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.*･｡. AN ODE TO CLARK KENT .*･｡.
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024.
SALUTATIONS.
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——

   Lois Lane slid open the door to the loft, sticking her head in and slowly peering around. After a second, with no sign of Peter Hale nearby, she stepped in fully and gave it a better look.

    "Hello?" She called, "Derek? You home...?"

The silence was palpable, but Lois had a feeling that he must have been around. Where else was he going to be? With an alpha pack on his ass, all wanting to kill him — especially after he had been said to kill Ennis — or supposedly have him join their pack, he wasn't likely to be out in the public eye. Then again, when was Derek ever out in the public eye? Lois hadn't seen him in public in a long time. Not in the daylight, anyway. It was pretty damn rare.

   After her not so friendly visit from Aiden, Lois had picked up the remaining pieces of her phone and gotten straight into her car, not even bothering to enter the school, let alone go to class. With the information she had received from both Ethan and Aiden, the only place Lois could think to go was to Derek's loft. He was the only person that she could speak to, right now, seeing as Lois Lane had learned a lot about Derek Hale, and a lot about herself. Or, rather, about what they wanted with them. The pack of alphas were still going to come for Derek eventually, but Derek still needed to know that they only wanted him to get to two other things. When they got through him, it would get them a step closer to what it was that Deucalian really wanted. That was their plan.

   Lois hadn't told anyone where she was headed. She had hopped into her car and headed to Derek's loft without so much as calling Stiles, or Scott — not that she could call them, not with what Aiden had done to her phone. There was no way of calling anyone.

She stepped further in the loft. Her eyes flickered around in a search for Derek Hale, briefly wondering where Cora could have been when she wasn't enrolled at their school and wasn't even supposed to be alive after the Hale house fire, but Lois' attention was taken by the windows.

It was so obvious, that she wondered how she hadn't seen it to begin with. The thick black lines stuck out like a sore thumb.

Before Lois could step closer, a knife hurtled towards her.

Barely managing to get out of the way, Lois let out a scream and ducked down. She threw her body to the ground and listened to the knife hit the wooden door with a thunk! Lois gasped for air, all breath taken from her chest, and looked at the impaled wood with wide eyes. She wasn't entirely sure what had just happened, but Lois was sure that if she hadn't moved in time, she would have hit the ground with a knife in her forehead — not the door. That alone was enough of a realisation that someone was actually home, and the loft wasn't as empty as she had assumed. And clearly they were anticipating some company to show up, that wasn't there to be as harmless as Lois Lane was.

"Lois?"

Her shocked gaze travelled away from the door and over to the spiral staircase, where the silhouette of a figure had appeared and was walking down them.

"What the hell, Derek?"

The alpha rolled his eyes; she could see it, from her spot on the floor.

As he waltzed down the stairs, Lois pulled herself up and gave herself a dusting. She didn't think the floor had ever been cleaned.

Derek grew closer, and Lois found herself watching him. Her stare was almost empty, he noticed, until his face was illuminated by the sun and she truly saw him. It was the first time she had seen him since discovering that he wasn't dead, but very much alive, so it hadn't the time to set in. Lois hadn't fully processed that Derek Hale wasn't dead — not how she had processed his death.

Lois had thought that Derek was dead.

He was dead.

But, there he stood, very much alive. All in one piece. And, as much as Derek annoyed the living daylights out of Lois, the girl couldn't help feel so incredibly glad to see him. She hadn't thought she would see him, ever again. Yet, Derek had defied the odds.

Lois' eyes warmed, soaking in the sunlight that circled him, and a smile crawled onto her lips. She was suddenly no longer angry that he had nearly killed her with that knife of his. In that moment it didn't matter, not when she had seen him. When she saw him, a relief graced Lois' shoulders and her whole body felt light and airy and unbelievably warm. Lois Lane had never been so happy to see Derek Hale, and as much as she hated to admit it, if he had been dead, then she would have missed him. Terribly. After all, Derek had been there since the beginning. This crazy journey had all started with him. He'd always been there. Always.

Unable to help herself, Lois leapt forward and threw her arms around Derek's middle. He was taken aback, unsure of how to respond, but eventually wrapped his own around her shoulders.

There was a nice, quiet second between them.

And then, it was over.

"Thank god, you're not dead—!" Lois breathed, "I don't think we could have dealt with Peter, on our own."

Derek rolled his eyes and detached himself from the teenager, unhooking her arms from his body. He tried to hide the fond smile that threatened to escape — out of all the annoying teenagers, it was no secret that Lois was one of his favourites. Derek had always had a soft spot for Lois.

Most people did.

"Why are you here?" He asked, "Shouldn't you be at school?"

She didn't answer him. Rather, Lois nodded over at the symbol that had been painted onto the window. It was familiar. Lois had recognised it as the same symbol that had been painted onto the front door of the old Hale house, the one that he had told them belonged to a pack of alphas as a warning of their arrival — as a warning that they were coming. They were coming, and they were coming for Derek Hale, first. He followed her gaze.

"They're coming, aren't they?"

Solemnly, Derek nodded. He pursed his lips, "You should get out of here, Lois. They're not gonna avoid you, in a fight. You aren't safe, here."

   Lois shook her head, "Actually, there's something you need to know—"

    "Go back to school."

   Furrowing her brows, Lois was ready to tell him how rude he was to interrupt her, and how important it was that he heard what she had come to say. However, upon looking at him, she realised that Derek wasn't looking at her. His gaze was set on the door that was already sliding back open, and he knew who had arrived.

   When one of them spoke, Lois knew who it was, as well.

   Isaac Lahey.

    "That's not very nice..." Cutting himself off, the beta glanced up at the knife in the door with squinted eyes, "Wait— is that a knife?" Then, his gaze landed upon the familiar girl at Derek's side, "Lois? What are you doing here?"

   Turning on her heel, Lois wasn't at all surprised to see that Isaac wasn't alone. Boyd was by his side, for one of the first times in a while, and the two were staring between Lois and Derek with very confused expressions. She was supposed to be at school just as they were, and they couldn't decide how or why she had wound up at the loft of their alpha, instead. They hardly thought that Stiles and Scott would have let her out of their sights long enough for her to go on her own, but when neither of the boys appeared, they could only assume that she really was there on her own. It was strange.

   Isaac stared between Lois and Derek. He tried to figure out what was going on, his frown deepening, but she simply looked away.

   It was weird to see both betas after what had happened at the motel, and Lois had to divert her eyes to elsewhere. It had made her feel uncomfy, to know that Isaac had no idea what had even happened, while Boyd kept it a secret from him. Lois had yet to actually speak to Boyd, since the ordeal. She didn't know what to say. Lois felt awkward.

    "She was just leaving." Derek answered, for her.

   She shook her head, "No, I wasn't—"

    "Go back to school," he repeated his words, "All three of you."

   There was little room for argument with his instruction, but it seemed that Isaac wanted to give it a shot, anyway as he waltzed into the loft as if he'd never been kicked out of it.

    "Well— actually, we can't." He drawled and pointed a finger to Boyd, who trailed behind. Isaac walked past Lois and Derek, and them perched himself on the table that stood over by the window. "You see, Boyd and I are incredibly and unbelievably sick."

    "With, what?" Derek quipped, "Brain damage?"

   Isaac ignored his comment and picked up a book, flipping over the pages carelessly. "Well, I have a migraine, and, uh— and Boyd, over here, has explosive diarrhea."

   As if expecting a lie, the three werewolves looked over at Lois. She shrugged.

    "I just didn't go to school."

    "We're here to protect you," Boyd said, with an eye roll.

    "You're here to protect me?" With a fake, mocking laugh, Derek crossed his arms as he looked over his betas. He didn't want them to stay for a fight that they didn't need to get involved in — he had tried to keep them out of it, for a reason. Derek wanted to keep all of them safe; every teenager, his betas or not, he wanted them to stay away from the alpha pack. After what had happened to Erica, he wasn't willing to risk it. "Looks like I'm in trouble, then."

    "Maybe..." Lois interrupted. All eyes were on her, and she was finally able to say what she had come there for. "Or, maybe not."

   Derek quirked a brow.

    "What does that mean?"

    "It means that I spoke to Ethan and Aiden," she told them and then paused, "Actually, I guess they spoke to me..." after a moment of thought, Lois shook her head and continued. "They told me that they want to kill you—"

    "Yeah— we kinda know that, gumdrop."

   She shot Isaac a glare for his unnecessary comment, "They want to kill you, but they don't want you. It's not you that Deucalian really wants, Derek. He wants something else — two things."

    "And, those are...?"

    "Well, I'm not really sure."

     "So, you don't know what they want?" Isaac clarified.

     "No..." she hummed, "But I know it's not Derek."

   Isaac wasn't convinced, "Good findings, sherlock." He ignored her second glare, "How do you know they weren't lying to you?"

   Lois routed around in her pocket and collected all of the pieces of her phone that she had been able to pick up from the ground and take with her. She held it up, watching as Isaac's lips formed the shape of an O and Boyd cringe at the sight of it, and shook her head at his suggestion with a wrinkle in her nose.

    "Aiden seemed pretty serious, to me."

   A silence smothered them, all unsure of what to make of her information, but knowing it wasn't good. That silence lingered up until Derek rubbed at his jaw and nodded, once. This caught the attention of the three teenagers, and they all looked over at him.

    "She's right."

    "Derek—"

    "They don't want me," Derek spoke over Boyd, "But I'm in the way of what they do want. Either I join them and help them get to it, or they kill me to get to it."

    "Actually, Boyd came up with a plan." Isaac said, smiling with a devilish smile that only really showed around his alpha, anymore.

    "Yeah—" Nodding in agreement, Boyd leaned down to unzip his gym bag and began to route through whatever he had inside of it in search of something. "I thought about the time Gerard had me and Erica locked up; we were tied up with electrical wires pushing a current through us. I was wondering if we could do something, like that..." he showed them the multiple cables and wires he had brought with him, lifting them out of the bag slightly, "...but on a bigger scale."

    "You wanna tie them up with wires...?" Lois guessed, not really following what he was suggesting.

    "In a pool of electrified water, it can take up to fifty milliamps to kill a normal human. That's less than the power it takes to turn on a light bulb," Boyd explained as he ignored her words. It made Lois hum in thought, quite impressed.

   That might actually work.

   It was plausible. Horrifying to think about, but plausible.

    "That's comforting," Derek remarked.

    "If we disable the circuit interrupter in the building's electrical room, the current will keep coming—" he continued, "—and anyone who steps foot in here will get a pretty shocking surprise."

   Isaac added, "Especially someone who's barefoot."

   Lois had heard all about Kali, the alpha who fought with a lack of shoes, from Scott. The thought of her toenails being claws had made Lois cringe, time and time again, but she supposed it could be to their advantage now. No shoes meant that there was nothing to absorb a shock of electricity even slightly, which made it all the more likely to take her down long enough to get the upper hand. From there, it would be easier to take down the rest of them.

"It could work..." peering at the werewolves, Lois pursed her lips together. She tried to figure out what to do next, "So, what? We just crack out a hose, fill up this place with water, and call it a swimming pool?"

Boyd nodded, and Isaac shrugged.

"Sounds easy, enough."

• • •

If she were honest, Lois was surprised that she hadn't been told to beat it and get out of there, yet. Usually, this was where Scott said it was far too dangerous for her to be around. She would be told to go somewhere safe, and to leave the fighting to him for as long as she could — at least, until Derek usually showed up. And Derek usually always showed up to help, in the end.

Although, it seemed that Derek had no intention of sending her on her merry way. Rather, he was getting her to help them fill the loft with as much water as they could possibly get their hands on.

Derek Hale knew that Lois Lane could defend herself.

Contrary to what most people assumed, the alpha knew very well that Lois didn't need as much as help as they expected. She wasn't the Lois Lane from the comics — despite her name, Lois didn't need to sit around and wait for Superman to swoop in and save her. She didn't want him.

Lois had always proved that she was more than capable of being her own hero. In all of the fights that she had been apart of, all of the monsters she had faced head on, she had never run. Lois had stood her ground and fought them all, one by one. She expected no special treatment for being human; she had wanted to get her hands dirty, to get down to the nitty gritty and kick ass alongside the rest of them. And she had proved that she could. Whether the fight was playing bait to take down Peter Hale back when he was the alpha, or launching arrows at the kanima, or punching Derek Hale in the face when he had really deserved it. Derek knew that Lois could handle herself, perfectly. He had seen what damage she could do, and he didn't doubt her one bit.

Derek believed that she would be able to handle fighting the alpha pack. Not on her own, of course — they'd be there, too.

He wasn't going to stop her.

Lois was glad.

Throwing down another hose that she had found outdoors, the girl went over to the tap on the wall and made sure the connection was tight. When she was sure that it was, Lois twisted the faucet and watched the water pour out and onto the ground.

It was going to take a lot of water to get the place to a standard good enough — to the point where it wasn't quite a public pool, but with enough water that it would conduct the current and thus electrocute the alpha pack when they inevitably showed off their claws. The symbol they had left on the windows meant that they would show up, sooner or later. Deep down, Lois hoped it would be later. As much as she was willing to fight these assholes for the (hopefully) last time, she didn't want anything to go wrong.

It was a risk, but she told herself that it was one worth taking.

Whether that was going to be true or not, Lois didn't know. Only time would tell.

    "You're gonna need a new phone."

   Lois looked at Isaac, who had appeared on her left, and then at her phone — or, what was left of it. She had discarded the pieces on the floor, and they were now waterlogged.

    "Yeah..." she groaned, "My dad's gonna kill me."

"No— I think he'll understand when you tell him half an alpha crushed it," Isaac's words were partially sarcastic, but also kind of true. Matthew Lane knew all about the supernatural, and he had seemed pretty okay with it. Isaac doubted he would be shocked, in the very least.

   The girl rolled her eyes, but she was unable to stop herself from letting out a laugh. Isaac practically beamed at the melodic sound. He was proud that he had made her laugh, for once. A genuine laugh because he had said something to evoke it.

    "If Aiden wasn't a wolf, he'd take him to court." Lois rubbed her face. "Having a lawyer-dad is like that, sometimes."

   Isaac's bottom lip jutted out, and he nodded.

    "Noted."

   He had met her dad once, and he had been a frightening — yet also very friendly — man. Maybe it was only Isaac who had felt intimidated when finding out that Matthew Lane not only knew of the supernatural, but was also working in law-enforcement. That meant that if Isaac ever did anything wrong, supernatural or not, Lois' dad would always be able to arrest him. Most police and the lawyers at the station weren't able to prove the supernatural things that they couldn't explain, seeing as there was little evidence left to link it to regular human beings, but Lois' dad would be able to. He  would find a way. The thought made Isaac shiver.

   He wondered if Lois' father knew he had threatened to kill her, on multiple occasions... he really hoped not.

   That was behind them, now.

   While the hoses continued to fill up the loft, Lois watched as her phone became submerged. Little parts of it floated sadly along the surface, and she found it to be very morbid. "Goodbye, phone."

   Isaac bowed his head, "He served you, well."

   Lois peered over at him with a smile, to which he responded with a swift wink. Her cheeks warmed and she was forced to turn away, her eyes catch Boyd's from across the loft. He and Derek had been setting up wooden crates for then to stand on, to stay up and out of the water, and she felt herself grow nervous when their eyes met. Now that she knew how he felt, and after the GLEN CAPRI situation, Lois couldn't help but worry that every time she spoke to Isaac, she was unintentionally rubbing it in Boyd's face.

   Shoes soaking, Lois waded through the water and hopped up onto one of the crates with Isaac close behind. They watched as Boyd began to hook up the cables, and dropped one of them into the water. It crackled and fizzed, a blue electrical current glowed and jumped out of the water, before it died down again.

    "Woah..." Lois shuffled back, nervous of the ankle-deep river they had just created that was now an electrical deathtrap. If she went in, she didn't think she'd come back out.

   Derek and Isaac shared a look, impressed but concerned.

    "Is this gonna kill him?" Isaac asked.

   Boyd looked at the water and nodded, "I hope so."

   A silent tension lapsed over the group. They all hoped so.

   For the next hour, they proceeded to connect the wires and set them up, throwing them in the water ready for when the alphas would eventually appear. After that, they sat on the crates in an anxious quiet. All they could do was wait, and inform Scott and the rest of the his pack of the plan they had going on. They were trying to find Deaton — who Lois learned had been taken as the third and final healer — and would help Derek's pack with the fight, if they managed to find Scott's boss in time. Lois had really hoped that they could; she had left her crossbow in the trunk of her car, and there was no time to get it now.

   That left Lois Lane pretty helpless, compared to usual. However, she wasn't sure how much a crossbow would have helped her in a fight against the alpha pack, anyway. She could shoot her arrows pretty well, but she didn't doubt that they could catch even better.

   What felt like days had passed before Isaac spoke up, his eyes narrowed on the security box that sat on Derek's wall. He squinted at it and then pointed, having realised that something was wrong with it. Lois watched from her crate that faced him, between Boyd and Derek, and frowned.

    "Hey—" he looked at Derek, "Isn't that light on that supposed to be on?"

   Derek's body stiffened, "Yeah."

    "What does it mean if it's not?" Lois asked, unsure if she really wanted to know the answer. She felt incredibly unsettled.

    "Someone cut the auxiliary power," the alpha explained.

    "What about the main—?"

   Boyd was cut off as the loft fell into darkness. The sound of the power shutting down made Lois jumped, scrambling up from her bottom and pressing her back up against the wall. She felt sick.

   Her heart almost leapt out of chest when Derek stepped into the water. Nothing happened.

    "Derek..." Isaac trailed off, watching him closely.

   Derek walked through the water and to the middle of the loft, staring down at the many wires surrounding him. He said nothing in response. He simply stared. As if he was connecting the dots in his head, and figuring out what their next move was before they had even figured it out themselves. The silence was nerve wracking and the two betas could hear Lois' heart thump unevenly. 

    "Derek," he tried again, "What do we do, now?"

   His eyes glowed red.

    "We fight."

——

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