‘how to care for your baby cousin when you’re barely an adult and weirdly enough Also the baby cousin’:
caring for kara works in stages. first, you finally get her to sit down and you coax out of her why she’s in metropolis, where she’s supposed to be, where the danvers think she is, what’s going on?
“to see you. national city. national city. i-“ her stoic facade cracks when she gets to the last questions and she plasters over it with bravado. “im doing whatever i want. i can do that. i deserve to get to do that.”
“you do,” clark agrees and kara’s eyes are instantly wet and huge and round with surprise and fear. “what do you want to do?”
it takes her a long time to say, and she kicks her feet lightly against his counter, flushed guiltily when a cupboard door cracks down the middle at a gentle-but-earth-hard kick.
“i don’t know,” she admits. “i just…wanna figure it out. in my own space.”
clark nods for a full minute before he takes the phone off the wall—he likes his landline, it’s the phones he first learned to call with and he knows exactly the pressure to use, unlike his iphone he breaks every now and again—and rings a familiar number.
“clark!” a worried voice answers. “clark, kara’s run away! she’s - she’s supposed to be starting at university and she’s not there and Alex dropped her off, I know she did, oh why didn’t she watch and make sure,”
“eliza,” he cuts her off gently. “kara is here with me. and i think she’ll be staying for a while.” he lifts his eyebrows. kara nods. “she will be staying with me. and eliza,” he turns away even though he knows kara can hear everything, “don’t be too hard on alex? she’s brilliant, but she’s not kara’s keeper.”
//
second, you make her feel welcome the best way you know how.
clark shifts the furniture in his cramped living room slash dining room slash study so that the roll out couch is rolled out and he makes up a bed for kara with clean sheets that smell only very faintly of washing powder. she smiles when she smells them, or rather, barely smells them.
“eliza still uses the one that smells like lavender.”
“makes me sneeze.”
“yeah. same.”
“she doesn’t know.” clark taps his nose, then slings an arm around karas shoulders. “so, you’ll sleep here. the traffic is always noisy, i can lend you my noise cancelling headphones-“
she shakes her head. “i can handle it.”
“okay. you can always use them later if you need a break.” she looks torn between being annoyed that he doesn’t believe her, and happy that he’s giving her the option. she settles, worryingly, on something in between - indifference. nods. “in the morning we’ll figure out the rest. sound good?”
“yeah.”
“alright.” he pulls her slowly in and, when she doesn’t fight him, presses a kiss to the top of her head. she’s only a few inches shorter, having shot up in the last few years like a gangly little blonde weed, but he’s still taller and older and he’s the big cousin now and he couldn’t look after her when she first landed but “i’ve got you, kara. im here for you.”
she still doesn’t cry or yell or do much of anything. just says into his hold for a few minutes before croaking, “im kinda tired, so,” and she crawls into the bed and pulls the pillow over her head and clark can see her eyes wide open in the reflection of the window but doesn’t feel like it’s right to press.
Adventurer, student, intern and superhero; Kara was a young woman with many talents and goals since arriving on Earth. Upholding the legacy and ideals of the House of El was a heavy task to bear, but one she took on proudly. And yet, despite how exciting her daily life could be, sometimes the Girl of Steel needed peace and quiet. Her cousin had his Fortress in the Arctic, but Kara preferred the warmer solitude of the Kent Farm she inherited; a place where she could relax and unburden herself in more ways than one.
