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Green Kryptonite was like a cancer diffusing into her lungs.
Silver Kryptonite was a shadow of a mirror thrust before her eyes.
Pink Kryptonite turned her sclera heart-shaped in the direction of her sex.
White Kryptonite was like ash — paper-thin and inert.
Red Kryptonite was the taunting of the beast that locked itself within the deepest chambers of her heart. An inhale was like the burst of incense and tumeric, tangy and fruity to the taste — the opening of the silver petals of a cage, melting upwards until they fell open altogether, only a red bird or a bloody flower left behind. It was a drug for the powerful; it put a clamp on oxygen levels and forced her heart to dance split-step. Her palms knuckled like peonies; her stance turned stalk-like rather than slouched, and her skin — her skin, the baby-pink flush that had never quite left her, it sloughed off like a raw dough. Alex had always called her eyes a baby-blue, but Red Kryptonite made her feel grown.
With each inhale of metallic dust, the chalk line between ‘Kara Danvers’ and ‘Supergirl’ eroded, stomped to cinders by a careless foot. She was not the journalist of a seedy ‘90s romcom; and nor was she the smiling shadow to Kal’s flame. She was something else.
She was Kara Zor-El.
*
The entire place smelt like petroleum and crushed soil, as though somebody had taken the earth apart and compartmentalised it into small quarters, enough to divide amongst its children. The whole world smelt like that; like doubt washed by the weight of petrichor. It twisted something in Kara’s gut; a long, thin alloy to which she could not put a name. She felt thin and translucent and radiant and powerful. Secrets made her strong.
At night, when Krypton’s sun was veiled by a cloud (for she could not bear to dishonour herself in front of Rao), she’d watch red lights flicker on and off within her palm. Like traffic lights. It was a game she played. Open. Close. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. She swayed along to tuneless nights, feeling a chilling smoke settle along her lungs like a cloud of velvet. She was wrapped, softly, in the arms of the galaxy, a child of Andromeda adopted by the Milky Way.
She tried not to overindulge. People noticed when she overindulged. Alex’s eyes would linger in unspoken question, and J’onn’s would just linger, because he always knew. Winn’s smile would thin, as though his lips had been cleaved in half, and James would raise two eyebrows saying politely, gentlemanly: May I?
Neither of them asked, and that infuriated her. Kara Zor-El had always hated dancing. She felt it was an art for the brittle-limbed; more of a flex of flexibility itself rather than rough-hewn sinew that came from years of rigour. Not that dancing didn’t have a certain rigour to it too, but dancers were taught to stubbornly evade where Kara preferred to keep a strong head. There were a lot of things she disliked nowadays. Like: gaudy sweaters and menstrual blood, the federal bureau of investigation and loud sounds, people who chewed gum whilst on the phone, men who announced they had a ‘hard-on’ for domestic essentials, and the colour purple — the colour itself, not the book or movie.
Kara found herself disliking other things as well. Like: when Alex was frustrated, she would bite her lip, as though worrying her skin smoothed out the creases of her pains. Like: how hardheaded J’onn was on manners of people; how inflexible he was to change. Like: how sometimes there was a problem and all James did was invoke his boyish laugh-lines until it faded away. Like: when Winn was to be counted upon, he shrunk into the seams of his big-boy jeans.
Kara loved them. Kara loved them in a very sick and twisted way, and she would keep them close to her chest the way a child would guard a toy. She loved for them to languish, starry-eyed, in this world bestowed upon them. She adored the faint tracks of their smiles and the bronze peals of their laughter and the burn of misery that came with her crying out her heart to them some nights, falling asleep bleary-eyed and bunched beside a cotton shirt. Kara wished she had more arms so as to hold them all closer; she wished she could fuse them all until they were but one. She wanted to lock them all within a glass prison and observe with proud curiosity. She knew them best: Alex, J’onn, James, Winn — her first companion, her second mentor, her third love, and her fourth friend.
This meant she knew how to hide the red blister from them too, the internal bruising that spread beneath her skin. She knew them well enough to hide. But there was one with whom the ground they stepped was tentative, crumbling — one she could not read.
That one was Lena Luthor.
Lena Luthor sensed the wrongness all at once.
*
Kara could not pinpoint the moment in time where she’d known they’d become best of friends. Perhaps it had been the dry ‘Could’ve fooled me’, or the enquiring, semi-flirtatious ‘Do tell’, or the room full of flowers that had Kara reeling from the colour of toxic paint. Lena Luthor had used her office as a canvas to splatter a most vulgar image, and Kara… she didn’t mind.
Was it inappropriate? Sure. Completely out of place? Definitely. Toeing the heck out of the border between platonic and romantic? Absolutely.
Did Kara dig it? Also yes.
Because as things stood: Kara Danvers had not managed to score a single perfect read on Lena Luthor. It was simply baffling — especially since Kara had the privilege of accosting Lena in two suits: her supersuit, and her more regular button-ups. And yet— and yet—
From the outside optics, there was a business-woman who a lot of men wanted dead. There was a CEO with 3 PhDs; a specialist in quantum mechanics, astrophysics and bioengineering alike. A prodigal bastard daughter with an eye for chess and floral prints. A genius with a soiled family name. There was some tragedy in it — with no little viewer’s distaste — addled with a pinch of humour for irony’s sake.
From the inside optics of Lena Luthor: there was littler to be seen. She was everything. It was like if one large ball of human rubber had stretched itself perfectly, symmetrically across all facets of human knowledge, depth, desire, intellect, pragmatism and empathy. Lena Luthor embodied it all. It was a trifle terrifying. Picture a Mary Sue shrouded in the untouchable veil of her past, coupled with the insane, self-preservation instinct of a suicide bomber — that was Lena Luthor.
That said, Kara really oughtn’t have been nearly as surprised as she had been when Lena was the one to press; to press deep, knuckle-down and razing at Kara’s throat with all the warmth of a red sun. That was: warm, very, and not comforting in the slightest.
The first time it had happened — the first time she had been overtaken by raw power, by the red-hot radiation of a nuclear core —she was entirely unprepared. Now, the stone vibrated softly in her tote bag pocket, and Kara Zor-El stiffly smiled through all the blemishes in her white teeth. Sitting opposite and draped elegantly in a floral-patterned blouse and tailored pants, Lena Luthor did not smile back.
Well. Kara never did mention exactly what it was she hated about Lena, did she? Here: Kara hated how she could never read her lip-bites or her dancing brows. Kara hated how Lena loved to pour her heart down along her sleeve and into a glass cup, readied to toast her sins away. Kara hated how heavily Lena’s own insecurity weighed down upon her sunken eyes. Kara hated how Lena could not go through a single morning coffee without mentioning — and never without a self-deprecating laugh to punctuate — that she was a Luthor to the bone. And Kara hated how alone and secretive she was, as though Lena had lost herself in the catacombs of her own mind.
Of course, this all meant that a rather large part of Kara loved Lena too. Kara Danvers had looked upon Lena Luthor and seen a marble bust of a human being; as a waterfall swaying gently with the pride of its own perfection, parched from none. Kara Danvers had looked upon Lena Luthor and seen a smiling rose, and she had blushed and fallen from her feet. It took Kara Zor-El to drag her back up.
Kara Danvers wanted to engineer a meadow for Lena, where the two would bask in light of day and scavenge blackberries and tip back their heads in mutual, coy laughter that would lead to something more. Kara Danvers wanted to open up the gates of the sky for Lena, simply to drink in the nectar of her awe — because Kara Danvers had a selfish side to her as well: she loved to give, and give, and give, and steal the reactions of those she’d given to. It made her feel a little less like a fool with face-paint on and more like a fool who fit right in.
Kara Zor-El wanted to place Lena Luthor somewhere high up, away from prying eyes, and shackle her to the mast of a ship. She loved her with the aching clarity of the flame craving to swallow the moth; with the hunger of the dying star and the nascent storm. Like the ocean with droplets of rain, she wished to absorb Lena into herself; to wholly submerge in the cavern painted by the night-light of how they loved. How she loved her was wild and carnivorous, and not detached and analytical, as she loved Alex and J’onn and James and Winn. She wanted Lena as more than a simple construct to who she was. She wanted Lena as the nose craved the delectable smell, as the tongue hungered for the appealing texture. She wished to sizzle her over a hot spit and savour, and wait — wait until the timely deceleration of when fierce madness shone in Lena’s eyes and she said: Me too.
But Lena did not say that today. Today, Lena said — “Are you alright?” And it was a question budding from concern, rather than propriety. Then again, if Lena did things according to convention she’d be behind bars, and nobody wanted that.
“Do I look off to you?” Kara asked, her smirk stretching to a silent snicker. It was an unspoken mockery that would’ve caused the regular person to blanch, but Lena didn’t read it for what it was. No, she had her polyatomic anions to release and trans-matter portals to engineer — to decipher the simple crinkles of the human flesh, it was too much. Kara felt as though somebody had suddenly placed her hand against a lit stove.
“Kara,” Lena pointed to her plate, half-jokingly, “you’re eating kale. Willingly. Eagerly. That’s practically half a reason to call an ambulance.”
And that’s— of course she’d remember something like that. Kara’s red heart throbbed painfully, attached to her palm by a string. It rolled down, up, like a yoyo, and it induced sickness in her gut. She inhaled, and her sinuses were attacked by the scent of smoke. She clutched the string of her tote back tightly, pulling it nearer to her hip. The Kryptonite pulsated in sync to her harsh breaths, but there was no sweet wrinkle to the bitterness. All Kara felt was a cascading wave of scalding heat, and the only reprieve to it was Lena’s sea-green eyes. They had sobered at Kara’s clenched jaw.
“But seriously. You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” Right? Wrong. Just like you didn’t tell me your fundraiser was a cage, Kara Zor-El bitterly thought. Just like you didn’t tell me about the virus strain and of your three-forked tongue; Just like you didn’t tell me about a lost love and a new blister; Just like you didn’t tell me about your mother and your brother. All of it. Any of it.
More painfully — more angrily than anything: Why didn’t you tell me? Why can’t I read you?
Kara Danvers had few inhibitions when it came to speaking her mind. It was one of the few things she — she, Kara Zor-El, an entity separated surgically from Kara Danvers — admired about her. And as it happened, Kara Zor-El had fewer inhibitions still.
“If something were wrong...” Kara repeated, smiling without humour. “Tell me, Dr. Luthor—“ because she was a ‘Dr’, dammit, you didn’t earn 3 PhDs and stay a ‘Ms’ “—do you consider it a natural state of progression for friends to lie to one another?”
Lena’s soft gaze hardened into a knife — though not before she blinked her confusion free. There was a greyscale settling into the green, like a charming sort of rash. It held her completely captive with its lure. The hard-handed, cold-voiced business-oriented woman Lena really was — you could take the CEO away from business, but you couldn’t take the business from the CEO. Beneath the layers of thin tact and thick charm, there was a wolf rustling in the undergrowth, and the wolf had a snout for blood.
“I don’t know. Is there something you wish to confess?” Lena spoke lightly, but a darkness touched her words. Her left eyebrow quirked up in silent question — who, what, where, why — and Kara manipulated her own with ease. She thought of Supergirl. She thought of Kara Zor-El, and all those other nasty parts of her she’d dusted away.
“You have been avoiding me,” Lena started again, coaxing her prey into a net. “For every three times I call, you answer once. I thought — logically — it’s fine, because you were getting over Mon-El, but—“ Mon-El was so long ago she had to stifle a bitter laugh. The memory of Kara Danvers, smitten with a single smile and a misplaced gesture, stung disproportionately beneath her skin. Mon-El was a whisper in the ears of a girl who hadn’t known what love was, and he was a sacrifice to be gutted on the altar of her morality. He was nothing. “— but there’s something more, isn’t there?” She wasn’t asking. At times like these, Lena Luthor didn’t ask questions; she only made cuts.
Her sea-glass eyes burnt, green like Kryptonite and the rotting cancer in her lungs. Kara Zor-El could not breathe a moment, but then the smoke made all right again.
“What are you hiding from me, Kara Danvers?”
On instinct, she snapped, “That’s not my name,” and caught the bait between her bloody teeth.
*
They were back in Lena’s office. It languished at the top of the L-Corp spire, situated comfortably above the National City landscape. It was a power move: the CEO looking down upon the little people. It did not matter how much she gave to the sick children or the elderly; the sort of money that could change a proletariat’s life was pocket change to her. Her shoes alone cost more than Kara’s yearly rent.
So this was Lena Luthor, basking against the backdrop of bruising sunsets and jagged skyscrapers, with only single-glazed glass to shield her from the breeze. She’d fallen from that balcony once. Supergirl caught her, bridal style, and for a glorious moment their heartbeats were in sync — like raindrops against the gravel sidewalk; pitter-patter, pitter-patter. She wondered now, how things would look had she arrived just a smidgen too late. How Lena would look with her insides painting the sidewalk red.
Kara felt a monster pulse inside of her. Lena’s gaze was loaded question.
“You wanted to show me something?”
Kara nodded.
Then, to Lena’s narrow-eyed surprise, she began to unbutton her shirt. Lena hissed, cool and crisp as one of her pressed suits, “Are you propositioning m—“ but her words died in her mouth at the first peak of blue. And then there was the emblazoned red crest, vigilant as a flame, the snaking ‘S’ winding up the diamond like a vine up an obelisk. Lena stared, glassy-eyed and open-mouthed, as Kara’s blouse fell to the floor.
“Well.” She said, jaw slack as though someone had forgotten to pull at it.
“Kara Danvers was too afraid to tell you,” Kara Zor-El shrugged. “I thought I might as well ‘rip off the band-aid’, so to speak.”
“Kara D—“ Lena frowned, cutting herself off. Intelligent woman, Kara bitterly thought. She couldn’t tell if she loved or hated that about her. A lemon squeezed juice along the dripping canals of her guts, festering to blind infuriation. Lena’s hand looked soft from afar, but against her forehead it was calloused as any mechanic’s, and Kara felt a finger of something unseen tremble down her spine.
“I am Kara Zor-El.” Kara Zor-El said. Lena didn’t question her. She nodded instead, jaw clenched tight.
“You’re hot,” Lena observed. Kara Danvers would have choked on her own spit. Lena continued, “you’re flaring up, and it’s not fever. If I ran a few tests, I’m sure you’d test positive for radiation… so. You’re not Kara Danvers. Is Supergirl to Kara Danvers as Reign was to Samantha Arias, then? Is this cell mutation? Is this a physiological manifestation of a psychological condition like— like Dissociative Identity Disorder? Has a trauma response triggered you to dissociate, then? Forgive me, I’ve only seen this condition manifest itself only once—“
“Not Dissociative Identity Disorder,” Kara cut her off. “Certainly not Reign. Kara Danvers and Supergirl are one. You’re right about the radiation, though. Clever girl.” The tip of her nail bit into the sharp jut of Lena’s cheekbone, glinting silver in the low light. Lena’s head turned sharply, illuminating the smooth edge of her jaw. Kara Danvers had once thought, She could slice me open with that jaw and I’d be thanking her for it, and Kara Zor-El was tempted to agree.
Lena, to her credit, did not visibly — or audibly — react.
“You and I are not close friends, Kara Zor-El. Supergirl. I would suggest you stop acting as though we are.” Lena spoke in tight, clipped half-measures, her eyes liquid Kryptonite woven in stretches of red. Kara Danvers pined for them, stared adoringly at the two green moons until they inevitably eclipsed themselves from view. Kara Zor-El hungered, and forced Lena Luthor to hold her gaze.
“If I wanted to, I could twist your neck right off your pretty shoulders,” Kara’s voice came in breathy puffs of air. The office had somehow reduced in size, pushing Kara and Lena face-to-face, eye-to-eye. An unstoppable force met an immovable object; though usually it was Lena who acted as the force, and Kara the object. Now, their roles had effortlessly been switched. “If I wanted to, I could kiss the very life out of your lungs. I could twist your bones into molten marrow. I could make your larynx sing a song of unimaginable pain. Does that not scare you?”
“Does death scare me?” Lena was a chess prodigy, eyes locked firmly on the board. The questions were rapid-fire, surgical, procedural. There was only the slightest quaver to her voice. “Or does pain? What are you asking me?”
“Hm,” Kara Zor-El shrugged a shoulder. Then she took a shot with blinds drawn around her eyes: “You’re not afraid of death.”
Lena smiled darkly, archly, like the shadow of a solar flare. It flurried something deep in Kara’s stomach; the sliver of her humanity threatening to break through skin. Despite the lighting, there was a darkness on Lena’s face, lined heavily and blurred. The life from her ivory skin appeared blotted out. “When my time comes, I will give myself willingly into her hands. What kind of scientist fears the inevitable?” She clicked her tongue. “But you’re not here to kill me. You’re…” she dragged a knuckle across Kara’s blemished skin, and Kara did her utmost to remain still. There was something torturously sensual in how clinically Lena looked at her — as though she were a metal to be synthesised, a compound to be studied.
(The thought crept in, unbidden — that she wouldn’t mind to have been ‘studied’ by Lena alone, wearing her lab coat and nothing else.)
Lena’s eyes lit with a manic glee, as though she’d read Kara’s mind. “You’re here to be saved,” she breathed; and of course she hadn’t. Despite being the more human of the two, it was Lena who acted the alien at times like these.
Then she barked out a harsh column of laughter. “Oh, I didn’t mean to say it like that — I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I sound like Lex, I know. But.” She inhaled, “There’s only one element that could possibly harm you. 260, the one you made me a pariah for synthesising—“
“Green Kryptonite is like a cancer to me,” Kara bit back, still clawing to defend the foreign skin on her back.
Lena shrugged. “And yet again, I feel the need to remind you that to me — there is no ‘like’ for cancer. Cancer is itself.” She paused, and then tacked on, almost sullenly: “James Olsen would be dead if not for my Kryptonite pepper-spray.”
Kara snorted. “James Olsen. Are you still fucking him?”
Lena ignored her, tactfully. “As I was saying. You’ve clearly been exposed to a harmful substance that is causing this radiation, and given how Kryptonite is the only element that can disempower you — my guess is that this is the effect of one of its isotopes. You are…” She toyed with the creases of her bottom lip in a manner that drew attention to how it curved, red and supple. Kara wondered how supple Lena would be beneath her hands; how pliant. She wanted to ease into her like a sculptor into clay.
Lena launched forth into explanation, releasing her lip from its captivity. “If you were a totally separate aspect, you would be clean of Kara Danvers’ notions, wants, and preconceptions. But — you knew she hadn’t told me about Supergirl, and you knew how to divert my attention from her onto you. You wanted me to see, because you know me as well as Kara Danvers knows me, which makes me assume that the radiation has had some sort of effect on your brain, releasing chemicals that alter your state of mind — how are you feeling? No, doesn’t matter, I cannot rely on your statement as profound truth. So. My guess is that the radiation of the Kryptonite has inverted your personality traits fully, which has caused you to rename this state of mind as a separate entity altogether.” Her chest rose from exertion, and then fell. “How far off the mark am I?”
“Rao,” Kara breathed, gaze flicking lazily to the smooth column of Lena’s neck, “if I weren’t so turned on right now I’d be frustrated.”
“That… really does not answer my question.”
“You’re no fun, but fine,” Kara huffed, “you’re right about the Red Kryptonite — though I’m not so sure about the ‘inverted personality’—“
“Kara, are you kidding me, you ate kale today. And you’re aroused by our close proximity — which is very flattering —“ a small smile fluttered at the corner of her mouth, before wilting almost forlornly, “—but Kara Danvers and I are just friends.”
Kara Zor-El snorted. “‘Just friends’, really — with the eyes Kara makes at you you’d think you’re one of her Big Belly Burger meals.”
“Okay, now you’re just being unkind.”
“Unkind how? I tell only the truth.” Kara sneered.
Lena didn’t flicker, scientifically impassive. “This is toeing the line at sexual harassment.”
Kara Zor-El rolled her eyes. “Fucking whatever.”
“What do you want?”
She smiled twistedly. “Again. Pay attention, Lee. Only to spill the beans on CatCo’s brightest. That’s why I’m here: to immeasurably fracture your friendship and fuck up Kara Danvers’ life.”
Lena looked her up and down: still detached, still analytical, still shiver-inducingly cold. Kara Danvers liked the excruciating measures taken to peel Lena open and cuddle her softness close to her chest. She loved the feeling of warmth that wasn’t toxic radiation; craved steadiness in Lena’s movement, breath and heartbeat. Kara Zor-El handled Lena Luthor like she was a hot coal, but with open palms. She liked her exterior well enough on its own: the flashy, charming businesswoman and the cold, calculating scientist. This was Lena Luthor: born and raised in a dumpster fire. She was interesting enough on the surface — to dig deeper was to ruin the mystery of it all.
“Would you let me run some tests on you?”
“Would you wear the lab coat?”
“I am exposing myself to potentially harmful substances, so I’ll be in full hazmat gear.”
Kara pulled a face. “Fucking boo,” but she complied because she was weak to the low tones of a pretty girl. Lena led her stiffly by the arm into the dark of her lab — spooky — and placed her upon a folding bed, and—
And then she fell asleep, and woke up as Kara Danvers once again. Shit.