Chapter Text
Chapter 1 — Papers
The envelope was too thick to be junk mail.
Kara knew that the moment she picked it up from the small brass mailbox downstairs. Heavy paper. Legal weight. Her name printed cleanly, not handwritten. No return smile in the ink. No warmth.
She stood in the apartment lobby for a full ten seconds longer than necessary, fingers resting on the edge of the paper as if it might pulse.
Probably hospital paperwork, she told herself. Insurance. Lena forgot again.
Upstairs, the apartment still smelled like lemon cleaner and toasted bread. Morning light stretched across the kitchen tiles. Two mugs sat in the sink — hers with a faint ring of dried cocoa, Lena’s with coffee grounds clinging stubbornly to the side. Ordinary. Safe. Domestic.
Five days ago, they were in Montreal, wrapped in scarves and each other, laughing because Kara slipped on black ice and took Lena down with her.
“Married to a hazard,” Lena had laughed, kissing her cold nose.
Kara smiled at the memory as she slid a finger under the envelope seal.
Then she saw the header.
NOTICE OF DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
Her brain rejected the words. Not disagreed — rejected. Like a transplant organ.
“No,” she said out loud to the empty kitchen. Softly. Polite, almost.
She turned the page. Then the next. Legal phrasing. Filing dates. Representation. Asset declarations.
Petitioner: Lena Luthor, MD.
Her knees hit the chair before she remembered sitting.
There was a roaring in her ears, like standing too close to subway tracks.
“This is a mistake,” she whispered. “Wrong address. Wrong—”
The key turned in the door.
Kara looked up.
Lena stepped in, still in her hospital blues under a wool coat, hair tied back, exhaustion carved into her posture. She closed the door gently — always gently — like doors had feelings.
For a moment, everything looked exactly as it should.
“Hey,” Kara said automatically. “You’re early.”
Lena saw the papers. The color left her face, but not in surprise — in confirmation.
“Oh,” she said. Just that. Oh.
Kara waited for the punchline. For the camera crew. For the apology.
It didn’t come.
“You got them,” Lena said quietly.
“Got what?” Kara held up the packet with a small, confused smile. “These are insane. They think we’re—”
“We are.”
The room tilted.
Kara laughed — a short, brittle sound. “Okay. You’re joking. This is — wow. That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Then say the rest,” Kara said, relief already forming. “Say the rest of the sentence.”
Lena didn’t move.
Something inside Kara went very still.
“You filed for divorce,” Kara said slowly, like translating a foreign language. “Without talking to me.”
“I tried to talk,” Lena said. “For years.”
Kara blinked. That sentence didn’t fit any known reality.
“We were on vacation,” Kara said. “We were happy.”
“We were functional,” Lena replied.
“That’s — that’s the same thing!”
“It isn’t.”
Kara stood up too fast. The chair legs scraped sharply against tile.
“Eight years,” she said. “Eight. Years. You don’t file paperwork like a parking ticket!”
Lena flinched — just slightly — at the volume.
“I couldn’t keep waiting for you to see me,” Lena said.
“I see you every day!”
“You look at me,” Lena said. “You don’t see me.”
Kara opened her mouth — closed it — opened it again. No words came out that matched what she felt.
“I built my life around you,” Kara said finally. “I left my job. You said we didn’t need two careers burning us out. You said—”
“I said I didn’t want to lose you to 80-hour weeks,” Lena snapped, then caught herself. “And you said you wanted the home life. You said it mattered.”
“It did. It does!”
“But you disappeared into it,” Lena said. “You stopped being my partner and became… a satellite.”
The word hit like a slap.
“A satellite,” Kara repeated.
“I come home and you orbit me,” Lena said, voice tight. “Everything is about me — my shifts, my meals, my sleep — and if I try to talk about anything deeper, you shut down.”
“I don’t shut down!”
“You deflect with jokes. Or you hug me. Or you change the subject.”
“Because you’re tired!” Kara protested. “You work trauma, Lena. You come home wrecked — I don’t pile my feelings on top of that!”
“I wanted you to,” Lena said.
Silence.
Kara’s thoughts scrambled like dropped papers in wind.
“You’re divorcing me,” she said again, softer now, testing if it still sounded impossible. “Without counseling. Without a fight. Without— without even yelling.”
“I’ve done my yelling,” Lena said. “You weren’t in the room for most of it.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
Kara searched her wife’s face — doctor calm, surgical calm — and panic began to leak in around the edges of her shock.
“Okay,” Kara said quickly. “Okay, we slow down. We fix this. We book therapy. I get a job again. I — I can—”
“It’s filed,” Lena said.
“Filed doesn’t mean finished.”
“It does when I’m done.”
The words landed cleanly. No cruelty. No heat. Just finality.
Kara sat back down because her legs no longer trusted gravity.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“I know,” Lena said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
Kara stared at the asset section of the document. Numbers. Accounts. Property — all under Lena’s name. Logical. She’d signed those forms years ago without reading closely. Because that’s what trust looked like then.
“You want me out,” Kara said.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Today would be best.”
Kara looked up sharply, like she’d misheard.
“Today?”
“I arranged a storage unit for your things,” Lena said. “I’ll cover three months.”
“Three months,” Kara echoed faintly.
“And a settlement payment.”
Kara almost laughed again — hysterical this time.
“You’re discharging me like a patient.”
Lena’s jaw tightened. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make this a joke so you don’t have to feel it.”
Too late. Kara already felt it — a spreading, hollow cold.
“Was any of it real?” she asked.
Lena answered too quickly. “Yes.”
That hurt more than hesitation would have.
Kara folded the papers with trembling precision.
“Okay,” she said distantly. “Okay.”
She stood, walked to the bedroom, and opened the closet. Her sweaters. Her scarves. The Montreal one still smelled like woodsmoke.
This is a dream, she told herself. Any second now I’ll wake up.
But the hangers were solid in her hands.
From the doorway, Lena watched, not stepping in, not stepping away — like a doctor at the edge of a procedure she chose not to attend.
Kara packed.
The clock ticked.
Reality did not blink.