Chapter Text
For the second time in her life, Lena stepped off the bus at a stop that she thought she would never see. Just like the first time Lena had arrived in Midvale, Kansas, she was surprised to be there, but there were a few differences. For one, Lena knew the woman that she had come to visit. Leanne Dixon, Granny D to everyone in town, had once been the only person that Lena truly considered family, her adopted mother’s mother who had taken Lena in and given her a home and place to belong when her world turned upside down when she was sixteen years old.
There isn’t a cab to catch here, Lena knows. Midvale had always been a small town, a town that she had once thought was too small. Now, Lena can’t help but smile as she looks around. It doesn’t take long to spot the salt and pepper hair of her grandmother, leaning against the bed of a red truck in the parking lot of the bus station. Granny D looks just like she did ten years ago, except the laugh lines around her eyes are deeper and her hair is more salt than pepper now, but her smile is just the same and her eyes still shine as bright as they always did when she catches sight of her granddaughter. Lena feels her own smile growing bigger as she hurries towards the woman, dragging her suitcase behind her.
“Be still me heart,” Granny says as Lena approaches her. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
“Granny,” Lena sighs in comfort as she is immediately pulled into a hug by her grandmother. She still smells the same too, a mix of her rose scented perfume and the vanilla and sugar of her famous chocolate chip cookies. “I missed you.”
“Well, you didn’t have to wait ten years to visit again,” Granny grins as Lena shrinks back a bit sheepishly. “I know you city folk are busy, but a phone call would have been nice.”
“I’m sorry,” Lena says truthfully. “Everything has been so crazy since I left, I feel like I haven’t had a moment to rest.”
“Oh I know,” Granny kicks off the bed of the truck and begins to move towards the driver’s seat. Lena eyes the cane she carries with curious eyes. That was a new addition. “I’ve been following all of the articles on you. You caused quite the stir up in Metropolis.”
“I was mostly damage control,” Lena lifts her suitcase into the bed, tucking it up against the window to avoid the worst of the wind out of a habit that she didn’t know she still had. “Lex was the actual cause of the problem.”
“Brothers are like that,” Granny shrugged casually. She started the truck as Lena climbed into the front seat. Lena looked at the black cloth seats, touchscreen interface, and latest model phone sitting in a cup holder with appreciation.
“I see you’ve upgraded.”
“It’s been ten years.” Granny gave Lena a withering look. “Things change. Not everything, but some things have changed.”
“What hasn’t changed then?” Lena asks as she pulls her seatbelt on. Granny grin turns mischievous then, a once familiar look that brings an unexpected surge of joy in Lena.
“You’ll find out.” Granny puts the truck into gear and they set off.
Lena isn't sure if it's a comfort or not that half of the buildings thetypassed on their way through town are unfamiliar. Midvale was a town that Lena had once known like the back of her hand. She knew that the second of the only two lights in town was always slower but the first one had a tendency to short out when it rained. She knew the steakhouse had the best fried pickles but the Mexican restaurant had the best burgers. She knew the back roads and hideouts where the road changed from pavement to gravel to dirt. This town had been her home once upon a time and despite what everyone had expected, Lena had loved it.
Granny points out some of the new signs, complaining about various families that had branched into small businesses as the town expanded with new work opportunities. Lena takes as much of it instride as she can, but her mind can’t help but fill in some gaps. She sees the football field where she spent two seasons sitting in the stands, cheering for a group of boys that she had never really been friends with but was happy to see succeed. She sees the ice cream store where she would stop at most summer afternoons, remembers damp blonde curls and bright blue eyes shining as they shared a sundae. She sees the park where she had taken pictures before prom.
“And that’s when they installed the bathtub downtown,” Granny was saying when Lena turned back in, blinking away the memories that had come up without her consent. “But they took it down after they caught the theater teacher smoking weed in the tub at two in the morning.”
“What?”
“Oh, good, you’re listening now,” Granny said, laughing. Lena felt her cheeks warm and turned her gaze back out the window for a moment before turning back to her grandmother.
“Sorry,” she cleared her throat. “What were you saying?”
“I was thanking you for making the trip,” Granny said. “I know how busy you are up in the city. I appreciate you coming.”
“Of course, Granny,” Lena said, reaching out to rest her hand on her grandmother’s arm. “I do admit that I am a bit confused at why you called me home. Your invitation was pretty vague.”
“We’ll talk about it once we get to the house,” Granny says. “It’s nothing too important right now, mostly just details that need to be ironed out. Plans and all that. The ranches weren’t built in a day, you know.”
Lena hummed an affirmation, still confused but knowing her grandmother well enough to not push the issue. Granny had never liked it when Lena begged for answers, always stating that Lena would have the knowledge she wanted when she needed to know it. The practice had annoyed Lena immensely as a teenager who understood nothing about her new life.
It wasn’t long before the buildings began to thin out and they were driving out west of Midvale towards the Dixon Ranch. The old water tower caught Lena’s eye as they drove past, looking rather fresh for a structure that had to have been at least 3 decades old.
“They gave it a new paint job last year,” Granny said. “Erased a lot of history. The repairs were needed but all of us wished they could have kept the names on there.”
Lena swallowed the emotion that suddenly rose in her throat at Granny’s words and the implication that Granny not only knew that a part of Lena’s history was carved into the metal tower but that she had been sad to see it disappear. It was a part of her past that Lena had spent years trying to let go of until she finally shoved it into a box in the back of her mind, pretending that if she didn’t think about it, it would mean she was really over it. The system had been faulty from the start but easy enough to ignore when Lena was buried in the politics and turmoil of trying to save her family name from ruin.
It wasn’t so easy to ignore when she was looking at the places where all those memories had been made. It was even harder to ignore when she remembered the ring that she had taken off on the bus, burning a hole in the pocket of her jeans. Jack had wanted to come with Lena to visit her grandmother, claiming that he hadn’t realized he still had a family member to win over, but Lena had stayed firm in her desire to travel alone. It was perhaps a little selfish of her but Lena hadn’t wanted the presence of Jack to taint her memories. Lena didn’t want to paint his image over all the places that she had once been. She’d tell Granny about the engagement, of course, she had the invitation already prepared to hand over, but later. After she knew why she had really been called back here.
It was a twenty minute drive through winding country roads before they reached the gates to Dixon Ranch. Lena had taken in the changed scenery with wide eyes. There wasn’t much difference in the shape of the land itself. The fence lines were cleaner, tighter, the gates that lead to various homesteads shiny and electric instead of the old wooden things they’d once been. Even the animals were the same, cows, goats, sheep, horses, all of them probably different from the ones Lena had seen as a teenager but still inhabiting the same space. There were significant differences though. Or rather, one significant difference with many impacts on the area. Wind turbines rose up from the ground every so often. They weren’t a dominating presence, not any more than maybe two dozen of them around, but they towered over the ground on both sides of the highway.
There was at least one to account for every landowner this side of town, but Lena’s eyes were inevitably drawn to the stretch of land that she knew belonged to the Danvers family, where there were several more turbines up. The same was true for the Dixon lands as well. Lena looked at Granny questioningly but Granny simply hummed along to the radio - the same local country station she’d always listened to, despite the advanced satellite radio setup in the truck - and pretended not to notice Lena looking at her. They pulled up the gate and Granny pressed a button on her visor, the gate swinging open a moment later.
“More upgrades, I see.” Lena commented.
“Hardly an upgrade when the damn thing breaks half the time,” Granny said. “Thank goodness for the Danvers. They’ve fixed my gate more times than I can count.”
The reference was made casually but it still sent a thrill of something tingling through Lena. Something that pulled on the tape holding that box closed. Lena stayed quiet as they drove the last three quarter mile stretch up to the house, roughly forcing down the plethora of questions that rose in the wake of Granny’s comment.
“You can put your bag in your room, it’s all ready for you.” Granny said as they parked out front. The house still looked the same as it did before. A simple, one story farmhouse with a large front porch that faced the sunset. The yard was neat and trimmed, a well tended flower garden lining the fence. The porch swing had been replaced, Lena could tell by the still shiny chains holding it up, but an effort had been made to make it match the rest of the porch furniture. Lena couldn’t help but smile at the sight. The house was so different from her sterile, modern condo in Metropolis, so much warmer and welcoming that Lena felt the tension in her shoulders release just from opening the door and stepping inside.
She made the familiar trek to the bedroom she had used for her two years in Midvale, walking down the long hall that stretched between the kitchen and the master bedroom, archways branching off to the den and the dining room and two doorways on the walls of either side. Lena walked past the doors that led to the office and bathroom and then opened the second door on the right wall. She was surprised to see that not much had changed since she had last been in the room. The bedding looked new and there was a nicer chair at the rickety old desk Lena had used to do her homework on, but everything else was almost exactly the same.
Even a single glance around the room, a look at the corkboard bulletin that Lena had created a decade ago and was still filled with pictures and mementos from her time in Midvale was enough to peel up the lid of the box that Lena was desperately trying to keep shut, so Lena didn’t linger in the bedroom for long. She set her bag on the bench placed along the foot of the bed and then made her way back down the hall, searching for her grandmother.
She found Granny out on the porch, sitting in her rocking chair with a pitcher of lemonade beside her, one glass already filled with the drink and two sitting there with ice. Lena joined her quickly, sitting down on the end of the porch swing that was closest to Granny’s chair.
“Are you expecting someone else?” Lena asked, eyeing the third glass.
“Yes.” For a moment, Lena thought she saw a hint of nervousness in Granny’s gray eyes, but it was soon replaced with the stubbornness that Lena was more familiar with. “Now, I don’t want you gettin’ all upset about this, and I need you to know that you are free to make up your own mind and live your own life, no matter what happens with the ranches but…”
“What are you talking about, Granny?”
“Time’s are gettin’ hard, Dynamite, and I can’t work the way I used to. Not since the heart attack.”
“You had a heart attack? When? Why didn’t you call me?” Lena asked hurriedly, hardly noticing the use of the nickname Granny had given her when Lena arrived at 16, all full of fire and ideas that she was sure would set the world ablaze with their brilliance, not to mention her determination to hate Midvale on principle.
“I had to make some tough choices and I don’t regret them, not one bit, but I thought that you needed to know about them. This place will be yours once I’m gone.” Lena sucked in a breath, uncomfortable with the very thought of her grandmother not being around anymore. “I know that you said goodbye to this place a long time ago, but, well, I guess I’d hoped you’d be willin’ to at least hear me out. Maybe you can even help me cut a better deal, I’m sure you’re used to that type of thing.”
“Cut a deal? What kind of deal? Are you selling the ranch?”
“Not exactly.” Granny sipped her lemonade. “We should wait until she gets here.”
“Who?” Lena asked, eyebrows raised skeptically. Granny shook her head, clearly not going to give an answer, but it didn’t matter all that much because it seemed like the answer was galloping down the driveway.
She was still a few meters away, too far to make out any details, but Lena knew who she was right away. She was riding a beautiful red and white paint, the rocking D of the Danvers ranch branded on the horses’ hind quarters. The leather was a deep, rich brown, the blue denim of her jeans standing out against the material. Her top half was covered in a blue pearl snap shirt, tucking into her jeans. Strong, tanned hands gripped the reins, honey blonde hair contained in a braid that flowed over her shoulder and reached nearly halfway down her torso. A cowboy hat was perched on her head, the brim pulled low to help shield dazzling blue eyes from the dust cloud formed by the galloping horse.
The horse came to a stop just outside the fence and Lena watched, mesmerized, as the woman dismounted with ease, murmuring to her horse as she lifted the reins over his head and tied them to the post outside the fence. She took a deep breath, her shoulders tensing, and turned to face the porch.
As their eyes met for the first time in a decade, Lena was helpless against the swarm of memory and emotion that flooded from that poorly sealed box. In a second, all the longing that Lena had felt for the past ten years was written plainly on her face and, before she even realized that she had stood from the porch swing, Lena was meeting her halfway up the sidewalk. Her arms wrapped around strong shoulders, her nose finding the forgotten but familiar crook her neck.
“ Kara ,” Her name escaped Lena’s lips on a sigh, her hard won self control failing the second she laid eyes on Kara. Kara’s arms slipped around her waist and pulled her closer.
“ Lena. ” Kara’s voice was soft and low in Lena’s ear, spoken like an answered prayer. If there was anything left of that box in Lena’s mind, it was gone now, washed away by the scent and feel of Kara. It didn’t matter that her mind was screaming at her to take a step back, to remember who she was now.
Lena was wrapped up in the arms of her first love again and the only thing she could hear was the thundering of her own heart as it rejoiced, the feeling of home singing in her veins.