Chapter Text
Sometimes there’s no time to think.
Kara’s not supposed to say that. She might be the most powerful creature on Earth. She can level cities with her bare hands, incinerate countries with her eyes. She always has to think. Even when she doesn’t, she has to. She lives in a world made of glass and one careless moment could mean its undoing.
But sometimes there’s no time.
The void is closing and her throat is raw and then her fist is trying to shatter a barrier between universes. A barrier so fine humans, Kryptonians, no one should be able to see it. Even breachers like Cisco need glasses.
But her fist finds it and the cracks form, rippling across space and time. The void shines through.
Someone shouts for Supergirl.
She punches again. The skin on her knuckles tear. Bones in her fist fracture. The world shifts as the void dips in.
A hand grabs her arm as she throws it back for another punch. A voice rumbles her name—“Supergirl.”
She casts the voice, the hand, aside. She screams with her next punch. One that will, part of her knows, consume the world and usher in the void.
But then Mon-El is there, standing between her and the crack in reality she’s trying to form. His beard is stained with blood and he’s sweaty—even though Daxamites shouldn’t get sweaty on Earth.
Blood from her knuckle, split and aching, brushes his nose.
“Supergirl, you have to stop,” he says softly.
“Please,” J’onn says behind her.
She turns and sees him cradling his ribs and breathless.
She looks back to Mon-El whose empathy is too damn calm and understanding for the rawness she feels.
She stumbles and J’onn catches her with a grunt of pain. “I know,” he says.
Because he’s the only one that can. The only one who can bare to understand what she is feeling.
Her sister just threw herself and a monster into some far away place and Kara can’t even chase after.
***
Winn skitters to a stop when he sees a bruised and bloodied J’onn wrapping Kara’s bruised and bloody hand.
“Did I—she didn’t—tell me that wasn’t Alex in the Lexosuit?”
Kara looks away. There’s the little corner in the medbay where Alex would stand and enter stuff into Kara’s medical file. She can see a pen on the keyboard, Alex’s teeth marks still in the cap.
“It couldn’t have been her,” Winn is saying. “Where would she have even gotten a new suit? And she was watching Ruby! The whole plan was you take out Reign and Alex stay with Ruby.”
“Clearly,” J’onn says, eyes on the bandages still in his hands, “Alex thought otherwise.”
“But that’s stupid. Alex doesn’t do stupid.”
“She does.” Kara’s voice is scratchy. She didn’t even know she could scream herself raw on Earth. “When it’s someone she cares about Alex is very stupid.”
J’onn looks as though he wants to say something. He probably wants to try and make her feel better. But Kara isn’t quite ready for that.
She hops off the bed and squeezes her hand experimentally. It hurts, a lot. She hasn’t blown out her powers, but she’s close to it.
Alex would recommend a few hours in a sun bed, a big dinner, and some rest.
Kara goes to the site of the fight instead. Mon-El and his Legion are helping the DEO and the local police with clean up. Kara joins in. She appreciates the strain of lifting buildings and moving rubble and searching for survivors.
After replacing a pylon supporting a twenty story building with her shoulders for two hours Mon-El approaches her. He offers water and for some reason it makes her think of Alex and the raw feeling in her throat returns. So she shakes her head.
“Kara…” He says her name quiet enough that no one else can hear. “She wouldn’t want this.”
“She jumped through a portal and might not be back for two hundred years so she doesn’t get a say either way.”
“Humans can’t even—“
“No. See Alex will survive. Somehow she will find a way to survive, because otherwise I’m probably never gonna see my sister again, and if I start thinking that way I’m gonna lose it.”
“Which is okay.” He steps closer, his voice too intimate for what they are supposed to be to each other now. “It’s okay to grieve.”
“Right, because you’re the expert on grief. How long did it take you to get over me Mon-El? Seven years? Only not really because you’ve been toying with Imra and I for months.” Mon-El looks chastened and it’s so stupid. Its not his fault. Not what happened between them and Imra, or what happened to Alex. Or what’s happening to Kara right now. None of it is his fault, but the guy is always a glutton for Kara’s punishment so who is she to deny him!
Imra must realize what’s happening because she calls her husband away, and because the guy genuinely loves Imra—even if he’s still got feelings for Kara—he goes after her.
Querl continues to watch Kara, head tilted in calculation.
Kara goes over to the rest station where food and water has been set on a plastic fold out table. She takes a water she still doesn’t want or need and sips it. Querl joins her, still staring, hands folded behind his back.
“What,” she asks.
“I’m sorry—I just—I never expected this response to the Reign solution.”
“You didn’t expect this response?” She can’t mention Alex here, with so many people milling around the table. Can’t mention that her sister is gone and she’s never going to be whole again.
“History suggests you handle it better.”
It would be so easy to yell at him. Querl is logical enough he won’t be offended and Kara might feel better. But she’s also starting to feel the fatigue of the day setting into her bones and the idea of getting angry, again, is too exhausting. So she waves him off and flies home.
She puts her phone, which has been dead since the afternoon, on its charger and then peels off her suit, adding it to a load in the washing machine.
Washing her face with one hand—her other hand is still wrapped up and feels like needs to be—is not easy, but she gets it done.
She skips brushing her teeth and finding pajamas. Instead she just changes her underwear and collapses onto her bed.
That’s when her phone powers up and she see a flurry of messages fly across the screen.
She flips the phone over and then curls up on her side. As sleep finally washes over her, like a wave at the edge of the shore, she thinks she hears Alex say her name.
A single sob shocks her back awake.
Then all Kara can think is Alex. Her name and face and the way she hugged tighter than a human usually did. How she’d smile and cry and how she’d trip Kara on the race to the bathroom.
Kara’s hand covers her face as soundless sobs seem to be pulled from her body by an invisible force.
It hurts to cry.
Sleep doesn’t offer much relief.
***
A frantic and insistent knocking forces Kara out of bed.
Her powers are clearly on the fritz because her mouth is dry, she’s sore all over, and her hand has actually swollen in the night.
She trips into sweat pants and a soft sweater and only remember her glasses as she’s about to unlock the door.
It’s a good thing she remembers them, because Lena is on the other side and she claws at Kara as soon as she sees her. Wrapping her up in a tactless hug.
She rambles too. “Alex said you were near the fighting and then you didn’t call and she isn’t answering and Reign—they’re saying Reign is gone! Ruby thinks her mother is dead but Supergirl told me—she told me Sam would be okay I c—“
“Sam and Alex are gone,” Kara says. She can’t stand to hear the rambling and the expectations. Can’t stand to be in the room with someone still existing in a world where Alex is too. “Supergirl lied.”
Thunderstruck is the perfect word to describe Lena’s expression. Her purse slips off her shoulder. Her mouth goes slack. Her eyes wide, but not too wide. It’s as if every muscle in her body forgot how to contract and just let go.
“She lied,” Kara says. Just in case Lena missed.
“No—no there was a plan. She—“ Lena is struggling. “She had a plan, and Alex! Alex. Had. A. Plan.”
Alex had a suit. One of Lex Luthor’s suits. It let her join the fight. Kara remembers the way one of the arms on the suit shattered and Alex cried out. Moments later Kara was opening the void and her sister was shooting past her, using the rocket boots on the stupid suit to push herself and Reign forward.
Alex never should have had that suit, and there’s only one place it could have come from. She knows her gaze is cold. “You gave her the suit to help fight.”
Lena is still too ramped up to realize Kara’s furious. “She told me she had a plan!”
“She did. She used the suit to throw herself and Reign into some kind of portal, and apparently Supergirl and her ‘friends’ have no idea where it goes or how to get there. So Alex, Sam’s body—Sam, they’re gone. Because you gave her a suit.”
There it is. Lena’s surprise. “Kara…”
“My sister would still be here—alive, but you gave her a suit, Lena.”
She watches Lena’s throat as she swallows. She’s looking for words to give Kara. Something to say.
When nothing comes to her Lena hangs her head. “I’m so sorry,” she says. And there’s none of the clipped tone of the CEO tasked with hard choices. There’s only the regret of someone who stupidly thought they could help.
Kara had to take the rage that’s boiling up in her—directionless and hot—and ball it up as tightly as she can. She takes a deep breath and while she sounds exhausted, the anger seems to have finally left her voice. “How’s Ruby?”
“Alex told me to watch her, and now she’s not returning either of our calls and Ruby just saw her mother thrown through some kind of rift on the news. She could be doing better.”
“I should—I should talk to her. Tell her—“
The hands that grip her shoulders are gentle and cool.
She stops talking.
Lena is looking at her with the oddest look. One Kara can’t decipher. Her hand rises and brushes Kara’s glasses before settling against her cheek. The other follows suit.
And Lena isn’t even doing anything. She’s just looking. But she holds Kara’s gaze until the tears return. And then she holds Kara, mute and solid.
They slide to the floor, Lena never letting go.
***
Telling Eliza is no easier than telling Lena (who assures her she will tell Ruby). Kara flies straight to the house and finds her foster mother sitting on the porch.
She simply nods and says “I already knew.”
Then it’s Eliza who hugs Kara.
Distantly she knows, its because this is how Eliza grieves.
Kara remembers when they thought Jeremiah was gone. She never saw Eliza cry. Never tried to listen for it. But one day she caught Eliza looking up at the stars. Her eyes were wet with tears.
This is something similar. Kara never knew grief could look so serene.
She stays with Eliza that night and there is little talking. Just mute comfort.
In the morning she returns home to change clothes and track down Lena, but as she steps outside she hears someone call after her.
It’s Maggie Sawyer, who holds up her phone and says “She hasn’t called me back.”
Kara hasn’t seen Maggie in month. She and her sister made a clean break and no attempt at being friends. But the woman standing in front of her doesn’t look like someone who found out an ex is gone.
She looks pretty much as awful as Kara feels.
“Walk with me to get coffee,” Kara asks.
Maggie nods numbly and joins Kara, hands shoved into the pocket of her jacket. They don’t speak really, just go into the coffee shop on the corner and order their drinks then settle at an uncomfortable table by the window.
Maggie speaks first, eyes on her dark roast. “She was the person in the suit wasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Kara says, and the admission already hurts less than it did last time.
The side of Maggie’s mouth curls up. “Had to save the world.” She takes a sip and almost chokes on it before setting it back down one the table. “I have to assume the DEO is trying to get her back?”
“Maggie.”
She looks up, eyes bright.
“As far as we know it was a one way trip.” Every time Kara even considers that she finds it impossible. The finality seems too much.
“I don’t believe that.” Maggie must agree.
Kara raises an eyebrow.
And Maggie leans in. Her dark hair is dangerously close to the cup of coffee she’s holding onto tightly. “I don’t believe that you would say that. That you would give up like that. Not after everything the two of you have been through.”
“It’s not a choice Maggie. There isn’t anything to solve. Alex is on the other side of the universe and the only way back here is the long way. Forget years—she’s likely millennia from here.”
“So find a time machine. Or another portal. Something to bring her back.”
“I can’t—“
“Bullshit!”
The barista pauses in her steaming to watch them. Same as the man waiting on his latte.
“Bullshit,” Maggie hisses. “You’re—“ She looks around, before leaning even closer and dropping her voice further. “You’re Supergirl. You can do anything.”
Kara’s own laugh surprises her, and she has to sit back, kicking her legs out and slouching. “Except save my sister.”
Blessedly Maggie gets a call after that. She leaves her half drunk coffee on the table and walks away, pausing just to tell Kara, again, that she can save Alex.
And if she hadn’t left to solve murders or robberies or whatever Kara might have told her that she’d like to save her sister. And then she would have pointed out that she had a genius from the future, as well as a lot of geniuses in the present day, on her side. Heck Kara’s uncle once said she was the smarted person on all of Krypton before it blew up.
Its not like Supergirl and friends lack the intellectual capacity to solve an unsolvable problem. Its just that this particular problem can’t be solved.
The machine she used to create the portal won’t create it in the same place twice, and the edge of the universe, however potentially finite it might be, is still enormous. Querl told her once that finding whatever they sent through again would take, minimum, a million years. “And that’s with technology from my century,” he’d said with a laugh. “Try billions with tech from yours.”
Looking for Alex isn’t feasible, all she can do—all she can hope—is that Alex somehow finds a really fast ship on the edge of space and points it towards Earth.
The knowledge that her sister can basically do anything, including that, is what keeps Kara from just sleeping through every day. Because there on the fringes of her misery is the faintest taste of hope.
And she clings to it when she goes to Lena’s place. Lena could live in a mansion in the hills like Cat, or a brownstone like James. But instead she chose a recently built twenty story condo building. She doesn’t even have the top floor—though Kara knows for a fact L Corp owns the top six floors. Instead she has a smaller two bedroom condo with low ceilings, way too much marble and modern lines, and a prodigious lack of color.
The balcony’s the selling point and Ruby is huddled on it when Kara arrives.
Lena’s wearing an old sweatshirt and jeans and looks softer than Kara’s used to seeing her. She pulls Kara into a one armed hug before stepping back to study her closely. “How are you holding up?”
Kara shrugs.
“And you hand?”
She flexes it reflexively. It’s still healing and she kind of likes the pain.
Not for any weird kinky reason. Just because it’s a nice distraction.
“I’m hoping to take the bandages off in a few days.”
Lena nods and walks back towards the open area that functions as a huge kitchen, dining room and living room in one. There’s half a box of pastries on the dining room table and a sweating carton of orange juice on the kitchen’s marble countertop. Lena doesn’t ask, just fetches a mug and pours coffee from the carafe in the corner. Kara takes it and settles at the kitchen counter. She can hear the water make its way down the sides of the juice carton and, like she used to as a kid, she lets herself get lost in the noise.
“—Notice Supergirl’s been out of commission the last two days too. She was close with your sister wasn’t she?”
Kara snaps her focus back onto Lena, who is sipping her coffee and looking perfectly innocent. “They worked together sometimes.”
“More than sometimes,” Lena says. “At least from the stories Ruby’s told me.”
Kara shrugs.
“Have you spoken to her?”
“Who—Supergirl?”
“I don’t know.” Lena looks away, tucking a long lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I just thought…maybe she saw something—heard something we can tell Ruby.”
Kara can remember, very clearly, the moment Sam flickered back into place. She and Reign had been high above the city, bruised and bleeding, Reign’s mask cracked—a chunk of it missing.
Kara had hit the button on the machine, forming the void she needed to throw Reign into, but then Alex had rocketed past in that Lexosuit, and Reign had disappeared for an instant as she and Alex connected.
An instant for a human.
But Kara was Kryptonian, and the moment had felt like an eternity. One she’d been too slow to move in. She’d seen Sam as Sam again, and she’d seen Alex.
And then nothing.
She sets her coffee down carefully. “Do you mind if I talk with Ruby? Alone?”
Lena has some undefinable look on her face again, but she nods. “Of—of course. I’ll be in here if you two need anything.”
Ruby acknowledges her with little more than a nod when she steps out onto the balcony.
Her gaze is directed towards where the fight happened. Buildings block the way, but there’s still the smell in there air of the burning. She knows from experience it will linger.
“I’m sorry about Alex,” Ruby says.
Kara stops, stunned by the sudden apology.
“You—Ruby you have nothing to apologize for.”
The girl shrugs. Clearly she disagrees. And Kara has to think of why that could possibly be. So she lets herself think like a kid might—like she did when she was Ruby’s age.
Then she sighs. Right. Kara joins Ruby to look out over the sitting, leaning on the glass. “You told her to save your mom didn’t you?”
Ruby blinks and her eyes are suddenly wet.
Ruby probably begged Alex. Probably cried. And stupid noble Alex probably hugged her and told her it would be all right.
Because that was what Alex had always done. From the moment Kara had met her.
She wouldn’t have done anything else.
Kara laughs and the sounds has Ruby watching her in wary horror.
Stupid noble heroic Alex.
“Yeah. You know, Alex probably would have done it even if you hadn’t begged her.” She feels something wet on her face and rubs it away with the back of her hand. “She was always stupidly heroic like that.”
Ruby is still watching her, a mixture of horror and confusion that forces Kara to look away. She settles on the sky. Being Kryptonian she can see all the stars even when the sun is out. They sparkle like nothing she’d ever seen before coming to Earth.
“I bet the idiot even hugged you and told you it would be okay.” She can hear how the tears are distorting her voice. “She always did that. When I first came to live with her, after my parents died, she told me it would all be okay.” She grabs the balcony and leans back, letting just her fingertips support her. “Which was kind of funny, because Alex has never been an optimist.”
Ruby is definitely crying now, but making no move to run or hug. Just watches Kara in a state of grief and shock.
“But you know what? When it came to friends Alex always had this really bizarre need to hope. She’s believed in me even when I felt like the biggest failure, and she believed in your mom, and you, and she and your mom might be gone right now, but its probably important for us to be a little optimistic too huh. We should believe in them?”
Ruby nods and wipes her own tears away.
“Because I really don’t want to act like they’re not coming back. Do you?”
Ruby shakes her head. “No.”
Kara, through her tears, tells Ruby to “come here” and the girl gratefully folds into her, squeezing Kara tight. She drops a kiss onto Ruby’s head and murmurs assurances she needs to believe herself.
It was always easy to be an optimist when Alex was skulking around being a pessimist. Now Kara finds it much harder, and she clings to her little speech much like Ruby clings to her.
***
Kara makes no effort to leave Lena’s apartment. They have sandwiches for lunch and watch cartoons on Lena’s giant TV. Lena sits a little further apart, eyes on her tablet.
Around two she gets a calls and slips into her bedroom.
When she returns she’s changed out of sweats and jeans into one of her jacket and slacks ensembles she wears to board meetings. “That was CNN,” she announced. “I’ve got to go down to some studio they rented to appear on a panel at five.”
She picks up her purse and starts moving her things from it to a new purse that better matches the pumps she’s wearing.
“What kind of panel,” Ruby asks.
“About Supergirl disappearing after the everything that happened.”
“Disappeared,” Kara exclaims.
Ruby and Lena both stare. Lena has the funny look on her face again.
Kara coughs. “Supergirl disappeared?”
“No one’s seen her since after the attack. The news says she helped with clean up immediately afterwards, and now its been nearly two days of radio silence.”
“That’s…Supergirl’s been gone longer than that before.”
Lena shrugs. “Well frankly after everything that happened Supergirl deserves to have a break, so I’m going to go on television and say just that.”
“Lena—“
“She can’t defend herself Kara. So I will.”
Lena says it with determined finality and Ruby shrugs and settles back into watching cartoon women blow up other cartoon women.
Kara, meanwhile, watches her friend leave and tries not to think about how warm Lena’s defense makes her. She bites the inside of her cheek and sinks further into the cushions of the couch.
***
Kara doesn’t realize she fell asleep until she’s waking up on Lena’s couch. It’s dark already, and the TV is on, but muted. She sits up, a blanket pooling in her lap.
Lena, who is sitting on the opposite side of the couch, looks up. “You’re awake.” She says it with a sleepy smile that has Kara wanting to curl up and go right back to sleep.
“I didn’t even know I fell asleep.”
“Ruby says it happened after you two watched me on CNN. She said you got very cranky with what one of the pundits said to me.”
“He was being a jerk—“
Lena’s still smiling. “Thanks for the defense.”
And Kara is back to feeling warm again.
“I ordered pizza earlier, including an entire one for you. I figure between your usual diet and the grief eating you deserved one to yourself.”
Kara stretches and catches Lena watching the sliver of skin from where Kara’s t-shirt has ridden up. She hops off the couch and goes to the pizza, carefully eating it as slowly as a human would. Lena continues to watch her, the glow of the TV casts odd shadows, that flicker across her face and make it harder for Kara to read her.
Kara thinks Lena looks gorgeous. Then immediately casts the odd thought aside.
“Where’s Ruby?”
“Asleep.” Lena stands and resettles at the kitchen counter, her tablet in front of her. Kara can see what looks like legal documents on the screen. “And we should talk about her.”
Kara eats another slice of pizza. The first two were great, if cold. This slice tastes more like chalk, and is gummy in her mouth.
“Sam always said the father was out of the picture and she’s right. From what I found he died in a car accident when Ruby would have been two.”
So Ruby’s an orphan. Kara should welcome her to the club.
“Sam, when she started getting sicker, actually spoke with Alex about taking Ruby in the event something happened to her.”
Something Kara already knew. Alex told her right after it happened and then they swore they’d find a way—any way—to save Sam.
“So what happens now?”
“That’s what we have to figure out. I don’t think Sam’s foster mother is an option.”
“Definitely not.”
“And I’m sure Sam and Alex would kill us both if we let Ruby go into the system. So,” Lena takes a deep breath and Kara braces herself for what she knows is coming next. “I want to try and adopt her.”
“Okay.”
Lena looks up sharply. “Okay?”
“You want to adopt one of your best friend’s kids. You have the means. You care. Okay.”
Lena nods, chewing her lips and looking back down at her tablet.
“And I’ll help,” Kara says. She reaches across the counter to squeeze Lena’s hand.
Lena looks grateful when she covers Kara’s hand with her own. “I don’t think I can do it without you.”
“Well good, because I need you too, Lena.”
***
Kara has a good idea of what it’s like to be nearly thirteen and suddenly orphaned. So she’s worse than Lena about forgiving Ruby when she starts skipping school.
The fight she and Lena have on the subject is easily the biggest fight they’ve ever had and when Kara angrily tells Lena they wouldn’t even be in their fight if Lena hadn’t given Alex the suit she instantly regrets it.
Lena gets sullen and asks her to leave, and Kara knows enough to respect her wishes.
At least until she returns to Lena’s office an hour later, this time in cape and boots.
“Supergirl,” Lena sighs. “I’m really not in the mood for this right now.”
“Mood,” Kara says teasingly. She’s there as Supergirl who would, technically, not be aware of her fight with Kara.
Lean spins around in her chair to give Supergirl the kind of glare she usually reserves for Kara. “Don’t you have buses full of nuns to save?”
“That was this morning. And the boat of monks rescue isn’t until tomorrow night.” She tilts her head. “What’s wrong?”
“My best friend is an insufferable idiot.”
Ouch.
Kara hides her wince by fluffing her cape, then crossing her arms and looking as super heroically as possible at Lena.
“What happened,” she asks, keeping her voice in the lower Supergirl register.
Lena gives a shaky laugh. “Oh you know, the girl I adopted a month ago has started skipping school and won’t tell me where she’s going and my best friend, who lost her sister and also has some experience with loss as a twelve year old, is telling me to just let it happen.”
Kara opens her mouth to support her alter ego.
But Lena continues. “And I get it. I can’t imagine what Ruby is going through—or what Kara did. I know that. But god, she’s a kid. And she doesn’t have someone like Alex there to protect her. And she’s certainly not—“ She waves at Kara. “She’s not like you.”
“Me?”
“You’re indestructible!”
“I…am.”
“Ruby isn’t. She’s a teenage girl who’s already hurting, and if she runs off like this she could just get hurt worse.”
When Kara had been in Lena’s office an hour earlier, having a similar discussion, that point had not been made. Probably because Lena thinks Kara is as human as she is. Hearing it now though—Kara agrees. “You’re right.”
Lena stiffens, rising up with the agreement. “I am,” she insists.
“You should tell Kara that.”
She sighs and settles back down in to her chair. “I should.”
She moves around papers on her desk, pretending to look busy for Supergirl. “So, what do I owe the pleasure. Just came to hear me complain?”
“Any time,” Kara says with a smile. “And actually…” Actually Kara really just stopped by because she wanted to continue her argument with Lena but knew she couldn’t do it as Kara Danvers. Now that she’s realized she was wrong she feels a little silly standing in Lena’s office with cape in hand.
She racks her brain trying to come up with an excuse.
Lena sighs again. “Supergirl I always welcome your visits, but if you don’t mind I have some work to do before I pick Ruby up from school, because I have to do it now that she’s started skipping. Can’t just rely on my driver.”
“Ms. Danvers can’t help?”
“She could if I didn’t want to strangle her at the moment. Could you…?”
Her eyes flicker to the open window and Kara nods.
“Of course.” She hops to it, pausing just before lift off. “You should talk to her Ms. Luthor. I know with her sister gone she appreciates your friendship.” She laughs. “Knowing Kara, she’s probably already kicking herself over how she acted.”
“Well if you see her before I do tell her she can make up for it by bringing over dinner and then helping Ruby with her Spanish homework. The pasta salad from that place on Atlantic ideally.”
Kara bites back a groan. She hates the pasta salad from the place on Atlantic. Ruby and Lena both love it but she finds it slimy and not the least bit filling. Ruby’s Spanish homework is also a point of complaint. Kara can speak Spanish just fine, but is awful at writing it all out, and she and Ruby speak with very different accents.
Through gritted teeth she says “I’ll let her know if I see her.”
Lena smiles brightly—like she’s already told Kara what she has to do to get back in her good graces.
Sometimes, if Kara didn’t know any better, she would think Lena somehow knew she and Supergirl were the same person.
***
It turns out Ruby has been skipping school because, like her mother before her, she has powers and believes in using them to dispense justice. Thankfully, for the city at large, Ruby is about to turn thirteen and her idea of justice is hanging criminals on lamp posts by their underwear.
No one actually knew that it is Ruby’s doing (Mon-El and Winn had placed bets on it secretly being J’onn) until she tries to stop a well armed alien that sends her through a wall. Mon-El, thankfully, was already en route after hearing the first reports of an alien.
Kara is patched in and told of what he’s found while she’s in a CatCo all hands. Her instinct is to bring Ruby to the DEO, where she can hover over her and worry and glower at the doctors and Winn until they explain Ruby’s powers.
But a DEO visit would mean bringing Lena into the DEO and generally outing the DEO to Lena. That can’t happen.
So Kara tells Mon-El to take her to Lena’s office and have Querl and Irma meet him there.
By the time Kara arrives, breathless and just a little too late, Ruby is sitting on the bench of an MRI machine in the L Corp basement and wearing a hospital gown branded with little Ls. Lena is standing beside her in a blue sheath dress with a purse hanging from the crook of her elbow and her phone clutched in her hand. Her free hand rests lightly on Ruby’s back and her face is screwed up in attentiveness as she listens to Querl.
When Kara bounds in Lena’s focus immediately slides to her and Kara thinks her best friend is about to fly across the room just to hug her.
Kara wishes she would.
Lena makes no move to leave Ruby’s side.
Ruby, for her part, looks miserable and sick.
“What happened,” Kara asks.
Mon-El clears his throat and pushes away from the corner he’d been leaning against. “Ruby here tried to take in a Tarconian.”
“She what?!”
Now Ruby looks abashed.
“And good thing she’s so durable or we’d have a different conversation.”
“Not that durable,” Querl interjects. “She has severe contusions when I first arrived. Really she should just be lucky she’s healing as fast as she is. And that she’s as strong as she is. Tarconians can remove your head with a single hand.”
Lena closes her eyes at the image. Ruby looks like she might be sick.
“Querl.” Irma voice is soft, her tone light on reproach.
“We’ll give you guys some space,” Mon-El says.
The Legion leaves and it is Kara alone with her...family?
She spends most nights at Lena’s—only returning home to sleep and wash her clothes (and do her work as Supergirl). She’s not a part of the adoption process, but she helps Ruby with her homework and argues with Lena about the best approach to raising her. They’re not Alex. They’re not Thanksgiving in Midvale or Smallville. But it feels the same. Only more, because now Kara’s party responsible for another life.
She crosses her arms and then remembers to sag a little, so her shoulders aren’t quite as broad as Supergirl’s. “You have powers?”
Ruby doesn’t look up, but she nods, once, quickly.
Lena rubs Ruby’s back in small circles. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Ruby’s answer is just a shrug.
Lena says her name in exasperation and Ruby just ducks her head lower.
“You have to know we would have been okay with it,” Kara says. When Lena looks up sharply in horror Kara quickly amends. “We are okay with it. Having powers is okay.”
“Its the skipping school to fight crime we have a problem with.”
“Why do I even need to go to school,” Ruby says. She’s sullen and embarrassed and picking at her hospital gown. “Supergirl didn’t go to school.”
“How do you know,” Lena asks at the same time Kara says “Yes she did.”
Lena and Ruby both look at her, raised eyebrows almost perfectly in sync.
“She told me,” Kara says…lamely.
If Alex were there she’d be covering her face in shame.
“I don’t think what Supergirl did or didn’t do at your age has a bearing on this conversation Ruby.” Lena gives Kara a little glare before returning her attention to Ruby. “She still didn’t put on a cape until she was much older.”
Technically…not entirely true…
Kara keeps her mouth shut.
Ruby gets dressed and the three of them agree, together, that Ruby is grounded for the next two weeks and that until further notice she is to be escorted to and from school by one of them and that they will be checking in with her principal throughout the day.
“We can’t have this conversation again,” Lena insists. Kara stands beside her nodding along, but she catches the eye roll Ruby thinks they both miss.
When they get home Ruby goes to her room and Kara immediately sorts through the groceries in the fridge, pulling out the ingredients for curry. Lena settles into her usual seat at the counter and calls to the speaker system to play some jazz. Then she kicks off her sky high heels and rubs the ball of one foot with a groan.
Kara dices an onion (not as well as Alex) and heats up the pan. When the onion goes in with a sizzle Lena finally speaks. “I honestly don’t know what’s gotten into her.” She’s rubbing at her face and looks exhausted.
Kara doesn’t say a word, because, having once been thirteen and suddenly faced with being an orphan with super powers, she actually has a good idea of what’s gotten into Ruby.
“Do you think Sam would have been okay with this?”
Kara remembers how furious Eliza was when she and Alex played as detectives. “Probably not.”
“Ruby knows that! And you know what she doesn’t know?” Lena is still upset. “She doesn’t know anything about her powers besides they let her hang grown men from lamp posts by their underwear.”
Kara snorts and hopes the sound is covered up by the noise of beef going into the curry pot.
“Kara.” Lena says her name with a tired laugh. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“She can’t know that! She’s acting like a toddler, where the smallest hint of approval is taken as a license to skip school and galavant.”
Kara stops chopping up potatoes to look at Lena over her glasses. “Galavant?”
Lena groans. “I’m gonna go change.”
***
Really good curry aside, dinner is not fun. Lena is still mad and Ruby is still petulant and Kara is still hungry because she has to watch her food intake around people who don’t know her secret.
Sometimes she wishes she could tell them. Lena especially. But then Lena wouldn’t look at her the same way. The fondness wouldn’t be there—Lena’s need to protect Kara. She’d be a superhero Lena works with and a former former friend who lied.
Kara’s come too far to give up on what she does have.
She follows Ruby to her bedroom after dinner. The noise of Lena’s clean up (and grumbling over the sheer amount of leftovers) a comfort to Kara.
Ruby settles onto her bed with her laptop on her stomach and cheap earbuds in her ears. Kara stares, and when Ruby makes no effort to acknowledge her she leaps onto the bed in the exact way that use to irritate Alex.
It works on Ruby too.
“What are you doing,” Kara asks.
“Homework.”
Kara cranes her neck to look at the screen. “Since when did YouTube count as homework?”
Ruby groans and closes the laptop dramatically.
Kara gets comfy, lying on her side and hugging a pillow. Ruby continues to lie on her back and stare at the ceiling.
“So,” Kara says, “superpowers? What kind?”
“Sort of same as my mom I think, and Supergirl.”
Kara raises an eyebrow. “Freeze breath?”
“No,” Ruby huffs. “No laser eyes either.”
“I think she calls it heat vision.”
“But I’m strong, and I can jump really high. Like almost fly!”
“But you’re not indestructible.”
Ruby settled back down.
Kara wants to play with Ruby’s hair, but keeps her hands tucked under her head. “You could have been hurt.”
“I know,” Ruby says. She has angry tears in her eyes that she wipes away with too much vigor.
“Hey,” Kara taps the top of her wrist. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re really not Ruby.“ she speaks quickly, before Ruby can get too upset. “And that’s okay. You get to be in a crappy place right now.”
“When my mom first got powers...” Ruby twists to lay on her side and face Kara. “I thought she was gonna be a superhero.”
“She’d be great at it.”
“But she wasn’t!” She tucks into herself, like if she curled up hard enough she’d disappear. “She killed people.”
“Your mom didn’t do that. It was—“
“Reign. I know. That’s what Alex said before she went after her.”
It’s like being struck by a Kryptonite knife. Pain bright and sharp. One day she really hopes mentions of her sister don’t hurt so much.
“But I don’t think people really care,” Ruby said. “To them it just matters that people are dead.”
Kara flashes to the moment, high on red kryptonite, she hurt those she cared for most. “Do you remember when Supergirl was sick? A few years ago?”
Ruby nods.
“She hurt a lot of people, but they learned to trust her again.”
“But my mom isn’t here Kara. She can’t win people over fight bad guys. That’s why—“ Ruby goes quiet again.
“That’s why you’re going out there. To make up for what Reign did.”
Ruby huffs and turns around so Kara can’t see her face.
“You don’t have to do that,” she says softly.
“Yeah, I do,” Ruby says. She sounds incredibly, naively, earnest.
Kara’s reminded, suddenly, of her own early need to fight. When she’d come to Earth and had no cousin to protect. Her family had sent her across the galaxy and a new sun had given her extraordinary powers and she’d felt it, like a burn, the need to save people.
She’s fought the feeling since. Every time her parents’ misdeeds bring calamities to her new home she feels that need to do better.
She’d be a hypocrite to tell Ruby fighting for Sam’s legacy wasn’t her responsibility.
She places her hand flat against Ruby’s back, rubbing small circles when she feels the girl go rigid. “I felt the same way after my parents died. I mean, obviously not the exact same—but like I needed to do something. And you know what my foster mom said?”
Ruby shakes her head, but doesn’t turn over. So Kara scoots closer, hugging Ruby tight. “She said I needed to focus on being a kid. That I’d have all the time in the world later, but at that point—I needed to just be teenager.” She shakes her gently. “You need to just be teenager right now. Get stronger. Learn how to fight. And when the time comes we’ll talk with Supergirl.”
At the mention of Supergirl Ruby immediately shifts, pulling out of Kara’s embrace to stand up and face her. “You’ll really introduce me to Supergirl?”
“I mean, when the timing is right. Sure. But she’s not crazy Ruby. She’s never gonna let you fight crime right now. Not if she wants to stay on Lena’s good side—a place we should all try to stay on.”
Kara won’t make the joke about how people on Lena’s bad side die. Ruby would not appreciate it.
“What when I’m old enough?”
Kara nods, and Ruby’s whole mood changes. The promise of a future meeting—a future team up—with her icon is enough to get Ruby over her melancholy. She puts her laptop on her desk and starts googling—announcing she’s got a lot of research to do to figure out how to be a sidekick.
Kara nods along and then eventually excuses herself—making her way back to the living room where Lena is curled up on the couch working on her tablet and drinking wine—a PBS documentary is on in the background.
Kara groans and hangs over the back of the couch, head buried in the cushion.
She hears a chuckle over her dramatic groaning and then feels fingers scratching her scalp.
“How’d it go?”
She mumbles the entire conversation into the cushion and at the end the pleasant scratching stops. “I understood exactly zero of that,” Lena says. The scratching resumes until Kara removes her face from the cushion to glance at Lena. Lena doesn’t move her hand, so it ends up laying against Kara’s ear and cheek.
It’s very nice.
“I think I fixed the skipping school to fight crime problem.”
Lena rubs her ear idly. “Oh? We’re finally installing that tracker?” Such a kidder.
“I told her Supergirl would train her when she got older.”
The hand on her face stills, and Lena carefully pulls back. “Why on earth—how?”
“Well, I haven’t talked to her yet—but Supergirl would probably be fine with it. She was really committed to saving Sam—“
“She regularly faces death Kara.” Lena seems…not happy.
“But she’s not dead?”
“Why on Earth would I be okay with Ruby training to do the exact same thing?”
“She’d be with Supergirl!”
“Who could die!”
“But she hasn’t—“
“But she—oh my god. I can’t believe I am even trying to argue this with you.” Lena stands up, pressing her thumb and finger to her forehead like she’s trying to will a headache away. “You didn’t adopt Ruby, Kara. I did. And you’re insane if you think I’m ever going to let her go out there and risk her life like Supergirl does.”
Since Lena announced her intention to adopt Ruby they hadn’t really discussed it. Yeah Ruby lived at Lena’s, and Lena was the one paying for most of her food and clothes and stuff, but Kara was the one frequently picking her up from school, and helping with homework. She was—practically-there as often as Lena.
She was in no way Ruby’s parent on paper, but she was there.
Kara stands up, putting distance between her and Lena. “Wow,” she says. Arms going around her middle in a vain attempt to get a little more comfortable. “Okay.”
Lena sighs. “Kara…”
“No. Sure. I’m emotionally doing the whole parenting thing, but I’m not writing checks so I can’t get a say.”
“That’s—“
“It’s fine.”
Kara tries to go for the door—keeping her movements measured so she doesn’t move too fast for Lena. But because she’s trying to be humanly slow, she can’t outrun Lena—who rushes around the side of the couch to grab her by the arm.
She stops, but doesn’t make an effort to turn back around and face Lena.
Instead Lena comes closer, hand still on Kara’s bicep. She drops her forehead to the back of Kara’s shoulder. “You’re her mom,” Lena says. “As much as I am.”
Kara sighs and turns around. Lena doesn’t try to move away. They’re closer than Kara can ever really remember them being.
“This whole parenting thing would be hard enough—but I never actually had parents who were good at it,” Lena says. She’s refusing to look at Kara. Instead focusing on where her hand holds Kara’s arm. “Especially the co-parenting thing.”
“Yeah,” why is Kara speaking so quietly. “I guess I was raised by a single mom since I was in high school. I’m probably pretty bad at it too.”
“But we don’t have to be?” Lena is looking at Kara now. Looking up. Her thumb is stroking Kara’s arm. Why is she looking up? Kara doesn’t remember being that much taller than Lena. But standing this close the couple of inches height difference feels like it could be a foot or more.
“We don’t,” Kara says. Is she…she’s looking at Lena’s lips?
That’s weird.
“So let’s—“
There’s no time to think. It happens so quickly that even Kara—the fastest woman on Earth—can’t process what is happening until it’s happening. Lena’s words are cut off by an open mouthed kiss that Kara can honestly say she has no idea who instigated.
Her hands are on Lena’s waist and Lena’s arm is now around Kara’s neck and holding her close and oh boy.
Oh boy she definitely never planned on kissing, or being kissed by her best friend.
There was no time to think and in this case that might have been a bad idea.
But it feels wonderful.