Chapter 9
Lena grit her teeth as Kara continued to prattle on and on about Lucy fucking Lane. The two girls were sitting in Lena’s room in the dorms working on a project for their history class when Kara brought up the older girl who had tracked them down in the library after school. Ever since her blonde friend had met the brunette a few weeks ago at the beginning of the semester, she has spoken of little else. At first Lena was amused by her friend’s babbling, but after a few days, the constant praises for the other brunette started to grate on her nerves. Lena was worried, worried that the older girl was trying to poach her best friend, her only friend if she was being honest. Now that she was in high school, people have started talking to her, especially with Kara hanging around and people loved talking to the bubbly girl, but she wouldn’t call any of them her friends. She has come to depend on the other girl, like having an a sister, a family, and she knew it was irrational to think of the older girl as someone encroaching on that bond but she was a teenager, it was her job to be irrational.
“And Lucy is really smart you know. She’s taking mostly AP classes as a junior and she’s on the cheerleading team,” Kara continued to gush.
The brunette snapped her book closed with a huff and glared at her friend. “If you’re going to talk about Lucy for the rest of the day, we should probably work on the project on a different day. I have other homework I need to do if I want to be able to start taking AP classes next year.”
Kara looked at her friend in confusion as she started pulling out her other books. “What’s your problem?” She asked, “Every time I mention Lucy, you get mad, and every time she comes over to hangout with us at lunch or after school in the library, you leave. Do you not like Lucy?”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to spend any time with that… that, that best friend stealer!”
“Best friend stealer? What do you mean?”
“You talk about her all the time Kara, you spend a lot of your time with her, time that we would spend together,” Lena snapped, her green eyes blazing. “You might have other friends Kara, but I don’t.”
“If you actually talked with other people, you might be able to make some friends!”
Lena flinched but hardened her eyes. “This isn’t about that, this is about you spending all of your time either with Lucy or talking about Lucy. If you want a new best friend, fine.” She grabbed her bag and started to the door. “I’m going to the library, make sure you lock up my room when you leave.”
Kara watched in disbelief as her best friend stormed out of her room, slamming the door along the way. She felt a pressure developing in her chest, an emotion she hadn’t felt before started building in her with that pressure. She felt her eyes starting to burn and knew that she had to get out of there. Kara packed up her bag and bolted out the door, remembering to lock it on the way out. No matter how irritated she was with Lena at the moment, she would still do as she asked. Luckily Kara had stayed late to work on her project with Lena so it was dark out when she ran out of the dormitory. She ducked into a nearby alley and checked to make sure that no one was watching her, and tugged her hood over her head and took off into the sky.
The girl hadn’t flown much since coming to National City, choosing instead to simply float around the penthouse. There were too many people living in the city to fly safely without cover, and Kara didn’t want to endanger her family if someone were to see her. It was an overcast night though and the anger welling up inside of her kept her from worrying about such things. Once she got high up enough over the clouds, the burning in her eyes intensified until she let out a scream, two red beams emerging from her eyes. Her breaths were coming out in heaving gulps when she finally stopped screaming, her rage burning away like the tiny clouds she had disintegrated. She continued to float in the sky, her eyes searching the heavens until she located Rao. It was just a distant speck in the sky, a brilliant star that she could see far better than many with a telescope.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed up there but when she noticed frost forming on her hoodie, she knew she had to head back down. The blonde glanced down, searching through the clouds down towards the buildings, looking for home. It wasn’t lost on her that she had just been searching the heavens for the same thing and was now looking towards Earth. She found the penthouse and headed towards it, moving slower than she normally did and feeling far more sluggish. As soon as she neared the penthouse, she dropped out of the sky, fortunately landing on her mother’s balcony.
Kara groaned and weakly pushed herself off the floor and into the penthouse, shutting the door behind her as she went. The light flickered on above her and Kara flinched, the light assaulting her eyes and causing a throbbing in her head. “Kara Catherine Grant,” Cat seethed, glaring fiercely at the girl. “Where the hell have you been? Lena called me hours ago in tears saying that you had a fight and that she left, but changed her mind and came back but you were gone.”
“I’m sorry Mom, I… I don’t feel well,” the girl’s words slurred and her vision darkened.
Cat stared in shock as her daughter seemed to wilt before her eyes and crumpled to the ground. She darted forward and caught her before she could hit the floor. “Oh you’re burning up,” she said, staring at the girl in disbelief. Lifting her as best as she could, Cat maneuvered the girl into her bathroom and in the bathtub. She striped her and started the water on cold with only a slight bit of hot water before pulling out her phone and hitting the speed dial.
“Kitty, do you know what time it is?” Lois’s voice mumbled out as she answered her phone.
“I don’t have time for this Lane, has there ever been a time when Superman got sick?”
Lois was silent for a moment before she spoke, “What’s wrong, did something happen to Kara?”
“Not now Lois, my daughter is sick, running a fever and just passed out, I don’t have time for questions!”
“Alright, alright, calm down. The only times I know when Superman got sick was when he was either exposed to Kryptonite or blew out his powers. Kryptonite is pretty rare, so she must’ve blown out her powers.”
“What would cause that?” Cat asked as she turned the water off.
“Excessive use of them, usually heat vision, that generally takes a lot out of him. I’m guessing Kara blew them out, has she been upset?”
Cat groaned, “No, but I think I know what happened, but that’s beside the point, how does Kara get them back?”
“Just take care of her Cat, normal medicine should help her for a while if she’s sick, but she’ll need a lot of sunshine. They should come back on their own in a few days, that’s how they come back for him, or a shot of adrenaline. Since she’s only fourteen though, I wouldn’t recommend that, they’ll come back on their own. Her immune system is weak though so take care of her.”
“You don’t have to tell me to take care of my daughter Lane!”
“I know I don’t Kitty, geez, I know you’re a good mother. It’s just, this is probably the first time Kara has ever been sick, though I don’t know about Krypton. She’s gonna be confused without her powers for a while, and something upset her so just be there for her okay?”
“I’ll let you know how things go,” Cat replied, hanging up the phone. She stared down at her daughter shivering in the tub, her mind calculated what she needed to do. She could take a few days off to watch her, the producers could show reruns of her talk show or one of the pre-taped episodes she had for such an occasion. The woman didn’t think she would need them to take care of her sick, alien daughter, but never let it be said that Cat Grant didn’t prepare for every possibility.
Kara started to stir a few minutes later and Cat drained the tub, helping the girl out and into a towel. She left Kara to weakly dry off and rummaged through her medicine cabinet, finding what she needed to combat a bad cold and fever. “I wonder if I can arrange for you to have your shots while you don’t have your powers,” Cat mused as she doled out the correct dosage of medicine. “It’s worth looking into.” She set Kara down on her bed and retrieved some clothes for the girl, helping her dress before forcing her to swallow the cherry tasting medicine. It looked as if the blonde girl was going to spit it out, but Cat covered her mouth and pinched her nose, forcing her to swallow.
The girl grumbled but dropped off into sleep again. Cat bundled the girl in blankets and sprayed some lavender in the air, knowing it was good for sleeping and Kara needed rest to sweat out the fever. She called Carter’s pediatrician and arranged for Kara to come in for her first round of immunization shots the next day, spinning a tale of the girl being born in an isolated community and hadn’t been able to get her shots. The doctor set a schedule for the girl, and Cat stared at Kara thoughtfully. “Well, you’ll have to blow out your powers a few more times, I’m not taking any chances that you’ll contract the measles or mumps when you don’t have your powers. At the same time, your body might break down the shots later, but I’m covering all of my bases.”
She turned her attention back to the girl sleeping on her bed and sighed, “I don’t know what happened Kara, but we’ll talk about it when you’re feeling better.” The woman pulled out her phone and sent a text to Lena, letting her know that Kara was home but she was sick so she would be out of school for a few days.
Kara woke up the next morning without a fever and her cold mostly dissipated due to Cat shoving cold medicine and tylenol in her throughout the night. She was less enthusiastic about being told that she was being taking to the doctor’s to get her shots, and pouted the whole way. The girl proved to be terrified of needles and clung to Cat the entire time she was getting her shots, and refused to speak to her on the ride back to the penthouse when Cat informed her that she would have to do this again.
The older woman just let her sulk for awhile and told Meredith to take Carter to the park while she had words with the girl. “Kara, you’re going to have to blow your powers out again in a few months to get your shots, stop pouting, you aren’t getting out of it,” Cat told her when she walked out on the balcony and found the girl lying in the sun. Kara just pouted and shifted slightly in her seat. “Kara sweetie,” the woman started again, “I need to know why you were so upset yesterday, what set you off?”
Kara was quiet for a moment but opened her eyes, confusing and sadness swimming in the blue orbs. “I don’t know really, I’m still confused about it,” she replied, her eyes shifting over to her mother. “I was working on the project with Lena, and then I started talking about my new friend Lucy, I told you about her.” Cat nodded, she had heard about her daughter’s new friend quite a bit in the last month. She didn’t think that the blonde girl knew that her friend was Lois Lane’s kid sister, but since the two Lanes didn’t talk much it didn’t matter. Kara sighed, “I don’t know what happened, one minute I was talking, the next Lena was jumping all over me, accusing me of replacing her as my best friend just because I was talking about Lucy a lot. And then we started arguing, and I said some things I didn’t mean to, and she left and I just got to mad!” She shrugged and looked away, “I ran out of there and flew up above the clouds, and my heat vision triggered. I disintegrated a few clouds.”
Cat hummed and leaned back in her seat, thinking about what Kara said, something about it sounded familiar. The overreactions from both of the girls could be attributed to rampant teenage hormones that it seems Kryptonians also deal with, but something else was going on. She thought back over the course of the month and skimmed over every moment where Kara mentioned the younger Lane; there were quite a few moments. Cat recalled a time when she was in boarding school and had a similar fight with her best friend over another girl at school, a senior, and Cat remembers what she was feeling at the time. “Kara,” she started slowly, gaining the girl’s attention, “Are you… do you possibly have a crush on Lucy?”
“A crush?”
The woman cursed, how was she supposed to explain this to the girl? “Do you like Lucy? As in have feelings for her?”
“Feelings,” Kara murmured, her nose scrunching. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Will you tell me what you do feel?”
Kara shrugged, “I don’t know. I like being around Lucy, she’s smart and nice and pretty. She’s helped me out a lot since I started high school, and she’s really easy to talk to. I get this warm feeling in my chest when I see her, and I look forward to seeing her and I’m sad to see her go when she’s not around.”
Cat smiled when Kara basically confirmed what she was thinking. “Kara sweetie, ukiem, you have a crush on Lucy, meaning that you like her, zhao.”
The girl blushed, a dark pink staining her cheeks. “Wha-what?” She sputtered, “No, just, no, why would I- no.”
“Kara, Kara, calm down,” Cat said, shushing the girl. “It’s not a bad thing, did you not have crushes on Krypton?”
“Wha-No, relationships weren’t like that,” she replied, avoiding Cat’s gaze. “Marriages, things like that, they were arranged, especially for the noble houses. It wouldn’t have been proper for me… No.”
Cat reached over and grabbed the other girl’s hands and squeezed, drawing frantic blue eyes back to her own. “It’s okay to have a crush on someone Kara, it’s okay to like someone. It’s perfectly normally, I had my fair share of crushes growing up in boarding school, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Re-really?”
“Yes, there was one girl in school, a few years older than me, dark hair, dark eyes, she was beautiful. I had a horrible crush on her the entirety of my freshman year in high school.”
“What happened?”
The woman shrugged, “I never said anything, she graduated, I moved on, dated a few girls, then I graduated, went to college and met Adam’s father.” She waved her hands around a bit, “The rest is history I guess, though I have dated casually in the time between, nothing recently though since I seem to have my hands full.”
“So is that what you recommend I do?” Kara asked, “Do nothing? Lucy isn’t a senior though, she’s a junior.”
“That’s up to you darling. I wasn’t brave enough to do anything, but you are a hundred times braver than I am,” Cat said, squeezing her hands again. “Of course, you’re already off to a better start than I was, the girl I was crushing on didn’t even know I existed, Lucy talks with you on a regular basis. She might be crushing on you too.”
Kara squeaked and her eyes widened as her legs jerked up on the chair with her. She pressed against the back of the chair, making herself look smaller than she actually was. “Real-what? No, impossible, Lucy is-no, she’s really popular and pretty, why would she-no.”
Cat just hummed out a sigh, “Well, my original plan was to forbid you from dating until you were thirty, but if you were to get a date, you have my blessing, though not a night until I meet her first.” The girl just let out another squeak, a terrified expression on her face. “In the meantime, I think you owe Lena an explanation, if she hasn’t already figured out what’s been happening to you.”
A deep red flush appeared on Kara’s cheeks again and she glanced away shyly, “Do I have to?”
“Yes, she’s your best friend and she’s been worried,” Cat ordered. The doorbell rang on the front door and Cat glanced towards it, “Actually, that might be her now if I know you two.” She got up and answered the door, finding the brunette girl on the other side.
“Hi Ms. Grant, is Kara here, is she okay? You said she was sick? I brought her work from today,” Lena started to babble, wringing her hands together. “I didn’t think she could get sick she’s you know… Did something happen?”
“She’s fine Lena, calm down, she was sick last night but better this morning and I took her to get some of her immunization shots. She’s on the balcony if you want to see her,” Cat replied, ushering the girl into the penthouse and pointing towards the balcony outside her bedroom.
“Kara! Are you okay?” Lena asked, running to her friend and giving her a tight hug.
“Oof, Lena, too tight,” Kara winced, causing the girl to immediately release her. The blonde greedily sucked in a lungful of air, “Now I know how other people feel when I do that.”
“Sorry, are you okay?” The brunette sat down next to her friend, looking at her with concerned eyes. “What happened?”
The blonde shrugged, “I got mad after our argument so I went and blew off some steam, a little too much I guess. I should be back to normal in a few days.” A petulant look crossed her face, “Though Mom said I have to do this again in a few months to get the rest of my shots. She’s evil.”
Lena stifled back a laugh, “Well it is a good idea to get them, though there are some people who choose not to based off of religious beliefs. Most of us get them as babies, so you’re just playing catch up.”
“It’s torture, pure and simple torture,” Kara groused, folding her arms. The two girls giggled for a few moments before falling silent, both looking at the ground. “Lena… I’m sorry about yesterday, I didn’t mean it, anything I said really.”
“No Kara, it’s okay, I over-reacted.”
“No, you were only reacting based on what you knew, and what I knew really. The truth is…”
“You have a crush on Lucy, I know, I figured it out shortly after our argument, that’s why I came back to my room trying to find you. I figured that you didn’t know.”
“Mom had to tell me,” Kara admitted, blushing, “How did you figure it out?”
“Seriously? Did you not notice me babbling about Veronica Sinclair the second half of last year?”
Kara’s eyes bugged out, “Veronica Sinclair, really, but she’s so…”
“Scary?” Lena giggled out, “I know, it didn’t last very long because it was mostly superficial, but I definitely had a major crush on her. Sometimes crushes are like that, they can be fleeting or they can turn into something else, depends on the people involved and how deep the crush is.” The brunette eyed her blushing blonde friend for a moment, “I think yours is a little more than a regular crush. I think you actually like Lucy.”
“Mom told me that too,” Kare replied, “I’m not sure how she knows that though…”
“Other than the fact she’s your mom? She also happens to be Cat Grant, the woman who single-handedly has told three celebrities this year that they’re pregnant before they even knew. The woman can either tell the future, or read minds, or something.”
“And don’t you forget it girls,” Cat said, walking out onto the balcony. She had been monitoring their conversation just out of sight in her room, just in case they needed her. It seemed as though they were well on their way to patching things up. “Now Lena, are you planning on staying for dinner?”
Lena glanced at Kara for a moment and just shrugged, “I could, I mean, it is Friday so it wouldn’t be any problem.”
“We’re having bolognese, so you two can help me. Meredith is going to be back soon with Carter, and I would rather start prepping dinner while there isn’t an excitable three year old underfoot.” The older woman sauntered off the balcony and back towards the kitchen, leaving the girls to follow her later.
“I really am sorry Lena,” Kara said to her friend, squeezing her hand.
“I know, I’m sorry too Kara.” Lena hugged her friend again, gently this time so as not to hurt the usually strong girl. “But look at it this way, this is our first official fight as best friends, so that’s one more hurdle down.”
“Really, why’s that?”
“Well, we know that even if we fight, we’re still friends.”
Kara grinned and tugged the girl back into the penthouse, “We should watch Fox and the Hound tonight before you leave.”
“Not on your life.”
“Who said that getting to high school would be a good idea,” Lena groaned, dropping her on a pile of books in front of her. “Did I say that? I take it back.”
Kara giggled from her chair across from the brunette, her own pile of books on the table in front of her. The two were in the library working on their homework. Cat had to work late and Carter was with his father so the older woman didn’t want Kara to come back to an empty penthouse. On those days, she stayed after school, joining a few clubs, and doing homework in the library with her friend. Occasionally Lucy would join them when she didn’t have cheer practice or an ROTC meeting. Kara was surprised when her petite friend told them that she was planning on going into the army when she finished school, but could recognize the warrior spirit and desire for justice in her eyes, the same look she recognized in her aunt years ago. “Come on Lena, we only have another month before we’re out for the summer. You can do it.”
“Shut-up,” the girl grumbled, “I don’t need your bubbly, perkiness right now.”
The blonde giggled and returned to her work. Her Kryptonian brain allowed her to have an easier time understanding math and science, despite how backwards the disciplines were on Earth. She had a bit more trouble with English, mainly dealing with analyzing the literature and writing papers, but with her mother’s help, she was improving. “So what are your plans for the summer?” Lena asked, drawing Kara’s attention. Kara looked at the girl suspiciously and the brunette just rolled her eyes, “I need the distraction, this assignment is killing me.”
“It’s just art history Lena, it’s not like it’s going to kill you,” the blonde rolled her eyes.
“It might, now talk to me.”
Kara fidgeted slightly in her seat, not really looking at the brunette. “You remember when I told you about… about my cousin?”
“And his propensity to flit about the world, yes, keep going.”
“Well… he called a few days ago, first time in nearly two years we’ve spoken.”
“I bet Cat was thrilled to talk to him.”
Kara winced, “It… it’s wasn’t pleasant, I didn’t think you could threaten someone using polite words, but she did. Anyway, he called to tell me that when he was close to fifteen years old, his body went through some changes, like… physical changes…”
Lena stared at Kara for a few minutes before it dawned on her, “Oh are you going to get to go through puberty all at once and get it over with? Like literally one day they weren’t there and the next day they were.” The brunette looked sadly down at her shirt, “I’m already fifteen and I’m still waiting for these.”
The blonde stifled back a giggle and smiled at her friend, “Yeah, that's what Kal seemed to imply. Said my body would tone up, muscles would develop and I would start looking like a grownup basically.”
“Must be nice,” Lena sighed.
“What about you? What are your plans for the summer?”
“Summer program at Oxford, I applied months ago, so I'll go home for a few weeks then I'm going to England for 8 weeks.” A mournful expression crossed her face, “I'll have to miss your Name Day unfortunately.”
“It's alright, when Mom heard what Kal said about me developing, she got in contact with an old acquaintance of hers that knows about my cousin and might be able to help me learn how to deal with the changes in my body.”
A curious expression crossed Lena’s face, “Really? Who?”
Kara shrugged, “I don't know, she didn't say. She did ask if I would be okay with spending a few weeks with them over the summer. If I liked it, she would arrange something similar for next summer.”
“So we'll both be out of town then,” Lena murmured, “Me off to England and you… where are you going?”
“Gotham.”