Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The message arrived on a warm, clear Tuesday in early May, and really there was no choice at all.

Things had been so quiet that only J’onn was in the Tower when the transmission came through.

Lena recalls stopping dead in her tracks, not two steps out of the elevator; paralyzed by his fathomless brown eyes, imploring, apologetic, determined, resigned. And—thinking back on it now—curiously focused on her.

Kara was spreading crumbs and drips of coffee, her expressive hands caught up in whatever story she’d been telling Lena on the walk over. Something about a nine foot tall alien, or a cute puppy in the park. Lena can’t begin to remember.

What she remembers is thinking: Wait. Wait, Kara, stop. Don’t finish the story. Don’t turn around. Don’t ask what’s…

“J’onn, hey, what’s up?” Kara asked, and Lena tensed for impact.

She watched Kara process the seriousness of J’onn’s expression. Watched her spine straighten and her chin draw back. Watched all the easy joy of the morning—all the hints of springtime promise she’d been feeling (but not naming) these last months with Kara—be swallowed by the kind of silence that could only herald duty and sacrifice.

Lena remembers every step of the dance Kara’s emotions took across the lines of her face and planes of her body. Every blink, every flex. But, she couldn’t recall a word of what was said if all their lives depended on it.

There must have been explanations for all of what followed. The intricacies of time travel and the fate of the future, laid out like CliffsNotes for the entire universe, and Lena’s brain hadn’t taken in a word.

But, whatever words were spent and forgotten, the result was branded into her entire self: Kara was going to the future. Kara was going to the future, alone.

[There would be no way to communicate.]
Look at how the sunlight sparks in her eyes when they glisten.

[There was no way to know how long it would take.]
Does she know she fists her hands against her hips when her fingers start to tremble?

[There was no guarantee they could send her back.]
How she chews on her lips when she’s holding something in?

[It had to be her...]
I wonder...

[And she had to leave now.]
Could she bite her own skin hard enough to bleed.

“Lena. Lena, are you listening to me?”

“Hmm?” Always. Until now.

Lena stared at the crinkle forming between Kara’s eyebrows. If she’d had any control over her body right then, she thinks she might have reached to smooth it out with her own fingertips. Instead, she stood and didn’t even blink.

Alex squeezed Kara’s shoulder and the contact broke Kara from her thoughts. She turned and pulled her sister into a bone-crushing hug. When they parted, Alex kept hold of Kara’s hand as each of their friends stepped into the hero’s space, sharing whispered goodbyes and too-brief embraces.

She has no idea how long she stood, frozen, silent, before startling at the “Lena” that escaped from pink lips bruised by restraint.

Hard enough to bleed.

Lena shook her head, willing the motion to jumpstart her brain, and glanced around the room to find only she and Kara remained. Her eyes returned to Supergirl’s face and she straightened her spine. “You’re leaving.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t.”

“Lena.” Kara dipped her head slightly, but kept their eyes locked. “I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Lena gripped her coffee to hide the shake in her hands. She could barely force her eyes to stay open, as she felt fingers that could crush a planet catch the tear sliding down her jaw.

It was too much. She shook her head again and took a step back, watching Kara’s hand drop to her side, shoulders straightening. Lena clenched her jaw and willed her shoulders to do the same. “There’s always a choice.”

Kara crossed her arms and fell back on the overconfidence that hid her fears behind the crest. “Lena. I have to go. You heard them.”

In fairness, she hadn’t. “It could take years. Decades.”

“I’ll just do my save the multiverse thing, then make them send me right back to now.”

“What if they won’t?”

“Pfft. I’ll make them.”

And well, Lena must have heard a little, because: “And what if they can’t?”

Kara stiffened, almost imperceptibly, but kept her voice light. “Trust me. It’ll be like no time passed at all.”

Lena despised the tremor in her own voice. But she hated the ice even more. “Not for you.”

There was no victory watching Kara finally falter. “No.” She dropped her eyes and held her breath, then stepped toward Lena again. When Lena didn’t pull back, Kara gently prised the mug from her fingers and set it on the table beside them. “No, not for me.”

Lena watched the superhero breathe air back into her posture and shake away the threat of tears. “But, Lena, I’ll be fine. And you? Well, I’ll be back before you can finish that irredeemably unsweetened coffee.”

“Kara…”

“And I’ll still be me. And you’ll definitely still be you. So whatever else... whatever else, we’ll be fine.”

“Kara…”

“You’ll see, I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Lena watched Supergirl’s hands find her hips, betraying those pointedly easy words.

It all felt too familiar: Lena the last to say goodbye as they sent Kara alone into unknown dangers. The last time, Lena held Myriad like it needed two hands to carry it, just so she wouldn’t forget herself and reach for Kara. Or worse, give Kara the opening to reach for her.

“It’s not the same this time, Lena.”

She didn’t waste a moment wondering how Kara knew what she’d been thinking. Lena closed the last small distance between them and wrapped her arms around steel shoulders, gripping red fabric from a dead world so tightly her hands ached.

Kara squeezed back, fingers and voice whispering through soft hair: “It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s worse. This time there’s nothing I can do to bring you back.”

Kara left for the future.

Kara left for the future, alone.

Lena stood beside the table in the center of the Tower and finally tore her gaze from the empty balcony before her. She turned and placed a shaking hand against the smooth, solid wood, her fingers landing next to her abandoned coffee.

She glared at the wisps still rising from her insulated mug. Her entire world was different when that cup of coffee was brewed, and the steam mocked her. She stood, and stared, and waited for Kara to stride back in, seconds later and who knows how much older. Her heart clenched with each passing second, and when the last tendril of steam gave way to the chilling effect of time, she walked out of the Tower without looking back.

She seriously considered never drinking coffee again. Suffered through two days of migraines and made it to the other side with a determination to live on black tea and (optimistically) better sleep habits.

But, halfway through an all-nighter with her R&D team when a prototype exploded three days before launch, she realized she'd been sipping from someone else’s mug for hours.

She spared a thought for this second wave of surrender, another wisp of steam lost to time, and went back to work with dark coffee and fractured hope bitter on her tongue.

Kara left for the future.

After 5 months, Lena stopped counting the days. Why keep track when there was no destination, no expected end? Why try to count past infinity? No. After 5 months, Lena stopped counting.

She just happens to know that she stopped counting exactly 26 years, 7 months, and 19 days ago.

Kara left for the future, alone.

And Lena has known this for a very long time. What Lena doesn’t know yet, is that it took 27 years and 18 days to save that future.

Chapter Text

“Dr. Luthor?”

Lena hums as her assistant’s voice speaks hesitantly through the private comm link between their offices. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s a Miss Danvers here insisting your ‘do not disturb’ does not apply to her.”

Lena is not amused. Her nostrils flare and her heart kicks into the most violent version of a long-forgotten tempo. She glares toward the reinforced doors between her office and her assistant’s and speaks as evenly as she can. “Have security escort her out immediately and give her image file to the front desk for a permanent ban.”

Her assistant only makes it through half of her response: “Yes, Dr. Luthor, I’ll–”

“Wait, did you tell her I have doughnuts? I would have brought…”

“Miss, you can’t just–“

“…Big Belly Burger, but I guess there is no Big Belly Burger anymore?…”

“Miss, you can’t go in there!”

“...Which, what?! How did your generation let that happen? Do you even know what you’re missing?”

“Miss!”

Lena hears it all happen, frozen at her desk, eyes wide and unblinking at her doors, knowing but not believing what’s about to come through them.

“Just ask Lena, she’ll tell you– oh.”

Kara stops as soon as she looks up from the now-open doors and sees Lena’s face. Sees the laugh lines deep and hard-earned around her mouth and eyes; the proud streaks of gray that frame a softer face and fall easily across less-burdened shoulders. The next word out of Kara’s mouth is so reverently hushed Lena doesn’t hear it. But she sees it. Sees perfect lips fall open and…

“Lena.”

She can’t breathe.

“Dr. Luthor, I am so sorry! I swear, I just blinked and she got right past me. She’s so fast.”

The painfully awestruck expression on Kara’s face shifts and she turns to the assistant and laughs. She looks back to Lena, pointing at the confused girl and waiting for Lena to acknowledge the shared memory. Those same words, at those same doors, from a different assistant, two lifetimes ago. It’s just absurd enough to shake Lena from her stasis.

“Kara?”

Kara sombers again at her tone and the assistant looks between them briefly before walking out and closing the doors behind her.

“Um. Hey, Lena.”

Lena isn’t even aware she’s started moving until her momentum crashes her against Kara’s chest.

“I finished a lot of fucking coffees, Kara.”

Kara buries her face in Lena’s hair and breathes in shamelessly. “But not that one?”

Lena’s furious and shattering, but long-neglected habit tells her that Kara’s not actually joking. She’s hoping. Hoping that she still knows Lena well enough to guess how she treated that damned heartless coffee. “No. No, never that one.”

Kara squeezes her harder and Lena tries desperately not to wince. She wants the tightness. Probably even wants the pain. But Kara notices. Of course she does.

“Oh Rao, sorry! I’m so sorry, are you okay?“

Lena grabs her before she can back away and locks her hands behind Kara’s waist, hiding her face against Kara’s shoulder. “No I’m not even close to fucking okay.” She knows her words are wet, feels the rocks sitting in her throat and chest while the rest of her tries to vibrate apart and float away forever.

Lena clears the rest of her day and Kara flies them to her old loft.

“You kept it? All this time?”

Lena just looks at her, not bothering to answer, the words too obvious to waste the breath.

She knew the windows were closed and locked tight, so they’d landed nearby and walked to where they now stood in front of Kara’s front door. Before Kara can ask any further stupid (and uncomfortably revealing) questions, Lena steps in front of her and fishes her keychain out of her purse.

Her head’s swimming for more reasons than she can count. The closeness of the short flight over—the familiarity of strong hands gripping behind her back and knees as wind whips her hair against flushed cheeks—high on the list.

Everything’s covered in a thick layer of dust. But Lena can tell that Kara’s noticed things are not how she left them all those years ago. And not just the dishes being cleaned and the bed made. There are differences that are well-worn; erosion patterns across the river stones of her home that Kara doesn’t recall seeing before.

Lena’s not sure how she’ll handle whatever questions are forming in Kara’s mind. But when Kara’s eyes finally meet hers, they’re not filled with confusion or curiosity, but understanding. Lena considers this infinitely worse.

She clears her throat and looks away, twisting her fingers together as she steps into the kitchen. “There’s probably still tea here,” she calls over her shoulder, reaching up to rummage through Kara’s cupboards, “or we could order some food? I think the place on 23rd is still there, or–”

“Tea sounds good.”

Kara’s voice is far closer than she expected, and Lena has to close her eyes and regroup as her fingers close around an old box of tea. She takes two deep, measured breaths, then quickly busies her hands boiling water and rinsing years of disuse from two mugs. She keeps her back to Kara, but can feel the heat of her gaze on every practiced motion as she moves about the kitchen.

The tea, unsurprisingly, is not good. But the warm mug is comforting in her palms, and keeps her fingers from fidgeting as Kara fills the silence between them.

Lena learns the broad strokes of a future she’ll never see. Kara explains the imperfect malleability of any given timeline. How the trajectory is more of a raging river than a trickling stream. Tossing in some stones might change the daily path of a fish or two, but it took a lot more than that to change its course, or create a new tributary. She swallows heavily before adding: “And they never thought anyone could build a dam big enough to stop it altogether. Let alone stop every river, every timeline, at once.”

“How did someone nearly…” Lena stops herself as Kara’s eyes squeeze shut and she starts shaking her head. Lena’s not sure if Kara’s reluctance is practical and precautionary, or if she just can’t bear to talk about it. Either way, she lays her hand over Kara’s where it trembles against the table. “You’re here now. I can’t imagine the odds you faced that it took all this time. That they risked sending for you at all. And I only want to hear what you want to tell me, Kara. Okay?”

Kara nods and gently flips the hand nestled under Lena’s to slide their palms together. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Her fingers flex against the inside of Lena’s wrist, her thumb gently rubbing along the side, and Lena can’t stop the shiver that travels up her arm and ripples across her body.

She grasps for something familiar to stop the free fall. “So, the real question is: what’s the food like in the 24th century?”

“Oh my gosh, Lena!” The fog lifts in a blink. “They have these fried beetles that taste like churros but, like, have the nutrition of an entire meal! And there’s still chocolate, so you can dip them in that and some cinnamon and oh my gosh. They wouldn’t let me bring any, but… Oh! And…”

Suddenly it’s Lena who’s traveled through time. Because nothing but a mirror could prove she’s not sitting with her best friend after a long day at the Tower, waiting for food to be delivered, scrunching her nose and laughing as Kara loses herself in a story. The incongruous words spilling from Kara’s lips can’t hope to penetrate the soft familiarity of the scene, and Lena falls into it with no safety net in sight.

Kara talks nonstop about incomparable tastes and experiences, veering off occasionally to muse on ways she might be able to recreate them for Lena. The tea is cold and forgotten, and they’re facing each other on the couch, by the time Kara’s ramble eases toward its inevitable end. She looks down and blushes slightly when quiet finally falls over their space again and time creeps forward.

Lena’s whispers with painful fondness: “I’m so glad you found things to love, Kara.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.” Kara glances up briefly and flashes a half-smile.

Lena swallows hard. Despite a focused effort, her next words come out sounding more like a question than she wanted. “Things and people.”

Something flashes across Kara’s face so briefly Lena can’t read it, but her soft smile is genuine when she looks up again and nods. “Things and people.”

Even after all this time, Lena’s not entirely surprised by the tendril of unwarranted hurt that flares across her chest. But mostly she’s so relieved that her eyes start to water. She reaches across the space between them and grabs Kara’s hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing as hard as her human strength allows.

“I’m so glad, Kara. The hardest part was always thinking how alone you must have felt.”

“Alone...” Kara’s eyes drop shut and her fingers tighten around Lena’s enough she barely manages to swallow a small whimper of pain. “It did feel that way. At first. Those first weeks, months even, the urgency was so consuming. But eventually we fought our way into a stalemate. It was… it was still so terrible, but there was space to breathe again. Sleep even sometimes.” She huffs out a tepid laugh. “But, yeah, eventually I got to know the people I was fighting beside, and they were incredible.”

She meets Lena’s eyes and just like that her smile is wide and uninhibited again. “They would have loved to meet you.”

… how the sunlight sparks in her eyes when they glisten…

“You would’ve loved them, too. I know it.”

Lena’s smile is finally unrestrained as well. “Tell me about them?”

And Kara does. Dozens of names are fleshed out with Kara’s effortless prose and endlessly attentive affection for the people in her life. It’s only the varying shades of blush that signal which names likely had the privilege to cross lines Lena once dreamed of erasing.

Lena doesn’t interrupt, and Kara doesn’t ask about the names most prominent in Lena’s own story. She wonders how much Kara knows. (Doesn’t wonder why she hasn’t brought it up herself.)

She thinks back to their few fraught minutes in her office earlier that day. Thinks of the countless pictures on her desk and walls. Pictures of the warm eyes and steady hands that, all those years ago, helped give her the space and support she needed to rebuild herself. To relearn who she was and what she wanted. What she thought she deserved. Thinks of the bright smile and green eyes of the daughter who is so clearly the best parts of both of them. Did Kara see the three of them laid out like a timeline across her shelves?

She shakes the question away and refocuses on everything Kara’s choosing to share. Eventually bits of plot start seeping into the memories again and Lena pieces together a skeletal understanding of the war they almost lost. The story finally ends and Lena adds the last sentence for her when Kara falls silent: “And they wouldn’t let you go back.”

It’s a statement, not a question. But Kara tenses, looks at her feet, wrings her hands.

And well, now it’s a question: “And they wouldn’t let you go back? Kara? Wait… wait… why are you here?” Her eyes start darting around the room, as if clues and explanations are hiding under all those layers of dust. “27 years… it’s been 27 years, but yours would’ve started in—“

“They let me choose the year. I chose the same amount of time for both of us.”

Lena feels the air abandon her lungs. “No, no, that’s not right–”

“Lena, wait…”

“Tell them you made a mistake, or you changed your mind. You can’t… you can’t just… I’ve…”

“Been fine. Lena, you’re okay.” Kara’s voice is quiet and sure, her eyes resigned but filled with such undiluted pride Lena has to look away. “You’re okay. Incredible really. I couldn’t–”

Lena’s up and backing away from Kara as though the motion will rewind time itself. “No, no, Kara wouldn’t– you wouldn’t know! How could you even know how I’ve been?! We couldn’t communicate, I never even–“

“I couldn’t talk to you, sure. But your present, your future, it was all still the past for me. I read about you, Lena.”

...And well that answers one question…

“Everything I could get my hands on.” Kara blushes, maybe having meant to keep that a little closer to the vest, but she keeps going. “Your life has been amazing. You’re amazing. I mean, of course you are. But, Lena, wow. How could… how could I…”

It slips into place with violent speed and her eyes are so wide they burn when she whispers: “You wouldn’t...”

“It was too risky, Lena. I didn’t have a choice.”

Breathe, Lena. Breathe. “There’s always a choice.”

The echoed words aren’t lost on either of them. But Kara just shakes her head and squares her shoulders, hands settling on her hips. “You know I’m right about this.”

“I absolutely do not know that, Supergirl.”

She has no idea how a single conversation managed to put decades-old venom back in that word, but Kara flinches before she responds: “What if I accidentally changed something for you? I couldn’t risk that.”

“You said it has to be significant for the timeline not to be able to right itself.”

“Ah, so no danger of me being significant enough to change anything. Gotcha.”

“Kara, you know that’s not what I meant.”

“It doesn’t matter. The life you’ve built is too important for me to take the chance.”

“What if I wanted you to live it with me? You were my best friend, Kara. What if I wanted you to be there to see it?!”

“Well what if I didn’t want to!”

An intake of breath so sharp it stabs from Lena’s neck to toes is her only response. She watches Kara’s eyes widen and lips start to tremble as she steps forward and rushes to say, “Wait, Lena, that’s not what I meant.”

“It is though,” Lena whispers. Her chest is rising and falling too fast and her head is spinning, but she still knows how to read Kara. Somehow, against all reason and logic, she still knows. And Kara meant every word. “You did mean it, Kara. Why?”

“I didn’t! Or, or I don’t know…”

And the thing is… she actually doesn’t. Lena sees the truth of that spelled out in the confusion and pain etched across Kara’s face. So she pushes past her own instinctual hurt, schools her features and breathes through the doubt and anger. It doesn’t matter anyway, right? “It doesn’t matter anyway, Kara.”

“Of course it matters, I just…”

“No, I mean yes, it matters, but we don’t have to talk about it. You can just go back now.”

It feels like Kara waits an eternity before she responds. “I can’t.”

Lena’s stomach drops. For a moment she worries there really isn’t a choice this time. “Did they only give you enough for one jump?”

“Oh, um…” Kara’s brow knits even further as she answers: “No, actually, they did give me enough for two…”

“Splendid. Off you go then.”

“Lena!”

And look, Lena knows it’s not that easy. Knows that she just got Kara back and, on some level, it’s insane that she’s in such a rush to send her away. But something about the situation is clawing under her skin. “Why even come back then?”

A look of horror washes over the confusion on Kara’s face. “And not have you in my life at all? I… I couldn’t…”

“Then why now? You said you’d be right back, Kara. I needed you to be right back.” Tears are threatening in her eyes, but if she didn’t know any better, she’d say the hurt and confusion prickling across her skin felt almost like anger. “Don’t you want us to have all that time?”

“Of course I did. I do! But I couldn’t risk it. This is the compromise I made.”

“Well unmake it!” … almost like anger, but why…

“Lena! Don’t you understand? I did this to protect you?!”

And, oh. Oh. “Don’t you fucking dare.” Lena and her anger come to an abrupt understanding. Her skin might as well be on fire with the intensity of it. “You don’t ever get to make decisions for me in my best interest again. If this is really about what’s best for me, then this is my call.”

“Lena…”

“Kara!”

“Lena, I can’t. What… what if everything changes?”

“We won’t let it.”

She almost thinks she sees a flash of hurt darken Kara’s face, but there’s nothing but determination in the set of her jaw as she crosses her arms and shakes her head. “No. I can’t.”

“You absolutely can and you will, Kara Zor-El Danvers.”

“I can’t!!”

“WHY NOT?!”

Kara’s wide eyes pinch together briefly and Lena watches in real time as Kara finally figures out her own answers. Even through a pulsing haze of red, she sees the sadness that fills Kara’s face when she lands on the truth.

They stare at each other through several labored breaths. It’s hushed when Kara finally speaks. “Well, why didn’t I let you choose the first time? Why did I lie for so long and convince myself it was for your own good?”

Lena’s answer is definitely not hushed: “Because you were stupid and selfish and scared!” She spits the answer like Kara’s going to deny it. But what she does instead is smile the most resigned smile Lena’s ever seen.

“Guess even 27 years can’t change everything.”

Lena shakes her head, the anger causing her to stay confused a moment longer than usual. “No, that, that doesn’t make any sense. What could possibly scare you about–” She cuts herself off and Kara begins to fidget nervously. Kara breaks eye contact and starts to shift toward the door, mumbling something about Lena maybe coming back tomorrow.

Lena says the words more to herself than anything: “You’re afraid I won’t choose you.”

“It’s been a long day, why don’t we–”

“You’re not afraid going back will change everything… you’re afraid that it won’t.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Look, Lena, this is a lot, maybe you should– or you know what? I can actually go, um, yeah. You stay, I’m just gonna–”

And really, ostensibly, Kara wouldn’t know what Lena means. They’ve never voiced it. In 6 plus 27 years. And they’re skipping right past any foundational confessions, any exploratory questions or hesitant hopes. But Lena knows with a sudden and ferocious certainty that she’s right. “You’re afraid you’ll tell her everything, and she won’t choose you. That I won’t choose you.”

Kara still won’t look at her, is still half-heartedly trying to escape. “Lena, I don’t know what you’re talking about– I should just–“

And Lena’s kissing her.

She doesn’t remember closing the distance. Doesn’t remember closing her eyes or fisting Kara’s shirt, but she absolutely must have. Because now Lena’s kissing her and Kara has stopped moving completely. Centuries of time and space swirl around them, a tempest of past longings and future regrets on every side, as they hover in the eye of the storm.

Lena doesn’t open her eyes as she leans back to speak against Kara’s lips. To make sure the bone-deep certainty she feels about the cause of this conflict—of all their conflicts, really—isn’t somehow wrong. She needs Kara to admit this has been an open secret they somehow both failed to acknowledge, but have always known. She needs… she just needs… please, just… “Kara, please–”

And Kara’s kissing her.

Kara’s kissing her hard and she gasps when her back hits a wall. Kara’s tongue fills her mouth like there was never a doubt how this would end. And maybe there wasn’t. 27 years and a marriage later, a thigh slips between her legs and Lena sees stars.

27 years and a– wait. Wait.

“Kara–”

Kara moans into her mouth and rocks her hips forward and jesusfuckinghell, but, “Wait, Kara… Kara wait.”

Kara stops as soon as the first “wait” spills out, pulling away just enough to look into Lena’s eyes. And Lena watches as Kara reads the apology there. Watches full, wet lips press together and fall into understanding. The tempest crashes, time starts again, and all the choices already made for her settle across their shoulders.

“I can’t choose you now. You know that, Kara, I know you do. That’s why you’re scared she won’t choose you either. And maybe I won’t.” She hears Kara whimper and feels a matching faultline crack behind her ribs. “But, Kara. You have to tell her the truth, all of it, and love me enough to let me choose for myself.”

Kara looks away, nodding with her jaw clenched and tears dripping down her cheeks. She takes a deep breath but her voice breaks anyway: “Okay. Yeah, I pro-mise.”

Lena ducks her chin, trying to catch Kara’s eyes. “Kara, listen, if I hadn’t lived this… God, Kara. If I hadn’t already lived this life, I know I’d–” She stops.

She can’t even say the words. She can’t unknow, unlove, her husband, her daughter, the family she’s made here. For her, there’s no choice at all. And she suddenly doesn’t envy the Lena that’s standing in National City staring at a steaming mug of coffee.

She certainly doesn’t envy the hero that’s now trying to do the right thing, and about to break her own heart either way. Because she can never unhear Lena, body still flush against hers and breathless, saying I can’t choose you. You left to save our world and lost yours again.