Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Krypto crunches through the pile of leaves, barking happily and wagging his tail.

Kara smiles down at him and superspeeds to build the pile back up.

“Go, boy! Go!”

Krypto jumps into the pile again and his wagging tail (it's practically a blur at this point) swats a few of the leaves aside.

Lena watches from inside the house, smiling at Kara, who’s laughing at Krypto’s antics.

“Mommy! I wanna go out and play with Krypto, too!”

Lori, their 5 year old daughter, comes rushing over, pulling on the side of Lena’s shirt and looking up at her with big, puppy-dog eyes. 

Lena sighs, she could never resist those eyes, whether they came from her wife or her daughter.

“Okay, darling. But, you have to put on a jacket, it’s getting colder outside.”

Lori pouts, but agrees anyway, knowing there would be no chance of going outside if she didn’t wear a jacket.

Once the jacket is safely in place, Lori runs out the door, towards Kara.

“Mama! I wanna play too! Can we do the flying thing? Please?”

Lena watches on fondly as Kara beams at Lori, holding her arms out to receive the little 5-year-old. 

“Sure, sweetie! C’mere! Hold on tight!”

Lena feels her heart rate skyrocket, anxiety getting the best of her.

Kara turns to look at her, worried about the sudden spike in Lena’s heart rate, and flashes a smile, easing Lena’s worries. I got her, she mouths, holding onto Lori securely.

I know, Lena mouths back, reminded of the same way Kara had held her when she had saved her all those years ago.

I know you do.

Chapter Text

“Kara, I’m home!”

The door shuts behind Lena and she hears a quiet meow down by her feet as she hangs up her coat.

“Hey, Streaky. Where’s Kara, hmm?”

“Lena!”

Lena can hear the happy call coming from the kitchen and she walks in, Streaky at her heels.

“Hi, baby. How was your day?” Kara’s beaming face comes into view as she turns the corner, and a soft smile spreads across Lena’s face.

“Oh, about the same. A bunch of investors on my ass about this and that.” Lena snorts at the thought of the meetings she’s had today. “But, I’m home now, and seeing you has made my day much better,” she declares, leaning into Kara.

“Well, I’m about to make your day amazing because… drumroll please…”

Lena chuckles and starts drumming her fingers against the countertop.

“I made cookies!!!”

Lena laughs out loud, her eyes crinkling at the edges.

“Did you burn them?”

Kara pouts.

“Hey! That’s… that’s only for me and the first three batches to know…”

“Aww, darling, it’s okay. Thank you for making the cookies,” Lena reassures, holding Kara’s face in her hands and placing a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose.

She sees a flush, the color of carnival cotton candy, spread across Kara’s face, and smiles down at her.

“So, what types of cookies did you bake?”

Kara leaps up, energetic again.

“You guess.”

Lena pretends to think for a moment, having caught on to the dark chips embedded in the cookies as soon as Kara had presented the tray.

“Hmm… are they… chocolate chip?”

“Bingo! A cookie for the pretty lady!”

Now it’s Lena’s turn to blush, her cheeks coloring a rosy red as she takes the proffered cookie.

“You flatter me, Kara.”

“I only speak the truth.” Kara presses her hand against her chest dramatically as she says it, making Lena laugh again.

Streaky meows again, wanting to be let up.

Lena jumps up onto the counter, with Kara’s help, and pats her lap for Streaky to jump onto.

Once Streaky is settled, his purrs rumbling against her as she strokes his silky black fur, she looks back up at Kara.

Kara is looking over at her with pure adoration and affection, a lovestruck smile on her face.

Lena feels her cheeks heat up again, but she beckons Kara over, taking a nibble out of her cookie as she does so.

“Thank you for the cookies,” she whispers.

“I wanted to end your day on a good note,” Kara whispers back, brushing a lock of Lena’s hair behind her ear.

“I think there’s still something missing.”

Kara frowns and takes a small step back. “What is it?”

Lena smirks and pulls Kara back in. Streaky leaps off her lap with an indignant meow, but she pays him no mind for the time being.

“This.”

And then she kisses Kara, and it’s like the first time all over again. The butterflies rise in her stomach and she sighs into Kara’s mouth when she feels Kara pulling on her ponytail, loosening it.

They pull away a few moments later, and Kara’s cheeks and neck are colored crimson as her blush spreads.

“There. That’s a good note,” Lena states, smirking at Kara’s state.

“Mhm. Yeah. I’m glad I could help.” Kara still sounds a little bit dizzy, so Lena takes pity on her and loosens her grasp on her shirt.

“You definitely did.”

“Now, about those three batches…?”

Lena laughs at Kara’s answering groan.

Chapter Text

Kara stands at Lena’s side. The dark, navy blue suit she’s wearing makes her tall, powerful in a way that she only feels when she’s in her Supersuit.

Lena is busy talking with some investors. The maroon dress she’s wearing compliments Kara’s navy blue suit in every way possible. Where Kara is all sharp edges and muscle, Lena is soft and curved, leaning against Kara as she laughs at one of the investor’s (frankly, horrible) jokes.

Kara delights in the fact that Lena’s laugh is all lipstick and teeth, none of the softness and genuine happiness she shows with Kara. It does a little to quell her rising jealousy, but not much.

The investor’s telling the tenth joke that night when Kara breaks, ducking her head to whisper into Lena’s ear.

“Could I talk to you, please?” she asks. “In private?”

Lena looks at her, about to scold her for trying to pull her away already, but at the sight of the frustration just barely hidden behind Kara’s cool facade, she gives.

“Could you please give us a minute?”

The investor politely backs away, but when Kara sees him leaving with a lingering glare at Lena’s backside, she slides her hand from Lena’s side to the small of her back and she glares at the investor.

He pales and rushes away quickly, almost tripping over himself and spilling his champagne in his effort to get away.

Kara turns forward again, smirking to herself as she guides Lena over to the dance floor.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“You noticed how that investor was practically drooling over you, right?”

Lena crosses her arms and looks over at Kara.

“I had to entertain him, you know that, Kara. I can’t lose any more investors now.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Kara mutters.

She shakes her head. She will not ruin tonight for Lena.

“It’s okay. I understand. It’s just… I don’t like it when other people try and take what’s mine. I love you, Lena. I can’t help it if I get a little bit jealous when other people just… stare.”

Lena softens a little, uncrossing her arms and smoothing them down Kara’s arms.

“Hey, it’s okay. I get it. I’ll try and keep it to a minimum. I don’t like it either. If it were you instead, I’d probably have that investor kicked out of the country,” she chuckles.

Kara smiles at Lena, placing a soft kiss on her hair.

In the background, the band starts playing, and Kara brightens considerably.

She bends over to kiss Lena’s hand.

“May I have this dance, ma’am?”

Lena laughs, and it’s a genuine laugh this time, nothing like the reserved, polite one she gave the investor, and Kara feels her insides warm and her heart flutter.

“Of course you may,” Lena responds, pulling Kara in and placing a light kiss on her cheek.

Kara beams, having completely forgotten about the investor, and sweeps Lena up, escorting her to the dance floor.

She and Lena start dancing, stepping together, swaying to the music, Kara occasionally twirling Lena only to pull her back in close.

Kara sees Lena twirling in the dress, and she’s immediately brought back to the night she won her Pulitzer, Lena standing in front of her, a dress the exact same shade as her eyes glint with tears. She sees Lena walking away, remembers wiping away her own tears, breathing in and out the same way Eliza had taught her to when she’d had her first panic attack on Earth, the same way Alex had told her to when Kenny had died and when Alex was standing knee-deep in a tank half-filled with water, and then walking back downstairs.

It still hurts sometimes. Sometimes, the memories will keep her up, and she’ll sit up the entire night, quiet and stiff as the hot trails of tears burn their way down her face, sobbing quietly into her hand for fear of waking Lena up. She’ll get up minutes before Lena’s alarm is set to ring and wash her face, making sure she looks properly sleep-mussed and not like she’s been crying the entire night before heading back to bed, sliding under the covers and pretending to wake up with Lena.

She doesn’t talk about it.

She doesn’t talk about it until Lena wakes up one night only to see Kara sitting stiffly against the headboard, her face buried in her hands. She doesn’t talk about it until Lena wakes up and sees the glint of tears in the moonlight. She doesn’t talk about it until Lena sees her expression, utterly and completely broken. She doesn’t talk about it until Lena sits up and holds her, wordlessly letting Kara sob into her shoulder and then getting up to make Kara a cup of hot chocolate. Only then does she talk about it.

She talks about all of it. She tells Lena everything. They’ve never talked about Kara this much, and she feels guilty a few times until Lena looks at her and Kara can see in her eyes that Lena needs to hear all this, just as much as Kara needs to say it.

So, she talks. She talks about everything about her, about being Supergirl, her nightmares, her panic attacks, her parents, her fear that one day she’ll wake up and it turns out she’s still in the Phantom Zone, and it’s all just been an elaborate dream, her fear that she’ll have to watch everyone around her die because of her, her fear that she’ll have to watch everyone around her die because Kryptonians live longer than any human and that she might go mad if she has to watch Lena die.

Lena holds her, lets her talk, and then tells her Lena has no intention of ever leaving her. Lena talks about herself, too, letting Kara see where she hurts, too. Lena tells her that if Kara really wants it, she can find a way for Kara to grow old with her. Kara cries and cries and cries as she realizes just how lucky she is to have Lena by her side, to have Lena want her, too.

She’s snapped out of her reverie when she hears Lena calling her name.

“Kara? Are you okay?”

She feels the tears welling up, and she laughs, the sound watery.

“Yeah. I’m okay. I’m so okay.”

She steps closer when Lena frowns and smiles against Lena’s mouth.

“I’m so glad you chose me. I don’t know what I would do without you,” she whispers after, their foreheads pressed together as their shared breaths mingle.

“Oh, Kara. I don’t know what I would do if I hadn’t chosen you.”

Kara beams at Lena, and Lena steps forward to smile against Kara’s mouth, too.

The tears are gone now, and as Kara sways with Lena, she can only think about how lucky she is to have her.

Chapter Text

“Okay, c’mere, girl. C’mere!”

Kara calls to the little stray puppy she had saved from a burning building earlier today. She had asked all the residents, but none of them claimed it, and several said it was a stray puppy.

She had decided to bring her back home, and she’d stopped by a pet shop on the way back to buy a bag of dog food, some squeaky toys, and a dog bed.

Everything was going great. The puppy, who she had named Zora, had loved her new toys and had sniffed the entire apartment through and through. The only problem?

She hadn’t told Lena yet.

Lena was still at work when Kara had brought Zora home, probably at a conference meeting with her board about their investors. Now, about an hour has passed, and Kara still hasn’t been able to muster up the courage to just fly to L-Corp and tell her about Zora.

Instead, Kara decides to start planning a way to break the news, preferably after Lena gets home.

Her plan is simple. First, she has to buy Lena some coconut curry, her favorite. Then, she has to pull out one of the more expensive bottles of wine. Finally she has to break the news carefully, sitting Lena down and trying her best to convince Lena to keep Zora.

She flies to the curry place and buys a few takeout containers for them before flying back to their shared apartment. Then, she carefully takes out one of the bottles of wine and sets it down on the table as well. Finally, she goes to buy a plumeria-scented candle and lights it, setting it in the middle.

Once she’s satisfied that everything is in place, she takes Zora out for a walk in the park before setting her down in her bed and cooing her to sleep. She knows Lena would never be able to resist a puppy, much less so a sleeping puppy.

She even goes to buy a single plumeria flower, placing it on the table where Lena normally sits. She whiles away the last two hours obsessively cleaning the entire apartment and checking on Zora every now and then.

Lena texts her right as she’s leaving L-Corp, and Kara tells her there’s a surprise waiting for her along with dinner.

Lena sends back a question mark, but Kara turns off her phone, waiting in anticipation for the moment Lena gets back, her nerves jumping from excited to nervous to worried and then back again.

She’s ready for Lena to come back, and she sits on the couch, waiting the final 15 minutes for Lena to head back home.

Everything goes wrong the minute Lena steps into the apartment.

She’s listening to the quiet clicking of Lena’s heels against the floor of the hallway as she gets closer and closer to the front door, and she jumps up when Lena is only a few steps away.

She waits for Lena to open the door, shrug her coat off, set her purse aside, and then she wraps Lena up in a hug. Lena tenses a moment before relaxing into Kara’s arms, the tension melting away.

“Hi, darling. Miss me?”

Kara almost forgets about her plan as she holds Lena.

“I always miss you,” she responds.

Kara can’t tell if Lena is blushing, the candlelight too dim in the room to allow her to see properly, but she’s pretty sure Lena’s cheeks are flushing bright red, and what she wouldn’t give to see it in better lighting.

Lena’s just about to sit down in her chair, when out of the bedroom comes Zora, yipping and yapping and jumping up at Lena.

Kara and Lena both freeze.

Then, Lena slowly turns her head to look at Kara scrutinizingly, studying her.

Kara immediately opens her mouth and starts stuttering. Her heart is racing, faster than Zora had when she’d come rushing out of bedroom.

“I— uh— she—“

Lena holds up her hand, promptly causing Kara to snap her mouth shut.

Then, Lena does the unimaginable; she picks Zora up, sets her down on her lap, and starts scratching behind her ears.

Kara stares at Lena, gobsmacked, and then back down at Zora, and then back up at Lena. Her eyes ricochet between Lena’s amused expression and Zora’s content one a few times before she finally regains the ability to speak.

“Um,” Kara articulates eloquently.

“So, where did you get her?” Lena asks, as if nothing has happened.

Kara is still trying to process what has just happened, and so it takes her another few seconds to process that Lena even asked a question.

“I… um, I rescued her. She’s a stray.”

“Oh,” Lena frowns. “Poor baby. What did you rescue her from?” Lena’s still scratching behind Zora’s ear and Zora’s tail is whipping up a frenzy.

“I rescued her from a burning building. Everyone who lived there either said she wasn’t theirs or that she was a stray. I kind of decided to just… take her…???” Kara rubs the back of her neck sheepishly, staring down at her feet.

“Don’t you think I should’ve had a say in this?”

Kara blushes even brighter.

“I’m sorry, I really was going to tell you but I was so nervous and I had a plan and I’ve already bought her dog food and toys and a bed and bowls an—“

Kara is cut off by Lena pressing a gentle kiss to her lips.

Lena is standing now, Zora by her side.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’ve always wanted a German shepherd. Just next time, let me know first, please?”

Kara smiles her thousand-watt smile at Lena and nods her head eagerly.

“Of course! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this time. I was really nervous and scared you wouldn’t want her.”

“Oh, Kara, I could never say no to you, you know that.”

Kara leans her cheek against Lena’s palm and closes her eyes.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

“Of course, Kara, I love you,” Lena responds, just as quietly.

“Love you, too.”

…

“Just so you know, that wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

Lena’s answering laugh is interspersed with little yaps from Zora.

Chapter Text

Kara loses her family for the first time when she’s 13.

The red she’s grown up loving and praising engulfs her planet and swallows it whole. She still remembers Ukr pulling her out of bed in the middle of the night to the feeling of the ground shaking and the endless sea of red and red and more red.

“Kara! Wake up, we have to go!”

Kara stumbles out of bed, still rubbing her eyes, and is yanked along. She trips over her own feet several times but Ukr holds her up by one arm.

Then, she turns and sees one of her teachers lying on the ground, unmoving, his glassy eyes staring at nothing.

She tries to scream, but it catches in her throat and comes up as a cough instead.

Soot. Ashes. She looks up again and sees the red of the blaze taking everything it touches, buildings, schools, homes, people. She hears the screaming, but it sounds so far away. It’s only when Ukr turns around and stops to look her over that she realizes it’s her who’s screaming.

“It’s okay, Kara. We’ll explain. It’s okay,” Ukr promises, still leading her along, Ieiu right behind them.

“What’s happening, Ieiu?” Her voice sounds small, even to her.

“We’ll make sure you’re safe, okay? Don’t worry. You’re okay,” her mother soothes, still not answering her question.

Before Kara can ask again, Ukr arrives at the destination and lets go of her hand.

“Come, Kara. I need you to do something for me, okay?”

Kara walks over to Ukr, and he kneels down to put her at eye level.

“I need you to promise to protect your cousin. Kal-El. He’s already on his way to Earth. That’s going to be your new planet. They have a yellow sun, and you’ll have special powers there, okay? You need to protect your cousin. Do it for us.”

Kara is shaking her head and she can feel the tears running down her cheeks, but then Ieiu comes over and Kara knows she can’t escape this.

“I need you to be brave for me, Karanizu. I need you to make sure that Kal is safe.” Her mother’s voice is warm and soft, and Kara wants to lean into it and let it wrap around her until everything else goes away, but it’s too late. Ukr has already opened the pod, and Ieiu’s gently placing her in already.

“Be brave, my little bird. You will fly so high,” her mother whispers, pressing a kiss to Kara’s forehead.

“Make us proud,” her father finishes.

The lid shuts, and the last thing Kara sees is her mother and father, waving goodbye to her.

And then the only thing that’s left is the red of the fire and the sun.

And then it’s all black.

She loses her family a second time as soon as she reaches Earth.

A man, tall and unfamiliar, helps her out of her pod and takes her to a different family.

She doesn’t realize it’s Kal-El until she sees the cape hanging around his shoulders as he’s walking away, the blanket that’s so unmistakably from Krypton.

It’s too late by the time she sees it.

She cries and screams and thrashes and tries to get to him, to apologize, to yell at him for leaving her, but she can’t. She can’t fight anymore.

She cries herself to sleep that night, staring up at where Krypton would’ve been in the star-painted night sky, and she apologizes. Over and over until she isn’t even sure what she’s saying.

She apologizes to the rest of her planet, the people that didn’t get a chance to survive. She apologizes to her parents, whose dying wishes she could not fulfill. She apologizes to Kal, who she was not there to protect. She apologizes to Rao, and wonders if he can even hear her.

(After all, she doesn’t think she’s blessed by his light anymore. She doesn’t deserve to be.)

She watches her family, her entire world, orbit a little too far from her (a star hot enough to burn and bright enough to blind) and leave her behind. She sees the empty blackness again, the abyss where Alex should be. (Where Kara had escaped after 24 long years.) Alex had filled the gaping hole in her heart and made her feel loved, but she’s gone now.

Alex forgets, and she collapses in on herself—a dying star right before it explodes.

She tells herself it’s to plan for the future, to keep everyone she loves safe.

(It doesn’t make her feel any better.)

Suddenly, every time she gets called to go fight an alien or put out a burning building, she feels her heart drop into her stomach, heavy and nausea-inducing. She goes anyway.

She puts on her Supersuit and rescues people and for a split second she feels okay again, but then Alex shows up along with Alpha team, and then Kara sees the way Alex looks at her, and the nausea comes back. She doesn’t ever want to be Supergirl ever again. Not when Alex hates Supergirl, not when Alex looks at Supergirl like she’s any of the other aliens they fight every day (like she isn’t worth it).

Kara gets up every day anyway.

(Sometimes she thinks about how easy it would’ve been to have stayed on Krypton and died with her family. The thought doesn’t come along often, but it’s always lurking in the back of her mind, a shadow on her entire being that makes her feel a little dimmer each and every day that passes.)

She gets up and goes to work at CatCo like nothing has happened. She saves people as Supergirl, and pretends like she can’t feel the way Alex is glaring holes into her—

“Give me the wine back, Kara!” Alex whines.

“Nuh-uh! You can’t just drink yourself to death!” Kara retorts.

Alex glares holes into her, but Kara just laughs and brushes it off before getting Alex a blanket—

She rushes back home after the save, abandons her Supersuit in the far back of her closet, and takes an extra long shower, trying to scrub away the feeling of the glare and the way it was packed with anger and hate.

She comes out of the shower with her skin scrubbed red and raw, but she can still feel the lingering burn of the glare.

Red Daughter is tearing her life apart.

No matter how true the statement is, Kara still can’t help feeling bad for her. She’s being used by Lex, persuaded and convinced to hate her. Although, the sympathy isn’t as strong while Red Daughter is currently trading blows with her.

At first, she thinks she’ll win. Red Daughter’s only been on Earth for a few months, and not even in America. The surroundings are new to her, and considering Kara grew up in Midvale, she knows it better than anyone.

Then, Red Daughter reveals the enhancements that Lex gave her, and Kara’s heart drops into her gut.

But, even now, as she watches Red Daughter’s fist soar through the air to meet her chin, she only feels regret. Regret for not getting to say goodbye to Alex, for not getting to tell Lena, for not being able to get through to Red Daughter.

The world fades away, and for a split second, Kara’s reminded of the Phantom Zone.

(She feels that same emptiness in her chest now, where her heart should be.)

She wakes up feeling tingly all over and with Alex hunched over and crying.

“I’m so sorry, Kara. I’m so so sorry,” she can hear Alex saying. It’s muffled, but she can still hear it through the ringing in her ears.

“I missed you so much,” she responds quietly.

“I missed you, too.”

She feels Alex coming back into her orbit and the light inside her burns a little brighter for it.

It’s not her time to go. Not yet.

Defeating Lex doesn’t make her feel any better about everything.

After all, Lena’s still in the dark.

She comes over, two bottles of wine in hand, and settles on the couch. The smile she shoots Kara is happy but tired. Kara smiles back, but it feels fake.

“I have to tell her, Alex. I can’t keep it from her anymore.”

“Lena’s gone through hell and back. And now, we’re finally somewhere we can sort of count as normal. Let’s give her a few days to live normally before you drop this on her.” Alex pats her on the shoulder and looks her in the eyes.

“Yeah, okay. A few more days.”

Her voice doesn’t sound very convincing, even to her.

She tells Lena the night of the Pulitzer party.

“I’m Supergirl. I’ve always been Supergirl. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I was selfish and I didn’t want you to leave me. I was going to tell you, it weighed on my every single day I didn’t, but one day, you came back, and you told me about how horrible Supergirl was, but you still loved Kara. And I thought, if I could just be Kara, then you would still love me. I’m so sorry.”

Kara feels her heart breaking into tiny little pieces, sharp at the edges. She knows they’ll cut her open when she tries to pick them up and piece them back together.

She tries again anyway.

“Please say something, Lena.”

But then the moment is over. The usher comes up to call Lena and she’s left alone, a mess of tears and broken pieces she has to pull together in time for the announcement.

She wipes her eyes and steels herself.

(She recognizes the feeling she feels now. It reminds her of how she’d felt when she’d watched Krypton blow up. She supposes it’s not too different. Everything she’s built with Lena is falling apart, just like Krypton did back then. Everyone she loves leaves her in the end. She’s accepted this by now. She just hoped she’d had a little more time with Lena.)

The feeling rushing through her is invigorating. It’s power unlike she’s ever felt. Even when she’d first basked in the Earth’s yellow sun, even when she had been poisoned by the Red K. This is different.

Because Lena still loves her. Lena’s still her best friend. And Kara feels like she could hold the entire world on her shoulders if it means that Lena will stay with her.

(She thinks about how Atlas held the entire sky on his shoulders and how maybe, maybe, he did it for love.)

The second time, her heart breaks even worse, the pieces too small for her to pick up and put back together.

“I have Myriad because I’m using you, like you used me.”

Lena’s voice sounds so far away. She sounds so distant and cold and Kara can hear the sadness in her voice.

Somehow, Kara manages to find enough in herself to respond.

“I never used you.” Her voice sounds tinny and small.

“Do you remember when you finally told me you were Supergirl? You were weeping big, crocodile tears, while I wept real tears… bitter tears for you weeks before.”

Kara’s still struggling to catch up, to figure out what Lena’s talking about.

And then it clicks.

Lena tells her anyway.

And then she leaves, and the only thing Kara is left with are the broken shards of her heart that she knows she can’t put back together.

Maybe this is it. Maybe this is all she gets. A handful of people she calls family who leave her in the end, anyway.

She knows they’re all destined to leave her. She just didn’t think it would happen so fast.

The emptiness in her chest has never hurt before.

(She supposes there’s a first time for everything.)

She wanders away from the battlefield, where Oliver lies unmoving.

She thinks about Lena leaving her behind.

She doesn’t cry.

She doesn’t cry until she makes it back home, until she realizes that Lex is a hero in this new world, until she realizes that no one remembers, until she realizes that Lena is working with Lex.

She doesn’t cry until she’s in the shower.

It doesn’t count as crying this way, not when there’s already water dripping down her face.

(Her thoughts don’t even sound convincing to her.)

Lena comes back to her on a Thursday.

The sun is setting over the city when she hears the knocks on her door.

She hesitates for a few seconds, knowing it isn’t Alex or J’onn or Nia or M’gann or any of the other Superfriends.

She pulls the door open anyway.

The knocks are too familiar for her not to.

“Did you bring Chinese?! Oh my gosh you’re my favorite, Lena!”

“And I brought donuts!” Lena waves the bag in front of Kara’s face.

“Yes! You’re the absolute best!”

Lena smiles, blushes, and then walks in.

“So, what are we watching tonight?”

She’s snapped out of her memories when she hears the knocks again.

She pulls open the door, and she sees Lena, standing there in a coat not unlike the one she was wearing that day in the fortress, wringing her hands and staring at her feet.

She turns around and walks further into her apartment.

She can hear the quiet click of Lena’s heels on the floor as she follows, and then the quiet click of the door latch.

“I’m so sorry, Kara.”

She hears the words she’s been wanting to hear for the past year, and she feels the tears burning behind her closed eyes.

“I have made… a terrible mistake. I was hurt. I was so hurt. And… I thought I could get rid of the hurt. I thought that I knew better, that I could make the world a better place… but I was wrong. That hurt, ehm, took me down a dark, dark path… where I was blind to what I was really doing… to what I’d become. I’m not looking for forgiveness. I know what I said and I know what I’ve done, but I am… I’m so sorry, Kara.”

The tears burn hot trails down her face.

“Lex and Leviathan are using the system I designed. I didn’t know I was helping them, but… but now I want to help stop them. Please, okay? I want to help stop Lex and Leviathan.”

“It’s not your fault. It never was. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

Kara turns around, and she hears the little gasp Lena makes at finally seeing her. She knows she’s probably a mess, but she can’t bring herself to do anything about it right now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I’m sorry I made you feel like I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry I kept playing two different parts around you. I’m so so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry I… I’m sorry I never told you how much I love you,” she’s sobbing now, tears-running sniffling sobbing.

She doesn’t hear anything for a few moments, and the emptiness inside her chest roars bigger, threatening to consume her.

Then, “it’s okay. I understand.”

And then Lena’s arms are around her.

And then she hears it. “I love you, too. I’ve always loved you,” and for the first time in over a year, she finally allows herself to break apart.

She tells Lena everything. They stay up the entire night and tell stories, crying and laughing and coming back together.

Now the sun is rising just above the horizon, and the sky is painted with streaks of pinks and blues and oranges.

Now, with Lena’s head on her shoulder, still fast asleep, she feels whole. Whole in a way she hasn’t felt since the day Krypton exploded in front of her eyes. Whole in a way she hasn’t felt since she lost her parents. Whole in a way that tells her she’s finally found her home, her family.

Chapter Text

Lena walks along the street and shivers, her breath wisping in the cool air.

“You okay, Lee?” she hears from beside her.

“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just kind of cold out today. I should’ve worn more.”

She feels Kara stop and tug her to a stop, too.

“Here, wait. I have an idea. Since we’re just going to the pumpkin farm anyway, I’ll fly us there, yeah? It’s cold and we still a while to go. I promise I’ll fly slow, too, so that it’s not too windy.”

“Are you sure, Kara? I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything.”

“No, no! It’s okay! I want to! You’re cold and I’m naturally warm, so if I fly us there, you can stay warm against me! It makes sense logically!”

Lena considers for a moment. Kara has a point. It is logical, and it really is getting chilly.

She’s just worried that she might slip up and say something that will ruin their friendship.

“Okay then. You should change into your suit, though, right?”

“Yup! Be right back!”

And then Kara ducks into a nearby alleyway. After two seconds, she hears her call for Lena.

“Come on! Let’s go!”

Kara carefully positions Lena in her arms as they fly along slowly.

“You okay?” Kara asks, checking in with Lena as she glides through the currents.

“You couldn’t have asked me while we were still on the ground?!” Lena yelps, holding on tight to Kara’s arms. She unconsciously squeezes her biceps and flushes a brilliant red when the action registers. She immediately ducks her head and presses it against Kara's shoulder.

“Hey, hey, is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Lena’s muffled voice is caught by Kara’s superhearing. “‘M just cold.”

“Okay, yeah, you stay there, then. We’re almost there, okay?”

“Okay.”

Lena can feel Kara’s muscles shifting under her touch, and she can’t bring herself to move her hands. The rest of the flight goes by in a comfortable silence, but Lena feels tortured throughout it. Every time they get hit by a particularly strong current, she grabs tighter, and Kara flexes under her hands, and she has to muffle her squeals and yelps.

She’s pretty sure Kara hears them anyway since her arms tighten around Lena and she shudders when she feels Kara’s muscles press against her harder.

She practically jumps out of Kara’s arms once they reach the pumpkin farm and immediately feels bad when the hero’s face drops just a smidge.

But, before she can come up with anything to say, Kara turns and spots something that makes her perk up.

“Ooh! They have pumpkin spice lattes!!! Can we get some? Oh, oh! And the donuts!”

Lena sighs with exasperated affection and follows along as Kara drags her along, still in her Supergirl suit.

The little coffee shop on the edge of the farm is bustling, and there are pumpkins and black cats and witches pasted to the walls of the shop. It’s messy, small, but also cozy, and Lena follows while Kara skips up to the front.

Everyone is whispering and pointing and recording, but Lena ignores them, and stands just off to the side, ready to hand the cashier her card and pretend to Kara like she was the one who paid.

Kara hands over her card and is immediately distracted by the donuts in the display case, and Lena takes the opportunity to switch the cards while Kara is busy drooling (and practically floating) over the apple cinnamon donuts.

Once the donuts and coffees are ready, two whole boxes and a pumpkin spice latte for Kara while Lena steals one or two donuts and drinks her scalding hot black coffee, they settle in a corner and start eating.

Kara’s halfway through the first box when Lena ruins everything.

Kara’s busy swallowing another donut whole while Lena watches the way the soft light in the small shop catches on her hair and in her eyes when she looks up. And then, suddenly, Lena’s traitor mouth betrays her and she slips.

“I love you so much,” she sighs, and then immediately freezes when she realizes she actually said it out loud.

Kara is holding another donut and it’s halfway to her mouth, but she’s frozen, too.

She slowly places the donut down and wipes her hands and mouth on the napkin. It’s silent for a few moments and Lena’s squirming where she sits, desperately trying to find a way out of this and preparing herself for the inevitable rejection.

Instead, Kara glances around the still-full coffee shop, pulls Lena to her feet, stacks their coffees on top of the donut boxes, and leads her out.

Lena’s just about to ask what exactly Kara is doing when Kara sets everything down on a nearby hay bale and turns back around.

“Kara, I’m—“

She’s cut off when Kara’s lips press against hers.

She freezes for all of two seconds before she’s melting into the kiss, pressing against Kara’s inhuman warmth and sighing into her mouth. Kara tastes like apple cinnamon and pumpkin spice lattes, and for once in her life, Lena wants a pumpkin spice latte.

Lena pulls away first, fighting to catch her breath.

“You… you like me, too?”

“No, silly,” Kara responds, as if it’s a funny joke Lena hasn’t caught onto yet.

Lena feels the smile slip off her face and her mind whir into overdrive.

“Wait, no, no, you didn’t let me finish! I don’t like you, I love you, Lena! I’ve loved you since you stopped those thieves at the gala you invited me to. I love you so much, so much!”

Lena’s smiling again, and it’s softer, but the blush on her cheeks is a lot brighter.

“I love you, too, Kara.”

Lena kisses Kara a second time as the sun is setting and she’s flying them home.

And, if Kara dropped several feet in the air and had to rapidly adjust, well, that’s just between the two of them.

Chapter Text

Lena is on a mission.

It’s getting close to Valentine’s Day, and she has to figure out what Kara’s favorite flowers are without asking her directly.

She’s gone over several options in her head. She could buy an arrangement with plumerias, maybe add some red dahlias, but she’d pretty sure Kara likes plumerias in part because of her. So, once she had crossed those options off, she was left with no options once again.

She’s tried asking Alex and James and Nia and even Clark. Alex had thought for a few moments before frowning, stating she wasn’t really sure. James hadn’t know at all and Nia hadn’t been sure either. Clark had almost flown away, but she had pleaded with him to tell her if he knew. He had simply jotted an address down on a nearby sticky note and flown away.

So now, she’s sitting in her office trying to figure out exactly where the address is and what it leads to, and wondering if Clark is just playing a joke on her.

She finally manages to pull it up on google maps and see it up close, and then it hits her.

She closes the laptop and picks up the phone, ready to make some calls.

Kara comes home to their shared apartment only to find the room filled with bouquets of sunflowers.

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a sunlamp taped to the ceiling, shining down on all of them.

The bright yellow in the room is enough to make Kara let out a muffled sob. The yellow reminds her of the sunflower field she used to go too in Midvale. The field where she landed, where Clark pulled her out of that pod, where she first met the Danvers’ and Alex, where she started her new life.

“Lena?” her voice is croaky, and she clears her throat through her tears.

“Lena?” she calls again.

“Kara? Are you okay?”

Lena is standing right behind her. Kara had passed her when she’d walked into the room.

The concerned tone in Lena’s voice breaks the dam, and the tears start flowing.

Kara has to sit down on the floor, and Lena joins her in a mere instant.

“Do you not like it?” The hesitation in Lena’s voice makes Kara feel guilty for not responding.

“No, no. I love it. I’m just… I have so many memories with sunflowers.”

Lena waits patiently, holding Kara in her arms and giving her time to speak.

“When I first landed on Earth, it was in a field of sunflowers. I remember asking Kal how something could be so yellow—the flowers on Krypton were all dark reds and blues and purples, we didn’t have any yellow flowers—and he told me how they absorbed the color of the sun. I’ve loved sunflowers more than any other flower ever since.”

“Oh, Kara. I’ll buy you sunflowers every day for the rest of your life if that’s what will make you happy.” The affection in Lena’s voice makes the tears come back, welling up in her eyes again.

“Can we… can we plant some?” Kara’s voice sounds small to her own ears, but she doesn’t have the heart to try again.

“Of course,” Lena reassures. And then, “Are you okay now?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

And Kara is okay. Sitting in an apartment, surrounded by flowers that remind her of her first home on Earth, in the arms of the woman she loves, she’s okay. She’s okay now.

Chapter Text

The sun shines down on the yellow-gold beach and glares against the surface of the ocean, making Lena pull her sunglasses down over her eyes. Waves crash against the edge of the beach, frothing and foaming as they retreat back. Seagulls wheel in the sky and dive down for the occasional dropped chip or cracker.

Amidst it all is Kara. Kara with her shining, golden hair, brighter even than the sun itself, and her sparkling blue eyes that put the ocean behind her to shame. She’s smiling at Lena, all teeth and happiness, laughter shining in her eyes.

“Look, Lena! I found a crab!”

Sitting in Kara’s outstretched palms is indeed a crab. Lena sees it try to pinch Kara’s fingers but then immediately retract the claw. She chuckles a little. Kara being Supergirl meant that if someone punched her, they would feel it more than she did. It seemed that the crab had learned its lesson, but before it can jump out of Kara’s hands and scuttle away, Kara picks it up.

“Isn’t it cute?” Kara peers up at Lena with those now much-brighter-blue eyes and Lena melts.

She wouldn’t particularly call the crab cute with its sharp edges and pincers and beady little eyes, but with Kara looking at her like that, she can’t help but agree—as if she could ever disagree with Kara.

“Yeah. It’s so cute,” Lena responds. She can already feel her brain turning to mush with how intensely Kara is looking at her.

“Are you okay? Your heart rate just spiked.”

Before Lena can think of an excuse, Kara reaches out with her free hand to touch Lena’s forehead.

She feels the touch like an electric shock, jolting through her entire body. The gasp she lets out is barely there, but Kara hears it anyway, and Lena silently curses her superhearing.

“You’re so hot!”

Lena flushes even more as her brain decides to process the words differently.

She brushes it off, trying her best to reassure Kara.

“I’m okay. It must be the sun.”

“Well! Then we should go in the ocean!”

Lena immediately recoils at the thought.

“No, no. Absolutely not.”

“Pleeeease?” And now Kara is staring at her and pouting with her big puppy dog eyes, still holding the crab in one hand.

Lena sighs. She’s already lost; she could never resists Kara’s puppy-dog eyes, but that doesn’t mean she won’t set some conditions.

“Fine.” Kara cheers, but Lena cuts her off. “But! You have to stay with me. Otherwise, I’ll be too cold,” she reasons, but it seems like it’s unnecessary since Kara is nodding eagerly as soon as she finishes her first sentence.

“Yeah! Of course! I’ll stay with you! Promise!”

They stumble towards the waves, laughing and giggling. The sand under Lena’s feet is warm and soft—like Kara her brain supples unhelpfully.

They get to the edge of the beach and suddenly Lena is regretting her decision to get in the water. It looks deep. So deep and dark and cold and—

“Ma? Where are you? Ma come back up! Ma?!”

The water is still and silent, and Lena sits there, waiting for her mother to come back. She sits there for hours, watching and waiting, and it isn’t until their neighbor comes to check on them that anyone figures out her mother is dead—

“Lena? Hey, Lena? We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.” Kara’s concerned voice cuts through her memories, and Lena realizes she’s crying when she tastes salt.

“I’m... yeah, okay.”

She lets Kara take her back up to the shade of the umbrella, let’s Kara sit her back down, lets Kara start humming a song, presumably from Krypton, as she rubs her back and holds her in her arms. Kara doesn’t mention her tears.

It’s later when Lena finally stirs, having dozed off.

“Thank you.” Her voice is scratchy and hoarse after a few hours of not being used. She clears her throat to try again but her voice comes out just as quietly.

“Thank you, Kara.”

“I’ll always be here for you, Lena,” Kara responds. No you’re welcome or it’s okay, just a silent promise to always believe in Lena and stand by her side.

It’s so easy to love Kara, she thinks, and muses about how ironic it is. A Luthor falling for a Super, forbidden love that will never happen.

She feels Kara tense above her.

“Are you okay, Kara?”

“You love me?”

It’s Lena’s turn to freeze.

“...what?”

“You just said... you just said that you love me,” Kara observes, her voice stiff and tense.

“Did I?” Lena feels faint. Kara hadn’t pushed her away after they’d finally defeated Lex, but maybe this is it. Maybe this is the day that Kara cuts ties with her, tells her she doesn’t feel that way, that Lena is delusional and disgusting and—

“...too,” Kara’s voice breaks through her fantasy (it’s more of a nightmare).

“What was that?”

“I love you, too.”

Lena stares at Kara, taken aback.

“You do?”

“Yes. Ever since the gala you invited me to. I never thought... I never thought you would feel the same way.” Kara’s confession is halted, strewn with pauses and breaks, but it’s oh-so-soft and warm, and Lena thinks the world could end and she would be happy that this was the last place she’d been, with Kara, on the beach as the sun sets over the horizon, listening to Kara confess her love for her.

It’s Lena’s turn now, and she could go on for days about what it was like to first meet Kara, but she’ll tell her the details later.

“I fell in love with you the moment we met, but I don’t think I realized it until later.”

“It’s been 5 years. I can’t believe it. We wasted so much time.”

“Then let’s not waste anymore.”

Lena sees Kara open her mouth, probably to ask what she means, but she cuts her off and swallows the beginning of Kara’s question.

It’s everything she thought it would be and more.

It’s so much more, and Lena feels tears coming up, building and burning behind her closed eyelids.

She pulls away first panting. Kara’s hand has found its way into her hair somehow, and the light scratching she’s doing on her scalp is doing wonders for Lena’s nervous system.

“I can’t believe it took us this long,” Kara observes after a few moments, cheeks flushed bright red.

“Well, we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. And I’m hoping we’ll spend it together.”

Kara smiles into her mouth.

…

“Also, did you just accidentally propose?”

“Well, that depends on whether or not you would say yes.”

“Oh, absolutely, but it’s way too soon. I want to at least have a few dates and then we can get engaged and spend a lot of time together and then get married.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

…

“I forgot to mention, but you have sand in your hair.”

Kara guffaws when she sees Lena trying to card her fingers through her hair desperately and laughs even harder when Lena swats at her arm.

Chapter Text

Lena doesn’t understand what the Luthor name means at first.

All she knows is that Lex, her big brother, makes her proud to be one.

Lex goes mad and the Luthor name loses its reputation.

Superman gets him imprisoned and Lena hates him, even though she knows Lex wasn’t in the right either.

Being a Luthor gets a lot more difficult after that.

She wishes she was never a Luthor.

That is, until Kara makes her way into her life.

Kara, who defends her and acts like her name doesn’t mean anything. Kara who gives her a chance, who becomes her friend, who stays with her no matter what.

Supergirl saves her life only a week later.

Lena feels a pull, not unlike the one she felt towards Kara, but she ignores it. Supergirl is, after all, Superman’s cousin. It won’t be long until she has Lena imprisoned, too.

Lena is fighting Mercy alone, throwing words and jabs at her as she fires the gauntlet.

Then, suddenly, Supergirl bursts through the door in all her glory and pins Mercy, forcing her to surrender.

Lena hears Mercy insult her again, something about how she doesn’t deserve to be a Luthor.

She sighs a little. She’s heard the same thing hundreds of times from Lillian and Lex. It’s nothing she hasn’t dealt with before.

But, for some reason, Supergirl defends her.

“You got that backwards. The Luthor name doesn’t deserve Lena.”

Lena spends the rest of the day trying to figure out what she meant by it.

Kara invites her to game night.

Lena feels Alex Danvers, Kara’s sister, glare holes into her for a few minutes.

And then she sees Kara drag Alex away. By the time they return, Alex doesn’t even look at Lena.

Slowly, bit by bit, Kara makes her feel proud to be a Luthor again. Kara tells her about how she’ll never be like Lex, how she was always better than him and Lillian, how she was always the smartest one.

Kara makes her feel good. Kara makes her feel like being a Luthor doesn’t mean she’s a villain. Kara makes her proud to be a Luthor, proud in a way Lex never had, even before he went mad.

Lena has never felt more like a Luthor in her life.

Kara lied. She lied about everything.

She remembers something Lex once told her.

“You know what makes you a Luthor? Betrayal. And if you’re a Luthor, you get revenge.”

Lena knows now why Lex had attacked Superman, why he’d turned on his best friend.

She can’t help but think about how ironic it is. A Super and a Luthor, best friends until not.

She starts planning.

“Please, Lena. You are so much more than your name, you have to believe me!”

Kara’s pleading voice comes from behind her, on her office balcony.

“Believe you? You’re a liar. I could never do that.”

She breathes in, 1, 2, 3, out, 1, 2, 3, and then she lowers the newly-installed shutters.

Alex comes in the next day, storming past her assistant and through the double doors.

“You hurt her,” she hisses, pointing her finger at Lena accusatorially.

“She hurt me first,” Lena responds, her voice cold and calm.

“She believed in you even when none of us would. We all just passed you off as the next Lex Luthor. But Kara... she wouldn’t have it. She convinced us all to trust you,” Alex continues, as if Lena hadn’t spoken at all.

“Well then she was wrong... and a liar.”

Alex levels the full force of her sisterly glare on Lena and Lena almost breaks.

“Maybe I was wrong to believe her. Maybe you are just a Luthor. All you do is push people away. You’ve made a big mistake this time, though. Kara believes in you, even when you never did.”

With that, Alex spins on her heel and marches away, leaving Lena to stew in her words.

Lena can’t help but hear the echo of Kara Danvers believes in you.

Kara makes Lena proud to be a Luthor.

After talking, working, healing together, they’d finally come to a good place.

After a while, Kara had confessed her feelings. They had talked some more about it.

Now, as Lena stands across from Kara, slipping a ring onto her finger and a bracelet onto her wrist, she’s never felt more proud to be a Luthor.

“Under Rao it is done.”

Chapter Text

Kara finds it ironic in a twisted way how Krypton, a planet of ice, fell in fire.

She remembers the first time she stepped out onto the land of Earth. It was warm, too warm, and she had almost overheated the first few days on Earth.

Whenever it got to be too much, Kal would take her to the fortress and the cool temperatures there would have an immediate effect.

The first time she’d been to the fortress, she had stared in awe at the towering pillars, the ice statues, and blocks that sprouted out of the ground here and there, like newly planted sprouts.

The blue had been overwhelmingly similar to the blue of Krypton and Kara had never felt more at home.

Every time she visited the fortress after, she’d greeted the icy coolness with open arms, reminded of Krypton, her family, home.

She’d never thought the fortress could be cold, though.

But, now, as Lena stands in front of her, she feels a shiver run down her spine. It’s never felt colder, and the words she’s trying to say are clawing up her throat, rendering her voice completely useless.

“I’m not a villain. You shouldn’t have treated me like one.”

The words sound muffled to her, almost like Lena’s underwater (or maybe it’s Kara now). Then, she’s gone, and Kara is left to deal with the chill alone.

The tears gathering in her eyes are blurring her vision, but she can still see the green. The green running through her veins, pulsing as her heart pumps blood to ever corner of her body, making her want to double over and empty her guts on the icy floor.

The chill is the most prominent feeling, though, and it staves off the nausea. Kara’s teeth are chattering, and she knows she’ll get pneumonia if the kryptonite doesn’t get out of her system anytime soon.

But, she also knows that the kryptonite isn’t the only cause of the cold she’s feeling. She’s not that in denial. Somewhere inside her chest, she can feel pieces of her heart clinking and cracking as they fall and fall and fall, clattering on the ice in a little pile.

But, she can’t bend over. The ice cage around her is restrictive, forcing her to stand.

The kryptonite is making her woozy, and soon the chill is replaced with a fuzzy feeling. Trying to talk makes her feel like she’s eating cotton, so she stays quiet. The silence is overbearing, louder than anything she’s ever heard before, even the screams of her friends and family as her planet exploded.

For a moment, she thinks about how disappointing it is that she had to destroy Kelex and wishes he were here now, but the thought is quickly overshadowed by the exhaustion she feels.

The fuzzy feeling is ebbing, and the unconscious world is threatening to take her.

She remembers Alex telling her that if she ever got hurt, she shouldn’t fall asleep.

But, then again, she’s not hurt. Not technically; she’s not bleeding and she doesn’t have any broken bones. With that cleared, she slumps against the ice, yawning and blinking tiredly. The world blurs a little more.

The numbness of the cold finally fades, and she slips into unconsciousness before the searing pain of the kryptonite can set in.

The fortress stays silent.

Chapter Text

Kara pushes harder, stretching her fists out as far as they’ll go, trying, trying, trying to go faster, to move because she can’t risk not making it in time. She can’t, she can’t—

The wind shrieks around her, trying to jostle and throw her off course. It pulls until there are tears streaking down her face, but she can’t slow down, so she squints and tries her best to ignore it.

The currents buffet her as best as they can, but nothing can stop a stubborn Kryptonian, and Kara has never been more stubborn than she is now.

The winds are almost loud enough to block out the screams, but just almost. The sounds still leak through and she stretches and stretches, trying to fly faster, trying to save everyone. The screams echo and she shuts her eyes for a moment, shaking her head to clear her mind.

It’s the wrong move.

Closing her eyes causes her to lose track of her position, and the slight shake is enough for the wind to push her off course, pulling her out of the current she’s following and twisting her away.

She scrabbles at nothing, her arms and legs reaching out, trying to regain her balance, to get back in the current, but she doesn’t succeed until she’s well out of range of the current. A desperate cry wrenches out of her throat as she tries to get back in, fighting against the winds. The adrenaline pushes her, staving off the inevitable soreness she’ll have in her arms and legs as she stretches out, trying her best to go as fast as she can. The sound barrier booms again as she makes her way back into the current, biting her lip as she scolds herself to getting knocked off-track.

She sees the States come into her line of vision and she feels herself let out a stream of air, sighing in relief. But, she can’t relax, not yet. She still has to make it to National City.

She starts to dive and her x-ray vision flares up, allowing her to locate exactly where to go, exactly who’s in danger.

There are several buildings on fire and the alien responsible is leaping onto another, but she ignores it. She ignores it because there’s someone she has to save, someone she can’t live without.

She finally gets to the right building and sees her. It’s Lex again. He set the alien on the city, an obvious play at “you choose which one to save”. She hears screams, but they’re muffled by the rush of blood pounding in her ears. Her heat vision flares up next, burning her eyes white-hot until she lets it go straight at the thugs holding her hostage.

She sees Lex frown, looking around for the source of the disruption as if he hadn’t expected Kara to come here first, as if he’d thought Kara would choose the city.

She bursts down through the roof, watching as Lex realizes it really is her.

She keeps the eye contact for all of a millisecond before she’s looking over at his side, at the woman she’d come to save.

Lena.

Lena is collapsed on the ground, passed out. Even though her hair is ruffled and her cheeks are stained with tears, Kara knows she’s never seen anything more beautiful.

She takes another moment to look over Lena. Lena, her best friend, the woman she loves above all else, the person who means the most to her.

Then, she turns her head to the right, glaring straight at Lex.

He doesn’t even get a chance to raise his kryptonite gun before she’s punching him in the face. He passes out cold, nose bleeding and probably broken.

Kara strides forward, ignores Lex’s unconscious body, and picks Lena up in her arms, holding her gently.

She gets to the balcony once she’s finished calling Alex about Lex over her comms and takes off, flying to the DEO.

Lena stirs mid-flight, opening her eyes carefully and smiling wearily when she sees it’s Kara who’s holding her.

“How did you get here so fast?”

Before Kara can answer, though, Lena passes out again, her head lolling to the side and steadying against Kara’s upper arm.

She answers the question anyway.

“I’d travel around the world for you, Lena.”

Chapter Text

“Kara? Are you in there?”

Kara hears Lena’s voice filter through the door, a set of knocks following shortly after.

“Yep! I’m just getting dressed! You can come in if you want!” she shouts, fiddling with the zipper on her dress.

She hears the quiet click of Lena’s heels on the hardwood floor and continues fiddling with the zipper, loosening it a bit more before she lifts it off her head.

She hears Lena settling in the living room, the barely-there sigh as she sinks into Kara’s couch cushions.

Kara barely has any time to smile about the small victory in getting Lena to be comfortable before disaster strikes.

Her zipper, the blasted thing, gets stuck on her hair, and every pull causes it to wrench harder, the pressure annoying and unbearable. It doesn’t hurt, not exactly, but it isn’t a pleasant experience either.

She sighs, swallowing the lump in her throat, and calls out.

“Um, Lena? I’m stuck.”

Her superhearing picks up on the tiny chuckle Lena gives as she stands.

“I’ll be right there!”

Lena is not in fact right there. She takes her sweet time, rummaging around Kara’s apartment for something before she finally heads over to the bathroom.

“You said you’d be right here!” Kara cries indignantly, trying her hardest not to pout.

“I had to find a bobby pin, get you unstuck. I also brought some scissors if that doesn’t work.” Lena brandishes them and Kara squawks batting her away.

“Get those away from me!” she cries out again, before quieting as Lena sets the scissors down.

“Relax, I was just joking. I’ll have you unstuck in a jiffy.”

Lena is right, too, unlike her previous claim about being right there.

Kara gets unstuck and she practically rips the dress off, breathing in the fresh air.

It’s only when she hears a steadily accelerating thump in her ears that she remembers Lena is still in the room.

“Oh, nuts, I’m—“

“I’ll just—“

In their haste to get away from each other, Kara trips and falls, her arms pinwheeling as she desperately looks for a handhold, and then she crashes into Lena, whose hand is still reaching for the doorknob, and effectively pins her in place.

By the time Kara recovers from her almost-fall, she’s much too close to Lena, and her eyes are drawn immediately to Lena’s lips. Both their chests are still heaving up and down, panting from the adrenaline of the disaster that had them ending up here in the first place.

Lena’s bright green eyes flash open, and Kara gets to watch real-time as they dart between her eyes and her lips and the slow dilation of her pupils that occurs in the process.

“Um, I’m sorr—“

Kara is cut off by the feeling of Lena’s lips on hers.

She squeaks into Lena’s mouth, startled, before she relaxes into the kiss.

They break apart a few moments later, their shared breaths mingling in the space between them.

And then Lena yelps in pain and the moment is broken.

“Ehm, could you—“

Kara realizes too late that she’s still pinning Lena against the door and her hand is twisted in a decidedly not-normal position, and she almost gets lightheaded with how fast she jumps up.

“Sorry, sorry!” Her voice is high enough to call the neighborhood dogs to her doorstep and she stumbles back, away from Lena.

And then it takes her another moment to realize that she’s still half-naked and she flushes even brighter, her apologies rising to previously-unreachable pitches. She has a momentary thought that maybe Lena can’t even hear her, but it’s crushed when Lena shakes her head carefully.

“It’s okay, Kara, just—“

“No, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, what was I thinking?!”

“Kara—“

“I didn’t even ask and I just… I just went ahead and—“

“Kara!”

That catches Kara’s attention, ending her rambling.

“Yes?” Her voice is awkward, hesitant, and she braces for the rejection.

“I was the one who kissed you, Kara.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They both stand there for another few moments, unsure of what to do, but then Lena turns on her heel and walks out of the bathroom, calling over her shoulder at Kara to hurry and get dressed.

Kara feels her heart drop into her stomach at the blatant rejection, but she dresses anyway.

She walks out of the bathroom, head bowed, unwilling to meet Lena’s eyes.

But then Lena darts in for another kiss and Kara’s entire demeanor melts away and she kisses back fiercely, because what if this is the last one—

“…one?”

Kara is too busy panicking to realize Lena has even asked her a question.

“What?”

“I asked if you’d like to be my plus one to the gala?”

“Aren’t I already? Isn’t that what the dress was for? Oh no, did I hear wrong?”

Before Kara can start panicking, though, Lena shushes her, a single finger placed against her lips to stop her.

“No, no. I mean. Would you like to be my date to the gala?”

Kara takes a few moments to process the implication of the words.

“Me? You want me to go with you on a date?” Kara points at her chest, thumping her finger against it as if she still can’t believe it.

“Yes, you, Kara.” Lena chuckles.

“Yes! Yes yes, I’ll totally go with you!”

“Let’s go then!”

Kara is ready to go, skipping happily across her apartment, feeling like she can fly, when she remembers that Lena still doesn’t know.

She immediately stops in place, sinking to the ground.

“Um, Lena?”

“Yes, Kara?”

“I’m… I’m Supergirl.”

Lena stares at her for a moment, mouth open and expression unreadable. Before Kara can begin to apologize, though, Lena bursts out into laughter.

“Kara, darling, you’re not even wearing your glasses. They came off with the dress.”

Lena doubles over, clutching her stomach when Kara reaches up to paw at her face and pokes herself in the eye.

“Oh my god, Alex is never gonna let me live this one down.”

Chapter Text

Kara is having an amazing day.

She woke up this morning and found a four-leaf clover in the park.

She tucked it into her bag, careful not to squish it as she skips to work.

Kal comes over to CatCo, ready to interview Lena Luthor. She offers to tag along, scan the room with him.

He agrees and she feels even better. The luck must be setting in.

They walk up to Lena Luthor’s office and Kara is still skipping, the buzz of being allowed to go report with Kal of all people still not having settled.

Then the world turns upside down and Kara feels like a little kid again.

Because Lena Luthor turns around and pins her in place with a stare and Kara feels her gaze, feels her own body react, flushing brightly.

Lena turns her gaze to Kal and Kara has to wonder how he hasn’t melted already with how intense her stare is.

She can’t take her eyes off Lena to check, though, and the sharp angle of her profile is enough to make Kara need to sit down.

She subtly glances around the room before realizing it would probably be kind of rude to sit without being invited to sit.

She manages to regain enough of her wits to scan the room when Lena turns around.

“You understand, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

It slips out, but it also means that Lena is now staring at her again, her eyes boring into and through Kara’s soul.

Kara leaves her office in a daze.

She carefully checks on the four-leaf clover. It’s still perfectly intact.

Her smile is wide enough to light up the next few blocks.

She wonders if this is what a lucky charm does.

If it is, she’ll go looking around the world for another one if it means meeting Lena again.

Chapter Text

Lena wrings her hands and breathes in and out, just like Kara had always taught her, trying her best to calm her racing pulse.

Kara bounds up from the other side of the car and smiles her hundred-watt smile and Lena can feel the nerves easing again

“Come on, Eliza’s probably waiting!”

Lena smiles weakly, but her nerves jump up again at the mention of Eliza.

She watches it happen in slow motion. Kara walks up to the door and knocks on it, Lena following along unconsciously.

The door pops open and Lena gets ready to be yelled at and berated and—

Eliza pulls the door open and welcomes her with a hug.

“Hi, Lena. It’s nice to meet you properly!”

Lena has to shake off her shock to properly hug back. She marvels at the resemblance between Eliza’s hugs and Kara’s hugs and realizes Eliza’s make her feel just as safe as Kara’s do.

“Hello Mrs. Danvers,” she greets, inwardly wincing at how formal her greeting is.

“Oh, hush, just call me Eliza.”

Eliza smiles at her again before turning towards Kara.

“You’re back!”

Lena watches as they embrace, and she feels like maybe she’s getting the family she never had a chance to have.

They’re all eating dinner and Eliza is talking with Lena about some of the experiments she’s been working on.

Lena is still engaged in conversation, listening intently to Eliza’s suggestions, when she becomes aware of Kara’s warm gaze on her. Just the feeling is enough to light up her insides and she relaxes a little bit more, leaning forward as she continues listening.

By the time they finish eating, the sun is already sending streaks of orange into the sky.

As she watches Eliza and Kara work in tandem to wash the dishes—they had been adamant about not having her do them—her eyes drift to some trinkets lining the living room.

She sees framed pictures clumped together on the mantelpiece, as if whoever had placed them there hadn’t known which ones to choose. When she looks closer, she sees pictures of a young Kara and Alex. In one, Alex is sticking her tongue out at what she presumes is Kara—it’s really more of a blur than anything—and the one below it, in the same frame, is of Alex getting tackled to the ground.

She sees pictures upon pictures of Alex and Kara and sometimes Eliza and Jeremiah are in them, too, but all of them give off a strong feeling of family and she can feel herself tearing up, relieved that Kara had such a wonderful childhood and reminded of her own, less-pleasant one.

A hand on her shoulder makes her spin around, only to relax when she realizes it’s Eliza.

She doesn’t even bother to wipe the glisten from her eyes, and listens carefully when Eliza goes to hug her and whisper in her ear.

“We’re your family now, too, okay?”

She closes her eyes and the tears clump and fall.

“Thank you, Eliza.” Her voice is hoarse, but she doesn’t bother clearing her throat either.

“Of course. Now, before Kara looks over here and wonders why you’re crying, why don’t we go get some ice cream from the freezer?”

Lena chuckles, wipes away the tears, and by the time they come back from getting the ice cream, Kara is already sitting on the couch, scrolling through the movie options.

She watches as Eliza and Kara smile at each other only for Kara to turn to her, too.

She smiles back.

Settled in between Eliza and Kara, eating ice cream, laughing at jokes, and watching a movie, she knows she’s finally found a family who will have her.

Chapter Text

“What are you making?”

Kara peers over Lena’s shoulder into the boiling pot, trying to see what she’s putting in.

“No peeking,” Lena scolds, swatting at Kara with the spatula.

Kara pouts, but retreats, jumping up onto the apartment counter—their apartment counter—and shining her legs back and forth as she waits.

“I’m making special pasta today,” Lena announces after a beat of silence.

Kara stomach grumbles and Lena chuckles.

“Sounds like someone’s excited for a taste.”

Kara pouts, but her mouth waters anyway. Lena’s always been good at cooking, and her pasta is always the best because she kneads it herself.

She watches as Lena plops some meatballs in the adjacent pan and begins cooking them slowly, adding a little vinegar so as to not burn them.

Soon, the kitchen is filled with the smells of sizzling meat and Kara has to force herself to stay in place and not just go over and steal the meatballs out of the pan.

Lena continues moving about the kitchen, grabbing spices and plates and utensils as she seasons the meatballs and makes sure the noodles are cooking properly.

“Since you’re just waiting right now, why don’t you go set up the table?” Lena suggests, waving at the utensils and plates she’s already set aside.

Kara jumps off the counter with a whoosh, and she carefully picks up the plates.

She moves slowly, since she doesn’t have anything else to do, and time away from the kitchen means she’ll be less tempted to eat the meatballs.

She places the plates down carefully, smiling when she notices the particular chipped one.

It had been just another day…

Kara walks around her apartment, yawning as she searches for the coffee.

Suddenly, Lena bursts in, wide-eyed and panicked. She’s dressed to nines, and Kara suspects it’s for an important meeting.

“Oh, thank god you’re here! I think I may have left one of my ledgers here the other day and I need it for the meeting!”

Kara is still trying to shake off the shock of Lena bursting in unannounced, but quickly shakes it off in favor of beginning her search.

“One second, let me see if I can find it anywhere.”

She walks back into her bedroom and lowers her glasses, scanning around the whole apartment. She notices the piece of paper sticking out from under one of the couch cushions and walks back out into the living room, pretending like she doesn’t know where it is.

She strolls over to the couch, peering under it before lifting the cushions one-by-one and announcing her find.

She’s never seen Lena more relieved than she is now, and Lena tackles her into a hug, and one of Kara’s spare plates falls and chips against the corner of the counter. She catches it just in time, and Lena doesn’t seem to notice as she carefully slides it behind her.

“Thank you so much, Kara! I really needed this, thank you, thank you!!!”

Kara stares, open-mouthed, as Lena rushes out the door, and the apartment falls silent once again.

She reaches her hand up to make sure it’s her pulse that’s racing.

She ignores the sudden realization that she might just like Lena more than a friend and goes back to searching for her coffee.

Her heart is still racing by the time she finds it.

That had been the first time Kara had truly recognized the extent of her feelings for Lena, and the plate is a reminder of it every day.

Lena still doesn’t know the story behind why Kara is so attached to it, and Kara hasn’t found the right time to tell her yet, but Valentine’s Day is coming up, and Kara already has a few ideas.

She’s cut out of her reverie when Lena calls her again.

“Is everything okay, darling?”

“Yeah!” she calls back, quickly rushing back to gather the rest of the utensils.

“Sorry, I just got a little bit distracted.”

Lena smiles at her, and Kara notices how under the light, Lena’s eyes look like they’re flecked with chips of gold.

“It’s okay, I was just finishing up here anyway, so your timing’s perfect.”

Kara follows as Lena brings the pot and pan over to the table, carefully laying the pasta out and spreading the sauce and the meatballs over the top. Kara gets the lion’s share of the food, but it’s an everyday thing for them now, and neither of them point it out.

Kara knows she can’t be trusted alone with the meatballs and noodles, so she follows Lena back into the kitchen, waiting for her to finish cleaning up and helping here and there when she can, and heading back to the table with her.

Kara settles down to eat and practically inhales half her plate within a few minutes. She looks back up halfway through only to see a mischievous glint in Lena’s eyes, one that spells out trouble.

She eyes her pasta suspiciously and swallows the mouthful before addressing Lena.

“What did you do?”

Lena only smiles and digs into her own pasta.

Kara doesn’t let it slide, though, and asks again.

“Lena, what did you do to the pasta?”

Lena wipes her mouth carefully, a now-smug smirk plastered on her face.

“I didn’t do anything to the pasta,” she responds.

“Lena…?”

“The sauce and the meatballs might have a little bit of kale in them.”

The shriek of horror Kara lets out is almost loud enough to drown out Lena’s laughter.

Chapter Text

It’s raining.

Kara is soaked through. Her suit is almost black with how much water it holds and she almost feels the chill—almost.

A part of her kind of wishes she could feel it, because maybe the chill would be enough to take her mind off of… off of what’s happened. Maybe the cold would be enough to numb the pain.

She imagines the cold seeping into her, sinking through her skin and flesh and into her bones. She tries to imagine what it would feel like. It’s not enough to take her mind off of things.

She closes her eyes, squeezes them together, tilts her head up to the heavens. It’s gray, cloudy enough that no one will see her—she doubts anyone is even looking up at the sky.

When she opens her eyes again, some of the water on her cheeks is warm.

She stays up in the clouds for the rest of the day, lets herself cry until the rain stops.

It rains through the night.

Alex calls her over the comms the next evening, asking where she’s been.

Kara gives a vague answer she knows Alex will be able to see through. To her surprise, Alex doesn’t say anything about it, simply asks her to come down to the DEO because some alien or other is rampaging downtown.

She heats up her vision, closes her eyes, lets the heat disperse through her. When she opens her eyes, there’s steam rising around her.

She almost smiles at this tiny success, almost.

She flies off with a boom louder than the thunder echoing behind her.

The first flash of lightning streaks across the sky as she races towards the DEO.

The lightning is still flashing as she trades blows with the alien, putting every ounce of her anger, her sadness, her frustration into every single punch, every single kick.

The alien matches her strength, catching her blows and throwing back punches of their own.

The color of the alien, a dark maroon color, reminds her of that day.

Lena is standing in her dark maroon coat, and the look in her eyes is even darker.

Kara has a moment to think about how beautiful the contrast is with the color of the ice around them before Lena opens her mouth and tears her world apart.

Steam rises around the stream of heat vision she lets out.

The alien screeches when her heat vision hits them, and Kara flies it back to the DEO herself, leaving it to the Beta team to lock them up.

The lightning has stopped by the time she gets back in the air.

With a start, she realizes she could’ve lost, almost lost. If she had been unfocused for a moment more, if the heat vision had been just a smidge weaker, she’d be under sunlamps and the alien would still be roaming the streets.

She wishes she could forget everything.

The rain pelts against her.

Kara stares sullenly at the milkshake in front of her.

The milkshake is melting, condensation gathering and dripping down the side of the glass as she stares at nothing in particular.

The diner is small, dim, and no one is going to recognize her, even if she’s still dressed in her Supersuit.

She had paid the waiter extra money to keep his mouth shut, to get her a darker seat where no one would be able to see her.

The light above her table flickers and her eyes flick up, eyeing the lamp suspiciously.

When the light dims back down, she looks back down, too, stirring her straw idly around.

She thinks of a diner she’d once visited with Lena, tucked into a corner, sitting on the same side of the booth as they drank from milkshakes and shared laughs.

She flicks the straw away, pushes the drink even farther, and leaves out the back door, leaving a hefty tip on the table.

It’s still raining when she walks outside.

She sticks a hand out, watches the droplets collect on her palm, sees tears and blood instead, and retracts her hand, shaking her head quickly as if she can rid herself of the memories, of the pain she’s caused.

She wipes it against her suit, as if it will make a difference.

She spends the night flying around the city, ignoring the one building she wants to be in, the faint glow that leaks past the lead shutters, looking for something, anything to keep her busy, someone to help, anyone.

She almost looks over her shoulder at the building when she hears heels clicking against the floor, almost.

Instead, she lands on the roof of CatCo and surveys the cityscape, as if the bustling of the people will be able to drown out the heavy sigh, the clicking of heels on concrete, the muttering in that familiar tenor.

The rain has lifted a little bit, but everywhere she looks, the people on the street are blocked by the umbrellas they hold.

She doesn’t dare use her x-ray vision to search for dark hair and green eyes.

The rain has lightened to a drizzle, light pinks and oranges peeking through the cloudy gray covering the sky when she wakes up.

The concrete is hard against her legs, and she almost pitches forward off of the building when she wakes up, her head tilting forward enough that she’s no longer curled into herself.

She shakes herself out, winces at the splash she hears when she shakes her cape out, pretends like the puddles that are forming at her feet aren’t there, pretends like she can’t feel the water sloshing in her boots.

She knows she probably looks more like a drowned rat than Supergirl, but she can’t bring it in herself to care.

She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, Kara Danvers is fired and she doubts Kara Danvers will ever exist again.

After all, Kara Danvers doesn’t have a job, doesn’t have a friend, doesn’t have anything.

Kara ignores how strange the word “friend” feels.

The rain comes back full-force that evening when she meets Lena and Andrea at a bar.

She takes in Lena’s cold glare, Andrea’s delighted surprise at seeing Kara Danvers at a bar, and it’s only when she hears the cracking of glass that she looks down at her hand.

She flies off into the storm, ignoring the genuine laughs coming from inside the bar, because Lena isn’t her friend anymore, because Lena is probably dating Andrea, because Lena isn’t… Lena isn’t… Lena isn’t.

That’s it. Lena just isn’t anymore. She isn’t part of Kara’s life, isn’t part of Kara’s friend circle, isn’t part of anything Kara is in.

The realization hits her harder than she expects.

The rain comes down faster. The sky is black.

Kara pretends like she can’t feel the tears burning trails down her cheeks.

The storm goes on through the night and Kara spends it looking for every possible accident she can find, even going as far to travel to Gotham, hoping Kate might need help with something, anything.

The trip to Gotham has her passing by L-Corp without her realizing and she almost stops, almost turns and looks, almost, almost, almost.

Instead, she shuts her eyes and flies faster, pretends like she can’t hear Lena’s voice from inside the office, pretends like she can’t hear Lena talking to Andrea on the phone, laughing like she used to with Kara.

Gotham is a brief reprieve from the nonstop rain in National City, and Kara curls up next to the fireplace in Kate’s house, pretends like her heart isn’t breaking, like her suit isn’t soaking through the couch.

Kate makes her a mug of hot chocolate.

It’s warm, but not enough—nothing is warm enough to melt the numb of the cold now.

It’s still raining when she comes back to National City.

The clouds are almost permanently gray, she thinks.

Kara doesn’t remember what color the sky is supposed to look like, doesn’t remember the pretty white of the clouds on a sunny day, doesn’t remember anything except the dark clouds and dark sky and the rain.

These days, she doesn’t even go back to her apartment. She ignores Alex’s calls, only comes in emergencies, when Alex uses the watch, thinks of how Lena still has hers, flies through the rain because it doesn’t count if her face is already wet, if she’s already soaked to the bone.

She sees Lena having lunch with Andrea, her cheeks flushed and her eyes squinted as she laughs.

It doesn’t count.

She flies past the lead shutters again, notices how they’re reinforced this time.

It doesn’t count.

A week later, the balcony is gone, too.

It doesn’t count.

She doesn’t think she remembers a time when the sky wasn’t black and when there wasn’t water everywhere she went.

The rain comes down in buckets.

It stops raining one day.

It stops raining one day when Kara fights an alien.

It stops raining one day when Kara fights an alien and loses.

Kara wakes up under the sunlamps. Alex is crying into her palms, Kelly at her side. J’onn is patting Alex’s back, visibly distressed as well. Winn and James are standing off to the side, Nia and Brainy next to them as Nia sobs in Brainy’s arms.

“Um, guys?”

Everyone’s head snaps up, staring at her with mixed expressions of shock, disbelief, and fear.

Suddenly, she hears a gasp off to her left, closer to her head. She turns, craning her neck to get a better look, trying and failing not to hope, praying to Rao that maybe, maybe her ears still recognize the right people.

The familiar tenor comes through again.

“Kara?”

Kara stares into deep green eyes, glistening with tears, and she feels the tears building up.

She makes a new rule: it doesn’t count if no one acknowledges it.

She cries in Lena’s arms, great, heaving sobs that soak Lena’s shoulder, that wrack her entire body.

She realizes it isn’t raining anymore.

Bonus Ending (you can do without it but I thought that this could have happened):

She pulls back when she realizes her suit is probably still wet, apologizing the whole while.

“I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, my suit is probably still wet.”

Lena looks at her with the strangest expression.

“Darling, your suit is fine.”

Kara melts at the term of endearment, but still checks over herself.

To her surprise, her suit is completely dry. Her boots, her cape, her hair.

“Maybe it came out under the sunlamps,” she mutters to herself, checking for any sign of water.

“What came out under the sunlamps?” Lena asks carefully.

“The water? It was raining all week.”

Her casual observation gets her weird looks from everyone.

Alex looks at her, her expression one of concern.

“It wasn’t raining, Kara.”

Chapter Text

Lena cries one day.

She cries one day and she doesn’t even see it coming… because she cries because of Kara.

It’s just another day and Lena gets up and goes to L-Corp to start it off with a meeting.

The investors won’t get off her back about this and that and the new committee members and the decisions she’s been making and the projects she’s been doing and how she’ll never be a good CEO.

She leaves the meeting with a headache and takes some Advil, hoping it’ll ease it enough for the next meeting.

Jess notifies her over the intercom five minutes before the call is set to start and she sighs. The headache hasn’t eased any, but she has to go through with the call anyway.

She picks up the phone and tells Jess to carry them through.

She ends the call feeling even worse for wear. The Advil has done absolutely nothing and her headache might in fact be even worse. But, she still has another conference lined up before she gets to see Kara for lunch, and she can feel the pounding behind her eyes get just a little louder.

She sighs through gritted teeth and opens her laptop, working through the time she has left before the next conference.

By the time she gets to the next conference, her eyes feel horrible and the ponytail is only enhancing the headache.

She flops in her chair very unprofessionally after the conference is over and closes her eyes.

She only remembers that Kara is coming in to see her for lunch when she hears the doors open and Kara’s cheerful voice drift through.

By the time she hears and starts to sit back up properly, it’s already too late.

She sees the way Kara’s eyes rove over her appearance, the tight ponytail, the bleary eyes, the wrinkles from frowning, and the way she’s squinting, as if it’s too bright inside her office.

Kara immediately drops the lunch onto the coffee table by the couch and gets to work.

She starts by shutting the double doors and locking them before striding over to Lena’s balcony windows and lowering the shutters, tapping her foot impatiently as she presses the button on the remote. As soon as the last sliver of light from outside disappears, Kara is walking over to the light switches, pulling them down so that it’s not completely dark, but there’s little to no light.

Then, she walks towards Lena and kneels in front of her, careful and cautious as she asks Lena if she can touch her.

Lena nods wearily, not even bothering to do anything about her appearance anymore.

Kara starts by removing her heels, carefully placing them to the side of her desk. Then, she stands carefully and moves behind her, gently tugging on her hair tie to loosen the ponytail. Finally, she picks Lena up, ignoring her squeak of surprise, and brings her over to the couch, placing her down gently and grabbing her coat, laying it over Lena.

She leaves Lena there, moving back over to her desk with a purpose, long strides moving her quickly and efficiently across the room.

Lena has a moment to admire how confident Kara looks and she can’t believe she didn’t see the steel before, how much they resembled each other, the conviction in both Kara and Supergirl. She’s snapped out of her momentary reverie when she hears the buzzing sound of her intercom.

“Jess, could you please cancel the rest of Ms. Luthor’s day?”

Jess ignores the squawk of protest that comes over the intercom and immediately agrees, thanking Kara quickly.

Kara seems to relax, the hard set of her jaw and shoulders loosening. She shoots a sheepish smile over her shoulder at Lena and walks back over to the couch.

She settles down on the couch and gently shifts Lena so that her head is resting in her lap, Kara’s fingers carding through her hair. Lena almost purrs in delight When Kara begins scratching her scalp, but opts to smush her cheek against the tops of Kara’s thighs, sighing and finally letting herself relax.

To her surprise, she can feel tears burning at the corners of her eyes as she finally relaxes herself, but she fights them away. She’s already shown enough vulnerability in front of Kara, crying would make her seem weak in Kara’s eyes.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Lena shakes her head. It’s a tiny gesture, small enough that she doesn’t expect Kara to see it, but Kara always notices, and she falls silent.

The silence doesn’t last long.

“You know, whatever they said, you’re the best CEO L-Corp could ever have. You’re strong, brave, independent, and you’re beautiful.”

That breaks the dam and she feels Kara’s fingers stiffen as Lena begins sobbing.

“I’m… s-sorry,” Lena stutters through her sobs, pressing her face against Kara’s stomach to avoid her gaze.

Kara isn’t having any of it and immediately lifts her up, letting Lena use her shoulder as a pillow.

She feels Kara shifting to hold Lena properly, and her coat slides down Lena, puddling in her lap.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You are nothing like what they say and you are so much better than all of them combined.” Kara’s voice is filled with conviction, fire.

“You are strong, so strong, and you are so much braver than any of them and you are more beautiful than anyone can describe with words.” The way Kara says it makes it sound like a fact, and it’s so filled with earnestness that Lena can’t help but believe her.

“Thank you.” Her voice is tiny and hoarse, but she doesn’t have enough energy to try again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Kara whispers, stroking Lena’s hair and placing fluttery kisses here and there.

“You’re beautiful Lena, don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Lena’s tears soak through the shoulder of Kara’s shirt and Kara keeps rocking her back and forth, murmuring and holding her gently.

Chapter Text

“Where’s Kara?” Lena is careful not to let the fear bleed into her voice, her spine stiffening as she sits up against the seat of the van, the cuffs digging into her wrists.

Alex looks at her, long and hard, before turning back around to look at the road.

The silence stretches on for four blocks, the cityscape blurring past the tinted windows, long enough that Lena thinks Alex is just ignoring the question. Before she can ask again, though, she hears Alex’s quiet response drift back.

“Not here.”

The rest of the ride to the DEO is silent.

It’s almost completely silent, a huge difference from the bustling city she’s used to.

Kara breathes in the chilled air and feels the tension ease off her shoulders.

Maybe here, she can finally relax, can finally find some sense of peace.

The little cabin she has now is quaint, but she finds it charming. It’s small, but then again, she doesn’t need much space anyway. She only packed a few belongings, sure that no one in Alaska would know about her identity. That’s part of why they had chosen to come here; the people in Midvale, Alaska wouldn’t recognize Supergirl if she came in flying. Kara had specifically requested it because she knew that the environment was surprisingly good for gardening in the summer.

It’s still a little cold, the remnants of winter lingering, but spring is already settled into the bones of the earth.

She places her several hair ties down, sure she’ll need them for the gardening she’s planning on doing, and heads out to see if she can buy some shovels and fertilizer and maybe some seeds, too.

First things first, she has to introduce herself to the community, see if anyone is willing to help her settle in a little bit.

She takes a breath and walks back out of the cabin.

Lena perks up when she hears Alex’s nervous voice filter through the glass. She pretends to be asleep and makes sure her breaths are even as Alex starts talking.

“Yeah, yeah, we have her in containment.”

She can only hear one side of the conversation, but something tells her she knows exactly who Alex is talking to.

“Are you sure?”

Alex sounds worried now, her voice rising in pitch.

“Kara, you can’t- okay, okay, fine.”

Alex sounds resigned, and Lena can almost see the way she rubs her forehead, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Then, she hears Alex again.

“How are you?” Her voice is timid, soft, and it wavers a little at the end of her question.

She hears Alex sigh, can hear the relief in it.

“Okay, that’s good. Is it cold up there?”

She files the information away for later, her mind already whirring on the possible places Kara could be.

“Right, I forgot,” Alex snorts, “of course, yeah.”

What Lena wouldn’t give to hear what Kara is saying, if only to hear her voice again.

“Radishes?!”

Alex sounds delighted, and Lena frowns a little bit, confused at the sudden turn of conversation.

“Oh, god. Why would you grow that?! We all know how much you hate it!” Alex laughs.

She hears the way Alex suddenly becomes silent, the way realization hits her. Lena burns with curiosity.

“Oh, right...”

She hears the silence stretch on, can’t hear anything from the other side either.

“I just... why would you still... why?”

Alex’s question is stilted, as if she can’t quite find the right words to ask her question.

“Right...”

Is it Lena, or does Alex sound... disappointed?

“You’re sure? You really want us to just... let her go?”

Lena is snapped out of her reverie, and she stiffens a little at the prospect of being let go simply because Kara asked for it.

Kara. Why would she of all people want Lena to be let go?

She hears Alex sigh again, can hear the defeat in it.

“Okay, okay. Stay safe, please.”

Lena can feel her heart ache, imagining how Alex must feel, separated from Kara because of Lena. She can’t imagine just how hard it must be for her to let Lena go.

“I want updates on the kale, though,” Alex jokes, and the pieces come together.

Lena files away all the information for later when she hears Alex hang up, her phone beeping once as she slips it into her pocket. She evens out her breaths again, pretends to be asleep again.

“I swear, I don’t know what she’s thinking sometimes,” Alex mutters.

And then she pops the door open and strides in, and Lena pretends to wake up at the noise.

Later, she’s at the entrance of the DEO when Alex says her goodbyes.

“I don’t ever want to see you again.”

And then she’s pushed out of the entrance and the door slams shut behind her.

Kara sighs as she sees another door slam shut.

It seems that the townspeople are wary of foreigners, and she hasn’t even gotten a chance to introduce herself to half the people around town before they slammed the door shut.

She heads down to the blacksmith, hearing the clang of iron and metal and the sizzling of water against molten metal.

“Hello?”

She peeks her head in, trying to see if anyone is inside. The blacksmith is dim, the only light coming from the red-hot metal on the table.

She’s automatically drawn to it and she reaches out to touch. The metal doesn’t do anything to her, but it’s a pleasant warm, and she smiles softly at it.

Suddenly, she hears a gasp and looks up only to raise her head even higher when she realizes she’s staring at a man’s stomach.

She sees a bearded face, kind eyes looking down at her with disbelief.

“How did you…?”

Kara already knows this is a bad idea, knows just how many people are anti-alien, but she comes out and says it anyway.

“I’m an alien.”

She waits for the inevitable backlash, for the disgust and the shock.

Instead, she only sees the man’s eyes soften.

“You remind me of my daughter, Astrea.”

When he sees the confusion spread across Kara’s expression, he elaborates.

“I adopted her. She was an alien, too.”

Kara can’t help but ask, hopeful now that the man hasn’t immediately kicked her out.

“What happened to her?” she asks carefully, can already tell this is a sensitive topic.

“Anti-alien protestors. She’s… she’s in a better place now.”

Kara feels her heart ache for this man, this stranger she barely even knows.

She places her hand on his, trying to convey at least an ounce of her sadness and empathy.

A beat of silence passes before the man is straightening up again, wiping his hands over her eyes and rubbing away the glistening sheen. There are a few stray drops trapped in his beard, shining like crystals.

“I’m Augustus, but you can call me Gus.”

He holds his hand out to her and she smiles up at him, feeling the tears gather in her own eyes at the overwhelming kindness he’s showing her.

“I’m Kara. It’s nice to meet you, Gus.”

She takes his hand and shakes it, careful not to grasp too hard.

“So, an alien? What are you doing up here?”

She laughs, says, “I just needed some time away.”

When Gus realizes she’s not willing to divulge any more information—when he sees the wistful look Kara is casting at nothing in particular—he respectfully backs away from the topic.

“Did you need some help settling in?”

Kara’s resulting smile is brighter than the sun.

Lena squints her eyes at how bright the sun is today.

The sun’s rays are reflecting against the windows and shiny metal of the building surrounding L-Corp, and she’s had to result to putting sunglasses on indoors.

She considered lowering the blinds on the windows. But, then she thought of Kara’s occasional fly-bys and rejected the idea immediately.

The sunglasses help and Kara never shows up.

The glare of the sun reflects across the metal on L-Corp, pierces through the glass windows.

The glare of the sun reflects across the snow, and Kara squints her eyes.

She can hear Gus behind her, the snow crunching beneath his boots.

She’s carrying bags and bags of materials. She has tools in one, seeds and fertilizer in another, and local food in the last. Her mouth waters at the idea of trying all these new foods, but she waits patiently, hovering slowly to match Gus’s ambling pace.

The bags are piled, one on top of the other, but she can barely feel the weight.

They finally make it to her cabin, Kara’s slow hovering and their long conversation having extended the journey.

Gus has to duck to make it through the doorway and Kara has to keep her chuckles contained to herself when she sees him bump his head.

Kara starts by unpacking the food. She throws the salmon, crab, and sausage into the fridge, places the ice cream into the freezer, and leaves the jams out on the counter.

She sneaks a taste of the smoked salmon jerky she had gotten and sighs at the taste. It’s smoky and salty, with a hint of spice curling over her tastebuds. She brings the bag with her as she takes the gardening supplies out back.

She smiles at the nicely-sized patch of land in her backyard. There’s a small shed in the corner and two chairs around a small circular table. She mentally thanks Alex for getting her such a nice cabin.

Kara places the bags on the ground and starts taking out the tools. Gus helps her, hefting the bags of fertilizer over to the shed even when she insists she can do it herself.

She thanks Rao for choosing such a good time to come to Alaska. Since it’s early April, she can definitely start planting the kale and the radishes and snap peas should probably be planted, too.

She puts the bag on the small table, sifting through the seeds she had bought at the market.

She smiles sadly at the kale seed packets when she takes them out.

“Kale sucks! And I almost never say anything sucks!” Kara laughs, pointing at the offending leaves in Lena’s salad.

“You take that back right now!” Lena gasps, pretending to be affronted.

“Never!” Kara sticks out her tongue at Lena before they both dissolve into laughter.

She’s snapped out of her memories when she hears Gus calling for her.

“You ready to start working on your soil?”

“Yeah, one second!” she calls back, quickly gathering the rest of the seeds.

She makes sure the kale seeds are on top, pretends like she isn’t holding them extra carefully.

Gus doesn’t point out the glisten in her eyes.

Lena goes to L-Corp every single day.

She pretends like everything is fine, normal, even. Pretends that the lack of Kara coming to her office for lunch doesn’t bother her. Pretends that the fact she doesn’t even know where Kara is doesn’t bother her.

When Jess comes in about a week later, asking tentatively if Ms. Danvers will be showing up for lunch anymore, Lena only throws her a look.

Jess doesn’t ask about Kara after that, but she is a lot more sullen.

Even her security guards seem to be acting strange, getting excited each time anyone steps in only to visibly droop when they realize it isn’t Kara.

Lena can’t deny the impact Kara has had on all their lives, but she can ignore it, like she ignored all the red flags pointing to an S-shaped sign.

She can and she will.

Kara turns the soil carefully as Gus instructs her.

She makes sure not to mess with anything she shouldn’t, makes sure that the soil is perfect for her peas, her radishes, her kale.

She can hear Alex’s disappointment at the fact that Kara is still tying herself to National City, to Lena.

She ignores it, clenches her jaw, and digs through the frozen earth.

The newly turned earth is soft, and she runs her fingers through it, checking for rocks and chunks of ice that might obstruct the growth of the crops.

She throws all the ice into a wheelbarrow, melts it with her heat vision as Gus looks on, and ends up with a steaming wheelbarrow of water.

She starts sowing the seeds, carefully stirring the earth around and creating little divots in the soil before dropping a seed in each.

She plants them in rows, alternating between the peas, kale, and radishes.

It helps ease some of the tension, helps ease some of the hollowness she feels in her chest, sows seeds of hope that are ready to bloom as soon as she lets herself cry, lets herself feel.

She can’t now, though. Not yet. She isn’t sure if she’ll make it through without lashing out and hurting everyone around her.

So she doesn’t. Not yet.

If anyone asks Lena what she’s doing during her lunch break, holed up in her office, or why she’s slacking on her work, she simply brushes them off, tells them it’s because she’s working on a new project.

She’s lying.

She spends all her spare time trying to figure out where in the world Kara is.

From what she overheard in the conversation with Alex, she knows that wherever Kara is is cold and up north and that Kara is growing radishes. She’s not sure how they tie together, but she knows she has to look north, figure out exactly where radishes might grow. She goes on the internet, searches through, looking for places where radishes grow best… only to be let down spectacularly when it turns out radishes are grown in almost every state.

She sighs, rubs the bridge of her nose, and goes back through the information she has.

North, cold, radishes. North, cold, radishes.

Suddenly she remembers something else Alex had said, the way she’d fallen silent after something Kara had said.

She squeezes her eyes shut, tries to remember what they had been saying.

“Oh, god. Why would you grow that?! We all know how much you hate it!”

“Oh, right...”

“I just... why would you still... why?”

“Right...”

Lena thinks and thinks and thinks, trying to remember what they had been talking about before that.

“Radishes?!”

She frowns as she thinks. Radishes. It doesn’t fit in the picture. Kara has never been against radishes, especially in soups. She doesn’t hate radishes… so, Alex must’ve been talking about something else.

She wracks her brain for more vegetables that grow in colder climates that Kara might not like. The first plant that comes to mind, a vegetable that Kara has always hated with a vengeance, is kale.

She jumps back on her computer, fingers flying over the keys as she searches.

She presses the return key, tapping her fingers impatiently against the desk as she waits for the page to load, cursing the L-Corp servers.

The search finally returns, the results popping up on her computer screen. She skims over the first box and freezes.

“Kale can withstand temperatures as low as 10 degrees and is also noted for improved sweetness after frost. A very hardy vegetable, kale not only tolerates the cold…”

Kale can withstand the cold. Kale.

Kara is growing kale.

Now, Lena has the exact same question as Alex.

Why?

Kara is tending to her garden again when she hears Gus come in through the gate.

She combs her fingers through the loose earth, searching for ice that may have formed in the time between now and the last time she had checked about 20 minutes ago.

Gus watches her, sits on one of the garden chairs.

“Kara,” he rumbles, “what’s your story?”

Kara frowns, confused. She answers without turning around, hoping the words are loud enough to carry over to Gus.

“I thought I already told you. I was sent here from Krypton aft—“

“No, no, I know how you came to Earth,” Gus interjects quietly.

A beat of silence.

“How…? Why are you here? In Alaska?”

Kara freezes, her fingers coming to a stop. She glances at the kale, feels the tears gathering.

She supposes it’s time she tells someone, and who better than Gus?

She sighs, pushes her palms against the dirt until she’s crouching, and then standing up again.

Her hands come together to brush the dirt away before she brings them down to brush at the legs of her pants, swiping away any loose dirt that might still be there.

She inspects her hands, sees the smudges of earth still there, and sighs again, trudging inside the cabin to wash them off.

She tilts her head, a movement small enough that no one else would notice—not even Lena—but one that Gus is used to, has been watching for.

He follows her wordless invitation, the floor creaking under his boots.

He waits, sitting down at the kitchen table quietly as Kara ambles over to the sink, washes her hands, checks under her nails, washes them again. He waits as she puts on a pot of water to boil. He waits as she sinks bags of teas into the cups of hot water, waiting for them too steep.

Kara finally walks over to the table, cradling two mugs of tea, rhubarb for Gus and mint for her.

She takes a sip, relishing in the warmth of the tea. Gus knows better than to take a sip, knowing how Kara can endure much higher temperatures than he can, and he simply sets the mug down on the table, waiting patiently, calmly.

Kara finally sets down the mug after thinking about the right words to say, the right way to describe the heartbreak she had endured, the pain she had caused, the events that had transpired that had led to her losing her best friend forever. (The events that had transpired that had led to her losing the love of her life.)

“I told you I needed to be away, needed a break, right?”

Gus nods wordlessly, allowing her time to think, to gather her thoughts, to figure out how to tell her story.

“That was all the truth, but I never told you why I needed to be away.”

Kara pauses again, skims over the words in her head, tries to come up with the right ones.

“I… I made a mistake. I hurt someone who I care about a lot by keeping the alien side of me away from her.”

Kara pauses again, shakes her head.

“No, wait, that’s not right.”

“So I told you about how I’m Supergirl, right?”

Gus nods again, finally taking a sip of his own tea.

“Since I’m Supergirl, I kept a secret identity, Kara Danvers, and I became friends with someone as Kara Danvers and I didn’t tell that person that I was also Supergirl… until it was too late.”

Kara can hear Lena’s words echoing in her head.

With his dying words, he told me that I was a fool.

“Someone else told my friend before I could. He told her in the worst way possible and I didn’t even— I didn’t even know. She’s my—she was my best friend. But, now she can’t even stand to look at me. She didn’t tell me after either. I told her after he’d already told her and I didn’t even know. She acted like everything was fine, like everything was okay, like she didn’t mind.”

The words are spilling out of her now and she couldn’t stop them if she tried.

“She pretended to still be my friend. She… she did a lot of things behind my back. But the worst one was when I took her to… I took her to a place that not a lot of people know about, a place with weapons that could hurt me. I took her there as a partner, as a teammate, as a friend, and she used me. She stole from me, took the one weapon I hated most in the world, and she left me there, trapped, and I couldn’t do anything.”

Kara wrings her hands in frustration. She can’t take her anger out on the table without destroying it so she takes it out on herself, squeezing her hands tightly. She can feel the tears trailing down her cheeks, burning trails of shame and guilt and regret.

“I tried to stop her. But, she wouldn’t listen to me anymore. She hurt me because I hurt her and I… I couldn’t stop her… so I left. I don’t even think she knows I’m gone.”

Kara trails off, staring persistently down at the table, watching her tears stain the surface of the wood.

“She hates me. I don’t know if I can ever go back, not without hurting every second I’m back there.”

Lena figures a little more out.

Lena figures out which state Kara is in when she overhears a conversation two weeks later.

She’s finishing up a conference with one of her investors and she stays back to sort through her investments and the validity of the documents. She’s still sorting and looking through the numbers, seeing if they match up, when she hears the investor on a call outside.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard she moved to Alaska recently? Yeah, how’s she doing?”

She only tunes in a little bit at first, half-listening but also not really.

“Oh, yeah, I heard Vivian took up gardening there, too. What is she growing, kale or something?”

Lena’s attention immediately snaps to the conversation, straining even to hear the other side of the conversation.

It seems it’s her lucky day since the investor’s volume is up and she can hear the other side of the conversation.

“Yeah, she is! She also says the jams there are great because of the berries.”

“Well, tell her that if she can, I’d want a few jars.”

“I’ll let her know for sure!”

Lena tunes out the rest of the conversation, the confirmation she needed growing in her mind.

Kara is in Alaska. Kara is in Alaska and she’s growing a garden. Kara is in Alaska and she’s growing a garden and she’s planting kale.

She just doesn’t know why.

Gus comforts Kara, hugs her carefully and lets her cry.

Kara sobs.

The sobs are heaving, great enough to wrack her entire body, make her shudder in Gus’s warm embrace.

Why? Why? Whywhywhywhy?

She doesn’t realize she’s saying it out loud until Gus’s careful murmurs break through the haze of tears and crying, the ringing in her ears from Rao-knows-what.

She doesn’t stop either.

Kara inspects the new sprouts, tilting them gently to one side and then another to see how they’re doing.

She smiles, satisfied, after looking through all the new sprouts. They’ve been sprouting all week, and she had been surprised but extremely excited when the first one had peeked out of the soil.

She’s already set up the poles in the row of snap peas, waiting for them to slowly curl around and branch off from there, vines reaching out towards the thin strips of metal she had attached with her heat vision.

For now, they’re still small sprouts, but she’s still happy with how everything is progressing, and she places her hands on her hips, smiling triumphantly.

The move reminds her of when she would save someone as Supergirl, and the reminder makes her think of Lena again and the smile drops alongside her fists.

She wraps her arms around herself, squeezes and squeezes until she can breathe again, until the sharp pain of pinching can shake her out of the overwhelming numbness of her hollow chest.

She shakes her head carefully and walks away, stumbling over her own feet in her haste to get away from the garden.

As she’s lying awake in bed during the middle of the night, the moon high above her cabin, she realizes that it’ll take more than this for her to get better, that it might even take talking to Lena.

She shivers, a cold feeling trickling down her spine at the thought, and when she wakes up the next morning, her eyes red and her hair mussed, she splashes water on her face and pretends like she didn’t cry herself to sleep.

Gus invites her to the forge the next day, showing her the process and making her a wicked sharp knife.

He shows her how the metal becomes red-hot in the forge, how he beats on it with a hammer to shape it, pulls and stretches it with tongs, before finally quenching the entire thing in cold water.

He sharpens it, polishes it, and makes a leather handle that fits Kara’s grip perfectly.

When Kara tears up and tells him she can’t possibly take it, he only chuckles and presses it into her hands.

“Consider it a gift. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come up here.”

Kara wraps him up in a hug and the look on Gus’s face when she accidentally lifts him off the ground is enough for her tears to become tears of laughter instead.

Gus hands her a block of metal, re-instructs her on all the steps, going over them and reviewing them.

Kara eagerly grabs the chunk of metal and focuses her heat vision on it for a solid 15 seconds before the chunk cracks and she only has a split second to throw herself over it before it explodes under her.

When she’s helped up by a stern Gus, she can’t help but smile sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck.

She comes back the next day, eager to prove her focus.

This time, she listens carefully to Gus’s instructions, even going as far as to test her heat vision focus on a piece of scrap metal.

Before long, she’s confident enough that her powers are cooperating with her like they used to (before Myriad).

Kara takes the block of metal and focuses her heat vision, careful not to overdo it like the last time she tried.

The metal begins to glow red and then white, and she stops her heat vision then, blinking quickly to clear away the heat.

She picks up the block and gently molds the metal, pulling on some of it, stretching it out, shaping and molding and sculpting until it feels more like she’s working with warm clay than metal.

She smooths her fingers over the curves, makes sure they’re even, pulls on the longer end, curving it downwards and rounding the end with the tip of her finger.

The other end she pulls into a point, adds lines—feathers—on the ends. She forms wings next, folded against the side of the body.

She moves back to the elongated end—the neck—and shapes the head further, pulling on it and forming a beak. She rounds the end on that as well, smooths the head down to connect properly, and digs her fingers in, adding the spots and patterns and forming the eyes.

The metal has mostly cooled down, so she heats it back up, burning it red. She reshapes, remolds, reforms until it’s perfect.

Then, she dips the whole figure into the cold water, lets it sit in for a moment, waiting for the sizzling to stop before she pulls it back out. It looks more black than gray, and she smiles at the finished result.

The color, the shape, the details, everything is perfect.

She can’t help but think of what Lena would say if she ever saw this. She brushes it away. Lena isn’t here anymore, and Kara can’t put her life on hold forever.

Gus applauds her, his hand placed firmly on her shoulder as he tells her she did a good job. She smiles up at him and thinks that maybe she’s found a home here.

After hugging Gus again and thanking him profusely, she places the figure carefully on the pre-made pedestal and brings it with her back to the cabin.

Lena pulls up Google Maps on her phone as soon as she gets back into her own office and then on her computer, too, scrolling on both, looking for cities that Kara might go to.

It takes her 2 hours and 3 cups of coffee but she finally stumbles across a city called Midvale.

Midvale, Alaska.

And she knows.

She finally smiles even though her eyes are burning from how long she’s been staring at her computer and phone screens because she’s found her.

She’s found Kara.

Kara gobbles down the last reindeer sausage and pumps her fist high in the air as a stunned Gus looks on.

“I win!!!”

Gus smiles at her and agrees, amused.

“You sure did.”

He sits back in his own chair and wonders at how fast Kara can eat and just how much she can put away.

“Oh, you still have one! Can I have it?”

Gus pushes the plate towards her and watches as she practically swallows it whole.

Only once she’s done does Kara sit back, too, laughing at the shaken look on Gus’s face and leaning forward to pat his shoulder comfortingly.

“Alien metabolism,” she smiles.

Gus smiles back and thinks of Astrea. She would’ve liked Kara.

“You have to add some vinegar to the water, too,” Gus instructs, handing Kara the bottle without even looking.

Kara adds a smidge of vinegar, only to hear Gus tell her to add more as he looks through the defrosted crabs.

The crabs are finally dropped into the boiling water and Gus drops the lid over the pot, sitting down at the kitchen table and beginning to make some crab dip.

Kara stays by the counter, checking on the crabs to make sure they don’t overcook.

By the time the crabs are ready, Gus has finished making the dip and he tells Kara to bring the crabs over to the table.

He teaches her how to crack the knuckles properly and get the most out of every leg, even the tiny ones, rolling the meat out and making sure not to accidentally bite off the cartilage.

Kara accidentally bites off some of it and makes a face, spitting it out a split second later.

They go through 7 crabs before Kara is relatively full, Gus only eating 2 while Kara speeds through 5.

Kara leans back against her chair before jumping back up as she remembers she has to check on her garden.

Gus smiles at Kara’s retreating figure as she ambles into the yard, shutting the back door behind her.

He hears a set of rapid knocks on the front door and frowns. No one else would be here. But, not to be rude, he opens the door only to see none other than the person Kara has been describing these past few weeks.

Dark hair, green eyes, she’s immediately recognizable.

“Hello. Do you by any chance know someone by the name of Kara Danvers?”

Gus sticks his hand out for her to shake.

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m afraid I don’t know a Kara. What’s your name?”

She looks desperate, borderline panicked as soon as Gus finishes answering.

“I’m Lena. I’m a friend of Kara’s.”

As soon as Lena had figured out that Kara was in Midvale, Alaska, she had booked a flight.

And then she had cancelled it, choosing to use her own jet instead.

She spent the entire trip pacing around the interior, trying to figure out exactly what she was going to say when she saw Kara again.

By the time she reached Alaska, she had already started 15 different speeches, but she hadn’t finished a single one.

When the AI beeped to life, letting her know that they were five minutes away from the destination, she had simply thrown all her ideas out of the window and decided she would see what to say in the heat of the moment.

It was a horrible plan, but it was the only one she had.

Actually finding Kara was a hassle. It took her several tries as she asked around, trying to figure out exactly which neighborhood Kara was in.

She had been asking around for hours when she suddenly hit the jackpot.

An entire line of houses saying they had seen a blonde woman with blue eyes.

She continued until one of them was able to point her to the cabin Kara was in.

She trekked across the snow, ignoring the chill, before finally reaching the door to the aforementioned cabin.

Now, leaning against the doorway, she’s trying to scrape together the last of her courage to just raise her hand and knock on Kara’s door.

She hears a set of rapid knocks, looks up to see her own hand having already knocked.

Well, there’s no backing out now.

She steels herself for Kara’s initial reaction… only to be met with a man’s stomach in front of her.

She looks up, confused, at the towering, bearded man.

“Hello. Do you by any chance know someone by the name of Kara Danvers?”

He sticks his hand out for her to shake and responds, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m afraid I don’t know a Kara. What’s your name?”

Lena begins to panic once she hears this news but tells him anyway, hoping maybe he’ll recognize her and magically procure Kara.

“I’m Lena. I’m a friend of Kara’s.” She winces internally. She wouldn’t exactly describe them as friends right now, but he doesn’t need to know that.

The man’s face twists unreadably and Lena is about to run away when he smiles down at her, though it seems slightly strained.

“I’m Gus. Is the Kara you’re talking about… does she have blonde hair? Blue eyes?”

Lena perks up at the description, nodding her head eagerly.

“Yes, that’s her! Have you seen her around?”

He nods slightly.

“You could say that. Normally, though, she’s somewhere in the market, so I would check there first. If she’s not in the market, she’s probably at the blacksmith. If she isn’t there, either, maybe by the lake? If she’s not there either come let me know and I’ll try and think of any other places she’s been.”

Lena smiles wearily but gratefully, taking a mental note of all the places Gus had mentioned.

“Of course. Thank you so much, Gus!”

She does as he says and heads to the market first. She combs through the stall three times, hoping that maybe the first and second time she had somehow missed Kara. After the third search, though, she’s sure that Kara is either invisible or she’s not in the market, and she immediately moves towards the blacksmith, asking for directions as she goes.

The blacksmith is empty, but the forge is glowing dimly and Lena walks in quietly.

“Kara?”

It’s silent.

She heads over to the worktable and her eyes widen as she picks up a piece of scrap metal with clear scorch marks in the shapes of circles that are about the distance of two eyes apart from each other. She brings it with her, sure that it’s evidence that Kara has been here.

She heads to the lake next, and she doesn’t see anyone around. There are a few holes in the surface of the ice and she briefly entertains checking them before dismissing the idea. Even if Kara were in the lake, she would at least have her clothes to the side.

She heads back to the cabin, feeling defeated, only to look up when she’s still quite a bit away and see Kara.

From her vantage point, she can see the backyard of the house, and in it is none other than Kara, tending to a garden.

She hides behind a rock, stares at Gus for a moment.

Gus knew her. There was no other reason for him not to tell her where Kara was.

She gulps. If Gus had kept her from Kara, how would Kara react to seeing her?

Since she can’t get to the backyard any other way than through the front door, she goes back to Gus, pretending she still doesn’t know what to do.

“I couldn’t find her anywhere,” she shouts from a few meters away, hoping it will catch Kara’s attention.

It works, and the blonde perks up from where she’s kneeled in the soil, pushing up and snapping her head around to search for Lena.

Lena forces herself to look away and continues walking towards Gus, pretending to be dejected and disappointed.

“She wasn’t in any of the places you suggested. Do you have any other places she might be?”

Gus is just about to open his mouth when Kara appears behind him, tapping on his shoulder lightly.

Gus freezes and turns around, looking down at Kara.

Kara smiles up at him, says, “it’s okay. I got this.”

She sees the way Gus relaxes, sees the way he concedes, albeit reluctantly. As he walks away, he throws a look over his shoulder at Lena.

When she directs her attention back to Kara, she’s wringing her hands nervously, looking down at her feet before her hands go to brush the loose soil off her pants.

“Lena.”

“Supergirl.”

It’s a low blow and Lena immediately regrets saying it as Kara flinches back visibly.

“I…” Kara looks up then, stares Lena in the eye.

“What are you doing here?”

She’s using her Supergirl voice now, confident and steely with no room for argument.

“Why did you leave?”

Lena matches her, uses her CEO boardroom voice, crossing her arms and arching an eyebrow.

Kara’s face stays blank.

“I don’t see why that’s any of your concern considering the terms you left me with the last time we saw each other.”

It’s a blunt statement but it’s enough to knock the air out of her lungs. What’s worse is that Kara is right. Lena had given the ultimatum, had told Kara she never wanted to see her again, had turned down all of her attempts at apology, enough that Kara had left and Alex was the one who had arrested her.

Lena looks Kara over, sees the exhaustion in the unconcealed bags under her eyes, the sadness in the dim blue of her eyes, and thinks that maybe this time it’s up to her, maybe this time she has to be the one to take the first step, to try.

Kara has been trying this whole time. Trying to tell Lena, trying to apologize, trying to heal. Maybe it’s Lena’s turn to try, now, so she decides to take the first step.

She uncrosses her arms, opens herself up, breathes in shakily.

“I’m sorry, Kara.”

She looks up carefully and sees the shock spreading across Kara’s face, the way it morphs into a desperate sadness, a relief, and then the tears come. She sees the way Kara blinks, looks up at the doorway, looks back down at Lena.

“I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t let you apologize and I didn’t even tell you I knew. I just let myself suffer and I walled myself back up and I… I hurt you. I wanted to hurt you.”

Lena lowers her head, shame rushing through her veins, dread trickling down her spine.

And then she hears Kara whisper, “no.”

“I’m sorry, too, Lena. If I had told you sooner, if I had noticed, if I had paid more attention, I would’ve been able to help you. I’m… I’m a horrible friend and I don’t deserve to be your friend.”

Lena blinks her surprise away, looks up to see Kara leaning heavily against the doorframe, one arm wrapped around herself.

She feels her heart break for Kara. Kara, who she can tell is so sad and utterly broken. And then she realizes: Kara is heartbroken.

The realization stuns her and she reels in shock. If Kara were heartbroken, she would have to be in love… in love with Lena.

“Kara, you… you’re the best friend anyone could hope for. I’m… it wasn’t your fault. You could have told me sooner, sure, but you had your reasons, and I was too angry to see them. We both made mistakes, and I’m ashamed to admit that mine hurt you more, but I hope that one day, maybe we can be friends again… maybe even more?”

Kara’s head shoots up, staring intently at Lena, studying her closely.

“You… you like me… like that?”

Lena considers denying it, but she can’t lie to Kara again, not after all this.

“I… I don’t just like you. I love you, Kara. I’m… I can’t believe it took me so long to realize it,” Lena wraps her arms around herself, laughs a laugh that sounds more like a sob.

“I love you too, Lena.”

She stops laughing, looks up at Kara, sees the earnestness in her eyes, and she falls forward, unable to hold herself up anymore.

Kara catches her (she always catches her) and brings her into the cabin, helps her over to the couch.

They sit in silence, Kara soothing Lena as Lena sobs into her shoulder and Lena sobbing harder when she feels Kara’s own tears falling against her neck.

Kara breaks the silence first, breaks the silence as Lena’s sobs grow quiet, turning into sniffles.

“I missed you so much.”

Her voice sounds so, so sad, and Lena feels herself tearing up again at the thought of just how lonely Kara must’ve been.

“I missed you, too,” she whispers into Kara’s shoulder, like it’s a secret that no one should ever hear.

Kara hears it anyway, of course she does, and Lena can feel her smile against her hair.

“Let’s go home,” she whispers.

Kara pulls away, and for a split second Lena is afraid she’s said too much, that maybe Kara will leave again.

“But, Lena,” she hears, Kara’s voice soft and genuine as she lifts Lena’s chin, “I’m already home. I’m with you.”

Lena’s lower lip wobbles and she bursts into sobs again, holding onto Kara desperately as Kara murmurs reassurances into her hair, holds her carefully, warmly.

Kara bids goodbye to Gus, packing her things and hugging the man.

“I promise I’ll come back to visit.”

She pretends she can’t see the glisten in her eyes as he waves her goodbye, returning the favor from all those weeks ago when he’d first met her.

She goes back to the cabin, sees Lena staring intently at a figure on the mantel, and she freezes.

Lena turns around, her eyes still wide with awe.

“Did you make this?” She gestures towards the metal figure, stroking the curved neck of the black swan.

“It reminded me of you,” Kara blurts and then freezes like a deer in headlights.

Lena turns back around, her expression soft and warm.

“It did?”

Kara feels herself relax again, the tension easing off her shoulders, her heart growing several sizes at the love in Lena’s eyes.

“Yeah. It did.”

Supergirl Spotted!

Supergirl was spotted this Saturday morning carrying none other than Lena Luthor, CEO of L-Corp and Lex Luthor’s brother into National City! Are they becoming allies? Lovers? What has happened? We’ll let you know as soon as possible!

Chapter Text

The first time Kara tastes pumpkin soup, she cries.

It’s October, and Lena and her are at the pumpkin farm, picking out a pumpkin just like they do every other year, Krypto trailing along happily. Lena holds the leash loosely, sure that Krypto wouldn’t run off anyway. Sometimes, it’s almost like Krypto understand exactly what she says.

Once Kara decides on a proper pumpkin, she drops it in the wheelbarrow, only to rush off when she sees another one she likes.

She ends up with 7 pumpkins of different sizes and shapes. There’s a classic medium-sized orange one for carving, another much larger, taller on that Kara says she can decorate better on, a small white pumpkin that Kara had been making heart-eyes at the entire time, another two relatively small pumpkins that Lena designated for food, a tiny orange pumpkin that Kara puts in Krypto’s protection, and another medium-sized white one.

Lena simply sighs and takes out her credit card, knowing she would never win a fight against Kara’s pouty face, and simply kissing it away when Kara begins to pout.

She watches on adoringly as Krypto trots after Kara, holding the tiny orange pumpkin’s stem between his teeth, the leash trailing behind him.

Kara is floating, carrying the wheelbarrow in a hug, and Lena watches amusedly as she hands the shocked clerk her credit card. The poor woman’s eyes almost bulge out of her skull when she realizes whose card it is.

Everyone is staring; after all, Supergirl hugging a wheelbarrow of pumpkins as a white dog trails behind her, now also floating, and Lena Luthor paying for the aforementioned pumpkins is not a sight one sees every day.

Once Lena has paid for the pumpkins, Kara floats over to their car, carefully loading each pumpkin in as Lena walks towards her slowly. By the time she reaches the car, Kara has finished loading all of the pumpkins and has also returned the wheelbarrow.

Krypto’s tail is wagging happily and he jumps in the car, placing the tiny pumpkins down on the seat before he takes a seat next to it, curling up so that his nose is touching it.

Kara smiles happily at Lena as she buckles herself in, reaching back to rub Krypto’s head as Lena turns the keys in the ignition.

Lena watches as Kara sings along to the radio, Krypto occasionally joining in to howl along. Kara’s cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright as she sings, and Lena has never felt luckier to be with anyone.

The sun is setting when they pull into the driveway, oranges streaking along the blue sky, and Kara quickly carries all the pumpkins into their penthouse. Krypto grasps the stem of the tiny pumpkin in his jaws again and trots along after Kara, disappearing through the open door.

Lena pulls the keys out of the ignition, checking one last time to make sure they haven’t left anything behind before she locks it and heads into the penthouse, too.

Kara has already set to work washing and carving the first pumpkin, scooping out the seeds and cutting the pumpkins into chunks. Lena ties her hair up and fastens an apron around her waist. She takes the quarters Kara offers her and pulls out the bottle of olive oil they have, using it liberally, about a tablespoon for each quarter, rubbing it into the flesh of the pumpkin.

Krypto has floated onto the counter at some point and he nudges the pre-lined baking pan towards her. Lena praises him, unable to scratch behind his ears since her hands are still oily, but Krypto takes it and curls back up on the counter, watching attentively as Lena moves the quarters onto the baking sheet, cut side down.

Once they’re finished, Kara disposing of the seeds and stem, Kara sticks the pan into the preheated oven and Lena sets a timer for 35 minutes.

As they wait for the pumpkins to finish roasting, Lena watches on as Kara and Krypto float around the penthouse, chasing each other. Krypto does a full roll in the air when he accidentally bumps into the ceiling light and Kara laughs, the sound hearty and warm.

The ringing of the timer is enough to startle her into a flip, too, and this time it’s Lena’s turn to laugh as Kara’s cape flops over her head.

Once Kara is finished pouting sadly, Lena ending it with a swift kiss, she pulls the pan out with her bare hands and places it on the countertop.

As the pumpkin cools, Lena takes a pot out, places it onto the stove, and pours three tablespoons of olive oil into it, heating it slowly. Once she sees it starts to shimmer, she adds onion, garlic, and salt to the oil, the satisfying sizzle filling the air. She stirs it carefully, combining all the components.

Kara is beside her carefully peeling the skin off of the pumpkins, and once she’s finished she entertains herself by playing tag with Krypto around the kitchen island.

Lena’s attention is drawn back to the pot when she hears another sizzle, and she notices the onions are just about done, translucent in color, so she adds the flesh of the pumpkin and some spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, even a few twists of freshly ground pepper.

She uses the wooden spoon she’s holding to break up to the pumpkin just a little bit before she pours in the broth. Once she’s satisfied it’s set to boil in a few minutes, she looks away for a few moments, watching as Krypto leaps up at Kara, trying to lick her face.

She hears the pot behind her boiling and she turns the heat back down, letting it simmer and setting a timer for 15 minutes.

She takes a skillet out in the meantime, adds a touch of olive oil before she places four slices of a baguette, letting them toast gently for a minute or two, checking on them every few seconds before she flips them all, letting them toast again for a few minutes.

The timer rings at the perfect time and she takes the bread out, placing all four slices on a small plate as she goes to check on her pumpkin soup.

She stirs in the pre-measured coconut milk and maple syrup, just to add some creaminess and a touch of sweetness to the soup. As she mixes, she lowers the heat until it’s completely off, giving a final stir to make sure everything is combined properly.

Then, she takes the top off the blender and calls Kara over to pour everything into the blender without splashing anything, which Lena can’t do nearly as well as Kara on account of the fact that she can’t touch the bottom of the pot like Kara can.

Kara does it carefully before she leaves with Krypto again, into the living room this time. She hears happy barking and laughing a minute later and turns back to the blender, smiling softly.

She tucks the lid back in, pressing it down to fit in perfectly. She closes the hole in the top by putting the stirrer in and turns the blender on. As it blends the pumpkin mixture, she moves the stirrer around, making sure to catch the larger pumpkin chunks to push them into the blender blades.

Once she’s satisfied that there are no more large chunks left, she stops stirring and turns off the blender.

She carefully pours the creamy soup into two bowls, one significantly larger than the other. She leaves the rest on the counter to give Krypto as soon as she finishes plating.

She adds a few thyme leaves to the top before adding the slices of bread. Kara gets three and she gets one, which is more than enough for her. She pours the rest of the soup into a small bowl, knowing Krypto will want some, too.

She calls for Kara, who appears at her side in a second, Lena’s hair whooshing as Kara blurs into the room.

She tells Kara to set them down on the table and calls for Krypto next as Kara grabs spoons for both of them and sets them down on the table. She can tell Kara is excited to taste the pumpkin soup, having never had any before.

Krypto comes trotting into the room, too, following Lena as she gets him a cup of his food, pouring it into his bowl and adding an egg, and a handful of blueberries in, too. She places the bowl of pumpkin soup down next to the bowl and pats his head as he settles down to eat.

She walks over to the table next, smiling at Kara when she realizes she still hasn’t had a taste yet.

“What a gentleman,” she notes softly, grinning When Kara puffs out her chest and places her hand against it.

“Nothing but the best for my lady,” she responds, and Lena laughs at the poor imitation of an accent.

Kara joins in a second later, and once the laughter dies down, Kara looks up at Lena questioningly.

Lena nods softly.

“Tell me what you think.”

Kara gathers some of the soup on her spoon, sniffs curiously before finally placing the spoon into her mouth.

To Lena’s shock and horror, Kara starts crying.

“Kara? It can’t be that bad, right?” she jokes weakly, her voice feeble and hesitant.

Kara chokes out another sob before shaking her head, but her voice refuses to cooperate.

She wipes away her tears after a minute, smiling up at Lena.

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s just… it reminds me of something Alura used to make on Krypton.”

Kara looks back down at the bowl, smiling down at it softly, but with a tinge of sadness, and Lena feels her heart melt.

“Tell me?”

Kara looks surprised that Lena is even asking, but she brightens up and begins to explain excitedly.

“There was this vegetable we used to grow on Krypton… it was called…” Kara frowns and she starts to go pale. “It was called… it was… oh Rao, I can’t remember anymore.”

Lena can only watch as Kara slowly grows more and more hysterical.

“I can’t… I can’t remember. I…”

Kara looks up at Lena with tears in her eyes.

“I don’t remember,” she whispers, and it’s so desperate that Lena can’t find any words for a long moment.

“It’s… it’s okay, Kara. It’s okay. You know, it’s not as important to remember the name as it is to remember the feeling, the taste, and smell,” Lena reassures quietly.

“Do you remember what it looked like? What it felt like? Can you describe it?”

Kara closes her eyes, and Lena can see the way she relaxes, can feel it, her hands still on Kara’s shoulders.

“Yeah. I remember all of that. It was a plant we used to grow a lot, and Ieiu would always make the best dip with it. It was… it was delicious.” Kara trails off wistfully, lost in a world of her own, a world no one else remembers.

Lena smiles sadly, tucks a lock of Kara’s hair behind her ears.

“Your pumpkin soup… it tastes the same. It tastes like… like home.”

Kara’s eyes snap open, and she’s looking at Lena with the softest expression she’s ever seen.

“It tastes like home… because you’re my home,” she whispers, reverence full in her tone, as if she’s come to a sudden realization.

“I’m home,” Kara whispers again, and Lena can already see the tears.

“You’re home,” she agrees, as Kara sobs quietly against the crook of her neck.

“You’re home now.”

Chapter Text

Kara breathes in and out shakily, trying to calm her nerves.

She places her forehead against the cool wood of the door before she finally pushes it open.

“Hey, Lena!”

Lena looks up from where she is at her desk and smiles and suddenly all of Kara’s nervousness melts away.

“Kara.”

Kara smiles right back before lifting the bag of Big Belly Burger in her hand.

“Guess what I brought?”

Lena’s eyes light up and she immediately stands up, making her way around the table towards Kara.

“Is that Big Belly Burger? God, have I ever told you you’re my absolute favorite person?” Lena gushes, causing Kara’s cheeks to fill with color.

“It was nothing. It was on my way, anyway.”

Kara’s lying. Big Belly Burger is on the other side of town, and she had flown to go grab some before coming over to Lena’s office.

“Still. Thank you.” The genuine earnestness in Lena’s voice makes Kara’s heart grow several sizes, and her eyes dart down to Lena’s lips for a split second before she feels her cheeks becoming ever redder.

“Of course. Actually, if you don’t mind, I have a question?”

Lena looks up curiously, hand still halfway in the bag.

“Yes?”

Kara wipes her sweaty palms over the tops of her slacks, trying to find the right way to ask this without coming off too strong.

“Um, my sister and I, or wait, we like to have what we call game nights with some of our other friends and basically we play board games and other games with a partner and it’s really fun and there’s also a lot of food and wine and—“

“Hey, relax, Kara. It’s okay. What did you want to ask me?”

Kara sighs gratefully, glad Lena had cut off her rambling before she could say anything stupid.

“Do you want to come? To game night? With me? Maybe?”

Kara is ready to add even more clarifications when she hears Lena begin to speak.

“I’m... I would love to. But, are you sure your friends will like me?” Lena’s voice is hesitant and Kara feels her heart ache for her.

“Of course, Lena. Plus, if they decide to be mean to you, I’ll have a nice long talk with them.”

Lena’s eyes widen at the tone Kara has taken before hastily reassuring her.

“Wait, no, Kara, you don’t have to do that!”

Kara breaks character and starts laughing, clutching her stomach. She wipes the tears from her eyes when she sees Lena pouting.

“I’m just kidding, Lena. But if any of them do say anything or do anything, I’ll talk to them for sure. I’ll make sure everyone behaves, especially Alex.”

Lena smiles gratefully at her.

“Thank you, Kara.”

Later that evening, Kara is talking to Alex when she hears a set of rapid knocks on the door and she beams at Alex.

“She’s here! Behave, please.”

She strides over to the door and throws it open, revealing Lena standing there, wringing her hands nervously.

“Hey, Lena.”

“Hey, Lena!” Kara greets, smiling widely.

“Kara! So, what are we playing tonight?” Lena asks as she walks into the apartment, placing a bottle of wine and scotch on Kara’s kitchen island.

It’s a routine they’ve perfected by now. Lena always arrives first when Kara’s hosting, and whenever someone else is hosting, they arrive together.

Lena always brings wine, and, depending on how generous she’s feeling, sometimes she’ll bring along a bottle of scotch, too.

“Well,” Kara starts, tapping her chin thoughtfully, “I was thinking either Pictionary or Monopoly first, but I’m leaning towards the first one.”

She chuckles at Lena’s relieved sigh.

“Thank god. You know how bad I am at Monopoly.”

Lena pours herself a glass of wine while talking, swirling it until she’s satisfied.

“That’s why I’m leaning towards Pictionary,” Kara laughs, slipping into their easy banter as they walk towards her couch.

“Excuse you!” Lena gasps, pretending to be offended.

“Well, you have me. And we both know I’m always up for stealing properties,” she notes as Lena leans into her side, Kara’s arm coming around to wrap around her.

“Right you are,” Lena sighs, nosing against Kara’s shoulder and relaxing, the tension easing off her shoulders.

They’re both startled by a couple of loud knocks and Kara gets up first.

“I’ll get it! Don’t worry about it!” she says over her shoulder.

She feels momentarily disappointed at having to share Lena now, but brushes the thought away before it has time to settle.

The knocks come again louder and she hears Alex’s voice through the door, yelling at her to hurry up.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming!!!”

Kara walks forward and the floorboards creak under her feet.

Kara listens to the quiet creaking of the floorboards as Alex walks towards the kitchen island.

“Could you get me another glass?” Her voice is hoarse, but she doesn’t have it in her to clear it.

She hears Alex breathe in, as if she’s about to say something, but then she hears Alex breathe back out and her jaw click shut.

“Yeah, sure.”

Once Alex hands the glass back to her, she swirls the electric blue liquid and thinks that maybe she could drown in it.

They would normally be at game night. Normally.

But now, nothing is normal. Lena is gone and she hates her and Kara can’t even begin to remember a game night without her. She’s not going to start now.

Alex had insisted on staying with her, turning it into a sister night.

Kara had finally, reluctantly agreed, and now they’re here.

The apartment is dim and Kara watches the dark colors of the night sky bleed into her apartment, swallowing the light as the sun finally disappears over the horizon.

She looks down at the rum. It looks more black than blue now, glinting with hints of light.

She swirls the liquid and holds it up to her lips, tilting the glass to take a sip.

Kara tilts the empty glass, checking to make sure there’s nothing left before bringing it towards the sink.

Lena is cleaning up next to her.

The air is charged with tension and something she can’t quite put a name to. She… she can’t. Not yet.

The sound of Lena shuffling the Monopoly cards back together snaps her back out of her reverie.

It’s silent as they continue to sort everything back into place.

It feels wrong. So wrong. Lena knows every part of Kara and Kara knows every part of Lena and here Lena is, cleaning up game night in her apartment, and where there should be singing and dancing and easy banter, there’s just… silence.

Once they finish cleaning up together, still very much in sync (like they used to be… before…), Kara dusts her hands off.

“Well.” She flinches at how loud her voice sounds.

Lena turns towards her, looking up at Kara with an unreadable expression.

“I guess this is it then.” Kara is talking about game night, about cleaning up, but it feels like something else, something bigger.

(It feels like she’s saying goodbye.)

“I’ll… I’ll grab your coat.” Kara sighs and lowers her head, trudging over to the coat rack to get Lena’s coat.

And then she stops and looks down at her arm, because Lena is holding on to her, Lena is holding her there, asking her to wait. Lena isn’t letting go.

Kara turns slowly, unshed tears already shining in her eyes. She sees vibrant, shining green, glistening with their own tears, and she feels herself break, feels herself crack open until there are no more walls, no more barriers, no more of anything except herself.

And then Lena kneels down beside her—when had she fallen onto the floor?—and strokes her hands up Kara’s arms gently, holding her face gently as her forehead bumps against Kara’s. Kara has a brief flash of confusion, before she hears Lena speak for the first time in a long time.

“Please don’t go.” Her voice is a mere whisper but Kara hears it anyway. The tears gather, but she blinks them back.

“I missed you,” she responds, looking into Lena’s eyes, their shared breaths mingling in the space between them; it feels too far, like a chasm she has to cross before she can finally make it back to Lena.

“I love you.”

And then Lena is kissing her and Kara isn’t even sure who made the confession because Lena is kissing her and she’s finally come back to Kara and— and—

Lena pulls back carefully and Kara immediately misses the soft feeling of Lena’s lips pressing against hers.

She hears Lena respond. “I love you, too.” Remembers that it was her who had confessed first, and then everything breaks apart and snaps open and Kara can’t hear anything except for the echo of Lena’s words and then she’s crying and then she’s sobbing, shaking so hard she can barely breathe, but does she really need to? because Lena is back and Lena loves her and everything is mixing together and jumbling and—

She feels Lena’s thumb on her face, smoothing away her tears as she places light, delicate kisses on Kara’s cheeks, kissing away the pain she feels.

“I’m sorry,” she hears herself say, feels the kryptonite rushing through her veins like it’s really there, like maybe this is all a dream and maybe she’s still trapped, unable to get away, to get to Lena—

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, darling. You’re okay now.”

And Kara can feel the pieces coming back together, can see them coming back together, can feel Lena slotting into place.

And why was she ever gone in the first place if they fit so well together?

And then she hears Lena again.

“I’m sorry, too.”

And now everything is back in place and for the first time in over a year, Kara feels like she can breathe again, feels like she can laugh again, can cry again, can go to game nights because Lena is back and Kara can’t help but think of something she’d said to James years ago.

Someone who knows everything about me, my perfect partner at a game night.

And now she thinks, knows, that Lena is it. Lena is her perfect game night partner.

And she can’t believe how long it’s taken her, but it’s always been Lena.

It’s always been the two of them.

Kara and Lena.

“You’re with me, right?”

“Always.”

Chapter Text

Kara has always been proud of her name.

The Zor-El’s, one of the most honored and revered families in Krypton. Her father, part of the Science Guild, like she would be some day, her mother, a Judiciary.

Every time Kara said her name, she would straighten up, puff up her chest, because she was proud of her name.

Even now, as she stands before Lena, revealing her true name, she can’t shake the old habit that she’s always had. So, she straightens up just the slightest, looks deep into Lena’s eyes, puffs her chest up, presenting her crest to Lena as the wind pushes her cape from side to side, and says her name.

“My name… is Kara Zor-El. I am Supergirl… and you know me as Kara Danvers.”

But then she remembers the ugly truth, the stories Astra had told her as she’d bled out in Kara’s arms, how the Zor-El’s had destroyed Krypton. She thinks of how she’s a Zor-El, and here she is, destroying her entire world, having to watch as Lena’s heart breaks, as Lena spins on her heel and shuts the balcony door.

Kara takes the unspoken rejection at face value and flies away, pretending the tears are from the wind screaming past her face.

Later that same night, Kara is sitting on the roof of her apartment building, her feet dangling over the side as she stares up at the starless sky.

She imagines that maybe she can still see Krypton if she tries hard enough, can see the star still glowing dimly, still too far away for its destruction to have reached Earth.

She thinks of what time it would’ve been for her. Would she still be stuck in the Phantom Zone? Maybe she was just born?

It doesn’t matter. After all, it’s gone now.

She thinks of her name again, thinks of the black of her family’s crimes, the red of the blood she’s spilled, staining it, turning it into something to be feared.

She takes solace in the fact that the Danvers name is still untainted by anything, and then she remembers Jeremiah and cries.

Kara Zor-El doesn’t have anything. Neither does Kara Danvers.

Now all that’s left of her is Supergirl.

“This week has seen increased activity of Supergirl, National City’s beloved superheroine. She’s been roaming the streets, saving civilians, and most of all, winning over the hearts of the people. Just yesterday, she saved a cat from a tree, and the owner of the cat posted a selfie with Supergirl on her Instagram. The hero was smiling and holding up a thumbs up. The picture now has…”

Kara smiles as she tunes out the rest of the news report.

The cat’s name was Mochi, and he was super fluffy and easy to bring down, even snuggling into her arms and purring as she slowly hovered down. The girl, Darcy, had been kind, too. She had thanked Kara repeatedly and had almost cried when Kara had suggested taking a selfie with her.

She hasn’t been to CatCo in three days now, and she’s thinking of writing a resignation letter soon.

She doubts Andrea has even noticed her absence.

Kara hands her resignation in Monday morning.

Andrea isn’t even in her office when Kara arrives, and she breathes out a sigh of relief.

She places the note on Andrea’s desk so that there’s no way Andrea will miss it and walks out of Andrea’s office, of CatCo’s bullpen, of the building, for the last time.

It doesn’t feel right. It feels like she’s losing a part of herself.

She brushes away the feeling and calls a cab.

Alex doesn’t even realize she’s quit CatCo until two weeks later.

Kara’s at home in her apartment when she hears Alex over the comms, calling her to face off against an alien rampaging through the streets.

Kara is at the scene in less than 5 seconds, flying straight into the alien.

Only after the fight does Alex pick up on it. It’s really a small detail, something Kara should’ve realized she did wrong before she did it, but it was too late by the time she realized.

“Here’s your blouse and some pants. You’re probably late for some meeting at this point,” Alex notes, holding out the clothes to Kara.

“Oh, that’s okay. I don’t need them.” Kara brushes her off before she freezes as she realizes what she just said.

“What do you mean, you don’t need them?” Alex’s question is innocent, but Kara can feel her studying Kara carefully.

“I mean I can just go back to my apartment and change! It is lunch after all!” Kara smiles innocently before she realizes her mistake. Lunch ended 15 minutes ago.

Alex tells her as much before eyeing her suspiciously.

After another lame excuse about how she must be late then, Alex asks her.

“Kara, did you quit CatCo?”

And Kara finally gives, standing up straight and crossing her arms.

“I did.”

“Why?” Alex’s voice is disbelieving, but at the same time, she asks like she knew the answer already, like she already knows why.

Kara tilts her head to the side, leans against the doorframe.

“Kara Danvers doesn’t have anything left. Neither does Kara Zor-El. The only thing I have left is Supergirl. Even though Lena hates Supergirl, everyone else loves her. Supergirl is a hero, and that’s what Ieiu and Ukr would’ve wanted. They wanted me to save the people of the Earth…” she lingers on the unspoken, like I couldn’t save them, remembers Argo wiped away by the anti-matter wave, remembers it destroyed after the Crisis.

“They would be proud of who I am today. I know it.”

She spins on her heel, her cape swishing behind her, but just as she’s about to leave the room, she hears Alex whisper.

“You still have me, Kara.”

She falters in her strides, almost trips when she forgets to put her foot back down, but restarts the pace quickly.

Once she’s back in her apartment, she lets herself cry.

Lena asks about her one day.

Lena asks Alex why Andrea had complained to Lena about Kara quitting and why she would lie to Lena about that. She gets is a hard glare that eventually morphs into something sadder.

“Because she did, Lena. She quit CatCo. Kara Danvers is… gone.”

Lena calls Kara to her office balcony that same night, pressing down once on the signal watch and waiting for the red and blue blur to come flying across the sky.

Kara touches down, mildly irritated.

“Is something wrong, Miss Luthor?”

“Don’t you pull that with me,” Lena hisses, glares at Kara.

“I heard about what you did. Andrea told me and then Alex confirmed it.”

As soon as Kara realizes where the conversation is going, she stops reacting, closes her face off, acts indifferent to everything Lena is saying.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern, Miss Luthor.” Kara forces her voice to be even, respectful and distant with the hint of warmth she always gives to everyone else, nothing less, nothing more.

“How dare you. How dare you leave and then you decide to destroy the one person I cared about,” Lena snarls, jabbing her finger in Kara’s direction.

“Apologies if I failed to understand, Miss Luthor, but I believe you asked me to leave. And Kara Danvers and I are one in the same. I am very much so Kara Danvers when I want to be, Miss Luthor. Do not misunderstand me; Kara Danvers will not be making an appearance anytime soon. She doesn’t have anything left. Neither does Kara Zor-El. I am Supergirl. And I am a hero.” With those final words, Kara leaps off the balcony and flies away.

She pretends like everything is fine, pretends like she can’t feel the tears burning behind her closed eyelids, pretends like she didn’t just destroy any last opportunity at getting Lena back.

After all, Kara doesn’t deserve anything good, not after all the people she’s hurt, the people she couldn’t save, the people she failed.

“Thank you, Supergirl!”

She smiles down at the little girl, holding a tiny kitten in her arms.

“Of course! Make sure your kitty doesn’t get out next time, okay?”

The little girl beams at her and nods her head eagerly.

“Of course, Supergirl!”

Kar— Supergirl flies off and does a few cartwheels in the sky, smiling when she hears the little girl laughing happily. She feels light, lighter than she’s been in months.

After the balcony conversation, Lena hadn’t reached out to her again.

After several more intervention efforts made by Alex and the rest of the Superfriends, Supergirl had simply told them that they were co-workers and that personal issues should not be brought up while they worked together.

After that conversation, Alex had tried coming to her apartment that same evening, only to find that she was not in fact there and that Supergirl was patrolling the streets for the night.

Even Nia had tried a few times, begging her to come back and work at CatCo, asking for help on articles, bringing up pitches she thought Supergirl might be interested in.

She had almost fallen for it a few times before remembering herself and shutting down the conversation.

She has a brief thought that maybe being Kara would be easier. Kara has friends, family, people who care about her.

But then again, she doesn’t deserve that anymore, does she? Not after everything she’s done, after everything her family’s done.

She doesn’t deserve happiness and friends who care about her if her family didn’t get that, if all she can do is hurt the people around her.

She thinks about changing her crest, before brushing the idea away. It doesn’t stand for her family, not really, and it means something to the people of National City anyway.

The sun is bright as she patrols the city.

Supergirl spends less and less time at her apartment, choosing to patrol the streets over everything else.

She doesn’t sleep these days.

Instead, when night arrives and she finishes her 25 circles around the city, she lands on the roof of her apartment right as the sun is rising and watches the sky turn shades of pinks and oranges and reds that remind her of Krypton.

Once the sun finishes rising and the sky is blue again, she goes back down into her apartment, checks herself in the mirror, ignores the increasingly dark bags below her eyes, and jumps back out of the window to do her morning patrol.

(Maybe if she can save enough people, maybe if she can fail fewer people, maybe, maybe it’ll be enough to make up for her family’s sins, for her failure.)

Supergirl fails again on a Saturday.

An alien comes through the city, tearing apart buildings and people, and Supergirl fails.

She matches him punch for punch at first, but then her body starts taking more damage, and she can’t throw her punches hard enough or dodge fast enough and the news reporters are silent with shock as they watch him beat her into the concrete, until she can’t fight, can’t stand, can’t even stay awake.

As she sees the blue sky fade into black, her eyelids drooping, she apologizes again. She failed again. She failed everyone.

She failed National City, the people living in it, who had always looked up to her as a hero, having to watch the same hero being beat into pulp against the concrete.

I’m sorry.

She failed Alex, Alex who tried her best to be a good sister, Alex who tried to save Kara, Alex who was better than Kara ever told her.

I’m sorry.

She failed Lena, Lena who always believed in her, Lena who was unyieldingly good, Lena who she hurt beyond repair, who she betrayed time and time again.

I’m sorry.

Kara wakes up to her mother’s voice.

“Karanizu.”

She opens her eyes, and instead of the glaring yellow she’s gotten used to, she sees the warm red again, the red of Krypton.

And then she turns to the side, feels warm hands on her face, and she sees Ieiu.

“Ieiu,” she breathes, her hands coming up to rest against Alura’s hands, making sure she’s really there, that this isn’t just another dream.

“Kara,” she smiles, and then Kara breaks and cries.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whimpers, clutching at Alura’s robes, only to sob even harder when they don’t rip under her fists.

“I missed you so much, i kir ghim,” she hears Alura whisper against her hair, and she holds her together.

“I missed you, too, Ieiu.”

“Is my name— our name, it’s… it’s wrong now, isn’t it?”

Alura turns her head to study Kara curiously.

“What makes you say that?”

“The Zor-El’s, we did so many things wrong. It’s not… it’s not a name to be proud of anymore.”

“Oh, Kara, it’s your name. You should be proud of it no matter what your family has done with it.”

And then, Alura continues, and Kara feels herself freeze in place.

“After all, Lena isn’t bad simply because she’s a Luthor, is she?”

Kara turns slowly, staring in disbelief.

“How do you…? You know about Lena?”

“The Luthor my little bird fell in love with, of course I do,” Alura states, an easy smile on her face.

Kara doesn’t even try to deny it, burying her face in her palms to stave off the fresh tears.

“I messed everything up,” she whispers.

“But you can still go back and fix it,” Alura notes.

“What?”

“You can still go back… if you want to.”

“I… I can go back?” Kara fights off the hope, because if she hopes again then she might be let down and she doesn’t know if she can recover from it again—

“Of course you can, Kara. You’re not dead, not really. You flatlined on the operating table, that’s why you’re here, but you can still go back. Your Earth-sister, Alex, she’s fighting for you, i kir ghim. It may feel like a long time here, but it’s only been a few seconds since you flatlined. The longer you stay, though—”

“—the less of a chance I have to go back,” Kara whispers to herself.

She thinks about it, really thinks about it. What does she have left on Earth? She doesn’t have any more responsibility as Supergirl if she leaves, but, but—

She still has people, she has people who love her, people she loves, and she can go back to them.

She turns back towards Alura.

“But what about y—“

“I’ll still be here, waiting for you. After all, where else can I go?”

Alura smiles, and it’s tinged with sadness, but she pushes Kara back anyway.

“Go back and fix everything.”

Kara smiles back, just as sad, her eyes glistening.

She wraps Alura in a hug before she steps hesitantly back, towards the darkness from where she came.

“I promise I’ll make it right.”

Kara wakes up under the sun lamps.

“Alex?”

Alex wakes up from beside her, having nodded off after too many hours of staying up and monitoring Kara.

“Kara, you’re back,” Alex breathes, her hands moving forward before flinching back.

Kara winces internally and is about to tell Alex it’s okay when she sees Lena.

Lena is there, too.

Lena is there.

Lena, in a pair of DEO-issued sweatpants and a sweater, her hair curling down over her shoulders as she snores into her own palm.

She shakes herself a little bit, looks back at Alex, and then pulls Alex down, sobbing into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispers as Alex soothes her, brushing away her tears and hugging her even tighter.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she hears whispered back into her hair.

Once Alex leaves to get Kara some water, not just the ice she has next to her, Kara sits in the silence, closing her eyes again.

When she wakes back up from her nap, she sees Lena standing over her.

“Kara?”

“Lena,” she breathes out, staring into Lena’s eyes.

“Kara.” And then Lena is sobbing and Kara pulls her up onto the bed, ignoring the sudden pang she feels in her ribs, to prevent Lena from collapsing onto the ground.

“I thought you were gone,” Lena whispers, and it’s so sad and small and Kara feels everything come rushing back to her in a tsunami of guilt.

“I’m so so sorry. I was stupid and I tried to push you away because I was scared of getting hurt and if I hurt you first then you couldn’t hurt me anymore and I couldn’t lose you because I love you and I’m so so—“

Kara pauses rambling as her words catch up to her.

Lena stiffens in her arms, leans back out of Kara’s reach, looking up at Kara strangely.

“You love me?”

“I... I do. I love you. I’m in love with you. I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. You don’t have to… you… I’m sorry.”

Kara looks back down, watches her fingers tangle against the bedsheets, crumpling them and then smoothing them out carefully.

“I love you, too,” she hears.

She looks back up so fast she thinks she might’ve cracked her neck.

“You do? You… you love me?” Her own voice sounds disbelieving, but then again, why would Lena Luthor love her?

“Of course I do, you idiot,” Lena laughs, wiping her tears away.

“But you… you’re… you’re so special and I’m just… I’m just Kara,” Kara finally stops gesturing between the two of them, and her hands land back in her lap uselessly.

“You are not just Kara. You’re so special, you know that? You’re kind and hopeful and you believed in me when no one else did,” Lena lists, counting the reasons off on her fingers.

“Yeah, but… but I lied to you. I hurt you and I betrayed you and it was me who did all that.”

“We all make mistakes Kara. I made a mistake when I decided to push you away, and you made a mistake when you pushed me away,” Lena explains simply.

“But I—“

Kara’s cut off by the feeling of Lena’s lips on hers. It takes her a moment to register what’s happening, and when she catches on, Lena has already pulled back.

“Did you not…? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ha—“

This time it’s Kara who cuts Lena off, pulling her back in for another kiss, a proper one.

Lena’s lips are soft and sweet and Lena tastes like… like Lena. Kara doesn’t think she can live without this taste ever again.

This time Kara pulls back first, panting as she tries to pull air into her lungs. She had forgotten that her powers were blown out and her ribs rattle as she tries to breathe in and out. She grimaces, and Lena immediately calls for Alex, worried.

“No, no, I’m okay,” she reassures them, clutching her side.

“I knew the sun lamps wouldn’t work,” Alex sighs, pushing them away from the bed.

“You need to stop overworking yourself, missy, and you need to take a proper nap,” Alex instructs sternly.

“And you,” she turns towards Lena, “need to stop tiring out my baby sister.”

She smiles at Lena and pulls her into a hug.

“She couldn’t have made a better choice, though, Luthor.”

Lena hugs back, smiling the whole while.

“But, I’m serious, you need to stop tiring her out. She really does need sleep.”

Lena nods obediently and turns back to Kara.

“You take a nap, I’ll be right outside, okay?”

She plants one last kiss on Kara’s cheek and walks out of the room.

Kara finally lets herself surrender to the embrace of sleep. She has Lena now, she has Alex, she has people who love her, people she loves, and they’re all waiting for her.

They’re all waiting for her, and they aren’t going anywhere.

Kara smiles and the world fades again.

She can finally sleep easy now. She can finally sleep now that she knows everyone is waiting, everyone is staying.

“My name is Kara Zor-El.”

She sees Ieiu smiling proudly, Alex tearing up, Lena laughing happily.

“And I’m a hero.”

Chapter Text

Kara’s lip curls in distaste as she stares at the glass of amber liquid.

Lena sighs as she sits back down on the couch, picking up the glass and taking a sip.

“How do you even drink that?!” Kara finally blurts, her question filling the otherwise silent office.

Lena raises a single eyebrow and Kara feels herself melt under the intensity of the gaze.

“It’s good! Try it,” Lena insists, holding the glass out to Kara.

Kara ignores the fact that her heart is beating a thousand times a minute at the thought of drinking from a glass Lena had already drank from.

She cautiously takes the glass, holding it carefully but still warily.

She hears Lena laugh and looks up, a little bit confused.

“It’s not going to bite you, Kara.” Lena voice is husky and low, dripping with something and Kara feels herself flush even more.

She holds it up carefully, turns it so that the lipstick mark is on the other side of the glass and takes a sip. She doesn’t even get a chance to swallow half a mouthful before she pulls the glass away from her face and chokes and coughs into her other hand.

“Oh my god it’s so strong,” she chokes out, still coughing.

Lena laughs as she takes the glass away from Kara, setting it down on the table. Except, by the time she leans back again, Kara is still coughing and she immediately begins to worry.

“Kara? Are you okay?” Lena’s voice is tentative and Kara feels her heart swell at how much Lena cares about her.

“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine now,” Kara finishes after coughing mid-sentence.

Lena carefully takes another sip of the whiskey without looking and Kara almost starts choking again when she notices Lena’s lips touch the exact spot her lips had been a mere moment ago.

When Lena notices how Kara’s eyes are glued to where her mouth is, she looks up and smirks.

“My eyes are up here,” she husks, smirking into the glass as Kara follows the curve of her lips.

Kara immediately squeaks, caught red-handed, and almost jumps through the ceiling before snapping her eyes up to Lena’s amused expression.

She muffles a groan and places her face in her palms, trying to rub away the insistent blush that she’s beginning to think is permanent whenever she’s around Lena.

“Lena,” she whines, “that was mean!”

Lena chuckles into the glass again, taking another sip, and Kara’s eyes are drawn back down to blood-red lips until she shakes herself out of her intense focus.

She opens her mouth to complain about the taste of the whiskey again but her brain chooses that exact time to think about Lena’s lips and how she wants to kiss them and instead what comes out it.

“I wonder what your lips would taste like.”

The world comes to a standstill, Lena frozen in place as Kara finally catches up with what she’s said.

“Wait, that’s not what I meant! I mean I would mean it and I would be curious but that’s not—!” Kara squeaks again and buries her face in her hands, too embarrassed to even begin to look at Lena.

She feels Lena’s soft hands tilting her chin up to look at her, but before she can say anything to try and explain or apologize or anything, Lena kisses her.

Lena kisses her. Lena is kissing her.

It takes her another moment to process the touch, but before Lena can pull back, Kara leans in, her hand seeking purchase in Lena’s hair, carding through and scratching her scalp lightly.

Lena moans into her mouth; it’s soft and quiet but Kara hears it and her entire body lights up.

Lena pulls back for air before Kara can do anything particularly embarrassing that she’ll have no way to explain away and Kara just barely manages to keep herself from leaning forward to chase after Lena’s lips.

“I actually think whiskey tastes pretty neat,” is the first thing she says, and she mentally slaps herself because why can’t she say anything right?

But then Lena is chuckling and then laughing and trying to catch her breath again and Kara joins in and soon they’re both running out of breath.

“I can’t believe my lack of mouth-brain coordination ended up with us kissing.”

Lena laughs again before it trails off.

“You didn’t regret it, did you?” Her question is tentative and Kara’s chest aches for Lena.

“No, no, of course not! I would never regret anything with you, Lena,” she answers as earnestly as possible.

It seems to work because Lena relaxes again, her smile soft and sweet.

But then her smile morphs back into a smirk and she holds up the glass of whiskey again.

“You want another sip?”

Kara recoils so fast she almost falls off the other end of the couch.

Chapter Text

“Lift your arms,” Lena instructs firmly.

Kara lifts her arms up as high as they can go, wincing slightly at the tug she feels and the way her ribs pinch.

“This might hurt a little bit,” Lena whispers, her fingers grasping at the lower hem of Kara’s hospital gown, bunched up at her waist.

The momentary, barely-there brush of her fingers on Kara’s back makes Kara shiver, heat spreading from the point of contact, but then the gown is coming up and over her head and she bites her lip to stifle the groan of pain.

Kara sits on the bed patiently, resting her arms carefully and placing her hands on her legs.

It’s cold in the room and without her powers, she shivers at the temperature.

Lena notices, of course she does, but she can’t do anything about it either.

“Sorry,” she whispers, staring intently at the bruises and open cuts marring Kara’s back and frowning.

“They didn’t stitch everything up,” Kara explains, “I didn’t want them to.”

She can almost see the disappointment Lena must be leveling at her right now, but she doesn’t turn around either.

Lena lets out a quiet sigh and it sounds defeated.

“You have to be more careful next time, Kara, please.” Lena’s voice sounds desperate and Kara clenches her hand into a fist to keep it from reach up to rub away the ache she suddenly feels in her chest.

“I… I can’t lose you… not again,” Lena whispers, sniffling quietly.

“I… I know. I just… I couldn’t not do something. There was this little girl and she was just standing there and the alien was running towards her and I didn’t have enough time to fly her away or punch the alien away so I just… I just stood in front of her. I couldn’t… I’m… I’m so sorry, Lena.” Kara is crying, too, her clenched fist unclenching and coming up to wipe away the tears.

She remembers the helpless expression on the little girl’s face, the way she had smiled a strained smile down at her as she shielded her with her cape, her back turned to the alien. She doesn’t remember anything else except for the way the little girl had run away fearfully as Kara’s strained smile morphed into a grimace. She had started wailing at some point and then all that was left was pain and then black.

She feels Lena come around to her side of the bed, sitting down beside her quietly.

“Can you… can you promise me… to come back?” Lena’s voice sounds so hopeful and desperate and when Kara turns, Lena is staring straight into her eyes and Kara can’t not promise Lena.

“I…” Kara still has to think it over, closing her eyes and allowing her mind to wander. She thinks about what their lives would be like if she held her promise, if she made it and kept it, imagines a life where Lena dances around the kitchen with her in the morning and Kara makes her coffee to wake her up, imagines a life where Kara can love her to the fullest, where Lena doesn’t have to worry because Kara promises to come back.

She imagines Lena sitting up on the beach as she swims through the water, imagines pulling Lena into the waves with her, the way Lena would complain and shriek, but would laugh anyway. She imagines sitting on their rooftop at night, Lena tucked into her side as Kara wraps her cape around her and points out the stars, tells Lena the stories of each one and remembers how different the night sky on Krypton looked, before realizing that it doesn’t hurt as much, not anymore, not with Lena by her side.

She imagines kissing Lena for the first time, the bloom of warmth in her chest, the soft press as Lena holds her close, unwilling to let her go. How Lena will look when she pulls back for air, her cheeks flushed bright red and her eyes sparkling with joy, glowing with love.

She imagines… and then she opens her eyes again, looks Lena directly in the eyes.

“I promise.”

Chapter Text

Lena sniffles quietly, not wanting to wake Kara as she slips out of bed carefully.

Kara is so warm and every part of her protests at having to leave her side, but she has to get to work, even though the pounding headache from her cold is already setting in.

The covers shift and with it, so does Kara, moving around, turning her head, and licking her lips before her breath evens back out.

Lena creeps quietly into the closet room and quickly gets dressed, slipping on a dress as quickly as possible; she doesn’t really have the time or energy to put on a suit.

She slips into a warm coat, trying to layer as much as possible without appearing sick as she rushes out of the house, purse in hand.

She quickly slips into the backseat of the car and Thomas, her driver, gets her to L-Corp quickly, bidding her good morning when she first settles in her seat and then goodbye as she steps out of the car.

Lena thanks him quietly, slipping away and sneezing quietly as she walks into the building.

The elevator ride is long, and she taps her foot impatiently throughout the entirety of it, impatient to finally get to her desk so she can sit back down.

She rushes past Jess’s desk, a sigh of relief slipping past her lips as she realizes that Jess is probably out on a coffee run or in the bathroom. She pushes through the double doors to her office and makes her way in, settling on her chair as comfortably as she can while slipping out of her heels.

She sighs when she’s finally settled and opens her computer, already dreading the conferences and meetings she has scheduled and the work she has piled up for her.

It’s going to be a long day.

Lena sniffles again before sneezing and then blowing her nose. It’s cold in her office and she has her coat on and a blanket piled on top of that as she lays on the couch. She’s still shivering, and it gets even worse when her balcony door suddenly pops open.

The cool breeze rushes in and she curls up into a little ball, trying to curl up into the blanket and disappear.

She hears the long strides of someone stepping into the room, hears the door swing shut and the breeze stop before a glorious warmth settles beside her on the couch.

“Kara?” Her voice is croaky and hoarse and she clears her throat.

“Lena, why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” Kara’s concerned voice filters through the blanket above her as Kara hovers next to her, exuding warmth that Lena shifts towards.

“I needed to go to work,” she explains, voice still hoarse.

“Work can wait, Lee. Let’s go home. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Lena can’t even find it in her to argue with Kara, simply nodding her head—can Kara even see that?—and settling back into her blanket.

She can tell as soon as Kara leaves because the room suddenly grows that much colder, and she suddenly remembers that the blanket isn’t very helpful anyway.

Kara returns after a few long minutes only to find Lena shivering, the entire blanket trembling with her.

Kara carefully gathers Lena in her arms, still in her Supergirl suit, wraps the blanket tighter around Lena, and walks outside. Once she’s out on the balcony, she checks one last time to make sure Lena is secure in her arms before leaping off the balcony and into the air currents.

The flight is steady, and Lena tucks her head even deeper into the blankets, pressing forward into the heat radiating off of Kara and finally relaxing.

Kara gets back to their now-shared penthouse, touching down on the balcony and walking past the several plants she put on it. She walks through the penthouse, passing by pictures of the two of them, of them with the Superfriends, things that Lena never would’ve had before, like random throw pillows and bright paintings of the sunrises Kara had done herself.

The hallway leading to their bedroom isn’t empty, either. There are framed pictures hanging along the walls, but Kara strides past them, walking to their bedroom, bumping the door open with her hip, and then moving in to set down the bundle that holds Lena onto the bed.

Lena finally makes an appearance out of the blanket she’s wrapped in, her head popping up past the edge of the blanket. Kara frowns at her state, hair mussed, cheeks flushed, and she’s clearly feverish.

“Oh, Lena. Let me get you into some pajamas.”

Lena curls up into a tighter ball, but Kara clicks her tongue.

“No, you can’t just sleep in this. You have to sleep in something more comfortable. If you don’t get up, I’ll just rip the entire thing off,” she scolds, already bundling Lena out of bed.

Lena pouts, but nothing can change Kara’s mind.

She carefully slips out of her clothes and waits for Kara to hand her some pajama.

Once she’s dressed in PJs, she goes back to bed, curling up under the covers.

She knows the headache will come back and soon she’ll be even more sniffly, but for the time being, she’s content curling up next to Kara.

Kara watches on, amused, as Lena shifts towards her. Kara’s warmth makes some of the chills ebb away and she snuggles into her arms as sleep finally comes.

“I’ll be right here when you wake up,” is the last thing she hears before she falls asleep, breathing in sync with Kara’s calming heartbeat.

Chapter Text

The first thing Kara realizes when she wakes up is that she doesn’t remember.

She searches and sifts through her mind, trying to find anything that’ll tell her about herself, about her life, about what happened before she got here.

There’s nothing.

She glances around the room she’s in next. It’s concrete, lined with… lead? She ignores that, casting her eyes about the room. It’s blank, nothing in it that could help her deduce where she is.

She tries to sit up and turn around to see what’s behind her only to find out she’s bolted down.

She looks down at her wrists and legs, realizing with rising panic that the cuffs are heavy-duty and made with titanium. The panic grows and grows until it swallows her whole, and she’s close to hyperventilating when her first memory comes back.

It’s a warm voice. One she doesn’t recognize but she knows is familiar.

“Breathe, Kara, breathe. Here, follow me. In… out… in… out… that’s right, good job.”

She follows the memory’s instructions, closing her eyes and seeing a flash of red behind her eyelids.

It’s hair, her mind tells her.

Red hair, a soothing voice that suggests familiarity, family.

She jolts at the realization.

She has family. That means there’s still hope. Maybe whoever this red-haired person is can find her, maybe she (suddenly she knows the voice belongs to a woman) can find her, find Kara.

She suddenly feels something shift, looks down at the IV in her arm only to see an unknown, electric blue liquid being pushed into her veins.

The world fades to black.

Green. That’s all she can see.

Green, exploding high up into the sky, filling the air, scraping at her lungs as she struggles to breathe.

It’s green, and then there’s black.

She tastes the gravel on her tongue, hears the crunch of it beside her ear as someone kneels down beside her, hears Alex yelling for her in the distance.

The person beside her fishes the comms out of her ear, drops them to the gravel, crushes it below their foot.

“Sorry about this, Supergirl.” It’s a male’s voice, saccharine and fake, and Kara already knows who it is.

Lex.

The world goes away.

The second time, Kara wakes up to the sound of a man’s voice.

She doesn’t recognize it, only hears the warm tenor of it, feels herself relax, the tension easing off her shoulders.

“Oh, Kara. You can’t imagine just how happy we are to have found you,” she hears him say, somewhere behind her.

“Who are you?” is all she can say in return, trying in vain to twist her head and see who it is that’s standing behind her.

“I’m here to rescue you.”

The cuffs come off, sawed away by a steady hand.

The man helps her up and off the table, moving her arm around his shoulders so she can stand more easily.

“Thank you.” Her own voice is hoarse after days of no use and she licks her lips, suddenly realizing how dry her mouth is.

The man seems to realize her problem, too, and fishes a bottle of water out of his bag.

“Here, drink this. But slowly,” he warns as he hands the bottle to her and zips his bag back up.

Kara slowly and carefully drains the entire bottle as the man watches. She hands him the empty bottle once she’s finished, unsure of what to do with it before he takes it from her and tucks it into the side of the bag.

“I’m Lex. You probably don’t remember me, but we’re best friends. I’m so glad I finally found you, Kara.”

Alex is shouting at Kara, pleading for her not to go in.

“Don’t go in there! It’s too dangerous, Kara! There are too many bombs!”

Kara ignores all of it and flies into the building.

She uses her x-ray vision and sees a little girl cowering in one of the storage closets and rushes towards it.

She holds her hand out to the little girl, smiles at her as soothingly as she can.

“It’s okay now. I’ll take you to your family.”

She flies the girl down to the ground safely before flying back up. She sweeps the floor again, searching for anyone else.

It’s empty.

She sighs in relief, and just as she’s about to fly back out of the window, she hears the barely-there beep of something.

And then it’s all up in flames.

And all she sees is green.

Lex walks by her side, humming a tune as he jumps over the fallen branches in the forest.

Kara is less excited and trudges along at his side, confused and lost.

Lex seems to notice and slows down, matching her pace.

“What do you remember?”

It’s quiet for a few moments as Kara tries to remember.

“I… I don’t know. I don’t remember anything. It’s just… it’s all gone.”

She waves her arms around uselessly and almost hits one of the trees around them.

“I can tell you about it if you’d like?” Lex offers offhandedly.

“You… you know?”

“Of course, I do, Kara. I’m your best friend, how could I not?”

He grins at her and Kara can see something in his smile, something familiar that makes her want to trust him. It’s a flash of something, and for a moment she sees red-painted lips curve into the exact same smile, dark hair falling behind the faceless person.

She blinks away the flash and sees that Lex is already 5 steps ahead of her.

She quickly jogs forward to catch up and a flash of her sprinting, the world passing by in slow motion as she smiles at the man in a red suit next to her, appears for a brief moment.

“First of all, you’re a hero. You’re a superhero with powers. You have superspeed, heat vision, freeze breath, you can fly, you also have x-ray vision and a bunch of other powers. But, you also have an alter ego by the name of Kara Danvers. Your real name is Kara Zor-El and you’re from a planet called Krypton. It was destroyed which was why you had to be sent to Earth in a pod. You first met me in an interview if you’ll believe it.”

Lex smiles to himself, almost as if he’s remembering the day they met. Kara briefly wonders if mind-reading is one of her powers before Lex continues.

“You came in for an interview as your normal day job, a reporter from CatCo, and you weren’t like any other interviewer I’d ever met. Everyone else was fake, ready to tear me apart, but you told the truth. You always dug deep, asked the right questions, figured things out even when I didn’t tell you outright. I was scared to let you in at first. I was scared of how deep you’d dig, how far you’d go to find the truth. But, you always stopped at my limit. You always backed off when it got to be too much. But, I really liked to bring you to galas I would host. Everyone else was fake and only wanted to talk to me since I was CEO and I had money, but you would always fend them off with questions about their past.”

Lex chuckles to himself before looking over at Kara.

“You would always dig into their pasts before we went. You asked for a guest list every single time, and every single time you would find something incriminating. Then, when we were at the gala and they would come over to harass me, you would come over and ask them some perfectly-worded question about something they’d done that was clearly illegal and they would just pale and back off.”

He looks back at their path when Kara returns his smile. She remembers this, a little bit. The story sounds familiar, but she can’t remember any details.

“We were really good friends and you trusted me with your super secret.” He grins over at her and she can’t help but chuckle at the joke.

“But, then, my sister came into the picture. She came in and kicked me out of my own company, renamed the whole thing, and then she made it her own personal goal to get rid of Supergirl because of your connections to me.”

Lex’s expression is darker now and Kara can feel the anger and frustration radiating off of him.

“She took everything away from me, even you. She must’ve kidnapped you after the last battle we had. I couldn’t find you for days. I’m so sorry, Kara. I should’ve known better, should’ve known she would keep you here. But,” and Lex has a victorious grin on his face now, “she would never expect us to stay in this bunker.”

He points at the ground, and with a start, Kara realizes that it’s actually a trapdoor. It’s so realistic that even the grass growing on it is real.

Kara watches carefully as Lex makes a set of clicks with his tongue, watches, mesmerized, as a code pad pops up and out of the ground. Lex waits for it to rise up to his hand before punching in a passcode Kara isn’t focused enough to remember. It’s 15 digits long, and the numbers she does catch are quickly slipping from her still-drowsy mind.

324867… 3248… 32…

Kara gives up trying to remember the rest of the code and simply follows Lex down into the darkness, the trapdoor shutting above them.

As soon as they’re engulfed in complete darkness, a set of lights turns on, and Kara follows Lex down the long hall, the lights in front of them flickering on as the ones behind them flicker off.

Lex finally walks into a well-lit room, the door to the hallway sliding shut behind Kara.

“This is it!” Lex announces, opening his arms and presenting the room to Kara.

Kara notices several beakers on a worktable, something that looks like a torch, a blackboard and boxes of chalk, a microscope, and several other scientific tools she doesn’t quite know the name of.

The lab is connected to another lead-lined room that Lex quickly tells her is off-limits. Immediately, her mind begins whirring about all the things that might be in it, but Lex simply explains that the weapon in there is dangerous even to her, but it might be the only chance they have at defeating his sister.

“Of course, it’s only going to be our last resort,” he swears before looking Kara in the eyes.

“I would never hurt you on purpose. Never.”

Kara nods and lets him show her to their rooms, mentally trying to piece where the warm voice and the red-suited man belong in this world she’s supposed to have lived in.

Once Lex is gone and she’s settled on the bed, laying so that she’s staring at the bland, gray ceiling, a far cry from the warm light that had haloed both of the people in her memories, she realizes they don’t.

So then, who’s telling the truth?

The city is up in flames.

All Kara hears is screaming and shouting and crying and she can’t tell where it’s coming from anymore.

Is she still in National City or is she back on Krypton? Are the flames rising from her school or from the buildings of the city? That scream, who does it belong to? Is it her teacher?

Everything is red, and then she hears the distinct ticking of a bomb. Another one?

She turns towards the building, focuses in on it, and then Alex comes on over her comms.

Kara spends the next few weeks in the bunker helping Lex with his experiments.

Her memories from Krypton are mostly intact, so she remembers everything she was taught, but not the end of Krypton. It feels… selective, almost, which memories she still has.

When she brings it up, Lex only studies her curiously before remarking that his sister does tend to bend things to her will, but that he’ll try everything in his power to help her get her memories back.

She doesn’t mention the ones she’s already gotten back, the names.

The red-haired woman’s name is Alex, it turns out, and she remembers someone else, a dark-haired woman that she’s also seen in her memories. This one isn’t like the flash of someone she saw when Lex smiled. Her eyes are there, for one, and she sees Alex introducing her to Kelly Olsen.

She can’t quite place why Alex would introduce her of all people to her girlfriend, but it at least tells her that they’re close.

All the people she remembers are warm and kind, nothing like the bunker she’s living in.

When she brings it up to Lex, he only smiles sadly, shakes his head, and tells her that they had to leave the city because of his sister. She had framed him for a crime he didn’t commit and the city had turned its back on him.

He doesn’t mention the people in her memories, so Kara doesn’t bring them up.

The lab, it turns out, is much more complex than what Kara first saw when she entered the bunker. There are several rooms with much more advanced tools and there’s even a decontamination room that leads to a sterile environment in which Lex sometimes takes some of her blood samples.

When she asks what the samples are for, he explains carefully that he’s trying to create a substance that could possibly defeat his sister without harming her, and Kara feels a strange warmth fluttering in her. She doesn’t remember anyone else, but Lex has been so kind, even though he knows Kara remembers next to nothing. She takes the explanation at face value and thanks him.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember anything. I wish I remembered enough to be a better friend.”

Lex simply smiles at her.

“It’s okay, Kara. You’ve saved me more than enough times. It’s time I help you.”

Kara suddenly gets another flash.

Red lips, curling around words spoken with the lighter tenor of a woman.

“You’re always the one saving me, Kara. Let me save you this time.”

By the time she’s blinked away the… whatever it is, Lex is gone again.

She stares at the blank walls and wonders why her memories are so bright and colorful.

As Kara flies over the city, she watches in horror as the flames rise higher and higher.

She flies a little lower, over the roof of one of the engulfed buildings, and the warmth of the flames lick at her heels.

She flies back up so fast she becomes light-headed.

There’s too much of it.

Too much fire.

Too much red.

One day, Kara breaks one of Lex’s rules.

The curiosity overwhelms her, and she thinks, well, Lex is out, anyway, a peek won’t hurt, right? It’s not like he’ll know.

So, she sneaks into the lead-lined room. The room Lex had forbid from her since the first day.

As soon as she steps foot inside of it, she feels the burn of pain.

She sees the glow of green in the corner as she folds in on herself, hunching over on the ground and heaving. Nothing comes up, but the nausea doesn’t abate, either.

Then, suddenly, she gets another flash. A memory. She’s sure of it.

The same person she had seen flashes of when Lex had smiled, when Lex had promised her, standing over her now in her full glory.

Kara feels herself look around, sees the ice-blue walls of… somewhere.

The same burning pain is there, too. She remembers it.

Remembers the burn of the poison flooding through her veins, the cold of the ice seeping through her now-weak skin.

She looks back up at the woman, sees the resemblance in Lex, and the pieces come together. The red lips, the eyes that look so much like Lex’s—but, they’re gray, nothing like the green of Lex’s eyes.

This woman, Lex’s sister, is the one they’re fighting.

Kara can see why.

She’s looking down at Kara with hatred, revulsion, and the anger burning in her dark, dark eyes makes Kara flinch back.

She doesn’t want to be burned.

And then Lex’s sister turns on her heel and leaves.

And Kara is left alone in the dark, cold, emptiness of the icy palace.

When she snaps out of the memory, the pain is still there. She feels the rush of the poison through her veins, the burn of the green coursing through her.

It takes all of her remaining energy to bear crawl her way out of the room.

As soon as the door slides shut behind her—thank god for Lex’s motion-sensing doors—she passes out on the floor.

She wakes up an hour later.

The bunker is still silent which means Lex is still out and she sighs in relief.

Her muscles are sore from the effort of her dragging herself out of the room, but she pushes herself up, stumbles away from the lead-lined room, and vows to never go back.

That night when they’re having dinner together—it's stew again, made from the rabbits Kara catches in the woods and the mushrooms that Lex identifies as safe—Kara brings up the memory tentatively.

“Lex, um,” her voice sounds small and she clears her throat.

“Please don’t be mad, but, I went into the lead room and then I saw the green light and I remembered something.”

Kara is looking down at her bowl, watching the floating chunks of meat simmering in the still-warm broth.

If she had bothered to look up, she would’ve seen the way Lex had tensed, the way he had opened his mouth to berate her, but she hadn’t, and so she keeps talking.

“I remembered your sister. She was… she was using the green stuff on me. She was… she hurt me. I could feel it, even in my memories. We were in this ice palace place and I was trapped and she was using the green stuff on me. And she… I could see it in her eyes, Lex… she hated me.”

She looks up now, carefully studying Lex’s face for any signs of anger or disappointment. All she sees is sadness and reassurance.

“I’m so sorry I never told you. I knew how much it would hurt you and you’ve already been through so much. I should’ve known you would remember.”

He places his hand over hers, firm and grounding.

After a few beats of silence, Lex sighs, heavy and sad, and begins to explain.

“Her name is Lena. She took over LuthorCorp and changed it to L-Corp, getting rid of all the projects and inventions I had been working on and taking over my spot as CEO. We were all friends before that. You were friends with her at one point, and you were still okay after she kicked me off, but then you revealed that you were an alien and she… she flipped out. She got mad at you, got mad at me, got mad at everyone, and she went mad. She locked you in that ice prison in the Fortress of Solitude and used kryptonite on you—that’s the green stuff. It’s not natural, and she was the one who made it first, to hurt you. She wanted to make you hurt because you were an alien. I took you to another bunker to keep you safe, you have to understand that. I didn’t have any other choice.”

Lex’s voice is so earnest that Kara can’t help but believe him.

“I guess she found out where you were and she kidnapped you, wiped your memories, probably to try and convince you to go to her side, to fight against me, but I just want you to remember that we were friends first, okay? She doesn’t actually want to be your friend. She wants to hurt you. In fact, she already did, and more than just the kryptonite you remember, too. She made a clone of you to fight you to the death, but you defeated the clone and got away. She also made your family forget who you were. Your sister, Alex, she hates you now because of Lena. Lena took everything from m—us. She took everything away, and I’m going to make sure that we get it back,” Lex promises, holding her hands in his.

“I promise.”

Kara nods once, twice.

“Okay.”

Kara suddenly perks up when she hears the almost-silent ticking of a bomb, flies towards it, and carries it to the ocean just barely in the nick of time.

She taps on her comms, relays her success, only to hear the orders and shouts of the agents, the screaming and crying of the civilians.

She flies back to the edge of the city just in time to hear another boom.

She watches in horror as the flames rise higher and higher.

Kara keeps getting new memories.

She gets memories of a woman, Eliza, raising her, sees Alex again, knows now that Alex is her sister. She hears Alex call Eliza mom, knows that Eliza is her adoptive mother.

She remembers other people, too. Kelly Olsen is a therapist her sister is dating, warm and kind in her own right, but also always the mature one in their group of friends.

She sees someone called Nia, remembers slowly that Nia is a reporter, working at CatCo right alongside Kara. She also remembers that Nia is Dreamer, fighting by her side in battle.

She remembers Brainy, here from the future. James and J’onn, too.

She sees Lena in her memories, too. Lena is always at game nights, smiling or laughing or simply sipping a glass of wine. Kara can see the stormy gray of her eyes, the way sometimes something glints in them, deep and deadly when Lena gets lost in thought, before it disappears as someone calls her name.

Kara can feel the memory of her own dread, of the weight of the secret. She wishes she could go back in time and tell herself not to tell Lena.

She gets a memory of when she tells Lena, too. Once.

She sees Lena, standing in her maroon dress, turning around to surprise Kara.

She feels herself breathe in and out, turn around, hears the words spilling out of her mouth, sees the way Lena reels back, the way her eyes fill with tears, betrayal.

She shakes away the memory before it can get any further, firmly locking it away into the dark corners of her mind, hoping that maybe with time, it’ll disappear.

It lingers in the shadows even as she recalls other moments.

After a while, she starts to realize that Lex doesn’t show up in her memories ever, and it strikes her as strange.

After all, if Lex was her best friend, shouldn’t he be in her memories, too?

When she asks Lex about it while they’re working on a new weapon, she notices the slight stiffening of his spine, the way he pauses for a moment before standing up straight.

“I was afraid of this. She must’ve targeted me and wiped me completely from your memories.”

He turns around then and Kara sees the regret and guilt shining in his eyes.

“She can… she can do that?”

“Yes. We made a lot of very advanced tech together, but she must’ve made this one on her own time. She probably used it to target all of the memories with me and wipe me completely from every memory. There are a few I can probably fill in for you. There was a game night that J’onn was at, I was behind you in the kitchen, pouring wine for everyone. You probably wouldn’t have known anyway. She must’ve wiped me completely.”

Lex gets lost in thought, muttering to himself on how to reverse it, before shaking his head.

“I’m so sorry, Kara. You might not ever remember any of me in your memories.”

Lex bows his head, his voice small when he speaks again.

“I hope you can still believe me.”

Kara rushes to reassure him.

“No, no, of course! Everything you’ve told me matches up. I just… I can’t believe your own sister would do that,” Kara frowns.

“Yes, well, she’s never liked me very much, even when you two were still friends.”

“Well. Now you have me. And I’ll always stand by you,” Kara declares.

Lex grins up at her widely, and Kara sees a glint of something in his eyes.

“Thank you, Kara.”

“Always.”

Kara flies away from the balcony of L-Corp when she hears Alex yell at her to hurry again.

She walks into a tense and quiet DEO and is suddenly on high alert.

“There’s a bomb planted in the city. We don’t know how big it is yet, but everyone, stay alert.”

Kara salutes J’onn before flying off, scouring the city as well as she can with all the other metal things and clicking, ticking, and beeping sounds.

Then, she hears it.

Kara is woken up by a loud thud from above the bunker and Lex rushing down the hall.

“They’ve found us,” is all he says before he takes off, the shields of his suit coming on.

Kara quickly changes into the suit he’d specially designed for her. There are streaks of gray running in lines along her suit and the metal plates on her shoulders and legs makes her feel more secure, more powerful.

As soon as everything’s in place, she rushes to follow Lex out of the bunker, catching up right as he’s shimmying out of the grass trapdoor, the lights no longer blinking on and off and flashing bright red instead.

As she finally bursts out of the enclosed, dark concrete bunker and hovers out up into the sunlight.

All the training she’s done down in the bunker has really paid off, and she burns a streak into the ground as she tests and retests her heat vision, grinning the whole while.

She looks up, eyes still blazing white-hot, when she hears shouting coming from agents that are slowly closing in on them and grins even wider.

It’s been weeks since the last time she’s used her powers against that boar she hunted and she’s itching to fight something.

She watches as Lex’s suit powers up next to her, the metal closing in over him as he strides forward, the plates sliding together perfectly.

She turns back to the battlefield, flies up and up and up, and then she sees her in person.

Lena Luthor.

“I love you, Lena Luthor,” is the first thing she says when she touches down on the balcony.

“I love you so much I don’t know what to do without you.”

She sees the way Lena opens her mouth, ready to kick her out again, before her mind reboots and processes the words coming out of Kara’s mouth.

Lena’s still frozen When Kara moves forward and kisses her square on the lips.

Kara pulls back after a second, watching Lena’s expression nervously.

“Lena? Oh, Rao, I should’ve asked first. I’m so sorry. You probably don’t even like me. I’ll lea—“

Her rambling is cut off when Lena surges forward and connects their lips again.

“I’ve waited so long for this,” Lena breathes into her mouth, and she’s crying and so is Kara but everything’s okay because they finally made it through.

Alex’s voice comes through on the comms.

“Kara, we have a problem.”

Looking at Lena on the battlefield is so much more strange.

This Lena is different, a far cry from the tall, regal Lena she had seen in her memories. She looks small, defeated, and Kara can’t bring herself to do anything, so she simply watches.

The little voice in her head from the very first day has returned with a vengeance.

You know her. You know her, Kara! You know her.

Kara ignores it and continues spectating the battle below her.

Lex is fighting with several of the agents and she smiles at him from above and takes out a few herself, knocking them unconscious instead of killing them.

She sees Lex pouting at her methods and laughs. Of course Lex would be the one to double-tap in battle.

She whips her head from side to side when she hears someone whisper her name.

And then she realizes it’s from Lena, and she looks down, and she sees green.

Lena's eyes are green, not gray. She feels even more things sliding together, clicking shut just as perfectly as the plates on Lex's suit.

The green is even more vivid than the green of Lex’s eyes, brighter than anything she’s seen before.

It glows, even more than the kryptonite she had seen in Lex’s lab… the kryptonite Lena had used on her.

But this time, Lena’s eyes are warm, glowing with happiness and relief, her shoulders sagging.

And then it all comes back.

Kara remembers the lunches and meetings and the hugs and the promises and everything that had told each other, everything in their friendship.

She remembers the not-so-pleasant parts, too. She remembers revealing herself to Lena, remembers the lies Lena had told, the kryptonite she had used, the things she had stolen.

It’s all too much and she clutches at her head, fighting against the onslaught of memories.

It’s too much and she finally drops from the sky, her powers shutting down as she curls in on herself.

She hears Lex rushing to her side, checking on her, and she’s never been more glad to see someone who isn’t part of her memories.

She hears Lena rushing forward, too, sees the way she ignores Lex’s glare and settles beside Kara.

“Kara, are you okay?”

Lena’s hands are reaching towards her and all Kara can see is the way she had pointed at Kara when she was kneeling in the prison of ice Lena had trapped her in and she flinches away.

“Don’t!” she shouts.

“Don’t touch me.” It’s a whisper this time, but Lena listens, retracting her hand carefully.

Kara ignores the hurt shining in her eyes and turns between the two of them.

“I told you she would hurt you, Kara. I told you so many times. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have taken you out here. I should’ve known she would be here.” Lex is rambling, but Kara doesn’t have it in her to stop him.

“Kara?” Lena sounds confused, and Kara feels her heart ache for her even when she barely knows her.

But, she can’t rely on feelings alone here. Not when everything Lex is saying matches up. She remembers who Lena is, and even if Lex had masked some of the details, he still told her most of the story, made sure she wouldn’t hurt when she found out about it.

She shifts carefully closer to Lex and Lena’s face drops.

“Kara?”

“You hurt me. You hurt me in every way possible. I might not remember everything, but I remember how much you hurt me. That’s enough for me.”

Her ultimatum is firm, final, and she ignores the urge to run over and brush away Lena’s tears when they start falling.

“Kara, don’t you remember?”

Lena’s whisper is quiet, and even with Kara’s superheating, she barely picks up on it.

She sees the way Lena’s head bows, feels the way Lex pats her on the shoulder.

She turns as Lex stands up, holding a hand out to her. Just as she’s about to grab ahold of it, she hears Lena again.

“Please come back to me.”

The last memory finally comes to her, and she falls back with the force of it.

“Kara, we have a problem.”

“I’ll be right there,” she replies.

“I promise I’ll be right back,” she smiles at Lena, turning off her comms.

“I promise.”

She steps back out onto the balcony, bends, and prepares to kick off, before she hears Lena whisper again.

“Please come back to me.”

She turns around, takes in the shaken expression of Lena, and smiles sadly, holding her arms open.

Lena sinks into her arms and sobs against Kara’s shoulder, soaking the blue fabric.

Kara presses her lips against Lena’s hair, whispers a promise she’ll always keep.

“I’ll always come back to you.”

When Kara finally blinks back to the present, she realizes her eyes are wet with tears, and she stares at Lena.

Lena’s head is still bowed, tears glittering like crystals as they fall in the sun’s light before landing in her lap.

Kara raises her head, pushes herself back up, ignores Lex’s arm as she strides over to Lena, kneeling down and lifting her chin.

Kara presses her lips, soft and careful, against Lena’s. She tastes the salt of the tears before she pulls back, pressing her forehead against Lena’s.

“I’ll always come back to you.”

Chapter Text

Kara takes in Lena, all sharp edges and harsh, biting words as she glares at Kara.

“You lied to my face again and again…”

Kara tries her best to tune out the rest of her sentence. She knows she’ll have to process everything later, but right now, she can’t. She can’t let herself take it in right now. She remembers Alex telling her about what shock does to someone, how it makes everything so much more difficult to process, how she could be in serious danger if she doesn’t filter what Lena is saying.

So, she filters. She tunes out what Lena is saying, keeping it to process through later. She can’t break down now, not now.

She remembers something Alex had taught her when she was little and things had gotten to be too overwhelming.

“Look at the little details, focus as much as you can, and then a little bit more. The more you focus on a little detail, the easier it is to tune out everything else. Like if the sun is too bright, focus on the blankets, maybe there’s a little spot or something you hadn’t noticed it before. Stay where you are and scan over it, see how much of it you can learn about just from that one spot. Think of something that you might want to tell me, too.”

So, Kara focuses. She focuses in on Lena’s eyes, the green of them.

In the sunlight, Lena’s eyes are bright green, but here, in the dim lighting of the fortress, Lena’s eyes are a deep, forest green. Kara notices the murky black swimming around, takes note of the flecks of gold, shimmering when they catch the little lighting there is. She watches the way Lena’s pupils grow and shrink, dilating as she talks.

She starts thinking of things she can compare to the color of Lena’s eyes. As she searches her mind, still half-listening, she realizes nothing in the world could compare to the color. Forest green matches, but Lena’s eyes are so much more than that. There’s a depth to her eyes, something deep swimming in them. She can see the emotion in the faintest twitches, the way her pupils shrink and then grow back out again, constantly changing in size and shape. The flecks of gold are tiny, and there aren’t many of them. No one else would notice them.

Her eyes are glistening now, though, tears forming a glossy film over the surface of her eyes. Kara watches, fascinated, as the gathering tears shine in the dim light of the fortress. Lena’s eyes shut for a moment as she blinks, and one of the tears spills over, bulging over into a small droplet before falling as Lena’s eyes open again, the movement jolting it into motion. She follows the tear as it trails down Lena’s cheek, watches the way it shines when it catches the light, thinks of something she can compare it to.

Diamonds.

Lena’s tears look like diamonds, shining little stones, priceless in worth. She pushes away the thought that she had brought them forth, that it had been her who had caused Lena to spill over these shining little gems.

The tears gather at Lena’s chin, drooping as she opens her mouth and then dropping to the icy ground when she shuts her mouth, snapping her jaw shut.

Kara keeps following the tears, her eyes intent on the fat droplet that whistles through the air before landing on the ground.

The cold air of the fortress is cool enough that the droplet has started to freeze as it drops down to the ground, and Kara watches intently as it makes a tiny clink when it hits the ground. It’s only just barely frozen, so it still moves into a droplet shape, but cool enough that it doesn’t immediately splat all over the floor.

Kara watches, captivated, as the droplet freezes over, thinks of how good the little gem would look on a pendant or a ring.

A ring.

Her observations leave her mind as she imagines kneeling down on one knee in front of Lena, imagine proposing to her, imagines teaching her about the customs of Krypton, how they would use bracelets.

In the back of her mind, she processes the sound of Lena turning away, hears the whirring of the portal before it closes. She doesn’t acknowledge it, though, still too caught up in the idea of proposing to Lena of all people.

She’s never imagined marrying anyone. She had never considered it with Mon-El or James.

But here she is, trapped in a prison made of ice, poison running through her veins, put there by Lena, and all she can think of is proposing to her.

She wipes away the tears glossing over her eyes, ignores the empty ache in her chest as she realizes that won’t happen, realizes Lena would have to forgive her first, realizes that she’s too far gone now.

She takes in deep breaths, following Alex’s voice from a memory years ago, from when she first arrived on Earth.

The air in front of her chills as her freeze breath slips in.

She opens her eyes, watches the way her breath visibly condenses in the air, and keeps that as another detail to tell Alex.

Once she’s sure she’s calm, she leans against the ice walls surrounding her and waits patiently for Alex to come for her.

She has so much to tell her.

Chapter Text

The sun is setting over the horizon when Supergirl comes by.

The sun colors the sky in bold reds and oranges. As the sky gets darker, the reds turn darker, bleeding into darker hues.

Lena is sitting at her desk, working on one of her newest projects, when she hears her touch down.

She turns to see Kara landing on the balcony with a loud thump rather than a light tap.

That’s the first red flag.

Kara’s not wearing her classic red and blue Supergirl suit, either. It’s switched out for a black full-body suit. It’s a dark obsidian color, save for a small patch on her chest where her crest stands out in bold red.

That’s the second red flag.

The cape is gone, too, and the entire suit is streamlined and smooth, perfect for cutting through the air currents.

That’s the third red flag.

“Supergirl.” Lena’s voice is more hesitant than usual. But, this Kara can’t be very different from her normal self, can she?

Just as Lena is about to kick Kara out and tell her she doesn’t want to hear another apology, Kara’s face shifts from a blank expression. Her lips curl into a sneer Lena’s never before seen on Kara’s face. Then, she sees the way Kara’s veins light up, glowing an eerie crimson color, and she realizes something’s wrong.

“Miss Luthor,” Kara greets, her voice wrong. It’s cold, harsh, hurts even worse than the apologies Kara had tried to give her.

“Kara?” Lena’s own voice is a mere whisper now, but Kara’s grin stretches across her face unnaturally, her face twisting and contorting into a cruel, harsh grimace of a smile.

“Kara’s not here today,” Kara grins, stepping towards Lena.

“It’s just me.” Lena watches as Kara stretches her arms out, as if showing who she is in a ta-da! gesture.

“What happened?” she hears herself whisper, regrets it as soon as Kara narrows her eyes, studying her.

“Nothing much.” Kara shrugs, sticks her hands in the pockets of her new suit.

Lena watches on with morbid fascination as Kara’s face twists again, sees the red in her eyes fade to blue for a second before the red comes back.

Kara smiles at her and takes another step forward.

“Sorry ‘bout that, she’s not very happy about my being here.” Kara points up at her head, taps her temple twice.

“And why’s that?” Lena asks again, mentally slaps herself for opening her mouth.

Kara smiles an easy smile, takes another step forward.

“She doesn’t want me to hurt you like I hurt Alex last time.”

The implication that Kara is there to hurt her, that she’s hurt Alex before, that this has happened before, all paired with the easy, almost-friendly smile Kara is giving her, makes Lena’s blood run cold, and she feels real fear for the first time since Kara has arrived.

Kara takes another step forward, and she’s close enough now that Lena takes a step back, completely aware that she’s being backed into a corner.

Kara’s hands don’t come out of her pockets, though, and she sees her wince, clearly trying to fight whatever it is that’s holding her hostage. She doesn’t make it, though, and it seems it’s already taking everything for Kara to keep her hands in her pockets.

Instead, she sees Not-Kara smile at her again, her eyes squinting in genuine happiness.

“You know, I really have to give you props. You really made me believe you were my friend those few weeks.”

Lena feels herself flinch back. She knows where this is going.

“It was really impressive. I have to applaud you for that, bravo! But, then again, I shouldn’t have expected anything better from a Luthor.”

The easy smile is still in place, but it’s more strained now, and Lena can only wonder what Not-Kara will do when it finally drops.

“I was still so surprised, you know? I believed you were all that was good in the world. I believed in you, Lena. I believed you were good and kind and everything everyone else should be. But, it turns out that you were just another person trying to hurt me. I shouldn’t have expected anything else.”

She sees the pain flash in Kara’s eyes, and realizes that whatever this is, Kara is telling the truth. Kara is hurting, and Lena is the one who caused that hurt.

The smile is gone now, and Lena watches, full of dread, as the momentary sadness morphs into anger.

Kara strides forward and closes the distance between them, backing Lena up against her desk.

She scrabbles to get away, but Kara is leaning down, and Lena is forced to bend to keep distance between them.

Kara slams her hands on the desk, Lena’s stray documents fluttering off the table while the stacks slosh off in piles before splitting and landing on the ground.

“I thought you were different, you know? I really believed it. I always loved you most because I could just be Kara with you. I loved you, Lena. And not just as friends. I loved you so much.” Kara’s voice breaks and she averts her eyes, breathing heavily.

Several beats of silence pass before Kara makes another confession that rattles Lena to the bone.

“I still do.”

In the back of her mind, Lena faintly registers the sound of plastic being crushed as her desk is pulverized under Kara’s fists.

Lena is frozen in place, her mind and body screaming at her that Kara loved her, still loves her.

Before she can say anything, though, Kara straightens back up.

“I’d rather not waste my time here. I have things to do, cities to conquer. I’ll be back for you, though. Mark my words. I will be back.”

With that, Not-Kara strides over to the balcony and leaps out, shattering several of Lena’s windows as she flies away into the now-dark night sky.

Only then does Lena let herself fall, her legs far too wobbly to hold her up.

She collapses to the floor, leaning against the desk that has two handprints crunched into it, surrounded by her fallen documents.

In the distance, she hears the faint sound of sirens and picks up her dropped phone.

“Alex?”

Chapter Text

Kara sighs as Lena turns another page, her eyes skimming across the paper, before finally sticking a bookmark into the thick volume.

“Okay, sorry about that. I was at a really good part of the story.”

Kara shakes her head and smiles.

“No, it’s okay! I don’t mind. You can keep reading, it sounds like you’re really invested in it!”

Lena’s eyes brighten and Kara feels her heart warm at the hopeful expression on her face.

“Are you sure?” she asks as she picks the book back up.

“Of course, Lee. It’s nothing important anyway, really. Just wanted to see you,” she answers earnestly, already settling on the pristine white couch in Lena’s office.

“Aww, you’re too sweet.”

Kara smiles again but doesn’t answer, pulling out a worn novel, dog-eared and well-loved, a book she had managed to take with her on the night Krypton exploded.

It’s one of her favorites.

She remembers Alura telling it to her, describing the little bird in the story before tapping Kara on the nose.

Every night, when she tucked Kara in, she would always call her my little bird, and Kara’s eyes sting at the memory.

She wonders if Alura had known then that Krypton was going to destroy itself, that she had already planned to send Kara away, that she had known Kara was going to be able to fly someday.

She hears Lena’s breath hitch and wonders how interesting her story is, wiping her eyes carefully and looking up.

Lena isn’t looking at her book. It’s open, in her hands, but her eyes are directed towards Kara.

“Lena.” Kara freezes in her spot, wondering how much Lena had seen.

“Oh, Kara.”

And then Lena is at her side, sliding her closed book back onto the desk as she strides over to the couch.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Lena’s eyes alight upon the book and her eyes soften even more.

“You know… she would’ve been so proud of you.”

Kara looks back up at Lena again, and her voice is small when she voices her question.

“You think so?”

Lena places a gentle kiss against her temple, stroking through her loose hair and pulling her glasses off to carefully set aside.

“I know so.”

Chapter Text

Lena chuckles, feeling bubblier than usual, the wine settling in and putting color high in her cheeks.

She sees Kara smiling at her from across the table, her eyes a dark blue in the candlelight, the vast expanse of the night sky glittering with stars. She hears the faint honking coming from the street below, but it’s too far away from them for her to pay attention. Too far away from their little bubble on the balcony.

The wind breezes past her bare arms and she shivers a little bit. Maybe the dress hadn’t been the best choice.

Kara notices and immediately appears at her side, lowering her suit jacket carefully onto Lena’s shoulders.

“But,” Lena protests, “won’t you be cold?”

“I’m Kryptonian, remember, Lee? I don’t get cold that easily.” Kara smiles brightly at her and Lena relaxes into her chair again.

“If you’re sure,” but she’s already pulling the jacket tighter around her shoulders and ignoring the way Kara’s eyes glow with unsaid laughter.

“Of course I’m sure.”

They settle back into the softness of the night, the moon glowing overhead, almost brighter than the candles that are lit on the table.

“Oh! I almost forgot!”

Kara suddenly jumps up, breaking the comfortable silence.

“I made dessert!”

Lena watches as Kara dashes back into the penthouse. Surprisingly, even though Kara is horrible at baking, she makes a mean soufflé.

Kara emerges with a chocolate soufflé and pours a raspberry reduction over the top, the red liquid glazing over the dark surface. Steam rises off the surface of the soufflé and Lena’s mouth waters. Kara always knows exactly what Lena is in the mood for, and the decadent chocolatey flavor of the soufflé paired with the slight tang of the raspberry reduction pairs perfectly with the soft darkness of the city night as the buildings glow faintly, windows lighting up as the night grows longer.

Lena takes the proffered spoon and digs in, the metal glinting as it sinks into the soft dessert. She pulls it back up at an angle, pulling up some of the dessert as well, and watches carefully as some of the glaze drips back down into the dish.

She wraps her lips around the bite, leaning forward so as to not drip any of the glaze onto the table or her dress, and feels her eyes flutter shut.

When she opens them again, having thoroughly cleaned off her spoon, Kara is watching her, eyes filled with love as she smiles softly.

“Good?”

Lena’s resounding head nod is enough of an answer.

The light breeze blows past them again, but Lena is warm, the soufflé filling her stomach, settling decadent and rich, the jacket sliding over her bare shoulders almost like a shield, and Kara’s love, directed fully at her.

Even if nothing else were there, Kara’s love would be enough for her. It always will be.

Chapter Text

Kara feels the solid concrete beneath her feet as she touches down on the balcony, her boots tapping against the rock, her cape fluttering behind her and brushing against the ledge before it falls against the backs of her legs again.

Lena is standing there, her pale skin glowing against the light of the moon.

She’s facing the city, leaning forward against the edge of the balcony, tears staining the gray black.

“Lena.” It’s barely an exhale, but Lena hears her anyway, if the barely-there turn of her head is to be noticed.

She doesn’t answer, though, and when Kara takes a step closer, she backs away, defining her space, retreating into herself.

“Lena.” Her voice wavers as her hands fall to her side, thumping against the thick fabric of her suit.

Lena still doesn’t respond, and Kara bows her head, taking a step back, away from the pain in front of her, the pain she caused.

“Lena.”

A beat of silence passes.

“Supergirl.”

Lena’s voice is quiet, and even Kara strains to hear the whisper, but her heart drops into her gut, thudding against the base of her spine and rolling in perfect circles until it finally stops, unmoving.

Kara feels her own tears burning behind her closed eyelids, feels them sliding down her face, hears them falling to the ground, whistling through the air.

The moon is bright and full, and it dilutes the colors around them, until Kara’s suit and cape are black as the night sky above them, until Lena is glowing in all her ethereal beauty.

“Lena,” she whispers again, as if it will change anything.

She falls silent again, her mind whirring as she thinks through the past month.

“How did we get here?” Her voice is small, and it barely makes it across the chasm between them, but Lena hears it anyway, if the slight droop to her shoulders is to be noted.

One. Two. Three beats of silence pass.

And then.

“I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

Lena wakes up to the sound of her phone alarm buzzing away on the table.

No matter how many times she’s had to wake up this early, she never really gets used to it. Lena’s never been a morning person, always choosing to stay up and work on projects with a glass of scotch in her hand. Even after all these years, she still doesn’t go home very early.

Well… until Kara. Kara would always come by L-Corp, either to invite Lena somewhere or sit with her. The first time, Jess’s eyes had almost popped out of her skull when Lena finally left… before 8… on a Monday of all days. Ever since then, Jess had gotten used to the routine. On Thursdays, sister night for Kara, Lena would leave later, usually around 10. Almost every other day of the week, though, Lena would leave before 8, and she always left before 6 on Wednesdays.

She smiles at the thought of just how much Kara has changed her life before sighing; there’s one thing Kara still doesn’t know about Lena, even after the Supergirl debacle… Lena likes her. More than she should a friend.

Her alarm’s buzzing helps her tune back in with the real world and she gets ready to go to work.

She checks the calendar. It’s the 31st of October. She’s sure Kara will try and show up in some costume or convince Lena to go to some Halloween-themed event or party. She’s also sure she’ll give in after Kara pulls her puppy-dog eyes. She could never say no to Kara anyway.

On her way to work, she’s scrolling through her phone, trying to see what her emails include, when a little ping sounds through the car. She feels the car slide to a stop as Michael reaches the next red light and looks back down to click on the little banner that pops up. It’s Kara.

She can feel the smile playing on her face as she leans back against the seat, eyes scanning over the text.

It’s a “good morning!” followed by a genuinely absurd number of emojis and she chuckles at how Kara the text is.

She sends a “morning, Kara” back and receives another text filled to the brim with happy emojis and hearts.

She sends back a single red heart and closes her phone, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

When she arrives at L-Corp, she’s still smiling.

Early in the morning, Lena hears the sound of boots tapping against the concrete of her balcony and the sound of fabric swishing and brushing together.

She spins around in her chair, her day already a thousand times better.

“Kara!” she smiles.

Kara smiles right back, hands still on her hips.

She strides into the room and settles on the white couch, suddenly all Kara in her demeanor.

“Sorry, I’ve been having a little headache today. Is it okay if I take a nap here?”

Lena completely forgets that Kara is still a superhero, that she’s not supposed to get headaches, and nods along.

She forgets as she watches Kara curl up on her couch, swishing her cape around and curling into it.

She forgets when Kara yawns a little bit before closing her eyes, the rhythm of her chest slowing as she falls asleep.

She forgets when Jess calls in through the intercom to call her to her next meeting.

When she comes back, Kara’s not on the couch anymore.

She ignores the disappointment she feels.

Kara comes back at around lunchtime, but without any lunch.

“Hey, Lena.” Her voice is small, uncertain, almost.

“Hey, Kara. You feeling okay?” Lena walks over to the couch that Kara has settled on once again, worriedly pressing her hand against Kara’s forehead.

“Um, yeah. I think so,” Kara’s still staring blankly at Lena, but it’s not a glazed-over look. She looks like she’s focusing on Lena, but she’s also not really responsive.

“Kara? Earth to Kara?” Lena waves her hand carefully in front of Kara’s face.

Suddenly, Kara seems to snap out of whatever she was in and she jolts a little bit.

“Lena! Oh no, did I do anything?” Kara looks around the room frantically.

“What? No, Kara. It’s okay. Are you feeling okay?”

Kara looks back at Lena after doing one last scan of the room with her eyes squinted, something Lena recognizes as Kara using her x-ray vision.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve just been zoning out a little bit. I’m not really sure why, but I have been a little tired recently.”

Lena frowns a little.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Kara smiles, “I’m fine.”

Kara takes another nap on Lena’s couch before leaving again.

Lena ignores the way Kara’s smile had been strained and gets back to work.

After all, Kara’s a superhero. Of course she would be tired. It makes sense.

It’s almost 6 when Kara comes by a third time.

Except, this time, Kara’s behavior is a lot more concerning.

She stumbles off of the balcony and trips over her own feet before falling to the ground.

Lena is at her side in less than a second.

She lifts Kara’s head carefully. Her pupils are dilated and she’s sweating and panting and Lena has absolutely no idea why. Kara shouldn’t get sick. She’s a superhero.

She doesn’t want to move away, but the only thing she can think of is getting Kara a glass of water, and she has to leave Kara on the floor to do that.

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

Lena stands carefully, laying Kara’s head in the ground as softly as she possibly can before running over to the water pitcher. She pours the water so fast that some of it sloshes over the sides, but she can’t be bothered to clean it right now.

Kara is her priority right now.

Once she’s back at Kara’s side, a process that took only seconds but felt like an eternity, she kneels back down, holding Kara up as she places the glass of water against her lips.

Kara somehow manages to drink half of the glass before regaining some of her lucidity.

“Lena? Where am I? Oh. Oh no. Oh no oh no. I can’t be here.”

Lena is helpless to stop Kara as Kara pushes her away and stumbles over to the balcony door, swaying the whole while. She pushes the glass door open and collapses on the concrete, but keeps crawling. Before Lena can regain her breath and run over to Kara, though, Kara somehow finds enough strength in her to get up and fly away.

Lena immediately dials Alex.

“Alex. It’s Kara. She just came stumbling into my office before flying away again. Is she sick? Is something wrong? Can you get her checked out? I’m really worried about her.”

“Lena. Oh god she was there? Oh no this is bad.”

Lena hears shouting and shuffling in the background before Alex’s panting voice comes over the receiver again.

“Stay away from her. She’s got—“

Alex is cut off by Kara’s hand whacking Lena’s phone away from her.

“Kara! You’re back! Are you okay?” Lena goes to feel Kara’s forehead again, and Kara leans into the touch, almost purring.

“I am feeling a little bit under the weather. Maybe you could take care of me?” Kara is pouting now and goddammit but Lena could never resist those sad puppy-dog eyes.

“Of course, Kara. I’m your best friend.”

“The bestest,” Kara agrees eagerly, smiling brightly before groaning again, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Okay, let’s get you to the couch.”

Lena carefully guides Kara to the couch, laying her down on it carefully before leaving to search for her first aid kit.

“I’ll be right back! I have to get my first aid kit, okay?”

“Okay!” Kara chirps back.

It momentarily hits Lena that something isn’t right, that Kara’s behavior doesn’t match up, that something doesn’t fit, but Kara is waiting for her and Kara is hurting and Lena can’t just stand aside and do nothing.

She strides into the bathroom before she starts looking.

“Come on. Where is that first aid kit?!”

Lena is holding the white box tightly, her grip firm on the handle as she turns the door to her office.

When she walks in, Kara is nowhere to be found. The couch is empty and her office is dark.

“Kara? Kara! Where are you?”

Her voice almost echoes through the large space and she shivers at the feeling of somebody watching her.

“Kara? It’s me, Lena.”

“I know.”

The voice seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, and Lena’s eyes dart frantically about the room, trying to search for the source.

“Kara? This isn’t funny.”

“I don’t know. Seems kinda funny to me.”

Kara finally steps from where she’s hidden. It’s a small corner of the room, blocked by her cape. The cape drops away from her now, though, and Kara emerges from the darkness.

It all hits her when she sees Kara’s face. Her veins are glowing red.

“Kara,” she breathes, suddenly terrified.

“You... you’ve been poisoned by Red K.”

“Poisoned is a strong word, don’t you think?” Kara is grinning now, stepping towards Lena.

“Kara.”

“You know why I came here first? Because I knew you’d understand. I knew you would listen. I know you, Lena. I know everything. I love you, too. So much.”

“No,” Lena whispers to herself, but Kara hears it—of course she does.

“Yes. I love you, too. I knew you would understand. That’s why I came here. You can join me. Let’s take over the world together. Just you and me. A Super and a Luthor... Kara and Lena.”

The smile on Kara’s face is so genuine that Lena almost misses what they’re talking about.

World domination.

Kara wants to take over the world.

“We can make the world a better place. Together. You can make the world good. I should’ve known better with Myriad. You were right. I was just too blind to see it.”

Lena’s brain is frozen. This isn’t Kara. Kara would never say this. But she also knows Red K. It brings out the worst of a person. It brings out their darkest natures, the worst truths.

“We’ll be gods, Lena. Nothing will stand in our way. It’ll be just us. Together forever. It’s just you and me. It’s always been you and me.”

Lena almost gives in, almost takes Kara’s outstretched hand. She wants to give in so badly.

Kara is giving her everything she’s ever wanted. She’s giving Lena the love she’s yearned for over the course of the past four years.

She’s promising Lena forever, a world where everyone is good.

She’s promising Lena together.

Say yes. Say yes. Say yes.

She opens her mouth.

“No.”

“...What?”

Kara’s smile starts to drop and more than anything, Lena just wants to see her smile again.

“I said no.”

The speed with which Kara’s expression drops, replaced with one of icy cold anger, makes Lena wonder if the smile was even real.

“Have it your way then.”

Kara spins on her heel, ready to leave, when she turns back around, staring straight into Lena’s eyes.

“I really thought you would understand, you know. I really thought you cared. You all of all people should’ve understood. But I was wrong.... I thought you loved me back. But that’s all it was. Thoughts. False hopes. I should never have come here.”

Kara steps towards Lena, pressing her back against a wall.

“I thought you would understand, you know?”

Lena watches the glisten of tears trailing down Kara’s face, feels her own heart break.

“I should’ve known better.”

Kara simply stands there, hands on either side of Lena, head bowed to the ground.

Suddenly, she steps away, turning her back on Lena.

“Stay out of the way. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll fight you if I have to.”

Lena listens to Kara’s ultimatum, unable to find any words to say something, anything.

She sees Kara’s head turn, sees the way she studies Lena, her head tilting.

“I don’t think you can say the same, can you?”

Lena watches as Kara flies away, her signature blue and red suit fading into the night sky.

The sirens start wailing.

They catch Kara at 2 AM.

Alex tells her.

She says Kara fought within an inch of her life and before she went down, she asked for Lena.

Lena doesn’t listen to the rest. As soon as Alex finishes her sentence, she’s beelining for the medbay, only to be stopped.

“You can’t go in there, Lena. Not yet. We had to turn the sunlamps up all the way. That radiation would give you skin cancer in a minute and kill you if you stayed longer.”

Lena is adamant, though. She won’t be stopped. She won't.

“What would Kara want?”

It’s a low blow, sure, but Lena understands. She understands how Alex feels right now, understands that she can’t afford to lose anyone else.

She owes it to the both of them.

When Kara wakes up, she has to squint at how bright it is.

She tries to complain, but all that comes out is a hoarse groan.

“Kara.”

She hears Alex’s voice, hears the relief as the sun lamps are turned down, feels Alex at her side as soon as the room dims.

“Alex. What’s wrong? What happened?”

Alex stops in her tracks, her eyes looking over Kara’s face.

“You don’t... remember?”

“I... it’s kind of hard to remember.”

Alex purses her lips, tone serious.

“I need to make sure you didn’t get a concussion. What can you remember?”

Kara closes her eyes, searches and probes her mind for the right memories.

“I thought you would understand, you know?”

“I should’ve known better.”

“I love you too.”

Her eyes shoot open and she knows Alex can tell, knows Alex can see the realization on her face, can feel herself crumpling in like a galaxy collapsing in on itself.

“Lena.”

As soon as Alex leaves the medbay, Lena is on her feet.

“Is she okay? What’s wrong? Can I see her?”

Alex’s silence answers everything and nothing at once.

“Alex. Please. What’s wrong?”

“She’s stable, but, when you go in, be very careful with her, okay? I’m trusting you, Luthor. You better not mess this up.”

Lena doesn’t point out how vague Alex’s answer is. “Stable”.

She nods, pushes the medbay door open before looking back at Alex.

“Thank you.”

“I’m counting on you.”

“Kara?”

She sees Kara’s huddled form on the bed. It’s a stark contrast to when she had walked into her office.

Kara had been hiding, powerful and dark, but here she is, vulnerable, the room bright and the complete opposite of her office.

“Hey, Kara. It’s me.”

She sees the way Kara stiffens, the way she looks over carefully at Lena before going wide-eyed with panic.

“No no no. You can’t be here, Lena. You can’t— I... I don’t want to hurt you.”

Lena’s heart breaks at how broken Kara is and she moves forward carefully, slowly, perching on the other end of the bed.

Kara is practically smashed against the wall, pressed against the headboard and curling into herself in an effort to get away from Lena.

“It’s okay. I trust you. You would never hurt me.”

Lena smiles, hoping that none of her anxiety is showing.

She sees Kara relax just the slightest bit and bites back the smile that threatens to spread across her face.

“I know that wasn’t you, Kara. Not really.”

Lena scoots a little bit closer.

“I know you Kara. Even when I didn’t know you were Supergirl, you were still my friend. I know you, and I know you would never hurt me, okay?”

Lena places her hand on the bed, palm facing up, between the two of them, so that if Kara wanted, she could reach out and take it, meet her in the middle.

“But what if I do?”

Kara’s voice is so small and Lena is struck with the realization of how small Kara looks, pressed against the cold wall of the DEO medbay, huddled in her hospital gown.

She looks like a child, a lost soul who never found her way back.

And she is. And that makes it worse.

“You won’t. I know you won’t.”

She watches the way Kara eyes her hand cautiously, sees the way her own hand twitches where it’s white-knuckling the plastic headboard of the cot.

“Really?”

“Really. I promise. You’re okay now.”

Lena keeps her hand flat, unmoving. Kara needs to do things on her own terms, needs a sense of control.

The Red K had controlled her, and she’s trying to give Kara some control back.

She watches Kara carefully unclench her hand, watches as she places it gently on Lena’s palm, as if Lena is a glass statue that Kara could shatter with a single touch.

“I won’t break, Kara. It’s okay. I trust you.”

Only then does Kara wrap her hand around Lena’s, tangling their fingers together.

Lena looks up at Kara meaningfully, scooting closer and holding Kara against her when Kara nods.

They don’t talk about the confessions that were made. Not yet. They have time for that.

For now, with Kara tucked into her side, sobbing quietly against her neck, Lena knows that they’ll get there. She knows she’ll have to be patient, will have to make sure Kara knows that Lena trusts her.

She knows it’ll take time, but for once, she finally feels like she has it.

Kara could take forever to come back to her. Lena doesn’t mind.

She would wait forever for Kara.