Chapter Text
Kara found the tapes stacked on the coffee table when she got home, with a note that said "You found the magic. Now don't lose it." She wanted to get angry, but instead she just put the tapes in a box on the shelf under the TV and tried to forget about them.
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Lena's hand shakes slightly as she slides the key into the lock, feeling the ghost of Alex’s rest gently on her shoulder as it had when she’d pressed the cold metal into her palm a few hours earlier with a silent offer and an encouraging nod. The door swings open slowly, and Lena is hit by a sudden wave of cold. Not temperature, but energy. It’s too quiet - no NSYNC on the speaker or Bachelorette on the TV. It’s too empty - no smell of fresh (slightly burnt) bread whose only proof of existence is the crumbs on the floor in front of the oven or sight of brightly colored yarn strewn all over the counter from Kara’s various crochet projects. It’s too...Kara-less.
Lena shakes off the feeling and slides her bag from her shoulder into the corner by the bookcase, careful not to knock Kara’s favorite cinnamon candle off the stool beside her, as she tells Alexa to play Nina Simone. She zips open her bag to pull out her favorite copy of Mrs. Dalloway and finds it missing. Realizing she must have left it in her desk drawer at Luthor Corp, Lena makes a mental note to send Brainy in after it tomorrow with the promise that he can change all of Lex’s passwords one more time before she and her associates are undoubtedly barred from the building.
Lena stares at the blank TV screen for a moment, dreading the thought of watching anything in this room without Kara’s head on her shoulder or in her lap. So, she crouches to look at the shelves of the TV stand, hoping to find at least one of the books she’d gotten Kara for her birthday last year wedged between the latest issues of CatCo and the recipe books Alex had gotten her in an effort to help her spend less money on pot stickers every week.
She’s just zeroed in on The Color Purple when she notices a box she doesn’t recognize laying across the tops of the books on the other shelf. She reaches for it on instinct, then hesitates. She hasn’t touched anything of Kara’s since their falling out, and what if Kara’s “what’s mine is yours” rule no longer applies to her now? She considers leaving it alone and waiting for Kara to get back and explain, sliding The Color Purple toward her without taking her eyes off the box, before her curiosity gets the better of her and she caves, tossing the book onto the coffee table.
She opens the lid and starts at the sight of VHS tapes. Hasn't she taught Kara better than this? They'd converted all her old tapes to DVDs months into their friendship ("Kara, these things deteriorate so easily and the picture quality becomes awful, don't you want something that will last?"). She picks up the first tape and reads the label on the side: "The One Where Lena Doesn't Make It Back In Time." Her brows furrow as she stares, unblinking, at the title - demanding answers she knows only one person can give her.
She glances around, but doesn't see a VHS player anywhere, so she sets the tape on the floor beside her and picks up the next one. "The One Where Lena Can't Save Sam Or Herself." Lena shoves down her growing horror and discards the tape, hoping the next one will be less ominous. She picks it up and chokes back a sob as she reads: "The One Where There Are No Survivors."
Lena can't wait for answers anymore, so she gathers the tapes back into the box, grabs her purse and Kara's key, and heads to the closest library. She finds the old CRT sitting on a rolling cart in the far back corner, tucked between the stacks of kids' books. She pulls the first tape out of the box and slides it carefully into the slot.
30 minutes later, with tears and clearly faulty eyeliner streaming down her face, Lena picks up the last tape. "The One Where Lena Was Never Your Friend." And here she'd thought things couldn't get worse. Lena takes a deep breath as she inserts the tape.
At the sight of the ruin that meets Kara and Mxy, Lena stifles the urge to laugh. Of course this is what a world without her best friend looks like. This is exactly how it feels now, and she's only been gone a few hours.
Lena's breath catches as she hears herself ask "who's Kara?", the mere thought of a world where the reporter had never believed in her, never cared enough to love her, almost too much to bear. Her hand drifts subconsciously to her chest as she watches herself reveal a kryptonite heart, and for a moment she can hear the sounds of her own screams as her mother's experiments rob her of the last of her humanity and turn her into Metallo – a possibility she realizes may have even been their intention in the first place. After all, she hadn’t planned to shoot Corben.
But her thoughts stutter and she presses her hand closer to her heart, sure that it's stopped beating at the sight of Kara on the ground, in pain at her hands but still refusing to fight her; feels it shatter when her worst self says nearly the exact same words she'd said to Kara in the Fortress when asked why she had pretended to still be the hero’s friend for so long.
And she thinks it might kill her, this agony that's flooding her body like acid. She wonders for a moment if this is what kryptonite feels like to Kara. Because it sure feels like her skin is getting seared off her bones and there are nails in her blood and it sure as hell seems like she won't survive watching herself kill her best friend as she lies helpless and desperate on the floor.
And when Mxy pulls them out, Lena's breath returns full force until she's hyperventilating because Kara is gone and she doesn't know how long it will be until they get her back; and she was terrified of what she'd become when she lost Jack but she survived because of Kara; and if this is what losing Kara without ever having her in the first place looks like, Lena has never been more afraid than she is as she realizes what will happen to the world if she doesn't get Kara back. What she'll do to the world if it dares to take Kara from her.
So, when she gathers the tapes and goes to return them to the box and finds a note at the bottom that says "You found the magic. Now don't lose it," Lena promises herself that, for as long as she lives, she will do everything in her power to keep the magic that is Kara Danvers in her life.
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Alex knocks on the apartment door three days later and finds it unlocked. She pushes the door open and her hand drifts to her gun, but relaxes as she sees Lena's sleeping form curled up on the couch. Alex approaches a box she knows the contents of all too well and finds it open and empty on the table before she notices the VCR player and tapes strewn across the floor. She smiles softly as she recalls the image of Kara in the exact same position months earlier. And, as she carefully plucks the handwritten note from Lena's clutched fist, she smiles at the knowledge that, once Kara returns, no force in the world will be able to keep them apart again.