Epilogue: Apparently not Anything

All she could do was stare at the contents inside that box in silence at Kent's remark.

Her lengthened nails bit into the material of the box, she **** herself to relax her hands and release it. The sting of this still bit into her but she couldn't afford to lose it here and now, not in front of Smallville.

She would rather rip out her own heart and consume it before laying a finger upon Blaze in a fashion of ****. Yet she still thought her so weak that she had gone behind her back, went to one of her work colleagues no less and pawned off the task of this delivery upon an innocent man. She bit her interior lip hard enough to taste copper. Her sharpened canines, tearing into the flesh of her gums. It was a betrayal, it hurt. Far more that lip ever could. Theirs's was not a long relation but she had hoped that with her tolerance, her love, her patience for the demon's antics she would've been given consideration in this affair.

Swallowing back the foul tasting swill that gathered within her mouth, she **** herself to adopt the controlled breathing that had been drilled into her as a much younger woman. Calm, collected, passive, she could not rage as she so wished no matter how well deserved it might be. It would only prove his and her point.

She could master herself, she wouldn't be thought as soft and weak as to need that demeaning contraption.

More then that though, she realized. This moment **** her to confront what she had been putting off in the back of her mind for weeks now as the changes progressed and advanced. Her increasingly lessening humanity, it didn't take Lex Luthor or Brainiac to figure out where this was leading. If it couldn't be halted and reversed she would cease to be human, she somewhere deep inside herself had already acknowledged that much but here and now she was **** to look at the situation objectively.

Clark offered a path and yet everything within her raged against it. Perhaps it was instinct not quite her own awakening within this body, perhaps it was fatigue at having to finally look at what she was becoming. She didn't know. What she did know however was that the path Clark offered led at best to things remaining as they were, while she put up with the indignity of living with a Succubus, her wife no less that she couldn't touch for a month. If that were the best course she'd endure, anything for her and what grew within her.

It wasn't though.

Lois Lane knew this world, in her time she had been kidnapped, beat to near ****, had accumulated more hospital visits then most professional soldiers, been used as a human shield and all but put through one **** or another as she tried her damnedest to deliver the truth to the people. Her recent escapades with Blaze aside this world was a pit, what if...what if becoming something else. Something new, something better was the solution and not the problem? Perhaps she had gazed at this from the wrong angle, attempting normality despite what had occurred, hoping that everything could back to normal.

Perhaps it took her sprouting horns of her own to finally understand that this wasn't going to abate, she wasn't going to likely be any sort of human for much longer. Kent offered a solution to that, a way out, the damage done was likely permanent. He offered a chance at equilibrium, not a cure. Was there a cure for the soul rotting out of her flesh as the demonic energies and blood consumed it? Perhaps but it wasn't the table here and now and more to the point she was increasingly fixated it not being needed.

'You are getting on just fine without, better then fine even.'

Blaze was out of commission with her pregnancy and could only grow weaker, they could abstain from sexual activities. She couldn't help but letting out a rather unladylike snort at the mere notion of the Lord of Hell adhering to that plan. 'Maybe if her former home decided to freeze over' More then that though, her brief stint in Blaze's body had revealed at the very least a notion of its physical capabilities and she was intimately familiar with the demon's magics. If those were if she continued onward as she was, vanish entirely as she and the child absorbed the power the demon had accumulated over the passage of centuries...

What or who would protect Blaze? Her unborn child? Once it was born into this world with all its crime, wars and superhumans? 'It could be you', the unbidden thought came to her mind as she absently traced the horns hidden beneath her headscarf. Clark had a point though, her self control over herself was beginning to lapse, she was letting the energy bleed into her mind. Overwhelm her emotions, with something as serious as this she needed to absolutely sure. Even if a permanent cure was not the table at present, it could be offered eventually.

This step though, this would be permanent. Still the ability to actually fight back, appealed to her. She had always tried her best, even without the powers oh so common among metahumans, the constant stream of aliens to the planet. This could her chance to defend what was hers, she loved Angie, she loved the little one that grew inside her. To put aside herself from the equation, she had proven more then once already in her life she was willing to sacrifice for what she loved.

It just so happened that this time she would be giving up something she never thought was on the table. Her eyes lifted from the box, silence still dominating the room in the aftermath of Clark's revelation and "gift".

"I am sorry Clark but no." She answered just barely above a whisper after a eternity of silence in the office.

She couldn't help but notice his grimace at her answer.