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This room is her favorite. The smell of lilacs and baking cookies fill the entire house as she sits staring out the windows the architect had planned perfectly. Most of the floor to ceiling view is of the ocean and the beach, but just a sliver of the woods can be seen on the right-hand side because of the angle of the room. She pulls her knees to her chest as a small bird lands on a tree branch. It chirps twice before taking to the air again. She watches the bird fly, it's only care battling the breeze blowing in off the waves. Books surround her on shelves just as tall as the windows. The supple leather of the chair is smooth from use under her sensitive fingertips. This is a room full of comfort and escape. This is where she goes to try and flee her own thoughts. A hand on her shoulder startles her out of her reverie.
“She still hasn’t called?” Eliza asks.
“No,” Kara responds.
Eliza swaps out Kara’s long gone cold tea for a glass of milk and a plate of still-warm chocolate chip cookies. Kara has been in this room since the sun rose, and even now Eliza can see it start to sink into view on the horizon.
“I just don’t know what to do. I was hoping, when all of this settled down, we could talk. Really talk. But I think… I think she hates me. I don’t know what to say to her. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her smile. Since she looked at me with anything other than hate or hurt. It’s like the sun has been snuffed out, and I feel powerless. And I did it to myself.” Kara just hugs her arms tighter around her legs instead of reaching for a cookie.
Eliza thinks for a moment, just as heartbroken at seeing her daughter hurting. “Then write. Write it all down. Write a letter. You were always so good when you could put pen to paper. You don’t have to send it. But it may help get it out of your head and your heart.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kara says, a little non-committedly.
Eliza squeezes Kara’s shoulder, and just for a moment, Kara presses the side of her face to Eliza’s hand. She can feel the warmth and the steady pumping of blood below the skin. It’s as comforting as when she was in high school. Eliza leaves and immediately returns with a legal pad and a pen, setting it next to the cookies with a whispered, “Just in case,” before leaving her daughter again.
It’s not until the sky has started to turn pink that Kara finally picks up the pen, her thoughts growing too loud. They rattle around the inside of her skull and keep making more and more noise. At least putting them on paper will quiet them. After fourteen pages of random thoughts and revisions, she finally has a letter short enough that Lena might actually read.
Dear Lena,
I can see the world so differently now. I see my mistakes and how much I should have questioned the choices I made. Now I’m sitting in my favorite place, looking at my favorite view, in my childhood home. But it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Everything is flat. Drained of its color. The sun is shining, but I have never felt more powerless because I lost you. Home used to be where Alex and Eliza are. This doesn’t feel like home anymore, even with them both here, because I had found my new home in you. You are too far away now. So I am asking you, would it be okay if I came home to you?
Yours if you will have me
Kara
Kara carefully folds the paper into thirds before stuffing it into an envelope. Before she can lose her nerve, she takes off out the backdoor, making the trip to and from National City in less time than it takes for Eliza to realize Kara has even left. Kara only had paused long enough to make sure the envelope was sitting squarely on Lena’s door matt.
Dinner passes as a quiet affair with Alex and Eliza talking about different science breakthroughs, giving up on trying to get Kara to participate. Kara simply shuffles her food around her plate for twenty minutes before excusing herself. She scrapes her plate into the trash and resumes her perch in her favorite room. The sun has long since set, but the moon is full and the stars are bright. Kara can even make out the faint one that was Krypton’s. The grandfather clock in the corner ticks away. Eventually, Eliza, then Alex, come in and kiss the top of Kara’s head with a whispered goodnight.
Shortly after the midnight chiming, Kara falls asleep also. It’s shallow and fitful, not that lying in a bed is any better. She hasn’t slept much at all since the Crisis, since the merging of worlds and Lex’s return from death. Kara wakes before the sun though and watches as the sky brightens. This is how she has spent the last three days. This is how she plans on continuing on for however long it takes to figure out what to do next.
Breakfast happens without Kara. She can hear her family moving about, Alex eventually heading to the beach in a wet suit with a surfboard. It’s how Alex is choosing on spending the vacation until Kelly can join them tomorrow. Kara watches her sister when Alex is in view of the windows, uses the methodic splashing of Alex’s arms to tune out the world. Tune out the imagined heartbeat that has been haunting her for three days. One she keeps hoping to hear. Then a shoe scuffs on the doorway, and a throat clears. Kara goes rigid.
“Hi…” the voice says gently.
Kara closes her eyes, wishing the dream away.
“I… I don’t know what I am doing here. I just… I am so tired.”
Kara slowly reaches up and takes off her glasses, setting them gently on the side table.
“Being mad at you is the hardest thing I have ever done. It drains me. It takes the color from the world because, before you, I am not sure if there was color in the world.”
Kara finally stands and faces the speaker. Lena stands in the sweatshirt Kara had loaned her a year ago. Her hair is thrown up in a haphazard bun, and her dark glasses barely hide the bags under her eyes.
“I think that’s why it hurt so much. I finally felt safe with you, and my brother stole that away from me like everything else he has taken from me. But it didn’t have to be that way. If you had just told me, he couldn’t have taken it. Told me, not at a life-altering moment like you tried with Myxy, but told me at a movie night, or lunch, or something. Whenever you realized you trusted me. A time where we would be able to just sit and talk and then maybe we would never had had that stupid fight. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt like my heart had been shattered into a thousand pieces.”
Kara opens her mouth to speak but is motioned into quiet.
“No, you have said your words. Let me say mine. You broke me. You broke us. And there is no going back. But we can move forward. I need to move forward because you are my home too, Kara. You broke me, but you have also saved me in more ways than one. But you can’t lie to me anymore. You have to be honest with me. Can you do that?”
Kara nods and holds up a finger, asking permission to speak. Lena nods.
“In all honesty, I am so in love with you, my heart hurts in my chest. It makes me feel sick to be apart from you. I can’t even eat.”
Lena raises an eyebrow, knowing the seriousness of the last statement. “I am so in love with you that I almost ran away and never looked back.”
Kara laughs. “I know we have a lot to work through, but can I kiss you?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
Using just a little superspeed, Kara closes the gap between them, fingers of one hand lacing together with Lena’s. Kara’s other hand reaches up to cup Lena’s chin, thumb brushing the defined line. Kara presses her lips to Lena’s expectant ones. Suddenly, the room feels much brighter behind Kara’s closed eyes, like the sun has just appeared from behind a cloud. In Kara’s favorite room, in her childhood home on Earth, Kara feels at home again.