#physical abuse tw
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 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.
