Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Oh, Supergirl?” 

Lex’s voice crackles in the comms. Kara sighs, not caring if he can hear it or not. “Yeah?”

“Be a dear and come down to the R&D level. We have a minor, ah, situation in Lab 5.”

Kara pushes her hearing to the subfloors and instantly picks up the familiar sizzle of an imminent explosion. A few choice Kryptonese curses slip out as she speeds through the building to the single elevator access point. She keeps her hearing trained on the lab, ready to smash through the elevator if necessary. 

The doors open to a smoke-filled room, despite the ventilation fans whirring away. Kara inhales deeply and lets out a quick blast of frost to clear the immediate area.

Lex is wafting smoke away from a cube glowing an eerie purple. Lena, clad in safety goggles for once, hefts a fire extinguisher and her brother backs away to give her room. 

“Everything is under control, Supergirl,” she grits between her teeth, and squeezes the trigger. Foam encases the box, smothering the plume of thick, black smoke. Lena lowers the hose, satisfied, and looks up to the superhero. There’s a challenge in her eyes, an unspoken, I don’t need you. 

That feeling of uselessness settles heavy and nauseating in Kara’s chest. She stands dumbly, casts her eyes down to escape Lena’s defiant gaze. This wasn’t-- Lex asked her to come. She didn’t just barge in, she didn’t force herself into Lena’s presence--

And then Kara’s hearing picks up a faint creak of straining metal. Her head snaps up. Lex is nowhere to be seen now. Lena raises an eyebrow at Kara’s sudden movement just as  a subtle cracking of crystal accompanies the metal strain, and the hero leaps forward to cover her fragile human friend. 

Several things happen at once.

The foam-encased box explodes outwards and each of the six panels shoot off in different directions, streaking with the same purple glow Kara saw behind the glass covering. 

Kara is still mid-air as she wraps her arms around Lena, tucking her head under her chin, and pulls them both to the ground. 

The contents of the box - glass or crystal from the sound - shoot outwards with an unimaginable force and pelt the walls of the lab. 

Kara’s body slams to the ground, Lena jostled but safe in her arms. For a moment all seems well. Then a stabbing pain in the back of her neck elicits a scream of pain. Bits of broken… whatever it was clink against the walls and floor and Kara, biting back more cries, knows she’s got a piece of Lex’s failed experiment under her skin. But she doesn’t dare try to reach for it, doesn’t budge at all until the room quiets and she’s absolutely sure it’s safe to open her arms and let Lena out. 

Lena decides it’s safe without waiting for Kara and starts to push against the restraints that are the Kryptonian’s steely biceps. The movement jostles the thing needling under her skin, sending another wave of burning pain through her neck and back. Kara lets her arms fall slack and Lena emerges, grumbling.

“Was that really—?” Lena stops mid-complaint as she takes in the scene and notices Kara whimpering and trembling. Her frustration melts away. “What's wrong?” 

Kara gestures at the spot on her neck and hisses in pain when her fingers accidentally graze the wound. The brief contact burns not just the wound but the hand that touched it, and she knows it’s familiar but is too distracted by the pain to place it. Lena wordlessly moves behind her and crouches to her level. 

“Do you see it?” Kara gasps, vision swimming. 

“Yeah,” Lena assures, and Kara could almost forget that they were in the middle of a massive fight. “I got it.”

Kara feels a gentle hand on the back of her neck, then a harsh tug on the burning, stabbing bit of broken crystal, then —- 

Kara slowly becomes aware of her body again. She feels the weight of regaining consciousness after an especially draining fight, all stiff joints and sore muscles. Other senses start to filter in and she hears voices shouting somewhere nearby.

“Supergirl!”

“Lena!”

She tests her limbs one at a time, hands and feet. Everything responds and she lets herself blink and take in the scene.

Brainy and Alex are the ones doing the shouting as they pick their way across the damaged lab. Kara rolls onto her side and the hard stone floor bites into her ribs more painfully than usual. She winces, slowly pushing herself up to a half-sitting position as Brainy kneels down beside her. 

“Are you injured?” he asks and places a steadying hand on her shoulder. 

Kara lets herself lean into it and uses the leverage to push herself up further. “Not exactly,” she starts, looking around the room for Alex. Her voice sounds foreign to her own ears, maybe choked with dust or the after effects of being hit by a mysterious substance. “But it feels kinda like I solar flared.”

Her roaming gaze does find her sister, crouched on the ground next to a facedown, unmoving figure draped in a red cape. Alex grabs the person by the shoulders and flips over the unconscious face of --

--Supergirl?

Kara stares at her doppelganger. The blonde woman’s eyes are closed, features blank and calm. The crest of the House of El displayed prominently on her chest, rising and falling gently. Alex starts checking vitals, calling ‘Supergirl!’ over and over. 

Kara’s stomach bottoms out. Memories of the scene rapid fire through her mind: The purple glow -- the bits of broken crystal -- she remembers Reign and Harun-El and a brainwashed Kaznian soldier. Dread pools in her stomach. She clears her throat but her voice still comes out strangely when she asks,

“Brainy, did it clone me again?”

“Um.” Brainy stammers, and there’s a long pause. “Did you say ‘clone’?” His brow furrows. “Are you sure you’re uninjured, Lena?”

That gets Kara’s full attention. She wrenches her gaze from the pseudo-Supergirl on the ground to Brainy, and he’s extremely confused. Did he just call her Lena?

“Did you just call me Lena ?”

He doesn’t answer this time, but looks between her and the Supergirl clone who’s starting to wake up. Kara looks down at herself. Her hands--- oh. What? The hands she holds up in front of her face are pale, with much more neatly manicured nails than Kara has ever had in her entire life. Her shirt is green silk, and probably more expensive than her entire wardrobe put together. She brings her -- the? -- hands up to her face and… well, it’s a face. But instead of loose hair, she’s wearing a tight, almost painful updo. A few stray, dark locks fall into her eyes.

Oh . Oh no.

“Supergirl?” Alex asks. “You okay?”

The blue-clad figure who looks exactly like Kara Zor-El winces at Alex’s words and holds her hands to her ears. “Alex, not so--” Words of reprimand tumble out of her mouth, but immediately halt. Supergirl jerks her head back, confused. Like those weren’t the words she expected to come out of her mouth.

Or that wasn’t the way she expected the words to sound. 

“Lena?” Kara asks, and now understands the much lower and slightly accented voice that comes out of her mouth. Alex turns to her, eyebrows raised and a question on her lips, but Kara lifts a hand to silence her. Supergirl freezes and locks eyes with Kara, who suddenly realizes this is at least the third occasion where she’s stared at her own face like this.

Kara crawls forward on unsteady hands and knees until she’s next to -- well, herself -- on the ground. Supergirl has started to relax ever so slightly.

“Lena?” Kara barely whispers with Lena Luthor’s voice. She knows how sensitive Kryptonian hearing is. 

Supergirl slowly, lowers her hands from her ears. Meets Kara’s gaze. Blinks. Blinks again.

“What--?” A blue-clad arm reaches out for Kara -- for the body Kara is currently inhabiting -- and freezes. Confused blue eyes dart between the navy super-suit, the unfamiliar, calloused hand, and the concerned expression that Kara knows belongs to the person looking at it.

“You’re--me. I’m you.” Kara, staring into her own confused face, takes a deep breath. “We switched bodies.”

“Supergirl”, “Lena”, Alex, and Brainy all go back to the DEO Med Bay and figure it out.

Lena’s mind is in Kara’s body.

Kara’s mind is in Lena’s body. 

The best they can all determine, Lex was running experiments with poor quality synthetic Harun-El. Instead of splitting a Kryptonian into two, it switched a Kryptonian whoever was in contact. 

“And you don’t know anything about this?” Alex has broken out her big-sister-DEO-director-Winn-would-have-broken-ten-minutes-ago voice, but Supergirl -- that is, Lena -- remains steadfast in her answers. 

“ No, ” she repeats, fixing Alex with a glare that her sister would never dare try. “He called me down to help before he called you. It got out of hand and,” she gestures between the two of them. “You know the rest.”

“How fast can we fix it?” Alex looks in Lena’s face, expectant, but Kara blinks back at her and shrugs. “Right, right,” Alex mutters, and turns to Lena -- Kara’s body -- instead. 

“Oh sure, I can give you an exact timeline with zero information.” No one is used to Kara’s voice being this sarcastic, this biting. Lena rolls her eyes, either oblivious or not caring about the group’s discomfort. “Get me and Brainy in a lab with the stuff for an hour and I’ll get back to you.”

“Can’t we wear image inducers?” Kara asks.

“They won’t change your voices--”

“Hey, sis.” The absolute last voice anyone wants to hear wafts in from the hallway as Lex strolls into the med bay like he owns the place. 

Alex shifts ever so slightly to block Lena and Kara from view. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

He wags a finger. “Ah-ah, watch how you talk to your boss.” The last word is deep and threatening and his face darkens for a moment. The room is thick with tension. He clears his throat and looks up, smiling again. “No harm done, right? Everyone looks fine.”

Alex and Brainy trade glances, but it’s Supergirl’s voice that breaks the silence.

“No thanks to you.”

All eyes track to Supergirl -- Lena -- glaring at Lex. Alex is the only one of the group that manages to keep her face neutral while Brainy and Kara tense in anticipation. 

“As much as I enjoy our tete-a-tetes, I’m here on other business.” The tension visibly bleeds from everyone’s faces, but Lex ruins it. “Lena, walk with me?”

Green eyes widen. Alex coughs, Brainy hustles over with a “hold on Lena, just one more scan to be safe” and tries to block Kara from Lex’s view. 

“It’s fine,” she whispers to him, then stands and exits the room with Lex. 

“Well.” Alex mutters.

“Supergirl” looks furious. 

Kara does her best poised-CEO impression as she follows Lex in the hallway. All thoughts of ‘what was Lena up to?’ ‘is she working with Leviathan?’ ‘what’s Lex’s endgame’ are gone and replaced with only ‘don’t let him know don’t let him know don’t let him know’

“You okay? You haven’t been in a room with the Kryptonian for more than a minute at a time since the Crisis. You could have called.”

“I’m fine,” Kara assures him, and says the most insulting thing she can think of in the moment. “I didn’t want her to think I need you around.”

“Okay, but don’t push yourself too hard. I’m here to help.”

Kara doesn’t know what to make of helpful Lex. She hasn’t know since she woke up on Earth Prime and he declared himself a good guy. “Thanks.”

“The other reason I called you away,” Lex glances around to make sure they’re alone. “Is that we’ve got some good progress on Non Nocere. Check the data when you get home.”

Kara nods, trying desperately not to look confused at the Latin words for ‘do no harm’. “Sounds --” good, she almost says, but at the last moment realizes she needs to sound like Lena, aka, fancier. “Excellent. That’s excellent.” 

Lex does give her a look, but shrugs and waves her off. “Go get some rest, too.”

Kara takes the out and bolts back to med bay as fast as she can without another word.

Chapter Text

When Kara returns, Alex and Brainy have prepared a comm device for “Lena”. Actual Lena has changed from the super suit to regular “Kara” clothes and glasses. She’s standing in a corner of the med bay, sulking, because she can’t get into her apartment alone.

Alex fits Kara with comms, and goes over the plan that Lena proposed: go to Lena’s high-security apartment together because “Lena” needs to give “Kara” permission to enter, then actual Kara is free to wear something incognito and go back to her own apartment. Alex is skeptical, but Brainy assures them all that the odds of their safety while in their own apartments, even in opposite bodies, are extremely favorable.

The ride back to Lena’s apartment is completely silent, which, to be fair, is also in large part due to the whole body swap thing. Lena stares out the window, probably looking for the sounds that she’s hearing even through the lead-lined glasses, while Kara contemplates how she should hold herself. Sit up straight? Slouch into the car’s amazing cushions? 

Whether or not her behavior seems odd, the driver says nothing and they arrive at the building without incident. Kara tells the desk agent that she wants to “add a trusted guest” as Lena had instructed. 

“Do you want to take a new picture?” the clerk says, glancing at Lena fidgeting in a reasonably Kara-like manner. “Or use the old one?”

“Old--?” Kara starts.

“The one on file is fine, thank you,” Lena responds in a rush. From the grimace on her face, she had not expected that reply. They head towards the elevator, and Kara finally dares to ask.

“I used to be…?” 

“We’re not talking about this.”

They get back to the apartment. Kara grabs the most casual things Lena has to offer and leaves in silence, a recurring theme for the day..  

Thirty dollars and a blessed sighting of a bodega cat later, Kara feels reasonably disguised in aviators and an NC Lakehawks cap. She tucks her hands in the pocket of the singular, hoodless sweatshirt Lena owns. 

It’s not the same as flying, but with muted senses and normal human body capacity, the walk is still distracting and cathartic the way she’d hoped it would be. 

She’s a couple of miles into the trip when things start to feel off. Her whole head starts to ache like she’s drunk, but instead of being fuzzy, it hurts. Her fast pace slows as her limbs get heavier and harder to move. Kara tries to recall any time Lena might have mentioned something remotely like this and has nothing. But also is working at a bit of a disadvantage here. 

When she turns a corner and walks face-first into the brick, she admits it might be time to stop. A quick glance around to make sure no one’s noticed billionaire Lena Luthor almost wipe out on a grimy south NC street corner, and Kara pulls out her phone. A finger hovers over the screen as she contemplates her options, finally navigating to her texts and double tapping the topmost thread to call Alex. It picks up on the third ring.

“Okay so don’t panic but I think something’s wrong.” Kara flexes her fingers, testing her motor control. “I feel weird. Heavy. Like it’s hard to walk straight.”

“So you’re drunk?”

“Alex, come on. I’m sending you a pin. Can you give me a lift to my place and we can figure this out?”

“Oh we absolutely put a tracker in your comms. I’m already on my way.”

A few minutes later, a Ducati pulls up on the broken sidewalk. Alex unhooks a spare helmet from the backseat and holds it out. “You good to ride?”

Kara nods, swapping the helmet for her blue cap. She swings a leg over the bike and wraps her arms around her sister’s waist. They take off, and get all of one block before Kara’s tapping on Alex’s shoulder and signaling to stop again. 

Kara stumbles off the bike and rips off the helmet, gulping air like she’d run a marathon. 

“Nope,” Kara gasps. “Bad. Very bad.”

Alex steers her to the curb and sits her down before she can fall over. Kara promptly tucks her head between her knees and tries to slow her breathing. Alex’s phone starts to ring, to Alex’s surprise, with Lena’s contact info. 

“Alex, something is wrong--”

“Headache? Dizziness? Trouble walking?” Alex looks at the trembling figure next to her. “Just generally really weird and shitty feelings?”

“So either this happens to Kara all the time and once again none of you told me, or it’s happening to her right now?”

“The latter. When did it start?” 

“Maybe 15 minutes ago?” 

“About 10 blocks ago,” Kara adds. Alex does some quick mental math.

“I have an idea. Kara, take the phone, get back on the bike.” 

“What--but-- helmet.”  

“Call her on your comms then.”

Kara had completely forgotten that Lena in her body meant Lena was now on the DEO comm network. She taps the flat piece on the back of her ear. “Lena?”

Silence. She presses the button again.

“Um, Supergirl?”

“ Shit .” Her own voice, crystal clear through the military-grade earpiece. “Warn me next time.”

“Sorry,” Kara mutters.

“I hate this.”

With Alex’s help, Kara clambers back onto the back of the motorcycle and tugs the helmet back on.

“The feeling is mutual,” Kara grumbles as the motorcycle lurches forward, and the leaden feeling in her stomach only gets heavier. “Worse, Alex, it’s worse!”

Alex’s helmet turns like she’s saying something, but of course Kara can’t hear it between two motorcycle helmets and normal human-powered hearing. But they make a sudden U-turn and backtrack the same path Kara had just walked.

“What’s happening?” Lena -- Kara’s voice -- demands. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

Kara doesn’t respond at first as the heaviness starts to lift. The pressure on her head slowly lessens as Alex speeds back through the streets. After a mile or so, she pulls over again. 

“Well?”

“How do you feel?” Kara asks into the comms, both relieved and dreading the answer. 

“Like a perfectly healthy super-powered Kryptonian.”

Drops her helmeted head into her hand and sighs. “Great.”

“Why doesn’t that sound more enthusiastic.” 

“Can’t I stay with you?” 

“I have a rogue Chlorophyllian to track down, I do not have time to calculate the precise limit of your-- tether, or whatever this is.

“Alex--”

“Kara. I know it is weird and uncomfortable and terrible that you have to spend the night with your sort-of ex. But the worst-case scenario is both of you dying, so suck it up for a night and we will figure out something better in the morning.”

Kara tries to ignore the searing heat that fills her chest when Alex says “sort-of ex” and focuses on “worst-case scenario” and “dying”. She sighs and nods.

Kara steps into the hallway. The elevator doors slide shut behind her and she listens to the mechanical sounds fade away as the car descends. Normally she can track that elevator from anywhere in a three-block radius. Now it fades into silence just a few floors down. 

Eventually she forces herself to walk up to the door. The retina scanner flashes in approval. Her stomach sinks and she twists the doorknob.

The sinking feeling deepens; she didn’t think that was possible. Lena’s standing in the entryway, blond hair down, glasses on, arms crossed. 

“Absolutely not.”

Kara shuts the door behind her, buying time as she searches for something, anything better to say than what’s in her head but---

“I know,” Kara finally mutters. It’s wild, how she can look at her own face, her own body, and know instantly from the tight shoulders and furrowed brows that it’s Lena looking back at her. 

“I will literally pay for you to stay in a hotel.”

“I know you will. But if anything happens to you --” Kara gestures to the body she’s in. “We’re both screwed.”

“So don’t let anything happen to me.”

Kara bites the inside of her cheek. She wants to yell. She wants to throw her hands up in the air. She wants to grab the most innocuous item she can find and poke herself with it to demonstrate how fragile this body is and how absolutely terrified she is of having to care for it. She counts to ten in her head, imagining paper cuts and pineapple and slippery floors and hot coffee and corporate rivals and a runaway airplane and Reign and Metallo and Rhea and Rama Khan--

“I don’t want to be here either,” Kara grits out, and before she can stop herself adds, “with you.”

If Lena is affected by that, she does a good job controlling her face. Kara knows both of their tells after all. An unspoken ‘but’ hangs at the end of Kara’s statement

But we’re in this together

But you have the best security system possibly in the whole world

But you might be working for Leviathan and I can’t let them use my powers

But you broke my heart and I don’t trust you

But I miss you

None of it makes its way out of her mouth and they stand there staring at each other. Finally, Lena relents.

“You know where the spare room is.”

They don’t cross paths for the rest of the night.

I don’t want to be here with you

Kara’s words lodge under her skin like a splinter - piercing, aching, working farther in the more Lena tries to push them out. She watches Kara walk away in her body, in Lena’s body, and not even the strangeness of the situation can block out the repeated with you on a loop in her head.

Lena thought that Kara’s constant apologies and over-the-top heroics were the worst things she had to tolerate. She thought that open hostility would be easier. It would give her a proper enemy instead of the unwitting pawn Kara had played for so long. 

It is not easier. 

The door to the spare room closes with a click so gentle that Lena barely hears it . Kara doesn’t take her frustration out on the door at least. Though without superpowers, she can’t do much damage, Lena muses, looking down at her hands--at Kara’s hands. She probably treats doors like that all the time just to look like a normal human. She imagines Kara pulling a door off its hinges with no effort at all. 

I don’t want to be here with you

Shakes her head to clear her thoughts. Body swap or not, there was work to lose herself in. She goes to the kitchen and settles in to look over the day’s Non Nocere data and try to forget the day’s events if only for a few minutes.

Chapter Text

Kara wakes up to a text from Lena.

Call Andrea and tell her you need Kara to follow you around for a few days for a story. If she objects, tell her “you owe me”. 

Sleep weighs heavier on Kara than usual as she blinks at the phone screen. She stifles a yawn and types back: Can you listen in on it? Or email her? I don’t know how you guys talk to each other. 

The typing bubble appears for several minutes before a blue bubble pops up with Fine. Living room. 15 minutes. 

Kara sets her timer for 10 minutes, dozes, then wakes up grumbling and more tired than when she closed her eyes. Dashes off a quick text to Alex with the Andrea plan, rifles through her bag of clothes and pulls on baggy sweatpants before shuffling out to the giant living room. 

Lena’s sitting at the counter with a mug of black coffee. She’s staring at an iPad laid flat on the granite, but neither her eyes nor the index finger hovering over the screen are moving. Kara, hearing only the sound of her feet on the carpet, imagines the multitude of background city sounds Lena’s listening to. Imagines joking about it with her best friend. Teasing Lena about listening in on the neighbors. Making her guess how many cars are outside. Asking her how much easier it is to secretly communicate with Leviathan now that she’s got superpowers.

Says nothing and takes a seat next to her at the counter. 

Lena pushes the tablet in front of Kara. The notes app is open and Kara reads:

She owes me big time. Don’t be friendly. “I need Kara to work on a story about a new product at LuthorCorp. It’s not a request.”

Kara raises one eyebrow - an expression that never came naturally to her but now happens before she realizes she’s doing it. Lena just nods to the screen and slides her phone over, open to Andrea’s number.

Kara can’t stand the silence any more. “Lena, can we just--” 

“What?” she snaps like she was waiting for any sound out of Kara’s mouth.

Kara scrubs her face with her hands and holds back a heavy sigh. “Can we please try to make this less terrible?”

“You should have thought of that--”

“You hate me, I get it!” Kara raises her voice, and instantly regrets it. She composes herself, starts again at regular volume. “I’m not asking you to forgive me or trust me. I sure can’t trust you.”

A muscle twitches on Lena - on “Kara”’s face. 

“But if either of us want to live through this we need to talk to each other. And I would love if we could do that without all the” Kara waves a hand between them “Extremely obvious loathing. Can we have a… a common enemy truce?”

Lena doesn’t retort but takes a moment to think. “What do you have in mind?”

“We stop snapping at each other. We work together or get out of each other’s way as needed. Example: You help me with this call to Andrea, I stay in the spare room as much as possible. We get through this without anyone finding out or dying.”

“Alright. Truce.”

“Yeah?” Kara asks, surprised. 

“Yeah. Now, Andrea.” 

Lena shows Kara to her massive wardrobe and they pick out outfits for each other with only minimal animosity.  The first two of Kara’s choices are rejected and she finally tells Lena to just choose the outfit. She’s presented with a navy striped suit and a black collared shirt that she likes quite a lot.

Limited by their size differences, they settle on a sleeveless A-Line dress that Lena digs out of the back of the closet. It’s still absurdly expensive but they should be in and out of CatCo quick enough that no one will notice. 

Lena messages her driver, and within minutes they’re behind tinted windows in the backseat of a black sedan. The ride is silent and uneventful, marginally less awkward than the day before. 

They arrive at CatCo around 8AM - early by Kara’s standards and late by Andrea’s. Kara drifts towards the coffee cart and Lena follows.

The stubbly 20-something behind the cart grins at “Kara”, pouring milk into a pitcher as they call “Kara! The usual?”

“Um--yes. Yes, please,” Lena stammers, schooling her face into something cheerful. “My usual, and a black coffee for my--” 

The unspoken friend rings in Kara’s ears as Lena gives up and just gestures at “herself”. The barista doesn’t seem to notice anything odd as they steam milk and pump syrup into a cup. Kara has a moment of panic about who and how they’re going to pay but Lena’s already got her phone in hand and taps the card reader. 

“Have a good one you guys!” Barista puts the sugary concoction directly into Lena’s hand and she forces a smile onto her face. Kara picks up the second cup and bolts away to give Lena an out following her. When they’re sure the barista isn’t looking, they swap cups. 

The newsroom floor is bustling when they step off the elevator. They head directly for Andrea’s office and nearly crash into her when Kara throws the door open. 

“Lena!” Andrea pivots around “Lena” even as she greets her. “Give me 15 minutes, okay?”

“It really can’t wait,” Kara says in her best approximation of a CEO voice. Andrea, unfazed, keeps walking and Kara’s forced to follow.

“Walk and talk then. You’ve got one elevator ride.”

Lena starts to follow but Andrea glances back. “Kara, you go check in with layouts. They need your o.k. before we go to print.”

Lena makes frantic eye contact with Kara, who mouths Just say yes. Lena points to Andrea’s back. What about Andrea?  Kara flashes a quick thumbs-up in reassurance, then immediately trips over her own feet, unused to Lena’s Louboutins. She hears the frustrated noise that Lena makes as she clears her throat and smooths her blouse to distract from the motion. 

They board the elevator, and Kara positions herself behind Andrea so she can mouth I’ll be fine over her shoulder. Lena watches, skepticism plain on her face. The elevator doors slide shut, and Lena looks around for somewhere out of the way to hide out. 

The empty office catches her eye. Kara’s office. A quick glance around the floor to make sure no one seemed like they were paying attention to “Kara”, and then Lena’s walking as surreptitiously as possible into the office and shuts the door. 

She lets out a sigh of relief. Relative safety, until Kara returned. She pops the lid off the coffee and tosses it into the trash as she approaches the platform where Kara’s desk is.

Lena sits down at the wide white desk. She’s never been in here, come to think of it. Kara was promoted around when Lena started working on the Harun-El and spent most of her waking hours in the L-Corp lab. She takes a sip of coffee and examines the post-its littered about. Names, story ideas, phone numbers, even a couple of unclear doodles.

There’s a familiar face at the window that catches Lena’s eye. Nia’s stopped outside the door, pointing to the handle. Can I come in? She mouths. 

Lena immediately shakes her head and grabs her phone, the first excuse that comes to mind. She holds it up like she’s on a call. Sorry . Lena mouths back. Nia waves her off, and starts to leave -- but pauses. Lena says “yeah go on” to sell the charade. Nia backs away eventually, slowly. 

Lena watches her go, and pretends to stay on the call, nodding and interjecting every 30 seconds or so, just so it discourages anyone else from trying to enter. She’s been at this for a few more minutes and is mid-sip of coffee when the door bursts open. Lena nearly spits out her mouthful of coffee. 

Nia’s holding up her phone and pointing to alternating blue and gray bubbles.

“Who are you and what have you done with Kara?” 

Lena stares, and points to the phone on her ear in one last desperate attempt to fool the younger woman. Nia doesn’t budge, and the hand pointing to the phone clenches into a fist that lights up with blue energy. Lena realizes when she’s out of tricks and lowers the phone. 

“Nia, I can explain.”

The energy around her fist hums louder. “Start talking.”

Lena raises her hands. “I have to get my phone, okay? I’m going to reach into my pocket.”

“Slowly,” Nia growls, with all the flair of a movie villain. Lena inches her hand into her pocket and drags the phone out. “Put it on the desk so I can see what you’re doing.”

She sets it gingerly on the glass surface, swipes, enters a complicated pattern that Nia can’t follow, and goes into her contacts. 

Calling Kara

She taps the speaker button and the room fills with the sound of the line ringing, then a click as the call is accepted. 

“Hello?” 

“Kara,” and Lena knows how absurd this must sound coming out of Kara Danvers’ body. “You’re on speaker. I’m with Nia. Can you please help me tell her what’s going on so she doesn’t punch your body in the face.”

“Ohhhh shoot. Nia? Stand down. I promise it’s okay.”

Nia’s brow furrows. “Lena?”

“So here’s the thing,” Lena’s tinny phone voice explains. “We switched bodies. I sound like Lena but I’m Kara. Lena looks like me but she’s Lena.”

“You--what? Say that again.”

“We both touched some of Lex’s knock-off black kryptonite and our minds switched bodies. I’m Lena, in Kara’s body. Hence the coffee.”

“What’s Kara’s go-to karaoke song?”

“Intergalactic.” Lena’s voice from the phone.

“What’s Lena’s favorite scotch?”

“Midleton Dair Ghaelach.” Kara’s somber face in front of her.

Nia seems placated but not convinced. “Why are the two of you fighting right now?”

Blue eyes glance at the phone on the table. “I shot Lex when he teleported to a secret bunker and he told me with his dying breath that Kara’s been lying to me for three years.”

“And Lena tried to use Myriad to do something and is now working with Lex to do something else and I don’t know exactly what but it seems really shady.” A beat. “Also Nia, Alex just texted me that you should check the group chat.”

The blue light around Nia’s fists dims and she lowers her arms. “You really switched bodies?” she asks, with something like amusement.

“Yes,” Lena replies, curt and clipped. “It’s extremely problematic for both of us and I would appreciate it if you would treat it as such.”

“Okay, but it’s also objectively hilarious. You’re basically living a romantic comedy--”

“ Nia.” Lena’s voice this time, stern enough that they all forget it’s Kara who’s saying it. A beat of silence as Nia bites her lip and Lena glances between the phone and the apologetic girl in front of her. 

“A--a comedy,” Nia eventually corrects. “Just a comedy. Totally platonic.”

Some background noises, then “Wait -- Andrea -- I gotta go.”

Beeping indicates that the call is over. “Kara” raises an eyebrow questioning and Nia nods and dispels the remaining blue dream energy lingering at her fingertips. 

“So. Lena.” 

She waits, not sure if Nia is making a statement of fact or asking a question. 

“Are you… okay?” 

Lena blinks. Not the question she’d been expecting. That’s apparently evident on her face, because Nia continues in a rush.

“I know things have been weird with you and Kara and everyone lately and you’re also working with Lex so maybe we’re on different sides right now but--” she stops herself, takes a breath. “I can ignore all that for a second. If you need someone to talk to.”

“I….”

Their phones simultaneously ring.

Without waiting so much as a hello, “Lena” immediately says, “s omeonetryingtokillAndreagetdownhereNOW. ”

“Um,” Lena replies as the line goes dead again. Nia, still on her call, responds in the affirmative.

“I’m on my way.” Nia shoots a look at Lena. “You coming?”

She sighs. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

Nia and “Kara” walk outside to chaos. 

Andrea and “Lena” have a meager two security guards in front of them, attempting to diffuse a crowd of twenty shouting humans and one angry Chlorophyllian shooting bolts of energy alternating in front of and behind the Andrea-”Lena”-security guard group. The 4 of them huddle together, flinching at each crackle of energy on the ground. Their attacker advances with each shot. 

As Lena takes this all in, Nia disappears to be replaced by Dreamer just a few seconds later. Lena’s scientist brain briefly wonders how her suit works, before the imminent crisis takes priority again. 

“Someone’s cranky. Did you skip nap time?” Dreamer shouts to the super-powered alien leader, drawing her attention. The energy bolts cease while the attacking Chllorophylian yells back at Dreamer and a one security guard ushers “Lena” and Andrea towards the building while the crowd is distracted.

Lena doesn’t even notice that her feet are moving - or possibly hovering - until the door is a good twenty feet behind her and Kara is within arm’s reach. Lena pivots to step back and let Kara pass -- and a bolt of energy shoots at the spot her head occupied moments before. She stares, shocked. “Lena”, meanwhile all but dives behind her, grabs onto her shoulders, and ducks her head behind her torso, effectively using her as a human shield as a second bolt flies wide. 

“What are you doing?” Lena hisses. She watches Andrea and the security guard pass through the glass doors safely into the building until Kara clinging to her shoulders yanks her in the direction of the fight.

“If I die, you die,” Kara hisses from where she’s crouched behind “Kara”. “Just back up so I can get inside.”

Lena complies, glancing back in the direction of the assailant to try to dodge any more shots. Dreamer has engaged, and the alien has to alternate between shooting off bolts in Kara and Lena’s general direction and fending off dream energy lassos. “And if I get hit and everyone discovers Kara Danvers isn’t human?” 

Kara doesn’t retort immediately. They make slow progress towards the door, about 10 feet away now. “I guess it’s comforting that’s not secretly your master plan.”

Lena gets a stab of guilt, remembering her plans all those weeks ago. Before Crisis. Before Lex. Now, with the immense annoyance of Kara living in her apartment, she can’t imagine ruining someone else’s private life that way. Even at her lowest, most broken moments, at least she had some privacy. 

“This would be the best time for it,” Lena muses, hoping the joke lands coming out of Kara’s mouth. “I am quite good at dealing with scandals.”

The joke does land apparently because it gets the softest, tiniest chuckle out of Kara. “Fair point.”

There’s just a few feet from the door now. Dreamer yells “run!” and Lena doesn’t question that it’s for the two of them. She spins around and shoves Kara through the frame. It’s not the most graceful way to get the two of them to safety, but it propels “Lena” through the doorway where she promptly trips and lands on her hands and knees. Lena winces at both the scrapes she’s sure to have and the pictures that are sure to trend on Twitter tonight.  

The security guards, ever a professional, offers a hand and pulls “Lena” to her feet while “Kara” stands and wonders what the hell she’s supposed to do now?

“Well, who am I to deny you your personal bodyguard?” Andrea’s sarcastic voice floats over. “Kara, you better have a good story when you get back.”

Lena takes an extra beat to remember she’s the one who’s got to reply. “Of course.”

Andrea takes her leave, not caring about the fight that continues to rage outside. Though judging from the number of sleep-related puns Lena can hear, it seems like Dreamer has it well in hand. 

When Andrea is gone and everyone else in the lobby is focused on Dreamer posing for pictures, Kara smirks and whispers to Lena. “Told you I had it.”

Chapter Text

The next few days are surprisingly cordial. Pleasant, even. 

Kara catches Lena admiring the fit of the Supersuit. Lena catches Kara admiring the expensive wardrobe.

They co-work at the kitchen island and swap computers to proofread each others’ work. 

Lena is sure that none of these noises have passed her lips in 15 years, no matter the stress level. Lillian would have drilled them out of her. At Kara’s fourth frustrated sigh, Lena asks, “You okay over there?”

“I’m trying to think of another way to word this sentence,” Kara huffs, and spins the computer screen around. “Here. You got any ideas?” 

“Hmm. How about ‘discern’ instead of ‘tell them apart’?”

“Huh. Yeah, that’s great.”

They lapse back into silence, punctuated with the occasional spurt of typing. A few minutes later, Lena asks:

“Does this mean I get a byline?” 

A couple of days pass in relative peace. Lena runs a program to crunch numbers on black kryptonite compounds while checking on Non Nocere progress. Kara works on articles and has Brainy send her any Kyptonian texts mentioning Harun-El. 

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Lena bursts after her program delivers a particularly unfruitful scenario. “There is no combination of elements, no synthetic flaw, that should make black kryptonite react this way.”

Kara stays silent. What was there to say? They were no closer to a cure than they’d been a week ago. Brainy had also been looking into various body-soul relationship theories for anything about transporting or re-homing and had nothing. The only thing that had even mentioned the possibility of souls leaving their bodies was the Arakawa Mind Formula which hypothesized that a soul, when separated, stayed invisibly connected to its body by the mind or spirit. 

“We’ll figure something out.”

Lena scoffs. “When? How? What resource is even left?” 

“We could go to the Fortress.”

“You said Brainy already sent you all the Fortress files.”

“He sent everything he could but there’s no harm in checking in person.”

“What if it senses we switched? What if it attacks us? It’s too dangerous.”

“Then we’ll take J’onn and Alex!” Kara grumbles. “You’re so desperate for answers; why don’t you want to go to the most likely place to find them?” 

Lena doesn’t have a good answer for her. She fiddles with the glasses. They’re still so foreign on her face and she’s constantly aware of the lead touching her ears, of the slight obstruction of her view. Her fingers close around the arm and start to pull; the volume knob of the world dials up in turn. She remembers the necessity and shoves the frames back into place.

Because the last time she’d been to the Fortress, Kara had betrayed her. Again. What if she couldn’t recover from another one?

Her phone buzzes. She spins around to the table and grabs it, grateful for the distraction. It’s from Lex.

Check the servers. Total system failure.

“Shit,” she whispers, flipping the laptop back open and slamming in the 15-digit password. As soon as the lock screen clears, alerts pop up and flash all over the display. 

FAILURE

CRITICAL

Q-WAVE CONNECTION OFFLINE

She opens VPNs to the server and scrolls through lines of program code, watching the test subjects disconnect from the Non Nocere directive one by one. Vitals spike, then flatten. Lena frantically send commands, changes Q-Wave broadcasting frequencies as the last few names change from green to red. 

Her eyes fall on the last name as it beeps and turns red: Steve Lomelli. 

She drops her head in her hands, trying desperately to think of something, anything to reverse the effects. The reports from the last few days flash through her mind. … Self-defense overrode the Non Nocere Directive…. …the human brain is incredibly adaptive… you played God and you succeeded…

“ Shit,” Lena repeats, takes a breath, and picks her head up. “I’m sorry, Steve.” 

And she enters the kill command. 

A loading bar appears and quickly scrolls to 100%. The screen flashes COMPLETE. The full prisoner log, entirely red, vanishes from the screen. Lena clenches her hands to stop them from smashing the innocent keyboard in front of her. 

“Um… Lena?”

Right. She’d almost forgotten that confused, helpless Kara was watching the whole time.

“Not now.” It takes even more restraint to not scream the words at Kara. She channels the energy and snaps the lid of the computer shut, bolts to the bedroom and slams the door.

Her phone buzzes the entire time. Lex’s contact takes over the screen as messages flash one after the other.

Did you kill it?

I’m sorry sis.

If you couldn’t figure it out, it must not be possible.

Guess we’ll have to lead humanity the old-fashioned way, eh?

She stares in disbelief, still struggling to process her wasted months of work. The messages keep coming.

You have the vision, I have the firm hand and charisma. Team Luthor, leading humanity to salvation!

It is incredibly stupid to text him back in her shocked state, and yet, her fingers type almost of their own accord.

What the fuck Lex

His message pops up almost simultaneously, clearly not caring what Lena’s typing back to him.

You tried a gentle approach. But humanity needs a firm hand to guide it. To lead it. 

Lena slides to the floor, leaning against the side of the bed. The weight of his words press her down. She runs through the last weeks, months in her head. Lex coming back from the dead. Lex supporting her when he seemingly had nothing to gain from it. Lex, being the only one on her side while Kara and the rest lied to her and didn’t trust her. 

All of it, just a ploy to, what, placate her? To humor her? 

You knew it wouldn’t work. You just played along Lena types as fast as she can, but his messages keep coming. 

And not some arrogant alien. It needs to be human. Think of all that we could accomplish together if we just take our rightful place as humanity's saviors.

This was always about you and your megalomania

For the first time, the typing bubbles disappear from his name. There’s a good 30 second pause, and then Lex replies:

About ME???

Lena barely has time to read the sentence when she hears the rippling sound of Lex’s portal watch from the other room.

Kara stares at the closed bedroom door, frowning. Something big just happened. Whatever Lena’s been working on -- it broke? It didn’t work? Kara knows she should be concerned with the what and the how of it all but she can’t shake the image of “her” devastated face. 

“Lena?” Kara approaches the door. “Do you, um…”

There’s a familiar electrical sound behind her, in the living room. Kara can’t place it til she turns around and sees the bright purple portal, and the hated figure who steps out of it.

Lex.

In Lena’s living room. 

“HOW DARE YOU.”

Kara is frozen . Lex is here, and he’s mad.  Does he know? He approaches slowly, a calculating predator, and Kara is the prey. She can do nothing but watch, wide-eyed, her back to the bedroom door where Lena can’t do anything to help her.

“I GAVE YOU THE WORLD,” Lex bellows, and for once, the charismatic mask is gone. He is a raging, screaming, megalomaniac. “I SUPPORTED YOU. I SABOTAGED NOTHING . I SET ASIDE MY OWN GOALS FOR YOU .”

Kara would never take this from Lex without retort. She doesn’t even think she’d let him get this far. But her body -- Lena’s body -- is paralyzed. Heart racing, stomach twisting. She can’t move. There is no fight or flight in her, only freeze. 

“Because you needed to see your little project fail with your own eyes,” he hisses. “To see the true depravity of humanity. To know that my way,” he winds up for the finish and screams into her face as loud as he can, “ WAS THE ONLY WAY .”

Her whole body is shaking. Something finally snaps inside and her throat unsticks enough to whisper, “Get out.” 

Lex definitely hears it, but he stays in her face, glaring, waiting for her to back down. Kara screws her eyes shut, and when they open again, she’s glaring right back. “Get. OUT!”

She reaches forward and shoves him as hard as she can. Lex stumbles back, still glowering, but surprised. 

“OUT!” Kara screams one more time. Lex smooths his jacket lapels and sneers at her as the portal watch activates again and he vanishes into the purple light.   

Leaving Kara, shaking and panting, standing alone in the middle of the living room. 

Lena hears Lex arrive. Hears his bellowing voice and can picture his snarling face. She wraps her arms around her knees, a tight ball on the floor. She’s torn between covering her ears and trying to tune him out and watching whatever horror is unfolding for Kara. Cautiously, Lena lowers the lead-lined glasses til she can peek over top and X-ray through the door and watches Lex tower over her body. Watches Kara shrink down until she can’t stand it anymore. Feels a little thrill when Kara shoves him for all she’s worth and he actually departs. 

Lena pushes the glasses back into place. She knows she should check on Kara but has no motivation to move from her spot on the carpet. A knock on the door takes the decision out of her hands.

“Lena?” 

Doesn't want to move but knows she has to face Kara. Splits the difference. “Come in.” 

The door opens, spilling light into the room. Lena didn’t even realize she’d been sitting in the dark. 

Kara hovers there, unsure. She finally lowers herself, sitting cross-legged across from Lena. It’s not a position Lena ever takes herself and the Kara-ness of the posture is striking.  

“Are you okay?” Kara finally asks. Lena scoffs, but doesn’t say anything else. Kara just waits and lets her gather her thoughts.

“I don’t know if I can talk about it,” Lena finally admits, and pivots the topic. “What about you?”

Kara reaches for glasses that aren’t on “Lena”’s face, the nervous tick she’s still doing after a week in this body. Her hand stutters and drops back down to rest on her knee. “That was a lot. I felt,” Kara taps her chest. “Your panic. It was like… like when I get claustrophobic.”

Lena doesn’t want to share this with Kara. Not now. Not after everything. But she’s here and she’s so patient and comforting and they’ve spent a whole week literally in each other’s skin.

“Everything was a lie,” she mutters, resting her chin on the arms still crossed over her knees. “It feels like when you--” The memory of learning Kara’s identity comes back. Lex was there for that too. Lex caused that too. Lena groans, buries her face in her arms and continues, muffled “Like when Lex told me your identity.”

Kara stiffens. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Kara pokes at a carpet thread. “It was that bad?”

Lena looks at “her” face, at Kara behind the guilty green eyes. She could still change topics. They don't have to do this now. 

“It was really bad,” she whispers, resting her chin on her arms. “Finding out your identity was -- was worse than coming back after Crisis and finding out Lex was back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Lena replies, so, so tired of their dance. “And I’m still angry and upset and hurt.”

Kara bristles a little at that. She keeps playing with the bit of carpet, mouth working like she’s got something to say but the silence drags on. Lena thinks about goading it out of her but she’s too tired.

“You can go,” she offers instead.

“Has he done that before?” Kara asks suddenly. “Yelled at you like that?”

Lena sighs. “Yes, I’m used to it. I’ll be fine.”

“No, that’s not what -- You don’t deserve that,” Kara insists, so damn earnest. “You know that right?”

Lena just looks at her. “Goodnight Kara.”

Kara gets up reluctantly. “You don’t. Not from him, not from me, not from anyone.”

Chapter Text

Lena sleeps terribly. 

HOW DARE YOU plays on a loop in her head while she tries to find a position comfortable enough to silence it. Her body, shrinking before Lex like in so many of her childhood memories. But this time watching it play out in front of her instead of being the target. Seeing the panic on her own face. Kara describing it as claustrophobic. 

This is the first time she’s been able to see so clearly, how Lex has seeped into every part of her like a poison. How he manipulated her so thoroughly. She sees it like he sees her every weakness. 

Eventually she must drift off because she dreams. 

Lex is there, standing in front of the white desk in her old office in L-Corp. Lena - in her own body - calls him a monster . He points to Kara, wide-eyed in the doorway, yells I’m not the monster, she is. Kara hugs her arms around herself and looks to Lena, pleading. Suddenly they’re in Kara’s office in CatCo. Lex is gone. Kara lowers her arms and she’s holding the book that Lena gave her. 

The sky is still dark when Lena wakes, mumbling out loud to dream-Kara, “I hope it helps.” 

When Kara shuffles to the kitchen the next morning, Lena is already sitting at the counter with a full mug of coffee in front of her. 

“Here,” she says, pushing it to the empty chair next to her. “I don’t need it.”

This is different from their usual routine, but Kara accepts the seat and the coffee without question. After a few sips and some of the caffeine in her bloodstream, she notices a tell-tale crinkle above the glasses. 

“Lena?”

She takes a deep breath. And another. Closes her eyes and says “I tried to rewrite people’s brains so they couldn’t hurt each other.”

Kara blinks and takes another swig of coffee. At the lack of objection, Lena continues. 

“It didn’t work. That’s what happened last night. It finally failed just like Lex planned. He was waiting for me to realize that I’d been wrong the whole time and become his -- devoted servant or whatever.”

“ Non nocere ,” Kara realizes. “Oh .” 

Lena hangs her head. “And he stole my delivery system. Gave it to Andrea for Obsidian. Maybe gave it to Levithan, too. I don’t know.

“But anyway, you were right. I don’t deserve that from him. The manipulation, the yelling, the betrayal. I’m not going to give him the chance to do it again.”

Kara sets the mug down. The pause stretches on for what feels like minutes. They sit in silence until Kara finally says, so quietly, “That’s good.”

The unspoken ‘but’ hangs in the air. Lena waits for Kara to finish it, but instead she pushes the chair back and stands up.

“Wait. What were you going to say?”

Kara shakes her head. “Not now.”

“Kara.”

Lena knows the expression on “her” face. Knows that Kara is holding something in and she’s done with people keeping secrets from her. Kara bites her lip and blurts,

“You tried to control people?”

Lena winces. Oh. That. “I tried to take away the desire to cause intentional harm,” she explains.

“So ‘yes.’”

“Yes.”

“It’s just--” Kara lets out a frustrated sigh. “You lied to me. You manipulated me. You locked me in a Kryptonite-laced prison because I was trying to protect you .” Her voice grows from controlled and calm to nearly shouting. “I was trying to keep you from harm. And you -- you punished me every way that you could. And you went forward with this project.” Kara shakes her head. 

“I’m sorry that Lex is so awful and that he did those things to you. But I can’t be okay with this right now.” 

“Okay,” Lena whispers. 

Kara curses, something with too many consonants to be an Earth language and taps at the hidden switch behind her ear.  “Alex. Shit. What--”

The color drains from her face. “You--- without me? He -- fuck. ”

Lena has never, ever heard Kara use that word before. Kara looks right at her. “Hold on. Alex? Alex!” 

“Rama Khan is in the DEO and -- I don’t know, her comms cut out but you need to go over there now and help.”

Lena wants to object but Kara’s just finished listing all the ways she’s wronged her. She can’t say no now. 

“What do I do?”

They talk through the suit, and through flying, and through all of the rules about destroying public property. And then they realize they’re still tethered together and Kara has to go with her. 

“I’m going to drop you.”

“You’re not gonna drop me.”

They’re on Lena’s thankfully private balcony. Kara’s changed into the singular set of practical clothes that Lena owns. Lena’s clad in full super-suit, one arm under Kara’s knees and the other around her shoulders clutching as tight as she can. “You’re not gonna drop me,” Kara repeats. “Can you float?” 

Lena feels the sun on her face and neck. The energy wells up under her skin, like an electrical current. She focuses on it, pushes it down and kicks off from the ground. They shoot up six feet into the air. 

“Float!”  Kara shouts, and they freeze where they are. “Okay. Better. Slower this time?”

Lena raises them another six feet at a much gentler pace. “Good, good,” Kara coaches. “Okay. DEO?”

Lena scans their surroundings. She picks out the DEO building a couple of miles away. “DEO,” she confirms. 

And they’re off. 

The building is in ruins when they arrive. 

Only half a story of broken concrete and exposed rebar are left standing where the 10-floor building used to be. The entire block is covered in rubble, broken machinery, exposed wires. 

Kara scrambles out of Lena’s arms as soon as they touch down. DEO vans that must have escaped before the collapse are parked along the rubble perimeter. Car doors slam as agents climb out. 

Just as Kara’s starting to panic about Alex, Brainy, and the rest, a red blur of light lifts from the pile of concrete in front of her and a dusty J’onn and Alex materialize on top of it. Kara leaps forward and pulls both of them in for a hug.

“You’re okay,” she gasps, though Alex definitely winces from the tight embrace. “You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay--”

“Kara, ow, too hard,” Alex finally gets out and Kara springs back. “Damn Luthor, you must work out.”

Lena, still a few feet behind, gives a half-hearted wave. “Thank you?”

“Supergirl,” J’onn starts. “Can you look for anyone else trapped in the wreckage?”

Lena nods and scans the piles of stone and metal. She doesn’t see anything besides the skeleton of a building. “Clear over here.” She spins around, scanning the other side of the block to be safe. Broken pipes. Crushed windows. A mangled desk chair. And… a pile of tiny rocks moving very, very fast--?

“There!” Lena has just enough time to shout before a stream of rock and dirt burst from the earth and shift into the extremely unwelcome form of Rama Khan.

“Been waiting for you to join the party,” he smirks, lifting an arm. “I have a new trick to show you, Supergirl.”

He points his fist directly at the group and green light shoots forward. Kara barely has time to process before her vision is blocked by blue and red and she’s covered in thick fabric. Her body slams into another, and she’s pinned tight by strong arms. The two - three? Of them tumble down the concrete heap she’d been standing on. When they finally come to a stop, the arms release and she’s staring up at the sun. Alex is on one side of her, groaning, but seemingly uninjured. Kara looks to the other side and there’s Lena - “Supergirl” splayed out, green threads weaving up her face. 

“No no no,” Kara stammers, scrambling onto her hands and knees. Behind her, Alex yells for J’onn, who grabs an advancing Rama Khan and tackles him to the ground. 

Lena struggles to push herself up onto her elbows and Kara shoves her down before she can. “Stay down.”

“‘M okay,” Lena gasps, clearly very much not okay if she can’t even fight off “Lena”. Kara shakes her head.

“You don’t have to be a hero just cause I’m mad at you!” Kara grabs Lena by the arm and gestures for Alex to do the same. They each throw an arm over their shoulders and haul her upright. Lena whimpers, but manages not to cry out in pain. 

“When the fuck did he get Kryptonite,” Alex hisses as they drag “Supergirl” towards the fleet of armored vans. Another red shimmer floats up from the ground and this time M’gann appears with a very somber Brainy. 

“Rama Khan has--” Brainy stops himself, taking in the sight of Alex, Kara, and Lena.  “Supergirl--”

He’s interrupted by a flying body and a tremendous crash about thirty yards away. Rama Khan emerges from the rubble with a fist full of rock, J’onn streaking towards him. They collide in a spray of concrete dust. 

“Everyone move NOW,” Alex orders, and the five of them manage to get Supergirl to the line of DEO cars. Brainy runs off to try to find an agent with a yellow sun grenade and M’gann flies off to help J’onn. Alex barks orders to the nearest group of agents, leaving Kara kneeling next to Lena, who’s propped up against the sunny side of an armored truck. The green lines on her face have started to recede and her breathing is starting to even out.

“You okay?” Kara murmurs, picking up Lena’s hand and taking it in both of hers. Lena closes her eyes and nods. 

“Getting there,” she murmurs, and squeezes Kara’s hand. “I’m sorry I did this to you.”

Kara looks down and lets out a shaky breath. “I know.”

They stay like that for a few minutes, on the edge of something like healing, like forgiveness. Lena’s grip on Kara’s hand gets stronger with each moment that passes. 

“Lena… I…”

The ground rumbling under their feet gives a half-second warning before the street explodes and Rama Khan emerges directly in front of them. He doesn’t say anything this time, just laughs as he raises the Kryptonite ring. But this time Lena’s ready for him. She shoves Kara away with one arm and shoots forward, grabbing him around the middle and flying both of them away. The green light shoots into the truck and topples it onto its side. 

Kara lands a few yards away, winded from the rough handling, but safe. She watches the two of them wrestle and jets of deadly green light shoot around. No no no no no no no--

And finally, the sound she’s been dreading. Supergirl -- Lena -- screams. 

And screams. 

Kara runs forward but the concrete slabs lift one after the other, rotate, and crash back down, forming a wall. She pushes on one of them, ten feet tall and twenty feet wide. She’s an ant pushing on a mountain. Kara watches Rama Khan build a whole perimeter around the fallen hero. 

The comm in her ear crackles to life. “Kara?” a weak voice says.

“Get out of there,” Kara begs. “J’onn - M’gann - Brainy - somebody get her out of there.” She pushes on the stone again, and again. 

Three more bodies appear. More members of Leviathan. Kara watches helpless as the rest engage in combat. J’onn breaks free from someone wielding fire and starts to phase through the rock wall. Kara watches through a crack in the wall as Rama Khan tackles him as soon as he lands on the other side.

“Brainy,” Kara tries, desperate. “We have to switch back. Tell me you have something.”

He grunts from the fight. “The only -- thing I know --” the sound of punches landing, “--is that your souls are still --” a body hits the ground “--connected to their original bodies. I don’t know how--” wind rushes, perhaps from Brainy flying, “--we get them to go back.”

Kara drops her head on the stone in front of her. “Right. The Arakawa spirit… theory…” she trails off as a ridiculous idea starts to form. “Alex! I need you!”

“Little busy here,” Alex’s strained voice comes through the comm. Kara starts to scramble across the rubble towards the cars again. 

“Get un-busy! I need you to drive!” 

“What??” 

Kara clambers into the first car she sees. It’s miraculously got the keys in the ignition. She starts it, swerves around to survey the fight. Alex is in the street, ducked behind a stray bit of rubble, trading shots with someone. Kara slams on the gas towards the mystery new Leviathan member. They turn at the sound, see a three-ton truck barreling towards them, and disappear in a puff of smoke. Kara slams on the brakes and throws the door open to Alex. 

They swap seats and Alex has already got her foot on the gas and aimed the car in the direction Kara’s pointing when Kara taps on the comm again. 

“Lena? You there?” 

She’s answered with possibly the worst sound she’s heard since Krypton exploded. Lena lets out a long, tortured cry, followed by a whimper that’s the closest thing she can manage to a “yes”. Kara blinks back tears. 

“Hang on. Please hang on. I’ve got an idea.”

“Which is…?” Alex prompts, looking at her expectantly. Kara takes a deep breath.

“Break the tether.”

Lena whimpers again.

“ What! ?” Alex demands. “Kara. That’s insane!”

“If this doesn’t work, we’re dead anyway!”

The screams are getting softer, shorter. Kara can feel the tether pulling on her, pinning her to the seat of the car. She closes her eyes and focuses on getting the words out. 

“Get me into the sun, okay? I trust you.”

A terrible, rasping inhale comes through the comms. “ Nng--n-no-- ”

Blackness pulls at the edges of her vision 

All Lena knows is pain. Burning, molten threads of green, blazing through every bone, every vein, every nerve. She once learned to focus and trace the pain to its origin and so narrow it to just one small point. That trick works great for a broken nose or a headache, but not when the kryptonite eats through her body like acid, blazing through everything in its path. 

She’s only aware she’s been screaming when she stops, the pain paralyzing her mouth and throat. It’s too much, too much make it stop please stop Kara help -- 

And her voice -- literally her voice -- echoes. “ Lena.”

Green speckles swimming in her vision. A ragged cry before lapsing back into labored breaths. 

“...sun…”

Lena struggles to understand what Kara is saying. 

“...trust you…”

No - no I don’t want you to feel this -- Kara -- Kara no---

Lena wakes up reclining on something cushioned, her first memory of pain , and screams. Jolts forward, right into a taut seatbelt that slams her back into the seat. She barely notices Alex yelling next to her. Phantom tendrils of kryptonite are enough to set her whole body shaking again. But as she gasps and settles back into her body, the feeling fades. She looks down at a neat manicure and designer jeans. She’s back. They switched back. 

“Hey! Kara? Lena?”

“Fuck,” Lena gasps, scanning their surroundings to figure out their location. “Alex, turn around.”

Alex ignores the demand. “Did it work?”

“ TURN AROUND NOW, ” Lena bellows, and Alex complies, maneuvering the car into a gravity-pulling about-face. Lena grits her teeth, willing herself not to scream again. Her anger fades and panic starts to seep in. “I don’t -- I don’t know how long…”

The car accelerating cuts off the rest of the sentence. 

Kara knows what Kryptonite feels like. It’s happened to her many, many times before. She once bragged to her clone that she’d even built up something of a resistance to it. 

It had been a bluff. A lie. Every single time is a new, fresh hell. 

Kara had been in the car, in Lena’s body. Her head was aching, her limbs stiff and heavy, her vision tunneled and blurry. Everything had gone black. 

She woke to green and pain. No other descriptors. No differentiation between her limbs, or her torso, or her head. Every nerve, equally, concurrently, twisting and writhing inside of her body. She cannot even conceive of moving. Cannot fire the neurons to even imagine any other existence but lying helpless on the ground. 

Kara 

Her eyes open and the inside of the warehouse is tinted green, dotted with bright green spots.  In the background, a badly-tuned radio plays a voice that’s come out of her own mouth for the last week. 

Kara can you hear me? 

She can hear it. Somehow even her ears burn with Kryptonite poisoning but they still work. She tries to reply, to form a single coherent syllable, but can’t do more than whimper.    

Hang on. Please. 

Hang on, huh?

Alex drives them back with the speedometer maxed out. The acceleration keeps Lena tight in her seat when all she wants to do is lean forward to catch a glimpse of Kara any millisecond faster. Alex taps the comms. “J’onn, southwest. You see us?”

“Got it. Ready,” comes his gruff voice in Lena’s ear. 

“Hang on Luthor,” Alex has just enough time to say before she swerves them straight at the pile of concrete that was just moments ago, Lena’s prison, and is now Kara’s. 

Lena panics for half a second before red light flashes. She’s flying backwards and the world goes dark. A second later, she’s on her feet, on the ground, J’onn’s hand around her arm and the armored truck is upside down in front of the now-toppled concrete barrier. She sprints forward without even realizing it. Rama Khan appears in a cloud of dust but this time Sentinel is there shooting a flamethrower so hot that the rock in Rama Khan’s hand starts to bubble and melt.   

Lena run past as Rama Khan turns back to rock with a frustrated yell. She runs past M’gann and someone in hand-to-hand combat, runs through the rock perimeter and towards the blue-clad figure lying under entirely a broken slab of concrete.

On the ground, tense and trembling and covered in green is Kara. They lock eyes and even through the convulsions, Lena can see the relief in Kara’s face. How she only cares about Lena’s safety. 

“No you fucking don’t, ” Lena growls, scrambling on hands and knees towards the quickly fading Kryptonian. “You don’t get to die on me after all that.” She grabs an arm and hauls them both upright. 

“Won’t,” Kara splutters in between wheezing breaths. “Y… you….” She can’t do more than hang limply off of Lena’s shoulder, feet dragging on the ground, and Lena nearly falls over from the uneven weight distribution. 

Lena curses and readjusts so Kara is draped over her back, each arm hanging over a shoulder. Grabs her under the knees and leans forward and full-body starts to carry her out. 

Kara’s breaths are getting shallower, slower, but she exhales out one last word. “...me….”  

“Shut,” Lena grits out from clenched teeth, concentrating on moving them as fast as she can. If Kara dies because she spent her last strength on encouraging words, Lena will kill her. “ Up.” 

Another splutter from Kara that sounds very much like a laugh, if the person laughing was also being stabbed with a thousand tiny knives. 

“You don’t,” Lena gasps, dragging Kara the dozen or so feet to the edge of the shade. “Get--” step “--to--” step “--die--” step step step “--on me.”

Lena tumbles forward onto her knees. Kara slides down her shoulder, limp and motionless, lands face-down on the sunny ground. Lena reaches over, too frantic to be gentle, and yanks Kara’s arm to flip her onto her back. It takes more effort than she’s used to after a week in a Kryptonian body. 

Kara flips over with a muted thud in the debris. Her eyes are closed, her face completely covered in thin, green lines. Lena feels panic welling up inside of her but shoves it into a box. She busies herself rolling up the sleeves of the supersuit, tugging on the neck, doing anything to get Kara more sun as fast as she can. But Kara just lays there, silent and still. 

Lena’s bottom lip trembles. She clenches her teeth and opens and closes her fingers into a fist. There’s nothing to do. She reaches for Kara but pulls her hand back again. Nothing to do. Nothing she can do. Her hands keep opening and closing as she wrestles with that one thought nothing I can do nothing I can do-- 

The panic fills her mental box, swells and bursts it at the seams and Lena drops her head in her hands and wails . “Kara,” she cries as the tears start to fall. “Please. Please.” Her shaking hand finds Kara’s and she clutches it and cries. 

Betrayal and Kryptonite and Lex and “ Kara Danvers is Supergirl” all pale in comparison to the pain of the lifeless body in front of her now. Lena curls around the hand she’s clinging to as though she can hold on tightly enough to keep Kara with her. 

Squeezes it for long and for tight that she doesn’t recognize when the hand squeezes back.

There’s a sudden gasp and Lena’s head snaps up, face covered in tears. Kara’s blinking against the sun, green tendrils receding from her face to her neck. She splutters and gasps again and Lena slaps a hand to her mouth to stop from weeping any louder than she already is. 

“H-hey,” Kara stammers, squinting up at Lena. Her chest heaves with the effort and Lena knows she should tell her to shut up but she wants to keep listening because it means Kara’s alive. “That you?”

“You fucking idiot,” Lena cries, grabbing that hand again. “Don’t do that ever again.”

“Deal,” Kara promises, closing her eyes again, but squeezing back.