Kara and Lena both made good on their vows and, in time, Lena headed down south to visit Kara in her hometown of Midvale.
"This will be new," the Luthor murmured to herself as she steered her car away from the busy interstate and onto a small town road. In her many travels, she'd passed small towns and country sides before, but she had never stopped in them. This would honestly be her first time in a world outside of a busy city. After another hour or so of driving around on smaller, quieter roads, then, the Luthor finally found her destination.
"Quaint," she remarked with a small smile as she pulled her car up a dusty driveway. Although Kara had sent her pictures of the house before, to see it in person still made Lena laugh a little just because it was so very stereotypical of that sort of place.
As she pulled up, Lena's first sight was of, of course, the dusty driveway. Beside it was an old mailbox, slightly crooked, its red flag faded pink with time. Past the mailbox and driveway was the house itself. It was a small, old, wooden building, some of the white paint chipping off of it. Its shutters and door, like the rest of the house, were old and wooden and they, too, were starting to lose their paint. All around, there was nothing but grass in all directions, a few trees spotting the landscape here and there. There was one right beside the house, an old tire swing hanging from it.
Once Lena stepped out of her car, she walked up the creaky old wooden steps onto the porch of the house. At her feet was a dirty old doormat that used to read "welcome", but now half of the letters had since faded off. To her left and right both were rocking chairs, four in total. Just like the rest of the house, they were covered with bits of dust and peeling paint. After taking a few more seconds to smirk in amusement at how stereotypical the house looked, Lena knocked on the door. A second later, it was answered, but not by Kara. Instead, Lena was met with another woman who looked only slightly older than Kara. She had short brown hair and intelligent eyes, but it was her outfit that really caught Lena's. The woman wore worn denim overalls with a plaid shirt underneath. She had a piece of straw in her mouth and she held a ten-gallon hat in her hand.
"Y'all lookin' for someone?" she asked when Lena could only stare at her with wide eyes. Her southern drawl was thicker than molasses and Lena was torn between laughter and nervousness. For a moment more, she could only continue to stare at this other woman as she tried to think of a way to make a request for Kara without sounding rude or insensitive. She also began to worry, then, that maybe this wasn't even Kara's house at all! What if her GPS had led her astray? Service out in these kinds of places wasn't always the best. Was she at least in Midvale?! The thought that she might be in the wrong place mortified and terrified Lena beyond words, but she did her best to remain calm.
"Yes, I am here to see Ms. Kara Danvers?" she asked politely.
"Ah, Kara Danvers," the other woman grinned, eyes lighting up with recognition as she bit down on the piece of straw.
"You know her?" Lena asked, a small rush of relief washing over her. At least now she knew she was at the right house!
"'Course!" came the amused reply. "She's my little sister."
"Oh!" Lena's eyes brightened with interest. Kara hadn't mentioned a sister! "Is she available?"
"Well, she may be out back workin' in the fields. You know, tendin' to the farm and whatnot," Kara's sister continued to stare languidly at Lena and Lena gave her an uncomfortable smile back.
"Could you tell her that I'm here, please?" she asked, twiddling her thumbs.
"'suppose I could. Y'all wait right here now," Kara's sister instructed, but she had only just turned around when Kara herself appeared.
Kara had already been heading back to the house when she heard her sister speaking and realized that there could've only been one person that she was speaking to, Lena Luthor. And sure enough, as Kara drew closer and closer to the front door, she heard Lena's voice and her heart skipped several beats in excitement. For a moment, she had lingered in the shadows trying to compose herself, but then when it occurred to her what her sister was doing, her nervousness quickly changed into exasperated amusement. That was when she stepped out from the shadows.
"Alex!" Kara chided her older sister, but there was affection in her gaze nonetheless.
"Gah! Kara!" Alex yelped, southern drawl vanishing at once as she leapt backward, having not expected to see Kara standing right there, inches away from her. She dropped her hat and the bit of straw fell out of her mouth as she yelped in surprise. In response, Kara began to laugh, Alex's little façade ruined, but Alex pouted. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" she whined at her younger sister.
"Don't greet my guests like you're a stereotypical redneck farmer from the Deep South!" Kara shot back with a smirk as she elbowed past Alex.
"But we are redneck farmers from the Deep South!" Alex argued, still pouting, accent absent now that it had been scared out of her.
"First off, we aren't that redneck," Kara teased. "And second off, Kansas isn't part of the Deep South!"
"It's close enough!" Alex shot back but Kara only gave her a fond eyeroll before turning her attention back to Lena, who was looking quite surprised and maybe even a little confused and embarrassed by the exchange she had just witnessed.
"Sorry about her," Kara gave Lena a sympathetic and reassuring smile. "Alex likes to be stupid sometimes. Or rather, most of the times," for a second, Kara's eyes darted playfully back over to the older Danvers who had since picked up her ten-gallon hat again and sat it defiantly on her head. But then Kara's face softened as she turned back to Lena once more. "How was your trip over?" and Lena felt much more at ease now that Kara was here. When Kara stepped aside and gestured for Lena to join her in the house, Lena no longer felt any reserves about entering the old wooden building and she felt herself physically relaxing the longer and longer Kara was there with her. It wasn't that this Alex girl had scared her, or anything, but because Kara herself did not have too much of an accent, to meet Alex with a full southern drawl had thrown the Luthor for a loop.
"Oh, nah, she was just being stupid," Kara repeated as she led Lena deeper inside. She paused to stick her tongue out at Alex again who shrugged unrepentantly as she followed them in.
"What can I say?" she asked, southern accent much, much lighter than before. "I've got to play the part for all of the city folk," she shot a dry grin at Lena and Lena suddenly looked sheepish.
"Don't worry about her," Kara repeated as she saw Lena looked embarrassed with herself. "We all have stereotypes about each other, so don't let her get you down!" and Lena brightened up again as Kara wrapped a friendly arm around her shoulder.
After that initial greeting, Kara took Lena on a short tour of the house. There really wasn't much to see because the house was relatively small, plain and simple. There were only two floors and the top one literally only consisted of a few bedrooms and one bathroom. Downstairs had a kitchen, living room and dining room. The real fun, Kara told Lena, was what lay on the outside.
"Oh, wow!" Lena murmured as Kara led her out the back door. From the angle Lena had driven up to Kara's house at, she had missed the large and sprawling farm behind the Danvers home. She had seen part of the pasture and some of the silo poking up in the distance, but standing on the back porch gave her a far better view. To one side, there was nothing but a sea of crops, and to the other, it was an endless field of grass where various farm animals grazed. Naturally, there was a large red barn, but that was further back.
"Sure is beautiful, isn't it?" Kara bragged, looking quite pleased with herself. She really did love the country! It was just so rustic, beautiful, peaceful and powerful. She wasted no time, then, in dragging Lena off the porch to show her around the rest of the farm.
For the entire rest of that day, Kara gave Lena a tour of the farm. It took far longer to cover than the house just because there was so much more to see. Lena hadn't realized it, but there were other buildings around the barn, including a cellar and something like a garage, where several trucks, carriages, tractors and other pieces of riding equipment were all stored. And of course, there were sheds for tools and animal care supplies. And not only that, but one building in particular acted as a hub of all of the other ones combined.
"Of course we can't run this farm entire by ourselves, so we have farmhands," Kara explained. "They stay here sometimes if they either can't, or don't want, to return home after a day here with us."
After that, Kara took Lena out to meet some of the other workers on the farm. Two of them were her parents, Eliza and Jeremiah Danvers, and several others were either friends or relatives from the surrounding area. One of these relatives, who was also visiting at the moment, was Clark Kent, Kara's cousin. He lived in a different part of the state (in a town called Smallville) and, thusly, didn't usually hang around the Danvers farm, but he had come up to visit Kara and was planning on heading out in a couple of days. His trip would overlap with Lena's for a little while.
"This house may be the only one in sight, but we aren't out in the middle of nowhere," Kara said as she led Lena through the line of farmhands. "Only a few miles in either direction there are several towns where we do most of our business. It's also where we get to contact the outside world and interact with other two-legged creatures," she added with a laugh. Lena took it all in with great interest. This was such a strange new world for her, a weird lifestyle, and an idea she had never even considered before.
Then, once Kara managed to finish showing Lena around the property, she brought the Luthor back inside for dinner. Because the Danvers had known that a city girl was going to be in their midst that night, they decided to serve up some of the more classic dishes of the south.
"Barbecue, sweet tea, fried green tomatoes, pecan pie and cornbread," Eliza announced as she laid the large spread out.
"You forgot the corn on the cob and the grits," Clark teased as he took a heaping portion of barbecue for himself.
"We also could've done fried chicken and cobblers," Alex agreed Clark passed her the barbecue.
"Oh, just hush up and eat," Eliza pretended to give them both disapproving frowns while Jeremiah and Kara laughed.
"You know, I never would say no to more sweets," Kara pretended to agree with Alex. Alex looked smug while Eliza only gave her a fond eyeroll. Lena, meanwhile, looked in awe of the food. It was quite a large meal and although Lena had been able to get this sort of fare in the city, there was something totally different about actually eating it from a southern kitchen. This wasn't just fast food or grocery store stuff or McDonald's sweet tea, this was the real deal.
After dinner, then, Kara, Alex and Clark (with Lena in tow, of course) headed back out to the farm.
"Where are we going?" Lena asked as Kara dragged her back out to the darkening farmland.
"We're going to do some late-night fishing!" Kara replied.
"Late-night fishing?" Lena echoed, sounding genuinely baffled.
"Oh, it's a lot of fun! Since we wait until it's dark out, the heat isn't as oppressive and there aren't as many people out on the lake!" Alex explained. They were all headed towards one of the buildings near the barn. They were headed to the garage. Parked inside were several large pickup trucks.
"Of course," a small flash of spirit returned to Lena's face as she observed the Danvers' mode of transport.
"You should've seen the one they used to have," Clark snickered as the Danvers sisters loaded their gear up in the truck. "The old one was bright red. At least this one is a more toned down silver," he patted the truck's rusting side and Lena was suddenly reminded of her own rather high-end car and how out of place it looked when compared to the pickup truck she was about to get in.
In the end, after a playful argument and a few rounds of rock-paper-scissors, it was agreed that Clark would drive while Alex, Kara and Lena would sit in the back, in the bed of the truck.
"What?" Lena almost squawked. "Is that safe?"
"Lena, it's late night and we're going to be driving down an empty road, we'll be fine!" Kara replied as she and Alex easily vaulted up the side of the truck and into the bed. In doing so, she missed Lena's worried look. If anything, driving down backroads at night made it even more risky to be riding (seatbelt-less) in the bed of a pickup, but when Kara leaned over the side with her hand outstretched to Lena, Lena felt her heart flutter and she couldn't help but accept the offer, gratefully taking Kara's hand as Kara pulled her up into the truck's bed as well. Even after she was safely inside, Kara releasing her again, Lena could still feel the warmth of Kara's hand for the entire drive over to the lake.
"Shall we show our city gal what kind of music we listen to?" Clark shouted back to his cousins and guest as he began to blast country music from the truck's radio. While Alex and Kara instantly began to belt along, southern twangs returning to their voices tenfold, Lena only watched in embarrassed amusement. She was instantly reminded of all the times she'd driven along the city roads only to sometimes get stuck in traffic beside cars full of teenagers who had all of their windows open, blasting the latest Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars or Beyoncé song from the radio.
"Yee haw!" Alex shouted at one point while Kara pretended to strum a guitar. Lena could only watch and laugh, unfamiliar with any of the songs, but more than entertained by watching the two sisters perform for her.
20 minutes later, the quartet reached the lake. It wasn't very big, but it was still a nice area. The quartet unloaded the truck before they headed over to a small building on the far side of the lake where the canoes, rafts and other boats were kept. Without further ado, then, Clark and Alex hopped into one canoe while Lena and Kara took another.
"Do you think we'll catch anything?" Lena asked as Kara rowed them both out to the center of the lake. Kara had asked if Lena wanted to try, but the Luthor had declined, having never gone canoeing before. She didn't exactly want to crash or overturn the boat, especially so late at night. So while Kara handled the steering, Lena held onto their lines and bait. The bait, she could not deny, grossed her out, but she tried not to let that show.
"Eh, I don't really know," Kara replied as she finally set the oars down. "But I'm really not in it for the fishing tonight."
"What?" at first, Lena was confused as to why Kara was out here at all if she had no real intention of trying to fish, but when she saw the meaningful look that the younger Danvers was giving her, she suddenly understood and the butterflies in her stomach picked up their speed.
For the next hour or so, while Clark and Alex were off doing whatever, Kara and Lena remained locked in conversation. Both of them had their lines in the water, but neither of them were really focused on fishing. Because of that, they didn't catch a single thing, but neither of them really cared, far more invested in one another than anything else at the moment. Then, once that hour was up, the crew headed home. At Lena's request, though, she sat in the front of the truck. To keep her company, Kara opted to be the one to drive home. She looked a little jealous that Clark and Alex were going to get to chill on the truck's bed, but she wanted to stay with Lena as long as possible, so she opted to give up a truck bed ride just once, in order to keep the Luthor company in the safety of the front seats of the pickup.
Once the group arrived home, then, they put their fishing stuff away and headed to bed. But that was where some of the magic ended for Lena. As nice as the first day had been, the night was a little bit more... lonely. It was hard to explain but even though Lena was in a nice warm bed in a house full of friendly people, there was something too sad and isolating that, for a time, Lena found herself unable to get to bed. She could only stare out the window up at the eerily big, bright, full moon and realize how very empty her world was at the moment. Nothing but nature for as far as the eye could see. No music floating gently up from the street below. No honking. No hustle and bustle of nightlife. No street performers. No rowdy youngsters parading up and down the streets. No car engines. No neon lights. No tall buildings to marvel at through the darkness. Nothing but emptiness and sky everywhere she looked. It was still a pretty sight, but Lena almost felt sad and lonely. From her apartment in National City, she had always been able to see other skyscrapers and lights shining through the darkness. She was never alone then, constantly reminded of all of the warm human life that surrounded her at all hours of the day.
Out here, though, far away from the city, there was nothing but silence. Silence and stillness. And to Lena, it was very eerie and terribly lonely. Where were all of the other people? The lights and sounds and smells? Why was everything so painfully quiet? Where was the gentle hum of city life and the gentle glow of the lights? Why was it like a ghost town here, nothing but endless darkness illuminated only by the tiny pinpricks of light that were the stars? But Lena did manage to get to sleep eventually and, mercifully, she slept straight on through the entire night.
The next morning, she woke up to the sound of a rooster crow. It was not a real rooster, however, but instead it was Kara, who had woken up before Lena and had been waiting for the Luthor to wake up. She was holding out a phone that was playing a loop of a rooster's call.
"What the-?!" Lena sat up groggily as she heard the rooster screaming in her ear.
"Good morning, Lena!" Kara replied cheerfully and Lena practically shot out of bed when she realized that Kara was standing inches away. From the doorway, there was more laughter. It was Alex.
"Told you the city girl would panic!" she declared.
"Yeah, I guess it is a little fun to be stereotypical sometimes," Kara replied as she finally shut her phone off, ending the rooster call.
"Ha ha, very funny," Lena frowned a little. Kara managed to look at least a little ashamed.
"Sorry," she said with a shrug. "I hope I didn't scare you too badly," and Lena found it impossible to stay annoyed when Kara was giving her such a cute and apologetic face.
"It's ok," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. Alex watched the entire scene unfold with a smirk.
The rest of the day was spent with Kara giving Lena a deeper look into country life. Lena had only gone through a very basic tour on the first day, so now she was getting more of an inside scoop. Kara led her around the farm, teaching her about all the crops and equipment that they had, and then she had the Luthor meet the animals. They had quite a few, including goats, cows, pigs, geese, sheep, chickens and a few horses.
"Do you ride them?" Lena looked a little intimidated by the horses. All of the other animals had either intrigued or disgusted her to some degree and she found it so strange to imagine that Kara lived with all of these other "pets" in such close proximity.
"Did you want to give it a try?" Kara replied with a playful and hopeful smile, but Lena was quick to turn down that offer. Just like with the canoes the previous night, the Luthor had no experience with horses and would've preferred to keep her own feet on the ground.
"They aren't that big though," Kara continued to try and plead. "A fall off of them won't break any bones or anything!"
"Aren't that big?" Lena echoed, looking up at the large beast standing before her. She was sure that even if a fall wouldn't be fatal, it still would be far from pleasant, and she was already shuddering at the idea of being thrown off and/or trampled. The horse's hooves looked massive in her eyes and she wondered what on earth Kara considered as big if she was able to look at this horse and insist that it wasn't too terribly large.
At one point, the horse huffed at Lena and she cringed a little as some of its spit landed on her face.
"Awww, he likes you!" Kara laughed, petting the horse's long face immediately. Lena looked a little less amused as she wiped off her face.
"I think I'll pass on the riding lessons," she muttered and Kara was forced to let it go.
"Maybe Alex and I will go later on then," she decided.
"Do you ride them often?" Lena asked, carefully stepping away from the horse's enclosure to avoid being nosed again.
"Of course we do!" it was Alex who answered, walking on by with a bucket of slop for the pigs. Lena tried not to stare it too hard. It smelled as ugly as it looked. "You have to remember that cowboys, or girls, are gay culture!" she added with a smirk.
"Wait, they're what?" Lena was a little surprised by this remark but Alex only gave her another teasing grin before she kept on walking along.
"I think it started with Brokeback Mountain," Kara replied, answering for Alex. Even though they all lived far out in the country, they weren't totally cut off from the rest of the world. They did have internet, phones and computers, so the world of memes was one that Kara and Alex were both very acquainted with. There were a lot of "yee haw" jokes and quite a large portion of them were also tagged under gay humor. For that reason, then, the Danvers supposed that cowboys had since become another queer symbol and, being who they were, both of them had been more than happy to go with it. (It beat listening to some of the more aggressive Bible Beaters down here in Kansas. Man could those guys be vicious!)
"Wait, Alex is-?" Lena asked.
"Yup," Kara replied serenely. "And she's got a pretty cliché girlfriend too," she added with a smirk. "She's dating one of the cops from the police department a few miles away. Maggie Sawyer is her name. Real nice girl, friendly and pretty too. But man do I love laughing at Alex for that. Of course she'd choose a gay cop. Cops and cowboys, or girls..." Kara trailed off, still laughing a little about her own joke. Lena, meanwhile, felt her heart skip a few beats. Although she was interested in learning about Alex, her mind was still stuck on the fact that Kara had worded it like they were both gay and Lena found herself subconsciously crossing her fingers...
Lena and Kara spent the rest of the day with the animals. As interesting as Lena found them, though, they wore her down. The chickens were rather loud and annoying and a few of them kept on trying to peck at her and the pigs were still kind of gross in her mind's eye. The goats were rather smelly and Lena could not deny that some of the larger ones unnerved her a little. She didn't know if it was natural or not, but they sometimes looked really angry and Lena knew for a fact that she did not one to be on a goat's bad side, especially if it had really large horns. But it wasn't just the animals that gave Lena grief. The bugs were rather vicious as well. Of course, the city had bugs and mosquitoes too, but Lena felt as if it was worse down here in the country than it had ever been up in National City. She'd even managed to get bitten a few times during the late-night fishing trip the previous night and man did those welts itch!
But it wasn't even just the living creatures on the farm that Lena had to deal with. It was also incredibly hot out and Lena began sweating her makeup off after a while. Even when she and Kara and all the others took a lunch break, retreating to the cool indoors, Lena had still been a hot and sweaty mess. Of course, she knew it was going to be hot, but this was insane! She was sure that she would melt at this rate! Even the city never got quite this hot, even on its hottest days!
"Welcome to farm life," Clark remarked when he caught Lena rubbing an ice cube on her neck and arms. Kara, meanwhile, watched with a laugh.
It was a very odd thing for Lena. A part of her was still rather interested in and enchanted by country life, just because it was so different from anything that she had ever known before. But at the same time, it was not an easy transition, and it wasn't always comfortable. A lot of the luxuries Lena had in the city that she used to take for granted were no longer at her disposal. Things were much farther away (Lena had been surprised to hear how nonchalant Kara was about having the local police department only being a few miles away. In National City, the local PD was only a few blocks away) and again, the heat and bugs were merciless. And it sometimes got a bit unnerving not to see any other houses nearby.
And Lena was still rather intimidated by all of the things farmers had to deal with. Namely, the larger or more aggressive animals, and all of their clattering, clanking machinery. The thresher and tractors had been quite the sight, in Lena's opinion, very loud and hefty and smoky, but Kara, Clark and Alex had wasted no time in scrambling on up into the drivers seats and engaging in a tractor race. It was the most redneck thing Lena had ever seen: three hotheaded young farmers racing tractors around a cornfield on a large swath of Kansas farmland. Lena did actually give tractor driving a swing herself, but she had found it incredibly cumbersome and difficult, not at all as smooth or easy to drive as a car or a cab.
"Forget your late night city street drag racing!" Alex had shouted over the roar of the tractors. "Country folk don't need fancy racers! Not when we've got cornfields and tractors!" this earned her a playful smack from Kara, who once again berated her for being so very stereotypical. Lena, meanwhile, had a knuckles-white grip on the wheel of the tractor. Even though it wasn't moving very fast, she was still worried that the rough and uneven ground would mess her up somehow and cause her to crash into something. Finally being able to dismount the tractor and feel her feet on solid ground once again had been a blessing to Lena, though she had needed help getting back down.
"I think I'm stuck!" she admitted embarrassedly. While Clark and Alex laughed up at her, Kara only reached up with a smile and Lena carefully, slowly, slid down the side of the tractor and into Kara's arms. But even after Kara had managed to set her back down on solid ground, safely away from the tractor, her arms had remained around Lena's waist for a little bit longer, not that either she or Lena really minded...
So when it came time for Lena to go home, her weeklong visit over, she really had no idea what to think. She was definitely glad to be headed back up north to the city and she had no regrets about leaving the loud, messy, sweaty life of a farm behind, but she really had come to enjoy her stay with the Danvers family and a new sort of loneliness entered her heart on the day of her departure. She would be surrounded by the sweet hustle and bustle of the city again, but Kara would no longer be there with her. Lena would no longer have to deal with hungry bugs, loud farm machinery or annoying farm animals, but she would have to deal with a friendless and family-less home. She would be able to go back to the world she was used to, but she would have to leave behind the one she had come to love while visiting. She would not wake up to Kara's smile in the morning, she would not spend the day with her hand in Kara's and she would not go to bed with Kara whispering a fond and gentle goodnight. She was trading one loneliness for another, it seemed, but she wasn't quite sure yet which was more unbearable: the isolation from the rest of the world, or a life without Kara Danvers in it?
"I will miss you," she admitted, actually feeling herself tear up at the prospect of having to go home again and leave Kara behind.
"We will visit each other again," Kara replied, but it sounded like she was trying to reassure herself just as much as she was reassuring Lena. Her own face and shoulders were lower than normal as she realized that she was no longer going to be able to see Lena all day every day. And even if they did visit one another, it probably wouldn't be any time soon. Kara didn't exactly have the money to afford another city trip and Lena didn't have the time to host her, or come back down to Midvale. She had a company to run, after all. So even if she could easily afford to bring Kara up to the city, she wouldn't be able to spend time with the Danvers anyway.
Their farewell embrace had been long and both of them did manage to keep themselves composed, but a very gloomy atmosphere followed both of them for the entire rest of the day after their departure.
AN: In all seriousness, if any of these country stereotypes were offensive or inaccurate, please do tell me. I was just going off of stories that some of my country friends have told me, but like I said, I personally have no experience living on a farm or in the stereotypical country.
And yes, again, there are some liberties with the canon. I know Midvale is supposed to be right outside Metropolis, but here it's down in Kansas a few ways away from Smallville.
