End: The Way of

Lois Lane walked, down and down.

Through darkness. Through fire and cold. Pain and hardship. Diminishment and degradation. Walking became the purpose in itself...as the aches of her naked body built and built. As her joints stiffened and skin sagged. Her breasts sunk low on her chest, her limbs grew thin. Black hair grew from her naked scalp, and then with the next step grey leached into her hair, and then white. Her eyes grew dim so she could no longer see the path...and when at last she was bent almost double, struggling to breathe, she crawled on her hands and knees, teeth falling out of her mouth, blind, tits dragging on the rough floor...

She didn't even feel it right away when her heart stopped beating.

Naked red feet touched the stone still warm from her passing. Even dead, Lois Lane was numbly aware of the figure that picked up her lifeless shell. That carried her naked body to the end of the path, where a metal hook waited.

It slid in, under her shoulder, just to the left of the reporter's spine.

Blaze ran her fingers over the corpse's cheek.

"A pleasant game, Lois. Yet you should know better than to play at being a goddess. You are...you were...only a mortal. Now, all that is left of you is mine...and I shall let your soul ferment like a fine wine, until I find use for you."

The scarlet succubus retreated...and there was Lois Lane, on her hook. Dead, yet terribly aware. Powerless. Trapped by her hubris, her curiosity...and indeed, she could well believe the old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

How to measure time, when you are dead? Three days or three centuries, it was all the same to Lois Lane as she hung on that hook, a shrunk and ancient thing...but then strong hands took her down and bore her away. Her ears would not hear, her eyes would not see...and then there was a light...a green light...that filled her entire being. sagging skin tightened. New white teeth burst through the ancient gums. Muscles tightened, breasts lifted once more, the wound of the hook closed. All the ravages of time and energy were repaired...and with a sudden instinctive urge the reporter threw back her head so that it broke the surface and gasped air into her lungs.

Superman was there, and Batman. Lois Lane blinked her violet eyes and clambered out of the earthen pit, the green liquid inside had begun to dim.

Batman had brought a towel. A large, black towel, with the bat-logo cunningly quilted into one corner. The naked reporter accepted it gleefully. She was exactly as she had been before her night out...except for the two streaks of white in her raven-black hair, and the haunted look in her eyes.

"We used the Lazarus pit to bring you back. When you disappeared, I went looking for you," Superman began to explain...but for once, Lois Lane's curiosity was satisfied. She threw herself against his great big chest and buried her face in it until the tears began to flow...and he wrapped his arms around her.

The Caped Crusader said nothing. He knew the Lazarus pits could restore the dead to life...but the psychological trauma that Lois Lane had been subject to would only be healed with time, therapy...and as he saw Lois lift her leg to grind against the Man of Steel...love.