In Any Reality

There would always be a few sour apples in a bushel, but those were usually few and far between. Moreover, to those who felt they had something to say about it, the often told story of the incident at Smallville High during the girls' senior year usually kept a tongue in check.

It had occurred one quiet afternoon just as cheerleading practice was breaking up. Lana, along with the rest of the squad, was just leaving the field when she found herself confronted by "Bash" Bradford, the quarterback of the football team. Bradford had been publicly dumped by his girlfriend, Sally Young, a few days before and had been since told by a few of his buddies that it had been on the advice of Sally's lab partner, Lana, that she had done so.

When Lana said that she had indeed told Sally that she could do a lot better than "Bash", the burly athlete totally lost it, accusing her of trying to steal his girl and than loudly calling both her and Laura a couple of "fucking desperate dykes". As he said it, the two hundred and thirty pound football player made what every onlooker interpreted as a threatening move toward Lana.

Of the two dozen or so spectators who had been there that day, there had always been some confusion about what happened next. No one disputed that just before the confrontation had started, Laura Kent had been sitting in her usual place up in the last row of the bleachers, reading a book. The next thing anyone knew, she was standing between Lana and "Bash", delivering a right cross that floored the twice her size athlete. What no one could remember was seeing her come down the bench or cross the field.

"We are not desperate," most of the onlookers remembered Laura having said as she stood over the unconscious jock.

Nothing it seemed would ever come between Lana and Laura, nothing, it turned out, but the girl in red and blue. Although it would be almost another year before either of them discovered that.

An Indian summer had extended late into October their senior year and the girls decided to take advantage of the still warm nights with a moonlight picnic. The spot they chose was not far from where they had been trapped that night of the snowstorm, just a tenth of a mile from the marker that signified the edge of the Kent farm. The night couldn't have been more perfect as they shared the late supper that Martha Kent had prepared for Laura and the girl she now viewed as a second daughter. The sky was clear and filled with stars, the light of which was only surpassed by that of the full moon.

With no one else around for miles, emotions took hold and the two young women spent the better part of an hour making love, enjoying the rapturous release that each had learned to give the other, time and again. It was only after the third, or had it been the fourth, they lost count somewhere along the way, that they settled naked into each other's arms, just laying on the oversized blanket and staring up into the comforting sky.

"Are you cold?" Laura asked of the girl whose head was resting against her soft breast.

"I probably should be," Lana replied as she nudged her head into the valley between Laura's mounds and softly kissed the flesh within, "but, I'm not. Your body is almost like an electric blanket," she added. "It keeps me warm."

Laura wrapped her arms tighter around Lana, sharing more of the warmth she was enjoying. They just lay silent for a while, until the dark haired girl again broke the silence.

"Lana, we need to talk," she softly said, gently stoking Lana's long red strands as she did.

"Do we really have to?" Lana asked, her eyes still closed. "Can't we just stay like this forever?"

"As much as I'd like to, no," Laura replied, a bit of regret evident in her voice.

"You know I can never say no to you, my love," Lana said as she lifted herself up just high enough so that she could bring her lips to Laura's. "Even though I know this is going to be about something I really don't want to talk about."

"What makes you think it's about that?" Laura asked.

Before Lana replied, she lifted herself all the way up into a sitting position and swung around to face Laura. Sitting there, with moonlight washing across her breasts, her beauty was almost enough for Laura to consider abandoning her plans. It was only when she reminded herself that this wasn't something that could be put off much longer that she found the strength to succeed.

"While we were in the kitchen and you and your mom were packing the basket," Lana began, "I saw the letter on the countertop, the one with the hard to miss return address."

"It is a great opportunity," Laura said.

"But why even go to college, especially one so far away?" Lana said, repeating a familiar refrain. "Especially when we have everything we could ever want right here in Smallville. How many times have I told you that I'd be perfectly content being a farmer's wife, as long as you were the farmer's daughter I shared that life with?"

"You'd really be happy, never leaving here?" Laura said, taking Lana's hands in her own.

"This little town is all the world I ever needed," Lana replied. "Just as it was for my mother and father, my grandparents, and even their grandparents. Not everyone has to go out and make their mark on the world, sometimes it's just enough to be happy."

"And what if I couldn't be happy here?" Laura asked.

"Why couldn't you be?" Lana asked in turn. "I would hope that my love for you would be enough to make you happy." Lana paused for a long moment, then asked a question she feared asking. "Is it that you don't love me anymore?"

"Lana," Laura said, her voice drawing as much emotion as she could put into it. "I've loved you since that night in the snowstorm, and I love you today, tomorrow, and until the day I take my last breath. It's just that there's something that I need to do..."

"What is it that you need to do that you can't do it here in Smallville with me?" Lana asked, cutting Laura off in mid-sentence. "You want to write, that's fine, no one said you could never be a writer, but why can't you take courses at the community college in Myers County? It's only an hours drive from here."

"Lana, it's not just the writing," Laura said, "I've wanted to tell you this for the past few months, but I could never find the right time or place."

"Whatever it is, it's not going to make a bit of difference," Lana said as she reached out to being their hands together once more. "I will love you forever as well. Of course if you're going to tell me you've been fucking "Bash" Bradford on the side, I might just have to change my mind about that," she added, hoping a little humor would make her friend feel better, "if only for exhibiting a total lack of good taste."

That humor faded from her thoughts as she took hold of Laura's hands and felt them trembling in hers. Whatever she was holding inside, it was more serious than she could ever have imagined.

"Laura, I love you," she said simply and directly, "please tell me."

Laura took a deep breath and then asked Lana if she had heard all the stories these last few months of some strange girl who appeared out of nowhere and stopped both several disasters as well as crimes around the state?

"I heard some of that on the radio, but who believes those things?" Lana replied. "More importantly, what does that have to do with you?"

"They really happened, and it was me," Laura said.

"What are you talking about?" Lana said, now confused.

"Lana, I'm not like anyone else," Laura said, still holding her hand tightly.

"Oh course not," Lana said. "That's one of the reasons I love you so."

"Oh this isn't going to work," Laura said as she released her hold on Lana and rose to her feet. "I'm just going to have to show you."

Still confused, Lana rose to her feet as well.

"Lana, do you trust me?" Laura asked.

"Of course," she replied.

"Then just humor me for a minute, will you?"

Lana nodded her head yes.

Laura looked around for a second, and then decided it would take too long for the two of them to get dressed again. Instead, she picked up the blanket they had been laying on and wrapped it around Lana.

"It's going to be a little colder where we're going so I think you're going to need this," Laura said.

"Where are we going?" Lana asked.

The answer was forthcoming as, with a surprising display of strength, Laura picked Lana up and into her arms. Lana was hardly a heavy girl, but the ease with which her friend lifted her left her almost speechless. What happened a heartbeat later would leave her most definitely so.

In an act that Lana knew had to be impossible, the two of them were rising up into the air, picking up speed with each second until they were high enough for her to see the lights of Smallville a few miles distant. Then, once Laura was sure that her passenger was secure in her grip, the two of them began to soar across the night sky.

"Holy Mother of God!" Lana cried out as her voice returned, the phrase being one she had NOT used since she was a child being taken to church by her parents.

Laura just smiled as they continued to sail across the heavens, holding Lana in a tight and reassuring embrace. After a short while, Lana no longer felt afraid and actually began to enjoy their flight as they went far enough away from Smallville to float among some clouds. Then, as they began to turn for home, Laura had to increase her speed to avoid a passenger jet she had veered into the flight path of. If one of those passengers had been stargazing instead of catching some sleep, they would've witnessed a sight to see indeed only fifty feet off their left wing - two young women, one wrapped in a blanket, the other totally nude, crossing the void like a pair of angels.

"I guess you have to believe me now," Laura said once they were safely back on the ground.

"How...how is this possible?" Lana asked, her sense of wonderment being replaced once more with a heavy sense of reality.

"I'm not human," Laura said, thinking that was the first time she had ever said that to anyone, even her parents. "I mean, I wasn't born here on Earth."

"Where, then?"

"I was born on a planet called Krypton, which died in an explosion the light of which won't even reach here for another century," Laura said, keeping her tone calm and reassuring. "My parents sent me away just before the end in an experimental rocket; in fact it landed just a half mile from here over in the cornfields."

"Then the Kents..."

"They found me when I landed, they raised me, loved me as their own," Laura continued, now failing to keep the emotion those words produced under control.

"Of course they did," Lana said. "They're good people."

"The best," Laura added.

"My head is still spinning," Lana said as she sat down on the large picnic basket they had brought. "This is all so much to take in."

"That's why I was so hesitant about telling you," Laura said. "I was afraid how you would take it, when you found out I wasn't really human."

"Now that's a load of horseshit, as my grandmother used to say," Lana said as she again rose to her feet. "You are more human than anyone else I've ever met, don't ever think different. But even if you weren't human, I would still love you."

"Even if I really had green scales and a forked tongue," Laura smiled, relieved at her friend's words.

"Well, it might take some getting used to the scales," Lana smiled back, "but a forked tongue might have some interesting possibilities if you think about it."

They stood there for a moment, each knowing that both nothing and everything had changed forever.

"I do want to stay here with you," Laura said.

"But you can't, I know that now," Lana replied, a sadness in her voice.

"You could come with me," Laura pointed out.

"No, no, I couldn't," Lana said, the sadness more evident. "We both know that this is where I belong, the only place that I'll be truly happy."

"We could try," Laura said.

"And destroy what we've had," Lana interjected. "Laura, my dear sweet Laura, I'm just a small town girl, and that's all I've ever wanted to be."

Laura opened her mouth to say something, then stopped as she realized that nothing else she said was going to change anything.

"But you... You're famous, or at least you're going to be," Lana went on. "No, that's not right. I don't think there's really a word for what you are going to be, or what you are going to mean to the world in the years to come."

"The world can go hang," Laura said in an emotional outburst as she realized what she was losing. "I can stay here with you."

"No, you can't," Lana replied, tears now sliding down her cheeks, "and I could never be that selfish to ask you to do that. I'm just glad we had tonight, so that I could be just a little selfish and have you to myself for one last time."

As she floated above Metropolis, Laura still remembered the last kiss they'd shared, before she'd flown up into the night sky and out of Lana's life forever. She had watched from thousands of feet in the air as Lana drove home, but turned away when she saw her drop crying into her bed. That was the night the Girl of Steel learned that her supposed invulnerability didn't extend to her heart.

Laura Kent left Smallville a week later, supposedly to help take care of a distant relative on the East Coast. Since she had long ago earned enough credits to graduate, the high school was more than willing to issue a diploma in her name for her to take with her. Already she had applied to and been accepted by Metropolis University for the next fall term.

Only a few months ago, Laura had learned from her parents that Lana had again found love. It was the best news from home she had ever gotten.

The sound of a distant alarm caught the Maid of Might's attention and she happily altered her flight in that direction. Lana was gone from her life but Lois was now in it. It was just a matter of finding out what that was going to mean.

-=-=-=-

"Supergirl saves five in waterfront fire," Lois read as she held up the front page of the early morning edition of the Daily Planet, "by Laura Kent. I guess you still lead a charmed life, always in the right place at the right time."

"I just happened to be out for a walk," Laura said as she looked over Lois's shoulder at the headline, taking note that Lois hadn't referred to her by either of her names. "It's not like I could've known that there would be a fire."

"Just out for a walk, down by the docks, at two o'clock in the morning," Lois added as she folded the paper and dropped in on her desk. "And then you rush back to the office, just in time to make sure it's the banner story in the first edition, scooping any other paper in town."

Lois had been surprised to discover Laura already at her desk when she herself showed up at the crack of dawn, eager to pick up where she'd left off on her latest investigative piece.

"I couldn't sleep and went out to think," Laura said. "Down by the water just happened to be where I wound up."

"Think about what?" Lois said as she sat on the edge of her desk, facing Laura across the aisle.

"Things."

"Things?" Lois repeated, making it a question. "What kind of things?"

"Well, if you have to know," Laura said, "I was thinking about what happened last night."

"What happened last night?" Lois asked, as if she hadn't been there.

"You well know what happened last night," Laura said, glancing slightly to her left and right to make sure no one else had come into the newsroom yet.

"Okay, yes, I know what happened last night," Lois said, relenting. "So I guess the real question should be, what do you want to do about it?"

"What do you want to do?" Laura countered.

"Alright, look," Lois said, slipping off the edge of the desk into the aisle. "We can toss this back and forth all day, but I think that would be a waste of time on both our parts. So I'm going to step off the ledge here and tell you how I see it."

Laura nodded her head in agreement.

"I'm attracted to you, I'm pretty sure you've figured that out by now," Lois began. "Don't ask me the why or how of it, because I don't know and have learned that sometimes it's better not to ask."

Laura again nodded her head.

"Moreover, unless I'm way off the mark, I think I can honestly say that you're attracted to me as well," Lois added, then paused to see if Laura wanted to agree to that as well. When she didn't, the brunette fell back on 'silence is sometimes more of an answer than words" and went on. "But I also get the impression that's there's something out there that's preventing you from letting this go forward. Something that frightens you, and it has to do with that girl Lana you mentioned. Oh, those girls in college were okay, because, as you said, that wasn't real. But this, this would be quite real and that scares you."

Laura was speechless. She couldn't believe how much of a read Lois had on her. Part of her wanted to just grab her and kiss her, but another held her in check.. Thankfully, Lois then offered a solution.

"I think you are someone worth fighting for, and I'm willing to take it as slow as you want, or until you figure out if it's something that you don't want. Is that okay with you?"

"Oh yes," Laura smiled, filled with the urge to throw her arms around Lois and kiss her right here in the newsroom.

A kiss that didn't happen as a figure just entering the newsroom from the other direction shouted Lois's name from the top of his lungs, diverting her attention in a reflex action.

"Lois," Perry While cried out as he walked across the room, "Commissioner Henderson's office just called, and they want you down there to talk to the District Attorney about your testimony at the Inter-Gang trial next week."

"Now, Perry?" Lois asked, remembering that Laura was standing there beside her. "It's barely seven o'clock, don't they normally start their day around nine-ish?"

"Right now," Perry repeated. "They've been working almost around the clock on this case and when I mentioned that you were already in, they asked if you could come right over and I said it wouldn't be a problem. I wasn't wrong, was I?"

In a story that was already being talked about as Pulitzer material, Lois had cracked open the biggest criminal organization in the city in the last fifty years. Bruno Mannheim, the boss of bosses who ran Inter-Gang, was looking at multiple life sentences and the dismantling of his empire, all due to her investigative skills.

"Okay, I'll head right over there," Lois relented.

Not expecting any other answer, the editor was already headed back to his office.

"I guess we'll have to finish this later," Lois said to Laura.

"I could come with you," she offered instead, "just as company."

"I'd like that." Lois said as she reached down alongside her desk for her bag.

-=-=-=-

"Aren't you at least a little worried that some of Mannheim's hoods might try and keep you from testifying at his trial?" Laura asked as she and Lois exited the Planet building onto the near deserted street and started to walk down to the corner lot where Lois's car was parked.

"It goes with the territory," Lois, who was walking along the curb line to Laura's left, said. "Besides, my testimony is just the icing on the cake; they already had enough to send that bastard away for two lifetimes. The D.A. just wants to put a human face on it, that's all."

"He's not the one that Mannheim threatened at his arraignment," Laura said, taking note of the slight quiver in Lois's voice that normal hearing would never have detected. "From what I've read of him, he's not the type who makes idle threats."

"Well, if you want to play with the big boys..." Lois started to say, but paused when she saw a strange look on Laura's face, as if something else had abruptly drawn her attention.