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Chapter Text

Without the crushing weight of her terrible family dragging her down, Lena Luthor can do incredible things.

“To be fair babe, you did incredible things even with your mom and brother hanging around your neck like a pair of megalomanic millstones,” Kara points out, mouth full of potsticker, gesturing with her chopsticks in a way Lena should find appalling but actually finds endearing.

“Do millstones come in pairs?” Lena wonders, and Kara immediately Googles it for her, giving Lena a quick précis of the history and development of millstones and milling, at the same time demonstrating why she’s the woman Lena’s chosen to spend her life with.

Kara’s right, of course, if Lena’s objective about it, which she has to be now she’s going to therapy, but she still mentally divides her life into ‘before’ and ‘after’ and the after just seems so easy in comparison, like she’s weightless and everything she touches turns to gold.

She’s got work to do; work she wishes she’d started a decade ago, or maybe — in the case of the things she’s learning in therapy — even a lifetime ago. Work like turning L-Corp into the model of a corporate citizen, ending the crushing inequity in her home city, her home state, work like learning how to have healthy relationships with other people and with herself, work like building a home and a life for herself and her wife.

When she sees the labour of her hands bear fruit — an orchard’s worth of fruit  (“A whole fruit salad’s worth of fruit!” says Kara. “You’re a goober,” says Lena) — Lena can’t lie, there’s a weight of grief for what could have been; all the chances to grasp good things that were wrenched from her hands by Lillian and Lex. But apparently that’s a grief she’s just going to have to make her peace with, trust she did her best with what she had available to her at the time, forgive herself for all the choices she made and ways she coped, because they all contributed to her making her way out alive and being alive is the pre-requisite for the happiness she has now.

Ugh, therapy’s so boring.

—

There’s a point at which Lena realises that L-Corp is not the place she needs to be.

“You know, I spend all my days metaphorically pulling people out of the river,” she says to Kara after a particularly frustrating day at work, “but I’m starting to ask myself whether it wouldn’t be better to stop whoever’s pushing them in upstream.”

“Seems like a reasonable question,” Kara agrees.

Lena runs for public office.

—

Now though, she’s done with being Lena Luthor — ‘the face of.’ Lena Luthor the face of L-Corp, Lena Luthor the face of New America.

From this point onwards, she doesn’t want to be the face of anything other than the face of Lena Luthor: early 40s, slightly eccentric lesbian, who works in R&D. She’s ready for the next part of her life to begin. She and Kara are going to start a family.

—

Kara tells her that, while this particular ship might have sailed and while it’s okay for that to hurt, it was never the only ship in the harbour. She’s right, which is why Sophie the Social Worker is now sitting across from them at their kitchen table.

“I have good news for you,” she says, “and I have news which is technically good news, but might be a bit disappointing for you.”

“Hit us with it,” Kara prompts, squaring her shoulders.

“The good news is: you’ve been approved for foster placements. Congratulations!Although I never really had any doubts that you would be. The mixed-bag is that this state has the lowest rate of children in out-of-home care in all of America — and even in most parts of the developed world — which is great news for everyone, but means you probably won’t get a placement for a while, under normal circumstances.” She looks at Lena: “All that work you did to make sure vulnerable families were supported and to raise the standards of living for ordinary Americans paid off, huh?”

“Who’d have thought?” Lena says drily.

“Excuse me,” Kara interjects politely, “you said ‘under normal circumstances?’”

“Yes, I did — that’s something I want to talk to you about actually. Because we now have more placements than kids needing them, we’ve started to accept children from other agencies, across state lines. It’s not ideal, because it means those children are separated from their communities, but it’s better than the alternatives, which can be pretty grim.”

Lena and Kara both wince: they’ve read reports.

“I was going to ask you whether you’d be prepared to foster a child from another state? Or a child with a disability? Or a teenager?” Sophie continues.

Kara and Lena both shrug.

“Of course,” Lena answers for them both. Considering they’d be prepared to foster a child from another planet, with superpowers — because it’d be pretty hypocritical of them not to, in the circumstances, and having Esme as a niece is an actual delight — Sophie’s asks seem pretty minimal.

“Great!” Sophie says brightly, shutting her laptop. “I’ll be in touch!”

—

It’s about six weeks later when they get the call: normally calm Sophie sounding a little harassed:

“I know it’s short notice, but could you be ready to take a placement tomorrow? I’ve got some kids coming in on a flight from Indy, and the CPS there have snuck an extra one in at the eleventh hour and I don’t have a placement lined up for her.”

It’s Lena who’s picked up the phone — she’s flapped her hands wildly to get Kara’s attention, but she knows Kara can hear the call without needing it on speaker. 

“Sure,” says Lena, trying to sound confident, mind whirring through all the things they’ll need to do. “What can you tell me about her?”

“Her name is Robin: she’s sixteen. She’s coming from a small town called Hawkins. I don’t know as much as I’d like because — and generally I don’t like to criticise other agencies but in this case — the child-protection situation in her county is — sketchy? At best?”

Sophie is one of those nice people, like Kara, who has trouble criticising other people, (Lena doesn’t have this particular impediment) so this is pretty damning coming from her.

“All I know is that she’s been living by herself since her parents left when she was fourteen; managing pretty well, all things considered, turning up at school, flying under the radar, but someone’s twigged to the fact that there are no parents around and I think the response has been a little… precipitous? A knee-jerk reaction — well, anyway, here we are. Will you come to the airport tomorrow? I’ll email you through the flights, and all the information I have.”

“We’ll be there,” Lena says. She and Kara look at each other wide-eyed.

—

Kara is nervous. They’re at the airport, waiting to meet someone who’s going to be part of their lives, part of their family. What if she doesn’t like us? She’s trying to look confident for Lena and she can tell Lena’s trying to do the same for her, so no one’s really winning. Sophie has other foster carers to deal with, things like car-seats and medications to organise, so once she’s greeted them they’re left to their own devices. 

It’s not at all reassuring when the children come through the arrivals gate. They’re mostly young; elementary school age, a few even younger, a couple of toddlers carried by workers. They look dazed and disorientated, like survivors from a war zone, some with backpacks, a few with trash bags containing everything they own in the world.

“Is it me or does this remind you of—”

“That scene from The Handmaid’s Tale where the kids arrive on the plane?” Lena finishes Kara’s sentence for her. “God I hate that the red states still lag so far behind, after all the work we did.” Kara squeezes Lena’s hand, cutting her off before she can spiral. They crane over the crowd of arriving passengers, trying to see someone who might be Robin.

It’s Kara who spots her first. She’s holding the hand of a little boy, about six or seven, chatting away to him. Sophie sees them, reaches out a hand for the boy. Robin gives him a cheery smile, encouraging him over to Sophie, who leads him away, towards his foster family. The second the boy turns away from her, Robin’s smile falls. She’s tall, almost as tall as Kara, with a choppy bob that looks like she might have cut it herself, bleached tips still growing out. She’s got a bag slung over her shoulder, a cardboard box in her arms. She stands, a still point in the midst of the moving crowd, and looks around her. Kara has never seen anyone look so lost and alone. It’s like looking at a vision of her thirteen-year-old self, crash-landed on earth.

“That’s her,” she says and starts moving, hand held out behind her to guide Lena through the crush.

Sophie dead-heats them; the younger children taken care of, Robin is obviously last on her list.

She’s probably been last on everyone’s list her whole life, Kara thinks and has to consciously stop herself stomping her feet through the airport floor as she walks forward.

“Robin?” Sophie asks and the girl gives a half-nod in assent. Sophie smiles, trying to be genuine — she must see stuff like this every day, and worse — but Kara can tell the whole vibe of this set-up is getting to her. “Robin, I’m Sophie, I’m your CPS worker now you’re here in National City and this is Kara and Lena, they’ll be your foster parents.”

Robin stares at Sophie, she looks bewildered at the turn of events, then she looks at Lena and Kara and her 1000 yard stare is gone in an instant, replaced by a fiercely curious expression that reminds Kara forcibly of Lena.

“But—” Robin begins, “but— you’re you!”

“Uh, yes? Last time I checked?” Kara answers, confused.

“No, I mean: you’re Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers — the Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers!”

“Were you expecting a different Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers?” Lena asks, amused.

“I wasn’t expecting anything at all,” Robin says, mouth twisting into something bitter, “A social worker came with a couple of cops yesterday, said: ‘pack your things kid’ and then practically frogmarched me on to a plane. And here I am.”

“What?!” The three adults around Robin speak in unison, united in horror.

“They didn’t tell you where you were going, or who you were going to?” Kara asks, incredulous. Even I got some warning, when they put me in that pod.

“Not a sausage.”

“Oh Robin,” Sophie says, “I’m so sorry, it should not have happened that way.” She looks between Lena and Kara. “I think I’d better come home with you, in the given circumstances, see Robin settled in.”

Lena has gone into what Kara thinks of as her ‘fighting trance’ — Kara knows that Lena is considering who will be the most appropriate target for all the rage she’s feeling on Robin’s behalf, although to Sophie she probably just seems a little zoned out.

“Babe?” Kara prompts.

“Of course, I’ll bring the car around,” Lena says, tone light.

—

Kara is nervous, so she keeps up a constant stream of chatter on the drive home, sitting in the back seat with Robin so that Sophie can sit in the front. She begins with: “we’re so glad to have you, we hope you’ll be happy here” and by the time 45 minutes have passed Robin has heard about, Krypto the dog, Sparky the Second, their house-rabbits Siri and Alexa, Alex, Eliza, Kelly, Sam, Ruby, J’onn, James, Winn, Nia, Brainy, games night, the time Lena accidentally singed her own eyebrows off, Kara’s catalogue of favourite restaurants and a rundown of her favourite series of Great British Bakeoff. 

Robin just sits there, chewing her lip and trying to pull the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands, which Kara can tell is a losing battle because it’s clearly too small for her, three inches of bony wrist poking out of each cuff.

As they arrive in their street, Kara’s monologue circles back around to welcoming Robin again: 

“This is us, we hope you’ll treat it like it’s your home too: mi casa es su casa, and all that!”

“It should be: nuestra casa es su casa,” Lena corrects, pathologically accurate. 

Kara is about to roll her eyes, but she sees a flicker of interest in Robin’s face; a brief spark of animation. Interesting.

“Hey,” she says gently, “I’m sorry if I talked too much; I tend to ramble.”

Robin turns to her and gives her a small smile, wan, but surprisingly genuine.

“It’s normally me doing that,” she says, “but I’m not really feeling up to it today, so thanks for taking one for the team. Whoah!” Robin exclaims as Lena opens the front gate to their house, Kara carrying Robin’s cardboard box and bag. Kara doesn’t bother trying to act like they’re heavy — even for a regular human they seem pretty light.

One of the conditions of Lena leaving public life is that they’d trade out the gleaming penthouse in the center of town for what Kara thinks of as a real family home — the kind she and Alex grew up in — and the kind Lena always dreamed of living in, picket fence and all.

This one doesn’t have a picket fence — it has a sturdy red brick wall covered in ivy — because they still need some level of security, but it does have a large garden full of wandering paths and mature oaks and maples, the house set well back from the street. Kara tries to see it from Robin’s perspective: it’s a shingle-style Victorian, smaller than Eliza’s and far smaller than anything the Luthors ever lived in, but it still looks like the house in a family sit-com, a storybook version of an American family home. 

“This is even bigger than the Wheelers’ house!” Robin says, to no one in particular, “This is even fancier than Steve’s parent’s pile! Holy shit, I’m Orphan Annie.”

Kara feels a little awkward, but Lena has been rich from birth, so she’s probably more used to this kind of reaction.

“Come on,” she says, unlocking the front door and waving Robin onwards from where she’s stalled, just inside the gate, gaping at the house.

“Right you are Daddy Warbucks,” Robin quips.

Lena fixes Robin with a Look.

“Only Kara is allowed to call me Daddy,” she deadpans. Maybe it’s inappropriate, and Kara darts a look at Sophie, who doesn’t seem to have heard, but whatever, because it’s cracked Robin up.

Robin laughs and it’s a beautiful laugh; unrestrained, a little messy: a laugh like karaoke with your friends on a Friday night.

It makes Kara happy just to hear it, makes her want to do the same tippy tappy dance Krypto does when he sees his lead come off the peg. Kara is determined to get this kid laughing more often.

Right now though, they pile into the kitchen and Kara pulls Robin and Sophie seats up at the big wooden table, where late-afternoon sunlight is streaming through the sash windows. Lena flicks the switch on the coffee maker and kettle, lifts mugs off hooks. 

“Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?” she asks Robin.

“Coffee. No, hot chocolate — no coffee, no—” Robin dithers.

“Coffee and then hot chocolate: great idea!” Kara grins. She pulls out cake and cookies, slices some fruit — because there is a social worker watching, after all, and she wants to seem like a responsible adult — and sets it all down on the table while Lena makes the drinks.

Robin immediately reaches for a slice of cake and it vanishes in a way that makes Kara wonder when she last ate. Robin hesitates and Kara dumps another slice of cake on her plate so she doesn’t have to ask if it’s okay, glances anxiously at Sophie and adds some fruit, catches Robin watching her and winks. Robin looks amused.

“So Robin, I imagine you have some questions,” Sophie says.

“You could say that.” The moment of lightness vanishes and Kara gets the sense that there’s steel somewhere inside this slightly awkward, lost teenager. “Why now? I’ve been coping just fine on my own for two years and suddenly now someone gives a shit? Enough of a shit to drag me across the country at a moment’s notice? How did I not know this was happening?”

“It can’t have been a moment’s notice,” Sophie protests gently, “there would have been a court order: the authorities can’t just take minors into care without any process.”

“You’d be amazed what the authorities can do in Hawkins, Indiana,” Robin mutters darkly, which seems like a strange thing to say to Kara.

“If there’s been due process, how come yesterday was the first Robin’s heard of it?” Lena asks. “Surely she’s old enough to have a say in what happens to her?”

“Exactly!” Robin is triumphant, and then she shoots Lena a glance, as if she can’t believe Lena stuck up for her.

Sophie rubs her face, a little defeated, hair coming loose from her bun. 

“I don’t know Robin. All I can say is that I’m sorry, because it makes an already rough situation even harder for you. It’s not how it should have been done, especially since none of the information I’ve received from CPS in Hawkins indicates that they intended this to be a temporary placement.”

“What?” Robin looks genuinely distressed. “No, I’m not staying here: I have to go home.”

It’s awful to watch, because Kara knows just how she feels. She can tell Lena does too. Lena has a way of ‘not crying’ that makes her green eyes shine like a cat’s, and they’re shining now. Sophie has obviously seen this kind of thing before.

“I know you want to go home Robin — I understand that, I do — but I think you probably also understand that, now you’re in my care — in Kara’s and Lena’s care too, we can’t send you back into a situation where’re you’re living alone, where you don’t have people to look after you. I know you’ve been living as if you’re an adult over the past few years, but you’re still a child.”

“I do have people! I have people who need me!” Robin says, desperate to make them understand. “I’m not living alone — I’m living with Steve!”

“Ah,” Sophie looks like she expected this. “I think that might be one of the reasons CPS in Hawkins was so keen to place you. A vulnerable teenage girl living with an adult man isn’t really an ideal situation.”

Kara can tell that Robin was upset before, but now she’s furious.

“Steve’s barely 18! He’s my best friend and he would never hurt me! If I’m vulnerable, so is he: his parents barely come home and it’s been like that since he was a kid! But nobody cared then, and now you expect me to believe they care now? I want to go home! I want to go back to my friends! How do I not get a say in this?”

Robin is screaming now, standing up, chair pushed back from the table and Kara has the feeling that, however experienced Sophie is, whatever she’s going to say next is going to make it worse. She makes a decision, opens the door to the hallway.

Like a big golden cannonball, Krypto hurtles into the room, knocking Robin back into her seat as he flings himself into her arms, or as much of himself as can fit in her arms, because he’s roughly the size of a washing machine. The air leaves Robin and her arms close around him in reflex; temporarily unable to speak, she buries her face in the dog’s soft fur as his tail thwacks a steady ‘thump thump’ against the table leg.

Krypto was a rescue and he looks like a Golden Retriever, with the exception of his head, which is rounder, more like a Bernese Mountain Dog’s, and the fact he’s super-sized. The DNA test Lena ran on him showed that he actually has almost no Golden Retriever in him, so it’s all a bit of a mystery really. Kara usually introduces him to people either as: ‘our small bear’ or ‘our giant croissant.’

Krypto works his magic and when Robin comes up for air, she’s no longer yelling. Before Sophie can say something that will make her start again, Lena weighs in:

“Robin, if it turns out that you’re not happy here, no one is going to force you to stay; I’m sure Sophie will find you another placement, or we can make some sort of alternative arrangement for you. But Sophie’s right, none of us are letting you go back to Hawkins unless we know you’ll be safe.” 

“Argh!” Robin muffles her groan of frustration in Krypto’s shoulder. “So never then!”

Lena tilts her head. 

“I didn’t say never, I said: ‘not unless you’re safe.’”

“In Hawkins, that’s the same thing.” Robin says it so quietly she probably thinks no one can hear her, but Kara can.

“You’re right to be angry,” Lena says. “You shouldn’t have been allowed to slip through the cracks and you should have been given agency in the decisions being made about you: you’re clearly old enough. I will personally make it my business to get to the bottom of whatever is going on in Hawkins that meant you’ve been failed so dramatically. And, if you know anything about me, you know I won’t stop digging until I get answers.”

For a minute Robin looks like a deer in the headlights; then all the fight goes out of her.

“No, it’s fine. I mean you seem like nice people so — don’t go digging, not in Hawkins. I’ll stay: it’s fine.” It doesn’t sound like it’s fine, in fact it sounds goshdarn weird to Kara, but it’s not like any of them are going to push back when Robin’s finally agreed to stay put.

“Let’s show you your room, and the rest of the house, and have dinner — is that okay?” Lena asks. Sophie takes the hint and says her goodbyes.

“Whaddya want for dinner?” Kara asks, “Are you hungry? We can get takeout or Lena can cook. Or both?”

“Both?” Robin suggests, echoing Kara from earlier. Then, unsure: “Isn’t that kind of a lot?”

Lena snorts.

“Trust me, too much food is not a problem we have in this house.”

“It’s me,” Kara says and then starts singing: “I’m the problem, it’s me!”

“Oh—kay then,” Robin says, eyebrows raised.

—

They show her around the house, Krypto plodding along after them.

“And this is where the magic happens!” Kara flings open the door to the attic. It’s one big room, taking up the whole footprint of the house and they’ve kitted out according to their own particular interests. Lena has a big drafting table, workbenches under an extractor fan, a set of 3D printers and a laser cutter. Kara has easels set beside the dormer windows, floor left bare and spattered with paint. Then there are the shelves and shelves of books, accessorised with squashy armchairs and couches to read them on. Sparky the Second uncurls himself from one of these and comes over to wind himself around Robin’s legs, purring like a steam engine.

“This is the space where we do all the things that interest us,” Lena translates, “there’s so much room in here if you want to take over some of it too. What are you into?”

Robin is drawn towards the bookcases like she’s being sucked out an airlock. She picks out Lena’s copy of Don Quixote in the original Spanish. 

“Is this the one where he attacks the windmill?” Robin asks.

“Yep. I’m a big fan,” Kara says, delighted and Lena and Robin groan.

—¿Hablas español? —Kara asks.

—Sí.

Kara starts chatting away to Robin in her not-very-good Spanish and Robin answers in her own — excellent, Lena notes — Spanish.

She sidles up to Robin, selects a few more books she might like.

—Le llamamos su ‘español de taco’.

—¿Porque es apenas suficiente para pedir un taco? —Robin asks.

—Exacto. Creo que es tan simpática que nadie tiene el corazón para aplastarla, así que todos fingen entender lo que quiere decir.

“My Spanish is good enough to know you’re talking about me!” Kara calls from around the corner.

“Do you speak any other languages?”

“Italian, French.”

« Tu comptes aller à la fac ? »

« Si je peux gagner une place gratos. Tu parles combien de langues ? » Robin asks curiously.

« Les langues romanes, même si je ne suis pas très forte en roumain. L'allemand, le russe, le mandarin, le cantonais, le japonais et l'hindi. J'ai passé beaucoup de temps à l'école à apprendre les langues européennes, mais les langues asiatiques m'ont vraiment mieux servi. » 

Lena realises she’s lost her audience. Robin is staring at her with her mouth open, star-struck. Lena blushes, and Robin pulls herself together.

“Wow. Okay. That is a lot. A lot of languages. Will you teach me Russian? I started teaching myself but it’s very… Slavic.”

“Sure,” Lena says, finding a Russian dictionary adding it to the pile of books she’s selected for Robin and plonking them in the girl’s arms. “You should keep these in your room: there’s nothing sadder than empty bookshelves.”

“I-read-your-biography!” Robin blurts out.

Lena sighs. So did everyone else. Lena’s (authorised) biography had been her campaign manager’s idea when she ran for her second term; a way to control the narrative and quash some of the rumours flying around about Lena and her family.

“Kara ghost-wrote it,” she says, “apparently everything I write comes out sounding like a quarterly report, including, according to Alex, my wedding vows.”

Sparky II has decided he’s not getting enough attention and stretches up Robin’s leg with just enough of a hint of claws to suggest that more could be forthcoming. Robin puts the books down, picks the black cat up. He looks at Lena, smugly and she raises an eyebrow at him. Robin wanders over to the corner where Lena’s cello sits on its stand.

“I can’t believe you play the cello too.”

“Yeah well, if you read my biography, you’ll know my family weren’t big on the idea of unstructured play, which is basically why my wife and I have built ourselves a playroom in our attic as middle-aged adults,” Lena says drily. “Do you play an instrument?”

“Trumpet, in band at school. And guitar at home. But I left my guitar behind. I thought…” Her voice falters. “I thought I’d be going back.”

“We can send someone to Hawkins, to collect your things,” Lena offers.

Robin’s eyes flick away, her body takes on the same restlessness as when Lena had offered to take the authorities to task on Robin’s behalf.

“Uh, no, don’t worry. It’s not worth someone going into Hawkins just for my old junk.” Lena doesn’t push, but she does wonder what’s going on. Is it just that she’s not used to anyone offering to do things for her?

Robin has found their collection of DVDs, Lena’s lego Millennium Falcon on a shelf of its own.

“Star Trek or Star Wars?” she asks Lena, changing the topic.

“We don’t subscribe to a binary in this household.”

“You really have every season ever here, don’t you?”

“And of Doctor Who,” Lena confirms.

“There’s some kids I know that are going to think you’re very, very cool.”

“I’ve never been accused of that before.”

Robin works her way to the games nook, bean-bag chairs and a huge curved screen.

“Holy shit is that an actual Nintendo 64? Steve is going loose his mind when he sees this!” Then it’s as if the realisation that she’s thousands of miles away from everyone and everything she knows hits Robin all at once and she starts crying.

Lena’s standing closest to Robin and what comes next is not instinctive or natural for her; it’s something she’s learnt from Kara and has to think about every time.

Person crying.

Open arms.

Robin falls into them, like Lena’s not a virtual stranger.

Close arms.

Lena stands there holding this not-quite-adult, not-quite-child as she messy cries her heart out. Kara’s face is worried, but she gives Lena a thumbs up and a mouthed: “You’re doing great!”

“Sorry,” Robin says, after a few minutes. She wipes her nose on her sleeve and Lena doesn’t wince, because I am not my mother.

They go and sit on the little balcony that nestles up in the gables. It’s one of the reasons they chose this house: Kara can take off and land from here and none of the neighbours can see her. The three of them stare into the horizon; a view all the way down to the blue arc of National City Bay. Lena knows that Robin’s wishing she could fly right out of here, but Kara, who can actually launch herself into the blue, is right where she wants to be.

“So tell us about Steve,” Lena prompts. Robin gives a lopsided smile. 

“He’s not my boyfriend or anything, he’s just my best friend. He’s going to be so worried about me. He’s more like my brother from another mother really. Actually I’m—” She hesitates, looking between Kara and Lena. “I guess it’s not a big deal here: I’m gay.”

“Definitely not a big deal here,” Kara says, putting an arm around Robin’s shoulders.

“It shouldn’t be a big deal anywhere,” Lena says.

“Yeah, well: the middle of nowhere Indiana, is still the middle of nowhere Indiana. Unfortunately,” Robin says, in a resigned tone of voice.

“You really make Hawkins sound like a like a relic from the 80s,” Lena observes.

“You have no idea.”

“You should call Steve,” Kara suggests, “let him know you’re okay. Maybe we could line up a round of MarioKart or something? So we can get to know him? I mean you don’t have to, if you don’t want, but if he’s important to you, we’d like to get to know him. Do you have a phone?”

“Yeah, but it’s dead and I forgot my charger.”

“No problem!” Kara trots back into the attic and takes a drawer out of Lena’s work station, hands it to Robin. It’s full of chargers. Robin flips it around to read the label on the front.

“I’ve never met anyone who had a drawer that was only full of the things that it was labeled with.”

“Lena’s a nerd,” Kara explains.

“Or, alternatively, Lena has an orderly mind or Lena’s prepared for every eventuality,” Lena corrects snarkily.

Robin chuckles. “You sound like my friend Nancy.”

“You seem to have a lot of friends,” Lena notes. Robin thinks for a moment before saying:

“Yeah, I guess I do. They kind of snuck up on me. On the drive from the airport, when Kara was—” She searches for a polite way of putting it.

“Rambling,” supplies Lena.

“—about all your friends, I was kind of thinking; that’s what we’ll be like, when we grow up.”

“So, Steve, Nancy, the kids who like Star Trek…” Kara prompts.

“That would be Dustin and Mike, with a side order of Lucas and Will,” Robin begins and then the words just keep coming.

Kara and Lena sit with Robin on the balcony as the sun starts to set, and let her tell them about all the people she loves.

—

“We left your room plain,” Lena says, now the tour of the house has ended with Robin’s bedroom, “we thought you’d want to decorate it yourself. If you don’t like this one, you can have one of the other bedrooms,” Lena says, trying not to try too hard and maybe failing just a little bit.

Robin sits down on her new bed, gives a few experimental bounces. She looks suddenly small in the big room and Lena is reminded painfully of herself as a child, dwarfed in Luthor Manor.

“Do you need to put anything in the wash? Have you got everything you need for tonight?” she asks, because projecting onto Robin is not going to help anyone.

Robin rummages through her backpack, dumping its contents haphazardly on the bed. It’s really not very much.

“I think I forgot pyjamas — I was kind of in a rush, what with a pair of cops standing over me as I packed.”

Lena gets her tablet, hands it to Robin. 

“Pick some that you like, we’ll get them delivered.”

“You’re going to DoorDash me pyjamas? You could just loan me some sweats or something.”

“You need pyjamas,” Lena points out.

“Oooh, can I DoorDash pyjamas too?” Kara is looking over Robin’s shoulder, “These ones have little dancing coffee cups on them.”

“Why are you asking me? You know you will anyway.” Lena rolls her eyes.

“I guess I’m a rich kid now,” Robin says bluntly, and then with a cheekiness that gives Lena a glimpse into who she might be when she’s not unhappy, adds: “can I have a pony?”

“Are you going to feed and exercise a pony? And muck out its stall twice a day?”

“On balance, no,” Robin admits.

“Then no, you can’t have a pony.”

“Can I have a pony?” Kara tries, hopefully. Two sets of blue eyes wait expectantly for Lena’s response.

“Over my dead body.”

“How come Robin gets a ‘maybe’ and I get a ‘hard pass’?” Kara asks indignantly.

“Because if you had a horse Kara Danvers, we both know it would end up in the house and that is not where horses belong. It would be the mini pig all over again.”

“Turned out it was just a regular-sized pig,” Kara says, sotto voce, to Robin.

“It’s an easy mistake to make,” Robin says.

“Right?” Kara beams.

Lena feels like she should take charge of the situation before it escalates.

“Okay, Robin: three jobs.” She lists them off on her fingers: “Order PJs, call Steve, stop Kara ordering anything too insane on DoorDash. By that time dinner should be on the table.”

Robin gives Lena an ironic little salute. Lena hears Kara say: “Oooh, Robin we should look at oodies! How do you feel about happy avocados?” but she waits until she’s on the landing before she cracks a grin.

—

Lena cooks stir-fry for dinner and they order pizza and potstickers. 

After her call with Steve Robin is quiet, distracted, but she eats with as much gusto as Kara, which makes Lena aware of the subterranean depths of her own rage, because Robin’s not a Kryptonian superhero, she’s just a really hungry kid, who maybe has not always had enough to eat. It pisses Lena off. She puts some extra spring rolls on Robin’s plate.

“That was so good,” Robin says, when the bottoms of the cartons are visible. Lena slides a folder towards her.

When they’d gotten the call from Sophie yesterday, they’d divided and conquered, playing to their strengths: Kara had assembled the furniture and Lena had assembled the dossier.

“I’ve put together some information about all of the schools in the area, so you can pick one.”

“I have to go to school?”

“On Monday.”

“It’s Thursday now.”

“That’s why I made you a folder.” Robin gives Lena the kind of look that reminds Lena that Robin is still a teenager. Still, she reads the information in the folder.

“Some of these are fancy schools, like really fancy. Like ivy league prep school fancy.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Lena suggests, “look for one that has a curriculum that interests you.”

“What if I want to go to one of the fancy ones?” Robin asks, being contrary.

“Then go to one of the fancy ones,” Lena says, “nothing’s stopping you.”

“I’d be the odd one out, out of all the snobby kids.”

“Probably. But you’d also get a great education, and it seems like you already have plenty of friends, so does it really matter?”

In the end Robin chooses one that has a good music program and some languages she’s yet to learn. Lena thinks it’s a sensible, well-considered choice and she respects Robin for it.

— 

Kara pads her way down the hallway to bed. She pauses at Robin’s door, which is ajar, and looks in. Robin’s fallen asleep with the light on, but Kara doesn’t turn it off, just in case Robin wakes in the dark and doesn’t know where she is. She’s bracketed on one side by the big golden dog and on the other by the black cat, tucked right up under her chin. Robin is dead to the world, but both animals give Kara an appraising look, no doubt wondering if she’s going to kick them off the bed.

“Carry on, you’re doing great work,” she whispers, tiptoeing away.

“Everything okay?” Lena asks as Kara gets into bed.

“Yeah.”

“Alex and Sam want to FaceTime us. Do you want to do a debrief just you and me before we call them?”

Kara huffs. “I’m tired, today’s been a rollercoaster, let’s just call them so we don’t have to say everything twice.”

The faces of their nearest and dearest appear in two little squares; everyone’s calling from their respective beds, because they’ve all got kids now and they’re tired.

“Are those the cuddly bunny pyjamas I got you for Hannukah, Alex? The ones you swore you’d never wear?”

“No!” Alex flips the hood, complete with ears, down out of sight. Sam says something which sounds suspiciously like: “Nice look Thumper,” before Kelly leans into the frame and gets the conversation back on track.

“How was your first day with Robin?”

“She’s great!” Kara says, grateful for her sister-in-law.

“She’s a flight risk,” Lena says and Kara looks at her sharply.

“You don’t like her?”

“I didn’t say that.” Lena doesn’t elaborate, because how to say that she’d already go to the wall for this kid that she’s only just met? Of course she’d do that for any child that needed her, but this feels personal.

Sam has been Lena’s best friend for a very long time and she shoots Lena a knowing look. Lena can’t help but ask:

“Does it always feel like this?” The feeling that something that matters so much to you is completely out of your control. She doesn’t have to explain what she means.

“Always,” Alex, Kelly and Sam agree in unison.

They finish up the call and Lena snuggles into Kara, feeling the now-familiar sense of safety flow through her, like warm honey, like Kara’s arms are the safest place she could ever be. Her last thought before sleep takes her is:

I hope we can make Robin feel like this.

Chapter Text

Lena’s prediction about Robin being a flight-risk is proved correct the next morning over breakfast, when Robin asks them with a studied casualness:

“Don’t you two have work today? You don’t actually need to supervise me, I can manage on my own, I won’t run with scissors or anything, I promise.”

Definitely a flight risk, Kara concedes, flipping the pancakes. Lena wanders in, once again FaceTiming on her tablet.

“I’ll ask her,” Lena says, “stop nagging.” She places the tablet face down on the counter “How do you feel about kids?” she asks Robin.

“I’m thirteen!” comes Ruby’s protest from the upside-down tablet. Lena throws a tea towel over it.

Robin laughs. 

“At this point in my life they seem inescapable.”

“Feel free to say no, but Ruby and Esme want to come shopping with us today.”

“Can I say yes to the kids but no to the shopping? I uh, actually hate malls. Like they give me the heebie jeebies.”

“Oh thank god, me too.”

“Why did you offer then?”

“Because you need clothes and I thought all teenagers liked shopping malls.”

“Did you when you were a teenager?” Robin asked curiously.

“I was born 45 years old,” Lena deadpans and Kara and Robin snort simultaneously.

“Yeah well, between the autism and the trauma, they’re basically satan’s playgrounds as far as I’m concerned.”

“You have mall trauma?” Kara asks, bringing the pancakes over.

“It’s a long story.”

“What do you normally do when you need clothes?” Lena asks. 

“I wear mine until they fall into rags and then I steal Steve’s,” Robin explains and Kara nods her head in approval of this strategy.

“How would you feel about a trip to the old Steelworks?” Kara asks. “It’s kind of like a cross between a thrift store and a makers’ market. Do you like vintage? You could pick some clothes out there and we can get you the rest online. It’s also got food trucks and—”

“What’s that noise?” Robin asks. Lena sighs.

“That is the sound of Esme and Ruby chanting ‘BOBA, BOBA!’ like the uncivilised little animals they are!” Lena turns the tablet over as she says the last bit, revealing two eager faces that look not at all abashed.

“Does that mean we’re going for bubble tea?” Robin asks.

“It’s probably inevitable,” Lena admits. Two little voices cheer from inside the tablet. “Bring your pocket money!” Lena yells at them, although Kara knows Lena will pay.

—

“How did you two get a day off school?” Robin asks her new cousins from the back seat of Lena’s EV.

 “Pester power,” Ruby says and Esme nods sagely in agreement from her carseat.

She’s actually great with them. The three of them run amok at Steelworks; one of Lena’s former urban activation projects that’s created a hub for creativity and culture in what would have been an industrial wasteland. There’s a band playing and Lena settles down with a coffee, knowing that Kara’s discretely following the girls’ progress through the stalls and small shops with her super hearing.

They end up back at the food trucks, playing on old arcade games with Kara, their laughter floating back towards Lena.

After a while Robin wanders back to Lena’s table, tapping away at a message on her phone with her chipped black fingernails. She’s wearing a different shirt and jacket to the one she arrived in, so at least she’s chosen some clothes. Robin absent-mindedly picks at the nachos Lena’s bought, but Lena gets the sense she’s miles away. Robin frowns, bites at her own lip. The dark shadows around her eyes are still there. She’s worried about something, Lena realises.

“Everything okay?” she asks and Robin leaps out of her chair as though Lena’s gentle enquiry was a horror-movie jump scare, clutching her heart like she’s having a heart attack. 

“Yeah, fine!” she says, with wild eyes. Lena gives her the scathing look her lie deserves and Robin looks for an exit. “Where did Esme get that giant bucket of blue candy-floss?” she asks Lena, which is a smart move, because Esme is definitely not meant to have a giant bucket of blue candy-floss and Lena has to go deal with that situation, if she doesn’t want to deal with an irate Alex later.

—

After dinner they play Mario Kart with Steve and a curly-haired kid called Dustin who seems like a force of nature. Steve is nervous at first — there’s a lot of ‘yes m’ams’ to begin with, which seems unreasonable, because it’s not like they’ve given him the shovel talk or anything, but after a little trash-talking he relaxes and it feels like it’s a regular session — the kind they have with Winn or Alex or Ruby and Sam — except it’s them, their new kid and her friends. Lena’s mind boggles, for as long as it takes her to realise that if she doesn’t concentrate she’s going to lose and then her competitive streak kicks in and she pulls herself together.

Robin and her friends are hilarious; Dustin a guest comedian in the double-act Robin and Steve have got going on. They’re sweethearts in a ‘the kids are all right’ sort of way. It’s easy, hanging out with them, much easier than Lena would have anticipated. In fact nothing about Robin is what Lena anticipated or what she was lead to anticipate from all the training and preparation she and Kara did before fostering. Robin just…fits. It’s like the universe, for once, has given them all a big dose of serendipity.

The doorbell rings at the same time as Kara’s phone buzzes.

“That’ll be the pizza,” Kara says, pausing the game and Robin skids on the floor in her socks in her haste to get it. As soon as she’s out of frame Steve says:

“Dustin, there’s an extra packet of Doritos in the linen closet.” The kid is off even faster than Robin. Lena doesn’t have to ask why the Doritos are hidden in the linen closet because she lives with Kara.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Steve says, pushing his floppy hair out of his face, “for taking care of Robin.” He seems like a sweet boy to Lena, but she doesn’t like the way his eyes have the same dark smudges around them as Robin’s or how easily their young faces crease into worry lines. “I’m really glad she’s safe with you.” The turn of phrase rings a little alarm bell in Lena’s head. She and Kara exchange a glance and she can tell Kara’s heard it too.

“Steve, Robin’s part of our family now, but we know she didn’t just fall from a coconut tree,” Kara begins, quoting Lena’s former running mate. “She has people that are important to her and that makes those people important to us too. So if you’re not safe, or not okay, then you can tell us and we’ll do our best to help you too, all right?”

For a heartbeat Lena thinks Steve might cry; he looks very young and very tired. All he says though is:

“Nah, all good here. At least, except for the hit my pride’s taking at the way Lena’s decimating me at MarioKart. Dustin! Did you just eat all those Doritos in the time it took you to walk down the hall?!” Dustin reenters the frame, hand hovering comically midway to his mouth. Robin comes back in with the pizza and the moment passes.

—

“That was nice,” Robin says as she heads off to bed, “I haven’t had a day like that in a long time.”

“A day like what?”

“Where it feels like the world isn’t ending,” Robin says thoughtfully, as if she’s forgotten they’re listening. Lena gives her a questioning look, because it doesn’t sound like she’s joking. “But hey, I’m a teenager, the world always feels like it’s ending to teenagers, right? It’s probably the hormones! G’night!” Robin backs out of the room.

“What isn’t she telling us?” Lena asks Kara.

“I don’t know, but we can’t force her to tell us — can we?”

Lena sighs.

“I suppose not.”

—

“What is this meant to be? It’s like some weird Sailor Moon kink.” Robin eyes her new school uniform with deep distrust.

“It’s your personal cross to bear,” Lena says unsympathetically. “Get in it and eat some breakfast or you’re going to make us both late.”

“You don’t have to drive me — I can just take the bus.”

“It’s on my way.” Strictly speaking it isn’t, but Lena will feel much happier if she’s watched Robin and her kilt and blazer actually pass through the school gates. “And Kara will give you a lift on her way back from work; she’s doing early mornings so she’ll be done by three.” This is also a tactical move on their part; neither of them can quite shake the thought that Robin is going to do a runner back to Hawkins at the first available opportunity.

As the days, and then weeks, and then months go by, it sometimes seems like Robin’s adjusting well; she’s chatty, excited about everything, joking around with them with her wickedly funny sense of humour. Other times she’s distant and anxious, staring into the middle distance and chewing the skin around her nails until it bleeds.

Everyone says that it’s going to take time, that whatever trauma Robin’s been through isn’t going to go away overnight, and they’re right of course, Lena knows they are, but still there’s something that she can’t put her finger on, something not quite right. At best it’s like she’s missing an important piece of data that would help makes sense of Robin’s behaviour, at worst it’s like something’s going on right under her nose and she doesn’t know what it is.

Which is fun.

She and Kara have the same conversation over and over again: how they have to wait for Robin to trust them and not just shake her down until she squeals. Kara’s super hearing is an ever-present temptation, particularly when they realise that Robin’s abrupt changes of mood usually coincide with the long phone conversations she has with her friends back in Hawkins.

“We can’t listen in, can we?” Kara says for the millionth time, knowing that even if Lena relents, she still won’t be able to bring herself to violate Robin’s privacy, but tempted anyway.

“Even if I said yes, how would we start that conversation? “You’re not allowed to keep secrets, but by the way, we’ve been keeping a huge one from you: your foster parent is Supergirl and she’s using her powers not for good, but to listen through your bedroom wall while you talk to your friends?”

Kara huffs her frustration and Lena rubs the back of her neck. They do keep an eye on Robin’s online activity, because that is a normal reasonable parent thing to do, but as Alex and Sam both point out, Googling creepy old murders and paranormal phenomena is a pretty normal thing to do at 16.

Kara is a little bit horrified. “Is it? When I was a teen I was just searching for pictures of Liv Tyler in Lord of the Rings and trying to find a way to message the Backstreet Boys and ask if they’d add Midvale to their tour dates!”

“Of course you were,” Lena says affectionately.

The thing is, the correlation between Robin’s anxiety and her calls to Hawkins is a bit mystifying, because it’s very clear to see that Robin is not hanging out with gangsters.

Yes, she’s sometimes secretive, taking calls into her room and talking for hours in hushed tones or frowning over messages, screen angled close to her body, but there’s other times when she’s got her phone propped up against the cornflakes chatting to Nancy or Dustin or Erica over breakfast and it all seems so innocuous. She’s sending Mike and Lucas pictures of Alexa and Siri eating celery in slow motion, not dealing drugs or being groomed by predators or hacking into stranger’s bank accounts. They’ve even seen her play DnD; it’s hardly the kind of thing that makes the news under headlines like: ‘OUT OF CONTROL YOUTHS!’

Still, something must be going on, because while it’s easy to see she misses them, she absolutely refuses to let Lena and Kara take her back to Hawkins to visit.

“We can go back — we can jump on a flight and go this weekend if you want,” Lena offers, unable to bear Robin’s hang-dog expression after she gets off a call to Steve.

“All of us?”

“Yeees, all of us,” Lena says, eyebrow raised.

“You could just put me on a flight,” Robin suggests, trying to seem casual and failing.

“I think we both know that’s not going to happen. What’s the deal with you not wanting us in Hawkins? Are you planning to do crime?”

“I’m not planning on doing crime.” Except she puts the emphasis on ‘planning,’ which makes it sound like unplanned crime might still be a possibility. Not reassuring.

“Then what’s the problem with making it a family trip?”

Robin groans and smacks her head down on the kitchen bench dramatically. 

“Why do you want to go to Hawkins? It’s not pretty, there’s nothing to do and I’m pretty sure the water got contaminated with pesticide back in the 70s. Please, please for the love of god: stay in National City and let me go on my own! I’m saying this because I’ve got your best interests at heart.”

“I’ll bring a book and my carbon-filter drink bottle. I’m saying this because I’ve got your best interests at heart.”

“Ugh!”

“Robin. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“Would now be a good time to tell you I got an A on my History test?

Lena sighs, but relents and allows herself to be diverted.

“It’s always a good time to tell me you got an A on your History test.”

—

It’s not the first time Robin’s had a disorienting and destabilising experience, it really isn’t, but this one is different, because she actually likes Lena and Kara, like, a lot.

When her parents up and left her, part of her — the part that wasn’t consumed with hurt at the rejection that even now sometimes hits her like a slug to the guts — was relieved that she’d no longer have to live her life on eggshells, always listening for the slamming of a door, the tone of raised voices. Then the crushing weight of loneliness had kicked in, and if you’d asked her then, and maybe even before, her greatest wish would be for something very like the reality she’s living now.

Kara and Lena do all the things parents are supposed to do: they pay the bills, put food in the fridge and amazingly, they actually seem to like Robin’s company. They’re generous, but not in a weird way, and for the first time in her life Robin doesn’t have to worry about where the things she needs are coming from. They send her to a nice school, where no one’s slamming her head into a locker and calling her a dyke and college has never seemed more in reach. 

Also, with Lena and Kara comes a whole raft of family: suddenly Robin’s got de-facto aunts and uncles and cute little cousins and a brand-new grandmother who makes a five hour drive from Midvale just to meet Robin, when the people who were meant to be her actual family abandoned her with nothing but a final notice on the electricity to remember them by.

The thing is, hardly any of the people Kara and Lena call family are tied to each other by blood, and it gives Robin a tiny spark of hope that maybe she could belong to them too, that maybe it genuinely doesn’t matter to them where she came from. Robin’s reminded of that first day, when she told Kara and Lena that she can see echoes of her own friends in Lena and Kara’s chosen family, that maybe their lives will look like this when they grow up. If they get to grow up.

And that part is the kicker, because Lena and Kara weren’t the ones to rescue her from her tower of solitude: Steve got there first, like an accidental knight in his Scoops Ahoy uniform. Steve bumbled into her life and her heart and gradually made her part of his weird little family of teens, made her stop feeling like an unwanted extra in the movie of her own life, and she’ll never stop feeling grateful for that. Unfortunately, the cost of belonging was danger and death, the cost of loving is the fear that everyone she loves is constantly in terrible peril. The family that she has can neither protect nor provide for her, but the way they try to anyway, for her, and for each other, means that she’ll never stop holding on.

So Robin squashes down the hope that maybe this could be her actual life, that this slice of comfort and general niceness could be for her. She can’t stay here playing happy families and pretending to be normal while her people risk their lives every day. She knows she has to go back — she wants to go back. She misses her friends like a physical ache. She wants to fling herself into Steve’s arms, feel Dustin and Eddie bowl into them so that they all fall to the floor in a big cuddle puddle. She wants to ring Nancy’s doorbell, say something dumb when she opens the door, like: ‘can Nancy come out to play?’ and see Nancy’s face light up in surprise to see her. She kind of wonders if Nancy will hug her, when she comes back. She is going back to Hawkins. 

It’s just that she kind of wishes she could go back to Hawkins as Lena and Kara’s kid, as someone whose parents care enough to take her on vacation to see her friends, maybe to do normal things, like hit the arcade with the kids or have a BBQ at Steve’s or go to the movies with Nancy.

Instead, she knows when she goes back she’ll be hiding out in the daytime, probably on the run with Eddie, patrolling the broken streets at night, wielding something dumb like a tyre iron as her only weapon against terrible monsters.

Every time she speaks to Steve or Nancy, they tell her they don’t want her to come back, they don’t need her, they’re fine. Once this would have devastated her, except now she knows it’s a lie. At least Eddie’s honest with her:

“It sucks Robin, man. I know Big Steve is glad you’re out of it, so at least one of us will live to tell the tale, but shit, we don’t know what we’re doing here.”

“Big Steve, huh?” Robin raises an eyebrow at him.

“I was being ironic.”

“Sure you were.”

—

So Robin tries not to get attached to Lena and Kara, tries not to forget that this is all temporary.

It’s hard though, when Lena gets them tickets to the French film festival or when Kara and Robin try to recreate a layer cake they saw on TV and it comes out looking like a pile of vomit and all Kara does is laugh until she cries. Robin has to remind herself what it will feel like if she lets them get too close, what it will feel like to see them get themselves killed for no other reason than they tried to be kind to her.

She has to get back to Hawkins.

The problem is that she’s never been so supervised in her whole life. Lena and Kara seem interested in where she is every second of the day.

She tentatively tries the old classic:

“Can I sleep over at Elsie’s on the weekend?” She picks a name at random.

“Of course.” Lena is reading the paper with her morning coffee. She passes Robin the arts section as she finishes with it. “But since we’ve never met Elsie or her family, we’ll need Elsie’s parents’ phone number so we can call them first.”

“Are you serious?” Robin is incredulous. Lena looks at her over the rim of her glasses.

“Don’t I look serious?” Robin looks away — Lena could outstare a cat. “Consider yourself lucky; Lillian did a full security screen and a credit check on all my prospective playdates; we just want to say hi.”

“Don’t look at me dude,” Kara says when Robin gives her a pleading expression, “I grew up with Alex; there’s no stunt you could pull that we didn’t already pull first, so I am all for calling parents.”

Oh, you’d be surprised, thinks Robin, but she lets it drop.

She can’t even skip at school. They take attendance at every single class. 

On the first day she turns to the girl next to her and asks:

“What happens if you skip?” The girl looks like this is a foreign concept.

“They call your parents,” she answers and Robin gets the feeling she wants to move her desk further from Robin’s, like Robin’s a dangerous animal, but is too polite to do so.

—

She throws caution to the wind when Nancy gets hurt.

Nancy appears on their regular video call with a split lip and Robin can tell every movement hurts her.

“Nance! What the hell happened to you? You look like shit!”

Nancy chuckles and then winces like her ribs might be broken.

“You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

“I do actually,” Robin protests, succumbing to the impending ramble in her anxiety, “I’m learning a lot from Kara, as it happens. If I wanted to make you feel special I’d have sent you your favourite flowers and taken you out to dinner, but right now it looks more like you need a gift basket with some ccs of tetanus antiserum, some codeine and maybe a romantic trip to get x-rays. Fuck Nancy! I thought you were being careful!”

“Oh calm down Robin! You make it sound like I’m pregnant or something.”

Has telling someone to calm down ever worked, ever? Robin, not calm, thinks.

“Better that than dead!”

“I’m not dead. Still alive, see!” Nancy waves her arms in demonstration and then looks like she wishes she hadn’t. “Anyway I am careful,” Nancy says, “you don’t need to tell me to be careful… but maybe you could tell the kids next time you talk to them.” By which Robin infers that Nancy has thrown herself in front of danger to protect one of them and this is the result. “And you don’t even know what my favourite flowers are,” Nancy adds, always needing to add a sting to the tail.

“Gladioli,” Robin says, unable to resist the urge to get one over on Nancy. Nancy’s eyes widen just a fraction in surprise, but Robin doesn’t want to give anyone the time to reflect on why Robin knows this incredibly specific fact about Nancy, so she continues: “and you better show me the damage Nance, because I need to know if it’s as bad as I’m imagining.”

“If your new parents come in and see me taking my top off it’s going to look like a sex thing,” she says drily.

“You should be so lucky!” Robin snaps back, and then her brain catches up with her mouth and she feels herself blushing scarlet. Nancy raises an eyebrow. There is a pause which seems to last for millennia, in which Robin’s gay panic crashes like a meteor into the surface of the earth. 

Then Nancy lifts her top and gives Robin a totally different reason to panic, because the bandages go all the way around. It’s never good when the bandages go all the way around.The bits of Nancy’s ribs beneath her sports bra that Robin can see in the narrow strip not covered by crepe bandage are bruised black and blue. “Oh Christ,” Robin whispers, horrified, “are your ribs broken?”

“No, only bruised. It’s just where it got me with its claws that’s giving me grief. If I move in the wrong way they open up again.” Ugh.

“What the heck did you tell your parents?” Even the normally oblivious Ted and Karen Wheeler must have noticed something surely.

“I told them I got hit by a car and knocked off my bike.”

“Hell, Nance.” The fact that this is the cover story Nancy’s chosen to be less worrying to her parents is alarming. Things must be dire. 

Robin gets off the call and throws caution to the wind. She’s been scheming for two months, trying to find a way out of dodge that will definitely work and not land her in secure accommodation for wayward teens, or you know, black-bagged by some government agency bent on silencing her. Now, every time she blinks, she sees Nancy pulling her shirt up, and while it’s not the first time her imagination has supplied her with this image, this time it’s not in a good way. She knows, in Nancy’s unspoken words, from the hunted look in her blue eyes, how close a call it really was, knows that time is running out for her loved ones. Can she protect them? Probably not. But she knows that if it’s a choice between flinging herself into the line of fire or having to mourn someone she loves, then she’d take death any day.

—

The thing is, despite her almost life-long need to keep secrets, Kara is not a naturally secretive person. She suspects the only reason the world and its dog hasn’t discovered who she is, is because her confident, capable persona as Supergirl is so different from that of Kara Danvers, slightly socially awkward middle-aged pansexual, but she has a feeling that Robin might be a little different from most people, and especially in this close a proximity, it isn’t going to be enough to fool her for long. Also, Kara is terrible at being sneaky:

Last week, she and Robin were chewing the fat and Robin asked Kara “If you could pick a different language to English to have as your first language, what would it be?” and Kara had absentmindedly said: “My first language isn’t English.”

Robin’s eyes had lit up and Kara had panicked and made up some guff about her birth parents being Norwegian, and now she’s frantically trying to learn Norwegian on an app on her phone, because of course Robin wants to learn Norwegian, from Kara, native speaker.

Now Lena and Kara are waiting in the car outside Robin’s school to collect Robin from band practice, Kara in the driver’s seat, Lena trying to finish some emails on her laptop.

“I hate having to lie to Robin.”

Lena pinches the bridge of her nose, closes the computer and gives her wife her full attention.

“Me too,” she says. Kara wants to ask Lena’s permission, so she can be the one to say no, but making Lena be the bad guy is a dick move so she doesn’t. They talked about this, when they talked about fostering, how they would keep Kara’s identity a secret until they knew for sure that a child was going to be part of their family for the long haul. Kara wants Robin to be part of their family. She wants Robin to stay.

“I know why I can’t tell her,” she continues, “I really do. It’s just hard not to trust her. I feel like, I don’t know, in my gut: she’s trustworthy.”

“Me too,” Lena echoes. “But she’s still keeping secrets, and until we know who or what has their hooks into her…”

“Mmm.” Kara gives a sad little hum of agreement. “I hate that she doesn’t trust us. I don’t know what else to do to show her she can.”

“Me neither.” Lena sounds defeated. “I guess it’s just — when you were her age and had a secret, what was it like?”

Kara thinks back.

“If it was my secret, then Alex or Eliza could usually guilt me out of it. But if I was keeping it for Alex, or a friend…”

“Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of you.”

“Right. How about you?”

“Lillian could weaponise just about anything, so I made secret-keeping into an art form.”

“You don’t think Robin thinks that’s what we’ll do to her, do you?”

“I really hope not.”

They see Robin lolloping across the lawn, bag swinging wildly. She scans the carpark and when she sees them she waves, almost knocking herself out with the trumpet case she’s obviously forgotten she’s holding. She bounds towards them, almost trips, saves herself at the last second, then throws herself into the back seat of the car like an overgrown puppy. She untangles herself from her luggage before sitting up.

“Hi!” she says, and gives them a grin. Kara’s heart feels like it’s going to explode.

—

Robin looks around the attic and feels her heart tie itself in knots.

Kara and Lena had repeated their offer to give her a slice of the attic, genuinely wanting to give her real-estate in their life.

“Everyone in this family gets to have a little shrine in the attic to the weird hobbies they’re into, you included,” Lena had insisted.

“Unless you’re into horses, no horses allowed in the house!” Kara had clowned.

“I think they’d have trouble with the stairs,” Robin had pointed out, resisting their offer, not wanting to make the charade of permanence deeper than it already was.

Still, she’d come home from school one day to find they’d set up a corner for her anyway. Nothing extravagant, not like Kara’s telescope and the star chart she’s painting up the wall and across the ceiling, or the mini laboratory, where Lena genetically engineered glow-in-the-dark mice for Ruby’s birthday, cementing her role as coolest aunt ever and earning Sam’s wrath: (“Just you wait Luthor, I’m gonna buy your kid a boa constrictor!”)

The space they’ve made for Robin is just a kind of place-holder — a kind of invitation — a desk under one of the dormer windows, some shelves and a pinboard; ready for things she might want to put on them, a music stand and — wonders — a guitar, as if they’d guessed how much her restless fingers had itched for the one she’d been forced to leave behind in Hawkins. 

Her little corner, tucked away in the eaves, has become her favourite place in the graceful old house and a few weeks ago she’d been practicing up here when Lena’s printer had started chewing up its paper, Lena obviously printing from downstairs. 

“Hang on!” Robin had hollered down the stairs, “You’ve got a jam, give me a second!”

She’d opened the printer and dragged the sheet out, pressed the play button again, before realising that she was holding an only slightly crumpled piece of Lena’s personal stationary, the one she has embossed with her letterhead for official correspondence.

Looking around at the space Lena and Kara had made for her in their home and feeling like the worst person in the world she’d taken it. It’s been hidden in her room ever since.

It’s a dumb plan, she knows it is, with so many things that can go wrong, which is why she’s kept it in her back pocket all this time and hoped something better would come to her.

Now she feeds it into the printer, connects her school laptop and hits ‘print.’

Then she takes Lena’s fountain pen off her desk and her own copy of Lena’s biography and carefully copies the signature from the foreword.

She finds an envelope and puts the letter in it, goes back to her bedroom and packs.

She can only take what she can fit in her school bag, even less than what she arrived with. She contemplates the books she brought with her; her ride-or-die books and wonders if Lena and Kara will keep them after she’s gone. Probably not. After what she’s about to do to them, they’ll probably put them in the trash. She wouldn’t blame them.

In the end, she packs the shitty clothes she arrived with: they’re good enough for fighting monsters. She adds the thick jacket Kara and Lena brought her, because her old one is too small. She wishes she could take the happy avocado oodie Kara chose for them on her first night, the one that’s so soft that Esme throws herself at Robin every time she catches her wearing it, squeezing her like she’s a giant plushie. She does take the strip of photos they took at the photo booth at Steelworks; her and Lena and Kara, Esme and Ruby all squashed in like sardines and pulling faces. She knows it’ll hurt to look at it, but heck, she probably deserves it.

She zips the bag closed.

It’s Saturday evening now, which means she’s got about 40 hours left before she blows this life up, along with Kara and Lena’s goodwill. They have plans tonight and Robin’s going to take all the practice she had at squashing her feelings down as a closeted gay kid in small-town Indiana and put it to good use, so she can enjoy this one last glimpse of a life that wasn’t meant for her, this Disneyland version of family, where everyone is queer and everyone likes her and nobody smashes her piggybank for drug money.

—

She’s riding shotgun with Kara, Lena’s gonna meet them there.

“Oh shoot!” Robin’s always amazed that Kara swears like a little kid or an old lady, when she’s neither. “I forgot to get Krypto’s kibble!” 

“Just stop, it’s fine.”

Kara pulls up at a small shopping centre. It’s not a mall exactly, but it’s not not a mall either.

“You can stay in the car if you want,” Kara offers, “I’ll leave you the keys so you can keep the AC running.”

I could just take Kara’s car, drive it cross-country to Hawkins. The thought enters Robin’s mind, and although this is an even worse idea than the one she’s going with — because Robin doesn’t have a licence, probably can’t drive and Kara’s car definitely has GPS, so they’d find her in an instant — the microsecond where she recognises the trust Kara’s placing in her and considers betraying it is enough for her to say:

“Nah, it’s fine, I’ll come in with you.”

Once they’re inside it takes even less time for her to realise her mistake. The supermarket is playing a hellish muzak-with-jingles combo but out in the shopping centre atrium they’re playing a completely different muzak and Robin can hear them both at the same time. Added over that is the fluorescent lights that would be appropriately bright if Robin needed to perform microsurgery without her reading glasses and the fact that her brain doesn’t so much read words as perceive them instantly, so the product labels compete for her limited attention her like they’re each screaming her name. She wants to slide out of her skin and slither away across the linoleum like a slug.

Kara hands her a pair of earplugs.

Oh god. This is love. This is how it’s meant to feel.

Robin doesn’t know whether to weep or to fling her arms around Kara, but either of those options would probably lead to a panic attack at this point, so she just puts the earplugs in and breathes a sigh of relief at the blessed silence. Kara hefts the giant bag of dog food for their giant dog in one hand and puts the other on Robin’s shoulder, steering her safely out of the mall.

—

They go to Noonan’s. It’s karaoke night and the whole gang is there. Ruby was foaming at the mouth because Robin’s been declared old enough to attend, but she’s been left at home with a sitter.

“What’ll it be Robin?” James asks, getting up to get drinks for the table.

“A beer?” Robin tries, because why wouldn’t she?

“She’ll have a soda,” Lena says, rolling her eyes, “sweetheart, give James a hand would you?” Lena asks Kara. As soon as Kara has trotted obediently off after James, Alex and Lena lean in towards Robin.

“Do you want to tell her or should I?” Lena asks Alex. Alex waves magnanimously for Lena to continue. “So you know no one here’s ever going to pressure you to do something you don’t want to, but there’s something we should explain, seeing as you’re part of the family now.” 

That doesn’t sound ominous at all, Robin thinks, alarmed.

“When Kara first brought me to karaoke night, Alex took me aside and told me this and now I’m telling you: Kara is going to want you to do karaoke. And no, she’s not going to be mean or angry if you say no, it’s just that, over time, you’re going to feel like her sad puppy-dog eyes are eating right through to your soul.”

Alex nods sagely and takes over the narrative:

“Which is why I gave Lena the advice I’m going to give you: pick a song you can live with and claim it as your own. Tell her it’s your favourite, practice it secretly and then do it every time she comes at you with her big dumb hopeful face. Book it early, smash it out, job done. Lena hired a voice coach to help with hers.”

Robin goes to laugh, thinking they’re joking, and then looks between them unsure, because they seem pretty pleased with themselves at having come up with the solution they’ve just described. Alex and Lena are categorically the most bad-ass women she knows, surely they’re not serious?

“Uh, thanks for the advice, I guess, but karaoke doesn’t actually scare me,” Robin says. They stare at her, incredulous. Kara approaches with the drinks and Robin leans in, pats Lena on the shoulder with one hand and Alex with the other. “But your secret’s safe with me.”

Kara puts the drinks down, bounces on the toes of her feet like a little kid and claps her hands together.

“Who’s for karaoke?” she asks eagerly. “Robin?”

“Sign me up,” Robin says easily and is rewarded by Kara’s best light-up-the-room smile and the dumbstruck expressions on Lena and Alex’s faces. “C’mon,” she says to Kara, “I want to see what songs they’ve got.”

Sam’s already over at the beleaguered DJ desk, flipping through a laminated list of songs.

“Did you book Alex and Lena in?” Kara asks Sam. “They’ve got their favourites: they always do the same songs,” Kara explains to Robin. “Lena always says: ‘you can’t improve on perfection’ Sam smirks, which makes Robin suspect she knows about Lena and Alex’s little system.

“Yup,” Sam says, “do you think Hollaback Girl or Merideth Brooks?”

“Both of course!” Kara couldn’t be keener. “But you should let me sing Hollaback Girl with you,” she adds as an afterthought. “What are you going to do Robin?”

In the end Robin agrees to do I Want it That Way with Kara, but refuses to be drawn on her own selection.

By the time their table comes up everyone’s pretty rowdy: Lena gets up to their raucous applause, calm and collected as ever, and sings 99 Red Balloons, note-perfect, absolutely deadpan, switching to the original German on the second verse, which in Robin’s book is pretty iconic. The beat has everyone up on their feet and dancing, clapping in time. When the song ends Robin screams her appreciation with the rest of the crowd and Lena just inclines her head graciously like she’s giving a keynote speech and exits the tiny stage.

Alex is apparently more capable of embracing the spirit of rock n’ roll with her cover of What’s Up?, spilling her beer a little as she waves the audience into singing with her at the choruses. James shows off his surprising top range when he does Teenage Dirtbag, Winn stepping up to sing the last verse in character as Noël. 

Robin’s phone buzzes in her pocket and she’s just checking her messages when her song gets called.

“Are you messaging your little friends?” a drunk Sam asks. “Here, give me that.” Sam’s interpretation of boundaries is loose at the best of times and she snatches Robin’s phone, presses the call button as Robin yells in protest. Steve’s face appears. “Our girl Robin’s gonna sing karaoke!” Sam yells into the phone and Robin just has time to hear Steve’s ‘ooph!’ as Nancy and Eddie slam into either side of them in their haste to see the screen, before she hears the opening bars of her song and has to sprint to the front of the crowd.

Robin grabs the microphone with both hands; she knows this song well enough that she doesn’t have to look at the words on the screen, her high-tops grip the stage and she feels more anchored to the earth than she ever has before and feels like she ever will again. She just wishes she had her guitar, because the dirty sound of the 90s punk riffs make her whole body hum, her fingers clench in the shape of chords of their own accord.

She’s chosen right. She’s here with a bunch of queers who are old enough to be her parents — two of them are her parents, at least for the next thirty hours until she spits in the face of their kindness — and this song hits just right.

“Heeeeeeeey, so glad you could make it,” Robin sings, putting her whole soul into it. Lena and Kara have pushed their way to the front, cheering like she’s playing a stadium show, instead of singing karaoke in a tiny dive bar in National City. Her adopted aunts and uncles crowd in behind them, Winn actually sitting on James’ shoulders. Sam’s holding Robin’s phone up and she knows it’s impossible, but she feels like she can hear her friends voices in the throng, Nancy, Steve and Eddie yelling in delight, just for her. 

This is it for me, she thinks, I’m never going to be this happy again. She sings like her days are numbered, because they are.

Chapter Text

Robin's stomach roils with dread and anxiety on the car ride to school on Monday morning. She is not as good an actor as she's trying to be, apparently, because Kara looks at her with concern. 

“Everything okay? she asks. “You seem kind of quiet.” 

“I think I forgot to study for a French test,” Robin lies. God when did I become such a liar?  she thinks in disgust.

“Well, you know what they say in the 1998 hit single by Irish pop sensation B*Witched…”Kara says, which of course leads to her playing the song and then to a bit more late 90s pop than Robin would normally prefer at this time on a Monday morning, but Kara seems so happy singing along and Robin wants to give her every last morsel of happiness before she commits what she's sure Kara will see as an unforgivable betrayal.

Robyn goes to first period and then takes herself to the office, handing over her forged letter in its deliberately crumpled envelope. 

“I'm really sorry,” she says to the lady at the front desk, “I know I should have given you this last week, but I completely forgot completely forgot; it’s been at the bottom of my school bag. I have a doctor’s appointment and my parents are sending a cab to collect me in, uh” — she makes a show of looking at her watch — “about five minutes.”

The woman frowns, inspecting the note. 

“Miss Buckley you know the rules are that you give us the note before the day you need to be excused from class, so we can check in with your parents if we need to.”

Robin has foreseen this objection, so she decides to use her superpower and starts to ramble.

“I know, I know, I'm sorry,” she says hopping from one foot to the other, not really needing to do any acting to look anxious, “it's just that I forgot and it was really hard to get this appointment and I’d get you to call them to check, only Kara has this really important editorial meeting and Lena has a meeting with someone who’s going to donate some money to children’s cancer — I mean they’re donating to the children, not the cancer —  that's my foster mother, Lena Luthor — so I don't really to mess up their work just because I can't get my shit together. And that's why they can't take me to my appointment themselves, because otherwise they would, but instead they're meeting me there, because we got this appointment as a cancellation, you know, so it's kind of all — oh crap sorry!” Robin knocks a tasteful yet understated floral arrangement off the counter with her wild gesticulating and the office lady has to make a dive to save it. “It’s actually a psychiatrist appointment — I’m getting assessed,” Robin finishes.

This is a carefully considered play. She knows Nancy, in similar circumstances, has used the ‘women’s problems’ excuse, but Nancy has a wellspring of chutzpah that Robin does not have at her disposal, and plus this is a fancy girls’ school and Robin reckons the receptionist will have heard that one before. Also no one who’s spent five minutes in my company would ever doubt I need to be assessed for something, Robin thinks ruefully.

Right on cue, a cab driver enters Reception.

“I’ve got a cab here booked under Luthor-Danvers,” he says and Robin looks pleadingly at the receptionist.

“Just go,” she says and Robin goes while the going is good.

“Where to?” the cab driver asks as Robin settles in the back seat.

“Central Station,” she says, “the bus depot.”

She’s not taking a bus, at least not from here, and not to Hawkins: both her foster parents are frighteningly intelligent, they’d figure it out in a nanosecond. Instead she goes into the bathroom and changes, feeling a pang of guilt as she stuffs her uniform into a trashcan, pulls her hoodie down low to hide her face and disappears into the crowd.

—

Between them, Lena and Kara have been involved in a stupidly large number of kidnap scenarios, so when Robin doesn’t come out of school when she’s meant to, Lena gives it five minutes and then lets her panic reign supreme.

It’s band practice night, so Lena’s waiting in the carpark of a mostly deserted school — she sees Robin’s fellow bandmates leave one-by-one, sees the teacher lock up behind them, and then not seeing Robin, she gets out of the car and accosts the teacher.

Lena’s been the recipient of some truly shitty news in her life, most of it with consequences far more momentous than hearing that Robin wasn’t in band practice at all this evening, but the bottom still drops out of her world.

It takes half an hour — by which time Kara has arrived — to get the principal involved, to find out that Robin only attended one of her classes that day, to drag the administration assistant who was on front desk duty away from whatever innocent pastimes she had planned for the evening and down to the school to locate the forged note.

Seeing the note should make Lena feel better, because it means that Robin probably left under her own steam rather than being — to pluck an option at random— kidnapped as leverage by an extremist anti-alien group, but it doesn’t.

Robin is still out there alone, it’s dark, she’s only sixteen and — if she’s planning on making her way to Hawkins — there’s still plenty of time for her to be kidnapped — or worse. Then Lena’s brain supplies the horrifying possibility that Robin might be hitchhiking and her legs go wobbly.

“Steady,” Kara’s arm is around her, squeezing her; her wife as she’s always been: Lena’s anchor in the storm. Lena takes a breath.

—

Kara would normally have a lot to say on the subject of corruption and nepotism. One of the things she respects most about Lena, is the way she’s consistently insisted that the rules apply to her too, even when people go out of their way to wave them for her — it’s a value that they’ve both rigidly adhered to throughout their lives.

But now, with Robin out on the streets, Kara doesn’t hesitate for a second to pull every string at her disposal, so that before an hour has elapsed, NCPD have issued an all-units alert and the DEO are throwing their resources, not at monitoring the extraterrestrial threat level, but at searching for Supergirl’s wayward teenaged foster daughter. Alex doesn’t even hesitate when Kara makes the call, and it’s a measure of the depth of their bond as sisters that NCPD officer that comes to brief them is Maggie Sawyer; Alex has clearly called in all her favours too.

Maggie sets a plastic evidence bag before them on the kitchen table.

“Is this Robin’s?” she asks. The pan I used to make Robin’s breakfast is still sitting in the sink, and now her school uniform is sitting in front of me in an evidence bag, Kara thinks.

Kara looks through the plastic, shaking the bag a little to get a better look. Robin’s got a habit of drawing on her shirt cuffs when she’s bored in class, which means Kara doesn’t even need to look for the iron-on name tags she painstakingly applied to all the pieces of Robin’s uniform, as per school rules, to be able to say:

“It’s hers.”

“Where did you find it?” Lena asks, voice tight.

“In a trashcan just outside the restrooms at Central Station. We’ve spoken to the cab driver that picked her up from school and that’s where he dropped her off. She specifically asked for the bus depot. I don’t want you to read too much into this; all it could mean is that she’s wearing different clothes — I’ll need you to go through her wardrobe and see if you can spot what’s missing.” Maggie pulls out a tablet. “But first, here’s the CCTV for Central Station for the hour after she was dropped off, and I want you to watch it with me and see if you can spot her. I’ve got officers on it, and I know Alex will probably have someone running it through facial recognition software, but I think you two might have the best chance of recognising her.”

They don’t. The station is busy and the quality of the footage is poor. There are a few people who could be Robin: wearing hoodies, sunglasses, hats, scarves, but there’s never an ‘a-ha’ moment of recognition, no clear view of a face that lets them know for sure it’s Robin. Maggie shows them footage of the intercity bus ranks, starting at the routes that go in the direction of Indiana, but Robin doesn’t seem to be getting on any of them. Maggie pulls the tablet back towards her and Kara has to resist the temptation to cling on to it, to beg to be allowed to try one more time.

“I know that you two are used to being in the centre of operations, but right now I need you to step back, to do all the things we ask parents of missing kids to do: check her room, ring around her friends, keep calling her phone, stay put in case she comes home. Leave the rest to me and Alex — we know what we’re doing.”

Kara ushers Maggie out, tolerates Maggies kind squeeze to her shoulder as gracefully as she can. She goes back into the kitchen to face her wife.

“Are we going to stay out of it?” she asks Lena.

“Like hell we are,” Lena says.

—

Robin is walking down the side of the road. It’s not ideal, but she’s got a couple of places on her journey where she’s got a couple of miles on foot between connections. Her route goes across state, in the opposite direction to Hawkins, catching suburban buses whenever they take her in an approximation of where she needs to go, avoiding getting on at stops in populated areas to avoid getting picked up on CCTV as much possible. She’s not stupid, she knows they’ll be pulling in footage from public transport, but she’s counting on the fact that they’re going to have to work outwards from the intercity connections going westwards and that municipal buses going east will be last on the list.

The downside to this plan is that it’s late and the traffic is so occasional around here that every car going past makes her flinch, dreading the sound of an engine slowing down. She’s wearing the oldest and rattiest of Steve’s hoodies and she hunches into herself, hoping she looks like a boy, praying that the curb crawlers pass her by.

The bus she’s walking towards is the last in the series; an overnight greyhound which will take her long-haul and out of state, a route that services small towns and goes nowhere near the major depots. The four previous municipal buses have all been the last scheduled for the night and she’s been nearly the only person on them apart from the occasional late-night shift worker or bleary-eyed drunks. She’s too wired to read and she can’t turn her phone on until she gets a new sim, so she’s passed the journeys with her cheek against the window, staring out into the blank blackness and counting the flashes as it’s broken by pools of sodium yellow light as the street lamps roll past.

—

Lena’s wishes they’d replaced the pay-as-you-go phone Robin arrived on with one on a plan, because then she’d have access to Robin’s calls and texts. Why did we let our teenager use what is essentially a burner phone? What kind of irresponsible parents are we? she berates herself. 

She’s searched Robin’s room, but it’s hard to know what clothes are missing, other than her winter coat, because Lena doesn’t know whether Robin threw out the clothes she brought with her.

They’ve been paying Robin’s allowance onto a debit card for her and Lena can see that Robin’s been withdrawing nearly the whole amount in irregular sums, but whether she’s spent it or has been squirrelling it away it’s hard to say. Even if she has, it’s not a huge amount, not enough to get her too far or in too much trouble — they’ve been very calculated about that — but it’s not necessarily a comfort now because it also means Robin probably doesn’t have the resources to get herself out of trouble either.

Lena calls around Robin’s friends. 

When she tells Steve Robin is missing there’s a long silence on the line, then:

“Ahhh…. shit.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Lena says acerbically. “Do you know where she is?”

“No,” he says, and she can feel his anxiety, “I knew she was going to try something like this, I’ve been telling her to stay put for months.” 

Lena resists the temptation to point out that if Steve knew, then perhaps he should have told someone, like her.

“Does she have other friends that would help her? Anyone I don’t know about?”

There’s a pause and then Steve says:

“We’re her only friends,” and as if he feels the need to justify that statement: “she doesn’t trust people that easily.”

Well, that fits, because she apparently didn’t trust us, Lena thinks unhappily.

“Are you going to tell me what it is you’re all involved in?” Lena asks him directly. 

“We’re not involved in anything,” Steve says reflexively. “Lena; will you tell me if Robin turns up?”

“Will you?” she asks him and then hangs up the phone in disgust when he doesn’t reply.

—

It’s amazing to Lena how many of Robin’s friends families back in Hawkins have landlines — the place really is stuck in a time warp.

A person who is presumably her mother puts Nancy Wheeler on the line at Lena’s request.

“Robin is missing,” she says, not wasting any time.

Nancy’s response is much the same as Steve’s.

“Fuck.”

Lena knows Nancy the least well of Robin’s friends: Robin talks about her like she hung the moon, and presumably the kid can crack a smile, because she sometimes hears them all laughing together when Robin is on a call, but every time Lena has had occasion to talk to Nancy, Nancy’s blue eyes are always suspicious and her tone is always guarded.

“I don’t know where she is Lena,” Nancy volunteers.

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“Not if Robin didn’t want me to. She should have a choice over what happens to her; she’s not a prisoner.”

Lena’s heart lurches — is that how Robin feels? Like a prisoner?

“She’s still a child. Actually you’re both still children.” It’s the best retort Lena can come up with, but she knows it’s not her best work.

Nancy gives the most bitter laugh Lena has ever heard, and she’s heard a lot of bitter laughs in her time. 

“I don’t feel like a child,” Nancy says.

—

It’s a low blow calling Dustin, but Lena doesn’t care.

“Before you ask, I don’t know where Robin is,” he says, the second his worried mother puts him on the line. “If she didn’t tell Steve or Nancy, she wouldn’t tell me. Do you think she’ll be okay?” he asks, voice full of such genuine concern that Lena wants to reassure him, she really does.

“I hope so Dustin,” is all she can manage.

—

That task done, Lena drags every monitor they have in the house to the kitchen table and starts hacking into all the CCTV feeds she can get her mitts on, running a facial recognition algorithm on them and checking every possible match she gets for Robin’s face.

She’s sure she’s duplicating Alex’s work and possibly Maggie’s, but a) she can’t not do anything and b) she’s pretty sure Maggie will be massively hampered by rules and Alex will draw the line at hacking into people’s doorbells, bird-feeders and dash-cams. Lena doesn’t give two hoots about the notional concept of legality when Robin is trekking across America at night alone.

—

Kara has gone in to the DEO and while Alex has had the good sense not to try and stand her down, she has taken her aside:

“Kara, you need to stop futzing around my analysts and let them get on with finding your kid,” she says, “you’re upsetting everyone.”

Kara rakes a hand through her hair and tries to take a deep breath in.

“Look,” Alex says kindly, “we’ve already got tabs on anyone who’s been identified as a threat to you and Lena, but we’ve increased that watch brief in case anyone even thinks of trying anything opportunistic while Robin’s at large, but really at this point this is just a case of locating her: she can’t drive and we’ve got so much data coming in from the public transport system that we’re going to get a ping sooner or later. She can’t walk all the way to Hawkins.”

“Alex I—” Kara doesn’t know how to put it into words.

Alex gives her a hug. 

“I know. I’d be the same. I called Mom and told her what’s going on; she’s on her way. I said we’d probably have found Robin by the time she gets here, but she said she’d keep on driving anyway until she heard otherwise.”

Kara squeezes her sister’s hand, unbelievably grateful for her family.

“Go patrol with J’onn,” Alex advises, “keep the city safe and look for Robin while you’re at it.”

—

In the end, in spite of all the bodies they’ve recruited to help, it’s Kara — or rather Supergirl — flying laps overhead — who finds Robin. Apparently, without Kara noticing, Robin’s has become one of the three sets of heartbeats she can recognise out of all the hearts beating in the world. Alex’s, Lena’s and now Robin’s.

Robin’s heartbeat is on a bus heading east, about four hours drive from NC. Kara is horrified at how far away Robin actually managed to get. Alex has a DEO helicopter waiting and Lena gets in it, despite the fact she hates helicopters, ever since hers fell from the sky with her in it. About an hour out, as the bus drives, there’s a hire car waiting for her at the nearest helipad, because landing a helicopter on a highway in front of a public bus might be misconstrued as an overreaction. Kara calls in all her favours and has Winn hack the Department of Transport server and hold all the traffic lights that stand between Lena and Robin at green, because she knows Lena will run them all if she doesn’t. 

They’re waiting at the bus stop when it pulls up and they get on.

“Oh shit,” Robin sums up the situation when she sees them standing in the aisle. 

“Oh shit is right,” Lena says. “Come on, this is your stop.”

Robin doesn’t protest.

—

“How did you find me so fast?” Robin asks, as they watch the bus pull away from the stop. “Did you implant a tracker in me while I was asleep or something?”

“Kara would never let me do that.”

“I’m beginning to rethink my position after today!” Kara says hotly. “What was your plan here, Rob? This bus doesn’t go anywhere near Hawkins.”

“I was going to catch the bus to Midwest City and get a flight to Indy from there.”

“Where were you going to get the money for a flight? Oh my god: are you selling your dexies on the playground at school?” Kara is obviously appalled by this new thought.

“I’m sixteen, we don’t have a playground at school.”

“Robin! That’s prescription medicine!”

“I’m not dealing drugs, okay? I— I pawned my guitar.” Robin feels wretched, both at the memory of selling the most precious thing she owns and at betraying the people who gave it to her.

She looks over and sees actual tears in Lena’s eyes. If it was Kara it wouldn’t be so shocking — she’s seen Kara cry at a commercial for senior dog food — but it’s Lena, who never loses her composure.

“Is it really so bad?” Lena asks and Robin can hear how hard she’s trying to keep her voice steady. “I thought you were happy with us.”

Robin couldn’t feel more like a worm if she tried. 

“No,” she says, “it’s not bad at all. It’s… really, really good.” She chokes on the words, her voice breaking.

“Then why Robin, help us understand, please.” It’s a terrible thing to hear Lena beg.

“I can’t,” Robin says.

Kara tries:

“Rob, all we want is to help you, do you think you could maybe try giving us a chance and tell us what's going on?”

“Please don’t ask me,” Robin says, because what else can she say?

The silence stretches between them. Lena’s shoulders sag.

“Want me to drive?” Kara asks.

“Please.” Lena hands her the keys.

It’s a long ride back to National City in silence, each one of them locked in their own unhappiness; except that Robin was already unhappy before she met Lena and Kara, but they were happy before they met her.

Robin doesn’t dare ask where they’re headed, but then the streets start to look familiar and she blurts out:

“Wait, where are we going?”

“Home of course,” Kara answers the question without much thought, but Lena turns around in her seat to stare at Robin, who’s huddled in on herself in the backseat with her knees pulled up to her chest.

“Stop the car,” Lena says suddenly and Kara brakes so hard Robin can smell burning rubber. Lena throws her door open and just about tumbles out in her haste, ripping open the rear door and ducking slightly so she’s eye to eye with Robin.

“Did you think we were going to throw you out on the street? Return you like a puppy to the pound?” she demands.

Robin’s stunned silence is obviously answer enough for Lena, because she throws her arms around Robin. It’s uncomfortable, because Robin’s knees are in the way and Lena’s holding on so tight she can barely breath, but Robin finds she doesn’t mind. The only person that’s ever held her in an attempt to comfort her is Steve, and although he does his best he’s just a dumb kid like her, whereas Lena’s a grown-ass adult, so while Robin doesn’t know how things can possibly turn out okay, if Lena tells her they’re going to it’s a little easier to believe her. Lena clings to Robin like she’s drowning and Robin is a lifebuoy. And there’s a little irony in that, Robin thinks because it’s the exact opposite way around.

“There is nothing you could do that would make me abandon you.” Lena whispers into Robin’s hair.

“What she said,” agrees Kara. “And for the record, we’d never return a puppy to the pound either.”

Lena releases Robin.

“Can you… can you sit in the back?” Robin asks Lena, feeling like the biggest idiot ever for needing this.

“Scoot over,” Lena says in answer, sliding into Robin’s vacated seat and doing the seatbelt up. Robin curls up against her like she’s six years old and Lena puts an arm around her, stroking her hair. Robin lets herself be comforted.

The house is dark when they arrive home, Krypto beside himself with joy to see them.

Robin doesn’t quite know what to do with herself. Where do they go from here? She wants to give up, wants this to be the last dumb stunt she ever pulls, wants to accept Kara and Lena’s forgiveness and be folded into their love forever more. But obviously, she has responsibilities.

“You should call Steve,” Lena advises.

Robin groans. “It’s late.”

“Precisely. You don’t want him up all night worrying.”

And of course she doesn’t want that.

It’s not the most enjoyable interaction she’s had with Steve.

“Jesus Robin — what is wrong with you? You nearly gave us all a heart attack. We were worried.”

“You were worried?!” Robin thinks this is a bit rich.

“Yes Robin, we were, because anything could have happened.”

“I was on a Greyhound bus, I’m not the one getting chunks taken out of me by creatures from a hell dimension!”

Steve pauses for a beat.

“You heard about that huh?”

“Yes I did! So I’d take a moment to consider before you talk to me about being worried!”  Robin says hotly.

Steve is more gentle when he continues: “It’s not like all the extraordinary crap gives us a free pass on all the ordinary crap that can happen. Like…. really bad things happen to teenaged girls travelling alone, Rob. It’s just — we’ve survived so much; I don’t want to have to imagine you dead at some truck stop in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

“Me either,” she manages, voice raspy with unshed tears. “I hate this and I don’t know what to do.”

“Me neither,” he admits. “I love you dingus.”

“Me too,” she says and rings off, wanting to cry, but not letting herself have that luxury.

This lasts as long as it takes to get to her bedroom and discover that her guitar is back on her bed. In spite of all she’s put them through, her foster parents have decided against tough love, against letting her bear the consequence of her own bad choices. Some time during that long, fraught journey home they must have arranged for someone to go and get Robin’s guitar out of hock and bring it back here, just spare her the pain of losing something else that was important to her. It’s kind of crazy how it’s easier to fight back tears when faced with the shitty dumpster fire of the Upside Down, than it is in the face of Kara and Lena’s relentless kindness to her.

Robin gets into her pyjamas and pads down the hall to Lena and Kara’s room, but when she gets there, she can’t find the words to say what she wants to say to them: thank you for loving me even when I’ve been such an asshole, so she just stands in their doorway snivelling.

They’re still up, Lena’s reading glasses perched on her nose, salt and pepper hair pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, Kara in Lena’s old MIT sweater, has her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. When she sees Robin, having a minor breakdown on the threshold, she sets her tea aside and flips the comforter back in invitation. Robin climbs in between them and Kara pulls the covers back over her, allows Robin to squirrel her way down the bed like she’s planning to hibernate for the winter. When Lena clicks her reading lamp off and Kara’s finished her tea and Robin’s still shown no sign of leaving, still a sad scrunched up little heap under the covers, Kara and Lena lie down, turning inwards to face her, each flinging an arm over her, shielding her from the world.

Held between them — and maybe for the first time in her life — Robin recognises what she’s feeling as safety.

Let me wake up tomorrow and be a little kid again, Robin prays to the uncaring universe, as she falls asleep; let me wake up tomorrow without the fate of the word on my shoulders, so I can stay here.

—

Robin sleeps late and when she wakes she’s alone in the Kara and Lena’s bed, shadows dancing on the wall as the sun streams in between the leaves of the plane tree that grows outside the window.

She finds Kara in the kitchen.

“What about school?” she asks.

“I called you in sick,” Kara explains. It’s not a reward!” she says sternly, then she thinks for a beat and adds: “It’s not a punishment either.” She sighs. “I think we all need a reset after yesterday. Plus we need to have a family conference.”

“What’s for breakfast? Pancakes?”

“Pancakes are for people who didn’t scare the crap out of us yesterday,” Kara says with an approximation of gruffness, holding her ground for barely a second before caving and adding: “I’ll fix you eggs.”

Facing Kara’s wrath is like being savaged by a tiny fluffy puppy. 

Lena comes in, towelling her damp hair, accepts the coffee Kara passes her.

“I told Robin about the family conference,” Kara tells her.

“After breakfast,” Lena suggests.

“Can it be right now?” Robin asks. “Otherwise I’m going to be too nervous to eat these eggs.”

Lena thinks about what Robin’s said and tilts her head in gracious acquiescence, sitting down at the counter with Robin, Kara slides Lena her bowl of granola and pulls up her own stool, squirting hot-sauce on the other half of the scrambled eggs and forking them straight out of the pan into her mouth. Lena rolls her eyes in affectionate exasperation and for a moment it feels like any other morning.

Lena sips her coffee and regards Robin with her piercing particoloured eyes. She lets her hang just long enough to make Robin squirm. They might still love me, but I’m not off the hook.

“We can’t make you trust us and we can’t make you tell us anything you don’t want to. All I ask of you is that you don’t insult our intelligence by lying. Can you give us that, at least?”

What an opening sally, Robin thinks, feeling like she’s underprepared for her half of the presidential debate.

“Yes.” There’s no point trying to lie to Lena anyway, and lying to Kara, with her unrelenting faith in humanity, makes Robin feel dirty. She’ll have to rely on pleading the Fifth.

“Am I right in thinking whatever is going on for you that had you running back to Hawkins is still happening?” Lena asks.

Robin nods.

“And there’s no chance you’ll tell us what it is.” It’s a statement not a question.

“Please don’t ask me.”

“I can understand why you’d want to go back to Hawkins,” Kara takes her turn, “I know what it’s like to be homesick, believe me I do.”

Robin can’t help it, the idea of being homesick for Hawkins is so absurd, she lets out a snort.

“Trust me, if I never set foot in Hawkins again, it would not be a problem, it’s just—” How much can she say? “There are people there who need me.”

“Then why not let us take you back there?” Kara asks, insistent. “We’ll go right now if you want. We can just be there with you, we don’t have to be up in your business.”

Robin wants to say yes, she really does, but she has a hard enough time keeping secrets from Lena and Kara when they’re a couple of thousand miles from Hawkins, let alone when they’re faced with the reality of curfews, military patrols and huge fault-lines running through the town.

“But also,” Kara continues desperately, “haven’t we told you — haven’t we shown you — how family works for us? Your people are our people, there’s nothing you have to shoulder on your own.”

Lena steps back into the conversation.

“I know you think whatever it is, we couldn’t possibly have anything to contribute, but think you’d find that we’re pretty resourceful. Between us there’s very little Kara and I can’t tackle.”

Before Lena had chipped in Robin had almost wavered, but now, with the image of Lena and Kara trying to ‘tackle’ Vecna she thinks:

No. No way. Because you can barely open a pickle jar and Alex told me how Kara once tried to pet a coyote: you two wouldn’t last two minutes in the Upside Down.

“No. If I go to Hawkins I’m not taking you with me.” 

Lena frowns.

“What if we went without you?” she says.

“What?” 

“What if Kara and I went to Hawkins and started digging around on our own accord — what would we find?”

Robin is horrified at this turn of events. “I can’t stop you,” she says, “but I’m begging you not to.”

“You see, I don’t think I trust you not to go running off into the night again,” Lena says, “and even if none of the normal bad things happen to you, Kara and I have made enemies in our time and there are people out there who would probably love it if you gave them a chance to teach us a lesson by leaving your lifeless corpse on our doorstep.”

Lena has a way with words that turns them into a slap in the face, without her even having to raise her voice, but she’s never directed it at Robin before.

“So maybe that’s the deal. If you don’t want us in Hawkins, fine. We don’t want you on the run. Everyone stays put. Fine. But if you hightail it back to Hawkins, we’ll be right behind you.”

It’s an impossible situation. If Kara and Lena end up in Hawkins, they will meddle, Robin knows it. Maybe her friends parents have cultivated the kind of wilful obliviousness required for a quiet life in Hawkins, but Kara’s an investigative journalist for godssake.

“You’d be making me choose.” Robin blurts out. Between protecting you and protecting the other people I love. “And I don’t know if I can live with that choice.” I don’t think I can live with the consequences of that choice.

Kara opens her mouth, no doubt to try another heartfelt entreaty, but Lena shushes her with a hand. She stares into Robin’s eyes, so that Robin feels her thoughts are written right there for Lena to see.

“You’re serious, aren’t you? Whatever it is, you really believe that there’s a balance and it’s hanging on you.”

“I know it,” Robin says simply.

“My god Robin, what have you got yourself involved in?”

Something I don’t want you anywhere near. Robin steels herself.

“This isn’t working out,” Robin says, “I want a new placement.”

Lena’s flinch is so small Robin might not have noticed it if she wasn’t looking for it, but Kara reacts as if Robin’s hit her. Robin’s never deliberately hurt anyone in her life, but this is the only way forward she can see.

Lena draws in a long breath and lets it out.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not happy here with us,” she commands. “Tell me honestly that you don’t want to be part of this family and I’ll get on the phone to Sophie right now.”

Robin looks her in the eye.

“I don’t want to be part of this family,” she says, forcing herself not to look away.

There is a beat.

“Robin Buckley, for someone who lies constantly, you are a terrible liar,” Lena says with distain.

Robin groans and puts her head on the counter.

“I have an idea,” Kara says, raising her hand like a polite third-grader. “Hawkins is out, for all of us, apparently, but what if we brought your people here? We could get Steve and Nancy on a flight and have them here this evening or tomorrow morning.”

It’s so simple. It’s not a solution to Vecna, or the Upside Down, or anything other than the ache in Robin’s heart, but the thought of seeing her friends, of not being alone with her predicament, of getting to wrap her arms around the people who until recently made up a large percentage of her whole world — it’s everything.

“You’d do that? For me?” Robin whispers.

This time it’s Kara and Lena’s turn to groan theatrically and mime banging their heads on the counter.

“What?” Robin demands at their weird behaviour.

“Robin have we not demonstrated that there’s very little we wouldn’t do for you?” Lena asks, frustrated.

“Yeah, dingus!” Kara adds for emphasis. “Call your friends and ask them, and then Lena and I will call Nancy’s parents and organise some flights. And then get yourself showered and dressed.”

Robin looks down at her pyjamas.

“I was going to go back to bed for a couple of hours.”

“Oh no you don’t!” Kara says firmly. “People who tried to skip town get to walk the dog.” She hands Robin Krypto’s lead off the peg, thus ensuring that Krypto won’t give Robin a second’s peace until the promised walk has been delivered. “And while we might have drawn the line at implanting a tracker in you, we did chip the dog, so don’t get any ideas!” Kara yells after Robin, as she heads towards the bathroom.

Chapter Text

It’s a weird kind of day. As commanded, Robin does drag herself out to walk the dog — or rather Krypto drags her; big golden tail thwacking joyously against the hallway wainscot as she fastens his harness — it’s really the least she can do.

The rest of the day is passed in a hazy kind of limbo: they’re all exhausted, but none of them get the chance for a nap because their friends and family keep dropping around with thinly veiled excuses, like they just need to see proof of life, to lay actual hands on Robin to trust that she’s okay.

It doesn’t make her feel less guilty — in fact it kind of makes her feel like she’s attending her own wake. 

Eliza comes over with a casserole she’s managed to materialise between Midvale and National City, asks Robin thoughtful questions about her studies and tactfully doesn’t mention her bid for freedom.

Sam and Ruby come over — Ruby has somehow also managed a day off school — Sam carries a tray full of takeout coffee from Lena’s favourite coffee haunt because she is, indeed, Lena’s oldest and closest friend. Lena takes the whole tray out of her hands the second she opens the door, leaving Sam and Kara to follow her through to the kitchen. They shut the door behind them, presumably so they can talk about Robin.

Ruby and Robin are left alone in the living room.

“You tried to run away,” Ruby says accusingly, staring Robin down. Robin doesn’t bother to deny it. “You were just going to leave and not say goodbye?” Ruby asks and there’s a little quaver in her voice that gives Robin’s heart another kick in its already fragile ass.

“C’mere,” Robin instructs, indicating the other half of the sofa. Ruby crosses her arms and glares. “No, really, please,” Robin says, “I’m not going to do this if you’re just going to  stand there giving me The Look: I’ve already been given The Look by Lena and I’ll probably get it from Alex, so I don’t know what you think you’re going to achieve in that space.”

Ruby concedes the point and condescends to sit on the arm of the sofa.

“It wasn’t about you Rubes,” Robin says, “I love having you as my cousin. But I know it was a crappy thing to do.”

“Why did you do it then?”

Robin sighs; she doesn’t have the energy to lie to Ruby, so she tells as much of the truth as she can. “Because there are people who need me.”

Ruby’s eyes narrow. “Are you a superhero with a secret identity?”

Robin laughs in surprise. “No! I’m just a dumb teenager. What gave you that idea?”

“It’s not as stupid as it sounds,” Ruby says enigmatically, then, plaintively: “I need you, I need you around.”

“No, Ruby — you just want me around. There’s a difference. You’re surrounded by capable adults who adore you. The people who need me don’t have that.”

“What about you?” Ruby asks.

“What about me?”

“Well, you said you have people that need you, but what do you need?”

An end to this line of questioning, Robin thinks.

“I don’t know Rubes, but it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. Look, can we just play a game on the Switch or something?”

Ruby raises an eyebrow at this obvious deflection in a way she’s surely learnt from Lena.

“You’re wrong,” she says imperiously, “I may be surrounded by capable adults, but I still need a cool older cousin.”

“Whether I stay or I go, you’ll still need one of those,” Robin points out.

“True,” Ruby acknowledges, finally allowing Robin a smile. “Come on, dork, let’s go play Switch while Mom is too distracted to add it to my screen time.”

“You’re cunning like a fox, you know,” Robin tells her, giving her hair a ruffle.

“One of us has to be.”

—

Alex and Kelly come over on their way home from picking Esme up from preschool. Robin  thanks her lucky stars they don’t seem to have told Esme about her jailbreak, because facing Ruby was bad enough. As predicted, Alex turns The Look on Robin, before crushing her into a bone-breaking hug.

“Don’t do that again,” she says gruffly, before thrusting a giant plastic tub into Robin’s arms. “I told Esme you’d play Barbies with her,” she says and then strides out of the room, obviously considering Robin both sufficiently chastened and punished by this exchange. The expression Kelly exchanges with Robin contains multitudes, but there’s definite overtones of exasperated amusement in there.

Robin looks down into the little face: Esme is practically vibrating with excitement.

“Okay,” she says, and upends the tub of toys on to the floor, “let’s do this.”

—

Honestly, Kara can’t wait to hit the hay. By the time evening comes around and they’ve talked over Robin’s escape attempt again and again with a succession of their nearest and dearest, she just wants to fall face down on the bed, but instead she and Lena are waiting with Robin at the Domestic Arrivals part of the terminal at National City Airport. 

It’s a mirror-image of the last time they waited here: this time it’s Robin crawling out of her skin with nerves, not them. She’s so jumpy it’s making Kara’s skin itch just watching her.

“Why don’t you wait by the barrier?” Kara suggests. “Then you’ll be right there when she comes through security.” 

“Good thinking!” Robin bounds away and Kara feels a little bad; like she does when she pretends to Krypto that they’re going to the park when they’re actually going to the vets.

“Oh thank goodness,” Lena groans in relief, “she was driving me crazy. Thank god I never have to be an awkward teenager again.”

They’ve managed to get Nancy Wheeler on the last flight of the day. 

“Is it okay if it’s just Nancy?” Robin had asked, after fifteen minutes conferring over message with her friends. “She and Steve don’t want to leave the kids at the same time.” Kara had practically heard Lena think: ‘what the fuck?’ but in the end they’d both held their peace. 

Lena had considered Karen Wheeler a bit too quick to accept their offer to fly her daughter out of state, especially considering it’s in the middle of the week during the school term. “I have to ask,” she’d said, “do you think Robin and Nancy are keeping secrets?” and then been startled when Karen had laughed, mirthlessly, down the line.

“I don’t think, I know Nancy is keeping secrets,” Karen had said, “but if you can get them out of her, you’re a better woman than me.”

—

Nancy does hug Robin, when she comes through the barrier and spots her. Normally so aware of her surroundings, she just dumps her carry-on on the floor and stands there in everyone’s way, with her arms around Robin and her face buried in Robin’s shoulder. Like a lot of tiny people, she hugs overarm, as if she’s the tall one, so she’s practically dangling from Robin’s neck. Robin lets Nancy be the first one to break away.

“It’s good to see you,” Nancy says, and Robin knows she’s grinning so hard she must look like a complete idiot, but she just can’t help it, and Nancy’s grinning back at her, and one of them should probably say something, but somehow neither of them does, until Kara whistles with her fingers in her mouth and mimes a suitcase from across the Arrivals Hall.

“Oh! Right! Yeah — let’s get your bag!” Robin says, and the spell is broken.

—

Kara and Lena watch as Nancy emerges from between the sliding doors and Robin waves wildly, like she’s stranded on a desert island and signalling to a passing aircraft, not just standing a few feet away behind a waist-high barrier.

“Do you think they’re just friends, or ‘just friends?’” Kara asks, making the air quotes with her fingers.

“Kara! It’s none of our business,” Lena chides, then ruins it by adding: “but on balance, I’d say: ‘just friends,’” as she watches Robin trip over herself with eagerness to help Nancy get her luggage from the carousel, spotting it a little too late, but grabbing it anyway instead of letting it go around a second time and nearly getting hauled around on the belt with it.

“That,” says Lena watching Robin, “is one point for Nurture over Nature.”

“Huh?” says Kara, oblivious.

—

Robin is sure that Lena and Kara would have made an effort regardless of the circumstances, but Robin thinks their evident relief that she’s not self-destructing is making them even more profligate with their time and energy than usual and she’s glad, because as ridiculous as it is, she wants Nancy to like them like she does. 

When they get home from the airport Kara proposes a large snack or a small meal.

“Nachos! Let’s have nachos!”

“We literally had a full meal less than three hours ago!” Lena protests.

“Yeah, but Nancy probably had to eat airplane food which everybody knows is ick,” Kara points out.

“Actually I had dinner before I got on the flight…” Nancy says, letting them hang just enough for Robin and Kara’s faces to fall and Lena to get complacent, before adding with her wicked grin: “…but I still want nachos.”

“Yes!” Kara punches her fist in the air. Lena throws up her hand in mock defeat, allowing Nancy the deciding vote.

The beautiful old house might be huge, but the lion’s share of the action in it always takes place around the kitchen island, and tonight is no exception. They talk and laugh as Kara fixes them nachos, and the way Lena and Kara make it easy makes Robin’s skin feel taut with pride, as does the way Nancy holds her own, confident and witty, even though she knows they’re not really hers — not any of them — to be proud of.

The talk about stupid stuff; TV shows and music, celebrity gossip, the best toppings for pancakes (Lena: berries, Robin: bacon,  Nancy: banana —urgh!— and Kara: absolutely everything.) They argue about the things in National City that Nancy should see while she’s in town. Kara offers to take Nancy to Catco for a day’s work experience, which makes Robin pre-emptively mourn the loss of Nancy’s company for a day, but only silently because obviously a day spent at Catco is Nancy’s idea of a dream come true and Robin will always be the first to be cheering in the front row of the Nancy Wheeler Show.

Kara decides they need s'mores and Lena points out that it’s eleven o’clock at night and they are not lighting the fire-pit, but then — as she always does when Kara asks — relents and fetches the culinary torch she uses to make crème brûlée, on the understanding that Robin and Kara are absolutely forbidden from using it. Lena does let Nancy have a go and then eventually gives Robin a turn and is very nice about what happens to the dishtowel.

Finally, it’s a quarter to midnight and Lena and Kara call time. 

“Where would you like to sleep Nancy?” Kara asks. “You can have one of the guest rooms or you two can have the air-mattresses in the attic like Esme and Ruby do when they come for a sleepover.”

The unspoken message is that wherever Nancy’s sleeping it’s not going to be in Robin’s bedroom and Robin opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before she realises she has no idea what to say in response to that, especially not in front of Nancy.

“The attic sounds fun,” says Nancy sweetly.

—

The attic is dark except for a neon lamp in the shape of a rainbow, tucked away in one of the bookcases. Its weak light makes the shadows seem deeper and Nancy’s crystalline eyes seem to glow like a cat’s as she lies on her side facing Robin.

“They seem nice,”she says.

“They are.”

“They’re not what I expected. Particularly from Lena Luthor.”

“What did you expect?”

“Not mom-vibes and s’mores. I mean she’s done some pretty wild shit.”

“What, wild shit like improving healthcare and increasing the minimum wage?” Robin says, knowing full well that that’s not what Nancy’s referring to; that she’s thinking of the sketchy stuff Lena’s been on the periphery of, courtesy of her family, maybe even about what happened to Lena’s mother and brother. “Lena’s a sweetheart!” she says defensively, hating the thought that Lena had to even live through that stuff, let alone that it’s what she’ll be remembered for.

Nancy views her reaction impassively. “I’m not judging,” she says. “I’ve done some pretty wild shit too.” 

Robin subsides, still a little disgruntled. “Yeah well, it doesn’t stop me from liking you and it doesn’t stop me from liking them.”

In the half-light Robin senses, rather than sees, Nancy give her trademark half smile.

“You seem happy.” Robin has no rejoinder for this, because her happiness is such a complicated topic at the moment, but Nancy seems to take her silence for agreement. “It suits you,” she says, “you look good. And I like this.” She reaches across the gap between their mattresses runs her fingers up the nape of Robin’s neck and into the fuzz of her new undercut. Robin dies a little death at the touch of Nancy’s fingertips, but she can’t, in good faith, return the complement, because Nancy looks like someone who’s spent too long in a war zone.

She’s thinner, if that’s even possible, than when Robin last saw her, shadows like bruises around her eyes. Robin has noticed that when she thinks no one’s watching the brightness falls from her face like gravity’s claiming the weight of it.

But what’s the use in mentioning any of that? Robin just says:

“If you like it, I’m sure we can get you an appointment at Le Salon Kara. She’s got her own clippers and everything.”

“I think, at this point, if I came back with my head shaved it would be the final sign my mother needs to have me committed,” Nancy says, and she’s joking, but also not joking.

There’s a lot of things Robin doesn’t know how to say to Nancy, and a lot of things that she does that are pointless to say, like ‘are you okay?’ or ‘I’m worried about you, Nance.’

Robin catches Nancy’s hand and squeezes it, trying to make the gesture reach across all the unspoken words between them.

“What’s it like?” Nancy asks.

“What’s what like?”

“Getting to start over. A new life and all that.”

Robin frowns. 

“That’s not how I’d describe it.”

“It’s okay,” Nancy says, as if trying to reassure Robin. “I’d reinvent myself if someone gave me the chance.”

“Yeah, but you see Nance, that’s not really what I’m doing here. I’m not here because I wanted a shot at a new life: I was kinda attached to the old one.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, you should, because it’s true. Sure the violence and life-threatening danger weren’t optimum, I’ll give you that, but the company was top-notch. And it’s not like I’m a different person here. I was Robin living by the skin of my teeth in Hawkins and I’m still just Robin living in a big house with nice parents in National City. I’m better fed and clothed and I have this rad undercut, but I’m still fundamentally me.”

This speech earns her a half-smile from Nancy, but it’s a sad one.

“I don’t know how you do that.”

“Do what?”

“You’re so, I don’t know, yourself. In every situation.”

“I’m not sure that’s actually a good thing. I mean I used to try harder not to be, but it’s a futile exercise, because apparently I’m a terrible actor.”

“I’m a great actor,” Nancy says darkly, “it’s all I ever seem to do. I feel like I’m about five different people and all of them make me feel like I can’t breathe.”

“Wow,” Robin says, a little dumbfounded, “that’s quite metaphysical Nance.”

Nancy laughs, so that she has to clap a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. Robin’s response clearly not what she was expecting.

“But also, Nancy, it’s okay if you want to let go a little.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’d still like you.”

“Would you?” 

“I’m convinced that I would.” Then because, in this weird little bubble of late-night confessions, Robin’s feeling extraordinarily brave she reaches out and pulls one of Nancy’s curls. It goes ‘sproing!’ just like she hoped it would. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she says.

“You’re a dork.”

“Didn’t we just establish I’m absolutely unable to help myself in that department? It’s unkind to keep mentioning it Nancy,” Robin kids.

“Don’t change,” Nancy says and, just like that, she rolls over to go to sleep, leaving Robin wide awake.

—

The next day is a great day.

It’s not as if Robin and Nancy haven’t hung out before. They have, plenty of times, both just the two of them and with the whole gang. It’s just that what they haven’t done is hung out without the ever-present threat of danger visible in the peripheral. Having Nancy here in National City, Robin realises that, in Hawkins, even when the time they spent together didn’t actively involved weapons or monsters, there was always the sense that they had to deliberately carve out each moment of normality; that weapons and monsters were the default and that they were kidding themselves if they tried to grasp for something else.

Now it’s like everything is lighter.

They don’t do anything in particular; Kara’s at Catco and Lena’s working from home and Robin and Nancy have both got schoolwork to do, so sight-seeing is on hold until later in the week.

“These GPAs won’t maintain themselves,” Robin says, flopping belly-down on one of the giant beanbags in the attic, her notes spread around her in a messy arc, “but wouldn’t it be good if they did?” Nancy sits neatly cross legged on the sofa, laptop on her lap, glasses perched on the end of her nose. Occasionally their hands brush as they dip into the bowl of potato chips Robin has placed between them.

They talk about Hawkins less than Robin thought they would.

“Will you help me figure out a way to get home?” Robin asks, when Nancy still hasn’t brought it up.

Nancy is watching Robin as she messes around on the guitar, lying on her back with her feet climbing up the wall. She’s got Siri on her chest, playing with the rabbit’s ears, picking them up and letting them flop back down, first one, then the other and then as a pair, like she’s doing aerobic exercises or trying to tune an antenna. Alexa, struck by FOMO, nudges at Nancy’s head with her nose, demanding her share of the action, and Robin puts her guitar down and scoops her up before she gets impatient and chews off a piece of Nancy’s hair, because Robin’s learnt that lesson the hard way, thank you very much.

“Isn’t this your home?” Nancy asks, still giving Siri all her attention.

“Not as long as Vecna’s still lowering house prices in Hawkins, and you know it.”

“Don’t you think you should maybe just stay here, where it’s safe?” Nancy says, still not meeting Robin’s gaze.

“Nancy Elizabeth Wheeler: put the adorable fluffy bunny down, sit up, look me in the eye and say that again to my face.” 

Nancy sits up, huffily and plonks Siri down, opens her mouth, shuts it again, attempts to stare Robin down and then has to look away.

“Yeah that’s right, you can’t can you?” Robin says, her general air of righteous fury only slightly diminished by the fact she’s got Alexa down the front of her hoodie, the rabbit’s furry little face poking out just under Robin’s chin. “You don’t actually expect me to wait it out while the rest of you stick your necks and all the rest of your appendages out, do you? I wouldn’t ask that of you, so don’t ask it of me!” 

Nancy sighs.

“It was worth a try,” she says.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

“Look, Robin,” Nancy says, and now there’s a note of urgency in her voice, “I’ll help you, just don’t go rogue again, okay?”

“Am I hearing you aright? Did Nancy Wheeler just ask me not to go rogue? Nancy ‘my middle name is gone rogue’ Wheeler?

“My middle name is not ‘gone rogue!’” Nancy says hotly. Robin raises her eyebrows.

“How’s your demo-dog bite Nancy?”

Nancy raises both her hands palms up. 

“Okay, okay! Point made. It’s just… I didn’t exactly enjoy knowing you were out there somewhere and not knowing that you were okay. And yes, I can hear myself saying that, but give me a break will you?” There’s a pause and then Nancy admits: “I think my stitches have ripped.”

Kara and Lena are the kind of people that have first aid kits and fire extinguishers in their home. 

Actually, Robin thinks, more accurately Lena is that kind of person, and Kara is the reason they need them. 

Robin listens at the door of the home office long enough to be satisfied that Lena is on a call and then nabs the kit from the kitchen, before rifling through the bathroom cabinet. Unfortunately Lena is also the kind of person who disposes of unused medication responsibly so in the end the only antibiotics she can find are from when Krypto got bitten by a squirrel. Robin Googles the dose.

“Jesus H Christ Nance!” Robin exclaims when she enters the bathroom. Nancy’s already peeled the dressing off and the bite looks all kinds of wrong. Robin grits her teeth and tries not to think about rabies. She hands Nancy two tablets and goes to fill her a glass of water.

“You might want to swallow these real quickly—” she starts, but it’s too late, Nancy already has them in her mouth and her face is an absolute picture, “—because they’re chicken-flavour,” Robin finishes redundantly.

—

So they start planning Robin’s return to Hawkins and their strategy to fight the Upside Down’s hold on the town.

They’re not as discrete as they think they are.

“Who’s Vecna?” Kara asks as she salts and sugars the popcorn she’s making them. “I keep hearing his name about the house.”

“Some boy who’s hassling Nancy,” Robin says, amazed at her own quick thinking. It’s not untrue.

Kara bristles.

“Want me to sort him out for you Nance?” She thwacks her fist into her palm suggestively.

Nancy laughs. God I love her laugh, Robin thinks.

“It’s a tempting offer,” Nancy says, “but I’m not sure giving him a smack behind the bleachers is the answer.”

“It would be satisfying though, right?” Kara says, waggling her eyebrows.

Both girls grin at the thought. Kara turns serious.

“Don’t let it get too out of hand though, okay? Shitty behaviour is never okay, but it can escalate into something dangerous.”

Ain’t that the truth.

“You should think about telling someone you trust what’s going on,” Kara adds. Nancy nods thoughtfully at Kara’s words, with what Robin now knows her well enough to think of as her ‘condescending to adults’ expression.

The four of them sit down to watch some dumb superhero movie which starts with Florence Pugh jumping off a building with a guinea pig and Robin spends the entirety of it alternating between wondering what she’d look like if she bleached her hair and trying not to enjoy the way Nancy’s snuggled into her side. Lena gives her a quizzical look, but she ignores it.

—

Robin can’t sleep, because as it turns out a sleeping Nancy Wheeler alternates between two settings: snores which sound like the universe is  being rent in twain and sleep-talking of the ‘please, no, please don’t’ variety. Setting A makes Robin want to give her a good sharp poke in the ribs and Setting B makes Robin want to take Nancy in her arms and comfort her, but there’s a good chance if she tried either of those things she might lose a limb, so no sleep it is.

She heads downstairs and is not surprised to see a light in the kitchen; Kara’s night-starvation is legendary.

“Hey kiddo, can’t sleep? Want a snack?” Kara asks and Robin pulls up her usual seat at the counter, the kitchen lit only by the light in the refrigerator and the one on the rangehood. It’s nice, dim and peaceful. Kara slides her own snack from the sandwich maker onto Robin’s plate and pulls the bread from the fridge to make herself another.

The sandwich maker is the kind that seals the bread into triangular pockets and one side of the sandwich is grilled cheese and the other is filled with Kara’s signature combo of a couple of squares of chocolate and sliced strawberries, managing to be two courses in a single snack. Robin appreciates Kara’s commitment to her craft.

—

There’s so many reasons why Kara loves having Robin in the house, but one of them is having someone to snack with in the middle of the night. The only time Lena would ever eat grilled cheese after bedtime is if she were drunk or high, but where food is concerned Robin and Kara seem to be twin souls.

“Kara?” Robin asks over their companionable chomping.

“Mmm?”

“Are you Supergirl?”

Kara’s sandwich hovers halfway to her mouth. She considers taking one last bite but decides against it. 

“Yes,” she says simply.

Robin starts ugly crying, massive heaving sobs like she’s going to hyperventilate, which is really not the reaction that Kara hoped for when she’d imagined how this conversation might go. Kara gets up and moves towards Robin, hesitates, not sure whether to touch her or not.

“Get away from her.”

Nancy’s voice is arctic, and her hands are rock steady as she points— holy guacamole, why is she pointing an actual gun in Kara’s kitchen?!

The sandwich still in the press starts burning and the smoke alarm starts going off.

On instinct, Kara puts her body between the gun and Robin and then wonders what to do next.

Kara has superspeed, yes, so if it all goes to shit she can catch a bullet, but what she doesn’t have is the foggiest idea of what is happening right now. Sure, she could zoom across the room and rip the gun out of Nancy’s hand, but she’s not sure she can do it without breaking Nancy’s arm and—

It all goes to shit, because Lena comes down the stairs to check if the house is on fire, sees Nancy pointing a gun at her family and loses the plot. She obviously has no compunction about breaking Nancy’s bones, judging by the force with which she slams Nancy’s weapon hand against the wall, one hand around Nancy’s throat so tightly she’s almost lifted off her feet. Nancy screams and drops the gun which goes skidding across the floor, Kara shoots across the room to retrieve it, because that seems like a good first step while she tries to figure out how to stop Lena killing Nancy without hurting either of them. Krypto starts barking hysterically, to add to the chaos.

“Mom! Stop!”

Lena’s eyes widen. Everyone goes silent. Before Kara has to resort to using the spray bottle, Lena releases her chokehold on Nancy’s throat. No one moves and no one speaks. Kara takes advantage of the pause to flick the sandwich press off.

“Sorry,” Robin says, “I didn’t mean to assume, I mean I know it hasn’t really been that long and I know I’m not really your—”

“No it’s fine,” Lena cuts Robin off mid-flow her voice sounding strange.

Kara still has no idea what’s happening, but Robin seems to have put all the pieces together. 

“Nancy,” she says, “Kara wasn’t doing anything bad.”

“You’re crying,” Nancy points out, unconvinced and yeah Kara would like to know about that too.

To Kara’s amazement Robin lets out a bark of laughter. “I’m crying because I’m relieved: Nancy, Kara’s Supergirl!”

“That’s not possible,” Nancy says.

This seems to bring Lena back to herself; she steps away from Nancy like she’s radioactive, pokes the smoke alarm with the broom and throws a handful of kibble out into the hall, shutting the door behind Krypto as he bounds after it. The sudden silence rings in Kara’s ears.

“Did I break your wrist?” There’s a blankness to Lena’s eyes as she asks this that lets Kara know that Lena is not okay, that there’ll be night terrors and tears about this at a later date, that a part of Lena is always waiting for the day she crosses the line, becomes irredeemable like her brother and mother.

Nancy’s clutching her wrist to her chest, but she barely responds, her eyes locked on Robin, just flexes her fingers and shakes her head ‘no.’

Lena goes to the freezer and pulls out an icepack, wraps it in a dish towel, holds it out to Nancy. Nancy waves it away.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lena says curtly, and Nancy takes it grudgingly.

“Robin,” she says, her body language saying that Kara and Lena might as well not even be in the room, “that’s impossible. We’ve talked about this before — I thought we agreed that there’s no way Supergirl can be a single person, let alone that it’s one of the two people of all the people in America who just happen to foster you.”

Kara’s been wondering what to do about the gun this whole time and this seems like as good an opening as she’s going to get. She takes the bullets out and places it on the kitchen island, slapping her palm down on it to turn it into a gun-shaped pancake.

“My gun!” Nancy yells at the same time as Lena yells:

“My countertop!”

Kara lifts her palm up. There’s a spiderweb of fine cracks in the stone counter, radiating out from the ruins of Nancy’s gun. As they watch, one lenghthens and runs the whole way across and down the island with a ‘crrriiiiiiiick’ noise.

“Whoopsies,” says Kara.

“Would everyone like to take a seat now that that demonstration is over?” Lena asks in the tone of a woman barely clinging to her patience. “Honestly Kara, we just had that done.” They all take a seat. 

“I think maybe it’s time to explain,” Robin says to Nancy.

“Y’think?” Kara’s not generally a sarcastic person, but she just can’t help it this time.

“I needed that gun!” Nancy protests.

“Yes, that’s one of the things that should be included in the explanation,” Kara prompts.

The girls tell the story. It’s got monsters and a significant amount of mayhem in it and it also makes Kara quite sad. 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asks Robin. Robin squirms.

“Well, you’ve both got that whole ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ vibe, so…”

“It obviously is,” Kara says.

“But that doesn’t mean we don’t also have a sizeably mighty sword,” Lena finishes for her. “Oh god, you’ve been trying to protect us all this time. What a mess.”

“Wait,” Nancy says, “you believe us? Just like that?”

“Well, we were racking our brains to figure out what kind of trouble Robin was embroiled in,” Kara says, “and look at her, she’s not exactly screaming ‘life of crime,’ is she? This makes much more sense.”

Robin feels a little indignant.

“I broke a window with a brick! And I helped steal a campervan!” 

Lena presses her fingers into her temples the way she does when she has a headache. 

“I think I was happier not knowing that,” she says. “Okay, listen up. This ends here. The two of you — and all your friends — have done incredibly well, but also been incredibly lucky to stay alive up until this point. But sooner or later that luck is going to run out, so from here onwards, you leave it to Kara and I. Do you understand me? We will deal with Vecna and the Upside Down.”

Robin feels a relief so strong it leaves her lightheaded, but she feels Nancy stiffen beside her, quivering slightly like the Chihuahua that always harasses Krypto at the dog park.

“You and whose army?” Nancy demands skeptically.

“Alex’s,” Lena says smugly.

Which is how Robin learns that almost all her new aunts and uncles are superpowered-vigiallante-alien-secret-agent-type-people.

“I mean not all of them, at least not in all of those categories, that’s an oversimplification,” Kara protests.

“Esme?” Robin says in disbelief. “The tiny child who needs me to push a step up to the basin so she can wash her hands after going to the toilet? You’re telling me Esme has powers?”

“Yeah, but she’s still essentially only five years old,” Kara justifies.

Nancy clearly regards all this as a diversion.

“Let me get this straight, she says to Lena, cutting over Kara “you’re going to send yet another dark-ops paramilitary force into Hawkins — as if the industrial-military complex isn’t responsible for this whole mess to begin with — weaponising children — and Robin and I are just going to sit here in National City, cooling our heels like good little girls, ignoring the fact that our friends and family are basically right at ground zero, with massive targets on their backs? Have I got it right?”

Robin was absolutely planning on sitting around cooling her heels in National City.

Lena looks confused by Nancy’s assumption.

“Nancy, your friends and family aren’t going to be in Hawkins,” she explains with the kind of kindness Robin knows is going to enrage Nancy, “I guarantee they’ll be out of Hawkins ninety minutes after we call Alex to brief her. And yes, I agree with you, weaponising children is disgusting, which is why I’m asking you to stand down.”

“That’s not—” Nancy begins and Robin doesn’t know why she’s protesting so much. “We’ll still be targets, wherever we are — distance is immaterial. Vecna’s not just any monster: he can get inside your head!”

“Can’t they all?” Kara says drily, sotto voce. Robin thinks Nancy probably doesn’t realise how the pitch and volume of her voice rose on her last sentence. She doesn’t sound reasonable now: she sounds frantic.

“He can literally possess you!” Nancy insists. “Any one of us, at any time!”

“No one is getting possessed,” Kara says, “especially not on a school-night.”

Lena continues with ‘definitely-going-to-irritate-Nancy’ patience:

“Nancy, this is not the first time Kara and I have dealt with psychic powers, or altered states of reality or even alternate dimensions. So please, it’s time to hand this over.”

“No,” says Nancy, eyes blazing. Robin knows Lena’s kindness is infinite, but her tolerance for bullshit is not.

“Why are you clinging on to this?” she snaps. “This isn’t Buffy, you’re not the one girl to stand against the forces of darkness. Let it go or you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“No,” repeats Nancy. “You can’t just cut us out.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It has to be me,” Nancy says, like the words are being dragged from the depths of her being. “It has to be me who takes the kill shot.”

There is a silence.

“You know,” Lena says to Kara conversationally, “I thought they broke the mould when they made your sister, but apparently not.”

Kara thinks this is a bit unfair to Alex, because it’s not Alex Nancy’s reminding her of right now.

“Come with me,” Lena commands, “we’re going to have a discussion.” Nancy doesn’t move. “Oh for heavens sake! I’m asking you to have a conversation with me on the patio, which is five meters away, not hauling you off for questioning!”

Nancy follows her very, very reluctantly.

—

“Do you think they’re gonna kill each other?” Robin asks as the patio door slides shut behind them.

“N-ooooo.” Kara says, with less than certainty, then she pulls herself together. “No, I don’t. I think it’s going to be a hard conversation and that you and I are better off in here.”

“Lena was pretty intense,” Robin says, sounding a bit wobbly.

“Yeah, well guns are kind of a thing for her.” That’s the understatement of the year, Kara thinks, reflecting on how many times Lena’s been caught in the crossfire. “She’s been through a lot.” 

“It was because Nancy was pointing hers at us,” Robin says, displaying her above average level of empathy. “That’s why she went so crazy.”

“Yeah well, family is a thing for her too. She’d protect us with her life.” Kara gives Robin a look. “So would you apparently — that’s what you’ve been doing this whole time, isn’t it? Trying to protect everyone?”

Robin runs a hand through her hair, messing it up further.

“Turns out that was pretty unnecessary,” she says ruefully.

“You didn’t know that though.” Kara softens. “How did you figure out I was Supergirl?”

Robin chuckles.

“What, you mean: ‘how did I see through your rock-solid disguise of a ponytail and glasses?’ Apart from the fact that you wander downstairs for breakfast without either of those most mornings in the week? Well, for starters, I got the pattern recognition autism: every time there’s a thing on the news about a factory fire or a train derailment, your special watch starts playing Chariots of Fire and all of a sudden you’ve ‘forgotten your favourite keep cup at the office.’” Robin does air-quotes with her fingers.

“Also, I know you lied about your parents, because I played Norwegian thrash metal around the house for a week and you were all like: ‘is this Metallica?’ 

But what really clinched it, was that Esme was playing with her Barbie dolls yesterday and   she was zooming one around the dolls house and I was like: ‘what’s Barbie doing?’ and she was like: ‘it’s not Barbie, it’s Auntie Kara rescuing Mr Potato Head from the Daxamites.’ So it wasn’t really a wild surmise.”

“Huh,” is all Kara can say to that.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Robin says, which makes Kara pull her into a hug.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you.”

Robin shrugs. “Eh, to be fair, I was acting pretty shady.”

“We could have saved you a lot of worry and I hated feeling like I was lying to you.”

“Me too.”

“Can we make an agreement?”

“No more secrets?”

“No more secrets.”

“Our life of secrets and lies is over henceforth.”

“I’m turning the page right now.”

“Kara, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you keep your identity a secret?” Kara thinks before answering:

“It used to be because it was dangerous, for me and for the people who were close to me. But now so much about this country has changed, it’s different. People aren’t desperate like they used to be; they’re not using people with superheroes as pawns to create change.

Sure, I turn out as Supergirl if the emergency services need help, but I’m not really saving the world on the reg anymore. It doesn’t need my kind of saving. Change is happening in other ways; in ordinary, human ways. The fact that that’s possible, and that people feel like it’s possible, is its own kind of safeguard.

Now, for me, it’s about privacy: Lena and I spent so much of our lives in the spotlight, and the fact that we were answerable for our actions to the whole world was a good thing, but that’s a huge weight to carry. If I hadn’t come to earth, I would have just been a normal person and I started to wonder about that and what that might feel like. So here I am; Kara Zor El Luthor-Danvers: private citizen.”

“Do you mind being dragged into my mess?” Robin asks, eyes a little wide.

“It’s not your mess kiddo,” Kara says firmly, “and I’m not being dragged. Wherever you need me is where I want to be.” And then, because she is an intergalactic-level dork and she has watched all seven seasons of the Gilmore Girls, plus the mini-series, more than once, she starts to sing:

If you’re out on the road…

—

Nancy follows Lena out onto the patio, where the pink flush of dawn is sparkling over the Luthor-Danvers swimming pool. Nancy shivers. She hates swimming pools.

Lena pulls a throw rug from a wicker hamper and hands it to her, obviously mistaking her distaste for cold. Nancy wraps it around herself as she sits down beside Lena on the outdoor furniture, burying her nose in it to block out the smell of chlorine.

“Lets keep this civil. I don’t want to upset our puppies,” Lena says and Nancy’s just about to ask about that, because she thought Robin had introduced her to all their pets, when she follows Lena’s gaze and sees Robin and Kara not even pretending not to be watching them through the glass door. Their twin expressions of anxiety would be funny if this whole situation wasn’t deeply unhumorous.

Nancy’s expecting some kind of shovel talk — not the romantic kind; she and Robin are just friends, Robin doesn’t think of Nancy like that, whatever frail and beaten-down hopes might be clinging to life in the dank dungeons of Nancy’s soul — but the kind where Lena reminds Nancy that she has power and influence so she better toe the line, or else. What she’s not expecting is —

“Are you crying?” Nancy blurts out, astonished and a little bit horrified.

“You just pointed a gun at my wife and kid,” Lena says. “It’s just the adrenaline leaving my system,” she says dismissively, wiping her tears away like they’re an inconvenience. She suddenly seems like a person to Nancy, like if you ignored the age gap and all Lena’s money and power, maybe they’re not so different the two of them.

“I thought Kara was hurting Robin,” Nancy explains: she’s not going to apologise.

“Kara would never hurt Robin, but that’s beside the point — why did you bring a gun into my home in the first place?”

Nancy doesn’t want to tell her, but Lena is surprisingly hard to evade; her gaze feels like a laser beam. “I can’t sleep without it,” she admits.

Lena sighs like the world is too sad for words. “Oh Nancy,” she says and to Nancy’s disbelief Lena runs a hand through Nancy’s hair, brushing her back off her face in the same way her mom would do. The most surprising thing about the gesture is that Nancy doesn’t immediately want to break Lena’s fingers. 

Robin’s not the only one who read Lena’s autobiography

—

Lena looks at the wounded child before her and wonders if the cycle will ever end. If this were Robin, or if she were Kara, she’d probably wrap her arms around Nancy and tell her everything was going to be okay, but Nancy seems like a feral animal at bay and Lena’s not quite sure that she’s got what it takes to approach her without being torn to shreds. She takes a breath.

“Nancy, I am more sorry than you can know that your childhood has been stolen from you. You don’t deserve any of the things you’ve been through. Nevertheless, just because you’ve been denied your innocence, it doesn’t mean you are an adult. It’s not a case of ‘oh well, it’s too late for Nancy Wheeler, let’s throw her on the scrapheap.’ That’s why Kara and I will protect you, as you’ve always deserved to be protected.”

Nancy’s expression looks as if she’s cycling through all of the emotions, one after the other, and that she doesn’t know what to do with any of them. Her jaw juts out, and the set of her mouth firms: clearly her factory setting is stubborn.

God save me from teenagers.

“It has to be me,” Nancy insists, making Lena want to shake her until she rattles.

“Why does it have to be you?” Lena asks with a very good impersonation of a patient person. Nancy raises her pointy little chin in defiance. Lord kid, I am not the enemy here, Lena thinks.

“Because I promised I’d get justice.”

“I see. May I ask, justice for whom?”

“For Barb.” Nancy keeps her voice steady but Lena’s been around the block and she can see that even saying the name hurts her. She asks the inevitable question and gets the whole sorry story, even the bits of it she doesn’t really need to know: like now that Nancy’s started talking — in her hard little voice that she probably thinks gives no emotion away — she can’t stop. Lena wonders if Nancy’s ever had the chance to tell this story before.

When Nancy’s finally done, looking down at her hands which are unconsciously destroying Kara’s favourite cosy throw rug, Lena doesn’t quite know where to begin.

Her first instinct is, once more, to wrap her arms around Nancy and say: ‘Your best friend got taken by a monster the first time you had sex with a boy: that is a horrific juxtaposition of events but absolutely not your fault, because no reasonable person could have been expected to predict that.’ However that seems like more of a therapist thing to say, and while Nancy Wheeler absolutely needs therapy, Lena isn’t remotely equipped to provide it, so she says instead:

“Killing Vecna won’t be justice for Barb. I think, in your heart, you know that.”

Nancy looks at her like she’s grown two heads, so Lena continues:

“Think about the life Barb would have lived: the people she would have loved, the mistakes she would have had the chance to make, the lessons she would have learned: all the wonderful, ordinary things human beings do over the course of a lifetime. Then think about the ways Henry Creel has used his unnaturally long life. You could put a bullet through his brain and expunge his memory from the face of the earth in the next half hour but it would never be justice for Barb, because the two things are not of equivalent worth, and no slow death you can make him suffer will ever tip that balance back into level.”

Nancy’s breathing like Lena’s hit her in the guts, and now Lena does touch her, places a hand on Nancy’s shoulder and squeezes hard, because she doesn’t want the kid to have a panic attack. Apart from anything, if Nancy shows signs of distress, Robin and Kara will probably come bursting straight through the glass doors and only one of them is made of steel and they’ve just had these doors replaced after the time Lena let Alex and Kara rent a foosball table.

Lena gives Nancy a minute and then continues, because there’s too much at stake to be pulling her punches now.

“I think it’s important to make the distinction between pursuing justice and pursuing revenge and, believe me, I’m not in a position to judge you when I say that. A desire for vengeance can be useful in that it keeps you going and keeps you alive, which is all to the good, but there comes a point where vengeance stops serving you.

Vecna took your friend from you and he violated your mind in a way that makes you feel like you’ll never be safe again. His death will give you some level of control back, and I would want that too, if I were you, but Nancy: dead is dead, it doesn’t have to be you who does it.”

“I want it to be me,” Nancy says, predictably. Lena really didn’t want to have to go here, but somehow she knew she’d have to. She steels herself.

“You seem like the kind of girl who’d do her research, so I’m sure you know that I’ve taken two kill shots in my life.”

She takes a long, slow breath, and then another, so that the memory of ending Lillian and Lex’s lives doesn’t swamp her.

“Believe me when I tell you: if you take that shot in anger it won’t make you feel better. You’ll still be angry, just at a stand-still, with nothing left to be running towards.”

Nancy sounds unbelievably raw when she asks:

“What will make me feel better?”

Lena honestly wishes she could lie at this point.

“A lot of therapy, and time,” she says, knowing it's the most terrifying prospect she could lay before Nancy, but that Nancy doesn’t know the half of it. She’s not surprised at all when Nancy refuses to pivot.

“It’s my right,” she says, little pointy chin set stubbornly.

“It is your right,” Lena agrees, “you’ve earned it, that’s for sure, if it’s possible to earn a thing like that. But I’m begging you to make a different choice and let it go.”

“Why? Why does it matter to you?”

Lena doesn’t say: ‘because I’m trying to save your soul, you little idiot!’ That wouldn’t wash because Nancy already believes she’s irredeemable. Instead Lena tells the other half of her reason:

“Because my kid will follow you into the very gates of hell.”

“She’s not your kid,” Nancy corrects on reflex, demonstrating the her ability to bite the hand that’s feeding her. Lena wonders at the casual cruelty of teenagers and then makes herself count to ten before replying:

“I know. But she feels like she is. You know Robin; could you blame anyone for loving her?”

Nancy has no answer to that. Hah! thinks Lena triumphantly.

“Nancy, like it or not, you are precious to my kid — to Robin — and you cannot throw yourself into danger without also endangering her. Don’t take my word for it; look at the evidence of the past. Heck, look at the evidence of the past week.”

“You’d have to stop her,” Nancy says, blue eyes pleading.

“And how am I meant to do that? Chain her to the floor?”

“If you have to.”

“Okay Nancy, just as a thought experiment, before I take your advice and bring my manacles up from the dungeon we don’t have, I want you to consider how you’d feel if someone chained you down, or locked you in or whatever, and Robin went back to the Upside Down and died. How well do you think you’d manage after that experience?”

“At least she’d be alive.” Lena thinks: for fuckssake.

“But you wouldn’t be, and that’s kind of the point. There’s living and there’s living Nancy, which sadly I think you have reason to know. Forcing Robin to watch helplessly as you risk your life is it’s own kind of danger, and one I’m not prepared to put her through.”

“Then you have to talk to her. You have to make her see sense,” Nancy implores and Lena almost laughs, because what does Nancy think she’s trying to do right now?

“I can’t stop her. If you go back to the Upside Down, I can’t stop Robin running after you, anymore than anyone could stop Kara running after me if I put myself in danger.

Lena says it slowly and deliberately because while Nancy is whip smart, Lena thinks she’s also a little bit dense. She watches the pieces finally fall into place, watches Nancy’s mouth make an ‘o’ of realisation as she gets what Lena is trying to tell her.

“But then what?” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “If I’m not going after Vecna, then what?”

“The hard bit. The part where you heal. I’m so sorry Nancy, the only way out is through.”

It’s hard to watch someone fall apart, it really is.

—

“It’s okay if you cry, I won’t think less of you,” Lena says.

Nancy has seen Lena Luthor on the TV and in the internet, looking glamorous and supremely in control. Even over the past few days she’s always looked put-together in her at-home-casuals.

Now Nancy regards the woman in front of her. Lena’s face is bare of makeup, her hair scraped up in a messy bun which shows the streak of grey running through it. Her eyes, behind her glasses, look puffy and blood-shot from the tears. She’s wearing sweats and a sleep tee. It’s got a koala on it and it says ‘‘I give top-koala-ty hugs’ and it definitely started it’s life as Kara’s sleep tee. It’s got holes in it. Lena doesn’t look like a genius tech-mogul or a world leader, she looks tired and old: she looks like someone’s mom.

“Apparently it’s not good for you to keep your feelings in,” Lena says darkly, “you end up getting to forty and having some GP who looks about twelve tell you that you have the heart health of a seventy-five year old investment banker in a stock market crash. And then you have to do yoga.”

Lena says ‘yoga’ like it’s a dirty word.

“Go on, have a good howl,” she urges, “it’s cheaper than a smash room.”

Through a supreme effort of will, Nancy has kept it together this whole time, even though this tiny, dishevelled, middle-aged woman in the rattiest sleep tee Nancy has ever seen has managed to rip Nancy ribcage open, then taken her still-beating heart in her hands and squeezed.

So it’s particularly galling that it’s Lena’s dumb dad jokes are what break her; the laugh that escapes her turning into something quite different on its way out her mouth.

Lena is small, but Nancy is smaller. Lena tucks Nancy’s head under her chin, wraps her arms around her and holds her.

Nancy howls