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Jack is just starting to deliver Miranda’s welcome-home kiss - hasn’t even had a chance to slip her wife the tongue yet - when it happens.
It’s not like the girls snuck up on them. Giggling children are very easy to hear when you have nine years of experience listening out for it. It was just that whatever they’d been expecting to emerge into the living room, that was not it.
Purple rain boots, green leggings, and a purple shirt topped with criss-crossed suspenders was one thing. The huge, filthy green rock her hand was another. But the real icing on the cake was the fine stubble replacing what had been, just an hour or so ago, their oldest daughter’s thick brown hair. Bits of it could still be seen here and there, where whoever had held the clippers had apparently missed.
“It’s over, Superman!”
One fist on her hip, the other lifting her dirty green rock into the air, Alexandra shouted at the top of her lungs.
The adults froze and stared, while behind Alexandra the twins were laughing themselves sick, hanging onto each other and the walls to keep upright. Undeterred, the oldest child took one step forward, thrusting the stone in Jack’s direction.
“I’ve come to defeat you!”
Jack fought the laugh welling up in her chest, she really did.
“Oh, no!” She managed before the laughter started and she had to cover her mouth with one hand to try to muffle it as she spoke. “Oh, no, it’s...kryptonite! My one...weakness!”
Apparently that was good enough, as Alexandra took another step forward, thrusting the rock out even more forcefully.
“I, Lex Luthor, have defeated you!”
Jack, halfway to the floor already from trying so hard to hold her laughter in, decided to go with it. Reaching out with her free hand as if beseeching the villain, she slowly collapsed to the floor.
“My powers...fading. You win, Luthor...” and, with a dramatic flourish and more muffled laughter, she lay ‘dead’.
From the hallway, the twins were cheering the villain on, while Miranda still stood frozen in the doorway.
“Alexandra,” she started, only to be interrupted with another brandishing of the ‘kryptonite’.
“I’m not Alexandra, I’m Lex Luthor! Superman’s arch-nemesis!”
Lying on the floor, dead, Jack stealthily typed out a quick message on her omnitool, pinging Miranda’s before the other woman could respond to ‘Lex’.
She’s a kid, it read, hair grows back just let it go
She watched Miranda’s eyes flick over the message and, after a moment of stillness, watched some of the tension drain from her wife’s body.
“Alright, Lex,” she said, voice gentle if a bit tight. “That’s wonderful, but your rock there is dirty. Would you like to clean it up? I gather it would work better that way.”
After a brief contemplation of the rock in question, the newly-minted villain agreed and was lead out of the room to clean up and, Jack presumed, to neaten up her hair a bit.
She rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes, listening to the hum of Miranda’s voice and the bright laughter of their children. Her eyes welled up a little.
“This,” she whispered to herself, “Is the fucking life.”