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So here’s the thing: by the time Lena notices the device taped to the bottom of her credenza—blinking red lights are such a giveaway, you’d think villains would stop using them—she’s already thoroughly done with her day. The only thing that’s kept her upright is the prospect of opening the bottle of Bowmore waiting for her on the top shelf of said credenza, so when the blinking red light turns a solid, menacing sort of yellow and pauses, Lena’s first reaction is less BOMB and more tired resignation.
(The second one is BOMB, because no matter how unimaginative her assassin may be, no matter how many times Lena stares down the barrel of a gun or lurches through the air in a failing aircraft, it isn’t something she’ll ever actually get used to.)
Her reflexes have gotten pretty good. It’s one of the perks of what her therapist has emphatically confirmed qualifies as PTSD. It’s also responsible for the three different avenues of escape Lena has installed around her office. Her reinforced desk now topples on a hinge; good for gunmen and small artillery, but too flimsy for her current predicament. There is a trap door by the couch, but it hasn’t worked properly since the incident with James. Lena’s best bet is the rappel rope outside her balcony. Its harness is based loosely on Lex’s suit design, clasping quickly around the body, but Lena fears she won’t be fast enough. So she tips the desk anyway, on her way out the door.
The hair on her arms picks up the abrupt change in air pressure before her ears register the sound of breaking glass. There’s no time to make sure the harness is locked in place before she jumps, taking her only shot at making it out alive. The way she sees it, there isn’t much difference between being a bloody smear on the wall of her ruined office or on the sidewalk outside her building.
Her descent begins to slow almost immediately, the belay device working to provide her with a survivable landing. Lena breathes out slowly. Another near-miss, she thinks, already schooling her features, ready to shrug it off like the others.
Then there’s a decisive snap.
For a moment, Lena is flying rather than falling. The air around her is like water, and she’s weightless. Even as she drowns in air, gasping for breath as it’s knocked from her lungs, she’s overwhelmed by the feeling that This Is Okay.
(Later, she won’t be able to figure out if it was her fatalistic streak or the strong arms wrapped around her that told her everything was exactly the way it should be.)
Supergirl has her, a blur of red and blue and soft, golden hair. Kara, Lena reminds herself. She’s still struggling to superimpose the two very different women Kara Zor-El once was—were? to her.
They land in an alley just off West Cordova Street. Lena only slowly becomes aware that there’s solid ground beneath her feet, because Kara is still holding on to her. She’s so close Lena can smell the metallic tang of her skin, the one she used to associate with hours spent tinkering in R&D. It represents to her a feeling of potential and contentment and joy, so it suits Kara perfectly, although Lena hasn’t allowed herself to dwell too much on why it does.
“Kara,” Lena says, but Kara interrupts her.
“I would have been too late,” she says, and Lena notes with consternation that Kara’s lip is trembling. Lena probably values her own life less than she should, but dying feels like a much more unfortunate possibility if it means Kara’s face might look the way it does now, and Lena wants to find the person responsible and make them hurt.
She’s feeling a little reckless—as usual after an assassination attempt—and Kara is still holding on to her, looking windswept and distraught. Lena can’t remember the last time someone looked at her with such focus, without even a hint of menace behind it. Before she thinks about it she’s reaching out, fisting a hand in that soft, soft hair, and then there it is—she’s kissing Kara, and it’s a much more uncomplicated, much more straightforward thing than Lena had made it in her head.
And really, Lena should have expected what happens next, because that’s the kind of day it’s been. The paparazzo is not discreet, the wide angle lens glinting in the sunlight at the end of the alley.
When National City’s gossip hounds stop by the newsstand the next morning, they’re intrigued—less by a Luthor and a Super finally locking lips than by what the paparazzo must have told them after she was caught taking their picture. Was it a flattering remark on how good they look together that had made them forgive her for invading their privacy? (They do—expect to see them on next week’s cover, already having been voted National City’s #1 hottest couple.) Was it a particularly bad pun that made Supergirl smile at her like that? (Supposedly Supergirl is a fan of bad puns.) Perhaps, they speculate, the paparazzo possesses some sort of superpower herself; surely nothing less than magic could have turned Lena Luthor’s resigned exasperation into amusement, or Supergirl’s disappointment into genuine glee.
The paparazzo remains anonymous. Only on her private social media does she share that all it had taken was a single phrase—spoken with the breathless reverence only a hopeless sapphic Super-fan could muster—that had made Supergirl turn her attention back to Lena with a questioning smirk and suggest that, if a picture of them kissing was going to be plastered all over the tabloids, it had better be a spectacular kiss. So it’s funny when the very same words—albeit paraphrased slightly—begin to pop up in every forum where the picture is shared over the following days:
“Damn. You’re going to be personally responsible for both the dramatic death and the ecstatic resurrection of every single lesbian on the planet.”