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It had been a late night of superheroing. So, by the time Supergirl was released from debriefing at the DEO and Kara made it home, Lena was already asleep. It was well after midnight and Kara smiled at how innocent and relaxed Lena looked asleep as she crawled into bed, snuggled Lena to her (gently, so as not to wake her), and quickly fell asleep.
Hours passed uneventfully until Kara woke suddenly around 4:45. She lay in bed, stock still, as she tried to identify what it was that had drawn her out of sleep. A few seconds passed before she identified the cause, a soft, fast heartbeat.
Kara lay in bed for a few minutes, listening to the heartbeat, trying to identify it. After careful consideration, she realized that it was not the heartbeat of someone very large, so there was no risk danger or of there being someone else in the apartment. This discovered baffled her further. They didn’t have a pet that this quiet heartbeat could belong to and she could not figure out where on Earth that sound could be coming from. It was slightly familiar, but not in such a way that she could place it.
After a few more moments of ruminating on the sound, she was hit with the realization of where she had heard that heartbeat before: from Alex, two years ago.
She and Maggie had taken actions to start their family. They decided that they wanted to have their own baby and chose to accomplish this via reciprocal IVF. Meaning that Alex carried Maggie’s egg. Kara remembered the first time she heard the heartbeat, three weeks before Alex and Maggie had revealed their secret to everyone. She had been overcome with joy and excitement for her sister and her wife and for herself. She was going to be an aunt!
Making this discovery now, in the quiet that is her apartment in the early hours of the morning with Lena sleeping soundly next to her and no one else around was a whole different story. Now that she wasn’t so focused on discovering the source of the soft, fast heartbeat, she was able to tune in to the steady, gentle rhythm of Lena’s heartbeat. And this lead to another discovery: the quiet heartbeat was very, very close.
Kara quickly did an x-ray of Lena and the results sent her into tears. There, right beside her, inside of Lena, was a tiny, tiny baby!!
Kara found herself dumbstruck. She was excited, of course. She was elated, ecstatic, exultant. She was also scared. Caring for a baby is a lot of work. And of course, she and Lena had talked about this, had agreed to move forward with this, had planned for this to happen. Those facts did not make the reality of it any less daunting.
Somewhere along the line of her processing this reality, she started to cry. The tears fell faster, her breathing became slightly erratic, and Lena woke up.
Lena’s first reactions to seeing Kara crying like that was to ask if she was okay, to look her over for any marks from some alien encounter, and, upon not finding any, to gently pull her into a hug. She let Kara cry for a few minutes, her shoulders gently shaking, before reiterating her question, “Kara, are you okay?”
Kara’s breath shuddered as she tried to calm herself down enough to speak. She finally was able to eke out the words, “It’s so beautiful” before bursting into tears again.
“Darling, what is so beautiful that it is making you cry like this,” Lena replied, with a befuddled look on her face.
Kara quickly rambled, “The sound, it is so quiet and fast! And the little bean, I just can’t believe this is real. It actually worked! It's right there so close, so quiet, so new and innocent. Oh, Rao, this world is terrible, we have to protec-”
Lena tried to interrupt a few time before succeeding, “Kara! Babe, what are you talking about? Are you okay? Did you hit your head on that mission last night? Where is my phone, I need to call Alex, she needs to come to look at your head because you are not making any sense right now.”
As Lena spoke, Kara started to calm down, the cadence of Lena’s voice soothing her. The crying stopped, her breathing evened out, and she slowly realized what Lena was saying. “No! Lena, I’m fine. Don’t call Alex. I’m okay.”
Lena slowly stopped talking, taking in the shift in Kara’s demeanor. She paused for a moment to think, “Babe, what’s up?”
“Imaybewokeuptoastrangenoiseonlytofindthatitwasababyheartbeatsoix-rayedyouandsawthetinytinybabyandimjustsohappyandscaredthatistartedcryingandIdidntmeantowakeyouand...”
“Whoa whoa whoa, Kara, love, you need to slow down, I can’t understand what you are saying.”
“I woke up to a strange noise and it took me a little while to place it, but when I did, I x-rayed you and saw a tiny, tiny baby. And I’m so happy and so scared that I started crying. I didn’t mean to wake you, but… yeah.”
Lena froze, speechless as she processed what Kara had just told her. Sitting there on the bed. Their bed. In their apartment. Where they lived together. Where they were going to... raise a baby? It had worked?! She is pregnant?! “Oh my god Kara, it worked!! We are having a baby?!”