Super: Origins

by Palladian

  Casey made a noise that could have been described as a growl and blushed slightly. “That guy was making some horrible comments and really made me angry. When I warned him to stop, he just got worse, so I showed him the door.”

  “What happened with the paint?” Lex asked, now more curious than ever.

  Casey looked away a little guiltily. “Well, we’d been standing near the edge of the roof, and when I grabbed him to throw him out, I bumped the paint bucket and it fell. That jerk shouldn’t have had it there, anyway.”

  “Probably not,” said Lex, trying to hide a grin. Since nothing terrible had happened, Lex clearly saw the humor in the situation now, but she didn’t want to laugh because Casey still seemed upset.

  They walked in silence for a moment, Lex enjoying the clouds that were starting to turn colors as the sun sank lower. She still felt a bit edgy, so she opened the water bottle and took a sip, noting from the plastic flavor that it had probably been in the refrigerator for a while. Lex never usually had to talk so much about her past, and the experience had brought up feelings that she usually tried to leave buried or forgotten. She’d tried to explain some of her history to her fiancé before, but he didn’t really seem to want to know. At one point, he'd even asked her why she wasn’t “over it” since everything had happened so long ago. That hadn’t been what Lex had thought of as a high point in their relationship.

  Casey’s voice brought her back to the moment. “So, what did you think of everyone? I know Lily wasn’t there, but I think you’ll like her when you get to meet her.”

  Lex laughed. “Everyone seemed very nice, but I don’t think Joan liked me much. I figure there’s no way I’m going to get the job, though. It just doesn’t seem like something I’m suited for.”

  Casey looked down at her again, an eyebrow raised. “I figure it’s pretty likely you will get the job. Don’t worry about Joan; she’s like that in all the interviews. In the two years I’ve been here, though, you’re the only candidate everyone in the team has voted for. Well, not Lily, I guess, but I bet she would have, if she’d been around.”

  Now it was Lex’s turn to look up at Casey, puzzled. “Really? Why do you think everyone voted me in?”

  “The only vote I figured you wouldn’t get was Joan’s because she’s always been sort of law-and-order. But I think some of the things you said got her liking how your mind works. Riss, well, I knew she’d vote for you after your little speech.”

  “Oh, that,” Lex said, feeling a blush on her cheeks as she remembered her long response to Riss’ question. “Well, I figured after a while that it was probably better just to go with radical honesty, but maybe I went a little overboard with that answer…”

  Casey held up a protesting hand. “I didn’t have a problem with anything you said, I just said I thought Joan might have. But I was pretty sure Riss would eat it up. Just a hunch, really, but when you get on the team, you may want to ask her how she got involved with us. No one else has been able to get the story out of her. As far as Serena’s questions, well…” Here, Casey broke off into laughter.

  “I figured she wouldn’t vote for me, since I protested them,” Lex admitted.

  “Are you kidding? Most of the people we’ve interviewed wouldn’t answer any of her questions! A couple folks answered one or two, but you’re the only one who answered all five.”

  “What do you mean, ‘all five’?”

  “As current team members, we’re allowed to ask any questions we want of candidates. However, five questions are all that are technically allowed for anything not specifically related to the position. I think you may have answered more than that, though,” Casey responded, with a bit of a smirk.

  Lex shook her head and tried not to blush again. “What can I say? I’ve had some friends in my time that have asked me wilder questions than that. I guess you just get used to it after a while.”

  “So,” Lex continued after a few seconds, turning her face to look in Casey’s direction, “what’s this ‘trial’ thing all of you kept talking about?”

  Grinning back at her, Casey replied, “Well, you’ll find out more about this when you get the job, but all of us on the team are able to do things most people can’t. That’s what the trial is about—testing your abilities.”

  Lex digested that bit of news and decided not to pursue it further at the moment. Instead, she asked, “Are you adding a bunch of people to the team? It sounds like you have lots of candidates.”

  “We’re only adding one person, from what I’ve heard,” Casey replied. “It seems like it takes running through a lot of interviews to find someone good, though.” Casey elbowed Lex then and they both started laughing. Surprisingly, Lex started to feel herself relaxing and even feeling a little happy while talking to the taller woman.

  “Hey,” Lex began, still looking at Casey, “when you said you’d already made up your mind about me, it almost sounded like you’d decided before the question and answer thing. Why did you vote for me?”

  Casey cocked her head to the side for a moment, as if considering. “Well, I liked our initial conversation. You didn’t try to get me to tell you any secrets, you just asked my opinion. Also, when we met I just got a good feeling about you.”

  Lex smiled, looking straight ahead at the sidewalk, but glanced back up at Casey for a second. “Same here.”

  They continued to walk quietly for a while amongst the spray-painted warehouses with broken and boarded-up windows. Lex smiled to see the colors of the clouds, now glowing bright gold, pink, and purple.

  After a while, Casey turned towards Lex. “So, did you grow up poor? You said something about that during the interview and I was wondering. If you don’t want to talk about it, though, that’s OK.”

  Lex thought for a moment, then answered carefully. “It’s OK, I don’t mind. It was after I left my parents’ house.”

  She bit her lip then, hoping Casey wouldn’t ask any further questions on the topic. Lex also couldn’t help but think about the pact she’d made with herself after fleeing from her parents. Since she’d been forced to lie constantly there in order to survive, Lex had sworn to herself that she’d learn to be truthful, especially when people asked questions about her past. She knew she could tell more or less of her story, given different situations, but she’d resolved never to lie anymore to cover up what her parents had done. That fact made her nervous as the conversation continued because she felt like she didn’t want to burden Casey with those stories. At least, not yet.

  “Why? What happened?” Casey asked curiously, bringing Lex’s thoughts back to the present.

  She could feel the sweat start to pop out on her forehead. “I had to go when I turned 16. It didn’t give me a good starting point, so I lived very close to the edge for years.”

  “Why did you have to leave so young?” said Casey, looking down at Lex with concern.

  Lex sighed, bit her lip, and then dove quickly into the explanation, face turned towards the ground and mumbling. “My father told me to leave or he would kill me.”

  “What? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” Casey said, leaning her ear closer.

  Lex sighed and felt herself mentally disengaging from the situation a bit. She said again, more calmly and a little more loudly, “Well, my father told me to leave or he would kill me. I figured it was a no-brainer, so I left.” When she realized she’d started rubbing at the scar on her right forearm, she bit her lip again and stopped, dropping her arm.

  She wasn’t sure how Casey would respond, but she’d gotten used to dismissive or non-existent responses to information like this. Oh, well, Lex thought, at least I’ll probably never have to see her again, anyway.

  Casey was looking down at Lex with an angry expression. “What an ass! How could he do that to his own daughter? Does that sort of thing happen a lot in the city?”

  Hearing that made Lex feel as if the ground under her were no longer solid and the air stuttered in her lungs. She took a new breath but had to s
top walking, the thought bearing down on her that none of the few people she’d ever told had spoken out so strongly against what her father had done. When she felt she’d gotten the raging storm in her chest under control again, she saw Casey gazing down at her with concern.

  “You really are a kind person, aren’t you?” Lex finally asked, too overwhelmed to add anything else.

  Casey shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but are you sure you’re OK? You look kind of pale.”

  Smiling up into Casey’s frown, Lex answered, “I’m fine, don’t worry.”

  Lex started moving once more, and Casey fell into step beside her. “To answer your question, though, I don’t really know if this sort of thing happens more in the city than the country. What was it like, growing up in the country?”

  Casey looked up at the clouds, smiling a bit, and started to tell Lex stories of growing up on a working farm: planting and plowing, catching fireflies on summer nights, playing hide-and-seek in fields of corn much taller than a child, eating an ear right off the stalk, learning to ride the neighbors’ horses, and a million other things that a kid would love. At some point, Lex noticed to her surprise that they’d almost reached the metro.

  Just after Casey had finished telling a story about chasing raccoons with the farm dog, Lex said, “Thanks a lot for walking here with me. I liked talking to you, and I hope we’ll meet again.” She smiled then, even though she thought that, unfortunately, the likelihood of that happening wasn’t too high.

  “Same here,” said Casey, sticking out her hand. Lex put her comparatively tiny hand in Casey’s, hoping she wasn’t a squeezer like Joan. Happily, Lex found Casey’s handshake gentle.

  “Listen,” Casey said, as Lex began to move towards the subway escalator, “when you make it onto the team, I think you’ll find out I’m a good listener. Maybe we can swap scary stories of the past, once you’ve settled in.” Lex frowned, realizing Casey probably meant they had some things in common from their pasts, and began to open her mouth to ask what she meant, but Casey continued, “Well, I only really have one bad story, but it is nice to know I’m not alone.”

  Lex nodded, an odd feeling in her throat. She cleared it and said, “I agree. Thanks again, Casey. If I get on the team, I look forward to it.”

  Casey laughed as Lex headed into the metro. “I tell you, you’re going to get the offer,” Lex heard from behind her, the sound following her down the escalator. She waved a hand behind her as a goodbye, hoping Casey could see.

  Chapter 3: Preliminaries

  As she opened the door, she could hear the television in the background. The condo was dimly lit, but through familiarity she didn’t need more light, and made her way down the long front hall then turned left to go into the living room. Kurt sat on the couch watching some show she wasn’t familiar with and turned as she came into the room. The back of the couch ruffled his short blonde hair as he moved and his blue eyes seemed tired.

  Gently smiling in greeting, Lex couldn’t help but think back to when she’d first met Kurt Soames about two years before. She’d been in a week-long class to learn a new software tool for work and had been paired with Kurt to work on the same computer. He’d charmed her with his quick wit and dry sense of humor, and she’d done her best to help him learn to use the tool, because he’d been pretty hopeless with it. They’d had their first official date the Friday the class had ended, and had been together since then. Lex swallowed the sentimental lump in her throat at the memory and met Kurt’s eyes again.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said while leaning over to take off her shoes.

  “What happened to you?” he asked in surprise, looking her shoes up and down and taking in the bandage on her hand.

  She laughed wryly. “It’s a bit of a long story. Let me make something to eat and then I’ll tell you.”

  Kurt glanced at the TV, which had gone to commercial. He used the remote to shut it off, saying, “I’ll come with you; this was kind of boring, anyway.”

  Lex poked around in the kitchen for a while, finally settling on putting a frozen dinner into the microwave. They sat at the kitchen table as Lex explained as much as she could of the afternoon’s events, showing off her torn skirt as she got to that point in the story.

  “Anyway,” Lex said as she neared the end of her description, “they told me that a courier would come by tomorrow with their answer, and that I should be prepared to respond to them by the end of the day if they had an offer for me.” She laughed softly and shook her head as the microwave cycle ended, and she moved to get her dinner. “It sounded a bit pretentious, I thought. I figure I’ll just get a rejection like I have from most of these other interviews.”

  Kurt shrugged, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know about that. I’ve never heard of the outfit you interviewed with, but some of these small agencies have odd rules that they follow. They may well send a courier by, so don’t plan on going out tomorrow morning. We can shop for a new suit and shoes for you over the weekend, after we have lunch with my parents on Saturday.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Lex replied quietly as she felt the unrest in her stomach start. Part of the queasiness came from considering the balance currently on her credit card. She could charge a lot more to it, but she hated the idea. Lex also didn’t relish the argument she knew she’d get when insisting on paying for her new suit herself. No matter how many times Kurt offered she still didn’t feel right about spending what probably amounted to his parents’ money. The other reason, contemplating lunch with his parents, usually made her feel a bit nauseous due to nervousness. Also, the pot pie she’d chosen was cardboard-like on the outside and unpleasantly gluey inside, which wasn’t helping in the least.

  “All right, it’s settled, then,” Kurt said with an air of finality, trying to stifle a yawn. “And don’t be surprised if you do get this job. It sounds like they were impressed with you at the interview.”

  Lex smiled a little uncertainly. “It’s just like nothing I’ve done before,” she replied. She hadn’t been sure exactly what she could reveal of her conversation with Sauer, so she’d just settled on telling Kurt that it looked like they would want her to do something different than she had been doing, something related to her martial arts training.

  “Well, maybe it’s time for a change. And, there must have been a good reason for what they did because they contacted you, remember.”

  Lex nodded, thinking maybe Kurt was right in that regard. They must have decided to contact her for some purpose, and maybe she should just trust in that. She smiled up at him. “Thanks. You always have a way of making me feel better.”

  Kurt smiled in a way that made her heart jump. “That’s my job. Speaking of which,” he said, looking at the clock, “if I’m going to make it to my less-important day job tomorrow, I should think about turning in.”

  Lex looked at the clock and noted that it was past nine thirty. “You’re right,” she said with a sigh. Then she looked at Kurt through the lashes of half-closed eyes. “So, would you like me to tuck you in?”

  He chuckled low. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Get ready for bed and I’ll join you there,” she said with a smile.

  _____________________________________________________________

  Forty minutes later in the gym downstairs, Lex hit the heavy bag as she went through one of her many forms. It could be done without using the bag, but she liked to do it this way if possible, since it kept her mindful of what it was like to hit a person, something she needed to remember when using martial arts. She took it easier than she normally would have, pulling some of the hand-intensive blows with her left hand so that her wound wouldn’t reopen. Lex could feel a trickle of sweat moving down her spine, under her t-shirt and sports bra, as she fluidly went through the movements. The bag stuck slightly to her arms as she hit it, and the familiar slick feel of it along with the usual smell of old sweat when she hit it seemed to relax her somehow. As she worked through the catalog
of motions, she could feel her heart and lungs speeding up, and she moved with the heavy bag as if it were her dance partner or her lover.

  At the same time, Lex found her mind wandering to a subject it had returned to again and again lately. She wondered if it was normal to feel like such an outsider with your partner’s family. Worse, the feeling had grown over the past few months to the point where she’d begun feeling more like a stranger even when it was just her and Kurt. Many things he seemed to understand naturally she felt she never would, and vice versa. Sighing, she made an effort to let go of those feelings, telling herself that, due to her bad upbringing, she just didn’t know how to connect with his family yet and that she had a case of nerves due to the mention of marriage. Smiling at herself, she punched the heavy bag squarely and moved on to the next sequence.

  As she showered after her workout, Lex thought that tomorrow she'd apply for and follow up on job applications like she usually did, and she’d wait. If someone called for an interview (not a really common occurrence these days, but it happened), she would try to put them off until later in the afternoon or another day. Nothing wrong with giving the M Agency one day, she rationalized.

  By the time she’d finished with her shower and puttered on the computer for a while it had gotten to be after midnight, and her hair was dry enough that she felt she could go to bed without causing it to twist into undesirable shapes by the next morning.

  Yawning, Lex settled in next to Kurt and cuddled into him. He moved slightly in his sleep, pressing up against her. She felt a heavy weariness settle over her, and fell asleep in moments.

  She sat on a big rock overlooking a rushing river, the uneven surface rough against her hands as she leaned back. She could hear the dim pounding of a vast waterfall in the near distance and could even taste it in the tiny, clean breeze that blew by. The day looked slightly overcast and chilly, but she felt a great sense of peace seeing the water running by, the little bit of sun casting a glow over everything and the dark tree branches brought out against the sky by their lack of leaves.