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.*･｡. AN ODE TO CLARK KENT .*･｡.
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030.
WAKE UP!
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——

   Lois had a restless nights sleep, that night.

   After Peter had left, she cried for a while. It hadn't been too long before she had been called down for dinner, where she had pushed her food around her plate with a dramatic loss in appetite, and she sniffled every few minutes. When her father had questioned the tear stains on her cheeks, Lois had spewed some sort of lie about grieving over Boyd, and he had promptly let it slide.

   Matthew didn't believe her, but he trusted her — if Lois needed him, then she would let him know. He trusted her, wholeheartedly.

   She had finally gotten to shower. It was late when she had, and it had been difficult as the running water kept trailing away in upset waves and missing her head altogether, but Lois had managed to keep herself under enough control to wash her hair semi-decently.

   Having not been able to fall asleep straight away — a common theme in her life — Lois had opted to try and complete some work for school, although she failed to get very far. Everything hurt Lois' brain. She didn't understand much of it, given her time off since Boyd's death, but she doubted she would have been able to really complete it, anyway; she hadn't paid attention to classes in weeks, it was rather difficult with a life like theirs. All of it seemed to roll around in a mass of letters and numbers, and the font danced in her vision and avoided forming intelligible words. So, rather than push on, Lois Lane had grown distracted and found herself in a state of subconscious doodling.

   Her notebook had been a mess, recently, from the few times she had actually opened it. Nothing inside consisted of useful notes in any of her classes. None of it was worth anything.

   The notebook was just a site for absent scribbles. Page after page of silly drawings, ones that came when she was bored, or trying to avoid being called on in class, or even when she had no idea that she'd been doodling, at all. Lois couldn't recall half of them, and if asked, she wouldn't have been able to say what doodles were on any of the prior pages. In fact, Lois didn't have a clue what could have been drawn in that notebook. It seemed that, as soon as she had drawn it, it was completely forgotten. Like an erased memory.

   Non-existent.

   So, when her phone buzzed with a message and the screen lit up, Lois had hardly realised that she'd been drawing again.

FROM: LYDIA SENT: 1:06
YOU BETTER BE SLEEPING. I WANNA SEE
MY BEST FRIEND TOMORROW.

She didn't reply to the text, knowing that there was no way of lying about being up this late if she made it obvious, but she did chuckle at it. Honestly, Lois wanted to see Lydia, too. It had felt like years since she had seen her, and she missed her. A lot.

Yawning, Lois stretched her limbs, craning her neck side to side and cringing at the click! Her back made similar sounds, and she shut her eyes in mild satisfaction, re-opening them in a half-asleep haze. They flickered down to look at her desk and focused on the notebook and pen she had been using, squinting in confusion as she stared at the paper.

A tree? Lois was bemused, she'd been drawing a tree?

   It was a strange thing to have drawn, but she supposed there had been weirder things to doodle in spare-time. But what confused her most was that she could hardly remember drawing anything at all, let alone the strange looking tree in the middle of the page. It was oddly detailed, and it had made Lois' tummy turn in on itself.

Lois shook the feeling off. After all, it was only a drawing of a tree, and it had no business making her feel so weird. She was just tired — that was it.

Another yawn passed her lips, and Lois stood from her desk and walked into the bathroom. She kept quiet, as to not disturb her father, and began brushing her teeth. While doing so, Lois rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand, glancing at the mirror as she did so. Much like the drawing on her desk, Lois' eyes seemed like magnets, zoning in on something that she didn't remember to have been there before. This time, however, it wasn't a picture that she had scribbled onto paper. It wasn't on paper, at all. Rather, this time, what Lois was looking at was etched onto her skin.

Her toothbrush fell from her hands and hit the sink with a loud clatter but Lois paid little attention to it. She was too transfixed on the black mark upon her chest, sitting just underneath the left of her collarbones.

It certainly hadn't been there, before.

Lois stumbled closer to the mirror in attempt to get a closer look at the symbol on her skin, eyes wide. It was small — smaller than it would have been with intention to be noticed, and she figured that was why she had failed to spot it during her shower. She briefly wondered how long it had been there, but that thought was swept away with ones concerning what it meant. She had never seen any symbol like it; it held no significance to Lois. So, why was it there?

It was a circle, with what eerily resembled waves inside of it. The lines were dainty, petit and thin, and curved in delicate spirals that Lois could only see as water. It sent a rolling chill down her spine.

Truthfully, Lois was no stranger to tattoos. She had gotten one a year back, before their supernatural life had whisked them away, under her father's permission. That weekend, Lois had taken her good friend Danny with her, seeing as Stiles would pass out, and it had been an experience to remember. A fond one. The tattoo was only small, sitting on her hip bone, but she adored it.

But, that had been a tattoo she remembered getting.

This one... this one had appeared, on it's own.

Lois was positive that she would have known if she had gotten a second tattoo. She was positive that she would have seen it.

Somehow, the girl had no idea about the mark beneath her left collarbone. She didn't know how long it had been there, but could only imagine it had been covered by shirts, and she failed to spot it when changing. No one else had noticed, either.

Well, maybe not.

"Danny..." Lois muttered.

When she had visited him in the hospital, Danny had mentioned something about her getting a new tattoo. Lois had brushed it off in assumption that the medication he was on had been screwing with his mind, and he had gotten confused as he fell asleep, but perhaps he hadn't been confused, in the slightest. Perhaps he had seen the tattoo before Lois had, and she had thought nothing of it. Maybe Danny had been more conscious and alert than he had seemed. It was likely.

Grabbing a flannel from the side, Lois lathered it in soap and hot water and began to scrub at her chest. She dragged the flannel back and forth over the black mark, rubbing her skin raw, hoping it would budge. But, the more that she scrubbed, the less the mark seemed to want to move. A part of Lois told her to keep going; if she tried hard enough, then the symbol would eventually begin to fade, until it turned into nothingness, just like ink from a pen. She told herself that either the symbol would dissipate into her skin or it would wash away with the suds, and it would be as though there had been nothing there, to being with. However, the larger part of Lois told her that the symbol wasn't going anywhere. That it was stuck to her, just like a tattoo. She listened to that part.

   Spontaneously sprouting tattoos wasn't normal. Lois knew that it wasn't normal — but, as she stumbled back into her bedroom with burning and wet skin, and half-cleaned teeth, she struggled to find a decision that wasn't accepting it. What was she supposed to do? It clearly wasn't going to budge.

   Doing what she did best, the brunette opted for scrambling into bed and tugging the covers over her head. She buried herself deep within them and shut her eyes, hoping to hide away.

From the symbol on her skin, the tree in her notebook.

She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and tried to hide away, but even as sleep soon came, her mind did not stop reeling.

Lois wondered if she was even asleep. It all seemed so realistic: it was as if she was actually walking through the woods, with leaves crunching beneath her bare feet. The wind was in her hair and the moon glistened, the world dark besides light between branches.

   She wasn't sure why she was there, in this dream. It looked like the preserve, but she was positive that the preserve didn't have a body of water — at least, she had never seen it once and she had been in the preserve almost a million times. Actually, Lois knew the preserve didn't have any water. The woods were mud and trees; it was an average forest, and there wasn't so much as a stream.

   So, why was there a body of water in this dream preserve?

   And why did it seem so familiar?

   Her eyes concentrated on the water's surface, trying to figure out why the sight of it brought goosebumps to her skin. Lois bent her knees and took a closer look, and bit on her nails in anticipation of realisation. Why was she drawn to it? How did she recognise it? It didn't exist in real life, as far as she was aware, and Lois couldn't recall another dream where it had appeared. She had never seen it in either scenario — she dreamt about water quite often, in all of her nightmares, but not this water. This water she had never seen in her life. So, why was she there? Question after question clouded her thoughts, and Lois forced herself up with a deep huff of air.

   Mind messy, the girl took a step back and away from the water, only for a panicked shriek to pass her lips. She slipped.

   Down a bank and into the water, the world blurring around her.

   It was a bizarre moment of colours and sparkles, and she was positive that a glowing blue arrow had taken over her vision. Lois didn't see trees, or mud — in that moment as she fell, the world had slowed and Lois saw blinding light and blue. Blue, blue, blue.

   Lois had seen this, before! She knew that she had seen this! In her crazed state at the motel, when the water had been flowing out of the basin and onto the floor, flooding around her and so she had fallen. Lois remembered it so differently to drowning herself in the basin, like Stiles and Luna has witnessed.

She had slipped and hit her head, and she had seen this. Even in that moment it had looked familiar, and now it was eerily so. All of it was so familiar, to Lois.

Her fall was in slow motion, like something about of a book or a film. She watched the tunnel of blue travel through the air above her, neon lighting the sky and then dissipating, before another one had followed in suit. The blue streaks were mesmerising. It looked as though it had set the trees to watery flames, and the light was as bright as the stars in the sky. Brighter, even.

Then it stopped.

Lois Lane hit the water's surface with a smack!

• • •

Lois awoke with a splutter, choking on air that felt like droplets of water sliding up her windpipe and out of her lungs. She heaved and coughed, rolling onto her side and gasping for the oxygen that wasn't tainted by liquid, and sucked in several deep and desperate shuddering breaths.

   Upon realising that there was no water in her system other than the severe lack of saliva, leaving her throat dryer than ever, Lois sighed in relief and flopped onto her back. It was all just a dream.

   A gust of wind made her brows furrow. She hadn't slept with the window open, why was it so chilly?

   As she slowly came to, Lois noticed that her bed wasn't as soft as usual. Come to think of it, her mattress felt like sleeping on stones, and her duvet was no longer keeping her warm and hidden from the world. Her room was incredibly bright, too, and there was a faint buzzing next to her ear. The girl swatted at it with her hand, hearing a crunch! when her elbow brushed something scratchy on her left. Her body stiffened and she was suddenly hyper aware that this didn't feel like her bedroom, not even in the slightest.

   Where was she?

   Lois cracked open one eye, peering around hesitantly.

   She shot up in a seated position and blinked harshly. A bubble of panic filled up her chest, until she realised where she was — and it most certainly wasn't her room. Lois wasn't even close to her house or her street, let alone her bedroom, tucked up in her warm bed.

    "What the hell...?" She breathed out, heart in the back of her throat. Lois Lane was terribly confused. Terribly, terribly confused.

   Once the brief panic had subsided — although, the confusion didn't dwindle for a second — the brunette slowly pulled herself up from the ground. She brushed the dirt and dust from her, once clean, pyjama bottoms and shook a few leaves from her tangled hair. Lois squinted, a hand covering her tired eyes from the sun that had just found its place in the sky and replaced the moonlight, temporarily blinding her as she grabbed her bearings. It felt like another dream, but Lois knew that she was awake once she had counted all ten fingers and thumbs. Stiles had taught her that; if she had a nightmare, or a dream that felt too real, he had told her to count her fingers.

   If she was awake, she would have all ten digits.

   She counted twice. Lois had all ten.

   A long exhale from her nose and she eventually found it within herself to move. Her sore legs stumbled to hold her up for a brief second, and Lois extended her arms to find her balance. There was an ache in the very back of her head, and her fingers moved to provide aid, though she found no blood, no bump. The tender area was perfectly fine, and Lois wondered why it hurt.

   Then again, Lois was wondering a lot of things: why she wasn't in her bed, where she had fallen asleep. How she had ventured out of her home in the middle of the night and woken up somewhere completely different, on the other side of Beacon Hills. What she had done while being there, whether there was a reason. The only things Lois remembered from the night before was discovering the symbol beneath her collarbone and a strange dream about lights of glowing blue. But, still, that didn't answer why she had wound up in the outdoors, in her pyjamas. Her feet were un-socked, and the bottom of them stung with the imprint of rocks and stones.

   They almost hurt as much as her spine, and she nearly laughed at the idea of being able to sleep on rough ground. It was hardly a memory foam mattress, that was for sure.

   She supposed she should have been grateful. There were worse places she could have woken up.

   At least it was a place that she recognised.

   Lois slowly span around, glancing at all of the trees with great interest. They seemed similar to the ones from her dream, but it couldn't have been the same place. When she looked down at the ground, there was no water. Not a single drop. There was only solid dirt in front of her, and no sign of a body of water.

   Perhaps Lois would have taken that as fact. Maybe she wouldn't have questioned it, and simply decided it was a different place, if she hadn't felt the stirring in her stomach. There was a tingle of a memory in her bones.

   It was too strong to not listen to. A feeling that had wanted to be heard. Something deep within her told her that it hadn't simply been a dream; the place she stood was the place that she had been in that dream, and that dream wasn't a dream at all. That dream was a memory, a memory that she had relived in the present, and it held significance. She knew that it did. Lois could feel it in her gut, in her heart, in her soul. There was something her body was trying to tell her — it wanted her to listen to what it had to say.

   And she wanted to listen, but she was having trouble hearing. No matter how hard Lois strained, she simply couldn't hear any of it.

There was a reason that she had woken up there, and there was a reason she had dreamt about it. Lois was certain that this place had made a mark on her, somehow, and she was determined to try and figure out what that mark was. Amongst the chaos that they were already dealing with, with an alpha pack and sacrifices, she added it to her list of unanswered questions.

What did it mean? She had ventured into the outdoors during her nights sleep, and had dreamt about this exact place — the only real difference was the lack of water, and that only upped Lois' drive to figure out why. Lois had a feeling that her dream hadn't been a dream, and she was there for a reason. She had to be.

Lois was there for a reason, and she figured it had something to do with the blue lights and the body of disappearing water. There was a memory that Lois was forgetting, and she wanted to know it.

Her body jolted as the pocket of her pyjama bottoms buzzed.

With shaky, cold hands, Lois pulled her phone out and frowned down at it. She wasn't sure why she would have brought her phone but she didn't question it too much, instead rushing to turn off her alarm. What time even was it?

7:00 AM

It was almost time for school.

"Shit..." Lois muttered, fiddling with her phone until she found the contact she had been searching for. "I'm gonna be late."

Thumb hitting the call button, the girl puckered her lips and let out a sigh, listening to the ringer. She tapped her foot and coaxed for them to pick up, and ran a stressed hand through her hair. It was knotty, and she immediately pulled back with a deep grimace.

"Lo?"

She breathed out, "Stiles, hey—"

"Why are you calling, so early?" The boy asked, "Couldn't you have just knocked on my window?" He paused, then spoke louder and quicker than before. "Wait— did you find out something? Did you—?"

"No, and no." Lois wrinkled her nose, "Definitely no."

"No you can't knock on my window—" Stiles asked, "—or no, you didn't find something?"

"Both."

"Both?"

"Both," she repeated. "Uh— can you pick me up?"

"Well, duh. You live next door, Lo, I kinda always pick you up unless you pick me up." Before he could ask why, Stiles' grew distracted just as Stiles often did. His brain ventured into other thought. "Does it still count as picking up, if the vehicle doesn't move to get you? Is that a pick up? I feel like it isn't—"

"Stiles," rolling her eyes, Lois tried to get him back on track. "I don't mean picking me up from my house, idiot. I need you to come get me."

"Come get you? From where? It's seven in the morning—"

"Can you come, or not?" She pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Yeah— yeah, of course." Stiles' voice grew gentle, as if he sensed that something wasn't quite right. Lois felt bad for making him worry but she knew that it was only because he cared, and it was something Lois would always appreciate. Even if it made her feel guilty, he would always worry about her. He had a sixth sense for Lois Lane — Stiles Stilinski knew if there was something wrong long before she did. "I'll come get you," his car keys jingled about in the background, "Why aren't you home? Where are you, Lo?"

Lois scratched the back of her neck, giving her environment one last glance, and then returned to the phone call. She sighed.

"Beacon Hills Preserve."

——

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