'Fate' has a decidedly funny way of doing things.
That was, of course, Kara's glum, inward response to her (older? younger?) cousin awkwardly telling her that 'well, Kara...everything happens for a reason.'
Blue eyes stare blankly back at him.
She wants to ask him what he thinks the reason is that her home is gone. Why everyone she ever loved or even knew was vaporized the instant Krypton exploded and knocked her pod off-course.
(Families holding each other in their last moments. Riots in all districts as their society collapsed and descended into chaos. Parents-to-be wailing over the birthing matrix and the children they would never meet.)
Instead of asking, however, Kara's throat just bobs as she nods silently. Her hands clench into fists in her lap for just a single moment as Kal-El - no, Clark, she tries to correct herself hopelessly - sighs and looks down at the floor. He nervously runs his fingers through black hair and adjusts the glasses he doesn't need before he meets her eyes again.
"I'm not sending you away," he tries to explain patiently. She can see him hesitate as he tries to find the right words. "This isn't a punishment. I'm not… I'm not mad about the couch, Kara, I promise."
Kara sniffs.
"Or the tele-vision?" she asks quietly. Her tongue fumbles over the strange word, and it's just a reminder how truly out of her depth she is on this brand-new planet.
Clark takes a breath, but despite the fact that it is kind of inconvenient he's had to replace nearly half of his furniture in the week since finding Kara's pod, he smiles reassuringly at her.
After all, he knows more than anyone else what it's like to live in a world where everything is practically made of tissue paper. The difference between them is that he at least has never known anything different.
"I'm not mad about the TV, either," he assures her gently. Then, a pause. "Or the microwave. Or my coffee table. Or...most of my silverware."
His expression falters a bit. Okay, maybe it's a little bit more than half. To top things off, when he had called Lois at work earlier that day to ask for her advice, he hadn't mentioned that her favorite sofa was the newest casualty of their newest ward's ever-growing strength.
"I know accidents happen," Clark continues a moment later with a strained, soft smile. This is not a conversation he likes having and it shows. "Believe me, I've had plenty of my own. You are not the problem here, Kara. The problem is just that…Lois and I work a lot, you have to understand. We can't be around for you as much as you need us to be."
"I'm supposed to protect you," Kara insists stubbornly. Instead of fists, her small hands curl into the fabric of her too-large loaned 'tee-shirt'.
Clark sighs, and he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Kara's role to him is a debate they'd quickly tired out during her first few days.
"You don't need to protect me," he tells her gently for what must've been the tenth time. "I already grew up. You don't have a responsibility to me anymore."
Kara's stomach grows cold at those words, and she averts her eyes from his. She doesn't want to hear that again. Without a responsibility - without a purpose - then what is she supposed to do now? It hasn't even been a week and she's already failed at the one thing her parents asked her for.
A few beats pass, and when it becomes obvious that Kara isn't going to say anything, he sighs again and runs a hand over his face.
"It'll just be for a few years," Clark tries, before wincing at his own words. "I mean… It's for the best. I promise you."
Again, Kara doesn't respond. She couldn't even if she wanted to with the way her throat has closed up with grief and fear over being separated from the last person she has left. Even though she barely knows him, even though he's no longer the little baby he was when they fled from Krypton, he is the last remnant of her home.
The last remnant of their family.
And she's recently had a lot of practice at losing her family.
Two days after their conversation, Clark flies her to the west coast.
He doesn't let her fly beside him on her own at first, though Kara can't figure out why. When she asks, he just hesitates and leans down to her height, clasping her on the shoulder as if he's about to depart some clever wisdom or sound reasoning about his decision.
Clark doesn't. He just looks odd for another moment before Lois, who's lounging against the railing of the balcony where they're about to take off, interrupts with a sigh and crosses her arms.
"He doesn't want you getting any ideas about using your powers," she tells Kara plainly, though not unkindly. "I know you can't control most of it, but the abilities you can have no exceptions. Alright?"
Kara likes Lois. She appreciates her straight-forwardness and her dry wit, but more than that, she appreciates the fact she doesn't treat her like a child.
(She tells Clark a year later, on the day of their wedding, that Jor-El and Lara would've liked Lois very much, too.)
They take to the sky with her in her cousin's arms then. Her fingers wrest the material of his suit so he tightly that he faintly fears its near-invincible durability failing underneath her grip, and Lois watches them leave with a small, worried smile and a crease in her brow.
It was just as much her decision as Clark's to send Kara to a better home, but she doesn't deny she'd gotten a little fond of having her in theirs.
About an hour later when the pair of cousins are somewhere over Kansas - though not the part he grew up in, Clark tells her - his will falters under her distracted, downcast expression and, against better judgement, he teaches her to fly over the golden wheatfields.
It's the first time he sees her truly smile, and there's a light in her young blue eyes as her arms splay out around her like Wendy Darling that tells him innately that they are family.
When the deserts of Arizona begin to fade the closer they get to their destination, an inexplicable reason returns Kara to his arms. He figures she's just gotten tired from flying, and he scolds himself for not noticing sooner. Even after everything, she's still a child in every way that counts, and to him, it's just another sign he isn't parent material yet.
Later, his shoulders square as they make a soft landing in front of the two-story house that will be Kara's new home. His little cousin grips his hand with a surprising intensity, but he's more than a little proud of her for keeping her back straight and not allowing any tears to fall. If she had, it wouldn't have been an issue - it might have even broken his soft heart a little - but he can't help but marvel at how extraordinarily brave this little girl is.
Clark doesn't stay long. Metropolis rarely stays quiet when he needs it to, and he's already spoken with Eliza and Jeremiah over the phone and told them everything they need to know.
He does, however, stay long enough to watch Kara slip her hand from his grasp and take a few tentative steps forward into Eliza's arms. A small, sure smile curves his lips, and when Jeremiah catches his eye over his cousin's shoulder, Clark gives him a grateful nod in return.
Superman isn't what Kara needs and neither is Clark Kent. But hopefully Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers are.
The first night with the Danvers can almost be considered easy.
Kara arrives in the early evening, and by the time the sun and the dinner table have both been fully set, she's staring listless at her lap through a curtain of hair as she tries in vain to process everything she's been told.
The mother is Eliza and the father is Jeremiah. Their daughter is two years older than her and named Alexandra, but only likes to be called Alex. The town they live in is called 'Midvale,' and the cover story they've concocted for her involves losing her entire family in a tragic fire.
(Glumly, she realizes it's not far from the truth. She can still see the explosion that erupted from Krypton's core imprinted in her mind.)
She repeats these facts over and over until she has them memorized, all too aware of the sympathetic stares lingering on her back when her new foster parents think she isn't looking. She can also hear them talking quietly in the kitchen about her when they think she isn't listening.
Unfortunately for all, as her cells slowly fill with the sun's charge and her senses enhance, it's not like she really has a choice.
Their bedtime comes earlier than usual if Alex's vehement protest is anything to go by, but a quick glare in her direction from Eliza is enough to quiet her rather quickly. It's the type of look that seamlessly communicates 'we'll talk about this later' as both a threat and a plea.
Kara doesn't even try to complain as she's led upstairs. She's far too exhausted from this entire week to even want to stay up much later. The only thing that could possibly keep her awake at this point is the knowledge that the sooner she sleeps, the sooner tomorrow will come, and tomorrow will inevitably bring a whole new set of challenges.
Still, she accepts the borrowed pajamas (Alex's) with a murmured thank you, and she'd led into the room where she's told she'll be sleeping tonight (also Alex's).
The older girl glares at her with her arms crossed as she watches her parents bustle and fuss over her. She watches her own room be given away while her mother collects blankets from the linen closet for her to use on the couch downstairs, and not for the first time, she feels angry tears sting the back of her eyes.
Kara can relate. She didn't ask for this either, and she keeps her eyes lowered and head down as Jeremiah sheepishly apologizes for not having their guest room cleaned out quickly enough.
"It'll be ready for you by the end of the week," he promises with a squeeze to her shoulder, and he doesn't even look offended when she instinctively shies away from his touch. Instead, he just looks pitying, which might be even worse, but Kara is too tired and too nervous to bring herself to care.
She goes to the bathroom to get ready for bed, and ignores her reflection in the mirror. There's already been a toothbrush set out for her (not Alex's, thankfully), and she almost laughs at how ridiculously comforting she finds it.
Toothbrushes are familiar. On a strange new planet light years away from her home, there's at least one thing that hasn't changed.
When she returns to the bedroom, Eliza and Jeremiah have gone downstairs, but Alex is still waiting for her at the edge of her bed. She watches the human girl cross her arms and lightly kick at the carpet, but when she glances up to see Kara standing in the doorway, her expression changes from distraught to annoyed.
Kara's surprised when no spiteful words come after that.
"Did you find everything?" Alex asks stiffly.
The younger of the two blinks for a moment, before blue eyes lower to the pajamas still bundled in her hand. She's still wearing the white gown she'd been pulled from her bed in the night she lost her planet, having refused to part with it just yet. In a new place like the Danvers's residence, it's acting as a security blanket for her to hold onto while her world shifts yet again.
When Kara doesn't say anything, Alex sighs and rolls her eyes.
"You know you're allowed to speak, right?"
The words are blunt and more than a little rude, and they do nothing to help the words stuck in Kara's throat.
Alex seems to realize this a moment later. Her expression fades from irritation to guilt to careful impassiveness as her eyes flicker away from her, and her arms drop from her chest to rest on the bed instead.
It's too hard to forget that this little girl who's come into her life so suddenly and uninvited has just lost everything, and for a second, she can't help but feel like a major tool for wanting to lash out at her like it's her fault.
(It also doesn't hurt that her parents have already give her a stern talking to about being nice to her new little sister.)
"I'm sorry," Alex apologizes immediately, and it's not just because it's what's expected of her. It's also because of the the way blue eyes immediately look like her sharp tone just personally kicked a puppy, and the puppy just happened to be a lost little alien.
A beat, and Kara still doesn't respond. Her fingers tighten on the bundle of pajamas in her arms, and she awkwardly shifts her weight from foot to foot. Still, she gives a small, nearly imperceptible nod to the girl in front of her.
Alex waits for another few seconds for a more verbal response, and then comes to the slow realization that this is probably the most awkward encounter she's ever had in her life. She almost wants her parents to start yelling at her for being up past her new bedtime - temporary, she hopes, because this is kind of ridiculous - just so she has an excuse for leaving.
"Uh…" Alex begins. Her eyes trail over Kara's form, taking note of the white gown, the Superman symbol on her chest, and the borrowed pajamas that she's still holding onto.
For a moment, she wonders if Superman has a nightgown just like that, and if it's just a superhero thing to have their insignia on every article of clothing that they own. Superman pajamas. Superman bathrobes. Superman socks.
(For an even briefer moment, she wonders the same exact thing about Batman.)
Then, she clears her throat and averts her eyes before she bursts out laughing inappropriately.
"Are you going to change, or are you just...going to wear that?" she asks uncomfortably, and gestures vaguely in her direction.
Kara blinks slowly.
"I would like to remain in this for tonight."
She looks down at the bundle in her arms, before holding them out to Alex expectantly. The brunette hesitates only briefly before she stands up to take them back.
Then, the two are stuck standing in the middle of the room and staring at each other.
Alex breaks first.
She clears her throat loudly and glances away as she takes the pajamas underneath one arm and tries to sidestep Kara.
"I'll just put these away, then," she says slowly. "You can just go grab them from the dresser if you change your mind or anything. Just try not to touch too much of my stuff, alright?"
Kara nods silently, her hands clasped in front of her. Before Alex can leave, however, she clears her throat as well, trying to mimic the older girl's movements. It almost makes Alex grin in amusement, but at the last moment, she remembers she's still not done being - at the very least - surly about the entire situation.
"Alex," Kara says, and her accent clicks over the unfamiliar syllables of her name. "I would like to apologize for coming here. It...was not my idea, nor was it my intention to intrude."
For someone who's just started learning English, she has a way better grasp on it than Alex has on Spanish after two years straight of courses, and the knowledge nearly makes her pout.
Kara takes another breath.
"My cousin says this is all 'for the best.'"
It's hard to argue with Superman, but Alex has never been one to back away from impossible challenges.
"Yeah, whatever," she mutters, and she turns her back on the younger girl before she can use her supersenses on her to detect the burning at the back of her eyes. It's not fair that she never asked for a sister and got one anyways, but she knows better than to take it out on her just for being there.
(She can always wait until Kara messes things up, and she'll tell her parents 'I told you so' for thinking they could handle a teenaged alien refugee.)
Alex leaves after that, and Kara watches her go with sad eyes that she tries not to notice.