Chapter Text
“C’mon, Kara, you two can’t be on the same team!”
“Why, Alex, cause you know we’ll kick your butt?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “As if. No, you have an unfair advantage—it’s like you’re psychically linked!”
“Says the woman who has Kelly on her team,” Kara shot back.
Alex paused her bickering and gave Kara a knowing smile. Kara had fallen right into her trap. “Touché.”
“Wait- uh- that’s—um,” she flushed, looking at Lena who had also grown very red.
Nia snickered. Brainy, sitting next to her, simply added, “We can rearrange teams after the first game to even any unfair advantages.”
Anne watched the sisterly bickering from a couch next to Lena, feeling a sense of warmth. The serious team from earlier in the day had transformed to a playful bunch and expanded to include two new individuals, Alex’s partner Kelly and J’onn’s partner M’gann.
She noticed that Lena was a bit quiet. She smiled readily but did not engage in the bickering or teasing to the extent of some of the other friends. She wondered, not for the first time, if that was simply Lena’s personality or a sign of something deeper.
The teasing finally settled, and the group began a game of charades. They kept the topics relevant to someone whose memory extended only as far as 1996. Anne was touched by the thoughtfulness.
For her part, Lena found it difficult to focus on the clues. Lost in thought, she allowed her eyes to wander around the room. She remembered that terrible game night, more than a year before, when she had entered the room with two bottles of wine and a broken heart.
She had looked at each of these people and seen mockery behind their friendly greetings. The sting of betrayal, the self-loathing for killing Lex, the grief at discovering the woman she loved had been lying to her, the bitterness of feeling herself entirely, completely alone had felt all-encompassing, overwhelming.
And now? Now, all she felt from this room was love and belonging and an odd, warm sense of safety.
It was more than everything she had dreamed of—it was the life she had never allowed herself to hope to have. Her mother was alive, and whole. Lena listened to her breaths by her side with wonderment.
Lena felt her eyes fill with tears. She tried to hide them, not wanting to break up the mood, but of course Kara saw.
“Let’s take a beat,” Kara called to the group after her turn. “I’m gonna grab some more cookies from the kitchen. Wanna join, Lena?”
Lena nodded and quietly followed Kara to the other room.
“Hey,” Kara murmured as she led Lena into the kitchen. “Are you alright?”
“I,” Lena began, blinking back her tears.
Kara bit her lip, concern flashing across her face. “Oh, Lena. Is this about what happened with Lillian? Should we call it a night?”
Lena took a deep breath. “No, I’m alright. More than alright, actually,” she whispered. “I never imagined this, any of this. Having her here with me, having all of you…”
Kara smiled. “You deserve it, Lena. And I am so, so happy for you.”
Kara’s eyes settled on her, as warm and blue as the Mediterranean. Lena’s heart pounded.
They stood like that for a moment, just looking into each other’s eyes. Lena couldn’t look away. She wanted to confess, her feelings perched on the tip of her tongue, yearning to be shared, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Kara finally broke the silence. “I forgot to ask… how’d your mom find out I was Supergirl?” she said casually, as if trying to dissipate the growing tension.
If anything, this question only increased Lena’s heartbeat. Lena blushed. “She said,” Lena began, feeling silly. “She said she knew because I looked at you both the same way.”
“Oh? And how’s that?” Kara asked. Lena thought she detected just the slightest of a tease in her voice, though with a nervous edge.
Lena swallowed. It was now or never. Before…before she would have thought this impossible, but wouldn’t she have also said that having her mother back from the grave was impossible? That having a family, a team who loved her and stood up for her was impossible?
She sucked in a breath and gathered her courage. “Like this,” she murmured, fixing her eyes on Kara.
Kara gulped. “And that look means?” she said quietly, not daring to hope that her feelings might be reciprocated.
“That I love you.”
“Oh.” Kara’s one-word answer took Lena’s breath away, and she was about to backtrack, to say she was joking, to add like a friend, to run and hide in one of the lower labs.
And then Kara spoke, echoing Lena’s declaration like a vow, and Lena felt for the first time since perhaps she had been a little girl, collecting cans to build a spaceship to rescue a lost princess, that all was right in the world.
Both Kara and Lena were flushed pink by the time they returned to the study.
“Everything okay back there?” Alex asked with a sly grin.
“What?! Yes, fine, we’re perfectly fine,” Kara squeaked. She slipped onto the couch next to Lena, trying to hide her giddiness yet vibrating like a puppy that had just stepped foot at the park for the first time.
“Hey Kara,” Nia called. “You know you weren’t sitting there before, right?”
Kara turned red. Lena interlaced her fingers with Kara’s. “It’s alright, darling,” she murmured.
“I heard that!” Alex whooped. “It’s about time!”
“That’s wonderful,” M’gann said warmly.
Anne placed her hand on Lena’s knee, rubbing small circles. “I’m proud of you, love,” she murmured, and Lena felt her eyes grow misty again, overwhelmed by her happiness.
It was Kelly, in the end, who interrupted the gentle teasing coming from all sides of the room towards the new couple.
“How’s the lab setup going, Lena?”
Lena glanced at Anne. “I turned it into a makeshift clinic for the last few days. Since my mother is feeling better, though, I think I’ll start reconfiguring it to begin the first phase of my new research.”
“Ooh, what is it?” Nia asked.
“The Harun-El serum,” Lena’s eyes flitted to Anne’s again. “I altered the chemical composition to prevent psychosis while still enabling healing. It’s gone quite well, so far.”
“How many tests have you run?” Brainy asked.
“Um, just one,” Lena said sheepishly, turning to her mother. “I may have broken a few medical research standards developing the drug I used on you. It was very risky, and I’m sorry for that. I just— I was desperate for it to work.”
“I’ll remind myself to be angry later,” Anne replied with a twinkle in her eye, her heart bursting with pride. “No, Lena, it’s a miracle, and I am forever grateful because it brought me back to you.”
Lena bit her lip and nodded. “I’m optimistic,” she said after a pause to collect her emotions. “The models are promising, at least for recovery of function and accelerated healing. I’ll focus on perfecting the formula for now, and then launch a new company for the testing phase.”
“It’ll be amazing!” Kara proclaimed proudly. The rest of the group echoed their approval.
“How about you, Anne?” Nia asked. “Do you have any plans?”
“Oh,” Anne began, feeling shy as all the eyes turned back to her. “It’s all been so much. I haven’t really thought about anything, yet.”
“That’s understandable,” Kelly replied kindly. “You don’t need to have it all figured out right away, or even anytime soon. You went through something pretty huge. It’s normal to be overwhelmed.”
Anne nodded, grateful for Kelly’s empathy.
“I suppose… I want to understand the world around me. So much is different from, well, from when I left. And I want to understand my place in it. Maybe eventually, become a teacher. I’ve always wanted to teach literature. And above all, I want to make up for lost time with Lena,” she added with a squeeze to Lena’s knee.
“That sounds lovely,” Kelly said.
“I’d love you as a lit teacher,” Nia added. “Mine in high school was dry and monotone as hell.”
“You’ll always have a place with me, for as long as you need as you’re figuring it out,” Lena said. “If… if you want to,” she added. The fear of rejection, much softened, still had not entirely left her.
Anne smiled softly. “I’d love that, a leanbh.”
Supergirl alighted on a small hill by a road leading to the town in County Galway where Lena spent her first four years of life, cradling Lena in her cape.
“We’re here!” Kara said as she gently placed Lena on the ground.
“I used to have a perfectly good private jet,” Lena teased. “And now look at me.”
“Oh, hush, you know you love flying with me,” Kara responded.
“Flying? Not really. You?” Lena stepped forward and drew Kara in for a kiss.
Lena sighed as their lips met. Her heart had been racing from the nerves of the flight and settled into a contented gallop with the kiss. Her arms tightened around Kara as they kissed, and she savored the taste of her, the smell of Kara’s shampoo mixed with the aroma of ice clinging to her hair from the clouds and the salty tinge of the Irish coast.
It felt like home. There was only one thing missing.
Realizing the same thing, Kara pulled back reluctantly. “I told your mother I’d pick her up too, remember?”
Lena sighed dramatically as her heart danced in her chest. “Ah yes, I recall. Carry on, then.”
She allowed her mind to wander as she waited for Kara to return with Anne. Even though it was June, the weather was still chilly, and the gray skies did little to alleviate the cold. Still, Lena liked the chill. It helped her recover from the dizziness of her flight and the pounding of her heart following the kiss.
Ten minutes later, Kara returned, a shaky Anne in her arms.
“Here you go,” Kara murmured as she set Anne on the ground.
“Thank you, Kara,” Anne replied. “That’s… I don’t know quite how you got used to that, Lena?”
Lena shrugged. “Well, half the time it’s either that or falling to my death, so I learned to deal with it,” she chuckled. She winced as she saw her mother’s face fall. Unsurprisingly, Anne did not appreciate Lena’s habit for dry humor based on her frequent assassination attempts.
“I’m okay, really,” Lena apologized.
Kara stepped up to Anne. “I would never, ever let her fall,” Kara promised, her eyes serious and her face earnest.
Anne nodded. “I know.”
“Call me when you’re ready for me to pick you guys up, okay?” Kara murmured to Lena.
Lena nodded. “We’ll have to come back some time. I would love to show you around.”
“I’d love that.”
Kara leaned in to kiss Lena again, and then, with a warm smile at both women, she launched herself into the air.
In a way, the decades had touched the town less than National City. Still, as Anne and Lena quietly walked through the cobblestone streets of the place where Anne had spent her childhood and adolescence, the changes were clear.
There were houses and businesses in places where none had been before. They walked by what used to be a bakery where Anne used to take Lena to buy little cakes as a treat, and found it replaced by a dingy convenience store.
She needed this, Anne realized. She needed to see for herself the changes that the decades had wrought, even as they twisted her heart like a fist.
She saw the small park where she had taken Lena to play as a little girl. The paint looked like it hadn’t been touched up in years. Anne closed her eyes and remembered it when it was new.
She mourned for all the years that had gone by, silently, unnoticed by her as she lay unconscious, the years that had stripped the paint from the play equipment and added wrinkles to her face and transformed her daughter into the woman beside her. So much time, gone in an instant.
And yet, it was a miracle too. Anne allowed her eyes to drift from the aging buildings and streets of her hometown and instead settle on her daughter’s face.
Lena spoke softly. “I haven’t been back here,” she murmured. “Not since Lionel picked me up when I was four. I’ve been to Ireland, of course,” she hastened to add, “but coming here specifically always felt too raw for me.”
Anne slipped her hand in Lena’s and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad we came here. I think I needed to see it.”
Later in the day, they rented a car and drove down to Lough Corrib. They stood on the banks in silence for several long minutes, the wind whistling through the reeds chilling them despite their coats.
Lena trembled slightly, but not from the cold. To be back at the site of so many of her nightmares, the place she had forced herself to remember as a child in a misguided act of penance, brought up so many emotions.
Anne wrapped her arms around Lena. “All is well, love.”
Lena exhaled in her mother’s arms, feeling safer than she ever thought she would in the scene of her nightmares.
They stayed by the lake even after night had fallen. The sky had cleared, the gray skies giving way to a night full of stars.
Neither wanted to leave. Instead, they laid down on the grass, like they had all those many years ago, and gazed up at the stars.
Lena inhaled deeply, feeling peace and hope flow into her lungs. “Mom?” she asked, savoring the word on her tongue. It felt new and odd, but right. She didn’t know when she had begun to refer to Anne as ‘mother’ in her memories like she called Lillian, but she didn’t want to do so anymore.
“Yes, a leanbh?”
“Would you like to hear a story?” Lena asked.
Anne assented with a squeeze of her hand.
Lena smiled. Gazing up at the night sky, she began to recount the tale of her own journey to rescue her own lost princess from amongst the stars.