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Lena opened her door, and her expression immediately tightened.
“What are you doing here?” she asked bitterly. “Shouldn’t you be out investigating with your new knight with a shining reporter’s badge?”
Kara’s mouth opened slightly in shock.
“Lex,” Lena replied simply in answer to Kara’s wordless question.
“I…” Still standing in the doorway, Kara pushed her way past Lena and into the apartment as gently as she could. Lena let her.
“We went on a date,” Kara blurted out, twisting her hands in front of her.
Lena raised an eyebrow and scoffed. “First Mon-El, now him. Another overly confident man who thinks he can save the world? I’m starting to think you have a type, Kara.”
Kara flinched, and Lena momentarily regretted her harshness.
“William is a good man. His heart is in the right place, even if his methods are a little brazen and risky. He...he made me feel like I hadn’t felt in a long time,” Kara muttered quietly.
Lena didn’t reply, but stepped away from the door and stood directly in front of Kara, her arms crossed stiffly under her chest. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to hear how Kara had found yet another person in her life who loved her, who needed her, who wanted her around. Not when she was still so desperately afraid of being alone.
“And how was that?” she asked finally.
“Wanted.”
Now Lena flinched. She pursed her lips in an effort to keep her face still.
“He made me feel wanted. He made Kara feel wanted. And it was light and fun, and it felt so good to laugh about bad karaoke after everything that’s happened recently.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lena asked, her voice barely above a raspy whisper. “We haven’t exactly been the best of friends lately where you can just pop in to talk about boys.”
Kara let out a shaky sigh and bit her lip. She raised her eyes from the floor and looked at Lena.
“He tried to kiss me at the end of the night, and, I...I realized I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him. I went home, confused and embarrassed and wracking my brain for an answer as to why. And then I realized.”
Lena found herself unable to breathe under the weight of Kara’s terrified, pleading gaze. Her blue eyes shone frantically in the dim light of the apartment, as if she knew she was about to take a leap from which she could not return.
Kara took a step towards Lena, and Lena instinctively shuffled back ever so slightly. Kara stopped.
“He wasn’t you.”
“Me? What you could you possibly mean by ‘me’?”
“Lena, you are the one reason Alex told me I needed to stop leading with my heart and start thinking with my head. The one reason!” Kara suddenly seem seized with energy. She started to pace around the room; her hand gestures grew more dramatic.
“William knows Kara Danvers, CatCo reporter. But you, you know Kara Danvers as Cat Grant’s assistant, as the CatCo reporter, as the rogue blogger, as the girl who eats way too much at brunch and still steals the last potsticker at dinner. You know I get overly competitive at game night and that I paint when I’m stressed. You know...you know Kara Zor-El. You know Supergirl.”
Kara took a deep breath and wiped her nose against her sleeve. She quieted herself and slowly returned to Lena, wary of making her back away again. “You know me, Lena, in a way that no one else could.”
She could see Lena thinking, the light of anger and pain and understanding flashing behind her emerald eyes.
“Kara,” Lena began, “we were friends before, once. Now you’re asking me for something else entirely. Something more?”
“Yes,” Kara replied softly. “Because despite Mon-El and William, despite Jack and James, I think we both know, for us, it’s not about picking a side. It’s about picking a person.”
Lena’s lip quivered as she quickly brushed her cheek with her thumb.
“And I pick you. Every time, Lena, I will pick you.”
“You broke my heart with what you did, you know. I can’t just forget that because you’ve suddenly realized what I’ve been trying to show you for the last three years.” Lena spat, but there was no real venom in her voice.
Kara nodded solemnly. “I know. I’m not asking you to forget.”
“Then what are you asking me?”
There was a genuine softness to Lena’s tone Kara had not heard in months, and it made her brave. She always had hope, but that tone gave her courage.
She reached down for Lena’s hand. Lena didn’t pull away. Kara stepped closer, clasping Lena’s hand between her own and holding it up between their chests.
“This is a new world, one that I don’t entirely understand yet,” Kara murmured gently. “I lost everything, everyone, again in Crisis. Then the Green Arrow, Oliver, he sacrificed himself to give us all a second chance. That is what I’m asking you for, Lena. A second chance, because I cannot lose you again.”
Kara’s face fell when Lena didn’t reply and removed her hand from Kara’s grip. She walked over to a table standing near the massive wall of windows that looked out over National City. She picked up the framed picture of them, the one she had found herself so often staring at lately, glass of whiskey swirling in her hand.
“Kara?” she asked, still looking at the photo, “Is it okay that I ask you to leave now?”
Kara blinked, her jaw tensed.
“I, Lena...yes, of course. I should go. I’m so, so sorry,” she sputtered, her voice cracking between tears. She turned towards the door.
“Wait. I wasn’t finished.”
Kara froze, her heart in her throat.
Lena set the photograph back down and moved towards Kara. She reached up and cupped her hand around Kara’s damp cheek.
“Will you come back tomorrow? I can cook us dinner, and we can talk. Because, despite the things I’ve said, I have lost far too much in my life to lose you too.”
Relief bubbled from Kara’s chest in the form of a sharp, watery laugh.
“It’s a date?” she asked.
The corner of Lena’s mouth turned up into a small, knowing smile.
Kara suddenly pulled her into an enveloping hug, and Lena pressed her face into the crook of Kara’s neck.
“It’s a date,” Kara repeated, unquestioningly this time.
Lena let out a deep breath and stepped back, gently leading Kara by the hand towards the door. She kissed Kara’s knuckles before letting her go into the night.
“Until tomorrow?” she said.
“Always,” Kara replied.