Chapter Text
Out in the middle of the American Midwest, hours from the nearest city, there was a small quaint town in Kansas, surrounded by nature to the south and miles upon miles of cornfields and farmland everywhere else. It was incredibly picturesque, all turn-of-the-20th-century charm. The streets were narrow, the lamp and sign posts wrought iron, and the buildings old and full of small details you didn't see anymore. It seemed criminal to not have a flower box on every window or hanging flower pots by the front door.
It was the type of small town where you were born and buried there. The type of close-knit community where there was no such thing as secrets, where the biggest scandals usually tended to be a new haircut or wearing the same hat as somebody else.
In fact, for years the biggest scandal that had rocked their community was when, all the way back in 1934, young Ms. Florence Leigh eloped with Father Lawrence Wilson when they were 19 and 26, respectively.
(It was also equally scandalous but never mentioned when they came back and the new Mrs. Wilson was pregnant almost immediately, or how Mr. Lawrence went from Father Lawrence to Pastor Lawrence.)
It would take decades until the next scandal stunned the town, in the form of Jonathon Kent leaving to the nearest city for college on a football scholarship but losing it in his third year due to a devastating knee injury. He returned to his hometown with his head held high, and no degree in sight; but he did return with a pretty young woman on his arm, the newly minted Mrs.
Martha Kent.
She was a socialite who gave it all up for the farm boy and followed him home, ready to start a new life. The very same farmboy everyone in town had expected to marry Eleanor “Nell” Potter, Nell included. (Sure, they had only gone on a single date before, but Jon had been Captain of the football team, and Nell the Head cheerleader. They had been homecoming King and Queen, even if they came with other dates. Nell had waited 3 years for him to come back; how could Jon be so cruel?)
Unfortunately, the next thing that shook the town to its very core happened a mere ten years later, when meteorites fell from the sky in a devastating reminder of the power of nature and how weak humans are to it.
After that, after all the rebuilding and “coming back stronger than before”, the community was never quite the same.
Long gone were the scandals of a woman with a bobbed haircut or a bad perm, for after this there was scandal on scandal, the type of things that would make front page news if word got out.
Word never did though, and if whispers of it attracted the wrong sort of people, it was very quickly downplayed or swept under the rug.
Because it wasn’t just people that were born and buried there. Oh no, that applied to secrets and rumours as well.
Smallville citizens knew everything about each other. The good, the bad, the ugly. If somebody tried to hide a skeleton, there was somebody digging it up the next day. But as soon as somebody from out of town came sniffing around, it quickly turned to a staggeringly effective display of wariness and safeguarding.
They would welcome the outsider to their kitchen table, give them a taste of that famous small town hospitality, and distract them with a smile so innocent that butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths; all the while serving them soup made from the very bones that they were looking for, and the dog was chewing on under the kitchen table after just for good measure.
That was the kind of community Clara Kent grew up in. One that didn’t welcome differences, but would protect their own with an unwavering support that was unheard of in this day and age.
So, they wagged tongues behind closed doors about her being adopted, but if she hovered slightly off the ground when grocery shopping with her mother as a child? It received a blind eye, or was excused because she surely must have been an angel. She was so quiet and well mannered, nevermind the fact that she looked like one. Always in her spotless dresses and never a scuff on her mary janes, or a ringlet out of place. And if she wasn’t an angel, surely she must be a doll brought to life.
She had incredible doe eyes in the most stunning crystal blue, surrounded by a thick ring of curly black lashes, her skin was pale with a rosy flush, and had scattering of beauty marks and moles instead of freckles. Her lips were pink and shaped like a rosebud while her cheeks were chubby with the sweetest dimples. Clara’s hair was dark as midnight and fell around her face in a cloud of ringlets, and she had the cutest little bangs cut straight across her forehead.
They all agreed that Martha and Jon deserved a child like her, especially for long they struggled to have their own.
(It was conveniently forgotten how much they used to enjoy speculating about the Kent’s lack of children; surely the Kent farmhouse would have been full already if Jon had married dear sweet Nell.)
Clara grew up being excused by the adults, but not by the children. She never had many friends her own age, made worse when she left public school so she could be homeschooled by her mother. After that, they all grew distant until they faded out of her life, until all she had left was Lana Lang who lived down the road, and Pete Ross, whose parents were friends with her own. (Their fathers were childhood best friends, while their mothers were each other's closest friends in town, both never quite fitting in as the only two city girls who followed their farm boys home.)
With Pete, they weren’t the closest, being closer to cousins than friends by choice. Pete had a few other friends from school besides her, and his own best friend. (Who ended up moving away in grade 8 after his parents divorced.) Lana wasn’t her best friend either, as Clara’s mother didn’t like her going over to Ms. Potter’s house too often for reasons unknown to both little girls. Lana had many friends of her own anyways, so it was a split chance if Lana was even available the odd time Clara’s mother relented.
But for Clara those two were enough, and she had a happy childhood, and made due with her two friends all the way until she hit highschool, and her mother sent her back to public school.
There, she met Chloe Sullivan, a girl who had just moved to Smallville all the way from Metropolis.
Chloe was loud, and unabashedly metropolitan in the disapproving faces of the town. The two of them made an odd pair; the demanding, short, thin blonde dressed in fashionable clothes, and the demure, tall, curvy brunette who dressed like her clothes were from the middle of the century. They instantly clicked though, and Clara had her first close friend she made of her own volition in her life. They were attached at the hip, and so was Pete by extension. Sure, they weren’t best friends either, as Chloe still had hers out in Metropolis whom she texted, emailed, and phoned almost every day, and who she visited every school break. But Clara had her first female friend in years, as she and Lana had drifted apart years ago, when Clara started to feel incredibly dizzy and nauseous around her.
Of course, their friendship wasn’t smooth sailing, as they had plenty of arguments. But they had stuck it out, and Clara figured her life was going to continue being the same as she headed into her final year of high school.