Chapter Text
Mxy leans forward, still looking about as frazzled as Kara feels, and lifts his hand in preparation for a snap. “You ready for one more go?”
And no, Kara absolutely isn’t. The memory of Lena in immeasurable pain, with her heart ripped out and replaced by kryptonite, is already an image she’s certain will forever be burned behind her eyelids. She’s not sure she can bear adding another. She’s not sure she can bear losing her again.
But with a deep breath in, she picks her bleeding heart off the well-worn floor and holds it out to the universe, ready to see it destroyed. “One more go,” she says.
“Where to?” Mxy asks, fingertips almost touching.
“Where were you, when my brother blew my helicopter out of the sky?” Lena’s words, breathy and full of hurt, but oh so distant, echo through Kara’s head. “When my mother dragged my broken body to a lab and experimented on me, instead of fixing me. When the world was ripped apart at the seams. Where. Were. You.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when it mattered.”
Kara knows what to do.
It’d felt so impossible before - if she was in Lena’s life at all, she’d have wanted to be there for the entirety of it. But she doesn’t need to have been. Not if it means Lena is better off.
She straightens her spine and fixes Mxy under a determined stare. “Show me a world where I saved Lena, every time she needed to be saved. Where she could rely on me - on Supergirl - without a shadow of a doubt. But she can’t know Kara. I don’t want her to know Kara.”
Mxy raises his brows, then nods, snaps, and the universe tilts.
Kara squeezes her eyes shut at the now-familiar pull high in her stomach. When she opens them, she’s looking at the L-Corp building from the sky. She wearily lowers herself towards the balcony of Lena’s office.
It looks the same as before the third or fourth remodel - all of them similar and necessitated by attacks that left too much damage for just a quick repair job. Right about now, Lena would’ve taken over CatCo and started dating James in their old universe. Here, she sits in her old office alone. Kara’s stomach contracts uncomfortably.
When Kara’s feet touch down on the balcony, Lena perks up and swivels around in her chair. If Kara hadn’t already experienced it several times today, the way Lena’s face lights up at the sight of Supergirl like it hasn’t done in years in reality might’ve knocked her off her feet. Who is she kidding - it still almost does.
There’s something new to the tentative smile that lingers on Lena's face though, an apprehensive but not unfriendly quality. She pushes to her feet and walks over to let Kara in. “Supergirl,” she greets, her voice clear and expression turned curious. She takes a distant step back to let Kara through.
Kara strides a few paces into the familiar room before she turns to face Lena again. It’s as much to steel herself as it is to collect her thoughts. She hasn't given much consideration to what she wants out of this conversation - just that she needs to see Lena, this Lena, to make sure this reality is viable.
Lena, meanwhile, had likely been having a normal evening at the office until the city's superhero interrupted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asks, tilting her head.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay, after…” Kara trails off, and gestures vaguely to the balcony in hopes Lena will fill in the blanks of the excuse herself.
Lena’s laugh is bright and far too breezy considering the fact they’re talking about an assassination attempt. “It’s been almost a month now,” she says. “I think I’ve had sufficient time to recover.” She cocks her head, her eyes narrowing slightly.
Kara wants to tell her that there isn’t really a time limit on how long traumatic experiences are supposed to affect you. Instead she nods. Plays her part and catalogues the information to place this moment in time. “Of course,” she says. She shifts her weight. Fiddles with the strap of fabric running across her palm.
“Well…” Lena’s heartbeat is accelerated, but she’s hiding her nerves well. “If that is all?” She raises a hand towards the opened balcony door.
Kara’s feet feel glued to the ground. She knows this Lena must be perplexed by her behaviour, but she isn’t ready to go. “Are you happy?” she blurts out.
Lena lets out an incredulous laugh. “Am I happy? How does that concern you?”
Kara almost winces, but shrugs instead. “Just - are you happy?”
Lena's chin raises, her eyes narrow. “I am, Supergirl. Are you?”
If you are, Kara thinks, then I can be.
“Yes,” she says out loud.
Lena nods once, then clutches her hands together in front of her stomach, a gesture she once admitted to Kara helped hide shaky hands when speaking to the public. It feels strange to see it directed at her. “Well, then…” Lena gestures towards the balcony again.
Kara looks at her for a long moment. Just looks. Allows herself to drink her in, the entirety of her, and commit her to memory.
Shiny dark hair tied back into a tight bun, but loose wisps of it brushed behind her ears at this time of day. Beautiful sea glass coloured eyes with the slightest droop of tiredness to them - tiredness that doesn’t keep Lena from working herself to the bone for the redemption of her company, that she doesn’t let anyone witness in case they might keep her from it, or worse, think her weak. Her chest rises and falls in tight, controlled breaths.
If Kara was still allowed, she’d find Lena in their reality, stride over, and wrap her up in her arms until she melted into them and her breathing evened out, came in warm little puffs against Kara’s neck. In Kara’s wildest fantasies, she holds Lena like that forever. And if Lena lets herself sag against her, vulnerable in a way she has such a hard time showing, Kara picks her up, and her head comes to rest against her shoulder. Kara never takes her eyes off hers.
Is Kara strong enough to give Lena up? Lena, and everything she’d dreamed they might be?
The Lena in front of her shifts from one foot to the other impatiently. She doesn’t even know her.
“Right,” Kara says finally, and steps out into the cold evening air with heavy steps. “Good evening, Ms Luthor.”
“Good evening, Supergirl,” Lena says.
They watch the new timeline play out. Kara isn’t about to let any potentially devastating consequences of the change slip under her radar.
But the longer they watch, the tighter the little ball of nerves in her stomach coils, until it smarts something terrible.
Lena looks happy, without Kara. She’s well protected through Supergirl, gives her the same intrigued smiles and raises her brow in the same way when she catches Supergirl’s eyes lingering for a second too long on the sway of her hips or the low cut of her shirt. She makes snide comments the same way, though their fight over kryptonite never escalates like it did in the current reality. To Kara’s surprise, this Supergirl never explodes at Lena like she did, never throws baseless accusations in her face or asks a boyfriend this Lena doesn’t have to spy on her.
In turn, Lena seems eager to prove herself in the face of her collaborator’s rising apprehension, and they emerge from the Reign situation if not closer on a personal level, then more secure in their partnership.
Kara feels like she might throw up. Lena had always been the one person she was sure needed Kara Danvers, but it turns out, Kara Danvers was the one who needed her. Lena's doing fine - better even - without her. Kara Danvers is the one who ruined them. Kara Danvers - deceiver, expectant of loyalty even in costume, when Lena wasn’t aware she owed her any.
Kara had been afraid of losing Lena to her secret, true, but she’d been almost as afraid to lose the way Lena looked at her, like just another person, someone without the weight of the world on her shoulders. Kara wanted to keep Lena as the one person who held a space for her to just be, the one person who wanted to protect her–not in a patronizing way, but because she was worth so much to them.
Kara had wanted to keep Lena for how she made her feel, and it’s never hit her as hard as it does now just how selfish that was.
Still, as she watches the Superfriends defeat Lex - the confrontation playing out differently, Red Daughter sent to Kaznia to be their hero after some training - she can’t bring herself to give Mxy the go ahead.
They’re two years into the future of this new reality when Mxy pauses the tape with a snap of his fingers. “I can’t give you an endless guarantee of things going well, Kara,” he says. “This is already more than I should’ve shown you. Do you want it or not?”
Kara stares at the unmoving frame. Lena, slouched over some papers spread out on her desk, hair mussed from running her fingers through it in thought. Just outside, Sam and Ruby are coming up - on their way to surprise her for her birthday tomorrow. Ruby is long limbed and way too grown up, Sam wears a wedding ring.
Not much has changed for Lena.
“One more minute?” Kara implores, not closer to a decision than she was a few seconds ago, but desperate to see her ex best friend’s face light up with a genuine smile one last time.
“Kara,” Mxy reprimands. It’s not like him to be strict, but she can tell he’s tired by his dragging voice. When she turns, his hair is more tousled than Lena’s on the screen. “Congratulations, you’ve found the most boring alternate reality. Is it not to your liking? Do you want to change something else?”
Kara shakes her head. Nods. Groans and buries her face in her hands.
Barely anything has changed for where the other superfriends ended up (some detours were taken), though Andrea and William never entered their lives, meaning Kara is just a little more alone. Everyone else has someone, and she doesn’t have Lena.
“It’s late,” Mxy pushes.
“Yes,” Kara sighs, muffled against her palms. “This is exactly what I wanted. Just. Give me a night to think it over?”
When she emerges from her hands, Mxy is looking at her incredulously. Then he throws his hands up. “Fine, if we can stop this and it still counts as helping you. But I want an answer tomorrow by noon.”
Kara nods mindlessly. Nods until he snaps himself away in a puff of smoke, leaving her to slowly come to a halt, a bobblehead cast aside.
Suddenly, the apartment is oppressively silent. Sometime during their viewing, night had fallen, and the only light illuminating Kara’s apartment is the one coming from the screen. As if sensing how tempted Kara is to press play on this infinite highlight reel, the screen zaps out in a dramatic pixelated effect, followed by a white flash.
Kara knows which answer she has to give. She’s found exactly what she asked for. But now that she knows it exists, she can’t bring herself to wish it into permanent existence. If she’s honest with herself, she’d (again, incredibly selfishly, she’s really starting to hate herself a little here) hoped a reality like this didn’t exist. That her and Lena were somehow integral to each other’s lives, not able to get through them without each other.
Maybe because that’s what it feels like to her. Maybe because she saw the dejected sighs of her alternate universe self when she’d snuck away from her friends at game night, pretending to want more juice and snacks but really needing a reprieve from all the happy couples around her. Maybe because she’d always believed that Lena was something like her soulmate, even if she’s rationally aware that it’s an almost puerile, certainly hopelessly romantic notion that two people could be entangled like that–that they couldn’t fulfill their purpose without the other. As intense as anything ever feels, you can always move on.
Probably.
In any case, Kara doesn’t have Lena in this reality, either, so all she’s really exchanging is Lena’s suffering for her happiness. It should be easy.
So easy.
It’s anything but.
She doesn’t know when she decided to fly to Lena’s apartment, or if she decided at all. It’s an even-less-thought-through, split-second choice she makes hovering above the building, though, to seek Lena out. Mirroring her earlier descent to the alternate Lena’s office, she lands on Lena’s home balcony.
In the moments it takes Lena to notice her, Kara already feels like her heart might escape her chest with how it races and aches. Lena looks impossibly soft, sleeves pulled up over her knuckles, face bare save for the soft glow of moisturizer and lip balm.
The serenity of the scene evaporates when Kara’s boots audibly touch the stone of the balcony floor and Lena looks up from her tea set. She doesn’t look angry today, but there’s a coldness to her surprise that has shivers racing down Kara’s back, her chin tilting up defensively.
“Let me guess - you’re here to tell me once again that I should forgive you.” Lena strides around the counter, just near enough to hear Kara’s response. Not a step closer than she needs to be.
Out of respect, Kara hovers in the doorway. She’s not sure what to say - she’s not here to ask for forgiveness, there’s just no one else she can possibly talk to about this - no one else who would understand the momentousness of it.
Alex, with Claymore and “changing history to save a friendship?” would never get why Kara can’t just let everything run its course or pick the last, altered timeline. And there is no one but Alex who Kara feels safe enough to be this vulnerable around. No one but Lena, once upon a time.
So, she might feel like a dog whose owner had accidentally stepped on their tail - hurt, aching, craving to trust more than being able to - but Lena is still the one who understands the gravity of the situation the best. Why would she have tried to hurt Kara so gravely if their friendship meant less to her than it did Kara?
Besides, and it might be old, patronising habit that had made Kara so flippant about it until now, shouldn’t Lena get a chance to decide if she wants her life changed this profoundly? Suddenly, Kara is scared.
There’s a question she feels too cowardly to ask.
“Well?” Lena asks, ripping Kara from her racing thoughts. Her shoulders are drawn tighter than a few seconds prior, her fingernails digging into her palm in an attempt to center herself. She’s wary. Not sure what Kara wants.
Kara clears her throat. “I’m here to ask your advice.”
Lena sneers. “I don’t owe you input on your little problems.”
“You helped Alex, during crisis. Please, give me the same opportunity to at least tell you what this is about.” Bravely, Kara takes a step inside. From blue-dark cold into the warmth of Lena’s flat. It smells like Lena - heavy, expensive perfume, the tea she was brewing, her.
Lena gives a terse nod. She doesn’t invite Kara to sit, but she also doesn’t send her outside again. Lets her bask in the warmth she’s so rightfully withheld from Kara for the last few weeks.
Kara takes a deep breath and exhales it again in a shudder. Lena’s eyes are set so intently on her that she has to look away to get the words out. “There’s this imp - Mxyzptlyk - who owes me a favour. He offered me the chance to change something in my past, and I chose - I chose us. Our relationship. I wanted to fix what I’d done.”
There’s a sharp inhale from Lena, but when Kara chances a glance, she gestures for her to continue.
“I got to see many different realities, and it didn’t work out so well, no matter when I told you who I was. Sometimes we still fought, sometimes we partnered up, but always, someone ended up dead. The second to last one - when I asked to have never known you at all - was the worst. Because when I didn’t protect you, horrible things happened. You were all alone.” Kara can feel a sob bubbling up. Her eyes burn with tears. She soldiers on, focuses on Lena’s thundering heartbeat to center herself. “But then I thought, what if I did save you, but we just - we just weren’t friends?” She laughs, a wet, desolate sound. A tear runs hot down her cheek. She wipes at it harshly, wills herself to get it together.
“And what did the world look like, then?” Lena asks, voice quiet and heavy and guarded, still, always so guarded. It’s Kara’s fault - she gave her reason to re-arm her defenses.
“You were happy,” Kara manages, just before a silent sob wracks her body, runs all through her in a violent shiver. “Without Kara Danvers, you were happy.”
She finally looks at Lena. To her surprise, Lena looks neither cold nor victorious, hearing this new piece of information. Instead, she stares at Kara, eyes wide and wet, lips parted and slick from the tears that have started to run down her own cheeks.
“You were running LCorp - even in the alternate timeline, you got it back. Sam and Ruby came to visit sometimes. You - you smiled a lot.”
Lena wipes at her tears with the back of her hand, still sweater-covered. “And you?” she asks in another surprising turn of events. “Were you happy without me?”
Kara takes a few, fast steps towards her before she remembers she probably shouldn’t. Lena’s fingers, too, twitch towards her approaching form. Maybe it is Kara’s wishful thinking, maybe it is instinct. Maybe Lena is just asking because she doesn’t want Kara’s misery on her conscience. Either way, they stay separate.
“I - no. No, I wasn’t happy without you, Lena. But I wasn’t miserable either. I was content.”
Lena nods, so hard that it sends a teardrop flying, glittering in the air. “Okay. Okay, I - what are you asking, Kara?”
Kara sucks in a sharp breath. This has to be the first time Lena has used her name when she’s in the costume, and she gets confirmation when Lena flinches a little at Kara’s teary smile.
Kara takes another step towards her, spine slightly bowed in deference. “Do you want that? Do you want to never have known me?”
Lena snuffles, hiccups from crying. Stares at Kara for a long moment, eyes searching for something Kara can’t identify. When she opens her mouth and Kara looks into her clouded eyes, she already knows the answer will devastate her.
“Yes,” Lena whispers. “I do.”