paradisalost | out in the boondocks

Entry tags:

out in the boondocks

Who: Lucy Saxon (

loisfuckinglane), along with Jo Harvelle (

huntersdaughter)
What: Finding themselves in the Dead Zone
When: Monday evening to the foreseeable future
Where: The Dead Zone, lol
Rating: PG-13

Early Monday evening, Lucy Saxon wakes with a start and a lot of disconnect. The last thing she recalls is going about her morning rituals--starting a cup of tea, feeding the cats and the Arcanine, opening her journal to read what she missed while asleep. Now she's in the grass, out in the open, and she's so cold that at first she can't even move. When she does move, she's immediately jerking up into a sitting position and frantically rubbing at her arms to try and get her circulation going again.

Her first thought is: This almost feels colder than Utopia--

Her second thought is: Tesla. I've been kidnapped like Tesla and the others--

Her third thought, after looking around, is: And I haven't got my journal--

Shivering uncontrollably, Lucy climbs to her feet and tries to get her bearings.

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I'll be fine, she'd told Akihiko dismissively, waving a hand in his direction and offering him up one of her customary eye rolls at his worry warting. If she didn't tell him he could go, he'd be stuck there due to his loss, and it felt strange to her to have him literally tethered to him.

She could handle herself for a couple minutes, she'd thought.

The way her head was aching when she came to, and the sharp pain in her shoulder said differently. She felt disoriented, and she wondered for a moment if she'd fallen off a cliff by accident or something. Her body screamed of the aftershocks of impact with the ground, which was colder than it had been even where she was moments before.

Or was it moments?

Maybe hours had passed. She tried to remember how dark or light it had been but there was a sensation inside her overriding her thought processes given how suddenly it had appeared when she woke. The feeling of something calling at her in the direction of where she knew somehow the Castle to be.

She'd heard about the phenomena but it didn't make it any less eerie.

"Well, Lane," she mumbled to herself, as her eyes scanned the empty landscape. "You wanted to see the Dead Zone." The dry humor rang a bit hollow, even to her, and didn't do its usual job of offering her some comfort. It only took a moment of painfully searching herself, wincing at the pain in her arm, to recognize that her journal wasn't there.

"Of course," she concluded. "We'd hate to make this easy." She vividly remembered Clark's instructions about building smoke signals, but it was going to involve hunting up the supplies to do so, and was going to be an adventure in itself with her injury. She should probably try to make a sling for it, she realized, but her only available cloth options were her own clothes, and she was already freezing. She tried to weigh the risks between freezing and doing more damage to the injury, but given that she still had her coat, she decided to rip it out of there. It was easier said than done, but she held the coat down with her foot, and used her teeth and hand to tear at the inner lining. She found herself grateful that it wasn't of better construction when she finally got it out - not exactly in one nice square piece, but enough cloth to at least work with.

Lois folded it diagonally into a triangle shape and then stuck her elbow at the top point, lining her wrist up along the bottom edge, and propping herself up on her side to try to make this easier. She needed something to tie the point up around her shoulder, and for a moment she felt her spirits sink at the realization, but she realized she could just tie it, though it'd be a little tricky. It took several tries and got increasingly more frustrating, and Lois gave a lot of thought to just saying 'screw it' and working with the shoulder as is. Especially because she knew how weak it might make her look if she came across somebody less-than-friendly. And it didn't feel dislocated...

She gritted her teeth and tried again, succeeding this time, and adjusting the knot to pull the arm up to a right angle.

"Clark," she mumbled, "wherever you are, I hope the boy scout is proud right now."

With that problem conquered, she made her way to her feet, groaning at the pain that seemed to be everywhere. The rest of it, however, she could shake off easily enough by walking. And she knew what direction to go in, and could look for fire building supplies along the way. Pretty much everyone missing was reporting in eventually - she had to believe her case wouldn't be any different, as long as she kept her head about this.

Seeing a shape not far in the distance, however, caused her to freeze in place, eyes widening.

Or, she thought, I could have the world's most terrible luck, and run into one of the Outsiders immediately. She thought about trying to make a break for it the other way, but it caught her eye that the woman - it was a woman - looked just as confused as she had, and surprised to be here.

Well, at least she wasn't alone.

"Hey!" she yelled, waving with her free arm. "Over here!"

Edited 2010-11-09 13:33 (UTC)

Lucy felt the pull of the castle too--telling her go this way, this way lies home--but considering she couldn't even see the castle on the horizon, that meant she was a very long way off, and the far more pressing need of finding a way to get warm was overriding the castle's call. It would be dark soon, and then she'd really be cold. Having been kidnapped in the middle of her morning routine, she was still wearing only her pajamas.

Much like on Utopia, the cold made her want to curl into a ball and rock back and forth like a child. But she's stronger than that, she thinks. She's survived this long, survived things other humans could barely begin to dream of. (Even if, by rights, she shouldn't have been able to wake up two weeks later.)

She was just starting to weigh her options when she heard the shout, and she immediately whirled towards it. Someone else, then. At least she wasn't alone. Lucy started jogging towards the other woman in a kind of staggering lope, hands still rubbing fiercely over her arms.

"You're from the castle, right?" Lois called out, as the other woman got closer, and she could see more clearly that there wasn't anything remotely threatening in her demeanor. Still, it was better to be totally clear on that point.

"Looks like we won the lottery," she added bitterly, head tilting in the direction of her own arm splint. "You're not hurt too bad, are you?" The other woman looked a little better off, which was good, if they were going to have to try fending for themselves and building smoke signals.

Lucy nods as she stumbles to a halt, slightly out of breath--getting a bit soft there, it seems--and mentally appraises Lois as the other woman does the same to her. She's a little curious about how Lois got hurt, but it's not like she'll really be able to ask. In response to her second question, Lucy shakes her head no, and then shivers exaggeratedly. The hopping from one foot to the other isn't a put on, though. They're bare and already she can barely feel them.

"Well, that's good, at least one of us got out of this wholesale," Lois started to say before doing a tiny double take and squinting at the woman. "I didn't catch your name. Don't think I've seen you around the castle. I'm Lois. Lois Lane." She stuck out a hand solidly, not suspicious of the woman's motives so much as she was wondering why the woman hadn't talked yet. Was she that cold?

For perhaps the billionth time, Lucy mentally cursed the castle for its choice of losses to inflict upon her.

And, since there's nothing else she can do, she simply takes Lois's hand and shakes it in greeting.

Lois returned the shake but confusion knit her brow a little more.

"Hablas ingles?" she asked - not that the other woman looked remotely hispanic, but who knew, maybe she was from Spain. They had blondes in Spain. Didn't they?

Lucy frowned, a little sadly, and shook her head 'no'; then, letting go of Lois's hand, gestured to her throat.

So she couldn't talk. Lois' eyes widened a little.

"Is this a recent development? Like since you landed out here?"

Now that her hands are free, Lucy's balling them back up and sticking them in her armpits for warmth; to answer Lois, she again shakes her head no.

"Great," Lois murmured. The other woman looked way more freezing than she was, so she handed her what was left of the mutilated jacket.

"I used the insides to make the sling, but it's better than nothing."

Lucy accepted the jacket with a clear expression of supreme gratitude, shrugging it on with shivering hands before sticking them back in her armpits. There were a lot of questions she wanted to ask, as well as suggestions to make, but it would obviously be much easier for Lois to take charge.

"I guess we're stuck playing charades for the time being," Lois said, as she glanced around, trying to look for any signs of... anything out there. Pickings remained slim. "Come on, we can walk or talk. Or... you know what i mean."

As she set off in the direction of that undeniable pull, she started in on the questions.

"Do you remember how you got here?"

Lucy followed her gamely. Heading in the direction of the castle seemed like the best option to take for the time being, so she wasn't inclined to argue, though she was hoping they might run across one of the outposts she knew had been built near the Zone.

Skipping a little to draw even with Lois so the other woman could see her, Lucy shook her head no, then folded her hands and laid her cheek on them in an imitation of sleeping.

"Great," Lois said, with a sigh. "I wonder exactly how far out we are, anyways."

No matter who else might have been taken, and shown up close to the border, the possibility remained that they would be the unlucky ones.

She refused to look visibly worried, however. They'd find a way.

They had to.

That comment made Lucy wonder about the strength of that voice in her head, telling her which direction the castle was in--would it be stronger if they were a good distance away? Was it even strong to begin with? She wished she could use it as a guide, but she had never experienced it before during her other trips into the Dead Zone. They had no way of knowing.

She echoed Lois's sigh and kept resolutely tramping on. Maybe if they kept moving, she wouldn't lose all the feeling in her feet...

It wasn't like Jo wanted to be wandering out there for longer than she needed to be, but she'd worked out a system and so far it didn't seem to be steering her wrong.

Her watch served to guide her along the border of the Dead Zone. It'd flicker to life when she was outside of it, which she figured was her safest bet for being found. Then every few hours, she'd take a wild stab in the dark and venture for what felt like an hour into the Dead Zone. She'd follow a single path, marking off the way back on the trees and random large rocks she'd find.

She knew she wasn't alone out there, which meant there were other people trying to find a way out. Jo just hoped she'd luck out and find some of them. After a few days though, she was starting to feel disheartened. Also a bit lost. Not knowing how far she was from one of the border outposts, she knew she had to keep moving, but her wrist hurt and she wasn't having any luck finding anyone else.

Then she heard something. A voice. A voice talking to herself.

Clearly that was either someone insane that she needed to stay away from... or it was someone, like herself, that was just as lost and just as frustrated.

Marking off another rock with the burned edge of the stick she had in her hand, she started to move quicker toward the voice. Hoping it wasn't a trap, because knowing her - that would be just her luck.

When she came across not one person, but two, she broke into a huge smile of relief, "I am so glad you're not crazy people in the Dead Zone looking to kidnap me again."

Here come those hugs.

Lois' head whipped around quickly at the voice, cursing herself for not hearing the footsteps over the sound of her own voice, but more than a little relieved when the figure the voice belonged to threw her arms around her unexpectedly.

"Well, hey there," she said, returning the hug awkwardly with her one good arm. "Gotta say that feeling? Is very mutual. I think my kidnapping days would be short lived currently anyways." She cast a wry look at her arm, and then stuck out her good hand.

"Lois Lane. Fellow member of the kidnappee society, I guess."

Lucy also returned the hug a mite awkwardly; she wasn't accustomed to being so... touchy... with other people anymore. She recognized the new arrival, of course--Jo had served her plenty of times at the Lux, but Lucy wasn't entirely certain of the other woman's name. And it wasn't like she could speak up to ask, anyway.

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out in the boondocks

Looks great! <3 thanks~ (oh, can you add Jo to the 'who'?)

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SO SORRY AGAIN ;_;

IT'S ALL GRAVY

<333

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OMG LJ NOTIFS

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