Chapter Text
“We can’t keep going like this, honey.”
Kara deflated, attention swerving to the throb of her shoulder blades and her skinned knuckles. She ordered her left hand to start removing the bandage wrapped around its humanoid twin, grimacing as the Promethium fingers twirled the gauze off to reveal patches of drying blood blemishing the skin.
Two of her fingers were broken, if the amorphous shape and swell was to go by. Big chance her right hook would have to take it a few notches easier before it was her mean right hook again. And a warm liquid seeped through her clothes, but she wasn’t paying any mind to it.
A little blood loss never killed anybody.
Sort of.
Glancing over her shoulder, she flashed a wavering smile in the direction of her wife, with a veil thick enough to disguise the dread dusted off from the question; the carbon-copy current of terror Kara swore that Lena would never have to experience as long as she was alive and could steer the torch as far as, now, humanly possible.
“Like what, honey?” Perkiest of tones summoned, she shuffled in the tiny stool perched near the foot of their bed, downing a painkiller under the arm-twisting methods of a wife’s stare down.
She carefully arranged pillows and her next thoughts to contrast with the hollowed-out look she was aware she sported. A little—somewhat cynical—party favour from her workday at the field she left drenched in questionable amounts of her blood.
Bad news? Lena hadn’t seen the other guy.
The doorway creaked under the weight of her wife’s distress, Lena pushing off it to wander across the room with a fearful gait to her steps, worried that Kara’s stoic glee would shatter and give way to a storm out the second she broke the borders of her personal space.
But, fine-print detail, Kara kind of… couldn’t.
Even if there was the pretence about the concrete barriers not being a big deal, even if she avoided eye contact and serious adult talks like the plague. She couldn’t endure not being able to echo Lena’s heartbeats far from a distance, wasn’t born to deal with separation anxiety—regardless of being separated from everything —longer than it took her wife to scare the stomach-churning trepidation that the world outside the safety of their home set off in Kara. And it never took Lena more than a second to squeeze her away from the epicentre of the ruckus, to sync up with her volatile ways and cuff her into some resemblance of domestic ease.
Greasy hair curtained around her hunched back, stuck with sweat to her temples and tumbling down in golden waves splattered in more red than seen in past occasions, graciously, hit her with the momentary common sense to wonder if the reason Lena’s face fared more ghostly than hers—lacking dangerous amounts of blood her body was desperate to know the whereabouts of—and was eager to chart into philosophical waters that would be labelled as treason if were the New Government to hear them, was that Kara herself looked pretty roughed up at the moment.
“Oh, this ouchie?” she touched around the wide, oozing gash with a nonchalance to her moves. It dragged from the left side of her ribcage to below her breast, resting close to the tattoo of the sun that darkened most of her upper abdomen. “You’ve given me worse ouchies.”
Lena stumbled upon the wound after pushing her to sink down in the mattress, catching the hitch of breath it strung out from Kara while she was scanned for other injuries under the black T-shirt plastered to her skin.
Her torso was black and blue all over. Webs of red riveting around the skin where vessels tore; the ink of the myriad of tattoos scattered along mixed with the other shades in such regal manner that Lena’s breath stuttered for completely different reasons. However, despite her carnal desires jumping out, the dark-haired woman gnawed at her lip in a way that left Kara more anxious than the bleeding cut the size of a black hole did.
“It’s absolutely nothing, we’ve been through worse scrapes.”
Lena glowered at her, for reasons she refused to acknowledge.
“This is the third day in a fortnight you’ve come home limping and staining my tiles,” she admonished.
Doe eyed, Kara watched with just an acceptable amount of adoration as she scratched a scarlet nail across the dips of her abs, engrossed with the fading remainders of a love bite and the design of two birds joined by a dashed circle drawn next to her hip; it was her wife’s favourite.
“There’s only so much bleach you can steal before people get suspicious.”
The motion had done nothing but smear more blood on her and ignite her friskier, biological urges.
But.
Maybe she knew one or two people who died from blood loss.
“I like my bleach like I like my vampires, ready to suck my blood,” Kara slurred, unprompted sweetness dripping down her grin. Charm levels had to be upped if she wanted Lena to stop gazing at her with worry painted across her gorgeous face. “But if it eases your mind, I’ll find another supplier. Word out there is that produce is not the only thing way more accessible in this renegade side of Mino’s Labyrinth.”
“We have our own veggie patch, you dumbass,” her wife reminded her with a soft clap to her cheek, an abrupt giggle bubbling up her throat after Kara pursed her lips, hesitant. Last time they cooked with their own crops, both ended up fighting a deathly battle against food poisoning. Kara hadn’t faced such an enemy in long. “Okay, okay. Our produce isn’t half as good as the Gurevich’s but, in my defence, they would pitchfork me if they saw a stranger in your backyard.”
A wave of relief burst within her right after the teasing nature of Lena’s words registered, nicely taken by surprise by the fact it didn’t sound like the resignation Kara grew used to, but rather something fond—perhaps proof that, despite the circumstances, Lena also started believing that up from the highest down the infinitesimal sacrifices they made day to day were notches engraved in the books of their future compensations, waiting to be cashed out when the opportunity called.
Exhaustion plagued her, she finally conceded, and, usually, she played the big leagues when Lena attempted to strip her off. But her eyelids gained the weight of steel and white spots clouded her crystal-clear vision, so Kara could only lift her butt and kick the black cargo pants down her ankles, whining when they got trapped around the heavy boots Lena hadn’t finished taking off.
She didn’t even get the chance to hear her wife mock her sock choice of the day. She had gone for the ones that said these are my sex socks if only to get a rise from Lena, or another patronising pat to her cheek.
Kara must have passed out for a while because the next time she sadly became aware of the awake realm, it was thanks to the pricking of her side, where Lena was working stitches on her. Patching the gap on her skin and simultaneously checking the monitor with her vital signs and the needle for the blood transfusion in the crook of her elbow as the unit dripped down.
Lena acted fast, lest the passing out tragically evolved into passing away.
“Lena?”
“Hmm.”
“You’re stitching me like one of your French girls.”
“And I’m gonna be shoving painkillers in your mouth like gummy bears if you don’t shut up. It’s cold but I’m almost done baby, then you can go clean up while I tidy up for bed,” Lena said, in lieu of offering a blanket for the woman shivering in bed.
“Will you be joining me, y’know, like one of your French girls?”
In reward, she got a quizzical huff. “Of course not, you can barely stand on your feet.”
“I don’t need to be standing for what I have in mind.” The once over she gave her wife was both obscene and sluggish, she knew. Yet it also precariously edged on awkward, what with the stretch of her face muscles and the world spinning around in circles.
But Kara’s white button up narrowly reached past Lena’s mid thigh and the top buttons were straining, the collar too low and showing off the dark ink of her own marks in the cliff of her collarbones. She had missed her too much to not ogle.
If Kara got to check out the soft curves and delicate lines that mapped her wife, who was the actual loser there?
“Dear, go back to your slumber if you’re not going to behave like my smart, only Space girl.”
Still Kara.
Despite the detached house they lived in being registered within the Capitol’s manifesto under someone else’s name and located in one of the four districts outside Mino’s Labyrinth, Kara couldn’t risk any chances. So, logically, the window where chilly winds snuck past to wake a path of goosebumps in the faint soldier lying half bare, was also the only one she didn’t board up when they moved in years ago.
The wide windowsill outlined the woods, facing the backyard where she had painstakingly built an orchard for her wife’s restless energy. A depressing orchard, maybe, but it was a landmark at some point back in the past.
Kara dared a glance at her, because thanks to years of learning to read Lena like poetry, she was positive there was the tip of her tongue peeking out in that charming way she did when her focus was out full-blaze, and. Warmth tingled her inner workings like a summer tide, hypothesis proven right.
“Stay still.”
She was everything but sorry, yet managed to mumble a quiet apology before commanding her left arm to map out the inside of Lena’s thigh, enthralled with how the navy details of her bionic arm alloyed elegantly with the ivory of her wife’s naked legs.
“Does it hurt?”
Even if Lena was currently rearranging her guts and zipping her up, she wasn’t addressing the most recent scratch in the canvas. So, Kara shook her head and lifted the myoelectric prosthesis in the air, waving it around as if seeing it for the first time.
After so long, she had yet to get familiarised with the foreign weight of the appendage. Not growing acquainted with waking up in cold sweats the nights where she removed it to sleep and phantom pain paralysed her instead. But the discomfort had assuaged, as the scars from the day Battle Primitus took place had faded. And the psychological repercussions were now a distant memory, only resurfacing to shore by severe bouts of wrath or sadness; the two emotions she allowed herself to feel whenever she walked into the Inside, the evil side of The Labyrinth.
“No, at least not tonight,” Kara breathed.
However, her core muscles were sore and thrumming with bruised clouds, and the weight of her arm thud back down. She bit her lip to trap a whimper when metal crashed against her temple, but Lena caught the mental glitch anyway and laughed under her breath before clambering to her feet, removing the blood-stained gloves. Her hands were shaking, an aggravating divergence to the stiffness she performed with the suture earlier.
Kara felt it first, the skip of her heartbeat, then heard it on the monitor the following second. Her hand shot up north to palm at her neck, broken fingers complaining despite being wrapped in a splint, only to find it devoid of jewellery.
Her stomach dropped when she didn’t find the necklace housing the matching wedding band to the one that sat on Lena’s finger. Seconds later, it surged back up to thrash uncomfortably in her throat, giving way to a distressed whine that made her wife turn around with another glare, softening with the sight of Kara’s skin acquiring another shade of ashen white.
“Darling,” she urged, “please, you’ll remove the needle if you–”
“–my ring, I don’t have it,” Kara panted, scratching angry red lines onto her chest. The previously straight bars on the ECG ticked up once more.
“Shhh, it’s okay.” Lena trudged to her side, struggling to rake a hand through the nest of blonde tresses. She gave up on a nasty knot, but leant in to press a kiss to her forehead. “I took it off after you passed out on me to clean it.”
Letting silence fill in an answer for her, Kara just nodded and craned her neck so the top of her head would graze the side of her leg.
Almost an hour and a half later, she was resting back in clean sheets. Right after getting out of a well-deserved hot shower, in spite of the doctor’s marital worries to avoid doing so.
The sky was pitch black outside their home, and they soaked in the silence for as long as the echoes of their minds allowed. Both watched the steady numbers displayed on the monitor as Kara twined her blue fingers around Lena’s hand, humming as the shallow tempo of rain spitting on the boarded up windows flew to their ears.
Nonetheless, the quiet was too disturbing, too overcrowded in the nights she made it back to the Outside—battered, bruised and on the verge of losing the chance to come back home to Lena again.
“I saw the sun today.”
“How was work?”
They spoke at the same second to start a conversation, laughs mingled together until Kara shook her head to dodge the incoming loss of reality—wondering if Lena knew how the gaping emptiness left by work ate away at her. It was like her mere behaviour prior to a bad day was an ill omen, and the pinkish scars she carried after living it were the prophecy being brought to life.
Lena always deciphered the meanings of her silence.
That’s why Kara would give her life up to ensure her safety.
“Got direct orders to deploy my brigade to eliminate eight Dissidents that got busted Southwest. They were so close to making it out of The Labyrinth,” she murmured. Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed the memories of the scenery to ease off. “I had to take six of my agents off the picture because they kept tailing me, and two of the Dissidents got their brains blown with lead before I got to them. It was hard to convince the remaining ones, they’re District One.”
“Oh,” Lena lamented, propped up against the headboard. Fingers carding through Kara’s damp curls. “They are the closest district to the Capitol, if anyone is familiar with the atrocities of the government, it is them. Their apprehension is coherent.”
“I know, sunshine. I just wished their apprehension hadn’t slashed me like a tire and gifted me a seven inch scar,” she said, lulled to an amenable state of stillness powered by her wife’s hushed tones. “They were right to mistrust someone who calls themselves a Dissident-Outsider hybrid, yet has Daedalus’ crest emblazoned on their chest.” That last sentence was spat-out through gritted teeth.
The offence of having to trade her family’s coat of arms for the symbol that represented contemporary evil weighed her down, choking Kara with rage in the way most things related to the New Government did. But this small ruse, no matter how big its symbolism, was a crucial sacrifice she had to consciously make everyday if she wanted to build a better future for Lena; if she wanted to write a legacy that carried the people lost under chunks of debris hurled at them by the repressed hubris of a third party.
She was an Outsider because that’s where her home was now. She was a Dissident because she would rather bite her remaining arm off than pledge loyalty to Daedalus and his New Government. She led Daedalus’ most powerful army because there was no other way to keep her wife and herself safe.
Small sacrifices.
Baby steps.
One day at a time.
“I showed them my status tattoos, told them that I could help them out as long as they trusted me. But–”
“–having the Dissident, Outsider and Overwatcher marks didn’t help your case?”
“They don’t know what a sexy triple double-agent I make, no doubt.” Her lips ticked upwards. “Gave them a few of your image inducers, their exit strategy and made them swear they would never go back to the Inside. But, by the look on their faces? I’ll probably be rescuing their asses soon enough.”
“Sounds like a busy day.”
“Yeah, just added six corpses to my body count.” A frown broke the serenity of her face. She swiftly brushed it off, forcibly acquainted with the discomfort of it. “Mr. Gurevich asked me if I was getting the 2500 days tattoo next week with them. It’s just hitting me it's been almost seven years since everything went down,” she said offhandedly, studying Lena’s face to anchor her to anything other than the coldness seeping through the weapon holes of her body.
Instead, her wife traced the black numbers already etched onto the skin of her inner forearm. One below the other.
0
500
1000
1500
2000
“Is this your what, nth tattoo? Leonard Shelby would be so proud of you.”
“Rao, no thanks. I wouldn’t want to live a life where I was constantly forgetting the stuff that gave me purpose.” Kara fought the sudden knot blocking her throat, sucking on a lungful of air through clenched teeth.
The thought of not having her compass to guide her through this new hell licked a blazing pit between her ribs, and she clutched her necklace to dampen the ache. She was at war with herself and the world, but at least she still had the love of her life with her.
“Remembering you is the one thing that has kept me alive this long. You’re the only reason I’m still fighting.”
No matter how much she wanted to, their current lounging arrangements didn’t allow Kara to take a peek at her wife. So, she was relieved when Lena huddled forward and hovered near, seeking her lips with an air of desperate, hot wanton that she reciprocated marrow-deep, too.
“Sometimes I forget how romantic midnights make you.”
She hummed. “This has more to do with the blood I lost than the hour. I’m seeing white, I think your transfusion didn’t work.”
“That so?” Lena lifted a single eyebrow in that way that most days earned her many, many bed rights. But tonight, it barely tugged a constipated giggle out of Kara. “You should have let someone in your brigade fix you up at the Capitol, then. That Siobhan woman still around? I, for one, know she would love to get her hands on you.”
“No need to get jealous, pumpkin pie, your hands are the only ones I want all over me.”
Besides, Siobhan Smythe had permanently lost the ability to get her hands on other people, or to do anything that involved brain activity. But it was Siobhan’s life—an Overwatcher who pledged her allegiance to the New Government on multiple occasions—or the life of two Dissidents trying to escape with their newborn. In Kara’s defence, she was running out of time and options, and snapping her neck didn’t seem too appalling at that moment.
It still didn’t.
“Let’s take your arm off before you flake out, I’m not in the mood to hustle one hundred and thirty pounds of deadweight around,” Lena called, piercing the longest interval of silence since they had gotten ready for bed.
“One hundred and thirty pounds of pure muscle,” Kara said, the petulant whine noticeable in her voice. “Lenaaa, I don’t wanna move,”
“And I don’t want to wake you in the middle of the night because I have a broken rib after you eventually become a cuddly monster. Come on, sleepy monster, sit up.”
Albeit disgruntled, she followed orders, but not without complaining and grumbling the whole way through.
Blue eyes flickered to the screen of the set-up, the source of lightning in their bedroom, as Lena’s fingers flew around the devices going step-by-step with the disengaging protocols designed by the New Government's platform. Purposefully naive as to not set off alarms that could warn the Overwatchers that Kara’s arm was manually removed, and not done by the machines created for that sole purpose back at the Army’s HUBs in the Capitol.
“What was that thing you were telling me earlier? About the sun,” Lena wondered aloud, making sure the charging current of the prosthesis wasn’t dangerous for her to manipulate.
“Uh. It came out for the first time in months down that region,” she started, waiting for Lena to attenuate the electric feedback signals of the multilayered subdermal chips so they would be corrupted and couldn’t make use of the GPS it housed.
They had discovered the New Government had surgically installed them on Kara after she woke up with a pounding headache and a limb that wasn’t hers, and, despite her somewhat good reputation back in the Capitol, Lena didn’t believe for a second that her wife had received the prosthesis at work as an act of goodwill.
And, because Kara was way too trusting, Lena had to be the one with a whisk of human malice. She had spent weeks scanning both her and the arm’s nuts and bolts to find a colourful variety of bugs, tracking devices and EMP bombs circuits that would be triggered if they sensed an unauthorised removal or any other activity considered an anomaly.
“I hadn’t seen it in so long, it felt good to feel the warm crawling on my skin again. It tickled, like that time I was licked by a tiger,” she continued, a content smile painting the otherwise taut features of her face. At the pensive look Lena paired her with, she nodded and braced herself. Breathing again after the weight of her arm was replaced by the weight of her wandering thoughts, the way it most often than not happened whenever she underwent the process.
This time, they didn’t take a downturn, but instead gave Kara a fleeting chance at catharsis.
Maybe she had lost part of herself—both physical and mental—in that battle, but thankfully she had the chance to keep seizing the day that way. However, there were more things to lose back then, and if this phantom reminder meant she got to wake up another day next to the only person she didn’t lose? Then she would shoulder her way across the whirlpool of intrusive thoughts and combat the ruins of the old world until she got her revenge.
For Lena. For her family. For the victims of the Draft and everything that came next.
“How long till they ushered you back to the confines of the Capitol?” Kara thought the bitterness in her wife’s voice was accurately justified. “They know damn well they can’t risk you getting a taste of solar radiation.”
“No, I don’t think they’re dumb enough to do that. No.” She laughed and leaned on the heel of her palm. “If they hadn’t stripped me off my powers– if Supergirl was still around then…”
“Kara, we’ve gone over this. There’s no use crying over spilled milk.” Lena went rigid behind her for a second, wrapping her arms around her waist and ghosting her lips over the scars constellating her naked back. “This is not your fault, this is nobody’s fault but the ones who allowed the New Government to rise. If anything, this is all on the higher-ups at the Capitol, Daedalus the first on the blame queue.”
Her fist clenched around the sheets.
It would be so satisfying when she got her hands on that guy.
“To answer your earlier question. Yes, I know we can't keep going like this, but I have no idea what else to do other than wait.” The reverberating whistle of her words was sinister, dangerous as it stiffened the muscles rippling her back under her wife’s caress. “I’m sick of pretending that I’m fine working for the people that took our family from us, and I hate protecting them from the Dissidents and Outsiders. I’m a mediator-turned-executor, and yeah it’s for the greater good in the long run, but… Daedalus and the rest get away with having destroyed our world. After what happened to Krypton, I promised I would take care of Earth but I lost home and almost everyone once again, and I’m also so sick of–”
“–pretending your wife is dead?”
The lighting-like shiver that bolted down her spine couldn’t be pinpointed either to Lena’s words or the straight row of teeth scraping that spot on Kara’s nape.
“Aye. That tiny, bitty issue, too.”
One she hated with a passion.
“Tomorrow is a brand new day, my love. And while I can’t promise the sun will rise with us, I do swear we’ll keep trying. Together.”
The bright side of having her ass handed to her—Kara was amenable to admitting that on the grounds that the pawns she encountered did face a fatal destiny—was that work, merciful as it never was, granted stay–in for a few days while she recovered from the injuries.
It wouldn’t take long. Four or five days more, tops. What with Lena’s handiwork proudly displayed on her torso, and the amounts of Capitol-trademarked healing serum provided with the purpose of getting the most damaged of soldiers back in their feet in a matter of days.
Still, the short lived break was welcomed with an arm wide open, even if it came at the expense of a fussing wife and a scar that was going to itch like crazy for at least the next three weeks.
And as she watched from the doorway the slow motions of Lena’s breathing, green with envy of the peaceful slumber that was stealing attention that should be poised on her instead, she loathed her body’s need to be fuelled by actual nutrients for taking a morning of being wrapped around in her wife’s arms away from her.
The door was quiet as Kara closed it behind her, so were the steps she took to sneak out of the house avoiding waking her sleeping beauty up. She fidgeted with her arm, squirming and off-kilter since she hadn’t had any help placing it back on this morning, but the uneasiness quickly scurried away in between the high ivy that lead to the green market, already busy with the early rush of Outsiders eyeing around from one stall to the other.
A smile weaved its way onto Kara’s face, the nostalgic weight of it translating the memories that came soaring back to her mind from just watching the landscape. The green market reminded her of Argo’s—minus the lack of a red sun rising above, plus the presence of birds scattered high across—with the crowd buzzing with energy while it made sure the harvest was worthy to be served to the lavish and preposterous.
Although the clock was approaching 7am, the sky was painted with shades of gloom. Grey, thick clouds hung below most of it, no doubt hiding the sun whose rays hadn’t shone on the area that made up District Four in months.
If Kara was to build a simile out of it, she would pair the humid atmosphere with one of the nights from a lifetime ago, prior New Government, when the sun didn’t set to a horizon of orange and pink hues but rather to black nebulas—illuminated by the lighting bolts that struck to show where the sky ended and the ocean began.
A particularly harsh wind blew her out of her absentmindedness, and she fingered her glasses up her nose, pushing her ponytail back in place before stuffing her hands back into the pockets of her khaki trousers.
“Ms. Zor-El!” a gruff voice called from the side of the road.
Kara turned her head to the source, the hole she was scuffing on the dirt long forgotten, and her eyes brightened as they flitted over the two guys standing on the farmer truck’s platform, dodging the wooden crates that brimmed with crops to dangle from the sides of the car.
Albeit clumsily from the stitches on her side, Kara propped up with the strength of her bionic arm and jumped to reach the fists extended for her to bump, her grin gradually dwindling to something less manic as Orlando and Joey started rambling about the state of their potatoes, filling a bag with them before offering it to her.
“Don’t even think about it.” Orlando started with a threatening look, watching Kara reach out for her wallet. “This one is in the house.”
“I can’t possibly accept that,” she refused with a groan, crossing her arms over her chest. She felt Joey staring with his astonished, brown eyes where the white cotton of her henley sweater rode up to reveal the three marks tattooed on the side of her wrist, but she couldn’t bother to hide them. At least not anymore, not in her district—not when she trusted their neighbours to not give their intentions away, not when she had trained a small group of Outsiders to keep Daedalus’ Overwatchers at bay.
“But– but you will have to, Ms. Zor-El,” Joey eventually chimed in, the stutter of his words betraying the veneration he was trying to conceal.
After some sheepish back and forth, Kara gave in and grabbed the crops, but not without telling the Davis that she would pay the favour back with hand-to-hand combat lessons, and to ask for her whenever they wanted to cash out on their part of the bargain. She pulleyed into the side of the truck again, messed up Joey's hair and shook hands with the older of the two before retreating.
“Sorry about Joey being all jittery,” Orlando leant it to whisper conspiratorially, “you’re basically his hero, so he gets shy.”
“I’m only doing what Guardian would’ve done in my place.”
She left with a smile, a bag of fresh potatoes hanging from her left hand and the bittersweet memory of her sister-in-law’s legacy. The same one she had promised to highlight every single day, the same way she had vowed to keep alive the memory of the rest of her loved, fallen ones.
Morning breeze evolved into puffs of air that didn’t bite into her skin, but rather embraced her with warmth and glistened on the surface of her sun-kissed skin, where small beads of water from the springs had settled.
Even though she had hoped, it didn’t seem like the sun was showing today either, so she huddled in the mellow comfort of her people laughing and bowing their heads in greeting as she passed them in the grassy paths sidelined with stalls, waving back at them with a self-conscious flourish of her hand.
It had been long since it was Kara’s turn to get their food provisions. But it’s not like she could forget how to be human. Again.
Ten minutes into her tour, a football came bouncing to her feet, shepherded by a horde of kids that drifted closer to her when they caught sight of who it was. A chuckle passed over her lips, shaking her head at the thinly-veiled excitement on their faces as she switched hands for the bag—balancing the weight between swollen knuckles and broken fingers—and metal-blue fingers closed around the ball. It was light, like holding a balloon, and she measured the grip before throwing it into the air once.
She nodded to herself, pushing her eyebrows together and addressing the kids in a deep, threatening tone, “How far?”
“Borders!” the tallest in the group asked, got several nods to back her up.
“Okay, step back troublemakers. Up, up and away!” The ball slithered through the air after Kara hurled it with as much strength she could muster without it roaring past the borders of the district, and her heart leaped when the teen-herd scattered with crazed laughs to chase after it, no doubt dumping their all to the race. The tall girl from before mouthed a quick thank you, General over her shoulder, and just like that Kara’s day was made. Sun or not.
But, apparently she was being rewarded for getting her ass beaten the day before. It was a delightful contrast.
“Kara! Kara!” Mikhail’s peculiar rolling of her name reached her with a gust of wind before she caught sight of him in the parade of customers. Her eyes caught him dashing through long legs just in time to drop the bag and crouch down for balance before the little boy crashed against the nest of her arms, squeezing tight around her neck. “Kara! Hi!”
The smile that blossomed on her face couldn’t be tamed no matter if she tried. She didn’t want to try.
“Hey bud,” she greeted, twirling him around before settling the precious cargo on her hip. “Where did you come from?”
“I’m afraid he escaped my supervision.”
Kara shuffled on her feet to find Mikhail’s father, lifted her right hand to shake his. It was heavy, like holding an anchor.
“Long time no see, Mr. Gurevich. How’s business? I was just headed to yours,” she confessed, a lilt to her tone that suggested they walked towards their destination. She shouldered her bag, tightened her grip on Mikhail and resumed her quest in blissful company.
“Wonderful, thanks. Both the wife and I are burning the candle at both ends, but it’s not like we can complain,” he said, scratching his beard. It was poorly trimmed and it led to the state of his face, dark fingerprints hung underneath his eyes and there was a frenzied look to them that made Kara ask inwards when was the last time this guy had slept. “Plus, this little guy here is showing his skills as a salesperson lately.”
“That true?” she wondered, eyes poised on pools of honey.
Mikhail gave a nod, although a bit brusque. And as they reached the Gurevich’s veggie stall and she dived into small talk with Mikhail’s mother—mostly about the kid’s wellbeing and his condition—she felt nimble fingers tug at her necklace, and immediately clocked on what was coming next. The apologetic-bordering-on-pitiful grimaces on his parents’ faces and multiple times undergoing alike situations having clued her in.
Plopping down on a hay bale, Kara whistled when it itched on her butt. She chose to stand up, placing a thick fabric over it before settling the kid back down. He shrugged it off as if it didn’t bother him in the least, and Kara scrutinised Mikhail’s face until he looked up, curiosity flowing off him in waves.
It always started that way. Mikhail chose a part of Kara that got his attention and started a harmless interrogatory right after, a mechanism he taught himself to cope with the gradual memory loss stemming from the brain injuries and traumatic havoc he had suffered back in Kaznia.
Somehow, Kara’s past was the feat about her he showed most interest to. As if they had known each other in another life and perhaps if he kept rummaging with the right questions through the depths of her backstory, he could find out if there was ever an age where he made part of her timeline.
Deep inside, she herself felt like she had known this boy her whole life, too.
“Where did you get this?” The first question eventually came.
There was never enough preparation for them. In a sick, twisted way, it was impossible for Kara to lie to him, or to crack a joke as leverage as she scooped herself up and sought for an answer that wouldn’t compromise her.
It only gave space for honesty.
He was twirling the necklace around his finger, waiting with expectant eyes for Kara to fill in the voids of some pages he couldn’t remember. Rather than the ring hanging from it, his hazel gaze was zeroed on in the chain, and Kara, squatting down, retrieved her wallet to show him a wrinkled piece of paper. The one picture she had left of her family.
“See her?” She pointed to Alex, who had her arms awkwardly wrapped around Kelly and Brainy. “That’s Alex, my older sister. I got the chain from her, who got it from when her dad served in the Army.”
Mikhail blanched. “Daedalus’ Army? He was an Overwatcher? A Dissident?”
The mark on the side of her arm burned, and she swallowed before reassuring him, “No, the Army from before. The New Government didn’t exist when he died, you weren’t even born yet.”
That seemed to appease his worries. “That’s why he isn’t in the picture?”
“Yeah, this was taken after.”
“Who are they?”
“My family. The two people next to my sister are Kelly, her wife, and Brainy, my best friend. Next to him are Nia and J’onn, and next to Kelly is–”
“–do they live in this district? Are they Outsiders like us, or did they live here before? Have they ever been to the other side of The Labyrinth?”
“Uh, no– no… they… I’d like to think they would fancy Outside. Uh,” she stuttered, opening and closing the fingers of her left hand. “They didn’t make it through the Draft.”
He nodded, his lips flat. “Dad says we were lucky we got to the country after the Draft ended.”
“You are worthy, kid. You’re smart and you’re passionate about the things you care about. You would’ve made it eyes closed, cross my heart. You’d make a terrific asset, but I’m glad you got here after recruitment.”
Kara wouldn’t let him a mile near the Inside and the Overwatchers.
“Wasn’t your family worthy, then?”
With her head lowered, Kara huffed out a sharp, dry laugh. It sounded more like a growl. “They were, all of them.”
However, their fates hadn’t been sealed by their worthiness, but once again by Daedalus’ hand-picked revenge.
“Who’s that?” His voice was small, as if he had sensed Kara’s sudden mood swing and wanted to soothe her with distraction. It worked, because she glanced back at the printed ink and a blinding smile gathered the heaviness of her chest, the adoration in her eyes vacuuming the blues she had sunk into the second before. The person in question was next to Kelly, mirth swimming in her green eyes as they poised on Kara behind the camera. “She is pretty,” he added as an afterthought, and by his blushing cheeks, Kara guessed he had wanted to keep that to himself.
“I gotta agree with you, sir, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” she whispered, outlining the shape of her wife in the photo. “That’s the love of my life, my wife. We got married a couple months before Daedalus’ dictatorship emerged.”
It was only then that Mikhail noticed the ring attached to the chain. “Did she make it through the Draft?”
“Oh, yes. Of course. We were the only ones. She was the director of the Tech Faction.”
His eyes sparkled under the obscure morning. “She’s a Dissident?”
“At heart? Yeah, she hated the New Government and we had plans to escape. She always gave her everything to make sure we were safe on the Outside.”
“Can I meet her?”
Uh.
“Mikhail…” Mrs. Gurevich warned, her upper body turned to them from where she was talking to a customer, but Kara brushed her off with a genuine grin, snatching the opportunity to gush about her wife.
“I would love to, and I’m sure she would’ve loved how quick witted you are, bud. But… uh– she died in the field a few years ago. Collateral victim to the E-bomb blast in Battle Primitus.”
“She was there?” Kara fiddled with her glasses, wondering how much more his eye sockets would put up with him. “That’s when Supergirl disappeared!”
“You know there’s a street legend that Supergirl lives amongst us? And is waiting for the right time to come back? My wife’s team helped the Dissidents who later became District Two escape, and Supergirl got them through The Labyrinth before they could get caught.”
“You think your wife met Supergirl?”
“I know they were really good friends. She even introduced me to her that day.”
“You were there too!?”
“Of course, Khai. Why do you think I’m half cyborg now?”
“So cool!” Mikhail was perched on the edge of the bale, vibrating with pent-up energy. But he straightened up, bore his eyes into Kara’s and branded with his scorching touch the Dissident tattoo resting in the middle of the other two. “Sorry your wife died, she was a hero.”
“Yup, she will always be.”
Hours flew by chatting with her favourite small sized human, the humidity of the day sticking the sweater to her skin and jamming her lungs. Kara was ready to go back home to prepare an early lunch for her wife. Or at least try. But as she limped her way to the market’s exit closer to their house, carrying a crate on her right shoulder and a swarm of tote bags with her other arm, a thrill spiked through her when she felt eyes burning holes behind her skull. She was too familiar with the sensation, conditioned on paranoia to discern whether the goosebumps kicked in from danger or raw delight.
Kara decided it was the latter, whipping her neck around just in time to catch the woman’s eyes locked into hers, right before she looked away and engaged in conversation with a random marketer who was unabashedly checking her out. Knuckles protesting when she clawed too hard at her palm, she smirked and shook her head, approaching with a quick step to be pulled in the same alluring orbit her fellow Outsider frequented.
She was a force to be reckoned with. With the light auburn strands of hair cascading down to cradle along collarbones branded with the elegant swirls of both the Dissident and Outsider marks, and greyish green eyes glancing up to mingle between the dark blue of the sky and the polluted blue of a lake nearby to finally settle in the besotted blue of Kara’s eyes with such awe, fervour and familiarity that the weighty, important organs of her body felt like fighting a straitjacket to be freed, to be moved.
Disarmingly attractive, to sum it up, always doing a great job of stealing her breath straight out from her. And today wasn’t the exception, not with the delicate flick of her wrist where she traced Kara’s bottom lip with the stem of a cherry, grinning to herself as she noticed the glazed-over screen in her eyes.
Kara was on the verge of obsession. But then again, she had been way before she got a portrait of what this force of nature’s physical form looked like. Already enamoured with the all-encompassing idea of a faceless newcomer who reignited what Kara believed was a habit they had lost for good, whose ardour enveloped her the first time she felt her presence around the district, whose magnetic field she fully devoted to a minute after seeing her charm her way into the Gurevich’s good graces with the geekiest of orchard management jokes.
“Ms. Mercer,” she breathed, out of air from the electrifying feel of slender fingers against her skin. There was a spot proximal to the knuckle on her left ring finger that was paler than the rest of her hand. Kara’s own wedding band burnt where it rested on the apple of her collarbones. “What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this?”
Tess lifted her eyebrow.
Kara bit her tongue.
That was too much gusto.
“Same as you, it appears.” Her voice was familiar and husky, dripping down Kara’s back like warm honey. “A very caring friend of mine advised me against too many vegetables, said I needed an honest source of protein.”
“Sounds wise.”
“So I got stuff to make pork potstickers tonight, if you’re interested.”
Kara perked up at that, eyes shooting upwards before startling a foot back, noticing how close Ms. Mercer had gotten. “Uh– ah… sounds promising.”
“What about you, Ms. Zor-El? If I wasn’t acquainted with your… appetite –” her attention strayed around Kara’s abs. And. Okay. There was no fair reason for such a mundane word to sound so… dirty–“I’d be inclined to believe you have enough to feed more than one mouth,” Tess said, squeezing a bulging bicep and climbing to her toes to take a peek at the contents of the crate.
Rendered speechless, she begged her berserk heart to level it down a few notches, dizzy and putty under this lady’s appeal.
Kara’s soul would sing to her in any world, any shape.
Kara twisted her neck to the side a little, checking to see the marketer from before out of eavesdropping ratio, and leaned forward. Making sure her voice broadcasted a lower octave when she said, “gotta run and take this to the old lady , but then I’m sure I can sneak out for an hour or so.”
Tess Mercer flushed bright red, and not even the sudden sharp pain on her shin pulled Kara away from her satisfaction.
“Meet me at our spot?” Tess croaked, visibly affected by the reciprocated gall, but recovered faster than expected and let her hand wander down a toned shoulder, past her neck and, at last, stopping in the crook of her neck to push Kara forward by the ring. “I won’t be up waiting,” she purred against her lips.
Kara didn’t even get the chance to voice her affirmation, the woman gone with the wind and the attractive sway of her hips.
The thrill of the forbidden—and deadly dangerous, Kara would admonish both of them later—flickered to overlap with the urge to rush back home to get her proper welcome, and she revved back to follow the signs to her neighbourhood.
Blood was pumping on her veins, flooding her ears with an energetic staccato and sending her pulse point into overdrive, but she forced herself to water down the fire licking between her ribs to help Mrs. Stein load the empty boxes into her husband’s truck—that she couldn’t get rid of, no matter how much duct tape both Kara and her had wasted on trying to make it work. She got a pat to her cheek for her efforts, along with an invitation to pick up a chocolate pecan pie at her house tomorrow morning.
It was bound to be a good week and it hadn’t even started.
Which reminded her…
She hadn’t finished unloading bags when that same alluring pull from before made its presence known in the kitchen. And, once again, Kara shifted in sync to watch a keychain, a beaten image inducer and a bag that smelled suspiciously like pork clattering to the bowl, Tess Mercer’s face slowly morphing into the features of the woman most of her dreams were infested with.
Only the green shade of Lena’s eyes was enough to have her hypnotised.
“Hey, sugar.”
“Old lady, that is my new name?. Seriously, Kara, that’s the best you’ve got?” Lena asked, a mixture of fondness and exasperation colouring her tone. She closed the distance between them, standing stiff like a lighthouse as she waited for Kara to come up from her squatting position.
“My poor shin faced your kicking skills for it, that evoked your flirting-shaming rights,” Kara shot back while jabbing a pointer finger to the air, then placing both of them through the loop of her wife’s jeans to roughly get her closer. She rejoiced in the whimper it elicited.
“Still too bad, even for you. Your game is getting rusty.”
Squirmish but overly eager, Kara chased Lena when the latter cupped her face, tasting the rain off her lips before daring deeper and plunging her tongue inside, desperate to get washed in the cotton-like sweetness of her mouth. Her hands wandered low, the left attached to the curve of her ass as the other rubbed circles on the dents of her spine, sighing as her skin met the mellow cloud of heat. Something gut-wrenching and hankering for attention simmered low on her belly.
“I can’t lose my dorky touch, that’s what got me in your pants.” Kara puffed breaths of air against Lena’s pout, her grin growing even wider after her back crashed onto the counter’s edge as per her wife’s direction. “What are you huffing about, woman. You know I’m right.”
Watching Lena’s eyes brimming with that kind of faux-irritation that hid vast rivers of adoration beneath was her favourite thing in the brave new world.
Right after potstickers.
Which again…
“Did you even get to pay for anything in here?” Lena interrupted her dinner thoughts before she could put them out in the void.
The doubt was well-deserved. But it wasn’t Kara’s fault that their neighbours scampered away at the sight of her wallet.
“You bet! I bought this mango with my own money that I earned with my blood, tears and sweat,” she answered. Reaching forward for the lonely, yellow fruit without making much of a hustle to not disturb her wife, a cheek pressed against her chest.
“They spoil you way too much.” Lena sighed. “But I’m not exactly complaining, heaven knows your appetite is too wild for a dead person’s wage.”
“I’m Daedalus Army’s General, I can provide for my own mango cravings.”
“Meh.”
“I see life as a non-billionaire is catching up on you,” Kara jested, leaving the mango to drift back and forth on the counter and hopping off the hug, catching the tip of her hand bandage with her teeth to tighten the knot. “Thou shalt not worry, O my lady. This home will overflow with those awful green leaves of yours for as long as you pester me to get them.”
“Don’t pretend you never benefited from billionaire life, I was basically sponsoring your every need by the end.”
Twirling a dark lock of hair around her finger, Kara hissed. Not a lie. “Semantics, Luthor, semantics.”
Lena let out a surprised shriek after Kara picked her and manhandled her up on the counter, but despite the heavy breathing, she decided to indulge in the lingering, sloppy kiss that she drew her into. Perhaps, Kara was privy to how much she enjoyed the slow pace, and engaged her arsenal of tactics labelled moves to get lucky, touching down firm and hard and unmoving on Lena’s ribs, running the pads of her fingers along the contour of her breasts.
Skin was burning under the silk of Lena’s blouse, and the sensation of having her wife purring oh so delicately on the drop where her shoulder and neck met, begging Kara to be careful with the stitches, was too overwhelming. Overpowering her up to the point she had to hook her left arm behind her back lest the counter pulverised under her grasp.
“Hey,” Lena said. Then—Kara still wondered what breed of demon possesed her—she drove a finger into her super sensitive belly button, cackling as Kara doubled down with a groan. “If you’re going to insult a lady for reminiscing on past lifestyles, the least you could do is have the decency to address them by full name. It’s Lena Luthor-Danvers for you.”
“Don’t forget Zor-El,” she waterily grunted and rubbed her recently targeted belly. She was in pain, but priorities were priorities.
“I didn’t. But I was running out of breath, and Lena Luthor Zor-El Danvers sounds too tacky, too yours.”
“Well, are you anyone else’s?”
“Never.” Lena tugged playfully at her earlobe, beckoning her back in. She followed, like the bewitched fool in love she was, and didn’t notice her destructive-ish grip on the counter had altered the mango’s path until it rolled to the edge and its full weight landed on her little toe.
Barefootism was also a noticeable enemy.
“Aaargh! Son of a mo– mango!”
Kara glared at the chuckle reverberating from above her, Lena’s eyes shining with barely concealed joy. “Serves you right for flirting with someone who’s not your wife.”
An aggravating complaint that irked Kara night and day, was that being a victim of capitalism in the age of the New Government—she was still one before Daedalus decided to destroy half the country and settle down in their city, building the Capitol and raising a literal labyrinth to surround it and divide what was left of the nation in half, effectively leaving the Outside to rot and taking the Inside under his wing. It marked what a Christian would call before Christ and anno Domini —is that being under a dictator’s payroll was quite literal.
Work meant working.
Not paid self-administered breaks to save the world nor the blatant disregard of her absence her co-workers at CatCo granted as payback from the times Supergirl saved their asses from danger she herself put them in.
Work meant working.
Zero strikes with no margin of error, unlike the times she worked for her platonic mentor, then her platonic best friend and then her platonic hater.
Who would’ve thought?
Kara shuddered.
The night was dark and the air thick. At about eleven o'clock, the sky was covered with dense black clouds and a violent storm broke out. The rain did not fall in drops, but in true streams that worshipped the ground as Kara got ready to leave once more.
Capitalism forgave no one.
“Leaving without saying goodbye?” Sleep clung to her wife, voice raspy and drowsy-eyed and also unfairly warm where she was sprawled mostly naked for Kara to smother her hand along the creases of her body, clad only in lacy panties.
Tucking the lace into her boot, she plopped flat on her stomach next to Lena. She could put on her shirt later. “Can’t leave without good luck kisses.”
“Come here,” Lena mumbled and pulled her close by the strap of her bra. She willingly obliged, letting out a sigh as her cheek made contact with her lower belly. It was quiet for a few minutes, until Lena spoke, “You have to leave so soon? You have one more day for recovery.”
“I know, and you know there’s nothing I want more than to stay here with you, but if they decided to do a random sweep of the HUBs and found out I’m not there…”
“You’ve been sneaking out here for years, what’s so different now?”
“Doesn’t mean the risk is less.” Kara blew a breath and sat up, her back facing Lena. “What do you think would happen if people in the Inside found out the General of the Overwatchers is–”
“–for such a barbaric villain, Daedalus was too stupid to call his little army Overwatchers. What’s that name even?”
“Daedalus’ little helpers appeals to you? I can pass the suggestion on to my boss,” she said. Her hand snaked through the bed to pull at Lena’s little toe. “I was saying, I can’t afford someone figuring out that I’ve been rendezvousing it to come here every night and fool around with an alleged ghost.”
Working sucked. But working herself to exhaustion to protect her wife? That she could get behind.
The sheets rustled, and a comfortable weight draped itself over her, Lena pressing her heartbeat against Kara’s back and waiting for her to match her breathing. “If you call our marriage, a marriage of years no less, a rendezvous then we seriously need to discuss our points of view regarding this… partnership.”
“I’m here for the free health-care, the food and the mindblowing sex,” she said, picking Lena’s hand to drop a kiss to the wedding band.
“You do know how to make a woman feel confident.”
Kara left it at that.
There was an undercurrent permeating the hardwood floors of their bedroom, sneaking into the walls like humidity to make the atmosphere heavy, almost impossible to breathe in its fumes.
She hated goodbyes. She should be good at them, for how many times she had had to say them, but it was never easy.
How was being ripped away from her soul the logical way to save the world?
Her wife traced on her steps as Kara climbed to her feet, following her around to soak in the minutes they had left of each other’s company. Despite Lena being Kara’s light, she was also her shadow, and it hurt like nothing else that there was no sun to cast Lena over to her side, even when they were miles apart.
Daedalus isn’t hearing the end of it, she swore to Rao.
They were quiet and careful, and Lena adjusted her arm in place, gazing at her with such an afflicting blend of love and dread that it pressed down hard on her throat, tears springing to her eyes.
“We got notice that an Outsider broke past the borders. Used a homemade E-bomb, it alerted the guards at The Labyrinth. They haven’t been identified yet, but there’s word they’re District Four.”
Slender fingers circled her wrist. “Kara.”
“It could be any of us, baby. That’s why I have to leave earlier.”
It could be Lena.
She saw the rage, saw the furious resignation swimming in green tormented eyes. But that’s who Kara was, that’s who they were. They helped people under all circumstances and climates.
“What if–”
Lena couldn’t finish her thought, scrambling to string anything out but falling short.
“How long until you’re back?”
A shrug. “I’m not sure. It could take a day or a month. I can’t rush.”
“I know. I know.”
“I love–”
“–what I said when you got home a few days ago? I meant it.”
“Lena, please.”
“No, let me.” Kara was itching to kiss the creases of her forehead, to do anything to make her lover feel at ease. “We can’t keep going like this, not anymore. That egomaniac took over our home. He almost killed you and definitely killed me, and our family. I can’t pretend I’m fine with watching you blurry your lines of morality for the Overwatchers, I can’t pretend that patching you up after you leave part of your soul somewhere else is okay.
“We both vowed to fight and honour those we lost, and that’s who we are. But to call ourselves Outsiders like we come from somewhere else when this is the place where we belong? I had to give my life up for something that is looking a lot like a lost cause? We became Dissidents when we refused the New Government’s doctrine and escaped the Inside, but are the scars even worth it? Only one of us survived that, and I don’t think you left unscathed.”
“No, don’t go there. It’s not fair.”
“What isn’t fair is watching the love of my life running herself to the ground for something that doesn’t recognise her efforts.”
That was a lie. She had Mikhail and his family. She had the Davis, and the football kids who counted on her pitcher skills. She had Lena’s image-induced alter ego and the thrill of tasting a normal life. She had the promise of chocolate pecan pie from Mrs. Stein kitchen. She had that one crumbled photo burning in her pocket. She had the love of her life, alive and sound.
For Kara, small things were always larger than the big ones.
She bit her lip and watched Lena’s throat work.
“We’re not giving up, but you lost parts of yourself that won’t ever come back,” she continued, voice breaking. “What if they keep taking and taking from you? This isn’t worth your life.”
That strung a chord. Kara couldn’t care less about her final destination. Anything was worth it if it was to save Lena.
“I don’t care!” The dam broke—Kara did a little with it. She hadn't meant to shout, but listening to Lena’s foretelling soliloquy only heightened her fear, and it was pulsing too sharp in her chest to be easy to control. “They can claw my heart out if they want to! All I need is you. I can be half a person, but I’ll be complete as long as you’re with me. Daedalus can have my arm, can have Supergirl and can have my heart, but I’m sure as hell won’t let him take you, my soul. If I die achieving that, I’m at peace with it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Tears dampened the side of her neck, and Kara hugged Lena closer, grounded by the warm drag of their bare skin. “What if you do die? How am I supposed to live without my one reason to do so?”
The thinly-veiled threat being put out there without euphemisms to dilute it instilled a panic she hadn’t felt in long. She often thought about growing around her grief if she ever lost Lena, but what about the other way around?
“Listen to me,” Kara whispered, a distressed tremble injected into her jaw, and licked the tears off her lips. She cradled Lena’s jaw in her hands, a pang travelling straight to her heart when she saw the red swirls eclipsing them. “When the war is over, we’ll get married again and the earth will grow flowers like you, and your belly will carry the most beautiful girl in the universe.”
Lena let out a wet laugh that bounced to crack her spine. Kara had never heard a more gut wrenching, beautiful sound. “Promise?” she asked, pressing her cheek onto her bionic hand.
Up to this day, she still searched for answers that told her why Lena trusted the most damaged sides of her. She held both the literal and figurative thread and needle for whenever Kara was falling apart.
Kara wiped the track of tears numbing Lena’s face with her thumb. “I’ve never been more inclined to keep a promise.”
The kiss involved teeth and bumping noses, and tasted of tears. Tasted of promises spearheaded to the future, but it also tasted of fear of the imminent. And while she learnt to not promise the sight of the sun, Kara was nothing but hopeful at heart.
Her fingers dug into the dimples on Lena’s back, staying there as she showed the column of her neck to let her wife brand skin with burning lips and the fierceness that preceded such harrowing departures. It would hurt to see the ghosts of their love littered amongst places Lena wouldn’t touch in a long time, but they both needed to anchor their love on something. Anything.
She arched into Lena once more, fumbling to wrap a hand around her neck to feel the pulse against her fingers, to have engraved in her mind the flutter of her wife’s life. She squeezed her eyes shut when a cold fire seeped in.
“Come back to me?” Her wife asked, lips hovering over the wedding ring on her necklace.
“You are the only place I belong to.”