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“Were you ever going to tell me?” Lena asks instead, the wine glass in her hands slipping slightly from her grip.
Kara watches as the red liquid swirls dangerously close to the edge. She swallows the urge to reach out and tilt it back, to touch crimson in the glass with the crimson of Lena’s lips.
“No,” she decides. Kara has practiced the words—chewed and spat them out in moments alone—so much effort, in vain, to only shallow them in front of Lena. If there was no Lex, if given a choice, perhaps Lena would never know.
(A coward, Kara hears in Lex’s voice.)
“Why?” There was no anger, no accusation. Just the simple breath of curiosity from someone who’s been betrayed far too often to have neglected this outcome, of resigned acceptance of a confession much too overdue. She knows what Kara will say, she’s just waiting to hear it. At the very least, being proven right may grant her some reprieve.
Lena watches the Super behind the rim of her glass, studies her face like she has done countless times, picks apart the what ifs from is and was, drowns as she traces the lines only to remember smiles and laughter. She finds yet the same thing: the woman she has grown to love. Lena hates herself for it.
“Why, Kara?” She closes her eyes this time, and hopes with the naivety of a little girl, the little girl who had for one moment expected her mother to emerge from still waters so many years ago, that not looking may soothe the pain, may let her forget the snickering faces that appear at her weakest. Those wretched beings who bore faces of her so-called friends.
“Because–” Kara stops.
She remembers from the textbooks she’d scoured through during the noisiest, most confusing first few weeks on Earth, that one should never begin a sentence with ‘because’. Unless a reason is followed along by a question. Because a subordinate clause is dependent on the main clause for complete meaning; because her answer has no meaning without understanding what Lena means to Kara.
How does she explain in the words that follow a simple because, that whenever she holds Lena, she is also holding on to memories of a past she was forced to abandon too young? That the woman in her arms has grown to encompass more than the quiet solace of their friendship; that if given a redo, Kara would choose to step into the pod that had brought her from one home to another, just to meet Lena again.
She glances up at Lena through her lashes and tries. “Because at some point, you’d become so important to me that I’d do anything to keep you away from Krypton.”
Lena frowns: this isn’t what she expects. None of the righteous proclamation of protection, or the desperate wail for forgiveness, or even violent spat of disgust and hatred. Lena had imagined this night countless times, went through so many versions of Supergirl that all she remembers is red and blue and golden. (A bloody ocean against the brilliant afternoon sun. She remembers something like that in her childhood—before it was tainted and teared and consumed.)
“I’m not sure I follow, Supergirl.” There was no bite to the name. Kara flinches anyways.
Lena peers into the red in her hands, struggles to find the clarity that would resolve whatever this is. Kara takes half a step forward before Lena’s drifting gaze shoots up at her and she stops; then, she tries again.
“Krypton is– was beautiful. It was home. But it is also a constant reminder that I'll never get it back, Earth feels more like home now than home did, but I don’t belong here. Krypton is a weight that makes me different, an alien; it is because of Krypton that Supergirl exists. But Kara? Kara was never Supergirl on Krypton. There, Kara was just Kara.”
She reaches a self-conscious hand towards the edges of her skirt and finds air; Kara much prefers the pants—they are easier to move and fight in—but even such a small change leaves her grasping at remnants of what used to be. Perhaps it’s a habit. Fixating on past versions of herself when she should know best that time never stops. After all, her run in with the phantom zone did nothing to halt the time of those who truly mattered. (If it did, Clark would still have been Kal-El.)
“You mean that Supergirl isn’t who you are.” Lena, despite the hurt scorching her alive and the pain staring up at her in the form of her heart scattered at her feet, knows what it means to pretend. She knows too well the act of dressing up as impenetrable or cosplaying calculated coldness like it’s a soldier’s armour.
“Except, Supergirl is you. She is everything Kara Danvers represents and believes in, isn’t she?” This was the hardest to swallow, because if Supergirl represents everything Kara is, then the sneering and biting form of the hero when Lena had possessed kryptonite, that was Kara. The anger and hatred and fear, those were Kara too.
She shudders, grips onto herself, and abandons her glass—no amount of drinking is going to numb her enough.
“Yes, but the Kara on Krypton didn’t have superpowers—couldn’t punch through walls, see through skin, or burn through metal. She was– I was just... me.” The Kryptonian sags into her shoulders. Kara Danvers has never been particularly phenomenal, neither was Kara Zor-El, but she wants to believe she could’ve amounted to something. The youngest member of the science guild, the glorious descend from nobility, but there’s no knowing if those count for anything now. No point in fixating.
(In this reality though, she has. Kara Danvers has become Supergirl. She just wasn’t sure if that is truly her.)
Lena looks right at her still and Kara imagines painting the forest of her eyes, knows she will never get the colour quite right. How does one draw all that is contained in one disarming gaze? Or to paint hurt, despair, defiance, and strength in one stroke, or to even think that Lena can be bound to one canvas alone? (Aren’t those red canvases in her room enough prove that the imagination can never bury the aftermath of an implosion? Surely, the tremors Lena cause in her being will never settle as long as Kara’s heart remains alive.)
But then, Lena is standing and moving closer, and all Kara can think of is to fold her arms against the softness of her back, to touch her nose to the rim of the worn in MIT sweater. For her to find comfort in the woman she’s hurt so deeply, Kara can’t help the returning urge to swim in neon green, wishes her greatest weakness would stab her in the throat. (But Lena has always been better than that. Better than her.)
This is the first time that they’re so close and yet Kara isn’t allowed to pull her in for a hug.
“I still fail to see how that relates to,” Lena waves a hand around, and the devastation and upending of their friendship lies in the space that has grown between them, “this.”
Warm breaths lean onto Kara’s cheeks, the quiet scream of their distance probes an equally soft reply.
“You saw that. You still do; see the Kara that I’d left behind in that pod. Sometimes, you know something is wrong before even I know it. You think I’m brilliant because of my silly little articles, Lena. Not because I go around punching bad guys in red and blue.”
“Of course not. Kara Danvers was never Supergirl to me, I couldn’t possibly have associated your righteousness with that of Supergirl’s.” (Lena thinks she can afford to lie a little, just this once.)
Kara shakes her head, a languid smile sewn across her lips, “you don’t get it.”
“Then explain it to me so that I do!” Lena snaps, and glares hard at the bold red ‘S’ on Kara’s chest. She thinks the white beneath her skin might just crack from the yellow of her knuckles alone.
She breathes the rage through her nostrils, wills herself not to cry. She feels the fire. The fire pit had begun with the brandishing of a smirk, the cruel gift of a taunt, and her merciful pull of a trigger. Her brother who had once tried to sew her brokenness back together, had stood before her with words he knew would rip her anew. For what is more heartbreaking than realising whoever has your heart doesn’t treasure it?
They were pretending to be your friends just to laugh at you behind your back, he’d said. You’d always been foolish, he’d said. And Lena had stared at the video of Kara Danvers stopping bullets with a hand and knocking out dozen men with force from a silent cry. The revolver in her hands pressed deeper into her skin, Lex’s laugh sticky against her ear. It reverberated. It deafened. It could destroy a soul destroyed.
(But she hadn’t needed that nor needed him. She could destroy herself alone.)
She traces a careless gaze down the Super’s face. She sees glasses sitting atop her nose where it shouldn’t be. She sees a smile, blinding as always, where down-turned lips sat. She sees Kara Danvers wearing the cape.
Maybe Lena will never learn, maybe she’s doomed to disregard self-preservation, or maybe secretly, she has yearned after feeling the texture of the suit against her fingertips during more mundane moments. (When the world isn’t ending, when life isn’t painful, when their names don’t matter.)
Lena hovers near the crest. The gentle rise and fall of Kara’s chest lull her. She places her fingers, one at a time, on the sacred of the suit. Each touch draws a small breath of air from Kara’s lungs; Lena feels the wild heart, feels it thunder, feels it pouncing at her as Kara leans in.
The Kryptonian trembles at her touch, trembles with every stutter of her heart. And it is adoration she sees in Kara’s eyes—the gentle care that ruptures like a tidal wave and the careful caress of warmth that had convinced Lena to hack down her walls. Then, she glimpses the fear, guilt, and regret concealed behind sapphires; notices for the first time a desperate plea calling for forgiveness.
(Except, Lena has never known how to forgive, has never learnt to stop hogging pain.)
She raises her fist and brings it down with velocity to kill, but Kara moves to cushion the blow, arches back ever so slightly that her fist lands softly against rough fabric. Never comes is the solidity of which is sufficient to splinter bone. Not for the first time, Lena wonders what it means to obsess over control of one’s form; what it means for a less-than-gentle breath to decapitate a living. (What it means to roam Earth as a demigod. What it means to roam Earth at all.)
Lena deflates, but her hands clench close and the yellow returns, “I only wish to understand.”
A warm hand wraps around her knuckles, a gentle thumb caresses the yellow away, a hollowed voice husks, “I know. I know, I’m sorry.”
Lena arches a single brow, and Kara shrinks. Surrenders. (Later, Lena would sit and ponder the power she held in this moment. For an indestructible being among mortals, all it takes for a Kryptonian to yield is a single twitch of a muscle; her brother—no, Lex—would be jealous.)
“You know, no one, no one thinks of Kara as anything more, Lena. And definitely not because she can, what? Write?” Kara scoffs. It comes out too bitter, too unlike Kara Danvers or Supergirl, but Lena doesn’t flinch or retreat or disappear. She stands, drinking in the woman whose face is so familiar yet everything about her is but.
“Alex thinks that I’m brave and kind and so good, because I use my powers to keep the city safe,” she whispers. “She doesn’t see. That I’m Supergirl only because I can, because I have the powers to protect and so I should. I need to; I can’t lose a home again.”
(The need to be useful eats into her bones. The need to be needed such that warm hands nudging her shoulders wouldn’t turn cold, and a calloused hand holding hers wouldn’t give her away again.)
Kara reaches towards the edges of a sharp jaw, halts inches from red lips and yearns for that splash of warmth almost kissing her palm. “You see me more clearly than anyone ever has, Lena. You make it feel like Krypton is still here,” she pulls back to touch the obnoxious crest on her chest, “not even Alex could do that.”
Alex will always be that constant source of support, that duvet one returns to when all else fails. But Alex has grown up witnessing the chaos a Kryptonian’s hand is capable of on a foreign planet; strength that can bend steel can also destroy itself. Alex tries but may never understand.
(She tries when she holds on during the anniversary of Krypton’s death, tries when they celebrate Kara’s Earth birthday. (Kara doesn’t mention how Kryptonians only celebrate birthdays every six years, but see great significance in names, because there is power in a name. There is power in identities bestowed.) Alex tries when she tells her to hide, to be human. But Alex has never learnt to speak her tongue, never tried to recreate Krypton’s customs, never asked beyond what Kara would offer. And Kara doesn’t blame her. Once upon a time, maybe, but now she knows Alex was only trying to make living without her roots bearable, thinks the best way to live is to forget the pain.)
“And you don’t think telling me about Supergirl would’ve helped with that? Helped me see you, completely, not just Kara Danvers or Supergirl, but you. Kryptonian or not.” Lena presses her fist deeper into Kara’s chest—the heart beneath still beats as wildly as it did.
(But Kara has never wanted to forget, only wishes to protect whatever memories she’s left, whatever piece of home she’s managed to salvage with her escape.)
“I was selfish.” A soft admission, feather-like, ruptures with the force of an eagle’s cry. “Would you believe me if I say I didn’t want to share you with Supergirl?”
Lena scoffs, but not unkindly—amusement dances in her eyes. “No.”
“Well, it’s true,” she shrugs. “It felt like telling you about her would make the loss of Krypton… I don’t know, real?”
(Because with Lena, she forgets that Earth is powered on a yellow sun, and if she forgets, she may turn to the sky and expects crimson. Because with Lena, she forgets about the crest she is wearing, only ever imagines it painted somewhere on Lena’s skin.
Then, a siren sounds.)
“Everyone prefers Supergirl over Kara Danvers. And it’s– it’s fine. I get it. But you? You can’t– I can’t–” I can’t survive it if you choose her too, she doesn’t say, instead, “I’m not always proud to be Supergirl.”
Lena’s frown unfurrows at her words, and a wry smile builds on her lips. “No? You wear that symbol on your chest and parade it around while saving people. What happened to the hero who is all self-righteousness and morality?”
She claws at the suit with every word, violent, unrelenting, and Kara flinches. “I promised that I'll always protect you, Lena. I didn't want to put in danger."
Lena chuckles, arms dropping to hug herself across the chest. "Neither of us is stupid, Kara."
Kara sighs, "okay, you’re right, I'm sorry. It was never about keeping you safe because I'd already secured that, somewhat.”
“What?”
“I’d always thought the best way to protect you was to stay by you. I think I've been subconsciously trying to be with you all the time. Because I really enjoy our time together, sure, but also because I thought that was the surest way to keep you safe.”
“I don’t need protecting,” Lena mumbles, turns, and downs the remaining drops of liquid in the wine bottle as protest. It’s childish, maybe, but Lena has been forced to grow up when she wasn’t ready; now, she’s tired.
“I know,” Kara acquiesces easily, softly. (Her palm tingles still with the phantom touch of skin.)
When she turns, all Lena finds is a Kryptonian—not far off from a god—waiting silently, gazing upon her like she’s built the way back home. Kara has always looked at her like she’s sculpted constellations in her name, but Supergirl was always more subtle, always a distance away.
With Supergirl, the distance was always a kind reminder of history between them, of two names so entwined they had almost set fire to the world. For all the times Lena had hoped for coexistence, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe they could be friends. (That dream ended the moment Lex began to yearn for a red sun.)
But Kara Danvers though, Lena didn’t know what to make of her in the beginning. When she realised what was happening, it was too late. Just like moths to a flame, she was already lost. Lost to the kindness she had never before received, to warm smiles, to comfort embracing dysfunction. Perhaps she had lost the moment she experienced her first loss. For abandoned moths fly towards fire with greater fanaticism, they fly towards a light that may fill up the emptiness, that may accompany them in their last moments.
Now, Kara Danvers and Supergirl are one and the same. They dance and morph and vie for a place in Lena’s heart and Lena does what she’s best at: she walks away. (But a part of her wants to stay, to let this play out and see where it ends. A part of her wishes she still has a place somewhere after tonight.) She turns towards the door, halts, and stumbles her way onto the balcony.
Kara watches silently, listens intently to the rhythmic muscle pulsing further and further away. For all the masks Lena have learnt to wear, her heart remains untainted by cruelty that people are capable of—those too quick to judge, too blatant in their misplaced judgement. Her heart revs with a life so wanton, Kara never thought intensity could be so beautiful. (It soothes her to know she is not losing this sound easily.) Lena may keep her heart in cages, but some vigour cannot be bound by borders, are not made to be buried with neon green.
She adores everything Lena Luthor—even that wretched last name that has brought nothing but pain; she would take it as her own, all Lena needs to do is ask—this woman so precious she couldn’t possibly be real. Because she looked at Kara, all cardigans and pastel and sheepish, and made out a hero from that. Because Lena has never set conditions for access to her time, simply gives when Kara takes and takes and takes.
Even now, after she’d willingly teared into their friendship, clawed and tugged and churned out tattered remains then left it to wilt, Lena is still here. (Kara thinks of her parents, thinks of Krypton and how it never stood a chance. She thinks of Lena now. Funny how two lifetimes on planets in different ends of the universe may rupture just the same.)
“Krypton, your house, that symbol on your chest, they represent everything you stand for. El– what was it?” Lena searches through the alcohol-induced haze, flips through Lex’s notes in her head, chokes on her tongue when she finds it, “El Mayarah.”
She doesn’t miss the way Kara just stops. (She curses her heart for stopping in sync.) Perhaps its jarring, to hear her native tongue thrown at her in a place that should feel like home—logically, it is now—but isn’t, really. Again, Lena understands. They have so much in common, tethered by the tragedies they have faced, connected by trauma that they had both survived but ultimately lost to. (Sometimes, Lena wonders if that’s all they ever were.)
She glances past her shoulders only to find the Kryptonian crying; tears that silently gather in the corners of her eyes, red, unblinking, and impossibly wide. And Lena may never admit it, even to herself, that while she insists on carelessness and apathy and keeping people away, she is anything but. In a moment of weakness—or maybe in strength because it takes courage to try again, to repair what once hurt you so bad you’re almost dead—Lena worries.
“Kara?” She steps back into her apartment, rushes past the blanket she’d snagged from Kara’s apartment so many months ago—too bright and colourful to ever have a place in her penthouse; but begrudgingly, it does—and stops toe to toe before a body of steel. Lena calls her name again, in a rasp only she knows, only reserved for her. (Lena hates herself enough, what’s that little more, she thinks.)
“You–” Kara’s voice breaks, “you can speak it?”
And it is hope she hears in that voice; Lena aches for the loss of it that is to come. “Only whatever Lex managed to learn and document in his journals. I’m afraid that’s all I know.”
“It’s enough,” Kara grasps clumsily onto the hand wrapped around her wrist, steps a little too close. She smells the lilies and sunflowers and cinnamon; it’s all so unbearably Lena. She doesn’t know why she is crying, just knows words can be so, so sacred—the revival of a dead language can feel like salvation.
“I can’t remember the last I heard someone speak it. I don’t even remember when I’d stopped.”
She crumbles, drags Lena to the ground with her in a hold that would’ve meant so much a lifetime ago. (When an alien found a new home, when a weird girl tried but failed to be normal. When Kara Zor-El buried her name.) She clings onto soft cotton and tangles her fingers in the sturdy raven locks at the base of Lena’s neck.
But it’s the smell of lilies and sunflower and cinnamon that again brings her back. (It’s Lena who always brings her home.)
“To the people, maybe. Maybe the crest is a symbol of hope and truth and justice and whatever Supergirl represents. But sometimes, all I see is destruction. So much conscious destruction.”
Kara shudders. For the graves of the perished that she had built in her heart, for the souls left behind to burn along with a dying star, for the life that could have been on a dead rock that now was.
The violent crunch of molten ground, like the accumulation of an ache in one’s bones signalling the pain has gone on too long, has been ignored too long to be ignored further. Kara wonders what kind of parents ignore impending destruction, let a planet wither away when they could have saved it, and push a child to survive on their own after a civilisation dies.
(Broken bodies, torn ligaments, muscles tears, defeated spirit, fear-filled eyes. A civilisation, dead, but dreams, dreams cannot die.)
“I’m not even sure to trust what I remember. And I didn’t want you to see… this, to have to deal with another broken person in your life. I wanted– you’re already dealing with so much. How could I– I wanted to be your friend, a real friend. Not– not to cause you more pain; never that.” Kara had wanted so much, had been selfishly indulging because for once it was something she had chosen. And Lena had, for the briefest and happiest moment in Kara’s life, chosen her back.
“I’m sorry I’ve only been doing things the way I wanted it and deciding everything for the both of us. I should’ve– you should’ve known.” Kara swallows, hard, “I’m sorry that I’ve always put me above you.”
(It isn’t true, that much Lena would argue. There hadn’t been anyone more selfless than Kara in her life. She still doesn't quite believe gentle care can be given without asking for anything in return.)
“It was never meant to last, I knew it. Which was why I kept on dragging to tell you, but I always prepared myself for the reveal, always rehearsing some sort of script. I knew someday, any day, everything’s going to end.” Like everything eventually does in her life.
“Then why? Why befriend me from the beginning?” Lena sobs into broad shoulders, claws at a chiselled back as if it would unearth all that is wrong, that it would bring back a sunshine smile in place of the mocking sneer. Back to their first meeting—that reverent ‘yes’ released into tensed air, that was hope taking flight.
“How could you be cruel even while offering kindness?” Lena doesn’t understand how care could be offered alongside deception, how the love she has fought for never comes and the happiness finally hers could be ripped away so effortlessly.
“I just–” She tenses, and Kara lets go immediately. “I just don’t know which part of our friendship is real and which isn’t anymore. Which parts of you were really you?”
“They are all me, Lena.” Kara begs.
“Even the part that hated me for making kryptonite.”
“I’m sorry,” Kara rushes to say, wonders how many more can she say before they lose meaning altogether.
She reaches out again, places her hands over slender wrists and finds life pulsing beneath milky white skin. Emerald eyes flutter shut at the contact, and Kara stares, commits something precious to memory—that crease between her brows when Lena is deep in thought, the hardness in her eyes that melts when she is tired and it's only Kara in the room, the dimples that show when she laughs a little too hard. Perhaps, Kara would never get a chance to see her Lena again.
“I don’t hate you, Lena. I don’t think I could ever hate you.” Lena startles at her voice, pries her hands off strong grip and lets her fingers rest at the edges of a red cape instead.
“No, I understand. Really. Trusting me doesn’t come easily.” Lena waves her off, shrugs, and reaches for a glass somewhere. It’s almost empty save for the splash of maroon that had fused with the sides. She stares at it, stares, and stares till it shatters and morphs and deforms, until it is unrecognisable. The darkness chases after her still; it never has once stopped.
Kara sighs and the slouch is still present in her bones. “I’m sorry for lashing out and treating you like a villain. I’m sorry for asking James to check on you. I know it’s hard to believe me now when I say this but, I trust you, Lena. I do. I–”
“I knew.” Lena cuts her off, sharp and swift and heartless like she has banished people from her life. The hatred rises, so raw she doesn’t know what to do with it. The glass touches the floor softer than she’d liked, exhaustion that plaques the mind poisons muscle and bone.
“What?”
“All this time, I knew. About Supergirl. Even before Lex.” Lena whispers. (Because of course she did. She is Lena Luthor.)
She imagines the shock discolouring Kara’s face, remembers the countless security footage she’s had to scrap, each time more desolate than the last. Supergirl may have saved her life too many times to count, but Lena would like to think she protected the hero just the same.
“You knew,” Kara says more for herself than anything, “how?”
“I don’t know,” Lena grabs at her forehead, feels ice-cold meets fury fire.
But oh, she knows exactly how, doesn’t she? Because Lena has never seen anyone more clearly than she sees Kara. She has never wanted to commit someone to memory so desperately, so afraid of losing the one good thing in her life. And to what? To a lie that has only built and built and built? Or to a truth they had pretended wasn’t at all all-consuming?
“But you stayed anyways. Why?”
“I don’t know!” Lena screams. “Maybe I’m pathetic, maybe I’m clinging on, like I always do, to people who care so little they shouldn’t be important.” She thinks of Lilian, about the way she tries and tries and tries, just so her treacherous heart may hear the edgings of pride and settle. She thinks about how she’s never gotten any of that.
“But they are,” she whispers, “that’s pathetic, isn’t it?”
“No. Lena, that’s not– You’re– You’re so, so strong, and good.” Lena scoffs, but Kara pushes on because now that she’s started, Rao knows she may never stop till all layers of buried emotion are unearthed, “stubborn, yes, and overly confident even though you have every right to be that it’s infuriating. You worry too much about whether you’re doing enough to make up for sins that are not yours to bear. You don’t take care of yourself enough.”
Kara frowns. Heaves and shudders through the close calls. That time Lena fell off her balcony, that other time Lena got poison in her coffee then in her gut, and another when she got captured by Lilian, by Rhea, by Lord, by people who have no business touching even half a hair on her. The loss of this woman would haunt her.
All loses do, but of those whom she loves, Kara never recovers. And she has never loved anyone the way she loves Lena. She doesn’t know how to survive without Lena in her life now, thinks perhaps another planet’s death is not necessary if Lena chooses to walk out tonight.
(Lena has loved Kara despite her flaws, and Kara loves her. Loves Lena more because of her name.)
“Despite everything, you still hope. You grew up around people like the Luthors and still came out of that trying to make the world just that bit better. You save more lives everyday than I’ll ever do in a lifetime as Supergirl, Lena.”
“You say that, but you treated me like a threat with the Kryptonite. You didn’t trust me, or perhaps you did, on some levels, but not when it really mattered.”
“Lena, I do care. You’re very important to me, one of the two most important, actually.” She catches Lena’s eyes and prays to Rao that she would believe her.
(Lena doesn’t. She has never been anyone’s most important.)
“Do you really believe I’d have treated you differently if I’d known you’re Supergirl? You know I’d have never preferred her over Kara Danvers. It’s you, Kara, it’s always been you I–” the rest is swallowed, shoved so deep back into a box it may fester only when hidden in the dark of her heart.
“You’re right, you’d have treated me the same,” it is easy to admit now that Kara is no longer lying to herself, “but what if after I told you, after you’d seen who– what Supergirl really is, you decide Kara Danvers is not worth it? That she’s not enough to bury the burden that comes with being Supergirl?”
(Kara would’ve lost a home only to lose another. Ultimately, she’d have chosen to save the world only to destroy herself.)
Lena imagines a different meeting, imagines a reality where Kara Danvers doesn’t know who Lena Luthor is. Would she have revealed her name, spit it out all wretched and heinous? She thinks of shame, then of happiness weightless and free. No, Lena decides, she wouldn’t say a damn thing. Until it is too late, until they are standing like this, and it would have been Lena begging for mercy.
“Is Lena enough for you?” her voice trembles even as she holds bravery like a lifeline.
“Yes.” Kara blinks, the answer comes before she understood what Lena was asking. And Lena must have noticed because she was smiling. A little pained, a little amused, a little in disbelief.
“Then why wouldn’t Kara be enough for me?”
And really, Kara should’ve known. That the moment she chose to give Lena a chance, to choose her over anything she has ever known, her fate has already been written. Because Lena Luthor exists as a tapestry woven from brilliance and a heart as vast as the universe itself. She is the tidal wave that has in a sudden, overwhelming force, swept through Kara’s world, toppled it on its axis, and altered its course definitively. (It’s entropy, Lena might say; the entropy of an isolated system may never return to its initial state. Kara doesn't want it to, hopes it never will.)
“The kryptonite,” Kara chokes on a breath. Honesty. She could give Lena that. “I– I was scared.”
In an ideal world, a reality whereby she had retained more of her Krypton self—rational before she is emotional—Kara would’ve stared deep into emerald eyes, would’ve taken in the apprehension in Lena’s stance or the fear growing on her face with every syllable of confession uttered, and responded with a simple ‘why?’.
But Kara has shed so much of her Kyptonian that only naked bones are left; that emotions control even when she dons her house’s code of arms. In this sense, Supergirl is less Kryptonian than the world regards her. All these conscious, meticulous destruction.
“I didn’t believe you’d use it against me, and I understood where you came from. Rao, it’s not even about the pain or– or dying. More than anything, I’m just afraid that the only thing that managed to survive Krypton’s destruction is what ultimately kills me. That if anything went wrong, you’d have had a part to play.”
Really, isn’t one annihilation enough?
“I’m sorry,” Lena looks away but can’t quite hide the guilt, shrinks into herself like she always does when she thinks she isn’t enough.
“No! No, no. You have nothing to be sorry for, Lena. I was being stupid, and mean, all because I was afraid. I’m the one who should apologise.” Kara reaches out to soothe, erratic almost, but Lena waves her off.
“It was the only way– it was never meant to hurt you. I would never–”
“I know,” she says. (There are some things she trusts without ever knowing why. When it comes to Lena, she never needed a reason. It has always been the heart.)
“You know, Supergirl would’ve burnt the world for you; would’ve destroyed everything to keep you safe.” She stares at Lena as she says it, and Lena flinches. Frantically, she draws back, but it only took Lena’s hands on her thigh to halt her once more—belatedly, after years of friendship, Kara realises, finally, the power this woman has over her.
She presses a delicate hand to Lena’s (her heart swells when the woman doesn’t pull away) and asks with a scrunch of her brows. When Lena raises her chin to meet her gaze head on, Kara understands. She is reminding Lena of Lex. And Kara feels like throwing up. She doesn’t mention the close call with the chemicals; doesn’t dare wonder how close they’d gotten that night to National City waking up to a river of poison cutting through its heart.
“I was scared of that too, of what Supergirl is capable of doing, and the ease she’d have done when it comes to you.” She slumps, squeezes Lena’s hand, and hopes. “If you hadn’t known, then maybe I could’ve hidden this ugly part of myself from you. You didn’t– No, I didn’t want you to look at me and see a monster.”
“What about Kara?” Lena asks despite of herself. She’s always put Kara Danvers above Supergirl.
“Kara?” she blinks.
“You said Supergirl would’ve chosen me over the world. What about Kara Danvers?”
“Kara would– I would–” Oh, where does she even begin?
“Once, Kal told me that I was brave, selfless, for letting Mon El go, for choosing the world over the man I loved. Once, he told me that had it been Lois pit against the world, he wasn’t sure it’d have been the world that he’d choose.”
“The Daxamite invasion,” Lena whispers, frowns at the naivety of her past self.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t say anything.” Lena side-eyes her, watches as the hero opens her mouth only to let out a shudder, but Lena knows what is to come and could hear it in the pauses between each stutter of breath. Kara breathes and the words die in her throat.
Lena turns back to face National City under a moonless night and answers for her, “you do know me pretty well.”
Her voice wavers like the reflection of the moon in the river, but Kara hears the jest in her tone. The hope it alights soars; perhaps this is how the moon feels when it whispers of finally meeting the sun, the bestower of its light. But it was the tentative touch at the slope of her jaw just beneath her ear that jolts Kara’s gaze away from the ground. She meets Lena’s gaze for the first in a while and gets lost in specks of indigo swimming in teal and green. Kara remembers now, how the weight of a gaze had shoved her down the path of a reporter, how that weight has been a steady presence in her life. (Even as Lena knew, as she waits, for a confession that never comes, that has come too late.)
The world has got it all wrong, Kara thinks, it has always been Lena Luthor who’s the embodiment of hope.
“I should’ve told him– told Kal El that I hadn’t been in love, that I had mistaken kinship for a bond that promises spending forever together. I wasn’t heartbroken because I loved Mon El. I was broken to have lost another piece of something that resembled Krypton.”
Sometimes, she feels guilty for thinking that, feels like she has let down the man who had sacrificed himself to save the planet she now calls home. (It could’ve been his too, once upon a time.) Sometimes though, Kara is glad he is gone. Because he had barged into her life, and she had chosen him because there was no one else to choose. (It isn’t true, but Kara has always been a coward. Scared of things that she could’ve, should’ve, and would’ve chosen.)
“You’re the best thing Kara has ever chosen for herself; our time together mean more than I could ever put into words. So, no matter what, I’ll choose you, Lena. I’ll always choose you.” Kara utters it like a prayer to Rao, like an oath that shan’t be broken even in a finality like death. Even Lena, with all her mistrust and doubt, cannot ignore the intensity in that.
“It hurt, but I understand, Supergirl has people to protect, and I happen to come from a family that enjoys burning your house crest for fun. Probably.” Lena touches the emblem again, traces the edge with her thumb. Kara lets her. “And you have always protected me—Kara and Supergirl, both. Still, it was easier to believe that you hated me and was just pretending to be my friend than believing that you lov– that you genuinely enjoy spending time with me.” (No, not love. Love for someone like her can only drown.)
“Lena–” a hand rests on the edge of her lips and the words die.
“It was the pretending that defeated me in the end, I think. Pretending I don’t know. Pretending that Kara Danvers was fine when Supergirl was bleeding out on the streets. Pretending your friends were mine too. Sometimes, I can’t help but imagine what they are talking about behind my back.”
Kara jolts forward, gathers as much Lena as she can with her arms; there is so much to say, not enough words in English—in language, dead or alive—to really mean them all. Again though, her words die when Lena places a palm flat against her chest, presses hard onto the erratic rhythm of her heart.
“It’s okay, Kara.” Lena coxes. (It’s Kara who doesn’t believe this time.) “Deep down I didn’t really think that. I know what hatred looks like, seen it first hand, it’s easy to tell when someone genuinely cares.”
Still, the voices are ugliest when a wine glass lands itself in her hands. She chuckles tiredly. How many glasses have she broken on those nights? Her laughter dies when she thinks about how often she had received a text from Kara right after glass shatters.
“You knew. About my…drinking.”
“I listen to your heart.”
“My…heart.”
“Your heartbeat, it keeps me at peace. Knowing that you are safe; that you’re still here.” Kara rushes to explain, but Lena’s hand on her chest slips a little, and she realises in horror how fast her heartbeat feels in her rib cage. “Sorry. I’ll stop, I promise. Rao, I must be making you so uncomfortable.”
“No,” Lena’s voice breaks, “no. I just…don’t understand.”
The softness in Lena's eyes has returned now, and oh, maybe they will be all right. Kara fervently prays they will be.
"Thank you."
Kara shakes her head, stretches out a hand for her to take, then tries again. Always tries again. “Will you– do you think you’ll not be angry anymore? Someday. Do you think– will you ever forgive me?”
Lena thinks maybe she could start trying too. “Honestly? I was never angry at you. For a while, maybe, but not really, no.”
(She thinks of anger and thinks of Lex, of bared teeth and fanatic eyes. She thinks of hatred and thinks of Lilian, all mocking smiles and words aimed at the jugular.)
“But you’re disappointed.” Kara says, slowly.
“No,” Lena smiles, “just sad.”
Kara squeezes her eyes shut so tightly the muscle strains under pressure. She has no right to be crying after all the hurt she has caused, but Lena swipes gingerly at the corners of her eyes, breathes a little too close. Kara knows she didn’t hide it well enough. (On hindsight, she has never been able to hide from Lena.)
"I'm sorry," she says, because she has to, couldn't otherwise contain it even with all her strength.
"I know, Kara."
Lena hugs her then. Still hesitant, still awkward, almost afraid that the touch itself might shatter any fragile chance at reconciliation. She has never learnt to properly hug another body, how to connect her arms around a torso or a shoulder to give the most comfort, but Lena knows how she wants to be hugged, has yearned for something so, so tender since forever. So, she cradles a head of blonde by her heart, settles an arm heavy across a red cape and pushes herself closer.
She wonders how they got here, a Super sobbing into a Luthor's embrace and a Luthor crying with them. They are not Superman and Lex Luthor, she reminds herself, not even Clark Kent and her brother. They are Lena and Kara, has always been Lena and Kara.
In the end, they were just trying their best to keep each other.
“Can you promise me something?” Lena gambles one last time. Kara regards her seriously but doesn’t say anything else; Lena is thankful for that. “Can you promise me, if there comes a time when you must choose between saving the city or me, that you’ll choose them? Not me. Promise me that you’ll save the world first no matter what.”
“No.” She turns away to regard a distant star.
“Kara–”
“I’m never going to say yes. I don’t want to break another promise with you. I will not, never again.” She says it with abandon, as if it isn’t going to break her when she sees the lives that will be lost just because she chooses, as if it’s a choice easy and careless to make. (The tremors she sometimes sees in Kara but never Supergirl is now present in her hands, and any protest dies in Lena’s mouth.)
“Darling,” it slips out, a little chastising, a little resigned, a little exasperated. She sighs, grumbles under her breath without meaning to, “you make loving you very difficult.”
(Lena never forgets Kara is Supergirl, is always so careful with keeping pretenses, but sometimes, the heart speaks before the brain knows the words.)
Kara freezes under her fingertips—gone so rigid she might as well not be breathing. This is incredibly bad, Lena thinks, and most certainly a mistake, a particularly catastrophic one at a specifically wrong time. She panics, hears her heartbeat ring so loud in her ears and panics some more because she knows Kara can hear it too. She moves to put distance between them, but the arm around her waist tightens. Kara pulls her closer, until her chin sits on a shoulder and her face passes out of view.
“You love me?” Kara asks, a bit breathless and a lot dumbfounded.
“Yes,” Lena forces through clenched teeth. This is one thing Lena cannot lie about—refuses to—because her love for Kara is the realest thing she has come to own; she will die before she allows anything to tarnish it.
“After everything?” Kara asks still, in disbelief.
“After everything,” she hums, resigned, presses her eyes closed before she sees something that may break her, like disgust reflected in cerulean or the beginning of a sneer.
But Lena doesn’t know—Kara has been drawing bracelets in emerald and jade since the day a helicopter exploded; there are so many sketches and paintings of Lena Luthor signed under Kara Zor-El’s name, people may wonder if she is the only thing a Kryptonian knows how to draw.
(It’s not, but it’s the most beautiful to have touched Kara’s canvas.)
She sees lips drawn into a line and chin quivering, waiting. Kara wants to kiss the frown away, the desire of lips meeting lips is constant but not always strong, never overwhelming; mostly she is contented just staying by Lena's side. Holding Lena is more than enough. Still, she tilts her head, nose brushing against moist cheeks before knocking her forehead lightly against Lena's.
“Lena, loving you is the easiest thing in the world.”
(A quiet gasp, a pair of greenest eyes, and the touch from the softest lips.)
(Later, Kara would mumble unknowingly as she strokes circles on moist cheeks, "Zhao," and Lena would smile shyly up at her, whispers in reply, "yes. Zhao.")