This ficlet is a scene from a high school AU. A high school AU that doesn’t exist yet because I haven’t written it and between the pirate AU and another I’m working on, it’ll be a while before I get to it.
It’s still living in my head and it needs to be free.
Tonight. She was going to tell Lena tonight. She had to, because if she kept this secret another day, another hour, another minute, she would die. There was never going to be another night so perfect as this one. The sky was clear over their heads and ablaze with stars, the moon hiding her face in shadow.
Kara wished Lena could see it the way she saw it, see the waves of particles scattering across the upper atmosphere and the glory of the stars.
“I wish I could share it with you.”
Lena made a soft sound. She lay back against Kara, sitting in the sand between Kara’s legs. They were a good mile up the beach, far from where anyone would find them, warmed by the fire Kara had started.
“Share what?” said Lena.
“The sky. I wish I could give you the sky.”
Lena shifted where she sat, turning in Kara’s lap to lean her head on Kara’s shoulder and look up at her. Lena was so beautiful that there were no words in English that could express what Kara felt when she looked at her. Green eyes flickered in glow from the fire, their boundless depths alive with yet more light than the endless tide of stars above their heads.
Sitting there in Kara’s sweatshirt, her hands tucked inside the sleeves for warmth, she was everything. Kara gently, experimentally, brought a hand up to draw a stray lock of curly dark hair away from Lena’s face. It was crossing the line, but they’d crossed the line so many times during these last weeks of summer, the line itself had been scratched to nothing.
Lena still stared directly into Karan’s eyes, emerald vistas more spectacular than any vista on any world she’d traveled. Kara adored her, everything about her, from the soft dimples that formed when she laughed to the way she could solve calculus problems in her head.
She wondered if Lena would have been matched to her on Krypton. She didn’t think she cared what a machine would think.
“Kara?” Lena whispered, tilting her chin up, inviting. Anticipating.
It was the most natural thing in the world for the hand that tamed the stray locks to now take Lena’s chin in the softest grip, for the other hand that rested on her thigh to slide up and take a possessive hold on her hip. It was like gravity drawing time together as Lena’s soft lips met hers.
The kiss was soft, halting, as much a question as an answer, and yet in that soft brushing of lips upon lips, a simple close-mouthed peck on the lips, a declaration was made. Lena almost went limp as she relaxed, safe for the hand that reached up to gently gather Kara’s neck and offer a silent affirmation for her to continue.
The fire was low by the time Kara knew they had to go. They walked up the beach together towards where Lena had parked them.
“What are we going to do?” Lena asked.
It was as much that question that brought them back to the real world, as it was the asphalt of the roadside pull-off. The question had been hanging over them like a deadly weight for weeks. Lena was going to MIT. Kara was going to NCU. There would be three thousand miles between them, and worse than that, no more sneaking around Midvale, free Lena’s parents watching them.
“Anything,” Kara said. “I won’t give up on us, ever.”
Lena said nothing, looking a little green now as she took the wheel of her Mercedes, a gift from her father before he died.
Kara sat beside her and kept the silence, but couldn’t take her eyes from Lena.
So, she almost didn’t see it coming.
High beams flicked on behind them, Lena crying out from the blinding flash in her rear view mirror. There was a sickening crunch as the car slammed into Lena’s bumper, and the driver was twisting the wheel.
“He’s trying to run us off the road,” Kara said, too calm.
“Hold on.”
Lena was a skilled driver, as capable as she was in everything she did. It didn’t matter. They were driving along a cliff overlooking the beach, a good fifty foot drop to the sand below.
There was no time. The car rammed them again, and Lena screamed, her cries turning to pure terror as the car turned against her will at the jarring impact. It spun, the world flailing crazily around them, and then came the inevitable lurch as the Mercedes careened over the shoulder and began to roll.
Kara threw herself across the gap between them, pulling Lena into a fetal position, shielding her with her own back. The car slammed onto its roof and Kara grunted as the struts gave way and sheet metal pancaked against her. Lena was screaming, clutching Kara with such a painful desperation.
The car rolled and rolled, crushing in around them. Finally, it stopped, settling on its roof, against a dune. Lena gasped, drawing in a shocked breath.
“What… how…”
“Hush,” Kara murmured. “I have you.”
Lena looked into Kara’s eyes.
Kara… flexed. She planted her feet on the roof and pushed, digging her back into the console. Lena clutched her tighter as the wreckage shifted, the entire chassis of the car rising as Kara stood, finally releasing her arms from Lena’s body. She put her palms against the wreckage and braced her back and pushed.
With a shriek of protesting metal, the entire car lifted over her head. Kara rose to her full height, two tons of steel and plastic resting on her palms as she easily raised it above her head.
She threw it, heaving it away. It crash landed in the sand a dozen yards away, carving a crater in the earth as it landed.
“There they are!” a voice called. “What the hell?”
Kara knew that voice. Otis Graves. One of Lex Luthor’s thugs.
“Who cares? Boss said to finish them. Shoot her.”
“Kara, get-“
Muzzle flashes lit the night. Kara stood her ground. The bullets struck her skin with soft, almost metallic pings. Kara reached down and plucked a bullet from the air, half a foot from Lena’s head. She screamed.
Lena’s terrified cry drove her over the edge. She crossed the gap between her and the two thugs in half a second, her eyes blazing with red sun fire. Kara slapped the gun out of Graves’s hand, curling it into a useless ball of twisted steel before it hit the ground.
Then, she grabbed him by the throat, hauled him up, and threw him. He rolled across the sand, crying out as a bone crunched in the landing. The man with him simply screamed Jesus Christ! and broke into a run.
“Kara? Kara!” Lena shouted, “oh my God, you’ve been shot! They shot you!”
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
Kara slipped her arms under Lena and lifted her easily from the sand.
“Put your arms around my neck, and hold on,” she said, taking Lena in a bridal carry. “I’m taking you back to my house. We need help. Eliza will know what to do.”
“How? Kara, we’re an hour away by car!”
“Do you trust me?”
Lena pressed tightly against her, shaking.
“I will always protect you,” Kara promised. “Always.”
“I trust you.”
Kara flew.
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