Chapter Text
After Lex’s death, Kara does her best to lift Lena’s spirits. Brunches, movie nights, the works. When she gets assigned to cover a new art gallery opening, she nearly passes it on to Nia (she’s senior enough she doesn’t have to do the puff pieces anymore), but takes the article just to have an excuse to invite Lena as her plus-one and have a night out.
Which is how Lena finds herself in an art gallery of all places on a warm Friday night. The gallery is cool at least, in both temperature and aesthetic. The space is light and clean, and she spends more time than she expects examining the art on display as Kara does her reporter thing.
There’s something… familiar, about the smeared washes of color. In one, mossy green fades to white like fields of grass on a bright morning. Another, shadows streaked with dark trunks evoke a forest at night.
They’re all strangely ethereal, like a dream on the verge of waking, and while recognition hovers just out of reach, Lena stares far more than she usually does.
“Do you like it?”
Lena jolts at the unexpected voice at her shoulder. She turns to see a diminutive woman gazing at the same painting she was. Lena turns back towards the art, and lets her eyes drift over painted strokes.
“Yes,” Lena confesses, in spite of herself. “They’re amazing.”
“Forgive me, but when you first came in, it seemed you weren’t keen to be here.”
Lena chuckles. “I wasn’t, honestly. I’ve been to a lot of gallery openings, and I’ve seen a lot of bad art. And I've had to schmooze with the artists who think they’re the second coming of Michelangelo. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised here. I actually wouldn’t mind asking the artist a few questions myself.”
The woman smiles. “Well, then, ask away.”
It takes a shamefully long moment for the words to click in Lena’s brain. When they do, her eyes widen in mortification.
“Oh, my god– you’re Rowena!” She laughs even as her cheeks heat in an embarrassed flush. “I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t be,” Rowena returns easily. “You just confirmed my work wasn’t bad art. And coming from Lena Luthor, that means quite a lot.”
“Just Lena, please,” Lena says, shaking the woman’s hand. “And yes, I very much like it.”
“It’s a little different from my usual kind of work, but this collection is one I’ve been working on for… oh, close to twenty years now. I was never certain I was going to show them to anyone, but it suddenly felt like it was time to do so.”
“I’m glad you did. They’re lovely.” Lena gazes at the painting again, and they stand in amiable silence for a long moment. “You know, a lot of artists try to twist what we see, reinvent the visual expression but you… here you seem to obscure it. It’s as though there’s a veil on the canvas. Like there’s a world inside it that we’re too far away to see.”
Rowena nods. “That’s one way to see it. There is always a lens between us and the rest of the world. For me, that lens is emotion, and memory. It filters my perception of the world, and this is all my best attempt to capture it, and share it. In the off chance someone understands.”
Lena gazes at the woman as she gazes at the painting, and there’s something familiar in the way she smiles. But whatever Lena hopes to say next is thwarted by Kara’s arrival.
“Oh, Miss Rowena! Kara Danvers, CatCo News. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
Rowena nods. “Of course.” She turns to Lena with something indescribably heavy in her gaze. “It was lovely to meet you, Lena. I enjoyed our talk immensely. You have a good eye.”
“Likewise.”
Rowena and Kara move off to find a quieter corner, leaving Lena to stare at the next painting alone. By the time she and Kara leave, Lena’s stickers sit on two paintings. She picks the mossy field for the bare wall in her office, but the hazy shape of a cottage against a cloudy sky stays in her apartment.
Somehow, it makes it feel more like home.
—
Lena finds herself going back to the gallery, this time without Kara. It’s more on impulse than anything else, but when she finds that more haunting canvases have been added to fill what had been sold at the opening, she spends over an hour perusing them all.
Rowena leaves her be at first, but eventually offers tea– an offer Lena accepts. They get to talking. About art, and Rowena’s career, and her time abroad, studying with masters. They get friendly, and Lena returns again and again, sometimes as often as once a week.
It’s easy to talk to Rowena, Lena realizes. Rowena asks nothing of her, doesn’t try to sell her any art. And something about that lack of pressure prompts Lena to open up. When Rowena notices her tension one day, and asks in concern if everything is all right, the truth spills out of Lena: that her friend has been lying to her, and she doesn’t feel like she can confront them, and on top of that the stocks are still down following Lex’s stunt, and the board is breathing down her neck as if it’s all her fault.
“Maybe it is my fault,” she finishes, curling her hands around her cooling teacup. “If I hadn’t… nevermind.”
Rowena covers Lena’s hand with her own. “I was sorry to hear about your brother,” she says. She quickly continues when Lena’s eyes flash up in new wariness. “Not for his sake,” she assures Lena. “He did despicable things, and the dead don’t need our pity. But for every death there are countless lives affected by the loss.”
Lena lowers her gaze once more. “I lost him a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt,” Rowena replies. She pauses. “Did you see my new pieces on your way in? The pair?”
Lena nods. They’d shown largely the same scene, a meadow within a copse of trees, still with the veil obscuring the finer details. Between the two paintings, the color was the biggest difference. One was grey, awash in a sickly pallor. It’s mate was more vibrant, another sunny day in the world Rowena saw.
“I painted the first shortly after I lost someone dear to me.” Her gaze darkens, and Lena understands the pallor of the piece a little better. It wasn’t a cloudy day, then, but grief that colored the scene. “It was years before I could paint the second. I still see that place as it looks in the first, but I was ready to remember how I used to see it. I was ready to reach for the good.”
Not knowing what to say, Lena simply squeezes Rowena’s hand.
“It’s easy,” the artist continues, “to forget those left behind by loss. Unless you live with it yourself. When I saw the news about your brother, I thought of you.”
Every instinct ingrained in Lena tells her to withdraw, to reject the offered tenderness. This is it, Lillian’s voice slithers in the back of her mind. This is how she ensnares you. Don’t fall prey to it. Not this time.
But Rowena continues to look at her with nothing in her gaze but understanding, and Lena finds herself staying.
“You’re kind,” she says, in realization rather than platitude. Rowena is kind, and Lena accepts it with a grateful smile that pulls slightly against the tears building in her eyes.
She hasn’t let herself process what losing Lex has meant– or role in his demise. This is the closest she comes. While it’s not the catharsis one might expect, the door to her heart opens, and stands ajar.
—
After that, her relationship with Rowena deepens, though Lena is helpless to put words to it. She keeps Rowena to herself, for herself, and cherishes whatever it is they’re building. She doesn’t even tell Kara how often she visits, though the reporter is aware that Lena’s taken a liking to her art.
They start having the occasional dinner together, and some overzealous reporters start speculating something lascivious– National City’s own Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor. It’s nonsense of course, but Lena can’t deny the hooks that seem to have sunk deep into her soul, pulling her closer to the older woman.
Not romantic, but something deeper.
She wonders if soulmates can be two platonic women, decades apart.
She dismisses the ridiculous notion almost as soon as it occurs to her.
On one visit in late May, Lena arrives at the gallery while Rowena is finishing with a client. She tosses a little wave to her friend, just to let her know she’s there, and Rowena waves back with a beaming grin.
“Good morning, acushla! We sold the meadow garden– I think you’ll like what I put up in its place.”
She turns back to her customer, oblivious to the way Lena’s spine has locked in place as though struck by lightning. Eventually she forces her feet to the corner Rowena mentions, but the new painting is just a blur of color against the roaring in her ears.
Her heart is pounding by the time Rowena joins her, and Lena whirls to face her.
“That– that word you called me. Just now.” Her voice catches in her chest. “Acushla, it’s– it’s Irish. Isn’t it?”
Rowena blinks in surprise, then flushes red. “Yes. It means ‘pulse of my heart’.”
Lena nods. “Yes. My mother–” Words always seem to come so easily when she’s with Rowena, it feels unnatural for them to be so sticky now. Lena swallows. “My mother was Irish.”
“I lost my acushla many years ago, but you remind me of her a great deal.” Rowena stares at her, searching Lena’s gaze as though on the verge of sharing a great secret. Whatever it is, she keeps it to herself, because the searching gaze shifts to an anxious smile a moment later. “I’m sorry, Lena. I didn’t mean to upset you–”
“No, it’s fine,” Lena lies, even as her heart thunders in her chest. She swallows thickly. “But I actually just remembered a meeting I nearly forgot about. I– I have to go.”
“Lena…”
“I’ll be back soon.”
As she sweeps out of the gallery, Lena nearly sobs on the words that had nearly spilled out of her.
My mother used to call me that.
—
Lena doesn’t go back for nearly two weeks. It’s the longest she’s gone between visits since the opening, and when she finally steps back into the familiar space, she does so with the intent to come clean.
To share why she’d been so shaken.
She hasn’t shared her mother with anyone since Adam, and the thought of doing so with a friend like Rowena terrifies her for reasons she can’t explain. But she can’t bear the thought of Rowena believing she's angry with her.
Waiting anxiously near the door as Rowena concludes a transaction, Lena tucks her arms around herself for comfort. It’ll be fine. Rowena won’t hate her for being away so long. She’ll understand, if Lena can just explain.
“Lena,” Rowena greets as she approaches, seemingly as reticent as Lena feels. “You came back.”
Lena nods, swallowing against a dry throat. “I’m sorry to have run off like that. I just… you should know that–”
“Wait,” Rowena interrupts gently. There isn’t an ounce of judgement or condemnation in the word, and Lena relaxes slightly in relief.
Rowena lifts a hand towards her. “May I show you something?”
Lena takes her offered palm, and allows herself to be led towards the back, and through a narrow door that delivers them into Rowena’s work space.
Rowena draws her to an easel in the center of the room, its legs dinged and paint-spattered beneath the tarp that covers the canvas sitting on top.
“This is the last piece of my Forgotten Memory collection. The first one I painted, and the one I’ve never shown anyone. Until now.”
She draws back the muslin, and Lena’s breath locks in her chest at the scene captured in color on the canvas. It shares the same misty augmentation of the others, the illusion of faded memory, but its sharper than the rest.
Through the blur Lena clearly recognizes the wooded shore and the mirrored surface of a flat, glassy lake.
All the blood drains from her face, chilling her.
“What–” Her mind reaches for words, even as it tilts out of control. “How did you–?”
“Lena…”
“Who are you?!” Lena demands, reeling back from Rowena’s steadying touch. She clings to the alarm that fills her, the only thing keeping her grounded. “And why do you have a painting of this lake?”
“It’s the last place I saw you.”
Lena can’t breathe. She freezes, strung tight as a wire, waiting to be cut. To fall.
Rowena continues.
“It was your favorite place in the world, do you remember? We went there every chance we got.”
When Lena blinks, she feels moisture spill onto her cheeks.
“My mother drowned in that lake.”
Rowena blinks in shock. “Lena, no–”
“I watched her drown in that lake!” Lena cries. “I was there! I saw it happen! How do you know about it?!”
“Because I was there with you, Lena! You were four years old. You– you had just learned new numbers, and you wanted to use them to count how long I could hold my breath.”
Rowena nearly reaches for Lena again, but hugs herself instead, pressing a hand to her chest as tears filled her own eyes.
“'Long as you can, mommy!’” she echoes hoarsely behind a pained smile. “Those were your last words to me.”
“No–”
“When I came up again you were gone. I searched and searched, but I never found you. It wasn’t until your father sued for custody a month later that I learned what truly happened. He’d had you taken, and used the ease of your abduction as proof I was unfit.”
“That’s not possible–”
“There is nothing on Earth that Lionel Luthor could not make possible. I tried to fight him, but it was made clear that even if I won you back, he would never leave us be. He would drown me in legal fees until the state took you from me anyway. So I– I let you go. And I never saw you again.”
Lena can only stare in shock. She wants to deny it– she wants to cry that her father would never do something like. But she can’t. She isn’t so naive anymore. She knows in her bones he very will could, and has, done things so terrible. And worse.
“I never forgave myself, acushla. Please, believe that much, if nothing else. I never stopped thinking of you.”
Shaking her head, Lena turned away. “This can’t be possible.”
Rowena took a trembling breath. “I tried to find the custody papers, to show you as proof, but… I couldn’t find them. No matter how hard I looked, there was nothing. Like I never existed at all. But they are there, Lena, I promise you. Buried, or sealed, or destroyed… I am telling you the truth.”
“I watched her drown,” Lena gasped. “I saw it…”
The woman claiming to be her mother doesn’t have any further counterargument. How could she? Rowena can only shrug helplessly.
“Maybe it was easier to believe that, than to believe that your mother would give you up.”
The world yawns in Lena’s ears. She needs to leave, right now. Get out. Get out, get out now.
Lena turns on her heel and escapes the room, Rowena, and the lake that has haunted her for her entire life.
—
She doesn’t go back.
But she can’t shake it off, either. Between the trust she’s built in Rowena and the trust she’s lost in all things Luthor, Lena starts digging.
She can’t do it alone. It takes three months and the combined might of Lena’s money, Kara’s investigative instincts, and Alex’s DEO access to finally find the truth.
And the truth is Rowena’s. Lena stares at the custody papers– signed after the death certificate Lena had dug up as early as her seventeenth birthday. She stares at those papers, and still searches for any excuse for it not to be true.
“My mother might be alive,” she rasps finally, after days of torturous contemplation, “but that doesn’t mean Rowena is her.”
—
Kara is the one who next steps into Rowena’s gallery. Rowena recognizes her after a long moment, and the hope that lifts to her eyes almost makes Kara start tearing up right there.
“Kara, right? You’re Lena’s friend.”
Kara nods.
“I thought I’d lost her for good this time.”
Schooling her features, Kara pulls a small swab kit out of her purse. “Lena’s asked for a DNA sample.”
“Of course,” comes the immediate response. “Anything.”
They move to the counter, and as Kara takes her time setting up, she studies Rowena carefully.
“Why now?” she asks.
“Hm?”
“Why reach out now?” Kara clarifies. “After all this time…”
Shadows darken Rowena’s gaze. “I’d hoped she’d come seek me out, when she grew older. When she didn’t, I believed it was because she blamed me– which I knew I deserved. But when I saw the news about Lex, I… I couldn’t stand to lose another second with her.”
Kara lifted the swab, and Rowena opened her mouth so she could rub it against the inside of her cheek. It took less than ten seconds, and as Kara deposited the swab into the sterile tube and capped it, it was Rowena’s turn to study her.
“I don’t want to hurt Lena,” she quietly. “I’ve loved her since the day she was born, and I– I just want to get to know the woman she’s become.”
Blue eyes regard her solemnly. “I believe you,” Kara says finally. “But Lena’s been through a lot. She’s been hurt before, and she’s wary of trusting people– especially those who claim to be family.”
Rowena swallows, blinking back tears. “I’d hoped that Lionel would have loved her, to want her so badly.”
“The Luthors aren’t kind people,” Kara tells her. “They take care of their own, but who counts as their own has been rather nebulous where Lena’s concerned.”
She tucks the kit back in her bag, and slides the strap onto her shoulder.
“Can I offer you some advice?”
Rowena nods. “Please,” she says, all but begging.
“Don’t reach out to Lena.”
She can see Rowena’s heart drop, and quickly continues.
“Lena takes time to process. If you try to rush or force that process, you’ll lose her. Trust me.” She'd nearly made the same mistake, not so long ago. She's lucky Lena had given her a second chance-- one she can't guarantee would be offered to Rowena. Kara offers her a kind smile.
“Lena’s a creature of love,” she promises. “She’ll find her way back to you when she’s ready for yours.”
—
Alex does the DNA sequencing herself. No one is about to trust an outside lab, and while Lena is fully capable, Alex warns against bias.
“Just give me two days, and you’ll know for sure.”
And two days later, the truth is Rowena’s again.
Lena leaves Kara’s apartment, and they don’t hear from her for days.
It takes months for Lena to wrestle with the conflicting feelings that tumble in her chest. Her mother’s death has been a part of her for as long as she can remember, and without it she feels adrift.
She feels guilty for not being immediately overjoyed.
She feels ashamed for being afraid.
And it disquiets her to have such a vivid memory of something that never happened.
Lena spends months waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Rowena to reach out, demanding her love, her attention, her money. But it never comes, and she finally makes her decision.
She makes and remakes it all the way to Rowena’s gallery one November afternoon. It’s the weekend, but the shop is empty. Empty save for Rowena.
Empty save for her mother.
—
Rowena emerges from the back at the sound of the doorbell tinkling, and freezes at the sight of her daughter.
She’d all but given up hope of seeing Lena in her shop again, but here she is: wide-eyed and stiff as a board.
Unable to keep from smiling, Rowena steps forward. “Lena…”
Lena recoils, reaching for Kara Danvers’ wrist, who Rowena only now sees standing half a step behind her daughter. Rowena stops short, the reporter’s words echoing in her ears.
“I found the records,” Lena grates out from behind a jaw so tense Rowena can nearly hear her teeth grinding. “And the DNA test confirmed it.”
Rowena sucks in a ragged breath. “Acushla…”
“Don’t call me that,” Lena snaps, only to soften a moment later when Kara places a hand of reassurance on her arm. “Not– not yet.”
“Okay,” Rowena whispers, nodding.
“I don’t know you,” Lena explains. As she speaks, her tension cracks, and a sob plucks at her voice. “But I want to.”
Rowena nods, blinking back tears to match her daughter’s.
“So do I,” she says.
Anguish twists sharply in her chest at the memory of all the time they’ve lost, at the bitter knowledge she shouldn’t have to meet her daughter as a stranger. It’s eased by the relief of knowing that even after all these years, she still has a chance.
“So do I.“