DISCLAIMER: Characters in this story remain the property of DC Comics, Inc. Movie copyrights and trademarks are owned by Alexander & Ilya Salkind, Warner Bros. Pictures, and TriStar Pictures. The story contained herein is meant only for personal enjoyment and no money is being made from the story. No infringement is intended. I offer this fan fiction as a tribute to the creative teams involved in the actual production of both the movie and comic. However, I reserve the right to any original characters I create for the purpose of fan fiction story telling.
The Reunion
Ethan tasted the tears on her lips as they kissed. As they slowly parted, he noted her wet cheeks and a look in her blue eyes that he had never seen before. This was not the same Kara who left him a year ago. Something had changed.
Her body was shaking in his arms. Something that he knew was not normal since the freezing temperature of Superman's fortress did not bother her at all. He wrapped an arm around her and led her up to his apartment. She seemed so weak, defeated, lonely.
**********
"Drink this..." he handed her a hot cup of cocoa to warm her up.
"Linda, call me Linda. Kara is no more." her tears began to build up inside again.
"What are you talking about?" Ethan wondered aloud as he sat beside her on the couch.
"Kara is from Argo City. Argo City is gone. Destroyed. The only home I have ever known is gone. My parents are dead." she said fighting away the emotions that threatened to surface as tears as she stared into the cup.
He pulled her closer to him and hugged her.
"You have a home here with me Linda."
"I know Ethan. I feel safe with you. I feel loved." His loving arms seemed to encourage her to let go of her emotions. He wiped away her tears with his handkerchief and lay her head on his shoulder.
"Then you will stay with me?" he asked hopefully.
"Stay with you on Earth? Yes. But I will live with Kal-El, it was my parent's dying wish." she wiped her wet cheeks with the palm of her hand.
He smiled brightly at her. That was a good enough answer for him. He knew what it was like to lose parents, having lost his when he was in high school. They died in a plane crash and left the gardening business to him. He needed to make the business work and his education was sacrificed. He still hoped to go back to school one day.
Sleep finally came over her. She yawned as she placed the empty cup on the coffee table.
"You better get some sleep now. We can talk in the morning. Take the bed." He pointed towards the pull out bed he had set up against the wall in his studio apartment.
"Where will you sleep?" she asked him wondering if he would be sleeping next to her.
He patted the couch that they were sitting on. "This is pretty comfortable." he smiled at her.
**********
Linda was still asleep when Ethan called Lucy to come over to his place. He knew that she would be thrilled to have her best friend back. There was also this gut feeling that told him Linda would need a woman to talk to.
"Hi Mrs. Lane. May I please speak to Lucy?" he whispered into the receiver.
"Lucy, it's Ethan." he heard her call for her daughter.
"Ethan, it's Saturday morning. Have you ever heard of sleeping in?" Lucy scolded him as they heard her mother put the extension phone down with a click.
"I know, but I have some great news. How soon can you get here?" he whispered as he watched Linda stir in bed. She had been fitful all night and barely let him sleep with her soft crying. He wondered if she slept at all.
"Two hours." Lucy was being sarcastic.
"Make it two minutes. And Lucy, bring some breakfast for 3."
"First of all, who do you think I am? Kara? I don't fly. Second of all, you will owe me for breakfast. And lastly, who is the third person? "
"Just get here." he insisted before putting the phone down.
**********
Lucy climbed the stairs to Ethan's 2nd floor apartment with an armful of Frostee's breakfast meals. She was mumbling about having to get up on such a wet day. Little did she know about the midnight snowfall courtesy of Kara's return. The snow was now just slosh in the streets and everybody who was up that early was wading through semi-flooded streets.
"It's supposed to be Spring!" she mumbled miserably as she pressed the doorbell.
Nobody opened the door.
"Ethan! It's Lucy!" she hollered.
She heard an excited thud from within. Linda had jumped out of bed a bit too heavily upon hearing her friend's name.
"Great! He probably tripped over something." she thought to herself.
"Lucy!" Linda excitedly opened the door and took the bags from her best friends hands.
"Oh my god! Linda!" she squealed in delight running into the room.
After minutes of hugging and loud voices, Ethan, who had been standing by the kitchen entry watching the two women cleared his throat.
"How about continuing the reunion over breakfast?" he asked them as he set out the food on the coffee table. His apartment was so small that his coffee table doubled as a dining table for when he had guests.
After they had finally settled down, Linda told Lucy all about why she was back on Earth. Lucy immediately suggested contacting Superman. They were in luck she said, Lois was staying with the family and Clark was with her. They both knew how to contact Superman. Lucy stopped talking and stared at Kara, as if remembering something for the first time.
"It can't be... but that is the only logical... Clark is Kal-El isn't he?" she waited for her friend to confirm what should have been painfully obvious to her one year ago.
Kara simply nodded her head.
"I bet Lois knows." Lucy thought aloud, a bit annoyed at the possiblity that her sister had kept a huge secret from her.
"So, where will you be staying in the meantime? Mom and dad would love to have you over again if you haven't got a place." she asked Linda between bites of her sandwich.
Linda looked over at Ethan. He nodded at her. He was not going to push her to do anything she did not want to do. At least not at this time.
"I'd love to come over for a few days." she answered.
"Well, I'll only be at home until Sunday. We should get you enrolled at Midvale School again." she suggested while dipping her pickle into catsup.
"But, I never finished the last term..."
"Don't worry about that. I'll have my dad ask Principal Danvers to give you an equivalency exam. We can both be Seniors! You'll love the dance!" Lucy enticed her friend.
"I'm not sure. Have to ask Kal-El..."
"He will say yes even if Lois has to force it out of him." Lucy assured her.
**********
The familiar truck of Ethan drove onto the abandoned farm where the ship had crash landed. The remnants of the ship were still smoldering as they approached. The boxes of crystals were nowhere to be found.
"Oh no! Where is it?" Kara wailed as she started to dig into the hot ground.
"Woah!" Stop it Linda!" Ethan pulled her back in a panic, forgetting that the extreme heat could do not physically hurt her.
"The crystals! My parents entrusted it to me!"
"What crystals?" Lucy wanted to know.
"My heritage. Those crystals are my responsibility."
"I have them Kara." they all turned to see Kal-El landing behind them.
"Kal-El!" she ran to her cousin and hugged him, crying once again.
"I know Kara. I found the crystal." his voice cracked as he acknowledged the fate of his last remaining relatives.
"Did you..?"
"The crystals are safe in the fortress." he assured her.
"Uh, excuse me, Superman... how did you know?" Ethan asked him trying to avoid standing too close to the Man of Steel.
"The weather disturbance. I was trying to find the source. When I saw the burning ship and Kara was not in it, I knew she would go to her friends since she did not know where to find me. That is why I came back today. I knew she would come back here with you guys for the crystals." he explained.
Lucy and Ethan stayed in the truck while Superman and Linda, who had now changed into her alter ego outfit, worked together to bury the remnants of the spaceship so deep into the earth that the two who were watching thought dinosaur bones would be unearthed.
"Can the three of you be at the Lane's for the barbecue this afternoon?" Kal-El asked. Kara had told him that Lucy already figured out his alter ego.
"I'll bring Linda, I mean Kara, this is going to get confusing." Ethan laughed at himself for not figuring out what to call his girlfriend.
"You can bring Linda over with you at 3." Lucy solved his problem for him.
**********
"The gang's all here!" Jimmy announced when Linda and Ethan finally showed up at the poolside of the Lane home. He threw a beer at Ethan which he caught with both hands.
"Linda, get over here, I want you to meet Lois." Lucy tugged on her friend's arm so that she would let go of Ethan.
"Go on Linda. I'll shoot some pool with Jimmy." he encouraged her. She had been so sad since they got back from the farm that he knew she needed this get-together more than he did. This was simply his way of taking care of her.
Lois was busy mixing drinks at the mini-bar. She was dressed really casually now that the weather had finally returned to normal springtime temperature. Aside from an early morning news report about the sudden weather change, it seems nobody knew about the snow fall. Kara and Kal-El preferred it that way as well.
"This is my best friend in all of Midvale." Lucy introduced Linda to Lois.
"Hi. I heard you are Clark's cousin." Lois started on the small talk.
"Cut it sis. we both know who Clark really is." Lucy winked at her sister.
"Then don't let the whole world hear you." she warned the younger Lane.
"Speaking of which, where is he?" Linda asked.
"You know your cousin, there is always something that needs fixing in in some part of the world..."
"The world can always use extra supers." Clark whispered to Lois, planting a kiss on her cheek. Somehow they all knew that the gentle breeze that passed overhead was him.
Since Lois figured out his secret, their relationship both as work and love partners had been easier for them to handle. With the addition of Kara, Clark would finally get the family and grounding that the Lane's offered him a little of.
"Lunch is served!" Mr. Lane announced as he got the last steak off the grill. Mrs. Lane had also walked into the area with some freshly boiled sweet corn.
"Everybody move to the table." Mrs. Lane announced as she set down the platter.
**********
"I was planning to enroll Linda at the school for girls. She already started a term there but she had to pull out." Clark replied when Mr. Lane asked him what his plans were for his cousin.
"But Linda is too bright to be a junior. She should be a Senior in my class. I can't have my best friend in the subordinate level at the dorm." Lucy complained.
"The principal owes me a few favors. Let me see what I can do." Her father told her.
"Thanks Dad!"
"So Linda, where are you staying at the moment? Clark lives in Metropolis but you've always seemed to be a Midvale girl to me."
"I spent the night at Ethan's." she answered truthfully.
The older Lanes looked at her in shock. She did not know why. There was nothing wrong with what she said. If they had asked her, she would have told them about the separate beds. Kryptonian women never slept in the same bed as their mate until after they were bound by the laws of science and the land.
"Seperate rooms. We don't do that. We made a promise to each other. Not till after we are married." Ethan assured them as he took Linda's hand under the table and held it from where she sat beside him.
He meant what he said. He was never going to pressure this delicate young woman into anything she did not want to do. Not because he feared what she could do to him, but because he respected everything about her, and that included honoring her Kryptonian heritage as he slowly learned about it.
"Nice to hear the young ones talk with conviction about avoiding pre-marital sex." Mrs. Lane responded as she passed the corn tray to her husband. She was not sure if she believe them but if Linda was anything like Clark, she was not going to do anything that she might eventually regret.
"In the meantime, Linda can stay with us." Mr. Lane sounded like he was giving an order instead of offering a favor to Clark.
"I would like that." Linda smiled.
"We can all sleep in Lois' room until she leaves on Monday. It'll be like a sleep-over." Lucy told her excitedly.
**********
"Kara, walk with me." Kal-El told his cousin after the family had retired to the house for some dessert.
"What is it cousin?" she asked him as they sat on the edge of the pool and dipped their feet in.
"I wanted to give you this. I found it amongst the ruins." he produced the box that her parents had packed for her from his pants pocket.
The box that was the size of a ring box expanded once she held it in her hands. The top had the emblem of the House Of El and opened after Kara passed the hand biometric scan.
"It's what's left of our ancestors." she tried to blink away her tears.
Kal-El took the box from her and looked at the contents. This is what the once mighty Kryptonian race had been reduced to. A box full of S emblem souveniers. Nothing that made
sense to Kal-El since everything was written in Kryptonian symbols.
She opened mini box using a biometric scan of her hand."This is a lock of my childhood hair." she took out the sealed silver see-through container that held her brownish hair to show him.
"These are the crystal plates of our family tree. You can see these better at the fortress. It expands when you place it on the proper crystal."
She looked at Kal-El with sadness in her eyes.
"Do you want me to keep it at the fortress for you?" he asked.
"Please." Kara replied.
**********
The week-end passed so fast for the 3 young women. Lois and Lucy took turns giving Linda a make-over. Lucy also helped her get her old job at Frostee's back. Dean still rememebered Linda as his most efficient employee before she disappeared on him. She made a promise that she would not up and leave without telling him this time before he finally agreed to hire her back.
"Now that we are workmates, the only thing left is to become room mates again at Midvale. I have a single again this year. But I would gladly bump it up to a double for my best friend." Lucy told her as the 3 girls had a snack in the food court after a day of shopping.
"She has to pass the equivalency first. " Lois pointed out.
"That's nothing. Ask her how many people will exist in America by the year 2010." Lucy bragged remembering the question that Linda had effortlessly answered in computer class when they were Sophomores.
"Sorry Linda, Lucy has always wanted a baby sister, I guess you are it." They all laughed at Lois' statement.
