Chapter Text
There is a thin line between the horizon and the Sun. And in that line you can't quite tell where the Earth begins and where the light, all the reds and yellows of its essence start to disappear.
You're staring at that line and bashing your key into the lock, slamming your body into the door and cursing all the heavens that your father never sees the bigger picture. The Sun never counts the seconds or listens to the weather broadcasts. It just shines and hides when the darkness goes to overwhelm it. It just is. But your father could never let you be and the fact, the rigid and unchangeable fact is that the Sun is an unmanageable force, while the thought of being grounded can keep you in line, the fact is that the Sun is setting, but it's summer so the day is longer, the fact is that it's almost nine and you had to be home before eight. The fact is that you're out of line.
You're pushing the key with all your force, frantically trying to turn it, but it's stuck. You sigh and grunt and wonder how its only purpose is to open a door and how it has done that every day, every month, every year until now. You think about its edges and curves and how they have become dull from overuse. But you push and you push, and you're not even surprised when it breaks.
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You tell Mon-El about it. You tell him about the way your lungs burned while you ran like the waves bashing against the cliffs. About the pavement and all the cracks in it around your feet, how you didn't care whether you stepped on them, whether you made them even deeper and unfixable. About school and AP classes, tennis and choir, about your weekend job at Jeremiah's and the clock over the counter that seems to mock you. About the fact that you're only 17 and you have all the time in the world, but it's still not enough. About your dad and getting scolded for being late to cousin Dave's birthday. About the key and it's breaking.
He misses every word you say, too busy staring at the blue of your eyes. He seemingly only catches the last minute of your talking and cuts in a cheesy, melodramatic voice.
“You're the key to my universe!”
You look up at the night sky and see all the stars, and suddenly you can finally grasp how all of them seem so close to each other, but in reality stay worlds apart.
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You lock the door. Then unlock it. Then lock it again. It's a weird habit of yours, but you've got so accustomed to it you don't even realise what you're doing anymore. You just know you can't let anyone in.
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“Leave the back door open before you leave tonight.”
Mrs Danvers is a small old lady, always dressed in pastels. She's the nicest and friendliest woman you know and you're extremely happy she's your boss. She's more than that to you, though, so you get her a new lavender scarf for Christmas, ask her for help with AP English essays and quietly give her your condolences with a knowing look and slightly burned muffin every year on the 5th of April.
Mr Jeremiah Danvers was a nice man or so you remember from when you were a small child that knew all of the Power Ranger's names, but still said ,,wred” instead of red. Your faint memories consist of his sunshine smile, the dizziness from when he twirled you around the room and how dark Mrs Danvers' eyes became, darker than all the black she wore on the day of the funeral. You remember your mom caught you staring at the crying woman, put a tissue in your hand and pushed you towards her. You remember telling Mrs Danvers you had cried when Mufasa died in the Lion King and that you think all the best characters die in the beginning of the film because the world has to be bad so the heroes can make it better again. You could almost recall her calling you a hero. And even though you didn't consider yourself a hero, for the longest time you dreamed of becoming one.
You don't remember when that dream died or whether you buried it next to your mother or in the pile of your thrown out childhood toys.
All you know is that one day you realised it was time to grow up and to let some things go.
Mrs Danvers never did manage to do that.
She still considers you her lost hero and keeps her husband's portrait on the wall of her small restaurant. You aren't sure how healthy her fixation with the past is. You are too busy worrying about the future to care.
But you couldn't help but be concerned when the little old lady made you promise not to lock the door after your night shift. Maybe the loneliness and sadness behind her warm smiles finally drove her mad. Maybe she was still trying to keep open doors that had been gone for ages.
“But what if someone breaks in and steals something?”
“Just trust me on this one.”
You hate every part of your being that made you stay after closing hours just to make sure the crazy lady didn't make you a part of her business' downfall. You hope your dad isn't going to kill you when you get back home Monday morning and that he'll believe you when you tell him you were saving Mrs Danvers' restaurant and not partying all night long. But most of all you spend the night convincing yourself this in no way made you a hero before you drift off to sleep.
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You are abruptly woken up. A hand is shoving you and a raspy, female voice is shouting at you.
You roll over trying to get away and fall from the booth you were using as a bed. Finally, on the ground, with an ache in your backside and no trace of sleep in your system from the adrenaline jump you look up at your attacker.
She's a girl, around your age with long black hair and smudged makeup. She's wearing a black band T-shirt and ripped skinny jeans. She also has a black leather jacket and some worn out sneakers. You'd expect to see her at a local rock band's concert, but aren't exactly surprised catching her trying to rob an innocent old lady's business. You are surprised when you finally tune in what she's screaming at you.
“Daddy's little girl? What clean cut suburbia with its lemonade stands, summer barbeques and spring gardens wasn't enough and you decided to get a bit of a rush trashing Mrs Danvers' place? But was vandalism too boring as well? Fell asleep on the job?”
You could feel your face going red and the anger boiling at the pit of your stomach.
“You're the one robbing the restaurant!”
“Oh, yeah? Does the cash desk look trashed to you?”
You immediately look towards it but it is intact. Ok, maybe she wasn't a criminal, but you can't help but wonder what she was doing here in the first place.
She seems to sense your confusion so she's quick to answer.
“I spend the night at this place. My folks kicked me out on the streets about half a year ago and Mrs Danvers lets me stay here since she found out.”
“Oh...” is all you manage to say.
The girl just shrugs and goes to lay on the red couch in the booth you were sleeping on a couple of minutes ago. You can't help but feel bad for her and have no idea what you're supposed to do. You ask her if she has had dinner and offer to heat up some leftovers from the day.
“I know where those are and can do it myself if I want to. You don't need to help me just to make yourself feel better for mistaking me for a thief.”
You feel yourself getting angry again and you don't know why. All you know is this girl walked in like she owned the place with you in it. Her arrogance, lack of tact and disregard for basic manners got you riled up and you wished you had locked the door because in a single sentence she broke down all your barriers.
All you really wanted was to feel better and she wasn't going to play along with it and let you fake it.
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She comes back the night after and every night the following weekends. You stay every time as well. Wait until she appears, offer dinner, get rejected, get angry, wait until she settles in the booth and leave in a furious rush home hoping your dad doesn't catch you getting home later than usual.
“Why are you still here? Your shift ends at 10 and I come around 12?” asks the girl one Sunday night or Monday morning to be exact. You have a test later the day after the Sun rises and aren't exactly sure why you stayed either.
“I can't leave the place empty and unlocked! What if someone steals something?”
The girl snickers and looks around.
“Yeah like what?” she huffs. “Old Mr Danvers' portrait?”
You know it was a joke, but what's funny is the portrait was the only thing Mrs Danvers wouldn't bare to lose.
“Look... no one knows about this settlement except me, you and Eliza. And who in their right mind would try going straight through the back door if they wanted to break in?! It's just not realistic. People aren't that hopeful or dumb. “
You consider that idea for a while and stay silent. You recall a time you were that hopeful. When you first got on the tennis team and trained like crazy every day, hoping you could win first place in the tournament. It was your first competition, but you were so full of hope. Or maybe you were just dumb, you didn't qualify for the second round. Either way, people are unpredictable and unexplainable at times. Even Mrs Danvers surprised you with this little secret act of kindness. So you just shrug.
“Oh, God! You could just give me a key then! Lock up, go home and I'll let myself in later.”
“No way!”
People are unexpectable and you sure aren't trusting this girl. So you put your foot down, tell her to make sure nobody comes in through the night and go back home.
You wait for her next Saturday as well. She rolls her eyes, declines your meal and goes to the booth again.
You're about to leave when you hear her. Her voice is quieter and softer that its usual boisterous and accusatory tone.
“Thanks for looking out for her. Eliza is a good person and most of her obnoxious, self-centered teenage staff don't seem to care.”
You're still a bit offended she always acts like you're inferior and want to use the occasion to remind her that she too is an obnoxious, self-centered teenager. But something in the way she sounded made you feel like she was decades older, like her soul had been through so much and in that moment all you wanted was for it to heal. You keep your mouth shut and wish her goodnight for the first time.
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“Why did your parents kick you out?” you ask, totally out of line and with no tact a month or so after your first meeting.
The two of you still haven't exchanged names, but you have started having dinner together after she stopped refusing the leftovers you kept offering her. You also started wishing each other goodnight and you even brought her a blanket, an occurrence both of you didn't acknowledge. But the strange punk chick was really intent on keeping this forced aura of mystery around herself and Mrs Danvers shot down all your questions whenever you tried to ask her about the girl. So you decided you were just going to go for it tonight, no matter what came out.
She looks a bit taken aback and almost hits one of the chairs on her way in.
“Hello to you too!” she sits at the booth and waits until you bring two plates of reheated spaghetti.
You stare at her the whole time the two of you spend eating in silence. You see a small cut over her eyebrow, probably an old piercing, and one on the back of her knuckles. The second one is still fresh and you could guess it wasn't there as an active decision on her part. Maybe a passive one, that led to a fight and a few broken teeth to her opponent.
“They didn't approve of my lifestyle.”
“What?”
She wipes the tomato sauce off her mouth with the back of her hand, but winces and remembers about the cut.
“They kicked me out because they didn't like my life decisions.”
If you had to be completely honest, you probably wouldn't be entirely accepting of her life choices as well. But you can't for the life of you understand how her parents would just abandon her like that. She isn't that much older than you by the looks of it, probably your age even. You wonder what it's like being so completely lost and alone.
“Oh, it's not the end of the world! I'm doing pretty well honestly... Probably better than you even.”
You don't even realise you're snickering until it's too late.
“Yeah, right.”
You feel bad, but as it has already been established this night was meant to be one short of tactfulness.
She looks at you or maybe even right through you as a child peeks through a locked door's lock and smiles an unreadable smile.
“And yet you're the one that chooses to leave her vastly more desired life to spend an hour or two living mine every weekend. Face it, you could have had dinner at your place tonight, but your shirt is covered in the same sauce as mine.”
She takes a tissue and hands it to you.
You try to clean the sauce out of your clothes, but some things have a way of imprinting themselves so deeply you can never really get rid of them.
Her words don't leave your mind for weeks on end.
You finally know how Mrs Danvers felt when you passed her that tissue. Like her whole world was falling apart and it was the only thing she could hold on to.
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“You know you're the key to my universe... but you hardly have time for me anymore!”
You try to remember if he ever had time for you. But not just to spend an hour or two in light conversation on topics he found interesting or doing things he found amusing. If he ever saw you as something more than a girlfriend, something akin to a real person.
“No,” you tell him six months into your relationship after he didn't pay attention to a word of what you said, after he brushed off all your anxieties before a big test, after he was too busy being offended you missed your date to his favourite pizza parlour because you had to revise, after he put himself before you for the millionth time.
“I'm my own universe.”
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“You missed choir,” your dad says absentmindedly one day.
“I quit choir.”
Suddenly all his attention is on you. You see the disappointment in his eyes and can even hear it in his voice when he speaks up.
“You love choir!”
It takes all the courage in you to tell him you don't. He just scoffs and you feel the need to remind him he made you sign up for it in the first place. You don't do that and he doesn't speak to you for two weeks. You're glad you kept your mouth shut or else he could have easily kept silent for a month. But on Tuesday night he decides to lecture you on how many doors you're closing.
You think about it for a moment.
“I never wanted them open anyway. I was never gonna go through them anyway,” you try to be reasonable.
He's always loved to respond to reason with yelling and soon the argument becomes a full blown verbal fight. You let it slip that you quit tennis as well and he's more than furious.
“Tennis was an open door to a sports scholarship and potential career and choir to other college credentials!”
You feel tears in your eyes and remember all the dread you felt every time you had to head to the music hall at school or drive to the tennis courts.
“You can't use one key to unlock all doors!” your voice wavers and you leave.
You feel a familiar burning in your lungs, but you can't stop the intoxicating rhythm of your feet hitting the ground. You're a wild force and for the first time, you don't feel like you're running away from something. You run like the current cutting its way through the rocks, taking everything halting its path along with it.
You go to Jeremiah's and find her in front with a cigar and smudged make-up. Her mascara is running down her cheeks and she looks like a mess, more than usual.
You sit quietly next to her. Your heart is racing and your breathing is uneven, but she is freakishly calm next to you. You've got to know her in the couple of months spent together. You never found out her name or most of her story, but you know the things that matter about her. You know she is collected as much as the flames in a fireplace are. All they need is a push to engulf everything. You know she cares about the now more than anything, rarely thinks about the future or the past. You know she is so different than you and still manages to pick through all the doors you're so keen on locking.
“You weren't at work today,” she says a little above a whisper.
“I only work on weekends.”
You know she knows that because she has grown close to you as well, but you've found out she likes to act distant and unattached at times.
You seem to know so much about her and she still manages to surprise you in the best and in the worst ways.
You don't know what to say when you hear her.
“Mrs Danvers is dead.”
-------
She spends the night at your place. The police had the restaurant locked down.
You give her your old tennis polo and some shorts. She takes off all her dark make-up and her eyes are still red from the tears. She looks so old and sad, so young and vulnerable at the same time. She is sitting rigidly at the edge of your bed and has her attention on one of the books she found on your nightstand. She's been on the same page for half an hour now.
You want to tell her everything will be OK, but you know she doesn't like it when people pity her.
You don't pity her, though. You can't pity someone when you're in the exact same position as them.
You take a tissue and try to wipe away all of your tears. You offer her one as well and she takes it. You're not sure if she realises what you gave her exactly as she doesn't tear her eyes off the page, but you let her be. Sitting next to her on the bed, you stare at the mirror in front of you.
In the dark, both of your silhouettes are blurry and almost indistinguishable. It's hard to tell who is who. You turn and look at her in your clothes, in your bed and you can't help but wonder if you were ever that different.
“You know...”
She throws the book on the floor and you finally recognise it as ,,Pere Goriot”
“Good and selfless people always die completely unrecognised. While the worst ones thrive even after death.”
You stay quiet.
“All the people that loved her for the low-priced coffee won't come to the funeral. All the employees she helped build a future won't come either. God, even her daughter may not find the time to come from the other side of the country...”
You hear her sad laughter before she continues on an afterthought.
,,I can't even recall the last time she visited...The sad truth is that tomorrow it's gonna be only me and you plus two or three other people.”
You still have no idea what to say, so you just pass her another tissue. You look at the clock while she blows her nose and see it's already around 5 am. This is the longest the two of you have spent together.
“My name's Kara,” you say suddenly.
She looks up at you and gives you the faintest of smiles.
“I know. I saw it on your badge that time you didn't change from your work clothes,” her smile turns into a smirk and you shove her in good spirit.
“Won't you finally tell me your name or maybe you don't have one?”
“Oh, no! You found out my deepest, darkest secret! My parents were idiots and forgot to give me a name,” she says while faking distraughtness.
“Oh, what a shame! Here let me help!”
You mockingly look her up and down before continuing.
“You look like a Joy to me, or maybe Sunny...hm... oh what about Merry?”
Potentially Merry is laughing so hard she clutches her stomach. Completely out of breath she still manages to speak.
“Try with Lena.”
“Lena,” you repeat.
Lena was nodding at you with a small smile on her lips.
“Has a nice ring to it,” you say absentmindedly.
“It's better than Kara.”
You reach for your pillow and hit her with it.
“You were the one that refused to say their name for months on end.”
Lena fakes an offended gasp and insists you were the one that didn't ask. You don't accept the excuse and continue hitting her with the pillow. Somewhere along the night the two of you decide to watch the Lion King. You tell her about its connection to your relationship with Mrs Danvers. Lena listens intently and after a little time contemplating tells you how she met Eliza.
“You know how some trash bins have locks so raccoons don't rummage through them?... Well, I was in the middle of picking one when she saw me. I didn't know what to tell her, but my stomach growling did all the talking. She took me inside her restaurant, gave me a free meal and offered me a place to sleep. I tried working as a waitress at Jeremiah's to pay her off, but I'm bad with people so she found me a job as a stock assistant at a local supermarket where she bought supplies from... I am so close to getting a promotion now. I'm gonna be able to finally rent my own apartment. She would have been so happy.”
You smile at the good news. Lena goes quiet for a while and looks calmer than usual. Not wanting to ruin her serenity, you too keep to yourself. Then all of a sudden she turns to face you, but her eyes are settled onto something in the distance behind.
“You know when I couldn't open the trash bin's lock or manage to work as a waitress, or when I used to cry without stopping for hours and days after my parents left me... Eliza used to tell me some doors close and some just can't be opened in the first place... but that doesn't mean you're at a dead end.. you just have to look harder until you find a lock that fits your key. It may take time, but you can't break the door down... you just have to wait.”
“How long have you been waiting?” you ask quietly.
“All my life really...You?”
“Feels like forever”
You both laugh. Her eyes finally focus on you.
“Well... we could wait together... Just don't make me a friends forever bracelet, please”
You almost fall from the bed laughing so much and she laughs so hard she snorts. You can't even take a breath. Your dad comes in to tell you it's 7 o'clock in the morning and to keep quiet. You can't even hear him.
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In the morning you go to the funeral and find more than 100 people gathered. You look at Lena and don't think you'll ever see a person this happy they were wrong.
The ceremony passes quickly. Both of you say a few words and you see Lena crying for the first time. You hand her a tissue for the hundredth and hope it will be the last because you are so tired of seeing tears.
You see Alex Danvers and smile at her. She is whipping at her eyes but her face lights up when she spots you and Lena. She nearly bolts to you and hugs you both. She is being recked by a thousand emotions at once and you can't keep up. She cries because of her mother's passing and cries harder because she wasn't there for her during her last moments. She thanks you for all the reassurances you throw her way and for looking out for Eliza. Then she smiles this unreadable smile and tells you the restaurant is yours.
You tell her to shut up and she smiles wider.
Eliza left it to you and Lena, according to her inheritance.
Your jaw drops and a new wave of tears coats Lena' cheeks.
Both of you can't recall a time you were happier.
You hear the sound of a key setting in place and a lock opening.
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In a month you hand Lena the key and she's the one to open the door. Danvers has a new name and look, but old Jerimiah's portrait is still hanging on the wall. Although now next to his, there's one of his wife as well.
You smile at them and look over at one of the booths. Lena is busy talking business with someone on the phone. You could offer her some help, but her short temper and no settling type of attitude are what helped the restaurant grow even bigger than it used to be. So you leave her be and go look through the window.
The sun is shining and it's at its highest point.