Chapter Text
When Supergirl leaves earth, Lena is sure she's not coming back.
She's known for the longest time that Kara and Supergirl are the same person. She's too smart not to realize that. So, when Supergirl leaves, Kara Danvers leaves too. A vacation, Snapper tells her.
Yeah right, Lena thinks.
Supergirl leaves and it's the talk of National City for about a few months. They think she's coming back. But after five months, they realize the girl of steel is long gone. They don't see her again for five years.
At this point Lena's reaching thirty. L Corp has become a multimillion dollar powerhouse. Not that it wasn't before, it's just that now it's Lena who's made it become so. Not Lex. She hasn't heard that name slip past someone's lips for three years. That she's okay with, it makes it all the easier.
She's out branched with the company, creating tools to help both aliens and humans reside alongside one another in harmony. L Corp has created outreach programs for orphans both alien and human alike.
Just this year she's begun a project she started when Kara was still on earth. A space program, entirely run on earth friendly materials. Lena starts it because it's time to move on, time to make L Corp something just a little bigger.
Granted, most everything she's worked on is all due to Kara. Kara changed 20 years of Luthor xenophobia grilled into Lena. She showed her that aliens weren't that different from humans. That Lena really had nothing to fear, for the most part.
She's thankful to Kara, Supergirl, about that. Like most of National City, she's beginning to realize Supergirl was their gateway to a better community. Now that Supergirl was gone, though, she realizes maybe it's for the best. National City couldn't always have Supergirl.
National City didn't always need Supergirl.
And Lena Luthor didn’t always need Supergirl. She’s grown to learn that the hard way. It’s been hell, to let go of someone who made you feel like you were worth something, who could be there for you like no one else could. Someone who was healthy for you and treated you right after twenty years of not feeling adequate for a family that took you under their wing. She’s made something of herself without Supergirl around, though. Supergirl, Kara, gave her the push in the right direction, the motivation she needed when she first started getting away from the Luthor name. She was there for Lena but then she disappeared and Lena had to once again was left to be alone. It hardened whatever started to soften around Kara Danvers. She shut everyone out like she always had, except more prominently this time. Lena got away from that Luthor reputation. She was no longer Lena Luthor, the adopted child. She was strictly Lena Luthor, without any bad strings attached.
She hadn’t visited Lex in three years. Hadn’t heard a peep from Lillian in four. It was as if they didn’t exist. Lena found that she liked that.
Where Kara Danvers had made her smiles and kind gestures, she turned it into hard frowns and disassociation from society. She attended galas, hosted events but she never truly got into them the same way she used to. People noticed but no one dared utter a word about it.
Alex Danvers, Kara’s sister, tried visiting once or twice. Lena could tell she was doing it for Kara. She had wondered, briefly, when Alex first visited with donuts, if she kept in touch with Kara despite being planets away.
“She’s doing good, I think. I haven’t heard much.” Alex had admitted to her when Lena asked. Then she noticed the engagement ring on Alex’s finger and wondered briefly if that’s why Kara left. Her sister had always been close to her, she talked so much about her to Lena.
Alex visited once more after that but Lena turned her away due to business complications. She didn’t hear from her again, only received an invitation to a wedding a few months later. Lena, of course, did not go.
She’s learned to cut herself off from anyone associated with Kara Danvers. Not only that, but places too. She won’t go to the local winery, where she and Kara had visited on several occasions. The coffee shop just down the block hasn’t seen hide nor hare of Lena Luthor since Kara’s leave. Other places, the park, local cinema, a restaurant favorite of Lena’s that she always took Kara to after a huge article. Definitely not the local Chinese restaurant either.
The key Kara had given her to her apartment had collected dust in Lena’s bedside drawer for the past five years. Lena had gone into her apartment a few times after she left, trying to make sure dust didn’t collect and that the plants were watered. It was her way of coping for a good few months. The smell of Kara hadn’t left and sometimes Lena would lie in the other woman’s bed hoping, praying even, that she would fall asleep and wake up to see Kara Danvers face once more.
She never slept and coincidentally, Kara Danvers never came.
So, with that, Lena threw the key into the bedside drawer and left it there. She didn’t want anything to do with it again. No matter how badly it hurt, no matter how many times she drank until she was entirely numb in her office only for Jess to call a car around and take Lena home. No matters how many times Lena spent crying herself to sleep.
She hated herself for getting so attached to Kara ‘embodiment of sunshine’ Danvers. She hated that she had fallen for someone so quickly, that she had let herself ruin everything she built herself up to be (hard, distant, the National City ice queen) for this reporter who earned the title as Lena Luthor’s gal pal in news media.
It becomes easier with time, to forget about Kara Danvers. Or at least pretend to forget. People stop asking, Lena makes herself scarce. Workload increases tenfold. She’s thankful for it, really, the way L Corp blew up nearly overnight and suddenly she was overloaded with work and given barely any time to think about the girl she lost along the way. Working on the projects that built a bridge between aliens and humans may not have helped but Lena finds them as a type of closure. By finishing what Kara Danvers, Supergirl, wanted all along, she can let go of whatever she felt obligated to with the charismatic Kryptonian.
She scans the news reports on science. It’s more to look at the news NASA puts out. A new planet found, mysterious objects in the sky. She finds a blog about a year after Kara vanishes called Supergirl Returns? She laughs, fucking laughs, for about ten minutes, a glass of scotch in hand as she scrolls through the blog. People have theories, people begin posting pictures that they think could be Supergirl. Who would’ve thought the girl of steel would become a conspiracy theory?
It was the first time she thought about Kara in six months. She immediately blocked the site after one drunken night of scrolling through and never thought about it again.
The next four years flew by in a whirlwind of business deals, business trips, business galas, business meetings, business, business, business. Lena drowned in it. She dated around. A pretty girl from France here, a lovely daughter of a business partner there. None of them lasted longer than three months. She ignored the fact that they shared Kara’s physical appearance; blonde hair and blue eyes, a million dollar smile, a nice body.
So, maybe Lena Luthor wasn’t over Kara Danvers. But she could act like it. And she was doing quite well without the girl of steel.
"Miss Luthor, right this way." A flight attendant leads Lena to her seat on the plane. Today, L Corp will make history. The first satellite launch into space without using a rocket. Cost effective enough and as Lena's scientist group put it, 'killing two birds with one stone.'
Because they're launching the satellite from a commercial airplane, passengers aboard and everything. But they've planned this out thoroughly. Besides, all who is on the flight are reporters and a few corporate businessmen who helped fund the project alongside L Corp. Lena tells herself if the operation goes awry, then maybe at least there aren't casual civilians, families, getting hurt.
She buckles herself in, looks out the window the entire time. Lena only half listens to the flight attendant who explains what will be carrying on in the operation, what to do if there's an emergency.
Lena hates flying. She's never been a fan, not even when Supergirl would carry her across National City or when she'd catch her after the billionth time she's been thrown over something due to Lillian's henchmen.
At least Supergirl tried to make her feel safe. Regardless, Lena utterly despised it. Even if it was, statistically speaking, the safest form of transportation. Kara would always laugh at that. Shake her head and tell Lena that of course she knew statistics on the safest transportation. Lena would always smile back, wouldn't tell Kara she had always heard that from Lex.
So of course something goes wrong, it always has to. The satellite doesn't detach from the plane, instead begins sending the plane into the atmosphere. Everything becomes bumpy and it gets hard to breathe, Lena can see the frost forming outside the windows. The safety masks come down and she desperately puts one on, and peers outside her window just to see a flash of blue and red.
Lena tells herself she's hallucinating, because there's no way she's back and saving Lena like the good old times. She doesn't give herself time to think because the satellite finally detaches by some miracle and the plane is spiraling out of control, crashing back down to earth.
And that's when she sees her again and suddenly Lena's heart stops working properly. There's something different about her, is it the suit? She can't exactly tell yet, but Supergirl's pulling at the plane wing to get it to stop spiraling and Lena hears the snap, watches Supergirl and the wing get flung back, only for Supergirl to catch herself and race forward to the front of the plane. She briefly wonders if Supergirl knows that she’s on board and this is why she’s saving a plane. But Supergirl is an all around force for good, she’d save damn near anyone, even if they didn’t deserve it.
Lena closes her eyes after that, she can't take any more. Not when she can hear the ripple effect of Supergirl stopping the plane and it crumbles under her hands. They land, miraculously, in the middle of National City's park. The exit door is ripped off it's hinges and Supergirl strides inside in all her red and blue glory, not a single blonde ringlet out of place, red lipstick brighter than usual.
"Is everyone okay?" She addresses the entire plane cabin but she's staring at Lena. Her eyes express so many emotions at once that Lena can't decipher them. She nods, slightly breathless and entirely shocked.
Supergirl is gone in a flash after that and all the reporters are climbing over one another to get a glimpse of National City's long lost hero flying away.
Coincidentally, Kara Danvers is back too. She visits Lena a few days after the Supergirl incident, in her usual pants and button up blouse attire. Lena's trying to figure out the damage costs on the operation for the satellite and as if she's back to old days, she doesn't hesitate to tell Jess to let Kara in when she's warned. She doesn’t think twice on it, but she realizes she should have.
Kara comes in and already is a bumbling mess. It's endearing and Lena doesn't realize how much she's missed it, missed her. She greets Kara politely, standing up and holding her hand out. Kara stares down at it and Lena almost retracts her polite gesture when she feels Kara's warm grasp in hers. She can see the disappointed look in Kara's face but it's been five years and Lena wouldn't lie if she said she wasn't a little upset. She wants to make that known.
“Five years and not a word from the intrepid reporter of CatCo. You, Kara Danvers, are hard to get a hold of. Here for an interview? I’m surprised Snapper allowed you back on the team.” Lena sits back down at her desk, not looking at Kara, instead busying herself with papers and a graph on her laptop.
Kara sits opposite her desk and pushes at her glasses. “Well, Snapper’s gone and James is running the team so he let me back on. With conditions of course.”
Of course, Lena thinks, because yes James Olsen would. He knows Supergirl, knows that Kara is the girl behind that S symbol. So of course he would let her back on after five years. “Fortunate,” Lena hums.
Silence spreads between them. Lena can feel the start of a migraine and almost grabs her bottle of pills in her desk but she stops halfway there and decides against it. Kara clears her throat. “I’m here to see you, actually. Off the record,” then a little more softly, “as your friend.”
As if they could ever be friends. As if they ever were. Kara up and left Lena when Lena needed her most and she doesn’t think friends do that sort of thing. She also doesn’t think friends flirt the way they used to, doesn’t think they would look at one another that long. But she plays along because Kara Danvers is sweet, thinking that Lena and her still can be friends.
There is also a part of her that’s missed this, but Lena’s gone so long without it that she ignores it.
“Then tell me, what has Miss Danvers been up to?” Lena gives her a tight smile, leans her elbows on her desk. Kara winces because she can see Lena is faking it but begins talking. She talks more about her friends than anything. Her sister has gotten married, James now is officially in charge of CatCo, Winn created a great piece of tech. Lena knows about that one because she keeps up to date on all things technology in the news. Hell, she remembers the day, two years ago, because she couldn’t help but think of Kara when she saw Winn’s face plastered on CatCo magazine.
Then Kara asks about her and well, things go to shit. Lena explains her many accomplishments in the past five years, speaks about National City like it’s her child because in truth it sort of is. But then she makes the offhanded comment, “all no thanks to Supergirl,” and can visibly see Kara get rigid. That in itself makes Lena a little tense. “You know, I should really get back to work, Kara.”
“Right, no of course,” Kara says, nodding her head and standing. She’s still a little tense and Lena can’t blame her. “It was really nice to see you again, Lena,” Kara tells her when she’s making her way to the door. Lena finally looks up and makes eye contact with the pure blue eyes. Her heart starts racing.
“You too, Kara.”
“I’ve missed you,” Kara breathes, then ducks out of the room without another word. Lena could see the tears forming in her eyes. She tries to understand what they could mean, paired with Kara’s parting words. She’s hopeful for a moment. But that hope leaves because Kara left for a reason. Left her for a reason. She can’t possibly be sorry for doing so.