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When Bryce came to awareness, everything hurt.
Judging from the grinding sound at any movement, she estimated that at least five to six ribs were cracked and her right arm was shattered in three areas. There was a terrible roaring and hammering gnawing at her forehead, causing tears to prick her eyes. Her throat burned with a vengeance and suddenly breathing was too difficult.
There wasn't enough air, her chest wouldn't move, there was molten fire searing her entire body, setting every nerve alight with agony.
She vaguely remembered something about ... Clark? Where was he? Was he hurt too?
And what exactly happened to her?
A blurred figure hovered over her. Diana, her pain-addled mind supplied.
“ Rest, Bryce,” she softly said.
She had questions but there was a hurried beeping somewhere above and she could the flow of a cool liquid entering into her system and she knew no more.
~.~.~
The next time she woke up, Bryce was able to blink blearily at Barry who was anxiously jumping from sitting and tapping his finger on the table to checking her monitors and medications to standing and attempting to read a book.
“ Stop moving so fast,” she managed to hoarsely grumble before Barry zipped right to her side, causing the pounding in her head to escalate.
“ Welcome back to the land of the living,” he smiled.
“ What happened?”
Barry's smile dropped. “ What do you remember?”
He was avoiding her question. Which meant it must have been bad.
The medications were casting a dull fog across her mind. Gritting her teeth, Bryce sat up.
“ W-whoa Bryce!” Barry steadied her shoulders. “ Don't move! You're still badly hurt! You look worse than Grundy on his better days.”
Despite the pain that flared up, Bryce was able to think more clearly.
They had been hunting Brainiac down after he had captured Clark. Bryce remembered the anger and helplessness she had felt as she watched Brainiac take the unconscious Clark away. For the next forty-eight hours, she spent on the warpath, hardly eating or sleeping, determined to find Clark despite the concerns for her from the others.
They found Brainiac in the end, managing to restrain him and make him talk.
Only for a brainwashed Clark to reveal himself and attack them.
(she should have known, should have anticipated that, should have prepared a gaseous form of kryptonite to stop him, but she wasn't thinking clearly, wasn't thinking anything but rescuing him and getting him back)
He blasted the kryptonite away from her hand, breaking her arm in the process before slamming her to the ground with his heat vision.
His hands began to squeeze and tighten over her neck.
The last thing Bryce saw was his crimson eyes burning and hurting her.
And then, she woke up on the Watchtower.
Barry would not have been joking around if they were unsuccessful. Meaning, the others must have been able to subdue Clark and bring him back to his senses and escape from Brainiac.
The question remained why it had been Diana and Barry staying by her side at the infirmary and not Clark who would incessantly hover over her like a mother hen whenever she was injured.
Unless –
“ Clark. Where is he?”
Barry froze. He looked like he was going to deflect her question again but the look Bryce gave him made him give in.
“ He's – ahh, locked himself in a containment cell.”
The idiot.
With a motion that she knew her body would make her regret later, Bryce heaved herself out of bed, simultaneously taking off her oxygen mask and pulling out the IV drip out of her arm without a wince.
“ Bryce! You can't – !”
“ Either you help me or move out of the way,” she growled, her good hand clamped over her arm to stem the bleeding, ignoring the way the beeps and alarms intensified her growing headache.
Barry hesitated before sighing in resignation and helped Bryce stand. “ Diana is going to kill me,” he muttered.
She decided not to comment as the dizziness and swaying made her wanted to retch.
Down the hallway, they went. J'onn and Shayera made attempts to stop her but her glare and resolute expression on her face made them back down.
Bryce already caught a glimpse of her own reflection when walking. She did not need the others to tell her how bad she looked. Cowl was off, a rarity in itself. Pale thin cheeks. Haggard bloodshot eyes with dark circles underneath. Arms, neck and chest swathed in thick layers of bandages. A trickle of blood dripping down her wrist from where the IV site previously was. Barely able to stand on her wobbling legs without Barry's assistance.
If she was honest with herself, she looked more dead than alive.
A reasonable and sane person would have relented and complied to the others' well-meaning intents and their own body telling them to stop moving and lie back down.
But Bryce had her priorities.
By the time they reached the containment cells, Bryce was practically grabbing on Barry's arm to keep her steady, chest heaving and wheezing in exertion and lack of oxygen, body shaking so hard it was barely upright.
Diana and Arthur were already there, speaking in low voices, arms crossed, their postures rippling of frustration and concern. Their heads snapped up when they saw Bryce and Barry approaching them.
“ Bryce, you're awake! Are you – ?”
“ You shouldn't be up – ”
“ Is he in there?” Bryce curtly asked, jumping straight to the matter.
Arthur's shoulders sagged. He glanced uneasily at the cell behind him. Bryce looked over his shoulder to spot a figure huddled in the corner, facing the wall away from them. “ He is. Clark refuses to talk, doesn't even want to turn around to see us.”
“ Clark changed the lock code before shutting himself in,” Diana explained with tired fretfulness in her tone. “ We are waiting for Vic to beam up to see if he can hack the containment door. We've tried different combinations to no avail.”
“ We thought about breaking the door but that might things worse.”
The locks for each cell were set to a combination of numbers and alphabet. Clark's usual passwords were infuriatingly simple and easy to guess: Martha and Jonathan's birthdays, his birthday, Bryce's birthday.
Bryce stared down at the keypad, narrowing her eyes at it to stop it from spinning and blurring out of focus. Clark did not want them to open the door. A wise person would have simply selected random characters to make it near impossible to guess the password.
Knowing Clark in his distressed state, he would not be thinking as rationally and only focused on one thing.
Easier for Bryce to make an educated guess.
The date when Brainiac first captured Clark and most likely brainwashed him then, kick-starting the events that led them to now.
With a barely trembling hand, she punched it in the keys and the containment door opened.
“ How did – ?” Barry started but Bryce already walked past him and into the cell.
Clark finally turned around when Bryce stepped in. He looked as exhausted as Bryce felt. He looked terrible, to put it lightly, even if physically he did not have any injuries on him. His eyes widened in fear, guilt and panic once he realized it was her.
“ Bryce, what are you – you shouldn't be in here!”
Bryce levelled a look at Clark. “ I could ask the same to you,” she said disapprovingly.
“ It's not safe. I'm not safe.” Clark was looking imploringly at Diana, Arthur and Barry from behind Bryce. “ Get her out of here.”
“ I'm not going anywhere until you explain why you are acting like an idiot,” Bryce growled.
Clark was wringing his hands. He was looking everywhere except at Bryce. “ Whatever Brainiac did to me, it could still be in my head. Any moment I could hurt you or anyone else again.”
“ There are ways to fix that. Diana has her lasso. J'onn can scan your mind. Vic can check for any inorganic changes.”
“ Bryce, I – ”
“ Being brainwashed is nothing new. It has happened to all of us at one point and we have all done things we regretted. This was not your fault.”
“ This isn't about – ”
“ If this is about you trying to kill me, you didn't succeed.”
Barry winced somewhere behind her.
Clark looked aghast. “ I hurt you. I hurt you, Bryce. What if I did something worse? What if I kill you next time? I could never forgive myself if I did.”
“ Then I won't forgive myself for not bringing the kryptonite out faster,” Bryce dryly said.
“ This isn't a laughing matter!”
Bryce bit back the retort she wanted to make. She tried to ignore her worsening headache, the way her limbs were aching and trembling, how each word she spoke was scraping painfully against her bruised throat. This argument was going nowhere and she was reaching the limit of her patience and whatever was holding her consciousness steady.
“ Fine. Have it your way.”
Clark was looking at her with a mixture of confusion and hope that she was finally listening to him. The others were looking at her apprehensively and uncertainly.
She gave an almost bored look at Arthur who was standing closest to the keypad.
“ You can lock both of us in here.”
And that was when an explosion of protests came forth.
“ Bryce, you can't be serious!”
“ You're in no state to stay here!”
“ You're barely standing as it is!”
“ You need to return to the infirmary!”
Bryce's gaze was only on Clark. “ I'm not leaving until you do,” she calmly said.
“ You can't – ”
“ I can and I will.” Her voice was firm. “ Deal with it.”
Bryce was supremely pleased that she managed to get the final word with ringing authority.
Because before Clark could open his mouth, her legs gave out and she passed out into Clark's alarmed arms.
That was one way to end an argument.
~.~.~
The next time she woke, she was back in the infirmary.
Though thankfully this time, Clark was by her side and holding her hand.
Satisfied that she won that argument, Bryce was finally able to relax.
Upon realizing she was awake, Clark fussed over her and for once, she allowed him to do so without compliant.
“ Scan was negative?” she asked once she had a moment to speak in-between Clark's coddling.
“ It was.” Clark exhaled slowly. “ J'onn and Vic checked. There's nothing left. I'm clean.”
“ Good,” Bryce grunted. “ I don't fancy sharing you with Brainiac.”
A slight twitch of his mouth. He was starting to return a bit more like his usual self
“ Still, putting your own health and well being at risk like that is dangerous,” Clark chided her. Definitely back to his usual self. “ Don't ever do that again. Even for me.”
(“ I'm sorry, Bryce, I'm so sorry,” he was whispering, cradling her close to his chest – she was so light and weightless in his arms she could float away if he wasn't careful – as he carried her back to the infirmary, followed by the others who were worried for her but not as much as him.
If her condition worsened, if her injuries became critical and irreparable, all because she pushed herself to the limit, all because she cared too much ...
All because of him ...
It would hurt him far worse than anything Brainiac could have done to him)
“ I won't,” Bryce evenly replied, exasperated and fond that Clark was too damn noble for his own good. “ As long as you don't do something foolish like that again.”
Clark sighed.
“ I'm sorry for putting you through that. I just – wanted to protect you from me,” he quietly said.
“ I know,” Bryce wearily said. “ But what you did wasn't going to solve the problem.”
“ What if it happens again? What then?”
She leaned back against her pillows. “ We deal with it. Like we always do. Nothing we haven't been able to handle before.”
Clark allowed a small smile. “ Not like you to be optimistic.”
“ Hnn. It's the drugs,” she murmured, eyes fluttering shut. She was warm and comfortable and it must be the drugs that caused her to not let go of Clark's hand since waking up.
(anyone with a pair of eyes would have made certain deductions after seeing that; so much for their secret relationship)
Clark certainly noticed, with the way he gently squeezed her hand back, just as he pressed a kiss to her cheek, one of the few places on her body that didn't hurt.
“ Of course it is,” Clark said fondly and wasn't that the sweetest thing she heard in a long time as Bryce drifted back to sleep.