyes were focused somewhere in the distance, and Elle had a funny feeling that distance ran all the way to Africa as opposed to the section of wall over her left shoulder.
And then all of a sudden she jolted and stared straight at Elle. "It was him!"
"Uh... who was him?" Elle was feeling mighty left out of the epiphany and still on edge.
"Him! The ATF guy. Pete. It's him. He's the one who helped me escape!"
Pete did? Wow, that was n-
"Oh my God. Is he going to be okay?"
What? Oh.
Oh!
Her confusion fled and the lead weight in her gut settled back in. "I... I don't know. T-they told me to wait in here."
"Is he your.... partner or something? Boyfriend?"
"No. He's... well, I don't know, really." Elle stared down at her hands. Hands that had grabbed Pete's gun from his slackened grasp, covered in blood. And... Blood. There'd been so much blood. And she'd caused more. She'd...
The panic came flooding back and clogged in her throat. Lois. Clark. Tangled on the floor. Crying. Bleeding. And Lex. Laughing. Taunting. Raising the gun. Aiming at Lois.
She hadn't thought, hadn't... anything. Her hands... her finger had pulled the trigger, and she could still feel the ghost of the gun's recoil against her palms. The sound echoed in her head. And the sight...
Luthor's stunned face, changing to pained, to... blank. And he'd collapsed. Dead. He was dead. A man was dead because of her. And there was...
How the hell had she done it in one shot? Just... And he was dead.
"Elle?"
She jumped. Oh... Lois. Lois was here. Here was in the waiting room. The hospital. And they were waiting.
"Elle, are you going to be okay here alone? I... well, the doctor..."
She looked up to find Lois motioning to the doorway, apology written on her face - for what, exactly, she wasn't sure.
"They said I can go in and see Clark now... Will you be okay?"
For all the vehemence she'd spouted earlier, Lois was apologetic now. Elle could see the warring in her eyes.
"Yea-" Elle squeaked, then cleared her throat and tried to convince her heart to stop racing. "Yeah. I-I'll be fine. Go."
Lois gave her one more glance, a sympathetic one, and hurried out the door of the waiting room.
TBC...
