Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Laura Kent is eight when she looks in the mirror and finds herself irrationally upset about what she sees. It’s hard to put a finger on what the problem is- her face is so fragile, so hollow, so… wrong? The idea that this is what other people see when they look at her is disgusting, but Laura cannot explain why.

Eventually she decides that she is ugly. She decided the issue is that she spends all her time covered in grime and sweat from working on the farm. The last time she wasn't wearing denim was Christmas, and her hair is never neat, tidy, or fashionable. Girls at school have hair with ringlets, and impractibly pretty frocks. Of course she can't bear to look at herself, she's hideous.

Her mother is a round, solid woman, who curls her hair more from habit than anything else. She combs out Laura’s long dark plaits, and wraps them tightly around the fuzzy cylinders Laura used to stack when watching Ma dress. They dig out one of the dresses she brought Laura to wear to church (only there's never time to change between morning feeding and breakfast and service), and hang it so the wrinkles will fall out in time for morning. Ma even gives Laura a pretty sparkly feminine clip for her hair- something she saves for going out to parties.

In the mirror, the girl looking back seems older. She looks pretty and soft. Pa tells her she looks quite the little lady when she comes down for breakfast the next morning, and gently kisses her cheek, no longer able to give an affectionate tug to her braids.

*

Laura Kent is ten and a man comes to the farm- either buying or selling something she isn’t sure. Her hair is tied up under a cap, and she’s dressed in old overalls for working- so somehow he messes up and calls her Young Master Kent. She laughs, but doesn’t correct him. When off to do the rest of her chores there's a small grin on her face that lasts all day.

She doesn’t tell anyone about it, and after the man leaves she forgets it ever happened. Still, she finds herself wearing her hair tucked under its cap more often.

*

Laura Kent is twelve and blames the way she struggles to relate to the other girls at school in the fact that she is different. That she has these powers, that she has to hide who she is, what she is- and that’s why she feels different. Picking things up is a skill she has to relearn to not send them flying across the room. Touching people is completely out of the question, the bruise on her ma's forehead from a goodnight kiss taught her that.

Sure she looks like them, and they have a lot in common, but Laura Kent is different, special, she just isn’t like other girls. That’s the problem.

She wants to run around and play sports, kick a soccer ball around with the boys- but they won’t let her join in. She knows she could easily beat any of them in one on one, but she might accidentally take one of their legs off in a takcle. Instead she lurks around with the other girls, trying to muster an interest in whatever it is they’re talking about. It's not their fault they aren't freaks.

Her Ma seems to see that she’s unhappy, and says she can invite any of her friends around for a sleepover if she wants, or just round for tea if that’s easier- and Laura isn’t sure how to explain that she doesn’t really have friends. She doesn’t want to disappoint her mother though, she loves her ma more than anything else, the thought of disappointing her is too terrible to bear, so Laura tries her best.

She ends up with Kathleen McKinnon.

Kathleen has short spiky hair and a pin in her eyebrow. She chews gum in class and wears clunky boots, always carrying around a walkman with loud music that can be heard over the headphones. The other girls keep their distance. Laura, who despite all best efforts is still a farm girl through and through, long plaits and button up blouses, thinks she is incredible. Somehow, although Laura has no idea why Kathleen bothers, they end up friends, and Laura has someone to bring over for tea.

Martha Kent, for all her views about piercings before age sixteen, is nothing short of delightful towards Kathleen. She offers her iced tea, asks her about her family and the music she likes, and all in all they have a delightful afternoon. When Kathleen has to go home, Martha gives her a hug and tells her she’s welcome there anytime. It’s sweet, or at least Kathleen certainly thinks so, and Laura is happy that she’s done something right- made a good friend, had a good mother.

Ma Kent is less pleased when Laura comes home with a nose piercing Kathleen did in the bathroom at school. Or when Laura starts playing 'loud clanky music' on her cassette player. It's only the fourth time Kathleen comes over that the two girls lock themselves in the bathroom for a suspiciously long time, and Laura comes out with streaks of red in her dark brown hair.

Ma Kent is pleased to see her daughter smile.

*

Laura Kent is fourteen when her body morphs into something that it shouldn’t. Hips, chest, curves all over- and she hates them. It’s hard to explain what the issue is, there is no logical reason why these new developments should disgust her so much- but they do. This is not her body, just like that is not her face. She cannot explain it anymore than that.

*

She’s sixteen when she finds out she’s an alien.

That’s got to be the issue, she decides. She's part of a group of friends now, and even though she’s the slightly quirky one, everyone’s grown up enough for that to not matter. She didn't tell them about her powers, doesn't tell them she's an alien. Which makes her more of a freak she doesn't know. It doesn’t matter much though- she doesn’t need to bare her soul when she’s running barefoot down the hill after school to splash in the lake. They all know they’re a little old to find so much fun in the childhood game of splashing each other. Wringing their dresses out as they clamber back up the hill, dust and dead grass sticking to their barefeet. Interchangable mischevious Kansas girls.

Kathleen, Laura’s first friend, is someone she barely sees now. She lurks in corners writing in her diary, and turns down all offers Laura extends to play in the lake, or climb hay bales to talk about boys they fancy, or catch the bus into town and go to the movies once a month. Laura doesn’t stop trying though. She loves her new friends, loves being enveloped in their gossip and their laughter and the way she doesn’t feel she has to contribute to be part of the social setting. She also loved lying on her back with Kathleen, one headphone each. Or staying up long into the night to discuss things that could never even be acknowledged in the light of day. Perhaps Kathleen hadn't loved those years so much.

*

Laura kisses a boy outside the school gym on the night of junior prom. His name is Harrison Grey and he’s kind to her. She meets him in Science Club and he tells her she's pretty. Most boys can't seem to slow down enough to actually look her in the eye, but Harrison's eyes never dip below her collarbone. She holds his hand in the hallways, and invites him over for Sunday dinner with her parents.

Harrison is a good kisser- she thinks. She doesn’t have anything to compare it to, but it’s nice at least. She hadn’t been excited for prom, but that was something unadmittable in amongst the day long shopping trips and twee promposals. She does have a nice time with her friends, she does think its nice being lead by the hand into the gymnasium by a boy who likes her, she does want to dance the night away surrounded by people she's been to school with all her life, even if Kathleen isn't there.

He strokes a lock of hair out of her face (she took it out of its braids for the dance, her face feeling less and less like it belonged to her as Jamie-Lynn did her hair and Louise did her makeup) and takes a step back, smiling. Evidently it was a good kiss. “You’re so pretty.” He says, still smiling, “prettiest girl in all of Smallville.”

Laura isn’t sure why that makes her want to cry, why it feels so wrong- but she doesn’t feel like trying to figure it out. She is uncomfortable and her feet are beginning to sting from dancing, so instead she just smiles weakly and asks Harrison to take her home. She needs to get this makeup off her face anyway.

Ma asks why she’s back early, and Laura doesn’t manage to say anything, just collapses into her mother’s arms and starts crying. Martha Kent strokes her hair and makes her a cup of chamomile tea, and doesn’t ask anymore questions. Laura wouldn’t know how to answer them anyway.

*

Laura is eighteen, and gazing mindlessly at a newspaper when she first thinks about the word transsexual. It was an article about the Wayne heir- not only was he alive, but his name was Bruce now apparently, and he was a man.

Laura frowned. She didn’t know much about the Wayne heir- and honestly the fact that he wasn’t dead was more of a surprise than the fact that he was a man, but- she adjusted her glasses, trying to make sense of it in her mind. She had heard of the concept of being transsexual before, whispered behind closed hands about disant relatives who wanted a “sex change”, and Laura had never paid it much attention.

Now however, something about it caught her interest. Maybe it was the article that seemed not critical of Bruce, but supportive of him? Or maybe it was the interview he had given, about how realising he was transsexual had been the missing piece that made his life complete. For the first time, Laura wondered if anyone could be a boy.

Probably not. It was probably something you could only do if you were a billionaire.

She continued reading the newspaper, trying to put the whole concept out of her mind, but something about it wouldn’t leave her alone. She felt… was it guilt? Was she feeling guilty about not speaking up when Kirsty told them about her creepy aunt who thought she was a man? That was probably it.

She put the thought out of her mind properly that time, and began reading a story about rescued kittens.

*

That night, Laura dreamed she was on a park bench feeding the ducks. People around her seemed friendlier, happier to see her, something in her chest felt lighter. There were no braids hanging down her shoulders, sensible shoes on her feet.

She woke up crying.

He didn’t think he wanted to be called Laura anymore.

Chapter Text

The boy with no name brushed and braided his long hair, a babyish style he should have abandoned by now, and put on his clothes for working on the farm. It’s his last summer before university, and he wants to enjoy it as much as he can.

Outside it is so easy to consider just running away (he is fast enough and clever enough that he could be gone before most of Smallville even woke up. He could be on the other side of the country by the time his parents thought to worry about him). It is easy to consider but he doesn’t- because his parents would be broken, because he doesn’t have anywhere to go, because running away wouldn’t solve his problems, wouldn’t give him a name.

So he does his morning chores, and enjoys the feeling of the sunrise on his cheeks, and doesn’t think about what it would feel like to be somewhere where no one knows his name. Where maybe making a fresh start would be easier.

In the kitchen his Ma has started making breakfast, and he sets the table without being asked. Later, he will do the washing up while she dries, and he will pretend everything is fine. That he is not a nameless boy with a soft figure and long braids, that he is not more trouble than she ever wanted, more trouble that she deserved.

But for now he spreads butter on toast while his mother fries eggs and bacon, and his father is outside feeding the chickens. It’s a normal morning, a slow morning that the boy with no name would usually cherish- but today something is different. He knows something they don’t, he is keeping a secret from the people who love him most in the world.

He’s never really kept anything from them before.

They have given everything- more than everything for him. Keeping him, raising him, not telling people about him; they never made him feel like a burden but now, with his own secret crushing him, he wonders how they managed. How they managed to keep something so big and earth shattering from the rest of the world, how they hadn’t broken under the weight of something that could be devastating if it got out, how they didn’t resent him for it.

They had each other, he supposed. Each other to confide in, each other to voice their worst fears to. He should tell them. He should tell them, it would make it easier to bear, it would mean he had people in his corner, it would mean he wouldn’t be lying to his parents.

But he can’t. It’s too new and scary, and almost worse than the alien thing. No, worse than the alien thing. At least as an alien he can hide; there will be no hiding if he keeps going with this. He can either pretend he never had this thought, and go back to being uncomfortable, wrong, the person that he still is to the rest of the world, to everyone who loves him. Or, or he could do something terrifying.

He could ask his parents for a new name, and if they refused, give himself one. He could cut off his hair and- he isn’t sure about the steps after that, but Bruce Wayne did it. He could become someone entirely different. His reflection in the kettle is a person he doesn’t recognise, someone he never really recognised; but the person he wants to become is someone he can’t even picture.

Either option feels scary, feels impossible. He doesn’t realise he’s crying until his Ma puts a hand over his, and his Da looks up at him in surprise. They both look at him with such warmth and concern, something that he never thought about before. Something he never needed to think about because it was a given. He regrets taking his parents' love for granted for all these years, now that the possibility of it being taken away is here. Do they know what being transgender even is?

He tells them he’s feeling overwhelmed with the fact that he’s going to college soon- that he’s going to miss them. This is a half truth, he is feeling overwhelmed and he is going to miss them- but it’s not much to do with college.
It takes a month or so before he decides to take a first step. It takes some time, sifting through fliers in the library in town, then mucking about on the library computer, looking up other random things so it just looks like research- but eventually he finds a transsexual support group that seems welcoming. It’s miles away- but he likes that, means no one there will recognise him. Means that he won’t have to deal with anything he’s not ready for.

He decides to wait until he’s in college to actually go (the group is closer to Metropolis than Smallville) and it’ll be easier to pretend that he’s reporting, or at least practicing reporting, if he’s caught.

*

It turns out once he’s at college there isn’t a lot of time. There’s work of course- but more pressing is the sheer amount of time he spends with his roommate. Her name is Lois, Lois Lane, and she’s wonderful, but incredibly nosy. Keeping things from her is difficult, she wants to know everything, never mind that some secrets are better left buried. He should be more worried, he has a lot of secrets to keep after all, but unfortunatly she's also the most wonderful girl he's ever met. Sometimes he thinks he’s falling a little bit in love with her.

She’s left today though, her parents have driven up to see her. Her relationship with them is complicated- she never speaks to them on the phone or receives letters like everyone else- and despite knowing everyone’s secrets Lois doesn’t seem willing to share her own. The boy with no name doesn’t ask questions, even when he wakes up to her sobbing in bed. He just makes her hot chocolate and wraps his arms around her.

She’s always fine in the light of day though- and today, smiling at her parents, introducing him to them, it would be easy to assume that everything is fine. He wants to offer to go with her- make sure everything stays fine, but he also doesn’t know when he’ll next get the chance to visit the support group.

He doesn’t flinch when the bus driver calls him ma’am when he takes his ticket, instead finding a seat at the back and looking over the instructions he wrote down. He didn’t really need to- he remembers everything whether he wants to or not, but carrying them around makes him feel safe for some reason, something to look at when he’s awkwardly standing around trying to figure out which way he should be going.

He’s a man on a mission, and he’s sure as hell going to complete it.

The support group is bigger than he expected- there’s a lot of adults in there already when he pushes open the door and walks in. It’s difficult for him to get his head around the complex emotions he’s feeling as he attempts to walk across the linoleum floor without making his shoes squeak too loudly- a sort of mixture of fear and anticipation- he wants this moment to be important so badly, he needs today to go well.

In some ways, it does.

He meets Tiffany, a transsexual woman, who tells him to call her if he needs anything, and her girlfriend Jo who says ze is a butch lesbian, but not a woman, and that if he ever wants to go on hormones hir doctor is great.

He tells them that he doesn’t know what to call himself yet, that he wants his parents to help him but isn’t sure how to tell them. Tiffany gives him a sympathetic look, and shakes her head sadly. “Us trans folks don’t always get that, son, I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“My parents aren’t like that-” He isn’t sure how to finish his sentence, “They’ve been so understanding and good about everything else.”

“For your sake kiddo, I hope it goes well.” Tiffany clearly doesn’t believe him, and he isn’t sure he believes himself either. His parents are good- they coped with having an alien for a child after all- but as much as he knows they love him, he still can’t quite shake the idea that he might one day lose all of that. None of the people in the group still talk to their parents.

When he gets back to the dorm, Lois is sitting on her side of the room. Uncharacteristically she doesn’t ask him where he’s been or what's going on, instead giving him a weak smile and looking back down at the book she’s reading. He wonders what’s wrong, but isn’t sure how to ask.

He sits at his desk, pulling out a fresh pad of paper, and mulls over whether or not he’s actually ready to do this. Writing something down is more permanent than he thinks he’s ready for- but he’s brave. He thinks he’s brave at least- people in Smallville praised him for his bravery- but that was for doing things like saving cats from trees or kids from bullies- nothing actually scary. Nothing that he ever had to worry about.

“Lois?” he said, before he knew what he was doing.

“Yes?” she said, hardly looking up from her book.

“If you had a secret- like a secret that might make a lot of people very upset and sad- who would you tell?”

“My best friend Laura.” said Lois, still not looking up so she didn’t notice the way the boy flinched at the name.

“Not your parents?”

Lois said something so rude at this, the boy felt himself blush. Lois did notice this, even with her eyes still trained on the book. “Is this about…” she began, then trailed off.

“What?”

“Those powers you’re doing a bad job at hiding?”

Well. He wasn’t sure whether to be aghast or relieved- with all the worrying about being trans he had forgotten about the arguably bigger secret that he was supposed to be protecting.

“Don’t look so shocked.” Lois gave him a smile, “It’s probably only me who’s noticed that you’re far too strong and weirdly tough.”

“Neither of those things mean I'm a... a metahuman- I did grow up on a farm, Lois.”

“Yeah well, you also float in your sleep.”

This was shocking news.

“I- what?”

“Sometimes I wake up and you’re just floating a foot above the bed- still with the covers on. Researched it, subtly of course who do you think I am. That nutter who just appeared in Gotham is probably like you as well.”

“The- who?”

“You know-” she put her fingers up by her head, as though imitating horns, or unnecessarily long pointy ears, “the Bat of Gotham.”

Oh him. Yeah, the boy knew who he was. Had considered doing similar things around Kansas before he went to college, then realised that the idea of being famous in the wrong gender would be hell and abandoned that idea, deciding to stick to the small stuff.

“Look Lois you can’t tell anyone- I know it would be a good story but-”

“Relax. I know this is more important than me winning some journalism prize or whatever.” She managed to hide her wistfulness pretty well at this, which he appreciated.

“So.” she began again, “Did you want advice on the whole floating and super strength thing?”

“Actually…” he began, unsure of how to say what he needed to say. Lois had proved herself with keeping his other secret- and her rejection wouldn’t hurt as much as his parents would.

On the other hand if she wanted to she could write a piece that told everyone in the university about him, and ruin his life.

“I uhh.. Lois I…”

“Spit it out, Laura, you know whatever’s going on I’m here.”

“Don’t call me Laura.” The words came out too fast, almost like a reflex despite him never having said them before.
“I’m uhh…” This was a bad idea. “I- do you know what being transsexual is?”

“Yes.”

“Would you- If you knew someone who was one, what would you do?”

“Smallville are you telling me you’re a man?”

*

A week later, his parents visiting for the weekend, he told them.

“You know,” his ma said, and the boy felt a lump in his throat, “I did always want a son.”

“Aye, you were always wonderful, don’t get us wrong, but this is excellent news.” His pa is grinning, “We’ll need to give you a proper haircut though- and a proper name.”

They walk down by the river- it’s not as clean as the one down in Smallville, but it’s still nice to be beside the water. The boy wouldn’t care if he was walking through a tip though- he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop smiling.

“You know my maiden name is Clark- I did always think it’d be good to have someone to pass it on to?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Do you like it?”

“Yes, yes." The boy- Clark, gives his mother a grin.