1. Bound - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

2. Strangling - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

3. Manhandling - Martha (tumblr/ao3)

4. Hostage - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

5. Betrayal - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

6. Bruises - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

7. Sensory Deprivation - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

8. Severe Illness - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

9. Impact - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

10. Surgery - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

11. Drowning - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

12. Rescue - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

13. Burns - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

14. Crash - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

15. Fever - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

16. Half-Blind - Mister Wilson (tumblr/ao3)

17. Infection - Mister Wilson (tumblr/ao3)

18. Sprained Ribs - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

19. Stabbed - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

20. Kidnapped - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

21. Bleeding - Mister Wilson (tumblr/ao3)

22. Self-Harm - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

23. Screaming - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

24. Broken Bones - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

25. Comfort - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

26. Adrift - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

27. Poisoned - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

28. Bloody Hands - Clark (tumblr/ao3)

29. Insomnia - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

30. Hypothermia - Darcie (tumblr/ao3)

31. Shot - Lois (tumblr/ao3)

Whumptober Day 30!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/86724184

Title: Hypothermia - Darcie

Prompt: No. 30 ‘Digging Your Grave’ - major character death, left for dead, ghosts

Trigger Warnings: hypothermia

Word Count: 1948

Author’s Note: Bit of an out-there interpretation, but I’ve always thought of Digging Your Own Grave implying the idea of dying alone since there’s no one around to bury you. Best way to die alone: hypothermia.

Stormkrigeren had plenty of experience training in extreme temperatures, and as long as she kept moving, could survive with little to no protection in conditions as low as negative-forty Celsius thanks to her unnatural durability and high core temperature. She ‘ran warm’, as Dr. Schreyer had once described it, but that was not to say that Stormkrigeren couldn’t get cold.

It had been about negative-five out last time she had found a thermometer, which was three hours ago outside a small pharmacy in a town twelve miles south of her current location. Chances were it was about the same temperature now, though a combination of wind-chill and honest-to-goodness freezing rain of all things (fuck, it was only early autumn), Stormkrigeren doubted that it could be much warmer than below eighteen.

Four miles to go. Four miles to the nearest goddamn gas station where she could maybe, maybe buy her next few meals and a Greyhound ticket to Fort McMurray. Four miles of hiking beside the highway late at night in the freezing rain with not even so much as a ski jacket - just a pair of good boots, cargo pants, and a thick second-hand pullover from a charity shop. Four miles to go, and Stormkrigeren was well aware that she was running out of time with Stage II hypothermia starting to set in.

It wasn’t an issue - or at least, it shouldn’t have been an issue.

Almost to the day she had been found, it had been common knowledge among her caretakers that Stormkrigeren was a hardy little thing and much stronger than any human child. She never cried when she was hurt, did not flinch away from needles or machines during medical exams, and hardly seemed to notice when she got a cut, burn, or bruise during her training with Mr. Wilson. Stormkrigeren simply ignored the pain, and would carry on as she always did without ever allowing herself to be hindered.

But now with the clear symptoms of Stage II hypothermia - drowsiness, loss of fine motor skills, decreased heart rate, lack of shivering - making themselves apparent, Stormkrigeren knew that she would need to start addressing the issue soon. There was still at least another four miles to the nearest form of shelter, (a roadside gas station, of all things) so for now she kept herself busy alternating between vigorously rubbing her arms through the fabric of her sweater, stretching her fingers and toes to keep the blood moving, and stomping her feet on the icy asphalt as she jogged farther north. There was, of course, the chance that the hard movements plus a slow heart rate could cause her to go into cardiac arrest (which was why many doctors suggested against rubbing or massaging a hypothermic person to warm them up), but Stormkrigeren had already been in what was likely an unhealthy number of situations that could have lead to a heart attack even at her young age and it’d never happened back then, so she doubted that it would happen now.

The storm hadn’t been that bad when she’d set out that evening - fuck, it hadn’t even been a storm then, just a light drizzle that looked as if it would let up soon. Sixteen miles in that would’ve been a breeze, and the distance was nothing compared to some of the sprints Stormkrigeren had done during her training. The weather had turned nasty less than an hour later, but that was not to say that she allowed herself to slow down in her steady jog north, even when the asphalt of the highway she was running beside began to turn dangerously icy. Stormkrigeren ignored the hazardous conditions and maintained her pace, keeping to the shoulder to avoid any drivers that were stupid enough to be out in a storm like this after the sun had set.

Do not stop - that was the rule. Do not rest until the task is complete.

By her estimations, Stormkrigeren still had another two miles to go until she could rest.

The rain vehemently refused to let up, pelting her from all sides and soaking her to the skin while covering everything in a sheet of thin, icy frost. It might have been pretty if not for two very important reasons: (a), it was already quite dark out and even with her keen eyesight, Stormkrigeren could hardly see shit, and (b), it was too effing cold to be pretty. So Stormkrigeren dutifully ignored whatever sights might have been visible and kept running at her slightly-unsteady pace, refusing to acknowledge that she was definitely starting to lose her coordination, evidenced by every time she stumbled on the frozen asphalt.

Do not stop.

Do not rest.

Stormkrigeren had stopped feeling cold a few miles back, her feet like bricks inside her boots, but still she did not stop. Keeping moving, don’t stop, don’t rest-

The gas station seemed to appear very suddenly - one minute, she was still in the dark rainstorm in the middle of nowhere, and the next she was stamping her feet on the ground beneath a sign boasting of low diesel prices bordering the tiny parking lot. Two very contrasting thoughts swept through her head at the sight of the low building, simultaneously setting her on edge and almost dropping her guard in relief. On one hand, here was someplace where she could warm up and rest and prepare for the next leg of her escape in relative safety - but the other side of the coin was her fugitive instinct screaming danger at the sight of a gas station. Places like this had cameras, and the last thing Stormkrigeren wanted was for someone to have proof of her existence.

Then again, places like this were warm and Stormkrigeren’s fear of being recognized was just barely outweighed by her fear of significant frostbite. It was late, she was tired, she was hungry, she was cold, and she had just run nearly twenty miles in a storm bordering on sleet - in short, she didn’t have the mental capacity to be too worried about anything. With that makeshift courage bolstering her up, Stormkrigeren crossed the small parking lot and entered the convenience store beside the pumps.

One of the first things she noted (besides, of course, the location of the four cameras that could possibly catch a glimpse of her face) was a small coffee shop near the back - one of those little ones that was just a counter with a barista behind it and no chairs or tables in sight. But, Stormkrigeren also noted that it did have hot, black coffee fresh from the pot.

She made her way across the virtually empty convenience store, keeping her face out of sight beneath her cap from the nearby cameras, employees, and a balding customer currently browsing a nearby aisle containing medicine, sports magazines, and juice concentrate. The barista noticed her the moment Stormkrigeren looked remotely interested in the coffee shop, and immediately perked up as she approached, “Hi! What can I get you?”

“Canni-”

Stormkrigeren stopped herself mid-sentence, recognizing that she was slurring a bit - that wasn’t a good sign, maybe the hypothermia had affected her mind more than she had thought. She needed to be fully awake and alert, and the damn cold wasn’t helping much.

“Can. I. Please. Get. A. Large. Black. Coffee. As. Hot. As. You. Can. Make. It,” she tried again, forcing herself to pause between each word and say her piece slowly and deliberately so that she didn’t muddle it again. The barista shot her an odd look but didn’t push the matter and started calculating the total at the cash register.

“Alright, that’s one large black coffee to go. Your total is two-ninety-nine, ma’am.”

Stormkrigeren proceeded to pull out the exact amount in loose change collected in the front pocket of her backpack while the basista bustled about finding a cup and filling with steaming dark brew straight from the pot. She secretly hated coffee with a passion - it was bitter and had always brought up bad memories ever since she’d turned thirteen, but it was the quickest way to raise her internal temperature which was her highest priority at the moment. Accepting the hot cup, she paid for her drink and thanked the barista before promptly downing half its contents without so much as scalding her tongue. Stormkrigeren had a brief coughing fit afterwards but her insides felt all the warmer for it, so that could only be a good thing.

She proceeded to absently wander around the gas station, occasionally taking slow swigs from her coffee and mostly looking out for something to replace her thoroughly soaked clothes - there was a pair of clean jeans in her backpack which were probably only a little bit damp, though her pullover would definitely need to be replaced for something both dry and waterproof. Doing all of her shopping out of local Walgreens and gas station convenience stores probably wasn’t the cheapest or the easiest way to live on the run, though Stormkrigeren made it work simply because while gas stations were rife with cameras, customers were significantly less likely to be identified by the employees compared to someplace that had greeters like Walmart or Costco. Admittedly, gas stations often didn’t sell clothes (mostly because very few customers came in looking for anything more than a sandwich), but Stormkrigeren was in luck as this one had a few sweatshirts emblazoned with sights from a local tourist attraction. It would have to do.

After grabbing a few other necessities - including a hothands packet, a box of tampons, and six microwavable breakfast burritos - she made her way to the cashier with her total already calculated in her head. The man scanned the purchases and confirmed her math while Stormkrigeren counted out a few ten-dollar bills, made the exchange, and did her best to look like she wasn’t shivering violently throughout the whole interaction. Fuck, she needed to sit down. But even if it was warmer than the outdoors, the convenience store was in no way safe - too many cameras around. Except, Stormkrigeren reminded herself, in the bathrooms.

She scooped up her purchases and thanked the cashier before making her way to the little girls room on the other side of the store, shoving open the heavy door with her shoulder to discover that luck was with her and the place was empty. Not only that, but there was a heating vent embedded in the wall relatively close to the tiled floor. Stormkrigeren nearly collapsed in relief when she saw it and wasted no time in sitting down with her back against it while she stripped out of her still-dripping pullover and long-sleeved tee beneath. With her cold and trembling hands, it took her longer than she would have liked to put on the new, dry shirt and yank her damp boots and socks off her aching feet, but once she did, it was bliss.

She didn’t care that she had close to no idea where she was or where she was heading or what she was going to do next, that someone could walk in at any moment, that the cramped space reeked of toilet cleaner and the odd papery smell she had come to associate with public bathrooms - all that mattered was that she was out of the cold. Stormkrigeren slowly allowed her mind to temporarily let go of the razor-sharp focus that kept her alive as she pulled on a dry pair of socks, wrapped her travel blanket around her shoulders, and snapped the hothands packet to activate it. For the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to relax just the tiniest amount.

Whumptober Day 27!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/86584666

Title: Poisoning - Darcie

Prompt: No. 27 ‘I’m Fine, I Prom…’ - passing out, vertigo, collapse

Trigger Warnings: puking, poisoning

Word Count: 1873

There was new protein powder in the kitchen.

It was still kept in the same clear generic plastic container, and had the same texture and color too, but it tasted different from her usual stuff. It wasn’t that even that big of a difference - her shake was only slightly chalkier and more metallic beneath the artificial chocolate flavoring. Stormkrigeren put it down to the milk she had used for it - the flavor could change occasionally between batches, but as long as it didn’t look or smell bad, it was usually all right. Not like she couldn’t simply walk off any mild food poisoning that might result.

Stormkrigeren quickly polished off her breakfast of protein shake and fruit salad, washing out her dishes in the kitchen sink before returning to the main Room to perform some warm-up stretches. It was an arms and core day, which were always fun because it meant she could use the punching bag. The bag was usually stored in a cupboard in the storage/kitchen room, but now Stormkrigeren brought it out into her main Room and hung it on the folding steel bar against the south wall in preparation for the workout. Sixty minutes of alternating sprints, boxing drills, crunches, pushups, kicks, and punches. Certainly not the most challenging fitness routine she had ever done, but it was hard enough to make her satisfyingly sore when it was finally over. Stormkrigeren wiped sweat from her forehead as her alarm went off, signaling the end of her workout, and ignored the tenderness around her middle when she did one last crunch before getting up. It hurt a bit more than it usually did - but then again, everything tended to cramp a little bit when her menstrual period was approaching.

Stormkrigeren showered quickly and changed into some clean clothes before pouring herself a glass of orange juice and getting back to work. It was some online organization for one of LexCorp’s foreign subsidies - they were preparing another shipment to New York, and she had been assigned to come up with an analytics report on the proposed method of transporting the cargo. A simple, but not monotonous or necessarily challenging task, but Stormkrigeren still struggled to concentrate and ignore the uncomfortable churning in her stomach. She ignored it, of course, and carried on somewhat-normally for another half-hour or so before the nausea set in.

Abdominal pain, nausea, cramping, and a distinct lack of concentration - all early symptoms of many different sicknesses, but Stormkrigeren’s caretakers had long ago ruled out the possibility of the subject contracting any normal human illnesses. The last time she had ever felt like this had been last year when Mister Wilson had conducted a few ‘poison tests’ to see how she could handle various toxins and gases. Her body had little to no reaction to most of them, but a few of the more potent ones… had felt an awful lot like this. With her headache pounding the way it was, Stormkrigeren could only think of one logical conclusion: she had been poisoned somehow. And she needed to remove said poison from her system as quickly as possible.

“Fuck,” she muttered, stumbling up from her chair and towards the kitchen door, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck, oh shit - didn’t fucking recognize it sooner…”

Her legs were already trembling from the effort of sprinting to the bathroom and gave way beneath her as she crouched on the tile, but she still managed to lift the spotless toilet seat before shoving any stray hair behind her ears. She had not been gassed or injected, that she was sure of - most fumes would cause respiratory symptoms before gastrointestinal, and she couldn’t remember experiencing any needles or sharp pricks since her weekly blood tests a few days ago. It must have been something she ate or drank, and the quickest way to get it out was to make it come back up.

Mister Wilson had taught her how. ‘Just for emergencies’ he said. Comfortable position on knees, hair out of the way, head forward and gentle pressure on the abdominal area. Index and middle fingers in pointer position, pressed into the back of her throat to trigger the pharyngeal reflex and induce vomiting. Remain calm and relaxed, do not panic, never allow yourself to panic.

She eventually managed it, and promptly lost most of the meagre contents of her stomach into the toilet, along with much of her energy. The ordeal left her cold and trembling from the forced effort, muscles burning just from the effort of keeping herself upright. Her vision was swimming now as she clutched at the toilet bowl and tried to brush any loose hairs out of her face, taking deep breaths to calm the panic in her chest. It hadn’t been enough, she hadn’t gotten all of it out, there was still some of the poison inside her-

“One more time,” she panted, giving herself a goal to cling onto when the whole world seemed to be falling apart, “Damnit, one more time, get it all out.”

It wouldn’t do any good, she couldn’t possibly get all of it out this way, but she at least had to try. Stormkrigeren pulled herself up into position, her body trembling from the effort and vision flickering in shades of dark and light. She could feel herself slipping - physically or mentally, she couldn’t tell - slipping, falling, cracking, shattering, and finally slumping to the floor as oblivion took hold.

V*V*V*V*V*V*V

Movement woke her - nearby, to her left, footsteps on smooth concrete. Heavy footsteps, likely male, moving closer, stopping right within arms reach and crouching down beside her.

Her eyes flew open the same moment that Stormkrigeren kicked off the blanket and aimed a blow at the potential attacker - only for Mister Wilson to easily catch her wrist long before it made contact.

Stormkrigeren blinked, taking in the sight of him leaning down beside her, the usual scowl on his face and both of her wrists caught in his grip. She knew him well enough to tell that he wasn’t necessarily angry that she had tried to attack him unprovoked - approving, more like, but he didn’t tell her so aloud. Instead he tightly squeezed her left wrist until she was forced to open the hand, into which he pressed a full waterbottle in a subtle order to drink up.

“Pulse,” he ordered. She obeyed, pushing herself up into a sitting position and tilting her head to one side so he could press two fingers against the side of her throat, taking a moment to analyze her surroundings.

She was on the floor of her Room’s kitchenette, shivering slightly on the cold concrete - which would explain the blanket that had been tossed over her. There was an empty bucket off to her right, likely put there by Mister Wilson along with the blanket, and a warm, spicy, sweet smell coming from the nearby hob letting off small clouds of steam. Rice pudding - the kind with nutmeg in it that her teacher sometimes made.

“Did Dr. Schreyer call you?” Stormkrigeren ventured, finally working up the courage to point out the one small irregularity in the entire situation - it was the medically-approved Lisa and not Mister Wilson who was legally required to nurse the injured Stormkrigeren back to health in the case of an emergency.

“Off duty,” came the reply, “Lee’s the only one in the Watching Room, and he didn’t call me - didn’t even know you were hurting till I arrived for your lesson and politely explained to the bastard that something must be wrong because you hadn’t put your punching bag away.”

Part of her inwardly flinched at the mention - she was always supposed to put her punching bag away when she finished a routine, that was the rule, and somehow she had completely forgotten and broken that rule. There would be punishment for her negligence, there was no doubt of that, but she had no idea what or how severe it would be. Stormkrigeren found herself tensing in preparation, waiting for her teacher’s gentle hand on her pulse to turn into a fist for the inevitable blow. But Mister Wilson only frowned and muttered something to himself about her heart rate being too slow as he removed his hand to return to his place at the stovetop. Stormkrigeren let out the smallest sigh of relief when he stepped away, keeping her gaze trained on him at all times as he continued to rhythmically stir the pot before he finally spoke up.

“What do you think it was?”

“Arsenic?” she hazarded a guess, thinking back on all the symptoms she had shown before losing consciousness. Mister Wilson nodded.

“Likely. I’ll ask Luthor about it when I get the chance.”

It suddenly clicked and Stormkrigeren realized why her teacher was acting more protective than usual, rare worry lines creasing his usually grim face.

“You… didn’t put it there.”

“No,” he answered in a low growl, still stirring the bubbling pot, “But part of me wishes I had just so I wouldn’t have to address that bastard about running poison tests on my student without my permission.”

Mister Wilson snorted softly in annoyance and moved to grab two bowls from a nearby cupboard, “Of course, with the way you’re looking, you’re going to be out of commission for a few days till your body flushes it out. Won’t even be good for some light training, I’d expect - and no, you’re not ‘fine’. You were out like a light when I found you.”

Stormkrigeren swallowed back any protests she had about being well enough to train, knowing that her teacher would shut the argument down immediately with solid logic. Her body needed to recover first before Mister Wilson would even consider letting her do a few minutes of sparring practise, but the best she could do for herself at the moment was restore any fluids she had lost (vomiting tended to be very dehydrating).

She quietly drank from the waterbottle he had handed her earlier, the cool liquid soothing her burning throat as she watched her teacher at the hob. Mister Wilson had finally decided the porridge was thick enough and turned the heat off in favor of scooping rice pudding into the two bowls he had grabbed before finally moving to sit down nearby on the hard concrete floor with a low sigh.

“See if you can keep that down,” he muttered, passing her the smaller portion, which Stormkrigeren took with a grateful nod. It probably wasn’t the best thing to eat after having recently survived an attempted poisoning, but it was comfort food and might help to calm the twisting tension that lingered inside her since the ordeal. She followed orders and ate the pudding slowly, watching her teacher pull a pack of playing cards and an assortment of foreign loose change from his pockets.

“Ever played poker?” Mister Wilson asked, shuffling the cards.

“No, sir.”

He sighed, mildly annoyed and resigned, then smiled softly to himself as he moved a little closer to sit facing his student.

“I came all this way to give you a goddamned lesson,” he chuckled, laying out the cards, “Might as well teach you something.”

Whumptober Day 22!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/86312209

Title: Self-Harm - Darcie

Prompt: No. 22 ‘They Made Me Do It’ - cursed, demon, obsession

Trigger Warnings: self-harm, blood

Word Count: 1451

It was a defense mechanism of sorts - nothing could hurt you if you hurt yourself first. The pain would keep you awake and alert, the pain would make you want to avoid enduring such agony again, and the pain reminded you of your place in the world.

Darcie was painfully well aware of her place in the world. There was a word for it: protector. And there was also a way to be it: following orders.

Darcie, unfortunately, had not followed orders. She had not obeyed, she had not stood still while being inspected, she had fought back - and that was unacceptable. So, of course, she deserved punishment for that, so that she remembered to never do it again.

It was an accident, she told herself as she slipped out of their darkened motel room and out into the hallway, carefully and quietly closing the door behind her. It was an accident - she hadn’t meant to move when Clark leaned close, she hadn’t meant to strike out when he put his arms around her in what Darcie was now realizing was supposed to have been a comforting embrace, and she hadn’t meant to let her eyes burn the way that they had. It was an accident, she told herself, but she still had to pay for it.

The motel was quiet this late at night, only interrupted by the hum of a vending machine and the distant voices of the receptionist chattering with the manager in the office at the end of the hall. Darcie had no trouble getting outside, suppressing a shiver as she did - winter was approaching quickly and she had been more focused on separating herself from Clark than remembering to grab her coat. She wasn’t going back for it now. She deserved to be uncomfortable, to be in pain, so Darcie forced herself to feel the cold and start running.

The town was small and lit only by streetlamps and the occasional bright store window illuminating the sidewalk this late at night, so it was relatively simple to escape the urban area without being seen. Small neighborhoods gave way to sparse forest dotting the tundra where the only light came from the stars but Darcie refused to allow herself to enjoy the sight of the heavens overhead. She was focused entirely on her singular goal - find a decently-sized boulder, and make it hurt.

She had no idea how long she walked - maybe it was only a few minutes, but considering that her legs were starting to burn just the tiniest bit when she finally slowed down, it likely was closer to a couple of hours. The air was crisp and cold and burning in her lungs, clouding the air with every breath she took as Darcie paced through the copse of evergreen trees, her boots tramping on rocks as she searched. The forest-dotted tundra had become a low ridge at some point, freezing earth and broken stone dividing the trees from each other, and it was on that ridge that Darcie found her goal.

There was a large boulder, maybe the size of a truck if she had to guess, on the low end of the cliff and perfect for her plan, so she wasted no time in scrambling down towards it. The rock was hard and cool and rough to the touch - some form of slate or smooth sandstone, though it was difficult to tell by the light of the stars alone. Honestly all Darcie cared about was the fact that it was both breakable and a pain to do so.

She rested her fist against its sloping side, lightly pressing in before cocking her arm for a sharp blow. It had been badly aimed on purpose, and instead of hitting the rock head on her knuckles glanced against it in what should have been a painful scrape… but it wasn’t. Her hand didn’t hurt - hell, it wasn’t even bleedingorraw - but her boulder of choice was looking a little worse for wear in the spot where she had struck it.

Huh.

It was seemingly impossible, but considering the events of the past few days and just how much she was learning about herself by simply being around Clark, she had to admit that she wasn’t all too surprised to discover that stone could be broken while she remained unharmed. It was a change, a big one, and Darcie wasn’t sure if she liked it - she preferred life and pain to be predictable, and this certainly was not.

She hit the boulder again, harder and with better aim, and this time she felt the familiar grinding pain that one expected when they punched something hard, though it still hurt far less than she was used to. Oddly enough, there was now a decently sized bit of stone missing from the boulder where she had hit it, pulverized by the impact.

Another hit, harder and faster and a little to the right. Finally, burning pain blossomed in her fist as the stone fell away like dark chalk stained red by her blood, a dent made in both herself and the boulder. And even though it hurt, damn, it felt good.

She hit the rock again, and again, refusing to pull her punches when her bare knuckles hit rigid stone and throwing her weight into each blow. More power, more strength, more dust at her feet, blood on her hands, and pain paying the price of her transgressions as she continued to throw punches into the dark wilderness night.

She had known Clark for exactly a week, and so far had been able to keep her unforgivable mistakes to a minimum - until tonight, at least. It was her fault that he had gotten dragged into this mess, her fault that her Hunters would be after him now, and her fault that she had hurt him when she was supposed to be protecting him. She had failed at her purpose, and no matter how many times Clark tried to reassure her that it was all right, he was okay, it was only a bruise, that did not change the fact that she had failed.

Failure was inevitable, but that did not mean it was in any way acceptable. A lot like mistakes.

“Mistakes are inevitable - they are part of what makes us human,” her Teacher had once explained after a particularly difficult hunting session in the Rooms, “You, unfortunately, are not. So don’t you ever think for a moment that even one mistake will be tolerated for even an instant.”

She had failed, she had made a mistake, and since Clark refused to dole out the universe’s punishment for such a crime, she did it herself in the form of broken bones and broken stones. Bones to remind her of the frailty of her existence and obedience, and stones as a representation of what she must become in order to succeed. Mister Wilson’s damned ability to read meaning into everything he did was beginning to rub off on her - in all honesty, Darcie had just wanted something to punch.

She only stopped because her once-large boulder was now a pile of dust and rubble at her feet, and the stone that remained was not worth the effort of crumbling any further. It didn’t matter anymore - her bruised and bloodied hands were proof enough of her fulfilled punishment. Darcie took a moment to examine them, noting with some frustration that she had broken a few fingers and sprained her left wrist (those would take some time to heal) but interestingly enough, the skin on her knuckles that she could have sworn had been scratched, torn, or beaten into a bloody pulp when she first began her rampage was already beginning to scab over - odd, she had never healed this fast before.

She decided not to waste what precious patience she had worrying over it and shook herself instead, a small cloud of rock dust coming loose from her clothes and hair, though she should have expected that. Picking herself up and stretching to relieve the tension still clenching her shoulders in a fighter’s pose, she kicked absently at a nearby chunk of rock that had survived her assault and was still a half-way decent size, unsurprised when it crumbled instantly under her half-hearted blow. She wrinkled her nose in its direction and rubbed her eyes tiredly in a useless attempt to get the gritty feeling coating them to go away, doing her best to ignore the exhaustion finally catching up with her.

Damn, she needed a drink.

(And maybe, it occurred to her about two-thirds of the way through her hike back to town, maybe she needed a hug.)

Whumptober Day 19!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/86145226

Title: Stabbed - Darcie

Prompt: No. 19 ‘Just A Scratch’ - bitten, bleeding, stabbing

Trigger Warnings: blood, physical abuse

Word Count: 1578

Don’t scream.

Don’t scream, don’t scream, don’t scream…

She didn’t scream - she just grunted softly and waited for her Teacher to step away, leaving the blade embedded in her lower abdominal while she watched for the signal that she could begin. The first two minutes after receiving a major wound were always the hardest but Stormrkrigeren refused to allow the pain to get the better of her, standing patiently to attention as Mister Wilson glanced from his watch to the digital clock on the far wall of the Room, silently counting down the seconds.

She breathed slowly, carefully, doing her best not to disturb the knife still buried in her skin. It was bleeding profusely - as was to be expected from a stab wound - and most of the front of her shirt and a part of her pants were covered in the hot, sticky gore, yet Stormkrigeren had at least another minute before she could be allowed to treat it. Today’s lesson was in emergency medical self-treatment, and the goal was for her to successfully stop the bleeding and close the hole before she lost thirty percent of her blood.

Even if allowing yourself to be stabbed just so you could practice treating it was something that most, if not all, doctors would not suggest, Stormkrigeren knew that there was very little danger in the situation. She herself had recently passed her combat medic specialist exam, making her a certified emergency practitioner like Mister Wilson, and Dr. Schreyer (who was currently monitoring the lesson from the Watching Room) had a doctoral degree in paediatrics - if anything were to go wrong, either one of them could step in.

Nothing would go wrong. Stormkrigeren knew the procedure and was working in a sterile environment with everything she needed scattered in various corners around her Room (definitely not the most optimal situation, but done to increase the difficulty by forcing her to move around while injured).

Twenty seconds left now. Her stomach was throbbing painfully, but still she refused to so much as flinch at the discomfort and focused all of her attention wholly on Mister Wilson. Her Teacher was eyeing the stopwatch with his usual look of neutral annoyance, silently counting down the moments before she could begin. Stormkrigeren saw when he raised his chin and brought it down in a sharp nod in her direction, the signal that her two minutes was up - and that her time was running out.

She reacted immediately, pulling the knife out of her skin as quickly and cleanly as she could (biting her lip to hold back a scream as she did) while ignoring the sudden gush of hot blood that came with it as Stormkrigeren moved on to the next step - stopping the bleeding. Her previously-clean shirt was yanked over her head and folded into a halfway-decent makeshift bandage which she pressed firmly against the wound, knowing that she had to halt the flow of blood as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, moving around would slow the process down quite a bit, but she had to get the gauze and tape for the next step.

There were three unlabeled cardboard boxes containing exactly what she needed to treat the injury scattered around her Room. Stormkrigeren started making her way towards the nearest one, keeping her makeshift bandage pressed firmly against her stomach as she tried to walk without overusing her lower abdominals. Reaching the box, she pried it open with one hand and swore silently when she discovered that it only contained a bottle of sanitary saline solution used for cleaning wounds - it would be useful in a few minutes, but was not her first priority.

Stormkrigeren shoved the bottle into the hem of her loose training pants (which were quickly turning into a dark crimson instead of their usual gray) and took a deep breath to calm the painful throbbing in her abdomen as she hobbled towards the next box. This time, luck was with her and the contents were exactly what she needed: sanitary gauze and medical tape.

She wasted no time, immediately dropping into a sitting position that didn’t put too much strain on her core muscles and carefully removing her makeshift shirt-bandage to check on the wound. Damn, it was still bleeding pretty badly, though not as bad as when she had started, which was a miracle considering how much she had been moving around. No matter - she had the tools necessary to stop it, and Stormkrigeren got to work covering the injury with a decently-sized wad of gauze to soak up the blood, taping it in place in order to prevent it from moving around and to maintain constant pressure on the wound.

One thing was for sure: bleeding out was definitely the worst part of getting stabbed.

She eventually managed to staunch the flow, or at least slow it enough that she wasn’t too worried about losing any more blood as she stood up once more to move on to the next step sitting a few meters away on the floor. Reaching the third and final box, she ripped it open and quickly began sorting its contents - packing gauze, gauze sponge, bandages - everything she would need to finish tending the wound. Setting the tools well within reach, Stormkrigeren dropped back down to the concrete floor and laid down to begin the task. Even though she had put the new bandage on only a few minutes before, its purpose was temporary and by the feel of things, it had already done the job of stopping the blood flow decently well. Stormkrigeren carefully peeled the blood-stained gauze off of her stomach, and satisfied that the injury had mostly stopped bleeding, she got to work.

She managed to get it decently sanitized by squirting saline solution into the wound and the area around it, refusing to allow the stinging pain to register in her mind as she instead focused on getting the packing gauze damp with solution as well. Wringing the gauze out to get rid of any excess liquid, Stormkrigeren took a deep breath and began the hard part.

The packing gauze was for… well, packing. It was folded into dense, absorbent pads of gauze and carefully packed inside the wound to absorb any excess blood, filling the hollow space to prevent any organs or muscles from shifting uncomfortably during the healing process. Stormkrigeren had done this before and was ready for the pain of having something that was definitely not supposed to be there inside of her body, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. She bit back another moan as she slowly pressed the gauze into place, wincing as it refused to easily enter the hole in her skin - damn, it was being troublesome and taking much longer than she would have liked. But eventually the wound and the packing complied, and Stormkrigeren was able to move on to the next step: dressing the injury. That didn’t take long at all, only requiring her to put a few layers of gauze and bandage over the wound to soak up any extra blood, cover the patch with a decent amount of tape, and move on.

The final task to complete was to return the blade to her Teacher, signalling the end of the exercise. Unfortunately, Stormkrigeren had dropped it almost immediately after pulling it out a few minutes before, and she stumbled to her feet to retrieve it just as she realized a few other mistakes had been made on her part.

Her first, and most punishable mistake had been to leave the knife where it had fallen - in a real-world situation, an assailant could have grabbed it and easily used it against her a second time while Stormkrigeren was disabled by the wound. Her second mistake was not collecting all of the necessary medical kit in one fell swoop, wasting precious time to check on the wound that was obviously still bleeding every time she stopped at a box. And lastly, her third mistake had been almost inevitable, and that was the trail of blood spots dotting the usually-pristine concrete floor, clearly marking where Stormkrigeren had been and making an easy path for any assailants to follow.

There was one thing in her favor, and that was the fact that this particular exercise was based on timing and precision, not mistakes. Stormkrigeren silenced the fatal little voice in her head calling her a failure for missing such crucial errors with that thought, and quickly scooped up the knife from where she had left it to return it to her Teacher.

Mister Wilson silently accepted the blade, pulling a clean rag out of his back pocket to wipe her blood off of the steel before replacing it in its sheath and clicking the button on the side of the stopwatch - task complete. Stormkrigeren watched his left eyebrow twitch upwards at the sight of her time, but her Teacher made no comment on it and turned the device so that she could see the little black numbers indicating her success.

Twelve minutes, twenty-eight seconds.

Huh. Not too bad. Certainly not optimal, considering that a human could die from hemorrhaging in as little as five minutes - but then again, twelve-and-a-half minutes was pretty damn good for treating the wound herself. Not bad at all.

Though Stormkrigeren would admit that physical training would be nothing short of a pain in the ass - or stomach rather - for the next week or so.

Whumptober Day 18!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/86071141

Title: Sprained Ribs - Clark

Prompt: No. 18 ‘The Doctor Is In’ - “Now Smile for the camera”, doctor’s visit, CPR

Word Count: 969

Clark shut the bathroom door behind himself and took a deep, shaking breath to calm his nerves - not that it would help. It’d been a good half-hour since the accident but he still felt like his veins were on fire with the amount of adrenaline pumping through them, and the rest of him didn’t feel much better either.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink, wincing when he saw the scrape on his cheek and the dirt coating his hair and blue Kryptonian suit. Slowly, because he was still pretty sore, Clark unclipped the cape from where it was attached at his shoulders and let the fabric drop to the tiled floor while he got the top-half of the suit off. His chest was painfully tight beneath the alien garment, and he quickly discovered why.

A large, angry-looking bruise covered a good portion of his left side, his skin clouded red and purple in the area of damage. To make it worse, without the support of the tight Kryptonian suit to hold it in place, Clark was pretty sure he could feel part of his ribcage shifting uncomfortably with every breath he took. This couldn’t be good.

It hurt, and though it didn’t hurt badly, considering that he rarely ever got hurt in the first place, Clark was in a bit of pain since he wasn’t all too used to it. He was about eighty-percent sure he had broken something, especially since the last time he had been in this much pain was when he broke his wrist during the battle with General Zod in downtown Metropolis (though that had healed quickly enough to not need any medical treatment besides being gentle with it). But this… this might need a doctor.

He was at the farmhouse in Smallville, so the nearest doctor would be Dr. Whitaker at the clinic a few miles away, though Clark’s parents had decidedly stopped taking him there for checkups when his first ‘powers’ started developing at age eight due to his Kryptonian physiology. There wasn’t exactly any physician Clark could trust with the knowledge of who or what he was, and even if he did know a trustworthy doctor there was still the issue of differences in treating Kryptonians and humans for injuries.

Scratch that, Clark did know a trustworthy doctor who knew how to deal with Kryptonian medical emergencies, and said doctor happened to be about ten feet away on the other side of the wall, currently scrubbing out the inside of the fridge while she cleaned the farmhouse kitchen.

Darcie had admitted to him once that she was a certified combat medic specialist, and though Clark still wasn’t quite sure what that meant, she had assured him that it was almost the same thing as being a doctor at the ER (or close enough that the actual difference would never be too much of an issue for him). He had seen her work once or twice before, and Clark had to admit, she was pretty good at administering emergency care in high-stress environments (such as ice-encased scout ships and downtown war zones). Long story short, Darcie could probably figure out why he was having trouble taking deep breaths.

Clark sighed tiredly and opened his mouth to shout for her (not that he needed to raise his voice since both of them could hear a heartbeat on the other side of the country), “Darcie?”

He had expected her to take a moment or two to set her cleaning tools aside and come ask what he needed, but to his surprise, the expected knock came on the door before her name was even half out of his mouth. Clark, being a gentleman, opened the bathroom door to see Darcie standing there with her dark hair tied up in a messy bun, a surprisingly domestic-looking sunflower-patterned apron tied around her waist, and a pair of bright orange rubber gloves covering her arms almost up to the elbow.

“I’m just grabbing the extra bottle of bleach,” she explained quickly, absently pulling one of the gloves off of her hand, “The one in the kitchen is empty and I know your mom keeps another under the bathroom sink- ”

Darcie stopped, blinking slowly as she took in the sight of him half-undressed, pretty banged-up, and smiling apologetically at her from his seat on the closed toilet. She stared back, her eyes widening ever-so-slightly when she noticed the large bruise forming on the left side of his chest, “How the fuck did you do that?”

Clark paused, chuckling nervously despite himself, “Um-”

His would-be answer was cut off as he groaned in pain, Darcie having moved to stand beside him and press her hands along his exposed back and left side in a quick rhythm until she located the damaged ribs near the bottom of his chest. A frown crossed her features when Clark gasped raggedly, and she pressed a little harder on the bones to confirm her suspicions. “Three of these are sprained, Boy Scout. You’re just lucky nothing broke. What did you do - collapse a building on top of yourself again?”

Clark couldn’t help but smile at her mother-henning, and put a protective hand over his throbbing side before she could poke him again. “It was just a flying accident, I promise.”

It hadn’t been anything serious - he’d just come into the headwind at the wrong angle and lost control, resulting in a crash into yet another mountainside (Clark was pretty good at flying, but he still hadn’t quite got the hang of dealing with sudden changes in weather). Darcie must have guessed as much and wrinkled her nose in response - the polite equivalent of rolling her eyes in his direction - and shook her head, “Stay put. I’ll get you an ice pack.”

Whumptober Day 13!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/85823608

Title: Burns - Darcie

Prompt: No. 13 ‘That’s Gonna Leave A Mark’ - “This is gonna suck”, burns, cauterization

Word Count: 1244

It was an accident, there was no question about it. Clark would never have done something like this on purpose, he’d promised he wouldn’t…

But here she was, and if she was perfectly honest with herself, Darcie would have to admit that despite the burning pain, the gravity of the situation hadn’t quite registered with her yet.

She managed to get the Kryptonian skinsuit partly off without too much trouble, the cape left on the bathroom floor where she had dropped it and the upper-half of the suit rolled down to her hips so she could get a good look at the burn covering half her back - it was a miracle the alien material had survived, but she herself wasn’t quite as intact. There was a long, blistering streak of inflamed flesh across her spine, and another one just above her left hip, not to mention the fact that the area between looked (and felt) like she had fallen into a bonfire.

That wasn’t too far off from the truth, except the bonfire had been Clark trying to use his heat vision to melt through a steel wall blocking their way to the trapped victims, and instead of falling in, she had stupidly stumbled between him and it, resulting in the burn.

Once she could see the wound (or as much of it as she could while trying to half-turn and observe it via the bathroom mirror), she was able to gauge that it was just a deep second-degree burn of moderate severity - it had likely been worse when she first got it, but Darcie healed fast and the damage done was slowly fading away. Still, this wasn’t the sort of thing that would fix itself in just one day, so she erred on the careful side and proceeded to pull the first aid out from beneath the bathroom counter.

A bit of burn cream would have worked just fine, yet she found herself pulling out a variety of solutions - dressings, antihistamine, a snap-activated ice pack, a tube of silver sulfadiazine - mostly because it was good to have everything she needed within reach, but deep down she knew that she did it because having options, having the ability to make the choice helped her feel like she was in control. And after today’s events, she was feeling just the opposite - one of the central tenets of her life she had no idea she even believed in had been shaken, and it would be a bit of an understatement to say that it had thrown her for a loop. Clark had… Clark had hurt…

She shoved what he had done out of her mind as quickly as the thought had appeared - there was no use worrying about something that had already happened, and stressing over it wouldn’t make her heal any faster. Instead, Darcie focused on dispensing a decent amount of burn cream into her hands doing her damndest to rub it into her back - she was normally decently flexible and should have had almost no trouble getting the ointment onto the damaged skin, but today some obvious complications were making that a bit more difficult.

She bit back a quiet yelp when her shoulders twinged in protest, the burning muscles refusing to let her stretch with her usual ease as she tried to work the medicine in. It should not hurt this much, she was stronger than this, she had done harder things before, hadn’t she?

Darcie would never admit that she gave up, she just needed to… rest for a bit, sitting on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor with her head in her hands, breathing slowly, breathing slower. To be perfectly honest, her head was causing her more pain than any of the burns she had gained that day, her thoughts tumbling uncomfortably through her mind. He… he had hurt her… but he hadn’t meant to, right? It had to have been a mistake, he hadn’t meant to hurt her, hadn’t meant for this to happen… he’d promised, hadn’t he?

A knock on the bathroom door snapped her out of her reverie, and she immediately knew who was on the other side - only Clark would be so gentlemanly as to rap politely instead of trying the handle first (which, out of habit, she had conveniently left unlocked). Lord have mercy, how on Earth he managed to tolerate her, she had no idea.

“Dars?” he asked, voice muffled by the door, “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure,” she answered automatically before half-a-second later remembering that she wasn’t exactly decent. It was too late to change her mind, not that she had had a choice in the first place - she was supposed to say yes, she wasn’t allowed to say no, she shouldn’t have any boundaries at all - because there was Clark, standing in the doorway with a forlorn look, taking in the burn streaking across her backside before quickly diverting his attention to the bathtub on the opposite side of the small room. Gentleman that he was, his midwestern manners wouldn’t let him look in her direction when she was dressed in only a bra and the bottom half of a Kryptonian skinsuit.

“Are… are you okay?” Clark asked the tub, and despite the burning pain in her shoulders, Darcie shrugged.

“I’m fine,” she admittedly slowly, both of them perfectly aware of the lie and perfectly aware of why Clark had come looking for her. He also wasn’t one to let an issue sit for long, so she had a pretty good guess as to why he had sought her out and he confirmed her suspicions a moment later.

“I- I’m so sorry, Dars. I don’t know what to say to make you understand how sorry I am, but you have to believe me when I say that I didn’t mean for-

“Leave it - it’s already half-healed anyway,” she sighed dismissively, partly because she couldn’t stand watching him grovel and apologize over what should have been a minor issue, and partly because the cowardly little voice in her head wanted him out of there and gone before he hurt her again.

“Really? It patched up that fast?” Clark hummed, pleasantly surprised.

“No,” she said shortly, resisting the urge to snap or cower or both when he stared at her so hopefully, “I already told you not to worry about it. You feel bad and you want forgiveness, so here it is: I forgive you. What else could you want?”

Clark paused at that, staring at the tiled bathroom floor and breaking his midwestern code of honor long enough to steal a glance in her direction as he whispered, “I just don’t want to see you hurt… especially when it’s my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault. You were doing what you thought best and I stupidly got in the way.”

“But…”

Clark stopped himself before he could protest any further, knowing that neither of them could say much to repair what had happened. It was an accident, plain and simple. So instead of trying to change her view on it, he asked gently, “Is… is there anything I can do to help?”

She blinked, partly having expected him to argue again that it was his fault or just an accident or couldn’t they just forget it and move on, but the offer was a welcome, if unexpected one, and she nodded with a quiet sigh, “Can you help me with the burn cream?”

Whumptober Day 11!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/85695559

Title: Drowning - Darcie

Prompt: No. 11 ‘Just Keep Swimming’ - adrift, drowning, dehydration

Trigger Warnings: waterboarding, drowning

Word Count: 2123

Author’s Note: I experimented a bit with a bit with a different writing style, let me know what you think!

She wouldn’t say that she didn’tknow how to swim (admitting to such weakness was unacceptable to her) - she had taken three years of swimming lessons, and had become quite proficient at it. Or at least as proficient as one could become when they trained without a pool.

She was good at performing the strokes and could hold her breath for as long as she liked when out of water, but had never got around to putting any of the skills into practice. It just hadn’t been necessary - why swim when you can fly? Any incidents involving a water rescue (such as sinking ships, collapsing docks, and the occasional flash flood) usually did not require her to actually dive beneath the waves if she arrived early enough, and most of the time she simply acted as moral and medical support to the victims until the nearest emergency response team arrived. That was the purpose of ‘Kryptonian intervention’ as the United Nations had dubbed it: be the first to arrive, act, and assist until humans could do the same.

Today was no different. It was a weekend, which meant that she was working from home, seated in her usual spot at the dining room table with her notes strewn around her and both TVs in the small apartment playing various international coverage channels on a low volume. In addition to that were fourteen more tabs open on her computer each streaming some natural disaster or incident that might require intervention, but the twenty-one other tabs and graphing application she had open were dedicated to virtually testing another circuit orientation she had been working on. Today was, in short, no different from any other weekend.

Despite all the noise, she did her job quietly and quickly, always keeping an ear out for any sign of trouble. Of course, with the Earth being as big and populated as it was, there would always be something she could do, but she had learned to differentiate between ‘the police/military/emergency services can handle it’ and ‘they’re going to need help’ pretty fast. It was late afternoon when the eighth incident that might need her assistance came up - a sailboat in Hobb’s Bay (about five miles off the coast, by her estimate) had cracked its mast and that had somehow lead to the flooding in one of the motors though the clearly amateur captain still had the sense to put out a distress signal to the local CG on one of the radio channels she kept an ear on, yet the CG were unfortunately engaged with a freighter incident farther south and would take some time to get a cutter out there but long story short it was a chance for her to stretch her legs.

Shirt off, cape on, boots on, hair up. Twelve seconds. Not bad.

It only took three minutes to arrive at the site of the incident, though it could have taken less if she decided to break the sound barrier (she preferred to avoid doing so over heavily populated areas like Metropolis). It was a cruising dinghy by the looks of it, a bit on the larger side and likely not very well maintained - though she had it admit, she knew next to nothing about boats except that they were expensive and supposed to float. This one was sitting quite low in the water and listing to one side, looking like it would much like to do the opposite of float, but the captain and his three passengers (no doubt having been out on a joyride or joysail or something) hardly seemed to notice the danger as they were too busy staring at her hovering a few feet above the crooked mast. Bright red capes tended to attract lots of unwanted attention.

She pointed out the list to the captain, who somehow managed to drag his gaze away from the flying alien overhead long enough to notice that yeah, they were in a little bit of trouble. Landing on the rolling deck, she helped him to deploy the inflatable emergency raft (luckily for him, one of the few things that looked up to current water safety standards) and got the passengers into their life vests before they boarded the tiny bright orange boat. Everything looked alright and the Coast Guard would arrive within the next half-hour, so her job could be considered done and assistance no longer necessary - but since there were no drastic incidents occurring elsewhere as far as she could hear, she decided to stay with the group until they were officially rescued.

The sun was starting to set and it was getting dark out, though the captain found a flashlight in the raft’s emergency kit and now that the shock had worn off some, the four of them began to ask her questions as she hovered a few feet away above the water.

When would the Coast Guard arrive? About twenty minutes, forty-five at the latest.

Did she break their boat just for the recognition of rescuing them? Of course not, why the fu… why would they even think that?

The waves are getting choppy, did she have any Dramamine for motion sickness? No, she didn’t have any pockets and never used the stuff.

Couldn’t she pick the raft up and simply carry them all back to the mainland? No, too dangerous (here she had to resist the urge to give a lecture about how despite her strength, there was still the issue of the strength of the raft, not to mention that removing them from the site without government authority was a partial circumvention of the law surrounding incidents occurring under the influence, which led to the next question.)

Was she going to tell the Coast Guard that they had been smoking marijuana? The Coast Guard would figure that out pretty quickly on their own, and she would likely leave before they arrived.

Why had she made them get off the boat if it was still floating? The boat, she told them, was only as upright as it was because water had flooded the hold and the weight distribution had caused a partial neutral buoyancy to occur belowdecks, but one good wave or two more minutes of flooding and it would go under.

Fate must have been listening because the words were hardly out of her mouth when that one good wave arrived. She heard the sway and crack of the mast as the boat shifted and she moved to catch it, but that same wave also rocked the drifting life raft into the path of the falling sails. It was in that split second that she was forced to make a decision: catch the mast and hope the sails were dragged away from the raft, or dangerously push the raft to safety.

She hesitated less than a moment too long, diving for the raft instead of the mast only for the heavy wood to come crashing down on top of her in a toppling blow. Before she had a chance to react, she was trapped in a hurricane of sails, dark water, and quickly-sinking weight dragging her away from the surface and into the murky Bay. The shock of the sudden darkness and freezing current caused her to inhale sharply, water immediately invading her mouth and nose, and flooding into her lungs with each panicked gasp.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Kryptonians, or at least ones that have had long-term exposure to G-Class main sequence stellar radiation, can go without breathing for hours on end. She wouldn’t drown. She wouldn’t drown if she didn’t breathe. Gasping was an emotional response, not necessarily a need for air. Breathlessness was still possible, though it typically only occurred when one was passionate, surprised… or afraid.

Aquaphobia is the fear or anxiety caused by the sight of a body of water.

She did not have aquaphobia, that was for sure. She liked showers and thought the ocean was interesting and would occasionally go rock-skipping with Clark down at the creek behind his mom’s farmhouse - she was even fine with wading pools and bathtubs, as long as the water never went past her throat (which was why she only washed her face with a small damp cloth). She did not have aquaphobia. She was simply terrified of having water on her face.

When she was fifteen years old, she was violently waterboarded and raped as part of her ‘training’. The incident had been the cause of a severe concussion and hairline fracture along the left part of her skull - she could still feel the bump beneath her hair. For the longest time she was not sure if it had been done to train or to simply take advantage of her, but now she knew - it was both.

Stay calm. Don’t breathe. Stop gasping, stop gasping, there is no air for you down here. You are panicking. You are going to drown if you continue to panic. You are going to drown because you do not know how to swim.

There was water in her lungs, sloshing and moving and settling uncomfortably as it mixed with the blood rising in her throat. The water was getting darker, though she could not be sure if that was because night was falling or because she was slowly losing consciousness as her struggle towards the surface slowed to a weak paddle and finally a sinking halt as strength drained from her like water through a sieve. She could see shapes overhead - a round, black circle which must be the emergency raft, a large and twisting mass drifting off to her right that she dimly recognized as the sailboat, and a bright red swirl diving into the water.

A cape, she realized as it moved towards her, and then the bright red cape went black.

V*V*V*V*V*V*V

The first coherent thought she had was that it was warm. The second was that before opening her eyes she could already tell where she was based on the rumble of the engine and distinct evergreen-scented car freshener - the passenger seat of the little commuter car Lois and Clark shared. Upon fully waking up, she was not surprised to see the Boy Scout himself driving, one hand on the wheel and other gently rubbing feeling back into her hand.

Are you awake, he questioned in a whisper, and she nodded.

Good.

It was dark outside her window and the radiator was blowing hot air on full blast, which felt surprisingly good and soothing after her swim in barely-above-freezing water. Her boots and cape were off, wrapped up in a towel on the back seat, and she was sitting with her legs wrapped in another towel while apparently wearing what she immediately recognized as one of Clark’s biggest and warmest sweaters. Wow. He must have been worried about her.

It was not hard to piece it all together: She had known that Clark had been down at the docks for a few interviews in preparation for a story on ferry maintenance statistics. Having heard the moment when the mast finally fell, Clark would have flown out there in time to pull her out of the water before she lost consciousness and assumedly not long before the Coast Guard showed up for the boaters. Knowing that to fly her home would be a bit dangerous considering the high winds and amount of fluid in her lungs, he had only taken her as far as his car (which was still parked at the docks at the time), gotten her decently dried and warmed up, and started the drive home.

Was she okay, did she need anything, were the next few questions he asked, disturbing the comfortable silence. She opened her mouth to answer him, but instead found herself signalling for him to pull over in time for her to open her door and promptly lost the contents of her stomach on the side of the road. It was mostly seawater, hard and brackish on her tongue, but she hardly noticed it as much as she noticed the warmth of his hand on her shoulder, carefully holding her hair away from her face as she heaved into the dark grass only lit by the car’s headlights.

What happened, he asked in reference to her near-drowning, rubbing her back through the thick sweater as she coughed up the last of the water and breathed deeply for the first time in what felt like hours.

Badly maintained boat, she answered. Caught me off guard, not a big deal.

She didn’t tell him that the boat had barely been involved. She didn’t tell him that she had next to no idea how to swim.

Whumptober Day 10!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/85656256

Title: Surgery - Darcie

Prompt: No. 10 ‘Oops, I Did It Again’ - hospital, flare-up, ice chips

Trigger Warnings: needles

Word Count: 1453

It always started the same way: an extra vial during the weekly blood tests, a clear fluid making its way into her veins, and a heavy drowsiness that always ended the same way: an operating table.

Dr. Schreyer had explained it to her once, on the condition that she never have to explain it again. It was common knowledge that the Project was different, but in what ways, nobody was quite sure - that was what the tests were for. Weekly blood, saliva, and urine samples, bi-monthly psychological examinations and respiratory and cardiovascular check-ups, an in-depth physical exam every few months, and the occasional operation. And no matter how much she hated being poked, prodded, and put under, the Project dutifully kept quiet and did not try to resist the research being done.

She could usually guess when an operation was coming up as Dr. Schreyer would give her strict instructions to avoid eating the night before - abstinence from food usually meant either surgery or another one of Dr. Lee’s tests to see how long she could go without (the answer was at least two weeks, and she could have gone longer if Dr. Schreyer hadn’t put a stop to it). The only other indicator would come only a few moments before she was powerless to stop it: the needle in her arm and the sedative in her veins.

Dr. Schreyer admitted to her once that even she was not the largest fan of the sedative usually administered to the Project - it was actually carfentanil, an anaesthetic so strong that it was commonly used for extremely large animals and definitely not human-sized creatures but it was one of the few things that was capable knocking Stormkrigeren out.  Her lightning-fast metabolism meant that she had an abnormally high tolerance to nearly everything she ingested - tests had been run to prove this and ultimately discovered that not only did coffee, a variety of medications, and much of the food she ate rarely impact the Subject’s body in a detectable way, but even most poisons seemed to have little-to-no effect on her. Of course it would take an elephant tranquilizer to put her under.

Waking up from the sedative was nearly the same as being put under: a tingling, creeping, throbbing sensation slowly taking over her entire body at a frighteningly pace that she had no chance of resisting, followed by either oblivion or dim awareness. Said dim awareness usually took a minute to reach full consciousness but it was enough for her to take note of her surroundings and confirm that yes, she was back in her Rooms laying on the mattress with no knowledge of what had happened to her in the lost time.

Except she wasn’t on her mattress.

And she wasn’t in her Rooms either. She could tell because her Rooms were a certain type of loud with its own sounds and silences, and wherever she was now… was almostquiet.

Mister Wilson had reminded her of the dangers of kidnapping, drugging, blinding, and other sorts of debilitating situations on multiple occasions, so the Project was well familiar with what to do when suddenly waking up in an unknown location with no idea how she got there: listen. Listening was the first thing one was supposed to do when they woke up - well, at least the first thing besides keeping up the appearance that one was still asleep while they assessed their surroundings for any possible dangers. And when she listened, she immediately noted that it was almost quiet.

Keep your eyes closed, breathe slowly, don’t move. There was a pulse monitor beeping quietly off to her left, and a breathing tube uncomfortably lodged in her throat. Breathe slower, don’t move. If she focused, she could catch the slight buzz of overhead fluorescent lights, and something else that might have been another person breathing nearby, softly but heavily, accompanied by the click of metal on metal. She did her best to match her breathing pattern to theirs, keeping up the appearance that she was still unconscious while she cracked open one eyelid the tiniest amount to get a look around.

She was on her stomach, which made it a little hard to look around but she could still recognize a few things, such as bright lights, concrete, and the distinct scent of saline solution and bleach. She was in an operating room, that much was clear, and based on past experience and the slow return of feeling followed by pain to her body, she had a pretty good guess as to what had happened - the tranquilizer had worn off earlier than expected.

Way earlier than expected, gauging by the sudden, sharp pain in her lower back that signalled that she was more than likely only half-way through whatever operation her caretakers had decided to subject her to this time.

Deep breaths. Slow breaths. Don’t let them know you’re awake. Stay calm.

The Project hadn’t been trained for this, she had no idea what to do in this sort of situation - what was someone supposed to do when they woke up mid-operation, announce it to the surgeon? Hope that someone readministered the sedative without her telling them? Simply pretend to be unconscious and wait for it to be all over? Or get up and try to run away?

The last option was tempting, to be sure, and certainly viable. There were only three people in the room - she knew because she could hear them breathing, and one of them saying something about flow pressure and stem cells through the haze of the quickly-fading anaesthetic. Trying to escape a trio of medical technicians while drugged and only semi-conscious would be a task in and of itself but that was not to say that it was impossible. At worst, she would likely be put under again and dragged back to her Rooms to await punishment, and at best… she admittedly wasn’t coherent enough to think of all the possibilities but the outlook was bright.

Besides the surgeons just out of sight poking painfully at her backside, there was still the issue of the number of tubes and needles the Project could feel pricking her. Deep breath, count slowly, start at the top - there was the breathing tube, of course, along with what felt like an electrode on the side of her throat, two needles in her left arm, what was more than likely a pulse oximeter on her right hand, and one- no, two more needles in her lower backside that seemed to be penetrating bone. Those would be the biggest concern yet she knew it would be a waste of time worrying about them when she had to take action before the anesthesiologist realized that she was awake.

Deep breath, breathe in, and a sharp, unexpected kick out to her right that sent the medical technician standing there stumbling to the floor. The Project heard one of the other surgeons shout in surprise but she ignored them, instead focusing on sitting up enough to pull the breathing tube out of her throat and choke back a yelp at the stab of pain shooting up her spine. Gritting her teeth, she somehow managed to yank out one of the needles she felt there and probably snapped the other in her haste but it was enough to get her free of most of the medical equipment and able to clamber off of the operation table in a drugged panic.

It was the IV that reminded her of the futility of escape, the pair of tubes still embedded in her forearm yanking her to a halt with an agonizing stab caused by the two needles very nearly being ripped out of her. She had just turned to untangle herself from the mess of IV lines and wires when her progress was halted by another pain, cutting through her thoughts as it slipped beneath her skin, and dread washed over the Project as she realized what was in the syringe now poking out of her bicep.

The stuff was fast-acting, and she was on her knees before she had time to fully acknowledge what had happened. The needle in her arm was sharp and painful and draining all the energy from her body like water through a sieve, and despite her best efforts, the Project found herself struggling to do much as keep herself upright when one of the surgeons forced her to the floor. She was dimly aware of hoarsely screaming for the man to get off of her, let her up, let her go, but all he did was put another needle in her before the bright, concrete world of the operating room went dark and soft.

Whumptober Day 9!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/85569358

Title: Impact - Clark

Prompt: No. 9 ‘Rumors Of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated’ - presumed dead, (blind) rage, tears

Word Count: 1355

It hit him like… well, like a locomotive barrelling at full speed down the tracks, except in this case it had been flying through the air. He should have noticed it, he should have heard it or seen it or moved just a little bit faster to avoid getting hit but Kal had been entirely focused on her - she could have withstood a direct missile strike, couldn’t she? He should have noticed it, he should have glanced away from her still form for even the briefest moment… but he didn’t have even the faintest clue about what was coming his way until it hit him, and by then it was too late.

Kal dimly remembered waking up covered in broken concrete and rebar, every bit of him battered and bruised and severely protesting the fact that he was alive. It hurt, and he had no idea why, though the crumpled boxcar half-pinning him to the ground might have contributed. His head was spinning, and the only coherent thought he could come up with besides the fact that he was in pain was the fact that it was a miracle he wasn’t dead. Kal didn’t have long to contemplate why - he lost consciousness again soon after.

Pain woke him the second time, sharp and firm against his chest, and he weakly batted at the cause in hopes that it would go away. It didn’t, and he yelped when it intensified, forcing him to open his eyes with a low groan, “What the hell-”

He blinked, weakly rubbing at his eyes to get the gritty and dusty feeling coating his whole body out of them, and was met with the sight of an equally dust-coated Jaora standing over him. Her fist was pressed against his breastbone in what he dimly recognized as the position paramedics sometimes used to revive patients who weren’t fully alert, and she was looking him over with the same concise, assessing stare he recognized as a sign that she was checking for internal damage. He was about to open his mouth and ask her what on Earth had happened, was she okay, where was Faora and that other guy, why did he hurt so much, when she beat him to it.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she demanded with a frown, her already over-protective demeanor skyrocketing to new levels now that he was injured, not that Kal could blame her. With regular exposure to sunlight, he was extremely durable and almost impossible to injure, so the fact that a flying piece of train had managed to knock him unconscious was just the tiniest bit concerning, not to mention that the impact had left him feeling more sore than he had since… well, since yesterday when he had started coughing up blood on Zod’s ship.

“Getting hit by that, I guess,” he shrugged in response despite the painful twinge in his shoulders, pointing at the boxcar which had skidded to a stop only a few feet away after ramming him to the Sears. Jaora spared the thing which had nearly killed him a very brief glare before nodding sharply.

“Good, you didn’t miss much. You should go sit over there until you’ve recovered enough to walk - we need to get moving.”

Kal didn’t protest and clambered to his feet to follow her instruction. The spot she had indicated was directly beneath a bit of collapsed roof, lit by cold, midday sun shining in through the broken rebar, and he gingerly settled himself on the ground to soak in the light. Absently rubbing at what had to be a pretty large bruise forming across his chest (mostly from getting hit by the railway car and partly from Jaora trying to wake him up), he slowly took stock of his surroundings. Kal hadn’t been the only thing dashed to pieces - the boxcar had apparently crashed into the Sears, dragging him along with it as it turned the appliance section of the store into a pile of rubble. The crushed washing machines scattered across the floor were evidence enough that the piece of train had been travelling at a pretty dangerous speed. Luckily it seemed that no one had been around when the impact occurred, leaving Kal to be the only casualty, and he felt it.

His entire right side was throbbing with pain, the muscles protesting every time he moved, and Kal swore he could feel bones shifting beneath his skin when he took a deep breath - he wouldn’t have been surprised if half his ribcage had been shattered into little bits. Luckily he hadn’t suffered any major external injuries and all of his blood had managed to stay inside him, though it would be a miracle if he wasn’t bleeding internally. To be honest, he was just grateful that he couldn’t see any of the damage that he most certainly felt.

Thankfully enough, his Kryptonian metabolism and unusual ability to heal much faster than any human had already kicked in, and sitting in sunlight helped to speed it up even further. Kal was by no means a scientist of any sort but simple experimentation growing up had taught him a few things: he was difficult to injure, healed frighteningly fast, and seemed to get more energy from standing in the sun than he did from sleeping or eating. Even the weak winter sun shining in the gray sky overhead was enough to ‘recharge’ his cells and begin to heal his broken bones, though the energized warmth on his skin felt almost as odd as the impact to begin with. It… buzzed, if that was even the right word for it, leaving him tingly and warm and a bit energetic. The closest thing he could compare it to was being wrapped in a blanket fresh out of the dryer while having a sugar rush, not that he had had one since he’d been a little kid.

Kal wasn’t sure how long he sat in the patch of light, leaning against the boxcar which had very nearly killed him as he soaked up the sun and did his best to recover quickly from the ordeal, but it was long enough for his elevated senses to return and start taking in little details, like the smoke and dust of his hometown in the sky, the distant sound of police sirens, and the way Jaora’s shoulders twitched as she stood nearby, listening for dangers he himself couldn’t hear.

Upon meeting her only a few months before, Kal had quickly figured out that it was nigh-on impossible for her to be anything but alert, even in her sleep. Her existence seemed to be composed of constant watching, constant listening, constant moving, maintaining some sort of momentum as she kept abreast of what she would refuse to describe to him but Kal got the sense that it was likely ‘threats to our safety’. Before today, he might have dismissed her alertness as paranoia since to his knowledge nothing had ever threatened his safety… except maybe the boxcar which had nearly ended his life. Jaora, of course, was either panicking or throwing an internal hissy fit about it if the way her shoulders were tightening beneath the cape was anything to go by.

Panicking, Kal realized, because he had probably scared the bejeebers out of her and she had been genuinely concerned for his life when that boxcar hit, or upset that she hadn’t been there to save him. Still, even though Jaora was standing stock-still a few feet away and apparently nothing more than unusually tense, Kal had never seen such an intense reaction out of her - she hadn’t expected this, she hadn’t prepared for it, she hadn’t… expected him to survive.

“Did… did you think I had died?” he whispered, knowing full-well that she would hear him. Unsurprisingly, Jaora tensed up immediately at the last word, turning on him with a swiftness he could only attribute to adrenaline - or panic. She never did tell him which one it was, only shot him another one of her dangerously inquisitive looks. Finally, she pursed her lips and slowly shook her head.

Whumptober Day 5!

Link to the Ao3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210837/chapters/85369780

Title: Betrayal - Darcie

Prompt: No. 5 ‘I’ve Got Red In My Ledger’ - betrayal, misunderstanding, broken nose

Trigger Warnings: physical abuse

Word Count: 1591

Something was wrong.

She didn’t know what it was, yet she knew that it was very wrong and that she had to fix it right now. Her body was taut and almost trembling with tension, anxiety causing nausea to settle in her stomach as she strained her ears for any sign of danger-

She never saw him until she felt it - a familiar hand closing around her throat, and it took nearly every ounce of restraint she had to not scream when it tightened, slowly and silently cutting off her breath. She remembered what was wrong now: she had made a mistake.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asked her in a harsh whisper. She wanted to answer him, she wanted to give some sort of reply or defense but she had no idea what to say - so Darcie shook her head. The response immediately earned her a shove, pushing her violently up against the stark white concrete wall and making the room echo with the sound of her skull hitting the hard surface.

“I am only going to ask you this one more time,” he stated firmly, his voice dripping with suppressed rage, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Darcie, slumped to the floor and hardly able to do much more than respond with instinct, so instead of giving a reply that would doubtless earn her another blow, simply stared up at him and Clark stared back. His eyes, which were usually a bright, nebula blue, were clouded with anger and the veins around them darkened with heat and fury as he raised his powerful fist to bring it crashing down.

She prided herself on the fact that she did not scream when beaten, but that was not to say that she did not cry. Or at least she would have cried, if she had been able. Instead she simply watched each blow as it came, feeling oddly like both the audience and an actor in a play she didn’t understand. A throbbing bruise on her arm, a sprained clavicle by her shoulder, the crack of her jaw, the blood on her tongue, filled with both agonizing pain and… numbness.

She watched. She was hurt. She sat still, let it happen, let him hurt her simply because there was nothing else she could do when the world turned this way.

Violence is a way of talking with your body, just like sign language or sex, yet she understood nothing except his hand around her throat again, squeezing, stifling, choking…

And the entire time she was left wondering: what had she done?

V*V*V*V*V*V*V

She woke up unable to breathe.

Normally that wouldn’t have been an issue as having evolved slightly under a yellow sun oxygen intake wasn’t always necessary- in short, she didn’t need to breathe. But that wasn’t to say that fear, stress, and what was more than likely a panic attack could leave her gasping for breath.

Still running on adrenaline and instinct, the first thing she did was kick off the sheets that had somehow gotten tangled around her in her sleep and stumble into an unsteady-but-upright position as she panted hard. Identify your surroundings - that was the first thing you were supposed to do when you woke up. The quilt now dumped on the floor and the bookshelf to her right were evidence enough that she was in the guest room at the farmhouse, not in her Rooms, not trapped between white walls, but what did that mean when she could still feel his hand around the throat, the fingers tightening as the pressure slowly cut off her windpipe…

“Dars?”

She snapped to attention at the name, wheeling around to see… well, him standing in the doorway as he turned on the light, clearly having just woken up if his rumpled bed-head and pajama pants were anything to go by - nothing like the Clark in her nightmare and everything like Clark as he should be.

“You alright?” he asked sleepily, rubbing one eye as he did, “Your heart rate was up, but I couldn’t tell if it was because you were dreaming or exercising, so I thought I’d come check-… Maybe, you should sit down, Dars. You’re shaking.”

She obeyed, partly because he was right, she was trembling and was having trouble keeping herself upright, and partly because she did not want to find out what he would do to her if she refused. Sitting on the end of the bed, she watched absently as he sat down beside her while she absently ran her hands over her shoulders, over her arms, over her jaw - checking for bruises, she realized a moment later, but by then she was already breathing hard again and Clark was getting worried.

“Hey, hey, look at me. What’s going on? Were you dreaming? Do you know where you are?” he asked gently, reaching out to touch her wrist.

Unnatural speed had its advantages, and she was out of his reach in less than a moment, hackles rising as she dared him to try and touch her again before Darcie realized what she had done. The look on his face - a mix of hurt, confusion, and concern all focused on her - said it all.

“You don’t want to be touched?”

She opened her mouth to tell him no, touching was bad, don’t touch her, but ended up shaking her head in response.

“Did you think I was going… I was going to hurt you?”

No, no, he wasn’t going to hurt her but he had and she didn’t know which one was real: the pain, or the present. Maybe she had imagined both, maybe neither reality - white concrete walls or dark homely bookshelves - was truly real and she was still asleep, she was still trapped, she was still hurting…

“I’m not going to hurt you, Dars,” he whispered slowly, “I’d never hurt you, remember?”

And somewhere in the back of her nightmare-clouded mind, she did remember. She remembered being on her knees in a cold Canadian winter as he put his coat around her shoulders, she remembered him encouraging her and comforting her and telling that it would get better, and she remembered Clark promising her that no one was ever going to hurt her again. And so far he had kept that promise.

“Can you tell me what’s going on? Maybe I can help,” she heard him say, dragging her out of her reverie and back into the real world. No bright lights, no hard concrete, and no false Clark - only the true one standing just within arm’s reach with heartfelt concern written clearly on his face.

“Okay,” she answered finally.

“Okay?”

“Okay, you can touch me.”

He paused, hand outstretched only a few inches from her taut shoulders and arms folded tightly over her chest, waiting for her to change her mind. Maybe this wasn’t a good time, maybe she was too overwhelmed and physical comfort wouldn’t help, yet she had given him her permission and Clark silently went through with it. He felt the flinch rippling beneath her skin despite her best efforts to hide it, and gently stroked her shoulder in response as he moved up to caress the spot between her shoulder blades  where he knew her to be especially sensitive. As expected, she tensed up, but made no move to resist and instead leaned into his touch.

Reminders hurt. Telling herself over and over again that it was just a dream, it wasn’t real, it couldn’t hurt her was difficult, and letting him touch her was even more so - it had been terrifying enough seeing someone she trusted turn on her without warning, and it was equally terrifying letting herself trust him again. But Clark… was Clark, and somehow she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her.

At least, not on purpose. His hands on her shoulders hurt, but in a way where the pain was caused by her own muscles refusing to let go of their tautness as he massaged them into submission and not in a way like fists on her backside. She had never realized how tight she was, how much adrenaline was running through her system, until Clark was slowly soothing it away, leaving her drained and sleepy as she found herself leaning into his touch. Clark was quiet, Clark was calming, and he was rubbing away the phantom pains of injuries she had never received, so she allowed herself to relax just the tiniest bit as he hugged her close.

“Were you dreaming about Zod?” he asked in a whisper, almost afraid to say the name that had caused them both so much pain. Clark still had nightmares about the whole event, reliving the memories every night and frightening himself awake when they became too intense - it was only reasonable that she may be suffering in the same way. Darcie knew this, and she knew that it was simpler than explaining something even she herself did not fully understand, so instead of telling him the truth, she nodded into his chest.

“It’s okay, Dars,” he promised, rubbing her back in soothing circles, “It’s okay, it will never happen again, it’s over now.”

That was the problem, she realized. Clark believed in a past threat, something that had come and gone and would never come again, whereas she was presented with a clear and present danger: it would never be over, Darcie realized, as long as she couldn’t even trust herself to dream.