“You don’t have to…” Clark said.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t guess.” Lois said. “Girl comes back from a war zone with flashbacks…usually she’s a victim. Girl comes back a Slayer…”
“I suspected,” Clark admitted. “After Olaf.”
“You didn’t say anything.” Lois said staring up at him. The expression on his face was concerned, but not judgmental. If she’d seen condemnation in his eyes something in her would have died.
“It wasn’t my place. I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t do something like that without a good reason.”
He said it firmly, in that way he had, as though by saying it he made it true.
“That’s the thing. I don’t know if I’m me anymore. If we were talking about the person I was two weeks ago, I’d agree with you. Now…”
Now she felt as though there was another, darker part of herself that she’d never known before. Until she knew exactly what had been done to her, she would never be able to relax. She’d never be able to sleep without nightmares.
Lois shivered, with more than the wind making her cold. She was startled when she felt Clark’s coat settling around her. Once again it was warm and it covered her to her knees.
His hand stayed on her shoulder, and even through the coat she could feel the heat of it.
“Now I’m not sure that part of me didn’t like it.”
She’d enjoyed hitting Angelica. It had felt as good as anything she’d felt in a long time. All her unexpressed rage focused on a target she didn’t have to feel any guilt about. It had been a heady feeling.
There was a sense of power in violence. Although society tried to reject violence, it was tied into the fabric of human life. Lois had learned that lesson the first time she’d gone to a boxing match with her father. The energy of the crowd, the driving, surging hunger…the relentless need.
It was something that was part of her now, and it wasn’t something she could easily explain.
“Do you feel that way now?”
“What?” Lois asked.
“Are you happy you did what you did?”
“No!” Lois stared at him for a moment. “What kind of question is that?”
Clark placed his hand on her arm. “The way you are feeling now…it shows that you aren’t this inhuman thing you’re afraid of.”
“I have a darkness within me,” Lois said stubbornly. “And until I find out why, I can’t stop.”
“We’ll find out together.”
“You won’t leave?” Lois asked. For some reason, this was more important to her than she would have imagined before all of this began. She’d always seen a partner as a hindrance.
Now she couldn’t imagine doing this without him.
Clark was silent for a long moment then sighed. “Not this time. I’ve done enough of that in my life.”
He’d lived the life of a nomad before this, always moving on before people became too suspicious of the miracles in their midst.
They stared out at the city. The view from here was nothing like flying, but it was still beautiful. They were silent for long moments.
Lois leaned up against Clark and felt him put his arm around her.
“It’s not easy, feeling helpless.” Lois said finally, breaking the silence.
That’s how it had all started, with Lois’s helplessness and rage.
If Lois closed her eyes, she could still see that faces of the girls who had been shipped out before she’d changed. The abuse she’d seen and been unable to stop.
“I always hated feeling that way,” Lois said. “Now it’s intolerable.”
“I went through the Congo once,” Clark sighed. “I didn’t stay long. It hurt too much knowing that the villagers you helped one week were going to be herded off their land the next.”
Three million dead and with the death toll rising, the Congo was a place of horrors. The land screamed out its misery. It wasn’t any wonder that Nassur and his men had thought no one would miss a few hundred young women.
Nobody had but their families.
“I was so angry.” Lois said, staring off into the distance. “I saw what they were doing, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
“And things changed…”
“They were hitting me,” Lois said. “And I heard this voice, offering me power.”
“It sounds like you didn’t have much of a choice.”
“What if I did? What if I did this to myself?”
The nightmares, the strange urges, the growing anger and violence and rage. What if she’d made a deal with the devil to save her own life?
“What was the alternative?” Clark tightened his grip around her reassuringly.
“I would have died.” Lois didn’t look at Clark. If she hadn’t been caught in the first place, she never would have been in that situation.
“You said in your story that forty girls escaped from a compound in the Congo. How much did you have to do with that?”
“I made it happen,” Lois said grimly.
If she hadn’t taken the risks she had, Nassur and his men would still be shipping girls out. They’d still be brutalizing them.
“Then you gave those girls a chance.” Clark sighed and stared off into the distance. “I made a decision a long time ago to try to help people. It’s not something I’ve ever regretted.”
“Well, I did a good thing in getting the girls out, but that doesn’t justify what I did.” Lois said.
It didn’t justify how much part of her had enjoyed it.
“I can’t judge you,” Clark said. “You had a difficult choice to make, and you made it.”
“What if it wasn’t me making that decision?”
The specter of being possessed by something dark and evil terrified Lois.
“Then it wasn’t your fault.”
“I could have stopped.” Lois said quietly. “At least after the first few.”
Her rage had consumed her; it had been like she was someone else entirely. She’d been another person.
“Then you have to live with that,” Clark said. “Just like I have to live with what I’ve done this evening.”
“That thing would have kept killing,” Lois said. It seemed so obvious to her. Killing the thing that had taken over a man’s corpse almost wasn’t like killing at all.
Of course, before going to the Congo, Lois had been against capital punishment.
It was frightening to wonder how many of the changes in her personality were due to an alien influence, and how many were just the result of life trauma.
“Would those men have stopped what they were doing?” Clark shook his head. “It doesn’t make what either of us did right, but it makes it a little easier.”
“I dream about it every night,” Lois said.
“Guilt exists for a reason. It’s there to help us choose differently in the future.”
“What if we can’t?” Lois asked.
“If I get into the same situation again, I won’t be making the same choice,” Clark said firmly.
Lois felt a chill. He’d as much as admitted that he’d surrender himself if he was captured again.
She’d have to make sure that didn’t happen.
**************
“We’re going to have to be more careful,” Lois said quietly. “Angelica isn’t going to stop trying to get control of you.”
“I’m going to take us out of the city,” Clark said. “At least for the night.”
“How far are we going to have to go?”
“Far enough that even if they can find out where I am they’ll have trouble getting anyone to us before we can get away.”
“Metropolis?” Lois asked, before realizing how foolish that sounded.
All it would take would be for one of Lucy’s friends or Lois’s coworkers to recognize either of them, and Perry would have some very pointed questions.
“I don’t want to lead them back to anyone we care about.” Clark looked grim. “One hostage is more than enough.”
Lois wondered whether he was talking about her or Jimmy.
Against magic, he was just as likely as any of them to be a victim, which had to be disconcerting.
“Surprise me,” she said.
***********
The view across the river Thames was amazing.
“Why England?” Lois asked. She’d been part of an exchange student in Ireland during her eleventh grade year, but somehow she’d never made it to London.
She’d always wanted to go, but she’d never had the time.
“Do you remember Clem asking you if a man with an English accent had come looking for you?”
Lois nodded slowly.
“Doesn’t that sort of suggest that there is some sort of story there?”
“Maybe we should ask Clem,” Lois said.
That assumed they could find him again. By his own admission he didn’t have a fixed abode.
“I have the feeling that Clem didn’t know all that much,” Clark said. “He seemed like the sort that would have told us.”
“If he hadn’t assumed we already knew.” Lois shook her head. “We should be back in the states looking for Faith’s friends.”
“Well, at least this will give us a safe place to sleep.” Clark sighed and rose to his feet. “We’ll see what we can find in the morning, and if we don’t find anything we can always head back.”
“Clark,” Lois said. “Thank you.”
She reached up and kissed him on the cheek.
Lois turned away quickly, before either of them could be embarrassed.
**************
The crater somehow wasn’t an unexpected sight. An act of domestic terrorism which had been perpetrated in the days before Sunnydale’s collapse, it was still being investigated by the London police.
Lois had been surprised at how much information the name Slayer had made available. It had opened unexpected doors, both on the internet and in local libraries.
There was an entry on a website called “Demons, Demons, Demons.” The things Lois saw on that site made her shudder. If she hadn’t seen some demon types she recognized from the bar, she would have assumed that it was all fantasy.
Apparently, wherever Slayers appeared there appeared watchers, people trained in supporting them. Clem had been right. According to local legend, only one Slayer was Chosen, after the death of the last.
Lois had wondered briefly where her watcher was; having someone who was there to ease her into the transition might have made things a little easier.
This answered her question. This was all that was left of the main quarters of the watchers organization. On paper they were a group of historians and dealers in antiquities.
The death toll had been in the hundreds.
“This wasn’t a coincidence,” Lois said.
Clark nodded. He was staring at the rubble, then shook his head. “There isn’t enough of anything left to save. I don’t think you’ll find your answers here.”
Lois scowled. Whatever had happened at Sunnydale was looking more and more like a deliberate act of terrorism.
People had to be warned.
*************
By daylight, flying was even more exhilarating than by night. They had to skim near the surface to avoid leaving much of a radar trail, and seeing the sea and then land flashing by beneath her was exciting.
Glancing at Clark, Lois felt a sense of contentedness. He hadn’t rejected her, even though she’d revealed things she’d never revealed to anyone. If there was a sadness in his eyes, and a sense that he wasn’t happy about his own role in killing, it was something that Lois was sure would fade with time.
All she had to do was protect him while she looked for the truth behind what had happened to her, to the organization in England, and to the city of Sunnydale.
It was a task that she had renewed hope in being able to accomplish. She was Lois Lane after all, and she could do anything.
She could even master herself. The darkness was still there, but it was not her master. If she could still hear the crunching of bones when she was sleeping, if the faces of the dead gathered at the foot of her bed, she would endure.
It wasn’t until she felt the vibration in her pocket that her temporary sense of calm was interrupted.
Clark landed, and Lois was thankful she had nationwide coverage. Lex-Tel was more than efficient. Whatever else could be said about Luthorcorp, its businesses were efficient.
“Ms Lane?” An unfamiliar male voice was on the telephone. “I believe you wished to set up a meeting with Ms. Summers?”
The voice was British, cultured, confident.
“Um…yes?”
“Meet her in an hour in the hospital parking lot. Come alone.”
Before Lois could protest, the line went dead.
