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It's pretty dumb, how it happens.
Lena's in the lab, like usual. She's got no one around so she's in sensible clothes and closed shoes and even the glasses Lex got her that she's definitely thought about throwing away more than once.
But hey, if there's one thing she's learned about herself, it's that she's bad at letting go.
Kara walks in at ten. Kinda funny since that's where Lena would rate her. If people could be whittled down to just a number, of course.
She's all smiles and dinner and that twinkle in her eyes that makes Lena's heart do silly things like leap into her throat or tumble down her sleeves. And she hefts the dinner bags like she doesn't work out or have arms that really set her from ten to eleven.
But she sits with Lena, like she has nowhere better to be. Like she has no one she wants to be with more and Lena is so warm. So happy. So thinking about the future like there is one, like she never has before.
She thinks in tomorrows and next weeks, always with the knowledge that the next attempt on her life could end those right quick. But now, with Kara dripping salad dressing on her pants leg, Lena starts thinking about months, years, decades… the next century.
So she can't let things go. Or people. It's a habit.
She's distracted and kinda sorta lights herself on fire. Not a lot! Just her shirt and maybe her hair a bit, but it's fine, she's got it totally under control.
Or she does until Kara's hand is closing around her wrist and icy cold breath is skittering across her skin. Because then, with Kara and her glasses askew and her hands gently patting at Lena's side and head and her lips ringed with frost… then Lena doesn't have it under control.
She freaks out.
But, not to worry, she freaks out in a Luthor kind of way.
She leaves and Kara's sad, sad eyes haunt her but she leaves anyway. She leaves and she upends a whole bottle of Scotch while sitting on her floor.
Sam calls.
Lena's not sure what day it is. It's most likely Thursday, but Lena's been through most of her wine and liquor cabinet and she's been drinking just enough water to keep from vomiting all the time. Practical lessons, that's what Luthors learn.
She hears tapping at her window and it's sunny outside which is odd because Lena could have sworn she'd closed her blinds. There's a brunette standing on her balcony and she looks like she's about to put a hole in Lena's bulletproof door. Which would be a pain.
Lena can't really get up right then, but she slurs out the opening password and the lock clicks back just as the tapping starts again.
Then it's a whole lot of words being aimed at Lena and water and two whole stalks of celery which Lena's never really liked, even with peanut butter. Then there's puking and the words are softer and there's the blunt taste of a washrag and then there's nothing.
Lena wakes up in her own bed. She's naked. Which is slightly concerning because she always sleeps with pajamas on. It'd do no one any good for her to be killed while naked after all.
There's soft music playing and she's got a crick in her neck the size of a lug wrench. She feels like trash. Actually, worse than trash.
She feels like terrible trash.
She sits up and Sam's there with water and advil and something that smells wonderful. She's not sure why Sam's there, but this is nice and she'll certainly take the advil and… what turns out to be plain broth with noodles in it.
It's quite good.
Sam doesn't say a whole lot and that's good because by the time Lena gets to the end of her soup she's pretty well remembered everything. Too bad her alcohol's all run out.
Sam sits with her as she cries.
After that, everything pretty much goes back to normal. Except she doesn't see a certain reporter anymore. Sam'd said something about how she'd threatened Kara and made her leave Lena alone until Lena was ready to reach out to Kara.
It'd sounded pretty good at the time.
But Lena keeps waking up and thinking about that little crinkle. Those blue eyes smiling at her. The softness of those frankly ridiculous cardigans.
"I will always be there for you. "
Of course she can see the whole thing from Kara's perspective. She knows she's not the most emotionally competent person, but contrary to what the papers actually don't say about her anymore, she's not a monster. She can empathize.
Still doesn't make the whole situation much better though.
And the tomorrows keep slipping through her fingers as she puts off dialing to answer another company emergency. And then the tomorrows turn into weeks and Lena isn't thinking about decades anymore. She's been reduced to minutes, hours.
She's never not wanted to place a call more.
What's funny is that she wouldn't even have to use her phone. She'd probably just need to call her name. Two syllables and they could just neatly tuck this away and go back to having dinners and laughing.
But then there's a gun in her face and at least this is something Lena was prepared for.
But then
Then there's red and blue eyes that are angry and desperate and so so so so so sad.
So sad they mirror Lena's own eyes and that empathy thing is a bitch and Lena just can't let things go.
There's a red cape clutched between her fingers and nobody cares about the gunman knocked out on the floor because Kara's lied a lot, but she didn't lie about what she would do for Lena.
And yeah, Supergirl's weird and a topic Lena doesn't really even want to bring up, but the woman kneeling next to Lena as she cries is just Kara.
She's just Kara and Lena's just Lena and for the moment that's good enough.
Lena asks later, as they're curled up together on the couch, why she hadn't trusted Lena. Why she had to hurt Lena. Why she'd let Lena be the fool for so, so long.
She expects distrust, the Luthor name, some sob story, something.
But all she gets is selfishness. All she gets is Kara Zor-El Danvers without a mask. A woman with a heart nearly cleaved in two that's made her kind, yes, but also selfish and angry and so fucking desperate it makes the empathy in Lena's chest hammer against her ribs.
They talk all night, they cry through most of it. Kara sits and tries to burn her own hands with her blue, blue eyes and she can't and Lena weeps. Lena has scars on her arms and Kara has scars in her mind.
After that Kara isn't so bubbly anymore. She still smiles and brings dinner and hefts the bags in arms of steel, but she's more subdued.
Lena is too, a little. At first she's just desperate to have her friend back. Even with what Kara kept from her, Kara's still one of the only ones who has always been in Lena's corner. Sam still visits and Agent Danvers seems to have sat firmly on Lena's side, but…
Whether in a red cape or a pink cardigan, Kara showed up.
Kara keeps showing up too. A little more frequently now, sometimes with ash in her hair, sometimes without glasses, sometimes in red boots. Each time she holds Lena's hand a little longer, doesn't leave as quickly.
That subdued smile starts to feel a little realer.
Now, Lena's not dumb. Yes, she's very good with boxes and she kept her boxes about Kara and Supergirl and her own heart very nicely organized and in separate rooms. But well, the reveal's kinda smashed her mental walls a bit and now the whole thing's much more open-floor-planned and well…
It's caused a right fucking mess.
She's got anger at Supergirl boxes mixed with dinner with Kara boxes and repressed we-don't-talk-about-that-gay-crush-thing-that-kinda-keeps-happening boxes mixed with both of those and there's only so much empathy someone can feel before they fall in love so really,
The whole dang world is working against Lena.
She should have guessed it.
But when those pretty and desperate and hopeful eyes wind up at her windowsill with a single flower and a cupcake and they just talk at her window for hours about nothing and Lena watches the sunset reflected in those eyes, well, there's only so much a woman can do.
So Kara should have guessed it, that Lena would kiss her.
But she obviously doesn't because she falls almost seven stories before catching herself. She looks really dumb. But so does Lena when she slams her window shut and closes the blinds and doesn't return a single one of Kara's calls for a week.
She keeps finding flowers and cupcakes on her balcony though.
So she's dumb, as Sam loves to tell her that whole week, but so is Kara. Kara's not even subtle about checking on Lena and leaving gifts and prodding at Lena's poor, dilapidated, beaten, little boxes like their cardboard sides could ever keep out her empathy anyway.
Kara lasts a whole eight days before she comes tapping on Lena's door. She's got dinner and a smile that's bubbly and there's empathy bleeding from the heart on Lena's sleeve which should really be red with how long her heart's been fucking beating there.
Some crappy watch that's only right all the time because all it's beating out is 'love' in morse code.
So Kara's selfish and Lena's got a gaping maw of self-doubt but Kara's got those soft hands and Lena's all caught up in empathy and Sam's the only one who guessed it all from the start, but Lena's definitely not going to give her that satisfaction for a while.
Lena starts counting up to days and weeks and years and plans her death a century out. Kara holds her close, a little desperate, and she takes and takes and takes from Lena's self-doubt till that little black hole has no more mass and the light slips back fully into Lena's life again.
And Alex doesn't bring a single NDA and they all live happily and gayly till the end of time! The end!