ENTWINED DESTINIES
Valentine's Day. A good day for couples.
A terrible day for single and broken-hearted people.
A perfect occasion to sell cosmetics and love essences.
Star smiled, looking around.
Little cupids… hearts… red and pink lighting… girls dressed as angels walking between the couples… and lots of tents selling different things. Most of them were food and drinks. But not hers.
Star was the proud owner of a natural essence shop: Star's Earth Essences. She sold every kind of cosmetics, including oils, perfumes and creams. But they weren't exactly usual.
A couple of years ago, after a second meteor-shower had hit Smallville, Star had decided to examine pieces of meteor-rocks. And then she made a discovery.
Just like most of the great inventions in the world, it all had started as an accident.
However… one day, when Star was examining the meteor-rocks in the laboratory behind her store, a piece of meteor fell into the perfume she was developing. The color immediately turned into green and it started to bubble, so she removed the rock with a pincer and closed the bottle as quickly as she could. Before she could think about what to do, she heard a costumer entering at the store. Walking towards the front of the store, Star saw it was a woman. She seemed very distressed and nervous, and she said she was looking for a gift. A special gift, to someone special. Someone she was in love with, and who, apparently, wasn't willing to admit his feelings towards her.
Explaining she sold cosmetics of all kinds, Star asked what sort of gift she was looking for. Immediately walking towards the perfume section, the woman smelled all of them, and no scent seemed to please her. Desperately, she asked if Star hadn't something else.
Having a sudden feeling, Star asked the woman to wait and walked back to the back of her store, to grab the perfume that had just been infected with a meteor-rock. And when she gave the bottle to the woman so she could inhale it and see if the fragrance pleased her, the woman's face suddenly opened into a big smile, and she said the scent was perfect, just what she had been looking for.
Star warned her that perfume hadn't been… tested, but the woman didn't care. She paid her and ran out of her store, leaving Star a little bit worried and with the certain that the woman would come back. And she did.
Days later, Star saw her entering at the store again, looking absolutely happy. She grabbed Star's hands and thanked her, saying that the man she was in love with had loved the perfume, and that in the same night she had given it to him, he had asked her to drop by his place, had told her how much he loved her, and had asked her to marry him. The woman showed Star her wedding ring and said she'd recommend her store to all of her friends, before leaving.
She never saw the woman again.
Star extracted the basic prime material to her cosmetics from the nature – which was surely powerful enough. But from that day on, she started to add meteor-rocks on every cosmetic she created. And ever since, she had been successfully helping people who had bad luck on love with her products. Euphoria elixirs, bliss solutions, cosmetics… love potions… they all worked.
And Valentine's Day was the ideal occasion to sell them. And to test her newest invention: lipstick infused with a love potion.
All she needed to do was wait. Sooner or later, she knew some heartbroken soul would walk in front of her tent.
Star looked around again. Everyone was dancing.
Almost everyone.
A tall, muscled and dark-haired guy called her attention. He was talking to a blonde, short woman, and he seemed to be very upset to be there.
"What is it that you always say about Valentine's Day? Oh yeah, an annual sneak peak at Hell. That must have been before Cupid's struck."
"Don't you think that after being trapped in the front seat of the Clark and Lana operetta I deserved a good V-Day?" The blonde woman answered. So she wasn't his girlfriend.
Lana… she had heard that name before. And thinking about it, now, the guy seemed familiar too.
An article published on the gossip section of the Daily Planet weeks ago came to Star's mind.
Lana Lang. Now she remembered. Lex Luthor's fiancée. So she was the cause of the guy's broken heart.
She watched the guy, still talking to the blonde woman. Clark was his name, she believed. Star smiled.
Had she just found her heartbroken soul?
"Don't worry, Clark." The blonde woman was saying. "Your achy-breaky heart will go away too, one of these days."
"Will you put that on the writing?"
"Just give the Lana thing a little more time. You never know when the next love of your life is right around the corner…"
Automatically, Star looked at the corner where the Talon's front door was located, and she wasn't surprised when she saw a tall woman entering at that exact moment, after that exact sentence.
Star smiled mysteriously.
"Ugh." said the brunette woman, being followed by another guy who seemed to be her brother, or her friend. "Is it wrong that I want these chubby cherubs to burst into flames?"
Star grinned. Maybe now she had found her heartbroken soul.
Focusing her attention on the woman, now, Star watched while she and her friend walked into the Talon, while the guy rambled about how Valentine's Day was like finding out how babies are born. He was a little confusing, but was still making sense.
The brunette didn't seem to think so. She frowned and shook her head.
Star wasn't surprised when the woman had showed up right after the blonde woman had told Clark about the next love of his life being right around the corner. Nature was smart. And so was fate. And both were sending signals to everybody all the time.
But she was indeed surprised when she realized the tall woman and Clark already knew each other.
She watched as the guy who had come with the brunette approached the blonde woman and twirled her around, giving her a kiss on the lips.
"Jimmy!" she said, grinning. Then, her head turned to the brunette behind the guy named Jimmy. "And Lois!"
She seemed surprised, disbelieving and amused.
"Welcome to the Love Fest." said Clark, ironically.
"Yeah." started the tall woman – Lois. "Me without my Uzi."
Two brokenhearted souls., thought Star, frowning a little bit. Then, she smiled. Interesting.
"Will you excuse us for just one second?!" said the blonde woman, dragging her boyfriend to the side. Star concentrated at their conversation. "What are you doing?" She lowered the tone of voice. "We were supposed to take Clark out tonight, remember?"
"Yeah," answered Jimmy. "But Lois was all alone… and then it hit me." He didn't even have to continue for Star to realize what he had done. His smart grin pretty much said it all. "Lois… and Clark."
"Lois and Clark?" asked the blonde, shocked.
"You have to admit, they've got chemistry." said Jimmy. Star smiled. She glanced at Clark and Lois, who were standing side by side, giving Chloe and Jimmy suspicious sideway looks.
The Jimmy guy was a little dorky, but he had a good eye.
"Yeah, so do nitroglycerin and peroxide, and I don't suggest putting them together!"
Star frowned at her sentence, but she couldn't help but notice the blonde pushed her boyfriend away from there instead of interrupting the silence between Clark and Lois and ending Jimmy's game.
Star focused her attention on the two of them, now. They were still side by side, and they mirrored each other perfectly – their frowning expressions were identical. Both glanced at each other awkwardly.
"Please tell me we weren't just set up." said Lois, annoyed.
"Looks like it." replied Clark, embarrassingly.
"Us." she continued. "That's like hot fudge and… halibut."
Clark nodded. "I take it I'm the halibut."
Lois smirked. "Naturally."
It was strange. Star usually had a sixth sense about people. She narrowed her eyes to them, but she was smiling.
Definitely, there was something there.
And they had no idea.
If Star had learned one thing during all those years, was that signals from nature and fate shouldn't be ignored. And the fact Lois had walked in just when that blonde woman was saying the next love of Clark's life could be just around the corner was certainly not a coincidence.
"Well, I've had my fill with fat babies with arrows." Clark was saying. "Knock yourself out, Lois."
She watched Clark walking away from Lois and noticed her smirk.
In life, there were no coincidences. There were just fate, choices and the fact that everything happens for a reason.
Looking from Clark to Lois, Star could see something strong between them. Really strong. Almost like an unbreakable line, pulling them together while they insisted in stretching it apart.
She smiled. Maybe she should give it a little push.
Plastering a mysterious smile on her face, Star called after the tall woman.
"Little down on love?"
Aaaand the rest is history. ;D