Chapter Text
Kara watches Lena step onto the plane. She watches out of sight, high up in the sky because Lena hates her with a passion now. Hates her for lying. Hates her for betraying Lena’s trust. Lena doesn’t want to see her.
Kara watches Lena step onto the plane. The same plane she and Lena had been on just months prior. The same plane Lena spoke to her in a voice so sexy and intimate that made Kara’s chest tight. The same plane were Kara had almost told Lena the truth of her identity and spared them both the crippling heartbreak.
Kara watches Lena step onto the plane. The one she knows has no pilot. The one Lena trusts with her life because “I belive in technology. Not people. Not anymore.” The one Kara had to help land so it didn’t crash into the side of a mountain and kill them both.
Luckily this time Lena thought ahead and decided to bring people with her. Two pilots. Six flight attendants, for reasons Kara couldn’t figure out. And a blonde woman, that from behind, looks an awful like Eve Tessmacher.
Kara used her X-Ray vision and scanned the plane for anything out of the ordinary. Any excuse for her to swoop in and save Lena however she can. To show her that Kara is still always on her side. Will always protect her.
But of course there was nothing.
She didn’t know much about planes, but everything seemed to be in the right place and in working order. No cut wires. No bent propellers. The wheels are straight and sturdy. There’s no bomb planted under any of the seats. And obviously Lena wouldn’t have brought anybody aboard that she didn’t trust enough to get her to her destination.
There was no reason for her to stay around anymore. Lena was in good hands. She was safe.
Kara focused her hearing, as well as she could with all the white noise from the city below, and honed in on the steady sound of Lena’s heartbeat. It was harder than usual to hear with the loud hum of the plane but it was still there.
Still her Lena.
Kara was done here. She flew away from the plane and away from Lena. Her gut felt heavy, like she shouldn’t be leaving, but she checked for everything. There was no reason for her to stay lurking like that and the farther she got the quieter the sound of Lena’s heartbeat became in her ears.
“Supergirl? Are you there?” Alex’s voice suddenly shouted through the headphone she had in her ear. It was so unexpected, Kara didn’t have time to prepare and adjust her hearing to a more normal volume before her sister just unintentionally shattered her ear drums.
“Gosh Alex! You’re right in my ear you don’t have to yell so lou-“
“The DEO is under attack! We need you!” Alex interrupted and Kara immediately forgot the thrumming pain in her ear and sped over to the DEO.
Her sister was in trouble and that took priority over anything.
The second she arrived at the DEO it was chaos. Abnormally large aliens were destroying everything, bodies were laid unconscious all over the floor, and Alex was working tirelessly trying to fight off a herd of whatever it was that was attacking them.
Kara jumped right in. Saving the day as always.
It was only an hour later that Kara felt it. She had just been thrown into a wall by one of the aggressive martians when something deep in her changed.
Something fierce and protective. Whatever it was gave Kara enough energy to finally push the last martian into a cage in enough time for Alex to slam the door closed, preventing it from doing anymore damage to the DEO.
Kara was admittedly exhausted. She hadn’t fought this hard for this long in a while and her head still hurt from Alex shouting in her ear.
But there was just this feeling. Something wasn’t right.
Alex has collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, but she was still awake and okay.
None of the employees were dead and even though they’ll probably have some severe injuries and hefty bruises they would be fine too in the long run.
What the hell was it then?
Kara felt her heart shoot into her throat when she remembered Lena.
Lena had gotten into a plane around an hour ago, long enough for a number of things to horrible to happen to her.
“J’onn? I need your help”, Kara shouted, frantically searching around the massive space of the DEO headquarters. The second she laid eyes on him, panting heavily on the floor, she used as much of her energy as she could to speed over to him.
“J’onn I need you to get an update on Lena’s flight. I have this feeling in my gut and I can’t shake it. I just wanna make sure she’s okay” Kara begged.
“You do it yourself, I’m exhausted”, J’onn panted, “do you know the flight tracking number?”
Kara shook her head, her eyebrows scrunched together giving her the trademark “I’m worried” crinkle on her forehead.
“Okay that’s fine, what’s her plane model number?”
“I don’t know that either”. Seriously? Kara stared at the plane for so long. Examined every inch of it and didn’t think to check the plane number.
“Where was she going?”
“I don’t know”.
“Well what do you know Kara? You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t know anything”, J’onn snapped. It wasn’t out of true anger or frustration, he was just tired. Everybody was tired.
“She hasn’t spoken to me in weeks, J’onn. The last thing she said to me was that she wanted me to leave her alone. That I broke her heart. If something happened her, the last think she would remember of me was that I hurt her so bad. I have to know she’s okay”
J’onn sighed. Kara could physically see him trying to remain calm in an attempt to not make Kara anymore upset than necessary. He stopped and thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully.
“Kara you’re jumping the gun. I’m sure Lena is fine. She’s a smart and strong woman”, J’onn paused for a brief moment, trying to gauge if his attempt at calming Kara was working, “Even if something was wrong Lena would know how to handle it and take care of herself”.
Kara nodded, listening to J’onn’s words but not really hearing them. The feeling in her gut and chest wasn’t easing up and she couldn’t shake the feeling no matter what she tried to force herself to believe.
“But this feeling, I-“
“You just spent an hour fighting aliens that threw you around like a baseball. I’m sure the feeling is unrelated” J’onn said. Kara didn’t say anything but she could tell he was about 30 seconds from falling asleep.
“Can I go to the airport she flew from? It was private property but if I go as Supergirl they’re more likely to tell me right?” Kara questioned. It was really her last resort. She wasn’t going to break Lena’s trust more than she already has by tracking her cell phone or laptop.
“I don’t care as long as you don’t do anything stupid”.
Kara was flying out the already shattered window before J’onn could even finish what he was saying.
It took less than two minutes for Kara to get back to Lena’s seemingly private airport, there were still no other planes around and she didn’t see any sort of staff running around on the runway where her plane had taken off. The only sign that the place wasn’t abandoned was the window on the top floor of the building. It was shut but through the glass Kara could see a young man, frantically running around the room with papers in his hands, pressing buttons on desk panels and looking around like he was lost.
Kara flew over to the window and tapped on the glass, her forehead crinkle returning with a vengeance. The boy inside was clearly startled by her sudden appearance and dropped all his papers, running to the window to open it.
Before she could get a word out, the boy was already rambling, “I’m so sorry Supergirl, I swear it wasn’t my fault. I don’t know what happened. Please don’t be mad I’m doing everything I can. I’m sorry, I’m so sor-“
“What are you talking about? What happened?”
“The plane Miss Luthor was on-”, the boy stopped when he saw Supergirl’s face turn cold. His hands started shaking and he backed away from her and towards the back wall.
“What about her plane?” She practically growled. She wasn’t really angry with this kid. He seemed just as desperate to help as she was to find out what was going on. She was angry with herself.
Kara knew something felt off. She remembered the feeling in her gut when she flew away from Lena the first time. She thought back to the overwhelming urge to protect Lena against everything and nothing at the same time.
She knew something was going to happen, yet she allowed her guilt and shame take over and now her ‘gun jumping’ from earlier didn’t seem so silly and irrational anymore.
Kara noticed the boy had retreated all the way to the other side of the room, his entire body trembling with fear of the rage from the girl of steel. He looked terrified and Kara felt bad for scaring him in the back of her mind, but right now he still hadn’t answered her question.
“WHAT ABOUT HER PLANE?” She spoke loudly. She didn’t want to scream. Not yet. But her voice was stern and intimidating.
“We lost all contact with it”, he shivered under Supergirl’s glare, “I think it might’ve crashed”.
Kara felt so many things at once when his words sunk in.
She was afraid. Afraid her best friend, the woman she cared about unlike anybody else in the world was hurt, or worse. Afraid of the fact she had no idea where the plane could’ve went down. The DEO was in shambles, it would take hours for everything to begin working properly again, and the boy running the office clearly wasn’t going to be of much help.
She was ashamed. Ashamed that she wasn’t there when Lena needed her to be there. Ashamed she allowed herself to lie to Lena for so long in the first place and ruin their friendship. If she had been truthful, maybe Lena would have taken Kara with her.
She was angry. Angry with herself for letting her fear of upsetting Lena further stop her from making sure everything truly was okay with the plane. Angry that she couldn’t get there in enough time to catch the plane from out the air and land it safely. Angry that her gut feeling was dismissed not once but twice.
She was crushed. She could not lose Lena like this. Not this soon. Not when the last thing she remembers of Kara is the dishonesty and betrayal.
“She’s a smart and strong woman” J’onn’s voice echoed through her mind. Grounding her enough to focus, “Even if something was wrong Lena would know how to handle it and take care of herself”.
He was right. Kara knew he was. Lena was hands down the smartest person she had ever met. She knew how to stay calm in situations like these and get herself and the people she cared about to safety. So Kara had to do the same. She had to get Lena and the rest of the people she traveled with to safety first.
Breakdowns could happen later.
“Okay” She exhaled, lowering herself onto the ground. If she wanted the boy to calm down enough to tell her what she needed to know, the least she could do was stop towering over him, “okay are you able to track the exact location where you lost contact? If I’m going to fine them I need to know where they were last heard from”.
“They we’re headed north towards the Atlantic Ocean, they went down somewhere over the Appalachian Mountains”.
Oh great. Of course they crashed in the one of the largest mountain ranges in America.
Kara let out a heavy sigh and her head hung down. She rubbed her eyes in attempt to lead her mind of all the negative things floating her her subconscious.
“Could you be just a tad bit more specific? It would take days for me to thoroughly search just half that area”.
“Yeah I have exact coordinates for you if you want”, the boy offered gently.
“Okay that’s good. The suit doesn’t come with a GPS system though, could you find the exact spot on a map and point to it for me?”
Without another word, the boy pushed himself off the wall and towards the panel facing the window, the same one Kara saw him fumbling with when she got here.
“Right there”. He pointed to a slight spot on a screen showing the north east portion of America and that was all she needed.
“Thank you. Thank you so much”. With that Kara flew right back out the window she came in through. It reminded her of the time Lena was upset with Supergirl and told her to leave the same way she came in.
That felt like it was decades ago. So much has changed.
Even going as fast as her body could handle, it took Kara 20 minutes to get to the Appalachians. The flight took a toll on her already exhausted form, and the rapidly decreasing temperature the farther north she got surely didn’t help matters.
Fortunately for Kara, she finally caught a break. As soon as the mountains came into view, so did a thick cloud of black smoke. The plane had obviously went down there and was still on fire.
Kara couldn’t remember exactly what she was watching, but she thought back to a scene in a movie she watched with Lena. “Black smoke means there’s still a fire. White smoke means it’s out.”
She wished she had paid more attention to the movie instead of how good Lena’s hair smelled when she laid her head in Kara’s lap. Or how her chest steadily rose and fell with her breathing and the tickle of Lena rubbing untraceable patterns on her side of her knee.
What? Stay focused there’s no time for that.
Kara flew towards the smoke. Fear and adrenaline wrapping around her keeping her warm and sane.
She stayed warm and sane until she got to the plane... well half of the plane.
The front half of the plane was embedded into the side of one of the mountains. Fire and smoke flickering wildly or the pilot widows. There was snow falling into the inside where just an hour ago people were sitting, warm and thoughtfully safe.
Speaking of people, there was blood everywhere.
The two pilots, Kara saw earlier were lying dead on the ground. Their lips were blue and eyelashes covered in frost.
All six of the flight attendants were scattered around the same mountain, blood still pouring out their heads and stomachs. They were still warm judging from the steam emitting from their bodies.
The Tessmacher look-alike was laid up, limbs sprawled out in all different directions and her neck was separated from her head, wires throwing sparks of electricity being thrown all over the snow.
Kara felt sick. She should have been able to save these people. She should have been there. She should have known.
As much as Kara’s heart aches for the people she couldn’t save, she felt just the slightest bit of relief when she didn’t see Lena’s body anywhere. There was still a chance she was okay.
Kara tried focusing her hearing to find Lena’s heartbeat.
Nothing. Only the same nerve wracking ringing from when Alex shouted in her ear.
Kara used her X-Ray vision and scanned for any sign of Lena, but once again she came up short. There were no foot prints that didn’t lead to one of the already collapsed bodies. No trials of blood leading away from the crash sight. Nothing.
No. Lena had to have gotten somewhere safe. She had to be alive. She had to be out here somewhere.
No matter how many times Kara repeated that in her head, the growing pain in her chest didn’t seem to stop. Her vision started going black at the edges and Kara found herself doubled over on her knees in the snow before she even realized she had moved.
Kara was clawing at the snow, maybe Lena was around somewhere and she just couldn’t see her, before she started roughly pressing her ear to the headphone still placed in her ear.
“Alex?”, her voice shook pleading for her sister’s voice.
“ALEX PLEASE! ALEX I NEED YOU PLEASE”
“Kara? What’s wrong what happened?” Alex voice spoke. There was slight panic but she kept it cool and collected.
You know those moments? When you’ve been holding it together as well as you can but the second someone asks what’s wrong you absolutely fall apart? Well that’s what how Kara felt.
“Alex, she’s gone I can’t- I can’t find her. I can’t hear or see her anywhere. The plane, half of its gone and I- I should’ve been there and now she’s gone and it’s my fault. Alex I can’t breathe. I- I can’t breathe this is my fault. I can’t-“. Kara was hyperventilating. Her rambling the only consistent method of breathing she could get.
“Kara. Kara I need you to relax and breathe” Alex soothed, “I need you to tell me what’s the matter”.
Kara took a stuttering breath, tears streaming and freezing on her cheeks, “I think Lena is dead”.