Work Text:
Farrah had always loved the news, more than anything else in the world. When she had been a kid, she’d run around with a TalkGirl (the one she had demanded for Christmas) and had insisted on playing journalist with all of her friends, whether they liked it or not. She would type up all of their interviews into a newsletter, print it out, and give it to all of her friends.
It hadn’t always helped her with keeping them, to be fair.
Now, Farrah was thirty-two – though she would never tell anybody that, because people were too nosy – and not much had changed. She had grown taller and her blonde hair had grown into chestnut brown, and now she wore glasses. But her love of the story – that remained.
There had been rumors going on about strange things happening in town. A man had fallen off a building and yet survived, saying some bizarre notions about a woman coming out of the sky to break his fall. Then there had been a woman who swore someone had swooped in during a bank robbery and saved them all before tying up the bank robber. No one had much of a description; they would just call her the “woman in blue”.
The woman was either tall or short, pale or tan, depending on who you asked. Farrah had been trying to get a more detailed description for a week now, and she’d come up with nothing at all. The “woman in blue” seemed like she could be literally anyone, provided that they were a woman.
And now, it was three AM, and Farrah had cancelled on her high school friend’s bachelor party in order to try, desperately, to drum up some more leads and figure out some likely suspects. Who would have the most to gain?
That question wasn’t one that really helped. Everyone could benefit from becoming a hero, at least in the short term. People would hold parades in their honor, would never make them pay for their own drinks. It would be great, up until the criminals would come to call. People generally didn’t like getting foiled when trying to commit crimes. If someone wanted to snatch purses, they might be prepared for an unusually strong old lady, but they wouldn’t be ready for someone who could fly.
A hero would be a disruption in the continuum; it couldn’t be allowed to stand for long. Someone would be mad.
“Do you mind doing that somewhere else?” Farrah turned and snapped at the woman behind her, who was playing her music on full blast without bothering to use headphones. “Or, you know, plugging headphones in?”
“They broke,” the woman replied sheepishly. Farrah spent a moment looking at her, noticing that she was tall and slim, with a small bop of blonde hair and a headband that pulled her bangs back. She had never seen her before. “And I want to find out who won the game.”
“But you’re listening to Eric Clapton.”
“The game isn’t on yet.”
Farrah wanted to snap at her, but there was something in her eyes that caused her to stop, some kind of feeling like she had met her before. Then again, it was a small town – maybe she had met just about everyone before.
“Have we met?” she asked. Curiosity trumped subtlety in that moment, as it did most of the time for her.
The woman smiled.
“I don’t believe so. I’m Jeanette.” She stuck out her hand, but still didn’t turn off the radio. Farrah was surprised the woman didn’t introduce herself as Layla with the amount the song was blaring.
“It’s nice to meet you, Jeanette.” Farrah paused. “You know, I’m a journalist.”
She looked around herself to reorient to exactly where she had been writing in the first place. Sometimes, when she got to jotting down notes and taking pictures of the world around her, she got so lost in the text, in the narrative, that she felt as if she was fading into it.
Right now, she was stuck in the front row of a Greyhound bus station, and nothing that exciting had happened. But there was Jeanette, and that was something.
“I know,” Jeanette replied, “I’ve read your pieces in the paper.” She reached over and turned her radio off, then sat down beside her and crossed one leg over the other. “What kind of story are you doing here? The exciting world of bus stations?”
“I mean, you never know. Something could happen. One time, the bus pulled up on the wrong side of the street, and someone pointed out they weren’t allowed to do that. But then another bus came, and everyone got on it.” Farrah sighed and dragged a hand down her face. “We really are pressed for news in this town, aren’t we?”
“Well, that’s why I moved here,” Jeanette said. “I used to live in Chicago, but… the big city, you know. When I grew up, I used to watch Footloose and kind of wish I lived somewhere like Bomont.”
“Where they didn’t let you dance?” Farrah asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Well, not that part. I do like dancing, but I’m not very good at it!” Jeanette laughed, and Farrah was struck by the sense that maybe she was hiding something, though Farrah couldn’t fathom what. “But you know, a small town. Quiet.”
There was a long, awkward pause, where all Farrah heard was an old woman pushing her cart around the terminal.
“Well, not always quiet,” Jeanette said.
“That’s true,” Farrah replied. “There’s been a lot of excitement recently. I’ve been hoping to look into some of it.” Would it be too much to get some tiny crumb of information from this random woman, or was she grasping at straws?
“You are?” Jeanette asked. “I’m sure you’ll do a pretty… comprehensive story on it.”
“Have you heard anything about that?”
Jeanette stood up and moved up one row, plopping down in the chair next to Farrah.
“I’ve heard a little bit. It’s almost kind of a local legend, isn’t it?”
“A local legend?” Farrah asked. “How do you figure that? And where are you from, anyway?” It was a small town, but somehow Farrah had never seen Jeanette until this day.
“From nearby. But not here.”
“Mysterious,” Farrah said. Her heart was beating the more she talked to this woman, as if they were alone somewhere instead of sitting side by side in forest green chairs in a Greyhound terminal that looked like it had last been cleaned during the Carter administration.
“Well, I decided that I needed a fresh start,” Jeanette said. Her head darted around for a moment, and then she stood up from the seat with a jolt. “Uh, sorry. I’ll be right back.”
Farrah watched as Jeanette burst out the door. She wondered if she should jump up and stop her.
Somehow, though, she knew that she would see her again.
***
“Did you hear, Farrah? The superhero struck again!” exclaimed LaRhonda Barrett, Farrah’s editor. “Did you find out anything from your investigating last night? Or were you actually just hanging out with a stripper dressed like a fireman?”
Farrah didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had spent three hours in the Greyhound station and not learned much of anything.
“I’m still looking,” she said instead. She wanted to stop thinking about Jeanette and the way that she had rushed off, but somehow, it kept sticking in her brain, rolling over and over again. But then it hit her, like a brick wall. She could have snapped her fingers when she thought about it.
Why hadn’t she seen it when she had been right there? But now, the running, the asking, the lack of reason for being there in a bus terminal all suddenly seemed to make sense. But it didn’t explain why she had been so curious about Farrah in turn.
Maybe her theory was wildly off.
But there was only one way to find out.
“I’ll be right back,” Farrah said, and now this was her turn to rush off.
***
It wasn’t hard to find Jeanette – she was back at the Greyhound station, her radio in her hand all over again. Looking through the window, Farrah couldn’t tell what she was listening to this time, but she was leaned forward slightly, transfixed by something. When Jeanette’s interest piqued, she looked beautiful in a way that made Farrah wonder how it hadn’t hit her before.
There was a way that she held herself that she hadn’t noticed.
“You’re the one,” Farrah said as she walked over. “Don’t try to deny it. You sat there talking to me for like an hour and you didn’t say a word. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jeanette looked at her, cocking her head to the side.
“Tell you what?” she asked. Farrah snorted.
“You’re the one who was flying in and saving everybody.”
“You think I’m Eagle-Girl?”
Farrah blinked.
“Well, you have to be, because I never heard this woman referred to as Eagle-Girl before.”
Jeanette smiled and stood up.
“I have to go,” she said, and began to walk out the door and, almost before Farrah could react, she was walking down the street in a quick stride. Farrah leapt up, grumbling. She should have suspected it, she guessed, after all – Jeanette was a superhero (a superhero! Farrah could still barely believe it), so of course she could make an escape if she wanted to.
Farrah was out of breath, ducking out the door and chugging after her.
“Jeanette!” she called. “Wait!”
She watched as Jeanette pulled a door open and ducked inside the building.
Farrah tried to rush after her. She definitely was who she had accused her of being, then, she had to be, or otherwise she wouldn’t be running, would she?
TMZ would never have a story quite like this, she mused, but musing and running at the same time was not as easy of a task as it should have been. Maybe Farrah was out of shape these days; she should really get back to Zumba like she kept promising herself she would.
She caught a glimpse of Jeanette just as she ran into the elevator, and Farrah ducked in there just before she could press the “close doors” button.
“You need to talk to me,” Farrah told her.
“No, I don’t,” Jeanette replied. She didn’t sound worried at all; she sounded as if she simply wasn’t going to talk about it and Farrah was just going to need to accept it. It was as if Farrah had come in and told her that the world was flat and Jeanette simply had to explain to her, patiently, why it couldn’t be so.
Jeanette pressed the “up” button and crossed her arms in front of herself.
It began to go up, and Farrah tried to think of a way to weasel something out of here in thirty seconds.
There was a sudden, lurching, squealing sound that made Farrah cover her ears. The elevator stopped, then shook, then stopped dead again.
Jeanette cursed under her breath. Farrah paused, rubbing at her ears, then grinned.
“Watch it, I don’t think Superman curses in public,” Farrah told her. “And I think you’re going to be stuck with me for a little while, so you had better give me some answers.”
“What do you want to know?” Jeanette shot back, “And more importantly, why do you want to know?”
“Because the people have a right to know if we have a superhero in our midst,” Farrah said. It sounded a little thin even as she said it, but maybe that was just because there was nowhere else in the elevator to look except for Jeanette’s eyes. They were blue, maybe – no, no, maybe they were brown. It was hard to tell for sure; the only way to know was to keep looking.
“You’re talking as if I’m a killer instead. And I’m not admitting to anything, anyway,” Jeanette replied. She looked right back at her.
Farrah took a shaky, awkward step forward, fingers dancing on her own hips, and considered it. She was in here with someone who had super strength and super power and who knew what else – if she wanted to shut her up, she could do it and have plausible deniability at the end of the day.
But somehow, Farrah felt that Jeanette wouldn’t do that, even if she couldn’t entirely put her finger on why. There wasn’t danger in the power, but safety.
Try making that into a 500-word article, though.
“What about off the record?” Farrah pressed.
“’Off the record’ is usually something journalists say to get people to get themselves into trouble,” Jeanette replied. She smiled again, and Farrah found herself wondering if she could just stay in there all day, watching the gleam and the brightness of it. “Are you trying to get me to get myself in trouble?”
Farrah leaned up and pressed her lips to Jeanette’s – take a risk, her heart said, take a risk. Jeanette’s arms slipped out and wrapped around Farrah’s shoulders, squeezing them gently as she returned the kiss, then deepened it.
When Jeanette pulled back, looking at her, Farrah smiled and said, “Well, what about now?”
Jeanette tilted back her head and laughed a little, then reached out and easily pushed apart the elevator doors. She reached out, grabbed one of the cables and began to climb up, before extending her free hand in Farrah’s direction.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you coming, or are you going to stay there all day?”
Farrah reached out, grabbed her hand, and wondered what the hell she was going to report back to LaRhonda tomorrow.