slayers_desire | Embrace the beast

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Embrace the beast

Five days ago had been a good day for April, since she had been able to protect Clark during a LOL and later helped him to fly. The days following had been normal enough, until the time came for April to return to her Nexus and complete some of her 'hero' expectations.

The situation had been easy enough at basic appearance, all April thought she had to do was get rid of one pesky demon that had a small town under its spell. What she did not know what that the spell had convinced all the mortals that they had to protect the demon.

That in itself had been difficult. April couldn't harm a mortal intentionally. But they sure as hell could harm her. By the time she had managed to get through the small riot crowd of people with their torches and home-made weapons, April had to call out her Beast to fight the demon one-on-one. It had been a more difficult battle than she had anticipated, because every now and then some innocent would try to protect the demon.

Then in the last moments of defeating the demon, he had burnt a rune into her shoulder, right before he took his last breath. It took April five seconds to realize that because of the burning rune, the Beast was not going away. And she was stuck in that form. It gave more reason for the already frightened villagers to attack her some more.

It took a whole lot of control not to fight back, and somehow April managed to get back home. There were small fires still smoldering on her clothes when she appeared at the door to her Nexus apartment. Opening the door slightly, the exhaustion came over her and she sort of slumped to the floor.

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"Oh I have lots of things in mind." The Beast purrs again. Her fingers run down Clark's spine. There is more force behind the flirtation when it comes to the Beast, then it would April.

This time he reacts, grabbing her arm firmly and pulling it away from him. "No. Not that." Even if he believed she was in her right mind, he wouldn't be ready for anything close to what she wants. And there's no way he's going to give in to her like this.

He doesn't let her go, either.

His firm denial seems to affect her deeply. And for a moment there are pair of greenish-blue eyes starting at him. "Clark..."

A second later, they are gone. "Let me go!"

Clark is torn. His denial to the Beast was to April, too - they're not completely separate people, no matter how much he wishes the Beast were merely an invader. And he doesn't want to hurt her, ever. But on the other hand, she was there. That was her.

He keeps his grip on her arm, a hand that can crush at the same pressures of the Earth's core locked around her wrist. "You told me once that you refused to let your dark side take you over. That by not defining yourself as a monster, you wouldn't become one. And this isn't the real you."

"You don't want the real me." The Beast replies. But the danger that was in its eyes a second earlier is not there anymore.

"I'd rather discuss that with your other half," he says frankly, staring her in the eyes. He doesn't know which side she considers to be her real self, but he's leaning more heavily on the side of the sweet humanish girl he's come to know and respect over the past several weeks. And he knows more than most how your true self isn't always one or the other, or the one you wish was you.

"Even if this is the real you, she's part of you too. You need her. I need her."

With a slight shudder, the Beast hisses out in pain as the rune burns brightly. "No one needs me."

"I do." He doesn't know which one of them is talking now, but it doesn't matter. "I need both of you. You need both of yourself too. If it wasn't for you, I would still be earthbound and useless in close combat. If it wasn't for her, I would've been lost and alone. You're her physical strength. She's your emotional strength. Whether or not you think you need each other, you do. And so do I."

That gives the Beast enough pause and April more strength. Before the Beast fully gives up control, it whispers, "She will need substance. Our strength is waning."

And with another shudder, the rune burns again and her eyes turn back to their natural blue-green hue. April cries out, as the pain consumes her body.

Whatever he was expecting, that wasn't entirely it. But it's close enough that he doesn't care. He lets her go immediately and zips to the fridge, going straight for the pitcher at the back. It's still weird and a little disgusting, but if it means she gets better, he'd do nearly anything to help her. He pauses for a split second to dump some into a mug, then zips back to her side, one hand securely clamped over the top to keep it from sloshing out.

Even with having to handle the pain, April can smell the blood. She lifts her head when he brings the mug over. "It has to be warmed slightly."

His eyes flare gold as he switches into heat vision, sending a brief, low-intensity burst into the red liquid. Don't boil it, it's not coffee, just warm. Like bottle-feeding an orphaned calf.

He checks to make sure it's not too hot - no steam is a good sign - and holds it out, fully intending to keep a steadying hand on the mug if she needs help.

The steady hand on the mug is needed. Her hands shake as she places them over his and drinks slowly. Every now and then she has to stop, grit her teeth, and ignore the burning rune.

"It still hurts."

"I'm sorry. Is there anything else I can do?" That rune has him worried, and he resents the demon for putting it there in the first place. He's not used to facing problems he can't fix so easily.

"I need to remove the rune." April drinks again. She remembers flashes of everything he said, while she was in the other form. And knows he wants to help. "I have a book of runes, on the self over there."

He makes sure she has a good grip on the mug before he goes to look. It only takes a few moments to find which book she means, and on his way back he flips through it as quickly as he dares to find the symbol. "Here."

April draws her finger over the symbol in the book, then reaches back and tenderly traces the one on her back. "Yes. This is it. Control. Desire. A unpredicatable rune."

Reading over the Latin in the book, April sighs and takes another long drink of blood. "Difficult to remove too."

He doesn't really like the sound of that. "Difficult how?"

He really hopes it isn't some extremely long ritual or something requiring human sacrifice or something like that, because that's the last thing they need today.

"Don't worry. No human sacrifices." Her abilities still seem to be working at the very least. "Returning control won't be hard. You have helped with that already."

April takes his hand. "By reminding me of my promises to not become the monster. By telling me you need me..."

"Removing desire..." She pauses. Then flips through the pages to find some clue. The memory of his hard denial to her Beast's flirtation is still there.

Clark gives her hand a light squeeze of reassurance. He wasn't lying when he told the Beast that he needed both of them, but he thinks he needs April a lot more.

He also thinks that what the Beast was doing was a lot less flirtation and a lot more hardcore seduction, although he's never really had a girlfriend let alone had sex at any point in his life, so his position is rather biased.

Another ebb of pain from her rune, but there is a part of it that is definitely faded now that Clark looks at it again.

Trying to ignore Clark's stray thoughts, April coughs. "Desire is the need to possess. The two most powerful emotions to destroy desire is fear. And love."

"Oh." Clark knows that if he wanted to, he could be plenty scary. The dark part of him that comes out when red kryptonite is in play, the cold and cruel Kryptonian son, his own normal feelings of rage. But he never, ever wants to turn any of that on her. Having someone looking at him with fear in their eyes makes him feel sicker than a bellyful of kryptonite.

"What do we need to do?"

Again, his thoughts practically leap at her from where he sits, so close to her. And April touches his face. "Even in your darkest moment, I want to be the light. Not afraid."

She finds the page with the love rune. "I am hoping this will work. You reminded me of how powerful love could be, with describing what your mother did for you."

He can't think of anything to say to that, so he simply puts his hand over top of hers. It's strange, coming to rely on someone so much after such a short time. Yet it feels so very right. He doesn't know where he'd be without her help. Nor where she'd be without his.

"Well," he admits, "she did have help from a little hunk of black kryptonite." Which reminds him that he'd planned to bring some traditional green with him, but in all the fuss after practice it didn't even occur to him. "But these runes seem plenty powerful to me." Just as the meteors of his home affect him so deeply, he assumes the runes of hers hold similar sway over her.

"They are powerful magic." April smiles gently at him. She squeezes his hand slightly. "Clark... I need you to burn this rune overtop of the other one."

She would trust no one else to do this for her.

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