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If Lena ever wanted to be honest with herself, she could have looked back into her boxes, the one without a label, and realize she knew Kara’s secret. But Lena is not one for opening her boxes, not one for unpacking; elects to hire movers. She much prefers walls and towers, anger and space and distance. So that’s exactly what she does.
Kara had come by L-Corp with her hands shaking, eyes already wet before the conversation even started. The box in the back of her mind was shaking, trying to spill its contents, but Lena just added an extra piece of duct tape and pushed it farther back. When Kara unbuttoned her shirt revealing the symbol of the House of El beneath, Lena was shocked. For two breaths. Then she was pissed. And now, she is walking out of her own office, leaving Kara in her wake. She vaguely registers her name being called but she pushes to the elevator.
Kara catches up to her before the car gets to the top floor, “Lena, please, let me explain.”
Lena doesn’t spare her a glance, “You have until this elevator door opens.”
Lena sees Kara shift to try to catch her eye before she starts. Lena thinks that if she has to look at Kara, look into her eyes, the same eyes she thought showed her the truth, she will break. And Lena is too pissed to break right now. She watches the numbers indicating the floor tick up and Kara’s time tick down.
“Lena,” she begins when she realizes Lena won’t look her. “You have to believe when I say that I never, ever wanted to hurt you. You - you mean so much to me.” Kara’s hand reaches out before she realizes what is happening and draws it back. “I know I messed up. I’m a liar. I broke your trust and I am so sorry. I will never make that mistake again. I only ever wanted to protect you, protect us, what we have. I can’t bear to think about losing that, losing you.
Lena counts her breaths, breathes with the ticks on the elevator.
“I know you don’t understand why right now, honesty I’m not even sure I know. I know that words mean nothing next to actions and so far, mine have been shit. I want to change that. I want to be the person you need me to be. Tell me what I can do to fix this. Please.”
The elevator door opens and Lena steps into it. As she turns around, she finally looks at Kara. The tears that had started forming before she even walked into Lena’s office were tracking down her face. Lena thinks how odd is for the ocean to dribble into a creek like that.
“Honestly, Kara, fuck you.” She presses the button for the parking garage below the building. “Don’t presume to know my depth of understanding nor my feelings.”
As the elevator doors close, Lena catches a sob break out of Kara’s chest and then she’s gone and Lena is descending. She can’t tell if this is her final descent into madness or if it is just her descent to her car. When her hand touches the cold floor, she realizes it was just her descent to the floor of the elevator. She acknowledges that if someone were to come into this elevator right now, they might see a brokenhearted girl (she was too overwhelmed to care). They’d see a young woman who didn’t know what it was like to live until Kara showed her. The same Kara that just tore her heart into shreds.
She feels hollow. She feels stupid, and Lena Luthor is anything but. There are very few people on this Earth that can make her feel stupid and she had no idea Kara was on that list. Lena mentally scratches out her name on the list titled People I Trust, leaving the list at a grand total of two names. She adds Kara’s name to People Who Can Make Me Feel Stupid as well as People Who Have Broken My Heart. Lena wouldn’t call them hit lists, but she also doesn’t not call them hit lists.
How could she have let this happen? She is smarter than this, the only game she ever fucking plays makes her think steps and steps ahead of her opponent, how did she miss this? Lena surmises she never realized Kara was an opponent. She didn’t know she should be strategizing against Kara, but she won’t make that mistake again.
The elevator doors open and she blindly makes her way to her car and gets in. She just sits, forehead resting between her hands on the steering wheel. She hasn’t let a tear fall but she knows it’s coming. How could she not have known that Kara was Supergirl? Now that it is laid out in front of her, it’s such an obvious conclusion. More importantly, how could Kara betray her trust like that? Let her have conversations with what she thought were two different people. Let her mistrust Supergirl when it was really just Kara underneath. Let her trust Kara when it was Supergirl underneath. How many people in her life were in on it? Alex, for sure. James? Winn? Very likely. Brainy and J’onn must know. Do Nia, Kelly? Is she the only one left in the dark?
She slams her hands on the steering wheel and counts the bricks on the wall in front of her until she feels in control enough to drive home.
X
It’s been three weeks since Lena left Kara standing outside the elevator. In those weeks, the only communication was the text she received that first night.
I will be here whenever you need me.
Lena had scoffed but couldn’t bring herself to delete it. It’s that text that she is looking at right now as she leans against her office balcony, scotch in her other hand. She looks up from her phone just in time to see a red and blue blur streaking across the sky. The blur notices her out on her balcony and screeches (Lena imagines there would be a screech if her feet were actually on the ground) to a halt half a block away. If Lena wasn’t feeling completely apathetic, she might have laughed at Supergirl’s resemblance to Wile E Coyote. She is just floating there in the middle of the city that Lena has the unfortunate circumstance to think of as home. She looks at her for a moment, the two things she once considered home right in front of her, then turns around and goes back inside.
When she looks out her balcony a few minutes later, Supergirl is gone and the sun has fallen behind the buildings and trees.
X
“Lena, it’s been a month. Why don’t you just talk to her. Not for her but for you. You’re a mess.”
Sam is across the couch from where Lena is snuggled against the arm. Hair up in a messy bun, throw wrapped around her shoulders, fuzzy socks on her feet.
“I am not a mess,” Lena tries.
Sam just looks at her pointedly.
She tried again, “I think if I talked to her it would just end in me yelling at her. Or walking away. Or both.”
“Maybe yelling at her will help you work through why you’re so upset.”
Lena scoffed, “What do you mean, Sam? I’m mad because she lied to me for years.”
Sam’s responding smile makes Lena want to punch it right off her face. Luckily for Lena’s knuckles and Sam’s jaw, she isn’t prone to violence.
“I lied to you. I knew but didn’t tell you and you’re my best friend. You’re not nearly as angry at me as you are with her.”
This makes Lena pause. Sam is on her list of People I Trust but wasn’t scratched out the moment she found out she kept Kara’s secret for her. “It’s not the same. I respect you not sharing secrets that aren’t yours to share.”
“And that’s the only reason?”
Lena staples shut the boxes trying to open up inside the recesses of her mind. If she decided to look through one of those boxes, she might see things like the warmth that spreads through her body when Kara smiles stacked neatly behind the way she melts into hugs and hand holding. She could pull out a whole folder on the way Kara makes (made) her feel cared for and important. It would feature impromptu lunches and dinners when Lena worked late, the way Kara made sure to team up with her at game night so she could whisper the rules in her ear and make sure she was included. She could pull out the file of that one dream she had that she hasn’t once let herself think about since she had it. Instead Lena adds a few more staples for good measure and responds to Sam.
“Yes.”
Sam just softly shakes her head.
X
Lena has no idea what number drink she is on when a body drops onto the stool next to her. She prepares herself to tell some creep to fuck off when she turns to see her newly appointed Favorite Danvers Sister.
“Alex. Why are you here?”
“You texted me. Said, ‘even though you are mad at me I am the only Danvers sister you are recognizing right now.’ You then texted me that you think O’Callaghan’s has shitty scotch, so I thought I’d come pay you a visit.”
Lena looks down at her phone to confirm that she did those things. Alex graciously left out the egregious spelling errors. When she meets Alex’s eyes again, they are softer than she’s ever seen them. Lena is drunk enough that the softness makes her feel good instead of defensive. She can’t help but open up in kind. Mostly due to the alcohol – she has been alarmingly good at remaining closed when sober.
“I’m drowning.”
“In scotch? Not a bad way to go.”
“No, shut up. Today, I feel like I’m drowning. On good days I don’t feel a single thing. On bad days I’m angry. On the worst days I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m just so sad.”
“Have you tried to talk to Kara?”
Lena squints her eyes in Alex’s direction, both to focus on her and to determine if she’s bullshitting her.
“You know I haven’t. I can’t.”
“Do you want to talk to me?”
“Why so you can just go run back and tell your sister? No thanks.” Lena huffs in response.
The corner of Alex’s mouth pulls up, “You already know I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Lena rolls her eyes at that. “Too soon.”
“Lena, I care about you. And if you want to talk to me it will stay between us.”
Lena swirls her drink in her cup as she considers Alex.
“I don’t have very many people in my life that I care about. None of them even come – came close to Kara. That is terrifying itself and then I find out she, along with everyone else, has been lying to me. But the worst part about all of this? She is still the most important person to me. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Lena, it’s not a bad thing to care about people. Kara made a mistake. Hell, I made a mistake for encouraging her to keep her secret from you for so long. But people aren’t perfect. It’s okay that you’re upset and angry while also caring about her. It’s okay to hold both of those at the same time.”
If you asked, Lena would say it was the drinking that made her cry. She would tell you that she’s a drunk crier. But truthfully, Lena hasn’t cried over Kara yet and she can’t hold it in any longer. The tears fall and she has no power to stop it. She hates that Alex has picked up therapist shit from Kelly. She preferred the no crying times.
Alex continues, “Every emotion you’re feeling is okay. They can conflict and still be valid. The bottom line is we miss you and we want you to come back. Not just Kara. Me, Kelly, god Brainy won’t stop asking about you. You are loved and none of us wanted to hurt you. I want you to be happy Lena, that’s all any of us want.”
Alex places her hand on Lena’s shoulder, “I’ll be your partner if you come to game night tomorrow.”
The tears don’t stop falling until long after Alex helps get Lena into a cab. She doesn’t tell Alex she has no idea what happiness looks like anymore (she knows the answer is stored in a box).
X
If Lena is being honest with herself, she hasn’t stopped thinking about Kara since she found out she was Supergirl. She hasn’t stopped thinking about her, but she hasn’t processed a single emotion she’s felt. She’s quite proud of this skill, in fact. She’s been aware of her anger and sadness, but she has refused to understand them any deeper than that. She comes close when she’s drunk but pretends she doesn’t remember that.
Every time she closes her eyes, she sees Kara’s crying eyes staring back at her. She doesn’t let herself relive the memory, but she can’t get her face out of her head. So, very unfortunately for Lena, she is feeling a fuck ton of shit when she wakes up. Her eyes are closed, and she sees traces of blue fighting to be recognized past the pounding headache she has from the alcohol. Her drunken talk with Alex must have let the floodgates open because she feels everything. Exhaustion, sadness, anger, betrayal, loneliness. She opens her eyes in an effort to fight one of the things assaulting her this morning. Lena doesn’t remember the last time she had this bad of a hangover.
And then she does remember. She remembers waking up to the soft sound of Kara singing along to some Carly Rae Jepsen song in her kitchen (Lena will not admit that she likes her music to anyone but she’s pretty sure Kara knows). She had dragged herself out of bed to find breakfast and Advil waiting for her. Lena doesn’t remember a happier morning, the way Kara smiled at her – she swore that’s what cured her headache. But today, her apartment is silent and there’s no bright smile to ease the throbbing in her skull.
Lena furiously wipes away the tears she let escape. Kara had always made things feel so easy. Lena rarely welcomed people into her space, but Kara fit like Lena had been living her whole life waiting for her to fill it. Just when she started to believe she could have some goodness in her life, it was ripped away. Kara had seemed so different than everyone else who let her down. And that makes it hurt even more.
Lena curses herself as she makes her coffee, hoping caffeine will take the edge off. Despite all of this, she can’t help but ache with longing, she wishes Kara were with her, to make her feel better. What kind of person does that? How could she want the very person who hurt her so badly? What does that make her? A masochist – probably. Definitely lonely.
The way Lena sees it, there are two options. The first is that Kara is actually a piece of shit and wanted to hurt her. She intentionally kept it from Lena to manipulate her. The second is that Kara isn’t a piece of shit and kept it from her for a reason that Lena cannot fathom.
The former really seems to be have more evidence. Evidence being Lena’s past experiences with people who lied to her. Lillian – over and over again – was exhibit one. No matter how many chances Lena gave her mother, she never pulled through. Lex holds his place as exhibit two. Lena isn’t sure if he has ever been truly honest with her (she hopes this isn’t the case but really, she has no idea anymore). He is always following his own super-villainous plans. Exhibit three – Lionel. He let her believe she wasn’t his biological child and kept it to his grave. What a shitty fucking father.
Lena is smart enough to be objective. Obviously the Luthor family isn’t exactly a fair sample, she knows they are extraordinarily sucky. So, take exhibit four: Andrea. She lied about that stupid fucking medallion, one of Lena’s last connections to her mother. Fucking selfish.
Lena’s (anecdotal) evidence is stacking up very heavily against Kara. She tries to come up with evidence to support Kara in an effort to uphold standards in science (yes this is science). Lena goes to her People I Trust list and pulls out exhibits five and six: Jess and Sam. The only two people that she has any semblance of a relationship with who haven’t royally fucked her over. They have been by her side, supporting her through all of her nonsense.
Despite the evidence leaning four to two, Lena can’t help but think Kara is much more like Sam and Jess than her family. She is, however, almost exactly like Andrea. Andrea has significantly fewer locked boxes in the back of Lena’s brain but they contained comparable things (warmth and a hope for more).
Despite Lena’s (meticulous) research and evidence gathering, she still fucking misses Kara. She wants Kara to be like Sam. No, she wants Kara to be like who Lena thought she was all these years.
Maybe Lena should let Kara make her case. Does she not have that right? Lena doubts anything she has to say is going to make her feel worse than she currently does. Exhausted and alone. Hopeless. Her symbol of hope has been ripped from her life and she feels it in the pit of her stomach, in the throb of her head.
Does that make Lena stupid? What would an emotionally stable person do? How forgiving, optimistic is the average person? She thinks back to her conversations with Alex and Sam. They both seem to think she should talk to Kara. It’s been well over a month since she walked away from Kara and she doesn’t think it will be so easy to walk away again. That woman is a sun, her gravitational pull way too strong for Lena to resist.
But, if Lena is being honest with herself (isn’t it time she’s truly honest with herself?), she wants to forgive Kara. She wants Kara in her life. Lena is going to hurt either way, she is going to think of Kara every day regardless if she sees her. Why can’t she benefit from her presence?
Lena feels the rattling in her brain, begging her to think about why she wants to be around Kara so badly. She knows, its right there is the recess of her mind, all the evidence, neatly labeled. She just needs to draw the conclusion. She Lena pours herself another cup of coffee and lets herself open one of the dozens of boxes labelled under ‘Kara’.
X
Kara opens to the door to find Alex holding snacks and a bottle of bourbon. Tonight is the fourth game night since Lena stopped speaking to her. She grabs the chips from Alex’s arms to put them on the counter and then goes back to her spot on the couch. Alex has barely left the kitchen before Kara is rambling.
“Alex, what if she never gets over it? What if I never get over her? How am I supposed to live my life like this? The longer I spend without her the clearer it is that I don’t want anything real with anyone who isn’t her. By putting on that cape to save lives, have I doomed my own?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. She will come around, I know it.” Alex pauses, “And we both know it’s not you wearing the cape that’s the issue.”
“Do you know she once told me I looked handsome in this shirt,” Kara motions to the button down on her body. “I can’t put it on without crying. But every day the sun comes up, there’s another disaster I need to fix, the world spins on and I do the job that got me in this situation.”
“Again, not the job that’s the issue. Do you want to stop being Supergirl?”
Kara sucks in her bottom lip. “No. I wouldn’t change any of it. I wouldn’t stop being Supergirl. I don’t – I don’t even know if I would have told Lena any sooner if I could do it over.”
Alex makes a noise of surprise at that. “What? Why?”
“At this rate, there’s a good chance I will never have Lena in my life again. I wouldn’t want to give up any of those moments by telling her sooner and losing her sooner. Maybe it’s selfish but I would keep my best friend for as long as I could before I break her.”
“We’re still going with best friend?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to know if we could be more so, yes, that’s what we’re going with still.”
“Have you thought about reaching out to her again?”
Kara drops her head against the back of the couch and puffs out a breath, “I’ve thought about it. But she’s stubborn, I think that would only make her stay away for longer.” Kara lolls her head to the side to look at Alex. “How horrible is it that I’ve been wishing for a small disaster at L-Corp just so I could have a reason to see her? She hasn’t been on her balcony since that time I saw her.”
Alex grabs Kara’s hand in both of her own. “I think instead of wishing for bad things at L-Corp you should be ready to give her what she needs when she decides to come back.”
Kara nods and takes her hand back from Alex.
“Let’s get the games set up.”
X
Kara looks up when she hears a knock at the door. She whips her head around cataloging the people in her apartment. Everyone is accounted for. Well, not everyone. But it couldn’t be. Kara nearly falls over when Alex nudges her towards the door.
“That must be my partner! Sorry Kelly you’ll have to lose with Kara tonight.” She nudges Kara again. “Go get the door.”
Kara feels like she must have fallen into the twilight zone. Her vision is black around the edges, the only thing she can focus on is the door. She doesn’t dare use her x-ray vision as she slowly walks towards the door. Or at least she thinks she’s walking forward; it’s hard to tell with how slow she is going. There is a second knock, a little bit louder this time. Kara finally makes it within reach of the doorknob. She steels herself. Whether it’s Lena, or not, she isn’t ready for it.
The sight that greets her when she pulls it open isn’t something she will soon forget. Lena looks like an angel. Well, she always looks like and angel but especially so tonight. Distance makes the heart grow stronger, or fonder, or whatever. Lena’s hair is pulled back and her hands are clenched around her bag. Kara can hear her heartbeat pick up and she blinks a few times. Kara tries to say hi, but she isn’t sure if it actually comes out or not.
Lena licks her lips and takes a deep breath.
“I have no idea if most people would forgive what you put me through. But I’m here because some people do.”