[AU] SV Futureverse

[dovelike]

Metropolis Children's Hospital

Days like today are what keep Eirene coming back to this small hospital in the middle of Kansas. Watching a thirteen year old with once-inoperable pancreatic cancer walk down the hallway to her parents, who are standing with the resident cancer specialist and trying to figure out what happened.

Eirene knows and she glances down at her hands with a faint smile.Miracles. One 'twenty year old' volunteer can do more in the weekend mornings she volunteers than the vicious decease still trying to kill a host of other kids on this floor. If she's lucky, she can save another life today, but her energy reserves haven't been replenished by rest in the last few days.

She's settled into a booth at the corner diner not half an hour later, sipping an herbal tea and flipping through the Planet for anything out of the ordinary. For the curious: she looks like any other college student; a Met U sweater, jeans and Birkenstocks.

Comments

[eirenikos]

Walking is awesome. Or, rather, some walking and some blurring, though she'll behave since Clark's around.

Eirene politely waits until he's devoured most of his burger, sedately eating her own meal (one spoon of chowder at a time) and occasionally sipping at her tea until she deems it safe to actually answer that question.

"Oh, I've been bandaging up and providing moral support for a certain four-person team of idiots who repeatedly go up against bad guys."

[hero_farmboy]

"So I've read." Chloe might be respectful of Eirene's activities, but those records she's been keeping for Clark are detailed because they have to be. "Thanks for that, by the way." Anything that keeps Chloe out of the morgue on a regular basis is something he's in favour of.

[eirenikos]

"No thanks necessary. AC is family, Chloe's family, the rest of them are knuckleheads who need a keeper." Eirene is, when she's there, a very non strict keeper. "Besides, it's given me a chance to see another side to relatives that I never would have thought possible. Dad's kinda nice here."

[hero_farmboy]

"Yeah?" That's genuine curiosity. Clark sort of half-knew the gods existed here, but it's something else to have it basically confirmed.

"Must be kind of weird to see them, knowing they're not really... yours."

[eirenikos]

"You ... have no idea. There's a me here, only she doesn't look quite like this, and Athena looks different, so does Thanatos, and Poseidon. Dad? Exactly the same, only he's ... nice. Mom -- she accepted me right off, said she didn't care about alternate realities and that the world could use more peace anyway."

Beat.

"Ares is still a spoiled brat."

[hero_farmboy]

Clark doesn't have an idea and frankly, he doesn't really want one.

"I don't think Ares would be himself if he wasn't. Somethings can't be changed no matter how hard you try or hope they might." With that, he sighs and then finishes off his fries.

[eirenikos]

"That's very true." Eirene reaches forward and snatches the second-to-last fry before he can get it, offers a cheeky grin in return and proceeds to make it disappear. She's totally magic like that.

"You can order a second burger." That was a pretty rapid devouring of red meat there, Clark.

[hero_farmboy]

That garners an unabashed grin.

"No, I'm good. Actually, I'm kind of itching to get out of this suit," he admits, tugging at the collar, though it's more habit than actual discomfort. "I suppose I should get used to it but I don't really want to wear it any more than I have to."

Beat.

"It's sort of the only one I have."

[eirenikos]

"Aha! The rest of your closet is filled with plaid, isn't it? Or various colored t-shirts." All is now right with the world, if Clark only owns one suit. She'd been half afraid he'd gone corporate up in the artic.

With Jor-El as a father and teacher. Sorta.

Mentally shivering at the memory of her one visit up to the Fortress, and the voice that had managed to infuse itself with as much arrogance as her father, Eirene pulls a fifty out of her wallet and sets it on the table.

"That should cover lunch and tip, if you're ready to head out."

[hero_farmboy]

He shrugs, standing, that shy smile back in place now. "I haven't had much of an inclination to go shopping for much of anything yet, including clothes, so yeah. I've pretty much just got what I had when I left." Not for lack of his mother trying, though. And Lois.

The fifty is eyed. "I think that's more than enough, but maybe it'll cheer her up," he nods toward their waitress.

[eirenikos]

"Hey, I like your plaid. It's sexy." Eirene wiggles her eyebrows and stands up, slinging the purse across her shoulders. She glances around to locate their poor waitress and waves merrily.

"Twenty five or thereabouts for the meal, so it's a good tip." She's heading to the door and then holding it open for Clark a minute later.

[hero_farmboy]

"Well, maybe I'd be better off expanding my wardrobe then. I wouldn't want to cause a ruckus with my primary coloured sexiness," Clark snorts, following her out onto the street. And that's... funnier to him than her right now probably so give him a minute.

When he composes himself, he continues. "Lois has offered to help me go pick out a few things for the office. I figure she'll be brutally honest about what will work and what wont. Emphasis on the brutal."

[eirenikos]

He'll get a raised eyebrow and a patient girlfriend standing in the middle of the sidewalk while he gets himself under control. The bit where her lips are twitching too probably doesn't help.

"Yeah, Lois is good about that." Brutal, beautiful, and currently dating her alternative world cousin, which puts her firmly in Eirene's good graces. "You should see AC's closet. It's got two suits in it."

[hero_farmboy]

Yeah, it's something he's not ready to talk to anyone about just yet, so she'll just have to chalk it up to recent hermit-itis.

"Wet suits?" He quips back, reaching for her hand.

[eirenikos]

"No, he's got these tiny trunks you could use for a damn slingshot, but I don't think she's complaining. I mean actual suits. Trousers and jacket ensembles. He bitched about it for a whole week before giving in and letting her pick them out."

She fits her hand into his, and then pauses to sigh happily. "I missed this so much."

[hero_farmboy]

"I think that's something I didn't need to know." About the trunks, that is.

But he smiles again at her last comment. "Me too." And it's all he can do to resist the urge to pick her up and speed them the rest of the way, but discipline dictates he value discretion with his abilities over, well, adorable goddess girlfriends.

[eirenikos]

"Oh, good. I was starting to worry you'd found some Inuit girlfriend up there to trade eskimo kisses with." She's teasing, part of her attention centered on the stores they pass on the way to his apartment.

Discount clothing. Fabric. Hardware. Obviously, these are signs. And ... "Oh, wow!" Yep. There's a small arts and crafts hole in the wall not a block from his place.

[hero_farmboy]

It's not the highest quality store - nothing in this neighbourhood is - but it's clean, at least.

"Go on," Clark nods her toward the entrance. "You'll pout the rest of the night if I don't give you at least five minutes."

[eirenikos]

"No, I won--" Is the automatic response, but halfway through it Eirene stops and blushes. "Yes, I will." She darts straight into the shop and while it's a little more than five minutes (we'll be nice and say fifteen), the blonde is back out on the sidewalk in a reasonable amount of time. Holding a stuffed shopping bag.

Clark will get another brief kiss for his patience. "Thank you."

[hero_farmboy]

She'll find him waiting patiently outside, hands in his pants pockets, looking up at the sky, though his gaze is drawn immediately back to her when she returns.

"Did you leave anything for anyone else?" He jokes, offering to carry the bag for her.

[eirenikos]

"Yes, I did." She sticks out her tongue at him, and draws the bag closer to her. Eirene is extremely protective of her art supplies, or maybe she's purchased something Clark isn't supposed to see.

"Very interesting place," is all she comments, before offering her free hand back to him.

[hero_farmboy]

There'd have been a time he would have insisted, but as it is now, he just nods and leads her the rest of the way to his apartment.

The building, like much else int he vicinity, is old and run down. There's little in the way of security on the way inside and Clark heads up a small flight of stairs to the second floor to his door.

The apartment itself is as bad as his narration promised earlier. To the far right is a small kitchenette, as clean as it'll probably ever get. There are a few dirty dishes by the sink, which Eirene may recognize from her visits to the Kent farm when the Kents still lived there. On a small opposite counter, there are a series of simply framed photographs: Clark and his parents, Clark with Pete and Chloe. Clark and Eirene.

To the left is what should be the living room, but true to previous description, the only real piece of furniture if the Kents' old couch situated in the middle of the room. In a corner, a closed laptop is recharging and kitty corner to that is a small lamp.

"I told you it's not much," he says, ushering her in, immediately apologetic.

[eirenikos]

He's learning! Eirene likes old things, architecture and the like, so the buildings on either side of his are given a thorough visual inspection before she even gets to his. The designs, some of them, date back to the Art Deco rage in the twenties and thirties, although there are same across the street built at a later date and left to moulder.

After setting the bag next to the couch, and deliberately not looking at the papers scattered across the surface, she eyes the space involved, mentally pacing through what the room could look like with more things in it (but not too many), and then peers into the kitchen. An absent snap of her fingers takes care of the dishes, and the little fridge garners a squeak of delight. Hey, it's cute.

And then she sees the pictures. Johnathan and Martha, expected. The Three Musketeers? Definitely. Her and Clark? There may be a sigh and a sniffle. "Mrs K took that one, didn't she?"

[hero_farmboy]

"What?" Clark is momentarily distracted by the dish trick but he peers over her shoulder easily enough to see what she's referring to, already starting to loosen his tie.

It's the two of them sitting on the steps of the Kent farmhouse, hands clasped, Eirene leaning her head on his shoulder. "Oh, yeah. I think so. Mom gave me a boxful. You know how she is with pictures." Clark comes by it honestly, at least.

[eirenikos]

It's handy to date someone with magic who doesn't use it on him, the narration points out, while Eirene tilts her head back to grin up at him. "You should put them in a photo album. That way, none of the memories will get destroyed." Just ignore that blush.

Beat.

"Ok, you go get out of the monkey suit and I'll rifle through my bag."

:D