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When Kara Zor-El the last daughter of a failed word, as Rhea had called her, had the time to sit down and contemplate, she usually fell into a thinking spiral about her life. Lately everything had been just a tad harder than she was used to. Everyone around her seemed to have moved on, didn’t had just as much spare time as prior. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t have any time; no they just had built their own life without Kara in the middle of it which should be fine.
But it wasn’t.
Of course in an easier world those things wouldn’t matter, because she had a boyfriend with whom she would spend the new free time and would be happy about the fact and wouldn’t try to minimize their time. But she lived in this one and in it she had fallen irrevocably for her best friend.
It had been just a tad too easy for Lena. In her strong hours she would blame eyes in the color of her eternal weakness, which had left her defenseless. But late in night with a sleeping Mon-El next to her she could admit the truth at least to herself surrounded by the darkness she felt safe for prying eyes and cruel judgement:
Being with Lena was like finally being able to breathe again, without the weight of an entire civilization on her chest always threatening to suffocate her.
And this was the real reason as to why she couldn’t bring herself to care that Lena had cut right through the caution paper around her heart, almost welcomed it, she
was too tired for any resistance and letting go was too easy.
She had broken things off with James because humans were too fragile to not be crushed by what the super name brought with it. But Lena knew all about names that felt too heavy to carry around every day again and the doings of a family member always seeming to overshadow every action and every word they said, leaving them like they were never comparable, somehow lesser and being shaken to the core by the cruelties people were able to do, who you once thought from didn’t possess a bad bone in their skeleton
But she had thought that she and Mon-El would make more sense, he had also lost everything, was on a new planet with a sun who had the wrong color, he also lived in a world now where the things felt less real, less like they were made of real material and more like glass and paper left with the possibility to crush just too easily.
Also virtually everyone had told her to give him a chance (and a second and a third…) and she had been too tired to argue, to try and explain the bad feeling in her stomach, that something wasn’t quite right. She was too drained to attempt to figure out her feelings. Why couldn’t it be easier?
But there was someone who didn’t tell her that she should give him another chance and another one and…
Someone who would just try and comfort her with warm blankets, hot milk and patience not pushing, just listening:
Lena Luthor, the one person who things were supposed to be so hard, who was supposed to betray her trust over and over again. Who shouldn’t care about her feelings and exploited her for her own advance. The first time she had had this line of thoughts –after a long crying session without any real reason other than alcohol and being left alone with her thought to senate about her life- she had laughed bitterly in the face of the role reversal, her tears still feeling like acid as the dropped down her cheek.
Lena had been intrigued by the pretense that Kara Danvers junior reporter was, had always encouraged her, had saved and laminated every article of her as she would find out years from now. When everything was too much and all the noises were too loud she would just snuggle up with her and she would almost feel like the young Kryptonian again whose biggest worry was if she would join the science guild this year.
With her there weren’t any expectations,when just being Kara Zor-El was enough and when she had revealed herself she wasn’t amazed to not see any surprise. But to read pure joy that a Super would trust a Luthor, it was then that she decided that she would never lie to her again, not about anything, Lena needed someone on who she could rely on and frankly? The indestructible Supergirl needed that too, because under bulletproof skin was still the soul of a feeling being and that was both a blessing and a curse for the sensitive Kryptonian.
But Lena’s obvious trust issues never failed to let Kara feel the same rage again that she had felt during her red kryptonite infection, it threatened to blind her, lured her with the promise of hurting anyone who had betrayed Lena, to give everyone nightmares who had dared to befriend Lena for all the wrong reason, to throw her away like a to-go cup after it didn’t had any use for them anymore.
To have every person, who was supposed to love her unconditionally on their knees begging for their live, to see the light in their eyes slowly vanishing; their last thought to the absurdity that a Super who threw away their reputation and overstepped every ethical rule ever made for them, did all of that for the simple goal of getting revenge for a Luthor.
Yes for those closed minded people it would surely be a shock.
Years went by and she unintentionally gets the front seat row on Mon-El, the prince of Daxam’s transformation. He became harder, colder, more superior, quicker to judge, easier to provoke and unnecessary violent.
During those years she would find herself lying awake at 3am asking her why she was still staying. Maybe it was out of habit, maybe she too weak, maybe it was just easier to ignore all the red flags and just carry on, maybe she had real feelings for him after all.
After all who was able to say that now, right?
Sorting out her emotions had never been her strong suit, just ignoring them was easier.
But any kind of rest-affection became twisted into something ugly and evil by one too many fights, one too many lies, one too many betrayals and finally she had snapped. Yelled at him for everything he had done, for all the things that had poisoned her mind for too long to ever make truly undone, to not wake her up in the night and his voice screaming in her mind like he was next to her again and not far away in the galaxy where time was a foreign concept. The mere thought of her 24 years in absolute, complete silence never failed to make her tremble.
Whenever the darkness in her room reminded her of her time in outer space she would fly over to Lena. They wouldn’t talk or when only light nonsense, but it hushed away her demons enough to fall asleep, while being hold by pale arms.
But breaking up with him, hadn’t made things easier, it only left her with more time to think and the silence was only fuel for the bad, self-deprecating thoughts that made looking in the mirror every morning a torture.
She felt like she was drowning again, not living on this planet with a sun always just a bit too bright. Of course she had hidden it well, her desperation, like she had learned during her first years on this strange, unknown planet, with beings who still sometimes felt like aliens to her.
But she should have known that Lena would look beyond her all too cherish attitude and the smiles that weren’t as wide and often as the young CEO had become used to. Hadn’t the Luthor been the one to tell Kara over one too many shots about her awful time in boarding school.
The open and offensive bullying and “friends” who had stabbed her in the back, the rumors that were spread about her, yes one could say that Lena Luthor had lived in pain long enough, so it almost felt like she had under her skin another layer hidden in plain sight, only masked through formal outfits, professional make-up and hair always tied in a strict knot.
It was scary how good Lena could read her, like she was an open book, if the Luthor could ever turn evil, Kara would lose in a moment, it was almost ridiculous how much she loved her. She might be able to crush Lena like a fly if she’d want to, but Lena could destroy her far more effective, so much easier.
She knew that she was only hurting herself now with all those negative thinking but she couldn’t stop, maybe if she’d give up, things would finally be easy again.
However she hadn’t calculated a certain brunette who entered her apartment armed only with what looked like the complete menu of their favorite Chinese restaurant plus extra potstickers and eyes shining, looking so green that she already felt her knees getting weak and the last and oldest wall around Kara Zor-El one of the two last children of Krypton broke down leaving her vulnerable and exposed to every spiteful comment, with the possibility of hurting her very essence. But it also flushed away every rule ever made by the alien to avoid impulsive actions, all vanished almost too easy.
Freed of any precaution she did what she had been longing to for years that felt like an eternity now, had burnt down their friendship in a big fire to let rise something new, unknown to the both of them rise out of the ashes.
They started to heal, slowly, but together not always easy not always steady but together, no fight was bad enough and no night on the couch long enough to ever separate them in the long term. Life had never felt like this, sharing her burden had made life so much easier. Some things were meant to be, it was the only way the universe ever learned to apologize.
And on a sunny spring day, the sun almost felt red for Kara Zor-El, now known to the outside world as Kara Luthor. She wasn’t naïve though, their life would never be easy, their names meant too many things for that but together they could deal with everything, a shared burden was –as she now knew- so much lighter.
Maybe after all her life was never meant to be easy, but to hold meaning.
El mayarah