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It hits like an optical illusion of a duck that is at the same time, a rabbit. An old woman that is also a girl. A horse running left, and then right. A person playing a trumpet that transforms into a nose and a jaw. Her brain refuses to process both at the same time and yet, she knows that they are one and the same.
Kara appears above the glorious suit of Supergirl. Supergirl sobs and begs, earnest and pleading with hands that twitch in a manner that belongs to Kara Danvers.
It is one whole funhouse mirror embodied as a person and Lena feels like the resident clown in this circus. She imagines the ridicule behind her back, her strives to do good, to be better, passing off as cheap entertainment. She thinks back, and realizes the fool that she is, an idiot she must have been, to come this far.
Kara cries and the Pavlovian urge to comfort is stalled by red and blue when her brain finally screams that Supergirl and Kara Danvers are one and the same. She tries to swallow this fact and it lodges in her throat painfully.
Supergirl is on her knees and Kara Danvers prays for forgiveness.
Lena offers nothing, turns on her heels and walks away.
Back in her office, Lena parses through her memory. She employs a trick from therapy in her childhood. She lays everything down, chronologically, and then from most impactful moments to least significant ones.
She even makes a chart. A whole timeline that starts from when her mother disappears in the water and ends with her drowning in tears.
First this, then this, and hence this.
First, the loss of her mother, then Lionel, Lex, Lillian, Kara.
She searches for causation or even a tenuous correlation and finds only one commonality, that is her own existence. She drowns her research in alcohol and pours a good portion over the damning hypothesis that always proves true. Anything she touches dies, or turns, or was never really hers.
Three glasses in, she screams and tears all the papers, throws her vibrating phone and kicks the couch. She breaks glass after glass and turns straight to the bottle when she runs out.
There is not much thinking that could be done after that.
She wakes up on her couch with her head pounding and eyes crusty.
There is a glass of water on the coffee table, and she eyes it warily, trying to piece together scattered memories of the previous night.
“Miss Luthor?”
Lena startles and turns to see Jess by the doorway.
She has to clear her throat twice before she trusts her voice not to break. “Good morning, Jess. What time is it?”
“It’s reaching seven,” Jess’s eyes refuse to stray from Lena’s eyes and Lena feels thankful that she is not looking at the mess she suddenly remembers creating. “I hope I am not overstepping, but do you want me to cancel your appointments for today?”
“That will be great, thank you.” Lena rushes to reply, feeling deeply unprofessional.
“May I call Hubert to drive you home?” Lena nods and immediately winces at the motion.
Standing up unsteadily, Lena’s face flushes in shame as she takes in the mess. She bends down to pick up a shard of glass and immediately feels nauseous. Her hand clenches around it reflexively and she bleeds.
“Miss Luthor!” Jess gasps and runs towards her. “Let me get someone to –“
“It’s just a shallow cut, it’s alright.”
“Are you sure? I can –“ Jess crouches down gingerly and frets over her.
“LENA!” Supergirl rushes into the office and Jess almost topples over. Lena cringes at the loud voice, her headache making its way back to the forefront.
“ARE YOU HURT? I JUST – “
“Shhhh,” Jess glares as she shushes Supergirl. Lena feels a rush of fondness for her secretary.
“What’s going on!” Supergirl tries again at a more acceptable decibel. “Is there a break-in? Can I help?”
Lena sighs. “This is none of your business, Supergirl. Please leave.”
Supergirl frowns, mouth twisting to find the right words as her shoulders rise in indignation. She looks around for a threat or a fight and finally takes in the mess. Lena wonders what she sees in it, and for a brief but agonizing second, what she thinks of her.
Thankfully, Jess steps in between them before Supergirl can say anything.
“Miss Luthor told you to leave.”
With a resigned look, Kara walks to the balcony and takes off.
Lena wraps her hand in a spare scarf, reassures Jess and leaves her building by the back exit.
She arrives to her apartment, cleans the wound, and tries to name an emotion but finds none. She spies her liquor cabinet but allows the temptation to pass, grabbing a few painkillers to starve off the pain of her throbbing head and stinging hand. She rewards herself with a glass of water and heads to bed.
When she closes her eyes, she sees Kara’s eyes and furrowed brows. She fiddles with the image, picking at an earnest blue and hoping that when it falls at its seams, the charade will tumble out and end.
She falls asleep with no resolution.
Lena sees Kara again nearly a week later and curses herself for seeking coffee at a place she knows the blonde frequents, a coffeeshop they have been to as a pair for countless brunches. She debates ducking behind a counter or running away but before she gives in to the impulse, Kara’s head perks up and turns. Their eyes meet and Kara makes to walk towards her.
Like a coward, she leaves without the coffee she paid for.
The whole incident sours her morning. She dismisses any ideas that her research team brings up and frightens an intern into a sweaty mess. She glares her board members into submission and powers through half of the annual business reports. By late afternoon, she finally made up for the work missed a week ago. Her manic energy wanes and she feels a little more in control by the time everyone on her floor leaves.
There is a certain calm and peacefulness that evenings bring. Lena steps onto her balcony and looks towards the skyline, where the setting sun paints the sky a deep orange and blue. It is a beautiful sight, but it soon makes her feel out of place, too unsettled to infringe on something so comparatively still.
Just as she moves to dip back into the office, she spies a familiar shape landing beside her. She pretends that she sees nothing and mentally wills the sheepish silhouette to leave.
“Lena, I - ” the shadow steps firmly into her peripheral vision and her skin crawls.
“I saw you at Noonan’s and you left your coffee?” Supergirl steps in front of her and poses it like a question. Perhaps she shares Lena’s passing confusion before she remembers abruptly.
Supergirl is Kara Danvers.
The hero holds up a paper bag like penance, but Lena sees it like a trick. Something twists in her chest and the phantom slap to her face stings. Her vision tunnels until she sees just a sigil, then a face, then the couch in her office when she turns to the side. Her ears burn as she feels a rush of shame, anger and other emotions she cannot parse through. She feels sick to her stomach.
Something must show on her face because Supergirl backs away, face falling and tears welling.
Lena tries to school her expression into something more neutral but finds that she does not really care. She directs her strength to staying still instead. Rubbing at her own wet cheeks, Supergirl puts the bag on the coffee table.
“I’ll just leave it here.” Supergirl’s words are nearly lost to the rush of blood that deafens her ears. “Please eat something.”
With those parting words, she flies away as quietly as she arrived.
Lena throws the paper bag into the bin and notes the oil-stain on the table. Anything she touches, she taints.
Her brother sends his love again, and Lena wants to cry or bury herself under layers of blankets or dirt or sand, but she does neither.
Instead, she sits under the hood of a police van, mechanically answering questions from a police officer who asks whether she could have benefitted from her own murder. Words get thrown around, like ‘attempted murder’ and ‘threats’ and Lena barely registers them. Her hearing is muffled, and the officer is asking questions too-fast and too-irate and she is pretty sure she repeated the same thing thrice.
The throbbing ache in her head sharpens into a jab and her vision goes white for a moment. The ringing in her ears turns shrill and she has to count her breaths before she could open her eyes again.
She recovers to see someone standing between her and the officer, cutting off yet another question of his.
“Officer, you are done with your questioning,” the voice a shade too authoritative for a reporter stuns the officer and Lena reflexively leans into the arms around her shoulder. “Or do I have to report you for inappropriate interrogation of a victim.”
The officer remains firmly in his spot. “There are a few discrepancies that I must clarify with Miss Luthor. Unless you are family or police, you have no right to be here behind the yellow tape.”
“Just give me a moment.”
Kara finally enters her view, looking shaken and rattled in a way that mirrors how Lena feels on the inside. Glasses askew, face ashen and body trembling, she shoulders the indignant officer away and squats down.
“Lena, are you alright?” Fingers clasp her jaw, gingerly turning her head left and right. When Lena flinches, the hands draw back with repeated apologies.
Lena stares blankly at her, compulsion to lean into the comfort and repulsion at Kara’s very proximity battling until she is frozen in between. Her normally controlled thoughts spirals nowhere and everywhere at once as she sluggishly blinks against blurry vision. She thinks to atoms and the impossibility of two molecules existing in a single space, and then to Kara, with her glasses and barely-tucked-in cape.
Nothing makes sense and the last thing she registers is an alarmed shout and the smell of ash and sunshine.
Lena wakes up in fits and starts, hearing footsteps fade in and out, a warm hand on her arm and a gentle voice consistent by her side.
When she finally opens her eyes, she squints against the fluorescent lights and tries to sit up. When she sees no open windows and a single closed metal door, her heart drops until she realizes that her hands are not cuffed.
Still disoriented, she startles when the door slams open. The machine beside her wails its protest as her heart pounds.
“Sorry, sorry,” Supergirl speeds to the front of her bed. “I heard that your heartbeat and it was beating really fast, and I thought you were in trouble again and I lost my mind and – “
Lena raises an eyebrow as Supergirl flushes a deep red.
“I just sped in here to see if you needed me.”
Lena twists her hands into the thin bed sheets. “I guess I am at the DEO then?”
“I brought you in when you passed out. The police officer was withholding medical care from a victim of an accident. If he had let you been attended to by a paramedic earlier, we could have helped you before you passed out on us.”
Supergirl grows increasingly incensed as she clenches her fists around the railing at the end of the bed.
“And the questions that he was asking, he had no right to –“ Metal screeches and Supergirl slowly removes her hands.
“Sorry.”
Unaffected, Lena looks on at the hero’s impassioned spiel and quietly marvels at how genuine Supergirl’s pretense looked.
“Can I go home now?”
Supergirl deflates slightly. “Yeah, just after Alex checks you out.”
“Alright, can you call her in now?”
Supergirl shifts from foot to foot and raises a hand to push against glasses, changing motion halfway when she only meets air. “You’ve only been out for a while, she is still at L-corp sorting things out.”
Somehow, for a world-class manipulator, she is still a terrible liar.
“Out with it.”
“Huh?” Supergirl blinks.
Lena wants to throttle her.
“What’s going on at L-corp?”
“Nothing! Just, you know. Regular clean-up. Glass-collecting, wall-plastering, paint-painting?”
Lena rolls her eyes and feels a familiar headache coming back. “Bullshit. Why would the director of the DEO be in charge of a clean-up crew?”
Supergirl rubs the back of her neck and sighs. Lena braces herself for the news, her mind creating new scenarios with each second the hero stalls. The whole of L-corp blowing up. Lex poisoning the city with L-corp resources. Or worse still, Lex somehow getting his hands and title on the company again.
“Alex is there because I blew my identity getting you here.”
What?
“What?” Lena echoes her thoughts.
“The police officer.”
Supergirl offers it like an explanation. Lena casts her mind and a feels a flicker of belated annoyance before a colossal amount of dread and horror took its place.
Kara threw away her anonymity for her. She wasn’t even on the brink of death, and this is no longer a frivolous gesture that Lena can discount as fake or disingenuous.
This is Kara Danvers lost to a whim on a person that spent the last month hating her.
“Kara,” Lena gasps.
Kara’s entire body shudders and a large sob tore out. Lena scrambles up just in time to hold her and drag them both to bed.
“You haven’t called me Kara in a long time.”
“I don’t – “ Lena strokes Kara’s hair in comfort. “That is what you want to focus on now?”
“I don’t care,” Kara tightens her hold on Lena’s shirt. “As long as I have you, I don’t care about anything else. I can be Supergirl full-time. No one needs Kara Danvers, but the world needs a Lena Luthor. I need a Lena Luthor.”
Lena’s heart stills, then kicks into overdrive as her worldview upends again. This is Kara. Lena can choose not to care about anything else too.
“Okay.” Lena sniffles into Kara’s shoulder. “We’ll figure a way through this, I promise.”
Kara sits in a chair with her knees raised to the chest. She thinks of her half-written article she will never complete, the critique from Snapper she will never receive again and the apartment that she can probably never go back to. She thinks of game nights, of lunches at Noonans and kicks herself for ever taking it all for granted.
She will never trade Lena for any of these, but she selfishly wishes that she does not need to give it all away.
“We have a solution,” Alex struts into the spare room at the DEO that became her temporary accommodation until they could settle into something more permanent. They debated creating a new identity, using an image inducer, or even just disappearing altogether but with each solution brings about its own set of problems. While Kara admits that she will trade the cape for a life of normality, it seems like she has no chance of getting Kara Danvers back again.
Kara surreptitiously wipes at her eyes. “It’s fine, Alex. I have accepted it. We can just – “
“It’s done. Everything is okay again.” Alex chuckles for the first time in weeks and hope blossoms.
“How?”
“I woke up this morning and all the news that you are Supergirl were gone. I didn’t know what happened until this.” Alex slides a piece of newspaper towards her as she sits.
Kara eyes the date and then freezes at the headlines.
“It was released this morning.” Alex clarifies.
L-Corp announces Samantha Arias and Jess Huang as co-chairs in huge move to oust last Luthor.
In smaller print: The last Luthor falls (see page 10).
Kara thumbs over a small image of Lena, “Where is she? is she okay? What is this?”
“She’s alright. Lost all her assets, penniless and homeless, but still surviving,” Alex grins wryly.
“But, how?” Kara kicks her sister in her shin. “What does that have to do with Supergirl?”
Alex’s smile dims. “She made a deal with Mxyzptlk. Imp made her trade an identity for an identity and she went for it.”
Kara’s face falls. “Where is she now?”
“Well, I am not going to let a random homeless person into my home –“ Alex trails off when Kara gasps in indignation and kicks her again, harder this time.
Alex flicks her forehead in retaliation, “She’s in yours, idiot.”
Kara pulls her sister into a tight hug and flies off.
When she gets to her apartment, she sees Lena moping the floor and she has to do a double-take to make sure it is, indeed, her home and that is, indeed, her best friend. She flies in quickly and heaves a sigh of relief as she changes into her comfort clothes.
“Lena,” Kara appears in front of Lena.
The brunette jumps in surprise. “Oh.”
“You’re mopping my floor.” Kara hopes that Lena hears her real question.
“Well, I am unemployed and leeching off my best friend so the least I can do is some housework.”
Kara’s grin grows and she moves to hug Lena but falters when she remembers, “You gave up L-corp.”
Lena frowns, “Mxy said that Kara Danvers was reduced to nothing so to balance the equation, Lena Luthor has to lose everything as well. I wasn’t sure what he meant but I guess Lena Luthor just lost her fortune.”
Kara feels a surge of guilt.
“Do you ever find it strange to talk about yourself in third person?”
Kara chuckles wetly at the segue. “All the time.”
Lena rubs her hand on the apron – a customized gag gift from Winn that said ‘some superheroes wear aprons’ – and then reaches up to wipe the tears off Kara’s face. She draws the blonde into a crushing hug and Kara lets the tears spill.
“I am so sorry.”
“For what?”
“Lying to you. Making you lose L-corp. Making you lose everything.”
Lena stares at her strangely. “I would have lost everything if I lost you.”
Kara breaks the hug gently to look at her at arms length.
Lena just smiles warmly at her for a beat, eyes twinkling. She draws away from Kara and skips to stand behind the kitchen island.
“Let’s try this again, shall we? Hi, I am Lena Luthor. And who are you, exactly?”