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The town had one stoplight, which was mostly ornamental, and a diner that opened at six-thirty whether or not anyone needed it to. Kara timed her grocery runs to avoid the rush, though ‘rush’ was a generous word for three people in line and a cashier who used to teach eighth-grade math. The mornings were all beige: soft light over tilled soil, coffee that never tasted strong enough, and a kind of quiet that felt less like peace and more like sedative.
She told herself it was good. Quiet meant safety. No dimensional rifts or alien uprisings or sudden press conferences with her name splashed in bold. It meant she could breathe, even if the air tasted faintly of cow dung and generational resentment. The DEO had dropped her here three months ago, smiling with bureaucratic relief as if they weren’t exiling a weapon to rust. The mission brief had been vague: watch over the community, act only if absolutely necessary, remain undercover. The phrase ‘strategic obscurity’ had been used, which sounded suspiciously like go sit in the corner until we figure out what to do with you.
The farmhouse they gave her was too big for one person, with floorboards that creaked like they resented her, and windows that insisted on letting in dawn whether she wanted it or not. The internet was unreliable. Her Supergirl suit was folded in a drawer she never opened. She woke up every morning at five-thirty, made toast she didn’t want, and stared at the weather app like it might start giving emotional forecasts.
The people were fine. Zia from two farms over was aggressively hospitable, dropping off zucchini bread and unsolicited advice with equal fervor. Janet and Gary, who lived across the road, introduced themselves on her second day and immediately began what Kara would later call their ‘curated matchmaking project’. First came Daniel, a local painter with too many bracelets and the smile of someone who had read The Alchemist too many times. Then John, the barista who claimed to roast his own beans but ordered Starbucks in bulk. Kara was polite to all of them. Smiled. Laughed when it was expected. Declined future invitations with the delicate evasiveness of someone who had mastered the art of social withdrawal without ever having to explain herself.
Eleanor was harder to dodge. The town’s only journalist, she wrote lifestyle columns that veered into personal op-eds and had a face made for narrowing suspiciously. Eleanor had already guessed Kara was hiding something, and not in the way Janet and Gary did when they whispered about her not being married. Eleanor’s suspicion had the edge of someone who enjoyed peeling back layers, not to understand, but to confirm that her instincts were still sharp. She had asked twice already where Kara was really from. Kara said Detroit, then corrected herself and said Des Moines. Eleanor raised an eyebrow and scribbled something in a notebook she didn’t bother to hide.
The days were long. Kara split them between aimless walks and small, performative acts of productivity. She fixed the front porch railing one afternoon and over-oiled it, so now it gleamed suspiciously against the chipped paint. She attempted gardening, gave up, then pretended she hadn’t. When Janet asked her how the tomatoes were coming along, Kara said thriving, and then drove to the next county to buy some.
She had started journaling again. Not like when she was younger, when it had been all exclamation points and secret crushes. Now her entries read like internal reconnaissance. “Woke up with shoulder pain. Dreamt I was flying, but wings were made of wires. Rain expected Thursday”. It was the kind of writing that came from someone trying to prove she still existed. The kind of writing she would never let anyone see.
Sometimes she caught herself looking at the sky too long, waiting for movement that never came. The stars here were sharper, crueler in their clarity. On certain nights, she stood barefoot on the porch, arms crossed against the cold, and thought about what it meant to be needed. Not just in a save-the-day way, but in the quieter sense. The Lena sense.
It was always Lena, even if she didn’t name her. Lena in the tilt of a laugh she heard from the post office. Lena in the way she hesitated before reaching for something warm. Lena in the space at the other end of the porch swing she never touched. Kara told herself she didn’t miss her. She missed the idea of her. The stillness Lena could conjure with just a hand on Kara’s neck, or the way she’d ask do you want me to stay? like the question wasn’t already the answer.
But this wasn’t National City, and Kara wasn’t allowed to want things here. She was allowed to protect, to patrol in shadows if necessary, to be the silent guardian no one recognized. She was not allowed to hope. So she didn’t.
She made toast again the next morning. One slice, no butter. Ate it standing. Stared at the horizon like it might offer a verdict. The sky was bright, too bright. She blinked against it, and said, to no one, Another day of strategic obscurity. Then she put the plate in the sink, stepped outside, and started walking, as if the motion alone could make her feel less like a ghost.
*
The thing about walking every road in town was that eventually, you learned which fences had loose boards, which dogs bluffed, and which porches contained chain smokers who asked too many questions. Kara charted it all internally, a private cartography of avoidance. She walked not because she enjoyed it, but because it gave her something to do with her body while her mind performed more dangerous loops. She tried not to call them that. She preferred the term rehearsals.
Today’s route began the same as yesterday’s: east past the white church that always smelled faintly of mildew and resignation, south by the grain silo that whined in high winds. She nodded at Arthur, who waved from his tractor with the solemnity of a man who only liked people on Tuesdays. She counted steps, as if the rhythm might unlock something. She passed the library and its unlit open sign. Thought about going in. Didn’t.
It was during one of these aimless laps that she realized she was no longer sure which turn she’d taken last. Not quite lost, but unmoored. The landscape here was a study in sameness. Dirt roads gave way to other dirt roads, and the occasional mailbox did little to differentiate one section of farmland from another. There was a brief pulse of something like panic, quickly smothered by long-ingrained muscle memory. She could fly out if she wanted. She didn’t want.
Instead, she sat. Just dropped to the edge of a field, legs crossed in the too-short grass, and stared. The sky looked smug. It was the kind of blue that didn’t exist anywhere but here - not bright, not vibrant, just wide. She leaned back on her palms and exhaled, half a sigh, half a dare.
It wasn’t until she was watching a hawk circle above that she noticed the quiet had changed. Not gone, exactly, but thickened. The air had the stillness of somewhere holding its breath. Kara closed her eyes, tilted her face toward the sun, and said aloud, without thinking, Lena used to hum when she was trying not to say something.
The wind picked up. Or maybe she imagined it.
The first dream came that night, uninvited. Lena was standing in the kitchen. Not dressed for drama or occasion, just barefoot, hair slightly curled at the ends like it got when she air-dried it. She was wearing one of Kara’s sweatshirts. That was new. It said “Midvale Track & Field” on it. Lena had once rolled her eyes at it. Now she wore it like it belonged to her.
In the dream, she was humming. Not a melody Kara recognized, just a low, private sound, almost more vibration than tune. She was slicing something on a cutting board, expression calm. She looked up when Kara entered the room and said, You’re always late in dreams. I wonder what that means.
Kara couldn’t answer. Her mouth worked but nothing came out. Lena smiled - not cruelly, not even with pity, just with the kind of warmth that was almost worse.
She woke up with a tightness in her chest that didn’t fade when she sat up. The dream didn’t feel metaphorical. It felt like a memory she hadn’t had yet. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and pressed her thumbs into her eyes like she could force the image back. Sweatshirt. Knife. Humming. The quality of light in the kitchen. She could still feel it on her skin.
She made toast. Burnt it. Ate it anyway. No jam this time. The sugar felt dishonest.
The dream lingered the entire morning. She caught herself drifting, staring at the same patch of chipped paint on the farmhouse wall, as if it might offer commentary. She thought about writing it down, but stopped herself. Dreams of Lena were dangerous in a way battlefields never had been. They left her open. Frayed.
She tried to drown it out by fixing the gutters. Climbed a ladder, pretended she knew what she was doing. Nearly fell, caught herself mid-slip with a barely suppressed yelp. The neighbor’s kid saw her and clapped. Kara bowed. Her wrist ached from gripping the metal too hard.
Zia wandered by around three, holding two gas station coffees and a lazy grin. She offered one to Kara, who took it mostly out of social obligation. It was barely drinkable, and she said so. Zia laughed and replied, So, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?
Kara didn’t answer. She was too tired to perform politeness. Zia didn’t seem offended. She sipped her coffee, made a face, and muttered, Worth a shot. Then she left.
That night, Kara lay in bed and tried not to think. It was ineffective. Her mind kept looping back to the dream. The familiarity of Lena’s posture, the domestic ease of it. She’d never even seen Lena cook, not really. They always ordered in, or Lena picked at whatever Kara made with the distracted attention of someone used to luxury meals. But in the dream, Lena moved like she’d always belonged in Kara’s kitchen. Like it had never been a question.
She stared at the ceiling and said aloud, Don’t come back just because I’m lonely. The air didn’t answer. The house creaked once, disapprovingly.
When she finally fell asleep, she didn’t dream at all. Which was somehow worse.
*
Eleanor caught her on a Wednesday. Kara had just finished restocking her pantry with things she didn’t need - instant oatmeal, a suspiciously long-lasting sourdough loaf, four different kinds of herbal tea she would never drink - and was halfway out the door when the familiar clack of Eleanor’s boots on linoleum cut through her mental fugue.
“Well, well,” Eleanor said, stepping into Kara’s path with the kind of amusement usually reserved for feral cats and cheating spouses. “If it isn’t our resident enigma. Did you know you always buy the same brand of crackers?”
Kara didn’t flinch. “I like routine.”
“That makes two of us,” Eleanor said. She wore a red scarf knotted too precisely, the kind of affectation that signaled she’d once lived somewhere people noticed details. “I wrote about you in last week’s column.”
“I’m sure it was flattering.”
Eleanor grinned. “I compared you to a transient nun.”
Kara raised an eyebrow. “Celibate and full of secrets?”
“Stoic and dressed in monotone,” Eleanor replied, then squinted. “But now that you mention it…”
Kara should have kept walking. Instead, she lingered. The mistake was hers.
“You’re hiding something,” Eleanor continued, in a tone that was meant to sound friendly and didn’t. “Nobody moves to a town like this unless they’re running from something. Or for someone.”
Kara shrugged. “I’m not running.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
The question sat there between them, humming. Kara considered lying. Detroit again, or maybe a vague allusion to a failed marriage. But her mind was full of Lena - Lena in the dream kitchen, Lena in the real one, sipping coffee with the kind of silence that said everything was fine even when it wasn’t - and she didn’t want to sully the memory with something cheap.
“I needed quiet.” She said.
Eleanor tilted her head. “And have you found it?”
Kara nodded. “Mostly.”
She made it two steps before Eleanor added, “Then why don’t you date?”
Kara didn’t answer. She didn’t look back.
That night, she let Janet and Gary set her up with John the barista, mostly out of spite. He wore a beanie despite the warm weather and introduced himself like he was auditioning for a documentary on misunderstood men. They met at the diner. He brought his own beans.
He talked for fifteen straight minutes about pour-over technique, his disdain for flavored syrups, and how corporate chains had destroyed the soul of coffee. Kara listened with the expression of someone carefully suppressing a sneeze. When he paused to sip his organic Guatemalan roast, she said, “You know they put oat milk in space now?”
He blinked. “That’s not -”
“Authentic.” she finished for him. “Yeah. I figured.”
They made it to the pie course. He ordered apple, she said no thank you. She didn’t want sugar tonight. She didn’t want anything, really. He asked her what she did before moving here, and she said, “Admin.”
He nodded like that explained everything. “You’ve got that vibe.”
“What vibe?”
“Controlled. Self-sufficient. Probably very good at email.”
She smiled. It was not a kind smile.
At the end of the night, he walked her to her car, said he’d like to see her again, and leaned in a little too close. Kara sidestepped like it was muscle memory and said, “You’re lovely, but I’m waiting for someone.”
It wasn’t until he blinked at her that she realized she’d spoken aloud. She added nothing. Just got in the car and drove home, jaw tight.
Back at the farmhouse, she peeled off her sweater and stood barefoot in the kitchen, listening to the refrigerator hum. The room felt hostile. Or maybe she just did. The clock blinked 10:42 PM. She hadn’t flown in almost two weeks. She hadn’t needed to. There was no one to save out here. Just herself, and she wasn’t doing a particularly good job of it.
The couch looked lonely. The walls, accusatory. She sat at the edge of her bed and stared at the small, framed photo still tucked into her nightstand drawer. It was one of the few she’d taken with her. Lena, mid-laugh, head tilted toward Kara, eyes bright and too knowing. Kara didn’t touch it. She just looked.
When she finally got into bed, she left the window open. The air smelled like grass and distance. She thought about what she’d said to John. I’m waiting for someone.
She wondered if it was still true. Or if she’d said it because it was easier than admitting she wasn’t waiting - she was simply incapable of moving forward.
That night, she didn’t dream of Lena. She didn’t dream at all. Her sleep was heavy, full of static, and when she woke up she had the sense that she’d missed something important.
The toast burned again. She didn’t scrape it this time. Just left it on the plate and stared at it while the kettle hissed behind her. She didn’t drink tea, but she boiled the water anyway.
Eleanor’s voice echoed in her mind. Then why don’t you date?
Kara didn’t have an answer. But she thought, with a quiet bitterness she didn’t bother to suppress, that the kind of love she wanted wasn’t available in a town where coffee came with a side of performance art and affection was a checkbox on someone else’s community bingo card.
The kind of love she wanted wasn’t a thing she could describe. It smelled like Lena’s perfume and tasted like her name whispered in the dark.
And it had left. Just like she had.
*
The DEO had nothing for her. Every check-in with Alex was a performance in low-stakes normalcy: no movement from Cadmus, no rogue Daxamites, no word from the outer rings. Kara assured her everything was fine, her voice modulated into something even and bright, then closed the laptop and stared at the wall for twenty-seven uninterrupted minutes.
She swept the porch for the third time that week. It was already clean. The act was ceremonial, not practical - an offering to the part of her brain that still needed order. She replaced a cracked pane in the back door. Sorted nails into jars by size. Mopped the floor twice. None of it helped.
On Thursday, she went to visit Gabriel and Rebecca, who had just returned from the hospital with their new baby, Harrison. He was pink and wrinkled and screamed with the commitment of someone already disappointed by the world. Kara smiled in the right places, complimented the nursery wallpaper, held the child with careful hands. Rebecca asked if she’d ever thought about having her own. Kara said, Maybe someday, and immediately wanted to swallow the words back.
She stayed longer than she meant to, unsure what compelled her. There was something magnetic about the chaos—the way Rebecca clutched the baby like she was already bracing for him to slip away, the way Gabriel hovered just outside the perimeter of usefulness, offering juice, suggesting naps, completely ignored. It was familiar in a way that stung.
When she finally left, the walk home was colder than expected. The sky was low and gray, the air damp and tight. The clouds held no promise, only pressure. Kara walked slower, dragging her boots through the gravel like the friction might bring clarity.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Lena’s voice the night she first held Esme. You’d be a good mother, she’d said, so casually Kara almost missed it. Then quieter, almost private: I’d trust you with mine.
At the time, Kara had smiled like it was a compliment. Now she wasn’t so sure it hadn’t been a warning.
Back at the farmhouse, she peeled off her coat and stood in the middle of the living room like someone waiting for orders. The air inside was stale. She opened two windows. It didn’t help. She made dinner she didn’t want, stared at it until it cooled, then put it in the fridge and lied to herself about eating it later.
In bed, she pulled the covers to her chin and tried to remember the last time someone had touched her just to be close. Not for comfort. Not for need. Just to be near. Lena had done that often - reaching out mid-sentence, brushing her hand against Kara’s wrist while she talked, touching the back of her neck while pouring wine. Casual, nonverbal proof that she was welcome inside the moment. Kara had gotten used to that closeness like it was ambient, then forgotten how to breathe when it was gone.
That night, the dream returned.
She was in the kitchen again. Lena stood at the counter, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hair tied back loosely, as if she’d been there all day. She turned when Kara entered, smiled, and said, You’re late again.
Kara opened her mouth to answer, but the dream didn’t allow for dialogue. She just moved forward, slowly, like she was underwater. Lena held up a spoon, offered her a taste of something Kara couldn’t identify. It was warm, faintly sweet, and entirely impossible.
The room pulsed with familiarity, but none of the details were quite right. The curtains were the wrong color. The chair placement felt foreign. Kara looked down and realized she wasn’t wearing clothes - just light, shimmering across her skin like armor. She glanced back at Lena, who didn’t seem to notice. Or didn’t care.
Lena wiped her hands on a dish towel and reached for Kara’s face, cupping her cheek like she had every right. Kara leaned in instinctively. The moment before contact stretched thin, then snapped.
She woke up with her heart hammering, sheets tangled around her legs like she’d fought them in her sleep. It was still dark out. She sat up and stared at the window, watched the outline of the world creep into focus. She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. She just sat there with the weight of the dream pressing against her ribs.
It wasn’t the intensity that unnerved her. It was the mundanity. The ease. Lena had looked so at home. Like she had always lived there. Like she was waiting. Kara made tea just to have something to hold.
Around noon, Zia showed up again, this time in overalls and a knowing smirk. She leaned against the porch post and said, “You’re not from the midwest, are you.”
Kara didn’t look up. “That obvious?”
“Only to those of us who also aren’t.”
Kara offered no reply.
Zia sat on the porch swing, kicked off her boots, and said, “Do you believe in parallel lives? Like, maybe somewhere, you didn’t choose exile.”
“I didn’t choose this.” Kara said, too sharply. “I have work to do.”
Zia smiled like she’d expected nothing else. “Don’t we all.”
After she left, Kara stood in the doorway for a long time. Watched the wind move through the grass. Thought about the dream, about Lena’s hand hovering over her cheek, about the way the moment never finished. It was beginning to feel less like a memory and more like a rehearsal. A scene waiting for its real performance.
That evening, Kara didn’t make toast. She didn’t eat at all. She sat on the porch, eyes fixed on the horizon, and whispered into the wind, “Come back.”
She didn’t know if she meant the dream, or the woman inside it.
*
There was something aggressively smug about the way the baby screamed. It wasn’t hunger or pain or even the vague existential rage babies seemed to harbor as their default emotional register - it was operatic. Harrison screamed with the unshakeable confidence of someone who knew he would never be held accountable for anything. Kara stood in the kitchen doorway holding a half-empty box of diapers and watched Gabriel try to rock him into submission.
“It’s been like this for forty-eight hours,” he said, bouncing in erratic increments, panic only barely concealed. “I think he hates us.”
Rebecca groaned from the hallway. “He’s colicky. It’s not personal.”
Kara handed over the box and murmured something sympathetic. She didn’t really mean it, but she did feel something - an ache, maybe, or envy’s quieter cousin. She glanced at the chaos: bottles on counters, burp cloths on doorknobs, a rocking chair pushed into an unnatural angle in the corner. It was domestic in the worst possible way. Uncontrolled, exhausting, intimate.
“Want to hold him?” Gabriel asked, already halfway to placing Harrison in her arms before she could decline.
Kara took him automatically. He stopped screaming almost immediately. She blinked down at the scrunched red face, the suspicious eyes, the little fist curled against her collarbone like a threat.
Gabriel stared. “Are you some kind of baby whisperer?”
Kara said nothing. She just shifted her stance slightly and let the weight of the child settle. It wasn’t heavy. Not really. Not compared to everything else she was carrying.
Rebecca wandered in with wet hair and a distant expression. She looked at Kara holding her son and smiled, tired and genuine. “You’re a natural.”
Kara bit her tongue to stop the words that threatened to follow. She didn’t want to be a natural. She didn’t want to belong to anything so fragile.
Later, on the walk home, she found herself looping the long way around - past the post office, down the dirt path that skirted the old grain mill, through a thicket of trees that probably didn’t count as a forest but at least disrupted the horizon. She walked slowly, head down, hands in her jacket pockets.
When she finally reached the road again, the sky was starting to shift. That in-between hour where everything turns to static - too dark for sun, too light for stars. She paused at the edge of a ditch and stared across the empty fields. The wind picked up, sharp and unkind.
It had been weeks since she let herself think of Lena in real terms. Not dream-Lena, not the phantom of her voice in Kara’s ear when she made tea or turned off the lights. Real Lena. The woman who used to read while brushing her teeth, who hummed off-key on purpose, who once said I don’t believe in fate, but I believe in repetition, as if that explained anything.
Kara missed the repetition. Not the big moments, the declarations or the sex or the fights that always ended in breathless laughter. She missed the small loops - the way Lena twisted her hair when she was bored, the exact cadence of her goodnight text, the weight of her silence when she was thinking. She missed the rhythm of loving her.
And she hated that. Hated that she had built something resembling peace in this quiet, neutral-colored town, only to realize it was made entirely out of memory.
Back at the farmhouse, she sat on the porch steps and watched the last of the light drain from the sky. She didn’t turn on the lamp. Let herself go unseen. Inside, the silence grew. Not empty, but bloated.
She made dinner again. Actually ate it this time. It tasted like cardboard, but she chewed all the way through. Washed the dishes. Stared at her reflection in the dark kitchen window and wondered when her face had gotten so sharp.
She used to look softer. Not physically, but in the way people do when they’re known. She went to bed early, hoping for another dream. It didn’t come. Instead, she lay awake, eyes on the ceiling, listening to the steady rhythm of her own breathing. She thought of Lena’s heartbeat. It used to stutter sometimes when Kara leaned too close, when her fingers slipped under fabric or her breath hit skin.
That was the first clue. Long before either of them said it. Long before the lines blurred.
Kara remembered the exact moment she knew. Lena had fallen asleep on her couch, head on Kara’s thigh, one hand curled under her chin. They’d been watching something forgettable. Kara had looked down and thought, I could live like this forever, and then panicked.
Because forever had always been hers. And Lena wasn’t supposed to be.
She rolled over, shoved her face into the pillow, and said aloud, “I miss you.”
The room absorbed it without comment. In the morning, she made toast again. Burnt, as usual. She scraped it this time. Ate every bite. Janet waved from across the road. Kara raised a hand in reply.
The wind had shifted. There was no storm yet, but something was coming.
*
Mark and Anne had stopped pretending to like their neighbors sometime around the second community potluck, when Peter accused Anne of buying, not baking, the cherry cobbler. It was one of those interpersonal collapses that should’ve been funny - small-town drama with the emotional stakes of a soap opera - but it wasn’t. Not when it spread like dye in water, staining everything with petty suspicion.
Now, the four of them - Mark, Anne, Peter, Christine - lived in a state of quiet civil war. They attended the same church, donated to the same library fundraiser, and watered their plants at the same hour of the afternoon, just to make sure the others noticed. Kara watched it all with detached curiosity, like observing a failed experiment.
What unnerved her was how familiar it felt. The way resentment burrowed into routine. The way silence hardened into ritual. It reminded her of the last month before she left National City.
She hadn’t planned to leave Lena. Not in any definitive, slamming-door sense. It had been more like erosion. A slow decrescendo of intimacy. Fewer texts. Fewer nights spent in the same bed. More work, more excuses, more smiling with her mouth and not her eyes.
She’d thought she was doing the noble thing - stepping back so Lena wouldn’t have to ask her to. It was only later she realized that stepping back without explanation isn’t nobility. It’s cowardice dressed up as generosity.
She thought about that now, while sitting on her porch drinking weak tea and watching Mark pretend not to glare at Peter’s recycling habits. She wondered what Lena would make of all this. Whether she’d find it tragic or inevitable.
Probably both.
That afternoon, Kara walked again. Not for exercise or for the benefit of being seen—she knew the rhythm of the town by now, knew when the sidewalks would be empty and the sun would be at just the right angle to make everything look more forgiving. She passed the church, the silos, the diner, and the one bar that served both bad beer and good gossip.
She ended up by the tracks.
There were no trains anymore. The tracks hadn’t carried anything in over a decade, but they remained, rusted and half-swallowed by grass. Kara walked alongside them for a while, keeping to the edge like it meant something.
She sat eventually. The sky was too open, and the wind pushed her hair into her mouth. Still, she stayed. There had been a moment with Lena, not long before everything began to unspool, where they’d both stood on the roof of Lena’s penthouse watching the city from above. Lena had leaned against the railing and said, “Do you ever feel like we’re just waiting for the next thing to fall apart?”
Kara had said no.
She’d lied.
Now, she thought about that moment with a different kind of clarity. Not regret. Not quite. More like a belated recognition of pattern. She was always waiting. For silence. For collapse. For the quiet permission to leave before she could be left. It wasn’t a martyr complex. It was worse than that.
It was a habit.
When she got home, the house smelled like dust and effort. She didn’t turn on the lights. Just dropped her bag by the door and lay down on the couch, shoes still on, arm over her eyes. She wasn’t tired, but rest felt performative, like if she pretended hard enough, her body might believe her.
The second dream came like a rerun. Lena again, in the kitchen. This time the light was different - cooler, more indirect, like morning. She was barefoot again, holding the same dish towel, but this time she wasn’t cooking. She was just sitting at the table, elbows on the surface, fingers laced under her chin.
Kara stood in the doorway and said, “Are you real?”
Lena didn’t answer. Just tilted her head like she was studying a specimen.
Kara stepped closer. “Why do I keep seeing you?”
Lena smiled small, not unkind. “Because you think I’d still come.”
Then the dream shifted, lost cohesion. The room folded inward. The light vanished. Kara woke up with her heart pounding and her mouth dry. The clock said 3:17 AM. She didn’t bother trying to go back to sleep.
Instead, she sat at the kitchen table and stared at her hands. Hands that had rebuilt collapsed bridges, caught planes mid-fall, carried people from rubble. Hands that had once brushed hair behind Lena’s ear and made her shiver.
She pulled out a notebook. Not the journal with the weather notes, but the older one—unlined, mostly empty, brought from National City like a relic. She opened to a fresh page and started to write. Not about dreams. Not about Lena.
About herself. Not who she had been, but who she might still be. She wrote until the sun came up. The next morning, she made toast. Ate it without thinking. Didn’t check the weather. Didn’t look out the window.
Later, Eleanor knocked on her door with a basket of sweet potatoes and an offhanded, “You look like someone who’s either snapped or figured something out.”
Kara said, “Maybe both.” and meant it.
The day passed quietly.
At night, she lay in bed and whispered, “I still think you’d come.”
She didn’t expect an answer. But she dreamed of Lena humming. Not in the kitchen this time, but somewhere closer. Somewhere warm.
*
The knock came just after dusk, precise and almost polite, as though whoever stood on the other side of the door was uncertain whether they were welcome but absolutely certain they were staying anyway. Kara didn’t move at first. She was on the floor, knees tucked up, half-reading an article about soil acidity in Midwestern Homesteads Quarterly, which she’d picked up at the co-op to pretend she belonged here. She didn’t belong here. She knew it. The knock confirmed it.
She stood slowly, spine unspooling, and crossed the room with the same apprehension one might reserve for opening a letter that wasn’t addressed to them.
When she opened the door, Lena stood framed in the fading light, trench coat unbuttoned, hair windblown in a way that made her look editorially furious. She had a duffel slung over one shoulder and a look on her face Kara hadn’t seen in a long time. Not quite anger. Not quite relief. Something brittle and searching, like she’d arrived at the end of a hypothesis and didn’t like what she’d proven.
“You didn’t even take your favorite mug.” Lena said by way of introduction.
Kara blinked. “You broke into my apartment?”
“It wasn’t locked, Kara,” Lena replied. “Which is either a cry for help or a security risk.”
Kara stepped back, held the door open in silence. Lena walked in like she hadn’t been gone. Like this was still hers.
She dropped the bag by the door, took two steps into the living room, and stopped. “Jesus. This place looks like the world’s shittiest Airbnb.”
Kara exhaled a laugh before she could stop herself. “You flew all the way to Kansas to insult my throw pillows?”
“No,” Lena said, turning slowly, eyes scanning the space with a detachment Kara recognized as protective. “I flew here because National City is intolerable without you and I got tired of pretending otherwise.”
Kara closed the door. It clicked into place louder than it should have. They stood apart, the empty space between them filled with the weight of all the things they hadn’t said. Kara folded her arms across her chest, not out of defiance, but containment. Her body felt suddenly too full.
“Eleanor published a column about the mysterious new town recluse,” Lena said. “The one with no last name and a pronounced aversion to eye contact. It sounded familiar.”
Kara looked away. “I didn’t think anyone read those.”
“I read them when I miss you,” Lena said, matter-of-fact. “Which is often, and against my better judgment.”
Kara said nothing. Her throat felt like it had been lined with sand.
Lena gestured vaguely toward the kitchen. “Is there wine? Or did you renounce earthly pleasure along with electricity and coherent taste?”
“There’s something red and vaguely fermented in the cabinet. Could be vinegar.”
Lena walked toward the kitchen. Kara followed out of instinct, not decision. The whole thing felt absurd, like a hallucination conjured by too many nights alone. Lena opened the cabinet, extracted a bottle with a label in Spanish and no cork. She sniffed it, shrugged, poured two glasses.
“Here’s to you,” she said, holding hers up, “and your emotionally masochistic tendencies.”
Kara took the glass. “You came all this way just to psycho-analyze me?”
“No,” Lena said again, more softly this time. “I came because I kept thinking about how you used to sit on my counter while I cooked and pretend you didn’t know how to use the oven.”
“I really don’t know how to use the oven.”
They drank. The wine was terrible. Neither of them complained.
Later, Lena drifted toward the couch, picked up the folded quilt on the arm and examined it like it might be a test. “This whole setup doesn’t really feel like Kara Danvers, you know.”
Kara didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
Lena looked over at her. “Darling, can I stay a few days?”
Kara nodded. Not quickly. Not dramatically. Just once. She watched Lena sit, toe off her boots, fold one leg under her like she had a right to the space. She looked tired, in that curated way she rarely allowed others to see - her makeup slightly smudged, her shoulders sloping with the quiet heaviness of someone who’d been brave for too long.
Kara crossed the room and sat beside her. Not close enough to touch. Not yet. They didn’t talk for a long time.
Eventually, Lena leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. “I hated it there without you. Not because you made it better. Because you made it bearable.”
Kara said, “You never said that before.”
“I know,” Lena replied. “You didn’t either.”
Outside, the wind picked up. The trees groaned. Kara reached for the blanket Lena had discarded and pulled it over both their legs. Lena didn’t open her eyes, but she shifted slightly, angling her body toward Kara’s without needing to look. The lights stayed off. At some point, their shoulders touched. Not deliberately. Just gravity.
Kara whispered, “I thought I had to go somewhere else to forget you.”
Lena didn’t move. “And did you?”
Kara let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “No.”
“Good,” Lena said, eyes still closed. “Because I came all this way to remind you.”
They sat like that until the storm started, quiet and steady, rain tapping against the windows like applause.
*
The storm persisted into morning, slow and steady, the kind that didn’t disrupt anything so much as saturate it. The sky never fully brightened. Light arrived muted, diffused through layers of cloud like it had something to hide. Kara didn’t mind. The farmhouse always looked better in grayscale.
She stood at the stove stirring oatmeal that neither of them had asked for, letting the spoon move in lazy circles while Lena remained curled on the couch in a position that suggested she’d fallen asleep mid-argument with her own spine. Her hair was a mess. Kara couldn’t stop looking at her.
Not in a way that invited interaction - she wasn’t ready for that - but in the quiet, aching way someone looks at something they once believed was permanent. Eventually Lena stirred, groaned something unintelligible, and sat up. She blinked blearily at Kara, who held out a mug of black coffee like a peace offering.
Lena accepted it and muttered, “Your hospitality is appalling, but your coffee is surprisingly competent.”
“You always did lower the bar when you missed me.” Kara said.
Lena sipped without responding. Her silence wasn’t avoidance, it was indulgence. She was giving Kara space to speak first, which was generous, if also a little cruel.
“I thought I was making the right choice,” Kara said. Her voice was level, almost detached. “Stepping away. Giving you your life back.”
Lena raised an eyebrow. “Because clearly I was so eager to be free of domestic happiness and quick kisses on the fire escape.”
Kara winced. “You seemed… tired. You kept pulling away. I thought you needed space.”
Lena placed the mug on the table beside her. “I needed you to ask what I needed. Not vanish like a ghost with good manners.”
Kara nodded. She deserved that.
The oatmeal was burning. She turned off the stove but didn’t move the pot. Her hands gripped the counter like it might help her stay grounded.
“I thought,” she said carefully, “if I took myself out of the equation, you’d stop looking so -”
“Miserable?” Lena supplied.
“Exhausted.”
Lena stood and crossed the room, footsteps soft against the wood. She didn’t touch Kara, just stood beside her, arms folded. “And instead you made both of us experts in quiet suffering. Congratulations.”
Kara let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I didn’t come here for a fix.”
“Then why are you here?”
Lena tilted her head. “Because despite your best efforts, I still love you, and it turns out ignoring that didn’t work. Not even a little.”
Kara closed her eyes. “I dream about you constantly. Not just in metaphor. You’re in my kitchen. You hum while slicing fruit. You’re barefoot. You look like you’ve always been there.”
Lena’s voice softened. “And I always leave?”
“No,” Kara whispered. “You’re always waiting for me.”
The words hung in the room with the scent of scorched oats.
They stood there for a long moment. Then Kara turned, slowly, and reached out like someone relearning touch. Her fingers brushed Lena’s wrist, feather-light, a contact so restrained it bordered on reverent.
“I want to stay here,” Lena said, not as a request, but as a diagnosis. “Not because it’s idyllic. It isn’t. It’s cold and the neighbors are nosy and your front porch has the architectural integrity of a popsicle stick.”
“But?”
“But you’re here. And I’m tired of missing you in places that don’t have your name in them.”
Kara pressed her forehead harder against Lena’s. “I didn’t realize how loud the silence got without you.”
“It’s not silence,” Lena said. “It’s mourning.”
The rain intensified. Neither of them moved. Later, they didn’t lie in bed the way people do in movies - perfectly arranged, sheets sculpted into suggestion. They collapsed into it like something instinctual. Lena kicked off her jeans with mild irritation and muttered about rural humidity. Kara laughed into her shoulder.
They didn’t have sex. But they touched. Slowly. Exhaustively. Like trying to memorize a language they’d both forgotten how to speak out loud. Kara’s hand hovered above Lena’s stomach, barely grazing, and Lena exhaled like that contact alone unraveled months of tension. Kara’s mouth pressed to Lena’s collarbone, and Lena whispered, “You could ruin me.”
Kara didn’t answer. She just kissed her again, and again, and again. At some point, Lena fell asleep with her fingers curled in Kara’s shirt like she couldn’t risk waking up to find her gone. Kara didn’t move, instead she wrapped an arm loosely around Lena's shoulder, trailing her fingers over the soft skin of her arm, mindless and gentle until Lena dozed off.
Outside, the rain softened. Inside, something began to repair.
*
They didn’t talk much the next morning. It wasn’t avoidance, not exactly - more a mutual understanding that whatever had happened overnight would be cheapened by translation. Lena padded around the kitchen barefoot, stealing slices of apple from Kara’s half-prepared breakfast and making a face at the state of the stove, which she declared ‘medieval, in the most unromantic sense’.
Kara sipped her coffee slowly. Not to savor it - she still hadn’t figured out how to make it properly - but because she couldn’t stop looking at Lena’s hair, tangled and unbrushed, and the thin line of skin visible where her shirt had ridden up.
The farmhouse looked different in the morning. Not better, but less accusatory.
By late afternoon, the rain had stopped entirely. The road was still soft underfoot, and the porch steps made a sound like resignation when they walked down them together. Lena had insisted on seeing the town. She’d said it with the dry finality of someone who had already decided the place was offensively beige and needed the satisfaction of confirming it.
They passed Jean’s house first. She waved enthusiastically and mouthed something Kara chose not to interpret. Then came Janet and Gary, sitting on their front swing with twin expressions of delighted horror.
Lena smiled at them with all the cold precision of a practiced socialite and said, “Afternoon.”
Gary waved back. Janet squinted. Kara kept walking.
“Do you want them to think we’re together or not?” Lena asked once they were out of earshot.
Kara shrugged. “I don’t care what they think.”
“That’s new.”
“No,” Kara said. “That’s what pretending for too long does. You burn out on appearances.”
They stopped by the co-op. Eleanor was there, of course, scribbling something in a battered notebook while sipping a smoothie too green to be palatable. Her eyes landed on Lena like she’d just discovered a new subgenre of gossip.
“Well, well,” she said, standing. “She’s the reason you burned the toast every morning, isn’t she?”
Lena looked amused. Kara didn’t answer.
They ran into Peter and Christine outside the hardware store, stiff smiles and crossed arms already in place. Mark and Anne materialized seconds later, equally braced. Kara introduced Lena, who offered an elegant nod and a single handshake - Peter declined.
Christine said, “Didn’t realize you had guests.”
Lena smiled thinly. “I’m spontaneous.”
Silence bloomed, brittle and unresolved.
As they walked away, Lena muttered, “That was delightfully hostile. Are they always like that or was that a special performance just for me?”
Kara gave her a sideways glance.
Lena smirked. “Be honest. This feud is the most interesting thing about this place.”
Back at the farmhouse, Lena wandered through the rooms like she was taking inventory. She stopped in the doorway of Kara’s bedroom and stared at the books stacked on the floor, the carefully folded clothes, the bed with its rumpled covers and emotional residue.
“This place is awful.” She said finally.
“I know.”
“It’s also… kind of perfect.”
“For what?”
Lena didn’t answer immediately. She walked to the window, opened it halfway, let the breeze in. “For pausing. For reconsidering.”
Kara leaned against the doorframe. “That’s all I’ve been doing. Reconsidering.”
“Have you come to any conclusions?”
“A few,” Kara said. “Mostly about what I can survive without. And what I don’t want to.”
Lena turned. “And?”
“I don’t want to survive without this,” Kara said, gesturing around the room, then at Lena, then back at herself. “Or you. Or the version of me you made bearable.”
Lena walked over, close enough that Kara could smell her perfume - something sharp and expensive and just barely familiar. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the Midvale Track & Field mug.
“You really did take it.” Kara said.
“Of course I did,” Lena said. “You’re not the only one who’s sentimental and stupid.”
They sat on the porch after dinner, a blanket across their laps, wine glasses resting on the railing. The sun dipped low behind the trees, bleeding the light from the sky in long, deliberate strokes.
Lena spoke first. “I’ve got two weeks before I need to be back. We have to fund a third-quarter pivot. Something boring and self-important.”
Kara nodded. “So you’ll stay until then.”
“If you want me to.”
Kara didn’t look at her. “I’d let you stay forever if you asked.”
Lena exhaled, not with surprise, but with a kind of weary understanding. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I do,” Kara said. “But I won’t push.”
“Good.” Lena murmured in response.
The porch creaked under the shift of their weight. In the distance, a dog barked, as if on cue.
“Stay,” Kara said, not as a plea, but a proposition. “Just until you get sick of me.”
Lena didn’t hesitate. “That might take a while.”
They sat in silence after that. Not tense. Just aware of the new gravity between them. At some point, Lena reached for Kara’s hand, laced their fingers together without ceremony. Kara squeezed once, gently, as if to say yes, and then not again. Sometime later, Kara found herself lying on the porch on her back, with Lena curled up against her, arm around her waist and with her face buried in the crook of Kara’s neck.
The storm was over. But the air still smelled like it might rain.