(Untitled)

[downsidedarling]

It's Sunday, which means Anna has a day off today.

This is good, because after helping herself to some free flowers last night, she's... shall we say... disinclined to get up.

Incapable of it, one might say.

She's also running quite the fever, and it's rather lucky all things considered that people in comas are not, on the whole, given to

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[downsidedarling]

"I was poisoned," she says shortly. "Going to try to figure out what did it. I may end up blind, paralyzed, or hallucinating, just to warn you. Don't let anyone visit my apartment, because they might die."

And with that brief but unpleasant message, she flickers, burns, and is gone - exiting the room through the window.

[hero_farmboy]

...

Clark stares at the window for a few minutes before heaving yet another sigh and heading out to try and explain this to the nursing staff.

[downsidedarling]

The advantage of fire-moving back to her apartment is that when she arrives she can see all of it at once.

The disadvantage is that she can't pay attention to all of it at once. She notices the bouquet of flowers she got at the Nexus yesterday - notices, more particularly, the fact that each flower has something not quite floral about it - but fails to similarly respect the lone purple bloom that sits atop a stack of books in the corner of her living room.

So when she disposes of the larger mass of flowers by taking it to her sink and setting it on fire, she misses one. And when she moves to retrieve a book from one of those stacks, she misses it again.

It, however, does not miss her.

[hero_farmboy]

Somehow, Clark manages to smooth things over with the hospital administration. It's possibly one of the very few times in his life he's deliberately tried to be charming. He's just amazed it worked.

That done, he heads immediately to Anna's apartment. After all, he's not 'anyone.'

[downsidedarling]

Anna is on the couch, with a book.

The purple flower lies forgotten, unobtrusive, overshadowed by the stacks of books on either side.

When Clark enters, she waves, gives a tired smile, and yawns.

"I'm going to call the place tentatively clean. Found a bunch of flowers with some bizarre shit on them. Remind me not to take free things from the Nexus. Fucking Nexus."

[hero_farmboy]

He frowns, closing the door behind him and pocketing the key.

"That's usually rule number one: Don't take anything from anyone you don't really know."

[downsidedarling]

"And I usually ignore it blatantly, because none of the crap it does to me sticks past the first torch afterwards. Other people, however, shake these things off less easily. I should remember that."

She closes her book and tosses it lightly onto the coffee table.

"At least it didn't take me out for longer than a day. I'd hate to miss work over something like this, and I promised Vivien I'd give her back her copy of L'Étranger tomorrow."

[hero_farmboy]

"You know, I think they'd understand 'I was in a coma.'" Clark remarks dryly. "I'm also pretty sure you'd get a doctor's note out of it if you'd stuck around."

[downsidedarling]

"Not the point," she says, grinning. "It's a matter of pride."

[hero_farmboy]

"Uh huh." Clark walks around the couch and sort of half sits on the arm. "I'm glad you're better."

[downsidedarling]

"So'm I, cheri. So'm I."

Anna moves a little closer to Clark, the better to hug him.

"Did I get any visitors while I was out? Probably not - I'm betting Viven didn't have time to hear about it."

[hero_farmboy]

"Lex dropped by. It's was probably best you were out of it."

[downsidedarling]

She raises her eyebrows.

"Huh. That's surprising."

Both that he dropped by and that he didn't cure her while she was there, but she won't mention the second part. She gets the sense that discussing with Clark the foolishness of allowing her to remain in hospitals would be Bad.

[hero_farmboy]

"A little, yeah." But just a little.

"He didn't stay long."

[downsidedarling]

"I'd imagine not."

Because Clark would have chased him away, of course.

[hero_farmboy]

Of course.

"You should probably take it easy for the next few days, just in case," Clark suggests, deftly changing the subject.