Chapter Text
Kara’s no stranger to nightmares. With time, though, her old demons have got quieter, fallen into lulls, shivering in her peripheral vision; she’s learned how to remember the good things and fold away the tragic ones, to love something even once it’s gone.
The boggart had dragged every ghost from the back of her mind into the forefront of her dreams, shattering her sleep with the screams of her family as killing spells flew and explosions baked the ground. The night quickly becomes a dreaded enemy, and despite her best efforts, it exhausts her, trying to cohabitate inside her head with crippling grief made fresh.
It’s Lena who helps. Of course it is. Lena would do anything for her if she asked, or even if she didn’t. That’s how they work, the two of them, holding hands, running together, pulling at each other to keep them just ahead of the dark.
The Hufflepuff girls don’t ask any questions when Lena starts sleeping over in their dorms. They too often have friends staying over; Gryffindor kids currently having a row with their roommates, or Ravenclaws crashing after a group study session.
With Lena’s arm wrapped around her waist and the soft sound of her breathing against Kara’s shoulder, peace is far less elusive. And when her subconscious turns ugly, her best friend is there to brush the hair out of her eyes, to kiss the side of her head, to hold her hand. It lets the fear boil away, knowing that however much she’s lost, she’s gained, too.
///
She can’t pinpoint exactly why she wakes. It might be the cold, the silence, the lack of a now-familiar hold; whatever it is, it takes a second for her to realise that Lena’s gone.
It’s possible that she’s just gone to get a drink of water, but a small pebble of worry twists into existence in Kara’s heart, and she slips out of the sheets, and pads out of the dorm, scanning the common room before sneaking out into the corridor.
Lena’s silhouetted at the end of the hallway, looking small and thin next to the giant suit of armour that hulks beside her against the wall. Kara tilts her head in confusion, walking quickly to try and catch up to her.
“Lena!” she calls out, as loudly as she can without getting them in trouble. “What are you doing?”
She gets no reply, and Lena continues around the corner, pacing so fast it’s only just shy of running. There’s a sort of slump to it, though, not her usual pace at all, and her head lolls to the side.
Kara’s puzzled for a moment, before she realises that Lena might be sleepwalking. She remembers Alex telling her not to wake someone who’s sleepwalking, and it’s best to just gently lead them back to bed.
Kara tries to catch her, without being so loud as to startle her out of sleep, but the gap between them widens. She doesn’t really start to worry, though, until Lena sets foot on the first step of the staircase leading up the Astronomy Tower, lurching forward slightly, almost like she’s being tugged on her way. Sleeping people and great heights are a terrible combination.
Lena’s climbing up the stairs at an almost superhuman speed; she should’ve tired by now, or at least slowed down. The cramped, spiralling nature of the stairwell means that she can’t fly up to her, not without crashing and wasting time.
“Lena! Lena!” she calls out, because she’d rather Lena wake up in shock than have something awful happen higher up.
Suddenly, the staircase has ended, and Lena is moving across the circular room impossibly fast, as if each step builds momentum, dodging past telescopes she couldn’t possibly see if she were really asleep.
“LENA! Lena, stop!” she screams, desperation colouring the words as they leave her tongue. Raven hair is thrown back in the wind as Lena staggers closer and closer to the giant, gaping window in the side of the Tower, the one that Kara once loved because it let her see the stars.
She knows, somehow, right then, that if she’s ever here again, she won’t think of beautiful cosmos, but of the most terror she’s felt since the day her colony burned.
Lena shudders, freezing, and turns around to face Kara; she realises that Lena’s eyes are open, has no idea how long they have been, if she was ever unconscious at all. Her heart hammers.
She changes tack quickly, using a soft voice, trying to keep everything still and calm. “Lena, you’ve got to step back, or you’re going to fall over the edge,” she breathes out, each word lacquered with fear, impossibly aware of the quickly mounting stakes. She can’t believe that ten minutes ago they were asleep in bed, wound tightly around each other, and now it’s like she left her stomach back in the Hufflepuff dorms, and her insides are hollow.
“Kara -” Lena whispers, and she looks somehow both confused and entirely certain at the same time, before she leans forward and steps over the edge.
Kara’s heart actually breaks – not in the simple, love lost kind of way, but completely implodes, down entirely different fracture lines than the ones formed last time she lost everything.
But then, just for a second, she sees the necklace, tugged out almost completely horizontal, jerking Lena forward, and Kara almost breathes in relief before she realises that Lena’s still falling, still going to die, and she doesn’t have to think. Doesn’t have to do anything but run, and jump after her, leap out into the night with her because that’s them, side by side, no matter what.
Even though she probably can’t save them.
Lena looks peaceful as she tumbles downwards like a doll falling out of child’s hand, and Kara hates it because it’s a lot like giving up. She reaches deep, tries to calm herself as much as she can to use the raw magic required to catch up to Lena, when she started falling first. Finally, she grabs Lena in a tight hold, almost like they’re sleeping and she’s having a nightmare, except this is worse and somehow also horribly real.
She’s never flown two people before, and she’s panicking far too much to have the level of focus that raw magic needs. The most she can hope to do is slow them down to the point where they can survive. Kara tries her best, concentrates as hard as she can, but she can’t, not when they could die and she’d thought Lena stepped.
Barely a second before impact, Lena twists them, so Kara lands on top of her when they crash violently into the ground. The earth has never seemed so unforgiving; how could the same dirt that makes flowers grow also let Lena’s bones make that awful snapping sound?
“Kara? Kara, are you okay?” Lena demands, her voice thin but determined.
She isn’t sure if she’s alright. Mentally, no way in hell, and physically, she’s still too dizzy with the bubbling of raw magic and the energy it costs to be able to tell if she’s damaged in any way. But she says the only thing she’s sure will let Lena think about herself for a second. “I’m fine, I think.”
There’s a beat of silence, both of them registering what’s happened, and the fact that they’re still alive at all. Kara looks up. The top of the Astronomy Tower reaches so far into the sky that she can’t even make it out properly among all the darkness.
Then Lena’s shouting, “Kara, you’re an idiot! I can’t believe you did that. You can’t fly with two people, yet! You could’ve died.”
Part of her wants to punch Lena, to scream at her that she doesn’t care, how could she care? Lena says it as if it was a choice that Kara deliberated, and it aches that she doesn’t know it was an instinct, a reflex that she would never have resisted. And she’s so angry that even after everything, all the change and the growth and the new beginnings, there’s still a part of Lena that will always believe she is worth less than the rest of them, and Kara doesn’t have enough raw magic in her to make that go away.
“Well you would’ve died if I hadn’t!” she yells back, bursting with frustration and fear and hatred at the futility of the fact that Lena might not ever love herself as much as Kara loves her, ever even believe that she’s as important to Kara as she is.
Maybe Lena should learn to read minds. Maybe then she’d understand.
Then Professor Grant is storming over to them, and Kara is being pulled into Alex’s lap, wrapped in her arms, and her big sister is nearly crying, might actually be, and Kara hugs her back, never taking her eyes off Lena. She should be the one being held.
Kara tunes into the conversation in time to hear Lena mumble, “I – I don’t know,” before slipping back onto the ground as her eyes roll into her head.
The white of her exposed shinbone almost glows in the night, and Kara wants to be sick. Because it’s the match that sets the gasoline of her mind alight, swamping her with images of how broken she could’ve been.
///
Lena lies completely still in the hospital wing bed. She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping, and not even like she’s dead, but rather more like she was never alive at all – a beautiful porcelain doll that no one bothered to animate, left untouched in its box to keep it safe.
Kara sits on the edge of her mattress, one hand twisted in the starched sheets and the other resting on Lena’s sternum, because from there she can feel the rise and fall of her chest, the steady thrum of her heart. She’s still on edge, still waiting to hear that something went wrong, and they’ve lost it all anyway.
Professor Grant grills her for what feels like hours, and Kara rambles out her best attempt at a chronological recount of events. She stutters and stumbles over words, trying to articulate that death’s greedy fingers had again acquired a taste for the people in Kara’s life, reaching rotten hands out and touching Lena on the shoulder. Lena, who is so good, and doesn’t even understand herself yet exactly how good. Lena, who is going to change the world, who Kara loves all the way down to her bones and then deeper, who has been dealt a dark hand and a darker river still. Lena, who deserves the world, and gets nothing.
///
Kara barely hears the version of events that Lena gives; she’s too transfixed by the fact that she’s talking at all, that her lips are moving and she’s still her and she’s going to be okay. Eventually.
She’s been fighting against the tears for a millennium, but when Professor Grant says, “Why kill you if he could get you to kill yourself?”, she breaks, lets the salt water fall across her cheeks, each drop that chases the previous getting faster and faster, momentum from sadness.
When Lena explains that the only reason this happened at all was because she was trying to protect Kara from her dreams, hold her instead of binding herself, it wrecks her. She’d have nightmares twenty-four hours a day if it meant Lena was safe and happy, and she’s sure her horror reads clearly on her face, because Lena winces.
She loses track of time again and suddenly Professor Grant is leaving, taking the necklace with her. Supposedly, Lena’s safe now, but Kara wants to hold her hand forever, just to be sure.
So she does. Reaches out and tangles their fingers together. Lena’s always run cool, and she’s never minded, because Kara’s slightly warm, so it’s perfect, but now, she wishes Lena felt less chilled. She’s desperately searching for signs of life. The more she finds the more anchored she feels.
“It,” she finally manages through the tears, “I didn’t see the necklace right away, and… Just for a second, it looked like you stepped.” Just for a second, my world ended, she doesn’t say. Because even though it didn’t happen, wasn’t what happened at all, there’s a part of her that believes it could’ve. That plugs Lena’s childhood and her self-esteem and her quietness and how lost she gets all into an equation, and totals up to something that pulls the universe out from under Kara’s feet.
“It was all the necklace,” Lena swears. “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Kara wants to believe her, and maybe someday, she will.
///
Kara stays awake all night, even after Lena finally gives in to the draw of the concoction of potions she’s been given and slips into unconsciousness.
“Kara, you should rest, too,” Alex murmurs softly, gently, words said as if each and any of them might shatter her spine.
“I can’t,” she tells her. Kara can’t see Alex from where she’s wrapping tightly around Lena, focusing on the feel of her Lena’s back pressing into her front with each rhythmic breath, and the heartbeat that echoes through both of their chests. The warm weight of her big sister’s hand resting on her shoulder still registers, despite the thoroughfare of thoughts that is her brain.
She’s empty and overflowing, all at once. “I know the necklace is gone, but… I can’t look away, Alex. What if she walks again?”
Alex’s hand moves down to stroke delicately up and down her spine, a calming movement that usually works wonders but tonight does little to curve the harsh edges of the world. “Okay. It’s okay. We’re going to stay up till dawn, okay? You and me. And if you can’t hold off and you fall asleep, it’ll be all right, cos I’ll still be watching her, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Kara hums in reply.
Over Lena’s shoulder and through the window, she can make out the sporadic painting of stars that is scattered across the night sky. She chokes on the memory of the view from the Astronomy Tower, on what might’ve been the last thing either of them saw other than each other.
For the first time in her life, Kara doesn’t want to look at the cosmos.
///
Kara’s usually a deep sleeper.
It was pure chance, impossible luck, that she woke up so soon after Lena left, with enough time to follow her, to catch her, and she knows it.
There are a million universes out there where Kara doesn’t wake until dawn, shaken by one of the girls in her dorm whispering that there’s a body at the bottom of the Astronomy Tower, one of the students. Where she rolls over and Lena isn’t there, where the necklace’s enchantment has fallen back into its slumber, and no one ever knows that Lena didn’t step. Versions of herself and her life where she never sees Lena again, where she spends the next seven decades wondering why, wishing to go back and change everything.
Alex holds her hair back while she throws up in the bathroom, caught up in a hurricane of what-ifs where she loses, where they all lose, where Lena is gone forever.
It’s like there’s a boggart following her about in real time, not just showing her biggest fear, but the more likely possibility of the fork in the road they came across last night.
///
“Are you all right?” Lena asks. It’s late at night, and the matron has long since shooed the boys back to their dormitory. Kara’s allowed to stay, even though it breaks infirmary rules, thanks largely to puppy dog eyes.
“Me?” Kara sputters. “You’re the one who nearly died.”
“So are you,” Lena reminds her. They both know that at any point, she could’ve let go of Lena and saved herself; they both know that she never, ever would’ve.
She thinks that maybe it’s that which haunts Lena. She’s always been willing to do anything for Kara, and now that it’s occurred to her that Kara’s willing to do the same, she’s terrified. Lena is unfamiliar with the power of reciprocated love, the almost-silent, yet ever-present fear that someone would choose you over themselves.
“I don’t care about that,” Kara promises, and it’s odd, but true: she really doesn’t. Her nightmares never involve her hitting the ground, dying alone. There simply isn’t room in her head to worry about herself. Perhaps in a decade, she’ll stop suddenly in the middle of her routine, horrified by what happened to her fourteen-year-old self, but for now, she’s fine. “I just… I love you, and I’m so scared. I mean, Lex’s threats were always awful, but now they’re so real. And every time I can’t see you it feels like the world is getting smaller and my heart gets faster and I just – I just…”
She doesn’t know what to say.
That Lena suddenly feels like someone she could lose? No, her experiences as a little kid have given her far too good an understanding of morality; everything hangs by a whisper and a pinkie finger locked precariously with life in a breakable promise. She’s known since long before they met how ephemeral it all is.
That she’s had to imagine life without Lena, now, and it’s suffocating her? No, this isn’t about her, as much as those never-had futures will always linger with her.
That for the heartbeat when she’d thought Lena stepped of her own accord, Kara was terrified, is terrified, that Lena’s life isn’t something she wants to live in? Yes. That she hasn’t held Lena quite as tight as she thought she had, that the darkness of her childhood, of her family, of the poisonous words that small parts of herself whisper won’t ever let go. Lena used to worry that she had a rotten part, a time-bomb cog in the mechanisms of her brain that would crack and seep emotional sewage through her, turning her into her brother. Kara’s worried that she’s more right than she’s ever believed; except Lena’s darkness strangles herself rather than others, chips away at her ribs in a way that Kara can’t rescue her from.
Lena is so wonderful, but wears black-tinted glasses that mean she rarely sees it when she looks in the mirror.
“I love you, too, Kara. More than anyone. I’m so glad you’re okay. That we both are.” She cracks a weak grin. “I think I might drop Astronomy next year, though.”
She might be kidding, but Kara isn’t, when she agrees, “Me too.”
“And Kara?” What Lena says next makes Kara wonder if she can read minds, or if there’s simply no barriers between them after this long, not even physical ones.
“I’m going to work on it. Being better. For myself.”
///
The idea of a summer apart eats at Kara’s stomach, but she knows she’ll have to live with it, just like she has had to every other year, never being sure if she’ll see Lena at all for the next three months.
Chase tells them that she’ll be waiting outside, and then it’s just the two of them left to say goodbye.
She hugs Lena tight, to make up for all the hugs she won’t get until September. “I’ll miss you,” she breathes into raven locks and the crook of Lena’s neck.
Lena pulls back a few inches to reply, except instead of speaking, she freezes, her gaze flicking down for a second, resting on Kara’s mouth before jumping back up.
Before Kara has even a moment to begin to understand what that might mean, Lena’s tripping over herself to put distance between them, and suddenly, Kara’s alone in the Slytherin dormitory.