Chapter 17: The First Date
The Talon was packed.
Friday night in Smallville meant the newly opened coffee shop was the place to be. Students clustered at tables, parents grabbed to-go cups, couples occupied the corner booths with their hands intertwined.
Kara and I walked in together, and the room got noticeably quieter.
"They're staring," she murmured.
"Small town. New couple. It'll pass."
"Will it?"
I squeezed her hand.
"Eventually."
We found a table near the back—private enough to talk, public enough to not seem like we were hiding. The menu was simple: coffee, pastries, a few sandwiches. I ordered black coffee. Kara got something with caramel and whipped cream that looked more like dessert than a beverage.
"Don't judge me," she said, catching my expression.
"I wasn't judging."
"You were absolutely judging."
I smiled. "Maybe a little."
The coffee was good. Better than the cart vendor outside the old theater—the one I'd found the morning after the Greg Arkin situation, what felt like a lifetime ago. Same town, different world.
[SOCIAL INTEGRATION: PROCEEDING. PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP STATUS: ESTABLISHED.]
"You look better," Kara said, studying my face. "The color's back."
"Martha's cooking. Two weeks of it." I'd recovered at the Kent farm longer than planned—Jonathan initially resistant, but eventually warming to my presence when he saw how I treated Kara. "I'm pretty sure I gained ten pounds."
"It suits you."
"Being fat suits me?"
"Being healthy." Her smile was teasing. "And maybe a little fat."
We talked about normal things. School—I'd missed a week, but Chloe had covered for me with the Torch. Football—the team had won without me, Whitney taking credit for the victory. The weather—Kansas had decided to skip autumn and go straight to winter, temperatures dropping overnight.
Normal. Almost aggressively normal. Two teenagers on a date, pretending the world wasn't full of monsters.
This is what it could be like. What it should be like.
"Let's get out of here," I said.
"Where?"
"Somewhere with a better view."
The hilltop was twenty minutes outside town, accessible only by a dirt road that wasn't on any map. I'd found it during one of my late-night drives, scouting the area, learning the terrain.
I backed the truck up to the edge, dropped the tailgate, spread out the blankets I'd brought.
"Stargazing?" Kara's voice was soft, surprised.
"Figured you might appreciate it."
We settled onto the blankets, lying side by side, staring up at a sky full of stars. No light pollution here. Just blackness and brightness and the vast, indifferent universe.
"That's Orion," I said, pointing. "The hunter. And there—Cassiopeia."
"Those are the Earth names." Kara shifted closer, her shoulder pressing against mine. "On Krypton, we had different constellations. Different stories."
"Tell me."
She was quiet for a moment.
"That cluster there—we called it the Dreamer's Eye. According to Kryptonian legend, it was the eye of an ancient being who watched over our world, weeping tears of starlight when her children suffered." Her voice grew distant. "The legend said that when the last tear fell, Krypton would end."
"Did it?"
"I don't know. I left before..." She trailed off. "The light from those stars takes thousands of years to reach Earth. The Krypton I knew is already gone. But the light it cast is still traveling, still carrying images of a world that no longer exists."
I didn't know what to say. What could anyone say to that?
"I feel out of place sometimes," I admitted instead. "Like I'm living someone else's life. Like I woke up one day in a world that wasn't meant for me."
Kara turned her head, studying my profile.
"The meteor crash?"
"Before that. Always." The truth pressed against my lips, wanting out. "I remember things I shouldn't. Know things I can't explain. And sometimes I look around at all of this—the town, the people, even the stars—and I think: this isn't where I'm supposed to be."
"But you're here anyway."
"I'm here anyway."
She reached over, laced her fingers through mine.
"Maybe the life finds the right person," she said softly. "Maybe it chose you."
I wanted to tell her everything. About the crash that wasn't a crash. About the laptop and the TV show and waking up in a body that wasn't mine. About the System humming in the back of my mind, tracking numbers I couldn't fully understand.
But the words wouldn't come. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
"I'm glad it did," I said instead. "If this life brought me to you, then it made the right choice."
Kara's breath caught.
"Cole..."
"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know."
She rolled toward me, propped herself up on one elbow. The starlight caught her eyes, made them shine like distant suns.
"I'm not good at this," she said. "Feelings. Relationships. On Krypton, things were... different. Arranged. Logical. But here, with you—" She shook her head. "Nothing about this is logical."
"Does it need to be?"
"No." A smile flickered across her face. "I suppose it doesn't."
She kissed me then, slow and deep, with none of the hesitation from before. The stars wheeled overhead, indifferent to two young people finding each other on a hilltop in Kansas.
[RELATIONSHIP STATUS: DEEPENING. EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT: HIGH.]
When we finally broke apart, Kara was laughing.
"What?"
"Your hands are freezing."
I glanced down. My fingers had gone blue at the tips—the frostbite scars acting up in the cold.
"Old injury."
"From Sean?"
"Yeah."
She took my hands, raised them to her lips, breathed warmth across my frozen fingers.
"I can fix that."
"Your powers—"
"Are coming back." She smiled. "Slowly. But I can manage a little heat."
The warmth spread through my hands, up my arms, into my chest. Not just physical warmth—something else. Something that felt like home.
We stayed on that hilltop until the stars began to fade, trading stories and silence in equal measure. When I finally drove her back to the farm, she fell asleep against my shoulder, trusting me to keep her safe.
The radio played something I didn't recognize. The roads were empty. And for one perfect moment, I forgot about monsters and systems and the weight of knowing things I shouldn't.
I was just a boy driving home with a girl who loved him.
That was enough.
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