i_seekthelost The City's Man & The Archeologist (cnt / Jack)
Prompt: Lana Lang wakes up from the Dreaming
She stirred first, pausing though not quite freezing when her eyes opened and she was somewhere she didn't recognize. It was indoors, she could tell by the lack of cold air against her skin, though something was slightly damp and wet on her forehead.
Lana reached up, found the cool cloth and then tried to sit up, "What... ?" She noticed the windows first. Lovely old, Metropolis windows, her heart wanted to call them. Arched and wide. Classic but new at the same time. Lana started to smile, and then saw a body out of the corner of her eye.
She almost hoped.
Almost.
But the legs she saw had no shoes. So she wasn't too surprised or disappointed when she saw it was simply Jack, and she realized she was in a strange new apartment, back in the strange new City, that even the King of Dreams believed to be odd but real, in his own way. And there anything was possible.
And how strange was her life that she could think a logical sentence, cold and hard, that contained the words 'King of Dreams.'
From the King of Dreams to the King of Cities. Lana certainly was filling her royal quota today.
"Hey. You feeling better?" His voice was gruff, but not without sympathy. "That was a hell of a wipeout. I thought I should, you know, keep an eye on you. Make sure you were okay."
She looked around again. "It's beautiful, really. And I grew up living out of tents and huts and hovels in Egypt and the Middle East. I wasn't always a Luthor."
It had the feel of an old artist's loft, re-worked from some bygone era where the building was a manufacturing plant of some sort; painted brick walls curved alcoves in the roof, probably left over ribs from cooling pipes, the big windows, painted cement floor, sturdy wood furniture, a huge fan in the kitchen.
"Going from homeless to this, is a very nice step up. Thank you."
"Don't worry about it. No one lives here." Jack reconsidered that last bit. "Well, except you, now. You know what I mean."
He sat back down on one of the armchairs, stretching his legs out in front of him.
"I was starting to get a bit worried, to be honest. You were out for quite a while, and I'm no good at first aid." Would it be in bad taste to make a mouth-to-mouth joke? Probably.
"You did?" Jack looked slightly confused. "I...didn't think that happened when you were unconscious."
Then again, what was normal in this place? It would be a bit dumb to accept the City moving under it's own power and then get worried about something a silly as, in Jack's opinion, a dream at an odd time. Still, she looked a bit upset.
She turned, giving him an appraising look. And then, bluntly, as if daring him to disbelieve her.
"The God of Dreams showed me what you meant about this place, this apartment staying still. The city buildings move and disappear in Dreamland." She paused. "The Dreaming."
From the look on her face, and tone of her voice, it was obviously Lana was at least partly expecting Jack to roll his eyes. But he'd spent too long around superheroes to disbelieve something like that.
"The...God of Dreams? I've never heard of him. Does he know anything more about this place? Anything we should know? And where is he?" Jack would quite like a conversation with him.
She smiled, in a quiet, calm sort of way, glad to be taken seriously; then shook her head. "He's not a conversationalist. He told me he couldn't tell me anything about anyone else." Her voice dipped a little, as she had been asking about someone in particular.
"And he didn't even know what this place was, just that it seemed to prefer to keep it's geography changing, even while people dreamt." She started moving towards the kitchen/kitchenette, etiquette demanding she see what was available so she could offer Jack something.
"He did imply the only reason he was there, here ? Is because there are people here who dream." Lana began opening cupboards. "Maybe I only remember what happened because I was on the Shores, not really sleeping. Otherwise I'd tell you look him up next time you catch some shut-eye."
Jack sat in silence for a few moments, considering. This dream god could potentially be a valuable ally, if he could be convinced to talk about other people. If he could keep track of others who were sleeping (and that was pretty much everyone), Jack could find out who else was here...
"Maybe I'll try it anyway," he said, turning to watch Lana. "I wonder if comes to people who aren't...quite as human."
He tried to put that delicately. No point in making her faint again.
"The God of Dreams, in a universal aspect should come to every being who sleeps. He shows up in quite a lot of cultures, there's no reason not to believe I saw him as I could best understand him."
She peered into the cupboards. "Coffee ? Tea ?" She turned to watch him, realizing she'd slipped from professor mode, to hostess. "I'm more comfortable with you than I was with him, if it means anything."
"No thanks, I'm..." Should he tell her he was currently metabolising the emissions from a smokestack down-river? Probably not. Jesus, he was so used to talking to the rest of his team that he barely knew how act in a normal social setting. Semi-normal, anyway. "I'm okay."
"That is reassuring, though," he continued with a smile. "The last god I met was pretty intense, so I guess they're all like that."
Hopefully this one wasn't intent on wiping out humanity. Killing the last one had been a real task.
"The last god you met ?" She paused for a moment and then burst out laughing. "No wonder you didn't even blink when I mentioned possible alien technology."
She pulled out a box of cookies, saw that it was unopened and within the box itself, the package was sealed, and came back over to him, popping open the bag.
"I just realized, I never asked when you're from. It probably doesn't matter now. It's just my curiosity rearing it's nosy head."
She sat down on the couch again and curled up, legs neatly under her.
"I've met at least one, and a couple of people who claim to be." He offered her a sheepish half-grin. "Not as interesting as it sounds. We generally just had to stop them blowing things up."
He sat back again, watching the cookies. She was a brave lady if she was going to the eat the food from this strange house. Or maybe he was just paranoid.
"I'm from New York, originally, but I've moved around a lot." Again, the sheepish grin. "My last home was actually a spaceship in Earth's orbit, in fact."
Her face lit up, a touch like a little girl's. "You're a superhero. Like Superboy." She paused to explain. "Where I'm from, there was a boy from another planet, Kyrpton. He was the last of his race, and he protected the Earth."
Lana bit into the cookie. "My Mom and Dad met Superboy out on a dig once. There was a sudden storm and a flash flood. Anyway, I grew up knowing about him. And now I have my very own 'when I met a superhero' story."
She threw her head back and laughed. "And mine definitely tops theirs."