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Sometimes everything is too much. It claws up her throat, grasping at her tongue. Her heart beating in her chest slipping till it’s the only sound in her ears. Then the images start, slow and steady, until there’s an unending cascade, spilling, spilling across her eyes.
They bend her forward, those images, spiraling, spiraling until her head’s between her knees. Her throat closes, she can’t breathe. Tiny gasps through clenched teeth as the faces of her family play out across her eyelids.
Lex, Lex, Lex, that manic look in your eyes, “We’ll kill them all”
The voices come one after another, overlapping so it’s hard to make out each individual sound. They scream and whisper things that should never be said.
Mother, mother why? “You were never a Luthor to begin with, only a tool, a broken one at that.”
She rocks forward and back, her hands pressed to her ears. Her heartbeat hammers against her fingertips and she traces those faces with closed eyes.
She can see them coming for her, she can hear every footstep, can feel every breath against the back of her neck. She doesn’t scream; just breathes and feels as she rocks on her heels.
Jess rises to stop her approach. Kara blinks and frowns.
“Ms. Luthor isn’t up to seeing anyone today.” Jess’s hand clenches at her side but she doesn’t step out in front of Lena’s door.
“We were scheduled to have lunch today?” She holds up the take-out bags and quirks her head.
“Ms. Luthor isn’t up to seeing anyone today.”
There’s a medkit in Jess’ open drawer. Kara sets her jaw and listens.
Th-thump-th-thu-thump-thump-thu-thump-thump-thu-th-thump-thump
She steps forward and all but tosses the take-out bags on the floor in front of Jess’ desk. “Jess, what’s wrong?”
Jess swallows and her eyes track to Lena’s door. Kara steps forward again and repeats her question. “Jess. What happened?”
She grimaces and opens her mouth but closes it just as quickly. Kara watches the frustration streak over her face before Jess reaches out, takes her arm, and drags her right in front of Lena’s door. “Lena has panic attacks.”
The words are whispered but they still hit Kara harder than flying into a brick wall.
“We have a system set up for when this happens, but one’s never gone on for this long. She says to play this song and not to touch her. But she’s still there, and she just rocks back and forth. It’s been almost half an hour.” Her words rush out and she watches the elevator’s numbers stop their climb, ten floors below. She pushes her hair back and frowns at Kara, “I-she doesn’t want anyone to know, but I-I don’t know what to do.”
Kara looks at the door and squints. Lena’s settled on her knees between her coffee table and couch. She looks tiny.
“I’m going to sit with her.”
Jess frowns but, releases Kara’s arm. “Don’t make any noise while you’re moving around. And call me immediately if you see any change in her condition. ”
Kara nods and slips into Lena’s office.
The music is soft. A single violin doing scales, up and down, up and down.
Lena’s fingers are white-knuckled against her scalp and Kara longs to ease the tension there. She picks her way carefully until she can kneel in front of Lena, but she doesn’t touch her. Lena’s swaying, her eyes shut, a small blanket draped over her shoulders.
Her shoes are still on.
Kara frowns. They can’t be comfortable wedged underneath of her. Lena should be comfortable for this. She deserves comfort. She certainly doesn’t deserve this, this reduction to fear. She stands so tall but curls up so small.
Kara sets her jaw again. She knows there aren’t cameras in Lena’s office, besides the one that only Lena and Jess have access to. Jess is smart, Lena is smarter. Kara’s pretty sure they both know anyway.
She floats so she doesn’t make a sound, pops the leather apart so the shoes slide off Lena’s feet with no resistance. Several thousand dollars rest in her hands and Kara doesn't feel a bit of remorse.
Lena doesn’t stir.
She places the ruined shoes on the coffee table and kneels once more in front of Lena. She listens to Lena’s heartbeat and remembers when she first came to Earth. When everything was so overwhelming.
Thump-th-thump-thu-th-thump-thump-thump-th-thu-thump-thu-thump
Alex would rub her back. Kara would keep her hands over her ears. The tears wouldn’t stop. Then Alex would talk. About anything, everything. Her voice so soft Kara could barely hear it past the rush of blood in her fingers, the gulls over the bay, the cars seventeen miles away.
“I heard about an ice cream shop. We should try it sometime. There’s a new tv show out too. Have you ever heard the word ‘magnanimous’? Apparently our English teacher thinks that’s a good one to learn…”
So Kara talks. Softly, so, so softly.
“I had eggs for breakfast. I made them myself. I’m not very good at cooking. I never really took the time to learn. There was so much else I needed to learn instead. Plus I eat so much, it’s hard to make enough for me. Eliza was wonderful about that. Even after Jeremiah was taken…”
“You were never enough”
Thump-thu-thump
Hands, fingers, grasping, grabbing, breathe, breathe, can’t, breathe, breathe
“Such a failure”
Thu-th-thump
“-was odd, because on Krypton we never had pets. Although that could be because-”
Fuck, fuck, make this end, fuc-
“How could you let me leave?”
Thump-thump-th
Why, why, why, why, why, why, why
“-ow, I still don’t understand anyone’s fascination with oysters. Or jello for that matter. Who likes food that wigg-”
I can’t, can’t can’t, fuck, hurts, this hurts
“Why didn’t you-”
“-ere’s this one book that wasn’t translated very well. The original is in French, but it’s old French and that’s even worse than French now. Did you know ‘beaucoup’ has a ‘p’ at the end of it? Who makes words like that? At least Kryptonese doesn’t cut half the syl-”
Th-thump-th
“No one will stand with you”
“-der. Mhh, this one time, Alex bought a book on Spanish so she could impress this guy, not that she’s interested in guys. Maybe that’s what people mean by ‘mistakes of youth’. But anyway, she’s got this girlfriend now, Maggie, and Maggie’s a cop. Winn said he’s not surprised because Alex wouldn’t date anyone who couldn’t use a gun. Which I suppose makes sense, you should see her with this gun we got on this moon it can to-”
Th-thump-th-thump-th-thump-th-thump
“-ch you can’t tell anyone because technically it’s classified. But J’onn kinda says everything is classified. I think he just doesn’t want to write reports. I don’t want to write them either, so that’s understandable. But Susan’s the one who really doesn’t like writing reports. I was surprised cause she always seems so put together, but that woman would rather fight a hundred Branx than lift a pencil. I’ve seen her reassign paperwork way too many times to count. But she makes these shortbread cookies to die for. So it’s not like I would tell J’onn, besides I like Susan, she’s really nice. And she’s totally right that the new recruits need to learn how to file things in the DEO’s systems. Although, their whole system is on an internal server. I’m not really sure what that means, Winn tried to explain it, but there was this bus that got turned over and it -”
“Kara?”
Her arms ached. Everything ached. But Kara was sitting in front of her. Why was Kara here?
“Oh, hey.”
She had a pounding headache.
“What are you doing here?”
Her shoes were missing. Why wasn’t she wearing shoes?
“I brought lunch.”
Lunch? Oh, fuck.
“Oh, I’m sorry, we had-”
“Lena, don’t worry about it.”
She didn’t want to open her eyes, everything still hurt. She just wanted to sleep. But she had lunch with Kara. She wanted to have lunch with Kara. She liked having lunch with Kara.
“Lena, can I do anything to make you more comfortable?”
The pins and needles started then. They always did. She grimaced and shifted sideways until her back was against the couch. The violin music was still playing. Oh.
Oh, that’s what had happened.
“...Lena?”
Kara’d seen her. Curled up and pitiful. Wonderful, just another person to pay off for another secret. Another voice to add to the pile.
“I thought you were worth standing wit-”
“Can I hold your hand now?”
Lena blinked her eyes open. The light was far too bright but so was Kara and she loved to stare at Kara. The light really shouldn’t be a problem.
Kara held her hand out to Lena and even though every muscle still ached, even though her legs and feet felt like they were on fire, she couldn’t help the tiny smile that quirked on her lips. This woman was too much.
Lena never should have doubted her at all.
“Yeah, that’d be nice.”
She felt Kara shift in beside her as her eyes slipped shut again. She let her head fall back onto the couch and breathed out slowly as she stretched her legs under the coffee table. It’d take a while before the blood settled back into her veins, she wouldn’t be moving anytime soon.
“Is there anything else I can do?”
Kara’s voice was still soft. So soft. Just like her hand. Fuck, Lena just wanted to hold her hand forever. She shifted so she could lean her head on Kara’s shoulder and Kara dipped her torso a little to make it more comfortable for her.
Lena smiled, Kara was so warm to lean against. “You could keep talking.”
She didn’t imagine the squeeze on her hand because Kara squeezed her hand again. She might have imagined the lips on her temple though. But how could anyone blame her? The only face close enough to her that she wanted to see never came to her in her dreams.
Was imagining it once too much to ask for?
“Well, how about I tell you about the time Alex helped me like this?”
Lena hmmed in interest, she was interested, truly. How had Kara dealt with the death of a whole planet? Hell, her adopted family seemed a rather flimsy excuse for all of this, comparatively.
She wanted to know everything about the true wonder sitting next to her. But Kara was so warm and she was so tired...
“We’d sit on the roof and watch the stars together. On warm nights we’d sit for hours, just talking about constellations and their meanings.”
Kara’s voice was warm. How were voices even warm? Lena hummed again, content for the first time in forever. She’d just leave her eyes closed. That was fine. It’d all be fine…
“-e breeze would carry so many sounds with it, Earth was amazingly beautiful. So diff-”
Jess stopped at the back of the couch. Ms. Luthor would need a massage or at least a long hot bath to get the kink out of her neck, but there was no way in hell Jess was waking her up.
Her head sat on Kara Danver’s shoulder, the blanket Jess kept in the spare closet tucked around them both as they slept. Ms. Danver had calmed her down it seemed.
They were holding hands.
Oh.
Jess smiled. Oh. Oh, it would be good around the office now. She’d need to call Ms. Danvers over more often. She nearly hummed as she switched off the violin music.
She should check the video feed too. No doubt Ms. Danvers did something she shouldn’t and Ms. Luthor wouldn’t want any of this on record anywhere. She looked back once more, Ms. Luthor’s shoes were on her coffee table.
Well, that was probably for the best. She turned, flicked off the lights, and went to schedule a dinner drop off. She’d seen how much Ms. Danvers could eat.
Jess caught herself humming and shrugged. Ms. Luthor wasn’t getting any more visitors today; she could hum as much as she wanted.
So, she did. And she ate every single potsticker Kara’d brought as well, just for good measure.