Archive of Our Own

Lena swirled the Scotch inside her glass, appreciating how pretty the ice looked submerged in it. This was her fifth (maybe sixth?) glass of the night. The worst part of being a frequent drinker was that now her alcohol tolerance was fairly high and, shit, sometimes a girl just wants to get wasted already, you know? Plus, yeah, all that downside on her health and etcetera.

“You know there’s no point in going out to have fun and take your mind off things if you… you know… don’t actively try to have fun and take your mind off things”. That was Sam. Lena could barely hear her friend over the club’s loud music, which was high enough to get in the way of any conversation they could try to sustain, but not nearly high enough to stop her thoughts from screaming louder inside her head. Lena huffed, annoyed.

“I am having fun” Sam just kept staring at her, not impressed in the slightest “Sort of”.

“You’ve looked as miserable as you’ve seemed for the last two months the whole night, Lena, come on” Sam gave her a soft smile, which was met only with pursed lips and a sight. At that, her friend grabbed her hand and, moving faster than Lena thought she was capable of after three mojitos and one pinã colada, pulled her towards the dance floor. Lena tried to protest, but only managed to grumble a few grumpy complaints before letting herself be pulled. Maybe she should try to loosen up a bit.

It had been two months already since she and Kara had fought. Well, actually, since she had screamed at Kara for lying to her for years while they were supposedly best friends, and leaving it to Lex, her psychopathic, dying brother, to use his last breath to show her how stupid she was for thinking someone could actually trust her, care for her, see her as more than a foolish, malicious extension of her horrible family. She never felt more betrayed, and both her mother and brother had already tried to murder her, so that was saying something.

Lena could not bring herself to look at Kara anymore, couldn’t even think of her without feeling nauseous. The problem was that she couldn’t just not think of her either. Her presence was everywhere, from the white couch on her office where she had looked deep inside her soul with those oh-so-caring blue eyes and promised never to abandon her, to the takeout spots scattered all around National City, where they used to order from when Kara was trying to cheer her up a bit and Lena pretended it was a huge sacrifice to stray from her usual healthy meal choices. Even this cramped, noisy nightclub reminded Lena of Kara. They did an hour of Karaoke starting at midnight, apparently, and Lena just knew Kara would have loved that.

The morning following their fight, she gave her couch away to Goodwill and bought a new one, grey and L-shaped. It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as her old one, but it would have to do. She was happy with it, she was. Satisfied. There was no need for a comfortable couch inside her office, really, that was a sacred place for working, for God’s sake. Yeah, she liked the new grey couch.

Sam swayed left and right, hands clasped tightly with her own, helping her dance to the music. Slowly but surely, Lena started to feel good as she moved, just slightly offbeat. Maybe five glasses (six?) of Scotch weren't enough to get her blackout drunk as she had initially intended, but they worked wonderfully on taking away some of her inhibitions.

As she danced, Lena smiled at Sam, grateful to still have one person she trusted enough to call a friend. She had flown in from Metropolis for the week after receiving a distressed SOS call from Jess, Lena’s personal assistant (who, honestly, sometimes seemed more like her caretaker, making sure she ate, drank water, and slept enough not to pass out. The girl tried to keep Lena alive, at least). Sam knew Lena was hurt, of course. She had confided in her, spent hours crying over the phone the day it all happened. What Sam didn’t know was that Lena was throwing herself at work (more than she already used to) as a coping mechanism. She should’ve known, of course her friend would do that. Well, Jess had ratted her out to Sam.

After Lena had spent three consecutive nights without setting foot at home, showering and (barely) sleeping at her office, dividing her time between meetings, answering emails, business calls and the R&D lab’s, Jess finally had enough.

“Miss Arias, I am and always will be first and foremost loyal to Miss Luthor” Jess started over the phone. “And, although she may not see this the same way as I do, that’s precisely why I am calling you now. Your CEO is about to have a mental breakdown, or, I don’t know, maybe die from exhaustion, and as her CFO and old friend, I think it is in your best interest to do something about it”. Sam had bought the plane ticket an hour later. Lena managed to be mad at her assistant for an entirety of thirty minutes before Jess wordlessly entered her office at 3 PM and deposited a bag with grilled salmon and a side of asparagus and Moroccan rice in front of her. Her stomach grumbled painfully. She had forgotten to have lunch. Again. That was when Lena remembered Jess was usually right and decided to only pretend to be mad at her for another thirty minutes, just for good measure, and then drop the act.

It was nearing midnight and Lena felt hot in the middle of the crowd. A good kind of hot, though. Like she was part of something bigger, something buzzing with life. Her arms glistened with sweat as she and Sam took turns spinning each other around. It was during one of those spins she thought she saw a familiar shade of blonde nearing the bar. She stopped abruptly, destabilizing Sam in the process.

“Wow, what’s wrong?” her friend asked, trying to regain her balance. Lena searched the area with her eyes, breath trapped inside her lungs. She found nothing, though.

“Nothing, I guess. I think I need to freshen up a bit, though” shaking her head a little, she squeezed Sam’s arms once before heading to the lady’s room. “I’ll be back soon”.

The bathroom was surprisingly empty when she came in. The AC there was working wonderfully, and she enjoyed the cold air while she fixed her hair in the mirror.

“You know there’s no need for that, right? Your hair already looks incredibly put together for someone in the middle of a night out”. A dreadfully familiar voice spoke from the door.

Lena froze. She schooled her expression into cold disinterest as best as she could, flicking her eyes towards Kara for only half a second, just enough to make sure this wasn’t some trick of her mind.

“What are you doing here?” Lena asked, and before Kara could respond, she cut her off. “You know what? I don’t want to know. You have no right to inquire about my life, and neither do I about yours.”

Lena should get out, get away from Kara and go back to where her true friend was waiting for her. She should call it a night, go to bed early, and block out all Kara Danvers related thoughts for the remainder of her days. She did not want to do that, though. So Lena turned on the faucet and started washing her hands. The soap smelled good (maybe it would clean the bloody stains their fallout left on her). Kara stayed quiet for a bit, lips pursed and eyes so filled with sorrow Lena almost wanted to take her words back. Almost.

“Look, Lena… I-” Kara started. Lena looked in her direction, eyes already starting to water. Kara faltered at that but quickly powered through. “I know I wronged you, believe me, I know that. But it’s been- It’s been just so long since we last spoke. I mean, gosh, two whole months? I think it’s been years since we spent more than twelve hours without at least texting, and I- Well, I miss you, you know?”

Lena could not believe the nerve of her. The tears starting to fill her eyes were not only from hurt but also from anger.

“Two months is too long, huh?” she started, and by the look on Kara’s face, she already knew where that train of thought would lead them. “How about four years? Isn’t that a bit long to keep lying to a best friend?”

Kara had the decency to look down, ashamed. Lena was thankful for that, she was never good at looking Kara in the eyes and maintaining her ability to think straight. She shook her hands in the sink, pulling some paper towels to dry them.

“I… I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just that- I was so unfair to you as Supergirl during that whole Reign thing, and I regretted it the moment it happened, I swear, but then you were so mad at Supergirl but still so- sweet with Kara, and I- I was afraid I’d lose you”

Lena closed her eyes, her breath was stuck inside her chest. Hearing Kara’s words was like salt in the wound, like twisting the knife just a little bit more inside her fragile heart. She used one of the paper towels to dry the tears that were trying to come out before they could ruin her makeup. It hurt, really. So she did the only thing she was taught to do whenever someone hurt her.

“Well, look at where that got you” Lena stared at Kara again, mouth twisted in distaste. “So much for not losing me”

She wasn’t the one with superhearing, but Lena could swear she heard Kara’s heart break. This time, Kara looked away, hands coming up to dry her eyes. That was good. That was what she deserved, after all, it was Kara who broke Lena’s heart first. (So why did Lena feel even worse now?) The air was charged between them when another voice cut through.

“Come on, Kara, they are gonna put our song on any minute now! What’s taking you so-” Alex stopped as soon as she stepped foot inside the bathroom, noticing that she had interrupted something. “Oh.” She said instead, looking at Lena with sad eyes “Hi, Lena. It’s been a while”.

Lena took in a sharp breath. “Hello, Miss Danvers. Hope you’re enjoying the night.” If Alex was surprised by the distance in her voice, she did not show it. “Now, if you both would excuse me, Sam’s waiting for me outside.”

Lena started walking towards the door and, for a fleeting moment, she thought maybe Kara wouldn’t move. They stared at each other for a bit as she tried not to linger on how the others' soft honey-like blonde locks looked pretty when she wore them down, on how her blue dress brought out the blue in her eyes. It’s absurd, now that she thinks about it, how she never found out. Blue was really Kara’s color and she wore it proudly while dressed up as her superhero persona.

Kara looked at her from head to toe for a moment. She could feel longing emanating from Kara’s defeated form. If she was being honest, she could feel it coming from herself too. Kara stepped aside, and so did Alex. And so, Lena got out.

When she found Sam, the woman was clearly flirting with a tall, handsome guy near the bar. Lena bit her bottom lip, not wanting to interrupt her friend. They may be there for Lena to wind down, but Sam deserved to have a little bit of fun too. So she went back to the booth they had been occupying earlier to find her drink still there. While she debated to herself what the odds were someone had drugged this unattained glass of alcohol and fought the urge to drink it all in one go, she heard the music being turned off and a charming host took the microphone on stage.

“Good night, beautiful people of National City!” He was met with clapping from the crowd. “We are about to start our Karaoke segment of the night.” The people roared, and Lena could not, for the love of her, understand why they seemed so eager to submit themselves to hearing other people’s off-key singing in the middle of a Friday night. Her hands were still trembling, her mind tuning away from that man’s babbling on stage as he worked the crowd and focusing instead on stilling her own erratic heart.

She needed to head out, she was well aware of that. Based on what Alex have said, she and Kara were going to be called up the stage to partake on all that singing nonsense this club provided and it would be too much (so excruciatingly much) to watch her ex-best friend glimmering under the yellow lights, hair shining, plump lips wrapped around the sweetest voice Lena had ever heard back when they had sleepovers and Kara took to singing in the shower while Lena herself waited her turn in the bedroom and pretended not to listen.

But again, Lena didn’t want to leave just now. She was a masochist at heart, but she also was a prideful one. This was her opportunity to torture herself with the sight of what she desperately wanted and couldn’t have, without letting Kara see her longing. Some enthusiastic group of young girls was just now finishing their destruction of “Teenage Dream” by Katty Perry when the host got on stage again to call for the next in line.

“Great work, ladies, great work! And now we have… The Danvers sisters, singing ‘Sincerely, Me’, from ‘Dear Evan Hansen’”.

Lena scoffed. Of course Kara would want to sing a musical number. She was surprised Alex had indulged her, Lena never pegged the agent as a musical lover. As the pair climbed onto the stage, Lena kept looking, feeling her heart speed up with each second, hearing it pounding loudly in her ears as if protesting why she would allow it to break again and again. Kara had a small smile plastered on her lips, it didn’t quite reach her eyes though. As she scanned the crowd ahead of her, it faltered as soon as she found what she was looking for.

Yeah, Lena wanted to torture herself with the sight of her, but sustaining eye contact, even from afar, was too much for her to handle. Even masochists have their limits. Fuck it, she thought, as she stood up and headed towards the club’s exit. She sent Sam a quick text saying she was ok, just tired and heading home, while her friend should stay and enjoy the night with her hunk (she even added a side-smile emoji too, attempting humour to mask her current despair). Sam was probably already looking for her since she heard the host call the name “Danvers” anyway.

Lena didn’t wait for a reply. She did not want to wait for a car either. Her building was only a block away, and she was just so desperate to get away that she decided to walk home. There was the risk that someone could try to approach her on her way home, but she did not mind it all that much. What she valued most in her life she had already lost.

Reprising their recent conversation inside her head, she laughed at her own stupidity in asking what was Kara doing at the club. She loved karaoke, so of course her go-to place for a night out would include that. Besides, the girl was immune to ethanol, so there wasn’t much else for her to do in an ordinary nightclub. I mean, yeah, Kara also enjoyed dancing. She was frustratingly good at it too, so graceful as she moved to the beat of the song. You wouldn’t expect that kind of body control from someone as clumsy as the reporter. But again, Supergirl seemed agile enough, so maybe the adorable clumsiness was just an act.

The memory of Sam flirting with that guy flashed in her mind, and she figured that that could be another thing to motivate Kara to go to where they were. Meet new people, flirt a little. She pictured Kara exchanging glances with someone in the middle of the dance floor, whispering something in their ear with that genuine smile she could sport, so unaware of its own allure. She pictured her getting flustered (easily, for that matter) over this mysterious person’s response, a beautiful shade of pink coloring her cheeks. She pictured them kissing in the middle of the crowd, tugging each other out of the Club and into a cab.

Suddenly, Lena was overcome with nausea. She barely had time to duck into an empty alley before everything she’d eaten that night (it wasn’t much) came back up her throat and spilled onto the street. She wiped her mouth (or attempted to at least) and continued her walk home.

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“You know” Sam started, still chewing on her croissant, “love is a lie invented by this capitalist world in order to profit from us poor, lost souls.” It was the following morning, and they were having brunch at a new place that had just opened up near Sam’s hotel. Lena flickered her gaze up from her pastrami toast.

“Who said anything about love?” she inquired, returning her attention to the food immediately after.

“Honey, you’ve spent the last two months acting like you’re going through a really bad break up after a long term relationship” Sam deadpanned.

“I cared for her, okay?”

“Oh, I know! You lo-”

“Stop.”

“Loo-”

“I mean it, Sam.” Lena sent her a dirty look. She didn’t need more truths shoved in her face now. The last time that happened, she ended in this miserable situation.

“Love her”. Sam finished quickly.

Lena sighted, annoyed. “I don’t.” The silence that followed reminded her of when she tried to do therapy and the professional kept quiet until she got uncomfortable enough to break. “Okay, maybe I do.”

“There we go”, her friend responded with a smile. “You don’t deserve to keep mopping around your whole life, Lena, you’re too good for that. But we need to face what you are really feeling in order to move on.” Lena stared at her, impassive. She wasn't in the mood to analyse her homoerotically charged and recently broken-up friendship.

“You sound just like my therapist.”

“Well, John, the guy from the club, he’s one” Sam responded, cheerfully “He gave me some tips.”

“Oh, did you two have fun?” Lena asked, playfully nudging her friend’s hand. She just wanted to change topics, really.

“Oh, he was alright. Won’t be seeing him again, though”

“Because love is a lie” Lena deadpanned.

“Well, I just said that to get your attention, really” Sam rolled her eyes at her before continuing “I’m just not looking for anything right now”

They continued to eat, talking mostly about Ruby. Lena missed the girl's playfulness very much. This led to Sam inviting her to stay over anytime she wanted, but they both knew this wouldn’t happen in the near future. She barely had the time to go home from work, imagine spending some days in Metropolis? She did, however, have some business associates there, which were mostly handled by Sam. Lena decided she could go to the next important meeting to be held there, even if it was just for the day.

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Later, much later, Lena found herself in her office on a Saturday night. There really is no rest for the wicked, she guessed. After brunch, she had received a message from one of the R&D scientists who was checking on their projects that morning, saying something seemed off with sample number five from project 1024E. She wasn’t able to keep track of everything that went down in her labs, but she did have a few projects closest to her heart, mostly the ones on improving dementia and growing stronger, faster to regenerate crops. For these projects, she asked to be personally notified of anything that could be potentially detrimental.

She’s spent the last eight hours or so trying to figure out what had happened. The scientist, Tomás, offered to call in the head biologist responsible for that project, but Lena knew Tina was at her daughter’s birthday party that day, and the last thing she wanted was to take the woman away from her family. So she stayed in the lab with Tomás for maybe three hours before she sent him away too and decided to handle the whole ordeal alone. Now, she was just finishing drafting an email to Tina explaining what had happened and what she had to do in order to get things back on track.

If she was being honest, Lena was glad she had that crisis to avert. If it weren’t for that, she would be forced to get back home and dwell on what Sam had brought to her attention that morning. Realistically, she knew she loved Kara. She’d known for years now. How could she not? Kara was just pure unadulterated goodness. She stood up to Lena like no one had ever before. She fought for people who didn’t have a voice of their own with a fervor gleaming in her eyes, the same eyes that could leave Lena bare of walls and insecurities carefully crafted by her crazy family over the years. She shined like the sun, spreading her warmth to anyone who was willing to take it, even if they didn’t deserve it, even if they were as taken by shadows as Lena.

And still, even with all that goodness inside of her, even as she lit up the lives of people around her, Kara still harbored some kind of sadness. You could see it in the glint of her eyes, in the way her shoulders slumped sometimes and her mind turned inwards. She knew pain all too well, knew loss all too well. There was this hidden dark cloud inside of her, so similar to Lena’s own. And Lena was drawn to it. Oh, she was just so enchanted, so enamoured with that woman who managed to be both the sun and the darkness at the same time.

They had talked about it, sometimes. In the middle of the night, when neither of them could sleep, they found solace in each other, be it over the phone, be it by Kara dropping by at her penthouse after asking if she could come over. Kara had told her of how much she missed her parents, her old friends, her old life. She’d confessed that recently she found out some things about them that she’d rather not know, found out they weren’t as good as she had initially thought. And she was so disappointed in them, so disappointed and angry, and then so angry with herself for feeling these horrible things about her parents. By the way she spoke, it seemed like she’d lost more than just her parents. It seemed like she’d lost everyone she had known before the supposed car accident. Lena did not understand that at the time, why Kara couldn’t reach out to old friends. How was it possible that none of them were avalilable? She did not press though. Kara always seemed uncomfortable talking about her past, and Lena was just grateful to hear it whenever she had the opportunity. She understood now.

For her part, Lena shared her own piece of mind in return. How she had done nothing while her mother drowned in front of her, how she had just stood there and watched. “You were four”, Kara had replied, like that justified anything. She told her about her childhood with the Luthors, how her father was loving until he drank too much and suddenly wasn’t, how Lilian sent her away to boarding school as soon as he died and would not bother showing up to pick her up and send her off at the airport when summer vacation came around. She told her about Lex, how he was so kind to her, so caring, how he helped develop her curiosity, her intellect, her wit. She told Kara how she feared what was inside her, who she really was to her core. How could she be good when the only person that had really ever loved her beside her own mother was as bad as Lex? Kara had pulled her close at that, nuzzling her hair on the curve of her neck.

“I love you, Lena” she had told her, whispering the words against her skin. “Our friends love you. You have such a beautiful soul, and it kills me you’re not able to see it”.

So yeah, how could she not love Kara Danvers?

She blinked the tears away at the memory, bringing herself back to the email. It was 10:30 pm, already. Lena finished some details, signed it and clicked send. She picked up her stuff and turned off her desk computer, ready to head home for the night. Before closing her balcony door, she thought she saw a blur of red and blue pass by.

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Finally home, Lena sat on her balcony, glass of wine in one hand and laptop open in front of her. She wasn’t sleepy and still had some presentation slides to finish for Monday morning, so she figured now was as good a time as ever. She had just opened Canva (Ruby had told her the slides looked prettier when you used it, so she might as well) when she felt a presence watching her. Most of the time, it was nothing. Just wishful thinking on her part, just Lena dreaming that Kara cared and came by to check on her. How pathetic was that? The antithesis of her feelings, the way she wanted to both push her away and pull her impossibly close. How she needed space from the woman or else she might just start to cry, but at the same time cursed her stupid need for space because it felt like hell not talking to Kara, not having her in her life.

This time though, when she looked up, there it was: Supergirl in all her might, hovering a few meters above her. Her traitorous heart quickened immediately. She hated that Kara could hear it.

“Supergirl” Lena greeted, turning her attention back to the screen “Can I help you with something?”

“You know, I was about to drag you out of L-Corp myself when you finally decided to come home. But then you get here and simply go back to work again? Lena, you can’t keep doing that to yourself, you’ll work yourself to death” said Kara, exasperated. Lena just smirked, trying to mask how shaken the woman made her feel.

“Keeping tabs on me, are you?” she went back to typing. She was grateful Kara could not see that she was just tipping out gibberish to keep up the appearances. The hero got a little flushed at her words, but she kept her bravado.

“You know I do” was her response, and her voice was so soft, so fucking warm. Lena hated it. Lena longed for it. She closed her laptop and left it there on her desk as she stood up.

“It’s not fair, you know? I know it was your secret to keep, I know I have no right to demand to know your truth, but damn, Kara… You didn’t have to make me believe you cared so much about me. You didn’t have to let me think we were close, we were something… real, to you.” Her voice was getting smaller and smaller. “We were to me”.

There was a beat of silence, a moment where Kara just hovered, eyes watery and body language wary, like any movement could send Lena running inside. She powered through, her voice wavering

“And now you come here and act all worried for me, say things like that and almost make me believe that-” Lena looked down, voice stuck In her throat “I won’t be fooled again. So please, stop the act. What could you possibly want from me now?”

“You” Kara blurted out. It left Lena speechless for a moment. The hero flushed at her own abruptness, but she saw right there an opportunity to talk and so she seized it. “It isn’t an act Lena, it never was”

“Don’t” she said, hurt seeping through her words. Kara did not stop, though.

“If you would just talk to me, if you could just let me explain-”

“What could possibly be there to explain?!” Lena erupted, exasperated. “I lowered all my walls for you, I gave you a free pass to my office, to my house. I let you learn every inch of me, and all the while I didn’t even know your name. And I was the only one who didn’t know. Out of all of the people in your life that were important to you, only I didn’t know.” Kara looked beaten, miserable really. It was odd, seeing a Super so deflated. “So, the only logical conclusion is… I was never important to you at all.”

“That is a sophistry and you know it” she snapped back, sorrow replaced by indignation. Lena scoffed at her. “You are so important to me.” Kara said, voice pleading. “And you know me. You know you do”. Lena kept staring at her, eyes void of emotion. Kara could not take it. “Come on, Lena, you know you do. So what if you did not know my real last name? So what if you did not know I can fly and break shit if I want to” Lena was momentarily taken aback by the curse word. That was unusual. “I’m not Supergirl. I’m not Kara Danvers either, I’ll give you that.” She paused for a bit, as if gathering the strength to say the next part. “I’m not even Kara Zor-El. I’m just… Kara.”

Lena’s anger had worn out at that point, the tears already streaming down her face. She was so tired, so sad. She missed Kara so fucking much. She knew she was about to break her resolve, she knew that if she let Kara push hard enough she would eventually give in. But she was still so fucking hurt. And that little monster inside her wasn’t ready to stop hurting, it wasn’t ready to stop hurting Kara back.

“I can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head, thinking out loud. “I can’t talk to you or else I’ll-” she stopped herself in time.

“You’ll what?” Kara asked, something similar to hope hidden in her voice. “We need to talk it out, Lena. If we want to be okay again, we need to. Please talk to me”. She was so earnest. So earnest with that luxurious blonde hair and that gorgeous stupid face and that big beautiful heart. Lena lifted one eyebrow.

“You can’t make me”. If it was said two months ago, to Kara and not Supergirl, it would have sounded playful, teasing. She would smirk, and Kara would blush, and maybe, if she was feeling bold that day, she would reply with something like “Wanna bet?” and it would be Lena’s turn to get flustered.

Kara just stared at her, long and hard, as if waiting for something. Lena held it. Kara licked her lips, preparing herself to speak. “Maybe I can, actually.” Lena furrowed her brows in confusion, smirking a little.

“What, are you going to take me away, then? Fly me somewhere I can’t hide?” She asked, almost playfully. Kara just kept looking, kept waiting. Yup, that’s exactly what she would do, Lena realized. To her credit, Kara waited a little more. Almost a whole minute passed, the silence stretching between them. Lena could’ve said “no” and gone back home. She knew Kara wouldn’t trespass her propriety unless she absolutely needed to. She didn’t, though. Lena stood there, her feet planted to the ground. That was all the confirmation Kara needed.

In a swift motion, Lena was out of her balcony and into the sky, carefully cradled in Kara’s arms. Oh, she loathed how much she loved being like this. Pathetic. “That's not fair!” she screamed, trying to be heard through the wind.

“You saw that coming” Kara replied, and Lena could not argue against that. She was so close to her that she could feel Kara’s heart rapidly beating against her suit. Soon enough they were on top of her building, really really high, up where they stored the water tanks. She could still get down. Of course Kara, ever so thoughtful Kara, would not trap her. She had an out of this conversation if she needed to, it would just be a little more… difficult, to climb down the iron ladder on the side, one that did not look sturdy enough, by the way. She would have to speak about that security breach with the building administrators later.

“I can still get down if I want to, you know.” She pointed out, because she did not know what else to say.

“Good thing you don’t” was Kara’s response. Well.

“Bold today, aren’t you?” Lena held Kara 's stare. She was almost distracted by how her eyes shone under the moonlight. Pathetic.

“Listen” Kara started, when she realized that if she wanted them to do this, she would have to be the one to take the first step (other than kind of kidnapping Lena out of her balcony and onto her own building’s roof). “I’m sorry. I already said that, I know, but I need you to understand that if I could change anything in this world, if I was given the chance to do that and there was a scenario in which I told you upfront about everything and we ended up okay, I would. But, as it turns out,. I can’t. I was selfish and I hurt you in the process. The worst thing I ever did was what I did to you, and I’m so sorry, Lena”

Her voice was soft, full of regret, full of pain. Lena couldn’t look her in the eyes, couldn’t bear to see her so small. Still, she needed to understand, in order to know if she could ever forgive (she wanted to, desperately, ardently).

“Why? Why did you not want to tell me?” she asked in hushed tones, in a way that if it wasn’t for her superhearing, Kara would not be able to hear it at all.

The hero let out a long deep breath. She mulled over her words before speaking, deciding how to proceed.

“I wanted to tell you, actually. In the beginning, I mean. After all that mess we went through with the Daxamites, I wanted to lay it all out to you. I’d trusted you long before, but at that moment I had no doubt your heart was in the right place. But… We started becoming closer and closer, you started liking me more, liking Kara more. Everyone around me gets so wrapped up in Supergirl. It’s like this” she pointed to herself, to her suit “is the best thing I have to offer, you know? I know my friends love me, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if… If maybe they’d love me a little less if I wasn’t what I am”

Kara seemed insecure, a little shaken. For Lena, this was the most idiotic thing she had ever heard. Again, how could someone not love Kara?

Kara’s eyes bored inside hers, trapping her attention. She was closer now, her hand reaching out as if to grab Lena’s, but it closed into a fist before it could.

“It was never like this with you, though. I mean, you liked Supergirl in the beginning, but you loved Kara Danvers. You always thought she was worth something, that I was worth something. I did not have to talk to you about villains and evil aliens, I didn’t have to show you my powers. I was enough, you know? Just Kara. We could just… talk. All this time I’ve spent on this planet, Lena, I’ve never felt normal. Always needing to hold back, always with something to hide, but with you…” she worried her lower lip, that earnestness so palpable in her eyes “with you I felt normal. I felt like myself. Yeah, I was hiding something, but it wasn’t anything that really mattered. You knew me. My hopes and fears, my pain. Even if you did not know all the details of it. Everything I told you about my parents, about how my mother would sing me lullabies and how my father would take me to his work with him, proud that I could keep up with some of the things they did… It was all true. Minus the car crash, of course.”

Lena could not decide if she felt her heart race beyond its limits or stop altogether as she heard her. Maybe both. Just like she had suspected, she could feel herself giving in.

“So I was selfish. I didn’t want to lose that, to lose you. Kind, resilient, brilliant, beautiful you. The one who knew me to my core, my perfect partner at a game night. So yeah, when you got mad at Supergirl, I didn’t have the heart to risk telling you. And even after that, I just… I couldn’t. I, Kara, couldn’t risk losing you to Supergirl either.”

Once again, there was silence. Lena stared. Kara waited, head ducked, shame all over her face. She took a breath and ducked after, chasing her eyes. It was so absurd, so maddeningly wrong to Lena that Kara thought that about herself.

“That’s… the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me”.

At that, Kara seemed worried. Hurt, even, like she had just being slapped. But there was something to Lena’s voice, it sounded like it used to before everything blew up. There was fondness.

“Between you and Supergirl, Kara, you’ve always been the superior one. I could never, never, choose her over you. If anything, learning you two were the same person would only make me like her more. You’re just so… bright. So warm. No one can compete with that, really.”

Kara tentatively touched her hand, delicately, testing the waters. Her eyes wandered all around Lena’s face, like a prayer. Her hand clasped around Lena’s, like a plea.

Lena felt that little monster inside of her dying, felt her wounds start to heal, like the only one who could help them do that was Kara. She ached to stay orbiting her for as long as she would have her. What was a woman to do without her sun?

Feeling brave and quite frankly desperate to comfort the other woman, she brought her hands to Kara's cheek, caressing gently warm skin dampened by the tears. She felt Kara lean in her touch and wondered if the hero even noticed what she’d done. They were so close, so achingly close. It wasn’t enough, it never had been.

With one last surge of courage, she got on her tiptoes and placed a small kiss to Kara’s left cheek. “We’re gonna be okay, I think” She whispered quietly, still caressing Kara where her hands rested on her face.

Kara, whose impossibly warm blue eyes were looking up at her in wonder, in absolute adoration. She was so fucked.

Slowly, she started to detach herself from Kara, before she did something reckless and ruined this shaky rebirth of their relationship. Kara’s eyes widened, almost panicked, searching Lena’s face, pleadingly. She followed after the retreating woman, arms enveloping her waist, pulling her in as their lips met.

It was tentative at first. Slow, chaste. Lena was taken by surprise, but it didn’t take long for warmth to invade her, for her skin to tingle where Kara’s hands rested and her stomach to turn with want. If she were a better person, she probably would have left things at that. A quick, soft kiss, that needed to be talked about before they went any further. Lena was a desperate woman, though. She felt like the fox from that old tale, always lingering so close to the sweetest looking grapes, but never being able to reach them. Well, now they had fallen towards her on their own accord. And so, Lena took a mouthful.

She reciprocated with enthusiasm, burying her hands deep into Kara’s hair, pulling her in. Her tongue darted out, liking Kara’s lip, asking for permission to enter. She was surprised when Kara invaded her mouth instead, one hand cupping Lena’s head, tilting it back to allow easier entrance, while the other stayed on her waist, applying firm pressure there.

“Oh”, she thought to herself, unable to contain a soft whimper.

Kara dictated the rhythm from there on, lips insistent and hands greeddy, grabbing Lena like she’d died if she let go. After a while, the kiss became tender again, just before it ended with a sweet peck, foreheads resting together, eyes still closed.

“Was that okay?” Kara asked, unsure, and Lena couldn’t help but giggle.

“By all means”. Her voice was breathy, her accent more pronounced as she tried to recenter herself. Kara smiled in front of her, that genuine, heart stopping smile of hers.

“Feel welcomed to do it again anytime you want to, for all I care”. At that, Kara leaned in again, chasing her lips one more time. She was giddy, beyond herself with happiness and, of course, that was the trigger that made a rush of anxiety pass through her. After all, her happiness could never last too long. She stopped the kiss, looking up at Kara, a serious expression on her face.

“I just… I can’t go through this again, okay? I can’t.”

Kara held her face in her hands and placed one small, adoring kiss on her forehead.

“You won’t,” she whispered back.

This time around, it felt like an oath.