Sounds of Home
Rating: PG/K+
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Angst/Family
Summary: For hc_bingo, prompt "Explosion". Life on Earth is a little too quiet for Kara, strangely enough.
Author's Note: …So many attempts at this prompt. So many. I can't even tell you. Many started stories, a couple of picspam and icon-options explored, but eventually I went with this one because it was an opportunity to write Kara.
Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville. It belongs to Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and the CW.
()()
Earth was quiet.
Kara lay awake in her bed at the Kent farm, staring at the window. Outside, the sky was black with a thousand little points of light shining in the distance; the only noises were the occasional moos of a cow, or the chirping of a dozen little crickets. Sometimes, the wind rustling the trees would subtly exclude all other noises and then die down as though it had never started.
It was unnerving, in a way, because Krypton had not been so quiet.
The war had started when she was young, and had lasted up until her departure in her ship in 1986. For so many years, she had become accustomed to the feeling of the ground trembling from the distant, falling bombs and exploding missiles; occasionally, there would be a scream of fright in the distance. The sky had not been alight with stars many nights, but rather the sudden flare of white, angry light.
Kara had always been too close for comfort to the fighting, but not so close that the sounds of the explosions were enough to damage her hearing, like it had so many others. But every time, every single time, not matter what she was doing, whenever she heard the first attack that would soon be followed by many, Kara would jump out of her skin and try to reason just how close it was to home.
"Don't worry, my dear. We're safe." Zor-El would assure her, but Kara always silently added, For now. They were always safe 'for now', because Zod was ruthless and it was only a matter of time before the city was attacked even worse than it already had been. When that time came, and the ground shook so hard Kara couldn't always keep her balance; many of her last days of Krypton were like that.
Earth was a sudden and unexpected sanctuary of peace. Well- Kansas was. Kara was well aware that there was conflict on around the world, but the entire planet was not engulfed in endless chaos and destruction. Smallville was bright and cheery and so very alive, though in a subdued and… Natural way. Like it had never known the terror of projectiles falling from the sky (even though it had- twice).
Some days, Kara was grateful for the quiet. It was a change from Krypton, where moments of true, uninterrupted peace had become so far and few between. She could just relax, knowing that she didn't need to be cautious of danger from all around.
And then, other days… Other days, the quiet was unnerving.
The quiet that had existed between the attacks on Krypton had been tense. Because while she had appreciated the moments of relative silence, Kara had always known that the bombs would fall again. 'For now' always ran out eventually; the longer the quiet lasted, the more tense she had become, because it always came back.
Smallville was a good place, a warm and calm place, but it also reeked of those in-between times, the time where the quiet dragged on until Kara was jumping at the most innocuously unexpected noises. The time when she would wish that something would just happen so that it could occur and then be over with, just so she didn't have to anticipate it any longer.
On nights like this one, where Kara laid awake and expected to feel the ground shake and the sky light up with the flare of an explosion, she couldn't sleep. In theory the danger had completely passed and there was no need for such concerns, but a part of her mind- after only a few weeks out of her ship- was still attuned to the instincts she had developed on Krypton.
Don't sleep, it's not safe, the bombs will fall, we might be evacuated again, no point in sleeping…
Kara rolled onto her back, sighed, and then glared at the ceiling for a moment. Clearly sleep was not in her future, at least not for tonight.
So she went up to the roof. The barn roof, that is- Clark would be more willing to dismiss any noise as unimportant if it was coming from someplace that was not right above his head. She always went to the barn roof on nights like these, where she could lie on her back and stare up at the stars, counting them until she finally managed to fall asleep.
Some nights, Clark heard her. Some nights he joined Kara on the roof; how many nights out of the ones he was aware of her stepping out, she wasn't certain. He had asked once, on the first night, why she had left her room. Kara had simply responded with "I couldn't sleep." After that, he didn't ask anything further- the nights when he sat with her, he was silent. Even if she tried to explain to him, how could he understand? His time on Krypton had been unfortunately short.
Kara flew to the rooftop, twirled so that her back was to the tin, and then glided down backwards until she felt herself come into contact with the roof. The metal was still warm from the sun that day, and it was pleasant. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again: The beauty of a smaller town was that the sky was unblocked, uncovered, perfect for gazing; no structures for the light of an explosion to bounce off of, to tantalize her with questions of its presence.
I… Will not find destruction here. Earth is home now- Kansas is home now. No noise, no lights, no shaking, no panic here. There is peace.
She knew she should be content with that, but it wasn't working.
The silence was cut through by the sound of the screen door of the house opening and shutting, and then the sound of footsteps crunching against the gravel. Kara smirked, momentarily dismissed Clark as noisy, but then remembered that he didn't have anyone he needed to be quiet for: They were the only ones in the house, and they were both very much awake, apparently.
Her cousin was loud when he landed on the roof, having to jump up and then land as best he could (they really needed to work on his flying), leaving dents in the tin. Kara didn't look at Clark, but caught sight of him peripherally, and relaxed when he sat down and looked up at the stars with her.
Maybe he didn't understand what living on Krypton was like, but he was Kryptonian, her family, and he could sympathize with it being gone. Kara would take that…
For now.
-End