Giant

Chapter 4: Giant

When you know I don’t have nowhere else to go
Does it feel good to leave me on my own?

Previously on Giant

Though it was summer, too much happened after the funeral. Lena stayed at her apartment in the city for the summer. Work kept her busy, preparing for grad school kept her exhausted, keeping an eye on her father and brother kept her borderline crazy. Long ago, her duty washed away any artifact of herself, and of that she was damn near certain.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but if they had to place blame, it was time and distance and life. In moments of frustration, when Kara would think about her friend, she second-guessed every step taken since that moment on the beach when they could have ran away. And as summer slipped into fall, and the year passed as it was known to do, with little regard for anyone arguing against it, Kara found herself far away from Lena, seeing her more in newspapers than in real life, getting voicemail more often than not.

Superman grew in popularity, grew in responsibilities, and reading the newspapers and seeing the toll it took on her cousin, just affirmed Kara’s mission to be normal, to have a proper, non-alien life.

There were a few lunches after school started again after the holidays. A few nights of drinks. A hang out one weekend, but other than that, everything stopped, and neither Kara nor Lena knew how or why or when to save it. Instead, they grasped at straws.

Lena felt herself getting pulled deeper into research in order to keep up with her brother, to counteract anything he came up with or tried. He worried her sick, kept her up at night with this sick feeling that her father wouldn’t listen to, despite her protests.

After the funeral, Lena pulled away. Gone was this seeming bright spot in their universe, gone was the woman who brought balance to her and kept the family rooted. She only made it into one semester of grad school before she found herself moving to Metropolis, tugging the friends even farther apart.

Eventually, a month turns into missed calls and texts, turns into just growing up and growing apart. Every single August twentieth, without fail, no matter where they were or what was happening, they ended up on the top of the water tower back in Midvale, waiting for each other.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Kara smiled as Lena crawled up the ladder behind her, her heels kicked down at the bottom in favor of bare feet and summer. She helped the youngest Luthor take her seat.

“This night has been the only thing I’ve looked forward to in months,” Lena confessed as Kara pulled her into a tight hug.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in decades.”

“I saw you… New Years. And your graduation.”

“I guess this is what becoming an adult is like,” Kara sighed. “How’s Metropolis?”

“It’s… tall. Everything is so big,” she realized. “It’s a lot of trying to do what my mom did, and also what my dad does. I don’t know. I like my little office where I get to build things.”

“How’s things going with Lex and Lionel? I’ve seen… um…” Kara fiddled with the railing. “I saw the quotes in the paper… about Superman, and weapons.”

“It’s like babysitting toddlers. But making money on people’s fears is working.”

“Did you… um. What Lex said, at the funeral? Kryptonite?”

“I was doing some digging into it. I think… I don’t think it’s harmful to humans, but it could accelerate already malignant cells. And Dad was doing research on it in his office at home. I don’t want to think about it, honestly. She had it in her, and something happened to accelerate it. It’s that simple. She’s gone. Nothing changes that.”