Chapter Text
Their first second date goes horribly.
Lena’s too nervous to think of good topics, so she falls back on what she knows, which means she spends about thirty minutes rambling about L-Corp, and Kara does indeed look absolutely hooked in what she was saying – which is incredibly sweet because Lena knows the business management is not the kind of stuff that easily entertains people – but she is also awkward, looking around her helplessly because Lena doesn’t even think to imagine that Kara might feel awkward in a five star restaurant.
Not to mention she decides to duck out of the date a quarter of an hour in, ‘a bathroom break’ that stretches out into over an hour before Lena even thinks to check in, only to find herself alone.
But still, Kara shows up a few hours later, with a sweet apology in the forms of donuts and a tight hug and, somehow, they manage to turn the rest of the night into an even greater date.
“Can I ask you something?” Kara says gently, cheeks just a bit puffed out with a donut. Talking with your mouth full is an act of the crude, Lilian would remark, but Lena can only focus on how adorable she looks.
“Of course,”
“Why National City?” Kara pauses, swallows, and then looks back at her slightly startled. “I’m not- I’m glad you’re here, I mean I wouldn’t have met you otherwise. But… Well, you said you were trying to distance yourself from LuthorCorp, right? Why come to a city with a Super?”
“In short?” Lena purses her lips, and shrugs. “Because I didn’t know she would be here. A change like that… It takes time. I made the official decision almost a year ago, and when she showed up seven months ago, I had already sunk a lot of money in the move.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”
Lena nods, smiling.
“Quite. But also… I could have still chosen another city by then. There would be some loss but the board would perhaps even back the decision.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t. It’s just, I chose National City almost at random. And when she showed up… I assumed it was Superman keeping tabs on me. And if that’s the case, moving to another city wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“Lena…” Kara says gently, impossibly sad. “Supergirl isn’t spying on you, I promise.”
“I… I think I know that. She seemed genuine yesterday.”
Kara beams, happy to hear that.
After that, Lena goes through various trials and tribulations, from being nearly killed by an assassin and saved by Supergirl, to joining her mother only to betray her and save National City, but somehow Kara is always there at her side at the end of the day.
And that’s how they fall in love. No, that’s ridiculous. Lena was already in love with Kara, a budding one, a small spark of interest that quickly turned into wildfire, and it grows, and grows, until it consumes her entirely and Lena finds herself leaning into Kara’s embrace even when she yells to herself that it’s platonic, that they’re not at that point yet, that she’ll scare Kara off if she’s too fast.
But Kara doesn’t pull back like she expects. She leans into it as well, and, well…
They start dating, and it doesn’t take long until Lena’s invited to one of the famous Game Nights hosted at Kara’s apartment.
“I’m surprised you waited until we started dating to introduce me to your friends,” Lena comments, because although she is a bit terrified of meeting Kara’s sister, formerly this time, it is curious.
“I… kinda wanted you all to myself.” Kara admits, then hugs her abruptly. “No sharing!”
Lena laughs.
“Well, I’m happy to be yours,” she says without thinking, and there’s this energetic moment that makes both of them fall silent, and Lena can see the blood rising up to her cheeks.
“Good.” Kara says with finality.
She meets Alex, who drags her into the kitchen the moment Kara isn’t looking to cross-examine every scrap of data the DEO dug up on the Luthors and make sure she wasn’t there for any nefarious reasons.
She sees Kara become an amazing reporter, and Kara helps her turn L-Corp into a company she feels proud of being a part of, and for nearly six months, their romance is almost a happy ending. Perfectly lovely, except…
Except Lena couldn’t find it in herself to tell Kara about her powers, and that secret, that lie, keeps growing like mold in the back of her mind, creating a shadow over every little moment they had together. A little whisper in her ear turning bitter every memory supposed to be sweet.
And that… That makes her careless. Lena’s too smart to fool herself, so she knows it isn’t a mistake, or a slip up. She starts using her powers more openly, and she knows it’s because she wants to get caught.
It starts small, at first. A spoon swirling by itself in coffee by the morning, a silly wave of her fingers to change the channel of the TV while Kara is stuck trying to take off her hoodie, a sly smirk on her face as she ‘guesses’ perfectly her girlfriend’s surprise date.
And she’s not sure when, she’s not sure how but she realizes… Kara is doing the same too, isn’t she?
It sounds crazy to even think about it, but Lena always joked Kara perked up just like a dog whenever someone was walking up the stairs to her flat, as if she could feel them. She eats a lot, like enough that what Lena considered monthly grocery runs are just snacks for the week and Lena once found all her clothes stained red and blue.
Lena schedules a date. She picks a nice little bistro that she just knows Kara loves, offers a… compensation, to make sure she and Kara could eat uninterrupted.
LENA [read ☑ at 10:19 am]
Are you free this evening?
KARA [read ☑ at 10:19 am]
I could be ;)
Lena writes a sly reply, and erases it. She thinks of a teasing remark, a ‘nudge nudge’ joke as Kara called it, but it’s silly and she… She isn’t feeling silly at all.
Rather, she is a wreck. Her lips bruise from how much she is biting at them and the inside of her cheeks, and when she glances at the phone in her hands, she realizes how much the screen shakes in her tense grip.
LENA [read ☑ at 10:22 am]
Good. 6 o’clock at that Chinese restaurant.
She sends instead, instinctively turning off the screen and slamming the phone on the table in frustration. It buzzed a second later, and Lena snatched it back.
KARA [read ☑ at 10:22 am]
Is there something wrong?
Lena bites her lip again, hard. She doesn’t know what to say, how to answer… She daydreams of just getting it over with, sending a “I know you’re Supergirl. And don’t lie to me, I could read your mind if I wanted to.”, but no, she doesn’t want to do it like this, she doesn’t want to be angry , because she is, Kara hid this from her, and the more she thinks about it, the more reasons she has to be angry.
But Lena is a hypocrite, because she also has powers. And she also said nothing. Even when she kept seeing visions of Kara rambling about her to Alex on the couch, even when she kept getting snapshots of her life and her childhood by touching the things around the house, very invasive snapshots, she also kept it a secret. She doesn’t have the right to feel hurt about this.
LENA [read ☑ at 10:25 am]
I’ll see you then.
KARA [read ☑ at 10:25 am]
Lena did I do something??
She throws the phone into one of her desk drawers, closes it carelessly and slumps into the chair.
KARA [Unread ☐, 10:35 am]
What’s going on?? You don’t sound like yourself, babe. Whatever it is, I’ll be right there with you to work it out. I love you, Lena xx
The rest of her morning leaves her a twitchy mess. Lena is unable to focus on a single line on her documents, keeps forgetting the appointments she set up, something that never happened before, and her hand glows a bright yellow as her powers escape her control.
She can hear Jess’ mind from across the wall, feel how she’s murmuring to herself about the bar she visited, thinking about Sunday’s baseball game with her nephew interrupted by casual reminders to herself regarding her various duties.
Every little object Lena touches bombard her with knowledge. The fine clothes brushing against the skin, the heels she bought made China despite the label of ‘American-made’, the papers she’s holding in her hands that are recycled scraps of a movie script.
And when she clenches her fist, grits her teeth and begs for it to all go away, the plant hovering in the air behind her, yellowy wisps of energy surrounding the bottom, falls to the ground and shatters.
It’s almost noon when she calls it quits. Extremely early for her, and she’s bound to lose a few meetings with international investors, but she just- she’s done. She can’t handle it anymore.
She can feel Jess’ surprise when she leaves the office, but she tries not to let it stop her. She taps her finger against her tights nervously on the way down the elevator, then grabs her own hand to stop herself when it reaches the ground floor.
Lena knows something is wrong the moment she steps out of the elevator. The reception area is business as usual, but something within her tells her that this is not right.
A second later, the front of the building explodes.
Lena is knocked back by the explosion, but she automatically braces against the impact, and her power flares up with a greenish energy, deflecting most of the shrapnel.
Lena pushes herself back to her feet, trying to look around through the dense cloud of dust. She can feel the fear/worry/anxiety of the people around her, but she can hear the sound of fighting up ahead.
The thing with attacks like these is that as a powerless bystander, (Or in Lena’s case, as someone trying to feign powerlessness), there’s not much you can actually do. It’s almost like dealing with a natural disaster, or a catastrophe. You do your best to sidestep the situation, hunker down and wait for it to be over.
So Lena does just that. She helps the man by her side get to his feet, then convinces him to help her drag the front desk off the receptionist, and the three of them hurry out with the other workers exiting the building through the side door.
Kara can handle this, she thinks. It’s best if she gets out of the way, especially if she’s the target. There’s nothing she can do, she wants to convince herself.
But she can’t stop from looking back, past the rubble and the broken glass of the front windows, and try to find her.
And she does.
Blond hair waving in the wind, the flashes of blue and red, Supergirl fights another woman in a full black bodysuit. They punch each other, each swing more savage than the other, each new wound making them even more brutal, and Kara’s face is already a mess, full of bruises and flowing blood. And… and she’s losing. T he woman, whatever she was, was just as strong as Supergirl, but her attacks were more precise, and for every strike she took to the face, she delivered three more to Kara, until Lena could see her girlfriend's leg trembling, unsteady.
To the point she couldn't even fly anymore.
“Hey, snap out of it, come on!” The man she helped yells, trying to tug her away, but Lena’s feet are glued to the spot. She can’t- She needs to see, she needs to make sure Kara will be alright. That she will come out on top.
But then Kara uses her heat vision. And the villain uses hers , and Lena can see the beams connecting, pushing against each other, the strain in Kara’s body as she struggles like she’s holding the weight of the world, and the woman looks as if she’s not even trying.
Something pops, then, and Kara’s laser sputters out. She gets hit straight in the chest and thrown back against the L-Corp logo standing on the grass like a morbid irony, and Lena–
Lena can’t stay on the sidelines this time.
It’s not even a conscious thought, a decision she carefully makes or the consequences ruled out by her desires. Her hands blooms with a thick red mist, and Lena finds herself outside of her own body, watching, unable to control herself as she marches out of the building and screams, eyes glowing rageful red.
“Get away from her!” And she throws her hands forward, and all the rubble around her, the pieces of concrete ripped out of the walls, the overturned mobilia, the broken shards of glass scattered on the ground. Everything flies off toward the woman, hitting her with enough force to plummet her to the ground and then bury her in a mountain of rubble, each new object pushing her deeper into the ground until there’s a noticeable crater.
And Lena feels her powers take a hold of her, almost like gently grabbing her waist, and she’s floating above Kara, drawing a line in the sand in her maroon suit and high heels, and her power isn’t just angry red anymore. It’s rage, but it’s determination. It’s her love for Kara made real, the compassion coursing through her vein, the fear of losing the one person she truly loves, the one person that understands her and… and hope. Because she can do this. She can protect Kara. She can use her powers more than for sick experiments and privacy breaches.
She can be a hero. And with that thought, her power isn’t yellow like it was when she was a kid terrified of herself. It isn’t the green shine of pure determination to keep it hidden, to hold back her powers like a dam standing in the way of the current. It’s a rainbow of colors, a myriad of feelings swirling inside her.
The rubble covering the crater shifts, and Lena throws her power over it, dragging everything up just long enough to see the woman groaning on the ground before slamming everything over her again. She does that three more times before the woman manages to break through and fly up, using her heat vision from a higher altitude than Lena.
Lena clenches her hand in a claw-like motion, and the beam hits a barrier of pure energy, reflecting off of it in wildly different directions and creating glittery sparks of light.
Lena cocks her head, and tilts her hand. The beam returns to its sender, and the woman is sent off into the air.
“I won’t let you touch her again,” Lena whispers, having the suspicion that the villain could hear her clearly no matter how far. And she knows Kara is sitting against the logo right behind her, with the same super hearing. “I’m not letting you hurt anyone else ever again!” She adds, louder, as the woman rockets back at her.
And Lena is a woman of her words. Her powers stop the villain in her tracks, clutching her in a tight hold as Lena tries to crush her.
She can’t. The woman seems almost invincible, but Lena tries her best, ripping her uniform apart piece by piece and strangling her throat, throwing everything she can see on the ground at her until the woman stops being just defensive and starts to get desperate. Punches, heat vision, freeze-breath, she tries everything she can to run away, but Lena doesn’t let her.
And then her powers fail. Lena smirks, watching the woman fall to the ground after having spent nearly all her energy, and rips away the mask, putting her to her knees with her powers, and–
And it’s Sam’s face, looking at her.
She lets go of her in shock, and Sam snarls, taking the brief opportunity to blast off into the sky with the last remnants of her powers.
Lena slowly lowers herself to the ground, turning slightly to look at Kara over her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” She asks quietly, staring at Supergirl– At Kara, her girlfriend.
“I- I’ll be fine, Ms. Luthor.” Kara groans, and Lena rushes to her when she falls back against the metal, defeated. “I didn’t know you had powers,” She comments lightly, and all Lena can hear is the judgment in her voice.
“Well, neither did I,” She snaps back, and Kara startles.
“Lena, I–”
Lena glanced behind her, seeing the black vans that usually followed after Supergirl showing up.
“Not here,” she said instead.
And as if in answer to her statement, the FBI agents swarm her and Supergirl, taking control of the situation and dragging her off to the side for a quick interrogation as Kara receives medical attention.
Without her phone that she forgot in her office, and absolutely no desire to return home, Lena wanders the street until she finds herself in the Chinese restaurant she had reserved earlier.
She doesn’t even know if Kara is going to show up but… They need to talk. And Lena needs to have that conversation here, somewhere she chose, somewhere that gives her this feeling of… Of control. Because she knows herself, and she knows that when she starts to lose control of things, she tends to get hurtful.
Lena reads through the entire menu as slowly as she can, only to decide that she’s too anxious to eat anything. She reads through another time, glancing around every few seconds in search of blond hair. There’s a woman in the corner, aging, with laugh lines and tear tracks on her face, and Lena clenches her jaw, reads through the menu a third time.
“Excuse me,” She calls the waiter, “What time is it?”
“It’s… a bit after 4 PM, ma’am.” Lena glares at him, annoyed, until he takes the hint with a stutter. “ F-four-Oh-Six, I mean.”
She sighs, glances around and takes note, for the fifth time, of the several people eating at their tables. Their presence bothers her, she feels like she’s being watched, like every single person in that restaurant is staring at her from the corner of their eyes, just waiting.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Do you know who I am?” She asks seriously, staring into the boy’s eye and a part of her hates herself for causing a scene. For waving the Luthor flag as if she was proud of it but she wants, needs, privacy.
The control.
“You’re Lena L-Luthor, ma’am.” The boy says.
Lena nods.
“How much do I have to pay…” She says very slowly, very clearly, and she can read the terror in the boy’s mind, the metaphorical bracing for a verbal impact. “To get this restaurant to myself for the next three hours?”
“I… We don’t do that–”
“Five thousand?”
“Ma’am, I can’t…” He whimpered, conflicted.
“Fifteen?”
“I would literally lose my job if I accepted that.”
“Then get the manager.” Lena snapped, feeling her patience fraying.
The game of Broken Telephone takes a while to clear up. Lena can see through the kitchen window a group of five, six people arguing, including what seems to be the manager and the family that owns the restaurant, and it doesn’t take long for the three to quietly come to her table to argue about it.
They can’t just kick their other clients out of the restaurant, but they’d be willing to take the offer otherwise. Lena doesn’t care, at this point she’s desperate to stop hearing people’s thoughts, the whispers. She raises the bid, and a fast-paced hushed conversation follows. They can close the restaurant, and wait for the other clients to leave. Kara is still a ways away, and by the time she gets here, the restaurant would likely be empty anyway.
It’s not perfect, but Lena agrees. She pays eight thousand dollars, mostly because the owners refused to accept a price higher than that, and they would close down the restaurant and wait for it to clear out.
“Thank you for this,” She says as they start to get up. “Oh, I’m sorry but would you happen to know the time…?”
“It’s… sixteen fifty-six.”
Lena swallows the urge to groan.
Surprisingly, Kara arrives thirty minutes early, with a smile (however strained) on her face.
She looks horrible.
Both her eyes are bruised like a raccoon, and although she cleaned up a bit, Lena could still see the slightly red discoloration on the side of her head where she had been bleeding.
But still, she’s a hurricane with endless energy, a fountain of empathy, and Lena almost lets herself drown in her aura, almost lets herself forget the reason they’re here, but she contains herself at the last minute. Kara gets in close for a hug, but Lena doesn’t get up, points at the seat instead while clearing her throat awkwardly.
“You should probably…”
“Oh, right,” Kara drops on the chair, throwing apprehensive glances at her. “This place is pretty quiet, huh,” She laughs. Short, nervous… Uncomfortable.
Lena hesitates, glances around through the corner of her eyes, and sees the waiter walking in their direction.
The restaurant is completely empty, thankfully, and she did notice the waiter hovering in the corner, a few tables away, waiting solely for a sign to approach.
“We should eat, right?” Lena laughs, nervously, and grabs the menu so she can bury her face into it. She doesn’t want to eat. In fact, she’s not even remotely hungry, but eating means she doesn’t have to talk. It buys her more time. “Yes, we should eat. What do you want?”
Kara hesitates, glances down at her own menu awkwardly.
“Lena, can you–”
“Would you two like anything to drink?”
“Wine, red.” Lena jumps to say, and flinches at the way Kara slumps with a frustrated grimace. “Kara, what do you want?”
“I just want you to talk to me, Lena, you’re freaking me out.”
“Sorry,” she says, contrite, and she means it. “I…”
Lena opens her mouth, and the words escape from her mind. Her stomach does a flip, and it feels like she’s desperately trying to keep herself afloat, choking mouthfuls of water as her vision darkens.
“We needed to talk.” Lena tries to explain, keeping her voice slow and even so she can get them to come out. “But I can’t- I- I had a plan. I was gonna ask- but then there was the attack– and now you’re here and I can’t- I can’t think.”
“Lena,” Kara whispers worriedly, and grabs her hand. Through her touch, Lena hears the voice of Cat Grant cursing something out about fashion and a wedding cake. “You’re having a panic attack. I can wait. What do you need right now?”
Lena gasps, then hyperventilates. She holds her breath, then tries to take long gulps, and after almost a minute she lets out a sigh, breathing evenly.
“You’re Supergirl,” She accuses with a shaky voice, and Kara flinches, opens her mouth as if she was about to deny or say something before shaking her head.
“And you have powers too,” Kara answers gently instead. “This isn’t how I meant for you to find out,” she says, quietly, guiltily.
Lena can’t look her in the eyes.
“Isn’t it?” She snaps. “How did you think that would go then?”
Kara purses her lips, returning her gaze to the wood of the table.
“I don’t know. I tried not to think about it, I didn’t… I didn’t want you to get angry at me.”
“You weren’t gonna tell me,” Lena says. “I’m angry, Kara. I’m so fucking angry right now, and the worst part is that I can’t even– I don’t even deserve to feel like that!” She deflates, tears gathering in her eyes. “Because I didn’t tell you I had powers either.” She reiterates.
“Lena, you have a right to be angry.”
“But I lied to you too!”
They both stop talking as they hear the door to the kitchen open, heads snapping in the direction of the waiter approaching with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
They remain mute as the man puts it on their table and serves Lena. Kara refuses before he can pour some on the second glass. He doesn’t ask any other question, and leaves as fast as he can.
“I’m not mad about you hiding your powers, Lena.” She says quietly. “Because I understand what it’s like, to have to hide a part of yourself.”
“So that just makes me a hypocrite then. And a crappy girlfriend.” Lena grumbles self-depreciative, looking at her hands as they begin to shine with sickly warm colors.
“No.” Kara says “It’s different. Lena, I don’t think you’re angry with me because I never told you I was an alien. You’re angry with me because I lied to you about my job, and you have a right to feel like that.”
“I thought you were my friend,” She said quietly. “Someone I met outside of the whole Luthor thing, someone that didn’t give a crap about who I was. But if you were Supergirl this whole time…”
“Lena…”
“And the thing is, I don’t even know where to start, or where it ends. I… I don’t doubt that you love me, Kara.” Lena said, quietly. “But did you tell me about Lilian being CADMUS because you cared about me or because you needed L-Corp on your side? Or the alien fighting ring with Sinclair.”
Lena pauses, glancing at Kara, at the tears trailing her cheeks, mirroring her own.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you were wrong to take them down, Kara. But… I can’t help but feel used, Kara.”
She almost expects the blonde to beg for forgiveness again. To try and explain, but Kara just nods her head, guilty, but full of patience and compassion.
“How can I make things right?” She asks instead.
Lena shrugs.
The kitchen door opens again and the waiter appears. Lena glances over, watching as he makes not-so-subtle signs to ask if they were ready to order, and Lena nods.
“You must be hungry, right?” She asks quietly and Kara nods.
“I don’t think I can stomach solid foods right now, but I could eat a ton. Literally.”
The waiter’s eyes bulge as Kara makes her request, even as she tries to keep her order small. Lena decides to ask for salads, but a growl from her stomach convinces her to order something with more proteins instead.
When the waiter leaves again, Lena turns to Kara.
“Can you tell me?” She asks, suddenly feeling shy. “Like you would if this hadn’t happened.”
Kara laughs, more out of anxiety than any kind of humor.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” She admits, but takes a deep breath before she begins.
“Lena? I… I’m an alien. I was born on Krypton, and that’s where I lived until I was about 14 years old.”
Kara tells her everything she can think of, and Lena listens. She tells her her name, Zor-El. She tells her of Argo, of her friends and the horrible fate of her planet. She talks about the Danvers, about feeling so lost, so alone in a place no one could understand her. She tells Lena about Alex’s flight, about the first time she wore the suit, why she loves being Supergirl so much.
And when she’s done, Lena ponders for a moment, and says, “I got my powers when I was really, really young.”
One of Lena’s oldest memories, the vivid ones she could almost picture it happening in her mind, was of Lionel.
She didn’t have anything from before the Luthors took her in, just vague scents that would make her cry and a sweet voice in her dreams, singing an old Irish lullaby.
Instead, this is what she had:
Lena was five. She was tiny, and her legs dangled from the side of the bed where she sat. She was wearing a pretty skirt and a tiny blazer, and she couldn’t take her eyes off her shiny black shoes.
She doesn’t remember how she felt. Actually, she didn’t know then, either. It was a few weeks after the death of her mom, and while she understood the scientific process of it, she… she didn’t understand what it meant yet.
But she felt… melancholic, a bit. She wanted her mom, although she was smart enough to not mention that around Mrs. Luthor, the woman who demanded to be called Mother.
There’s a voice talking to her, a weight beside her, but it isn’t the person she wants. It’s Mr. Luthor… ‘Lionel’, he insisted once, and although she could hear her words, she found her eyes straying back to her shoes. Letting the words wash over her as she thought about… a toy? Some kind of comfort she had, something Lena can’t remember anymore.
But she heard the words ‘you’ and ‘revolutionize.’ She heard him asking for help, and telling her she was, would be, amazing. She heard the wonder in his voice, and saw his look of pride and love, and found herself agreeing to something she didn’t know, hoping he’d mean it if she made him happy.
And then he gave her a shot. The syringe bit into her arm, and Lena trembled. She felt like crying, but she didn’t want to risk Lionel being upset with her, so she just reminded herself it didn’t hurt as much as the vague memory of watching silently as her mom drowned.
“That was just an antiviral,” he murmured, patting her arm afterwards, and Lena winced. “Just to make sure nothing goes wrong,”
And then he left.
Lena’s memories after that are always coated with these little moments. Lionel enters her room, pulling her aside in the mansion to give her a shot or make her swallow some kind of medicine. He didn’t lie to her about what it is, he’d explain in big words that this pill would induce extra growth near her parietal lobe, or teach her body to radiate electrical impulses.
And even when she read the anatomy books in the mansion’s library, when she could understand all the complex words he used… she didn’t understand the point.
Honestly, Lena convinced herself it was normal. That parents always gave their children cocktails of medication. That Lex, ‘never Alexander’, didn’t get them because he was older, because he didn’t need them anymore.
And, almost as if confirming her theories, the experiments trailed off after a year, slowed down from daily pills, to an injection a week, then some here or there over the year, until one day Lionel simply stopped.
They never mentioned it again, and Lena, a prodigy at seven years old, was left wondering if she didn’t need them anymore because whatever it was went successfully, or if it turned out to be an utter failure.
She certainly didn’t feel any different.
Things changed when she turned ten.
Lionel had died a few months previously, and Lena didn’t know how to describe what life was like when Mrs. Luthor took over the mansion.
She fired most of the employers the day after. The nannies that didn’t mind playing with Lena, the cook that knew her favorite treat, the gardener that taught her sociopolitics while he tended the bushes. Everyone except for her father’s personal secretary was gone in the morning. And with Lex always busy in Metropolis with the company, the mansion suddenly turned… cold.
Not to say that it was ever welcoming, but before it was that sort of detached coolness of being a guest in an unwanted place.
Now, Lena felt like a ghost. Like she was in one of those melancholic dreams where she was alone after dark, in a public setting devoid of life. And the feeling of wrongness because it is empty when it should be filled with people. It should have that wave of chatter and the movement of bodies dislocating through the place, doing all sorts of things that made her house feel alive, even if not particularly kind.
Kenopsia , she found online, and the word struck something in her soul.
It was just so quiet, so dead.. until it wasn’t.
It began with whispers. Not a vision, or an obvious flash. But a quiet understanding, as if knowledge was simply poured directly into her mind.
‘Lillian Luthor was here once,’ she heard, digging her bare feet in the thick carpet of the hall entrance. ‘ She yelled at Lionel Luthor and left for the bedrooms, crying.’
And as much as it wasn’t a vision, Lena never once managed to doubt its veracity. Even when she had never seen Mrs. Luthor crying before, she could… almost picture it.
‘ Lex likes to stare, he finds the sculpting of the muscles in stone impressive, and appreciates looking at the figure.’ she heard, a deft finger touching the marble of a greek man posing with a bow, the statue displayed in the library’s entrance.
Each object she touched would tell her of its history. Sometimes snapshots of its origins, who created it or why, or sometimes events it had been a witness of.
Lena quickly learned that she couldn’t stop the visions from coming if she touched an object. Her visions tended to repeat if she touched the same thing multiple times, but for things like clothes or backpacks that touched her skin for long periods of time, she would only get one vision.
And it took almost a year for her to connect the dots, to realize that all of this wasn’t just in her head, it wasn’t just a good intuition. That she had actual, real superpowers.
She almost told Lilian. She was just- so excited. So sure that this would be her ticket to affection. That Lilian would be impressed, and happy, and she’d finally love her because who doesn’t love superheroes?
But her feet froze the moment she approached Mother, and this time the visions that came weren’t of any objects. Weren’t memories of the past, it was just her voice whispering in Lena’s ears horrible things, spiteful things.
With time, Lena realized that she could read minds. She could change them, too, but it was a lot more difficult, and made her hand shine with a sickly yellowish color.
She was old enough by then to be horrified by the possibilities.
When Lilian sent her to boarding school, her powers only grew worse. The flashes she got of things were so strong that just a touch could lead her to stare into empty space for a couple of minutes. Touching another girl could either let her read through her mind like a book or get flashes of her past like a vision, and whatever she did, no matter where she went, she couldn’t escape the screams.
The multitude of voices talking gibberish, wondering about the soccer game or thinking about next week’s test. A thousand conversations merging into a single noise that deafened Lena to everything.
Now, Lena attributes the lack of control, the growth, to a pseudo-puberty of her powers. But she had been so scared then, each day being harder and harder to get through, each vision more powerful than the last one, and it was only when Lena walked into the forest surrounding the school and screamed to herself, ripping out nearby trees straight from the ground and launching stones into the sky that she finally learned to control herself.
She still can’t block out thoughts, but nowadays they’re just whispers in the back of her mind. Instead, she began to rely on her empathy. Reading only the moods and emotions of the people around her. She had never used her telekinesis again after that day in the forest, that is, until now, but she did end up using mind control to convince a few assassins to give up their professions.
And more importantly, she never told anyone. Never planned to. Her powers were an ironic curse, and Lena thought she would be forever alone and take them to their grave, because how can you have a relationship with someone if you’re constantly reading their minds? If you know exactly how they’ll react, or the dirty secrets they’re keeping?
Except… Her mind-reading didn’t work on Kryptonians. She still had visions when she touched Kara’s clothes, could still feel her emotions clearly, but she couldn’t hear Kara’s whisper. Couldn’t touch her mind.
“Thank you for telling me,” Kara said, gently. “And powers or no powers, I love you, Lena Luthor.”
An unwitting smile bloomed on Lena’s face at the confession.
“I love you too, Kara Zor-El.”