Chapter Text
Lena had been eleven years old the first time Kara appeared in her life.
It was the night of a LuthorCorp charity ball, one important enough to warrant Lena’s untimely return to Metropolis from boarding school, though the rest of the details were decidedly fuzzier. She’d attended so many similar functions in her time as a Luthor that they’d all begun to blend together at some point. No doubt there had been playful teasing from Lex, a handful of thinly veiled but precisely aimed barbs from Lilian, a speech from Lionel about upholding the dignity of the Luthor name. Lena knew what to expect from her adoptive family, and she knew what they expected of her in turn.
Lena’s appearance at such events was required only insofar as it helped to stave off any scandalous whisperings. The Luthors’ decision to take in a four-year-old orphan, one who had seemingly appeared out of thin air, had been the source of much rumor and speculation among the upper echelons of the Metropolis elite, and a full commitment to presenting Lena as one of their own was the family’s chosen countermeasure. Lena was primped, propped up, and paraded about for all to see, and then she was left to her own devices.
She’d learned quickly that the best survival mechanism was to stay out of the way. Lex and Lionel were often too busy hobnobbing to pay Lena any mind, which left Lillian as her sole observer. Her adoptive mother did not take kindly to Lena receiving any sort of positive attention, as though her being called brilliant or cultured or talented could somehow dimmish those qualities in Lex. There were only so many times that Lena could take Lillian’s icy reprimands – that she was vain, spoiled, that she thought too highly of herself – before she’d learned to make herself scarce.
Which was why, on that particular evening, Lena had squirreled herself away in a quiet corner behind the coat check with only a book and a small plate of hors d’oeuvres for company. The party was in full swing by then, and she had no expectations of being disturbed.
“Lena?”
The voice came out of nowhere, startling Lena so badly that the heavy book she’d been reading slipped from her grasp and landed on the floor at her feet with a resounding smack.
Lena glanced up to find a girl slightly older than she was fiddling nervously with her glasses. She had straight blond hair and striking blue eyes and was wearing a dress that was at least a size too big for her, the extra fabric hanging loose on her frame in a way that was decidedly unfashionable. She didn’t seem at all like one of the Luthors’ typical party guests.
Lena was almost certain they’d never met before, which made the girl’s expression all the more peculiar. She was staring at Lena with wide, unblinking eyes, her face contorted in such a way as to suggest she was holding back laughter, or tears, or both.
“Do I know you?” Lena asked skeptically, reaching down to recover the book she’d dropped at her feet.
The sound of Lena’s voice seemed to snap the other girl out of her daze, and she blinked in confusion before stammering, “Uh, no, sorry. I’m just- I mean- I’m Kara.” She thrust her hand out as though she expected Lena to shake it.
When Lena only continued to stare her down, Kara slowly retracted her arm back to her side. This was followed by a beat of awkward silence, during which Kara was clearly searching for something more to say. Her eyes landed on the book in Lena’s hand, and she said, a mite too enthusiastically, “Oh! Harry Potter? I used to love those books! Have you read them before?”
Lena was momentarily confused, before she realized that Harry Potter was the title on the dust jacket she’d used to mask the book on quantum mechanics that she’d stolen from her father’s study.
“Oh, this isn’t- That’s actually not what I’m reading,” she said, suddenly embarrassed.
Kara seemed confused by the admission. “Oh, then what are you reading?”
Lena could feel her hackles rising in the face of the other girl’s scrutiny. She’d been to enough of these events to know that their attendees did not typically seek her out for reasons beyond their own petty self-interest.
Tone turning to ice, Lena asked, “I’m sorry, did you need something?”
The tentative smile on the other girl’s face fell, and the same strange expression from earlier began to bleed through. The intensity of it was making Lena decidedly uncomfortable. “I just… I needed to speak to you,” Kara said quietly.
“Well, you’ve spoken to me,” Lena said, eyes narrowing. “So, you can go ahead and tell your mother or your handler or whoever sent you here that you’ve done your part in trying to befriend me, but I am not interested.”
With that, Lena stood abruptly and turned to leave. It was a shame too. This had been one of her better hiding spots.
“Wait,” Kara said, and there was such a clear note of desperation to her voice that it actually gave Lena pause. “That’s not- No one sent me here to talk to you. I just thought you might be…you know, lonely.”
“And you’re here to rescue me, are you?” she shot back.
“I’m- I’m getting this all wrong,” Kara mumbled, almost to herself. Lena folded her arms across her chest and awaited the other girl’s next move. Kara went on, “Look, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but I swear I just wanted to meet you. I-I know that you were adopted. By the Luthors. I’m adopted too. I guess I just thought we might have something in common.”
Lena could feel herself deflating a little in the face of Kara’s admission. It was entirely possible that the defensiveness she’d cultivated in the name of self-preservation had caused her to lash out at someone who didn’t deserve it.
“You’re adopted?” Lena asked, lowering her guard ever-so-slightly. It was a bit of an uncommon circumstance in their social circles, and she couldn’t hide her interest.
Kara seemed to pick up on the fact that Lena’s hostility was fading, and her tone was a little more confident as she said, “Yeah, I um, I lost my parents. Pretty recently. The family that took me in is nice enough, but it’s still hard.”
Lena nodded. “I lost my mother when I was four,” she said quietly. She didn’t talk about her mother very often, but it only seemed fair when Kara had opened up to her first.
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Kara said, and somehow, Lena could tell that she meant it.
Silence passed between them for a few seconds, before Kara asked, “Why are you back here on your own?”
“Oh, I guess I’m just not a fan of these fancy parties,” Lena responded, feeling self-conscious. “It’s all so performative. Most of these people don’t even like each other, and everyone is so old.”
Come to think of it, Kara’s attendance at the event was a bit unusual. Lena and Lex were required to make an appearance as members of the Luthor family, but it was rare for any of the other guests to bring their children along.
“Have you been to many of these?” Lena asked. “Who are you here with?”
“Oh, no, this is my first one,” Kara said, a bit nervously. She ignored the second half of Lena’s question entirely, and went on, “Um, if you’re not busy, I was thinking of checking out the dessert table. It might be one of the few things that makes a party like this worthwhile.”
“I’m not really supposed to have sweets,” Lena admitted reluctantly.
“Aw, really? But have you seen how amazing the spread is? They must have over a dozen different types of macarons.”
Kara’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Lena felt her resolve cracking. Surely she couldn’t get into too much trouble if she was only accompanying a guest. Besides, Kara had somehow managed to target a weakness. Despite being trained from a young age to avoid such indulgences, Lena had always harbored a secret fondness for French desserts. She bit her lip.
“Fine,” she huffed, squirreling her book away under her chair for safekeeping, “but only because I won’t be called an ungracious host.”
They made their way into the main ballroom, weaving their way between the clusters of chattering businessmen and guests who’d had too much to drink. Lena had to admit that the atmosphere seemed somehow lighter with company. Kara was a little strange, and she stuck to Lena like glue, but Lena found herself uncharacteristically giggly as she watched the older girl attempt to stack their plates with more sweets than they could reasonably accommodate. At some point, a pair of macarons escaped from the pile and went rolling across the floor, and Lena took Kara’s hand and dragged her from the scene of the crime.
They escaped into an empty staff corridor off the kitchens and sat down side by side, Lena still buzzing from the adrenaline. They’d been lucky enough to avoid attracting any unwanted attention so far, but Lena couldn’t help but continue to cast surreptitious glances down the hall every few minutes.
She clearly wasn’t as subtle about it as she’d thought, because eventually Kara asked “Are you okay? You seem a little on edge.”
Lena briefly debated on how much she wanted to reveal, but Kara had so far proven herself pleasant company, and so Lena found herself saying, “It’s my stepmother, Lilian. She doesn’t like to see me eating sweets, or engaging in activities she considers childish, or doing much of anything really, besides sitting quietly in a corner.”
Kara’s face was sympathetic. “Is she the reason you have to hide what types of books you like to read?”
Lena was surprised by how astute Kara’s observations were, given that they’d only known each other for a couple of hours. After a short pause, she said, “She doesn’t really like it when I read anything too advanced for my age. She says it’s ‘showing off and not becoming of a young lady’. It’s easier to just pretend than to argue about it.”
Embarrassed, Lena popped a macaron into her mouth to stave off any further confessions. However, instead of seeming amused, as Lena had thought she might, Kara’s frown only deepened.
“That’s terrible,” Kara said, and she seemed so sincere that Lena almost believed her. “You shouldn’t have to hide who you are for the benefit of others. You should be proud of it.”
Lena let out a bitter laugh. “Pride only gets me into trouble,” she said. “I’m happier if I keep my accomplishments to myself, believe me.”
“Well, I think anyone who isn’t proud of you is crazy,” Kara said adamantly. “You’re one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met!”
“A lovely sentiment, but you hardly know me,” Lena responded, eyes focused on the plate in front of her. She wasn’t used to such unabashed praise, and she could feel heat rising in her cheeks in the face of it.
Kara seemed oddly flustered by Lena’s statement. “Oh, I- Well no, of course I haven’t known you very long at all,” she said with a nervous laugh, “but I’ve been told I’m an excellent judge of character.” With that, she shoved half of a cupcake into her mouth and began to chew it with dogged determination.
Lena gave her a strange look. As much as she was growing to like Kara, she couldn’t deny that the other girl was a little bit odd. She seemed to lack any of the decorum one would expect from the child of a high-status family.
It dawned on Lena that she’d never actually caught Kara’s full name. “Who did you say your family was again?” she asked.
Kara swallowed the bite she’d been working on with so much effort that Lena was surprised she didn’t choke. Then, without warning, she made a show of glancing up at the clock, leapt to her feet and said, “Oh no, what time is it? My parents will be looking for me! I really need to go.”
The change in her disposition was so abrupt that Kara was already halfway out the door before Lena was able to call after her, “I’ll see you around again, won’t I?”
“Yes, definitely!” Kara answered, and then she was gone.
Lena didn’t see Kara again for three years after that. She’d shown up to the next few LuthorCorp events brimming with anticipation, but she’d been crestfallen each time Kara had failed to make an appearance. Eventually, Lena stopped looking for Kara at all, resigning herself once again to evenings spent combing through books in secluded back rooms. It was for the best, she’d told herself. If she had continued to befriend Kara, Lillian would have found out eventually, and then she would have attempted to turn her against Lena, or to use her as a tool for manipulation. Lena had learned all too well that to cherish anything in her life was to open herself up to weakness.
Time marched on, and Lena eventually forgot about the brief encounter entirely. She grew old enough that she was no longer permitted to hide away at parties, instead being forced into the limelight to laugh at the same insipid old jokes from the same insipid old men. She watched Lex dominate the room with discussions of business and politics and economics, while Lena was expected to smile and courtesy and nod. She’d known even then that she was going to need to work far harder than her brother to be shown even a fraction of the respect that he commanded so effortlessly.
Lena threw herself into her schoolwork, citing the academic rigor of her courses as an excuse to spend less and less time at the Luthor Mansion. She excelled in every aspect of her studies, perpetually at the top of her class, though this had the unfortunate side effect of alienating a vast majority of her peers. In a school as prestigious and competitive as Mount Helena, many took the heights of Lena’s achievement as a personal affront.
Lena managed to find solace from the pangs of social isolation in her relationship with Andrea Rojas, a girl in the year above who seemed somehow unfazed by both Lena’s name and her unrelenting intensity. Many a Saturday afternoon found them exchanging clumsy stolen kisses behind the ramshackle shed in the garden, and Lena found herself with yet one more secret to harden her heart around; one more aspect of Lena for Lillian to find defective should she ever find out about it. So Lena continued to play the dutiful daughter, to do everything that her family asked of her, and then she would return from Metropolis to giggle with Andrea, side by side on her four-poster bed, about the latest snobbish rich boy Lillian had tried to foist on her. It wasn’t perfect, but it was about as close to peace as Lena had ever known.
Then Andrea had transferred, and Lena was on her own again.
She told herself it was fine, that lonely was meant to be her default state. It was easier to shield herself from the world when she was the only one she needed to protect. It was more difficult to acknowledge that maybe Andrea had been doing some of the shielding as well.
It was in the midst of this adolescent turmoil that Lena turned a corner in a corridor one Sunday afternoon and walked directly into a familiar blonde.
It took a moment for Lena to place her. The presence of a new face on Mount Helena’s grounds outside of the start of term was such an unusual occurrence that it caught her completely off guard. Kara had also changed quite a bit since their last meeting. She’d grown taller, her shoulders broader, curves filled out in surprisingly pleasant ways, and Lena was far too busy taking notice to realize that they’d met before.
“Lena!” Kara said, greeting her as though three years hadn’t passed since they’d last seen each other.
“Kara?” Lena asked, her hormone-addled brain finally making the jump to recognition. The sight of Kara here, now, was so patently absurd that Lena was having trouble wrapping her head around it. It had not escaped her notice that Kara didn’t seem to share the same sense of bewilderment. “What on Earth are you doing here?”
“Oh, I um, I might transfer here actually, so my parents sent me to take a tour,” Kara responded, somehow adding a verbal question mark to the end of that sentence where there probably shouldn’t have been one.
“Transfer? Here?” Lena asked, dumbfounded. Kara hardly seemed the type of cut-throat socialite that frequented Mount Helena’s halls, though Lena supposed they had originally met at one of the Luthors’ more prestigious galas. Perhaps she came from a more important family than Lena had originally presumed.
“Yeah, it’s um- So I didn’t know you went to school here,” Kara said, very clearly changing the subject. She was acting incredibly suspicious, so much so that Lena could feel old defense mechanisms sliding back into place.
“Oh yes, for the last several years actually,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Though I’m sure a quick internet search would reveal as much.”
Kara was at least astute enough to pick up on the implications of what Lena had said. With an awkward laugh, she responded, “You think I, what, tracked you down or something? That would be crazy.” When Lena’s only response to this was to raise an eyebrow, Kara leaned in and said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’m not actually planning to transfer here. I’m only here so that my mother will stop bugging me about it.”
Lena would have to examine later just why she was so disappointed to hear that.
“In the meantime, though, maybe you could give me a tour?” Kara asked hopefully. “It’s nice to run into a familiar face.”
Lena found herself wondering if Kara was even telling the truth. She’d certainly never heard of many unsupervised, spontaneous tours of Mount Helena’s campus. Then again, the security at the gates was reflective of the wealth and status of its designated charges, and Lena doubted Kara would have made it this far if she wasn’t meant to be here.
“I…suppose so,” Lena responded. She was still wary of Kara’s true intentions, but it wasn’t as though Lena had anything better to be doing. Besides, if Kara really was up to something untoward, then surely it was in Lena’s best interest to keep an eye on her.
“Great!” Kara said, clearly oblivious to Lena’s lingering apprehensions. “Lead the way.”
They set off down the halls, and it didn’t take long for Lena to become aware of the confused stares and surreptitious glances that were beginning to follow them. The other students didn’t typically pay Lena much mind, but Kara’s presence at her side was clearly a point of interest, and Lena did not relish the extra attention.
Intending to hasten them away from prying eyes, Lena quickened her steps towards the library, not even bothering to check if Kara was matching her pace. They’d nearly arrived at their destination without incident, when a familiar voice sounded from somewhere behind them.
“Who’s your new friend, Luthor?”
Lena fought to suppress a groan as Veronica Sinclair and two of her usual cronies cornered them just outside the library doors.
“Just a prospective student here for a tour,” Lena responded, keeping her voice neutral. Veronica was a gossip and a shit-stirrer, but in most cases she was relatively harmless unless provoked. “I’m just showing her around.”
“A prospective student? In the middle of term?” Veronica asked, raising an eyebrow. “That sounds awfully suspicious. You sure she’s not another of your little girlfriends? What, you have to import them now that Rojas is out of the picture?”
Lena balled her hands into fists at her sides but refused to take the bait. She knew that Veronica had no proof of what she was saying, but that she’d love to hear Lena confirm it.
“She’s just here for a tour of the campus,” Lena repeated through gritted teeth.
“Hm, whatever you say,” Veronica said, feigning indifference. Then, as she turned to leave, she added, “I honestly hope she does transfer here. I’m sure it won’t take long for her to start avoiding you, just like everyone else does.”
Lena watched Veronica go, feeling the residual embarrassment of the situation settle around her now that the confrontation was over. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, turning to face Kara. She was surprised to find the other girl staring after Veronica’s retreating back with a look of blind fury, her hands clenched at her sides so hard that her knuckles were turning white.
“Oh, hey, are you alright?” Lena asked. Without thinking, she placed a hand on Kara’s shoulder, and the other girl uncoiled like a taut spring.
“Hm? Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Kara said, though her eyes were still narrowed and her jaw was tight. “I just really don’t like that girl.”
Lena was surprised by the intensity of Kara’s response, but then, nothing Kara did ever struck her as particularly normal.
“Why don’t we take this tour outside,” Lena suggested. “I know a spot where no one else should bother us.”
They purchased a pair of sandwiches from the cafeteria and Lena led Kara out into her favorite garden at the edge of the grounds. It was sequestered out of the way and a bit of a pain to get to, and as such it received far less foot traffic from the general student population. Lena was pleased to find it predictably empty as they settled down with their lunches under the shade of a large oak tree.
They ate without speaking for a few minutes, Lena still too embarrassed by their run in with Veronica to think of much to say. She was terrified that Kara might bring up Veronica’s comments about Andrea, or that she would be appalled by what they insinuated. However, when Kara finally did break the silence, it was simply to ask, “So, do you like it here?”
Lena felt some of the tension bleed out of her as she considered the question. “As much as anywhere else, I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “Their academic program is unparalleled.”
This comment elicited a small smile from Kara. “But is everyone who goes here a complete jerk?” she asked more pointedly.
With a short laugh, Lena said, “Not all of them, no. Most of them just ignore me.” At the look of dismay on Kara’s face, she added “You’ve probably figured this out by now, but I’m not exactly winning any popularity contests. I’ve learned not to let it bother me.”
“It bothered me,” Kara said quietly. Then, when Lena turned to her with a curious look, she jolted a little and said, “I’m kind of the weird kid at my school too. I guess that’s another thing we have in common.”
Lena was surprised to hear that. Kara seemed just the right combination of pretty and athletic to have people fawning over her. Lena certainly wasn’t going to voice that thought aloud though, so instead she raised her half-finished sandwich and said, “Cheers then, to being outcasts,” and laughed when Kara raised her own sandwich in response.
It occurred to Lena that she hadn’t opened up to anyone like this since Andrea. She usually preferred to keep her feelings closer to the chest, but Kara seemed so sincere and genuinely interested in what Lena had to say that she’d let some of her walls down without even thinking. It was easy to forget that they were essentially strangers.
The thought occurred to her that she had never even caught Kara’s full name. “What about your family? I don’t think I ever asked.” It was a simple question that should have a simple answer, but for some reason it seemed to set Kara on edge.
“Oh, they’re- You probably don’t even know them. They don’t really socialize often. I’d be surprised if you’d even heard of them, honestly,” she sputtered, clearly flustered by the new line of questioning.
Just as quickly as she’d grown comfortable with Kara, Lena could feel her old suspicions rising to the surface. “Kara, what’s your last name?” she asked pointedly, but Kara only began to fidget with her glasses in lieu of providing an answer.
Before Lena could remark on this needlessly evasive behavior, Kara’s attention shifted, and she turned to stare back towards the school building with a faraway look on her face. She seemed so focused that Lena was compelled to follow her line of sight, but the garden around them remained empty. She turned back, perplexed, just in time for Kara’s blue eyes to snap back and meet her own.
“I have to use the bathroom,” Kara said, her tone suddenly urgent.
Before Lena could protest, Kara jumped to her feet and bolted around the back of the school building. All Lena could do was stare after her retreating form, and Kara was barely out of sight when a new voice from behind nearly made Lena jump.
“Miss Luthor?”
Lena turned to find Ms. Nolan, the housemistress, staring down at her in the mid-afternoon sun.
“Are you alone, dear?” Ms. Nolan asked. “Miss Sinclair seems to think you were in the company of an unpermitted guest.”
Lena resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course Veronica hadn’t been able to mind her own business.
“I was showing a prospective student around, Ms. Nolan,” Lena responded, keeping her tone light and respectful.
“There are no prospective students permitted during the middle of term,” Ms. Nolan responded, “and there’s no record of anyone having come through security this morning.”
“That can’t be right,” Lena said, brow furrowing, though there was an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. “She’s just gone to use the restroom, but she should be back in a minute. I’m sure we can clear up any misunderstanding.”
But Kara never returned, and when Lena went to check the ladies’ room fifteen minutes later, it was empty.
Kara had vanished without a trace yet again, but this time Lena wasn’t going to let her get away without a fight. She scoured the Internet for any clues to Kara’s identity, but with only a first name and a general proximity to go on, she had little luck. She assumed that Kara must be from Metropolis or the surrounding area, but no Karas matching her description had turned up in various search engines, local periodicals or even on MySpace.
When her solo search efforts failed, Lena began to casually ask after Kara at social gatherings, spacing out her inquiries to avoid drawing attention to herself in the process. It seemed that, other than the one gala at which Lena had met her, Kara had never attended another of the Luthors’ events. In fact, no one Lena spoke to seemed to know anyone who fit Kara’s description at all. In an act of desperation, she’d even stolen the visitors’ log from Kara’s trip to Mount Helena but, as Ms. Nolan had stated, security had no record that anyone had signed in that day. Lena began to seriously wonder if she’d been conversing with a ghost.
The rest of her time at Mount Helena came and went with no further sign of Kara, and eventually Lena gave up on trying to track her down.
Life went on. Lena was accepted to MIT at the impressive age of fifteen, and soon after was leaving the mixed memories of her boarding school days behind. She was done with the pettiness of upper crust high school politics and moving on to an institution of higher learning. Surely there she would meet like-minded individuals who shared her drive and grand ambitions, peers who would place more importance on their education than on their social standing.
But Lena hadn’t accounted for how isolating the age gap would be. Her cohorts might be some of the best and the brightest, but they were also college students, and drugs, drinking and casual sex dominated a significant portion of their interests. They were polite enough during classes and shared assignments but, come the weekend, they avoided very-obviously-underage Lena like the plague.
And so, once again, Lena threw herself into her work. She took on a double major in biochemistry and bioengineering and spent entire weekends in the library or the lab. She aced her assignments, her GPA soared, and she climbed effortlessly to the top of the Dean’s List. All of this served to earn Lena the admiration of her professors and her peers, but it also cemented her standing as an antisocial genius-slash-loner. Her classmates were fascinated and intimidated by her in equal measure, but none of them seemed particularly concerned with befriending her.
It didn’t matter. Lena had brains and drive and ambition in spades. One day she would be the architect of a scientific breakthrough that would change the world for the better, and then it would be clear what all of her sacrifice had been for.
By the end of her second semester, Lena had patented two inventions, been published as third author in a fairly prestigious research journal and was looking at a fast track into MIT’s graduate program. She finally felt as though she was living up to the Luthor name, that her adoptive family might actually be proud to call her one of their own.
And then Lionel Luthor had died.
Lena had stood beside Lex and Lillian at the funeral feeling alarmingly numb. Lionel hadn’t been the warmest father, but he was the only one she’d ever known, and she’d spent her entire childhood striving to live up to his expectations. Now she would never get the chance.
Lex had been stony and silent as they’d watched the funeral attendants lower Lionel’s coffin into its final resting place. Lena knew that her brother’s relationship with Lionel had been strained in its later years, but she imagined that their father’s passing had still come as something of a shock. Lex would be the face of LuthorCorp now, and with that responsibility came the shedding of the remainder of his youth. Her brother had been a bit of a playboy and a philanderer in his younger years, but Lena could already see on his face that such boyish fancies were behind him now.
Before she’d left the Luthor Mansion to return to MIT, Lex had clapped a hand on Lena’s shoulder and said, “We’re going to run this company together. I can’t do this without you.”
Such a simple statement, but it had meant more to Lena than her brother would ever know.
She returned to school with renewed purpose. Lex’s succession as LuthorCorp CEO dominated the news for the next several months, and each interview and press conference showcasing her brother’s commitment to the company only fueled Lena’s conviction. She was going to graduate as soon as possible and take her place at Lex’s side. Lillain’s opinions and constant belittling no longer mattered. Lex was head of the family now, and Lex believed in Lena. That would be enough.
Lena doubled up her schedule, took on more research projects, pulled more all-nighters. At certain points she was fueled by nothing more than a few cups of coffee and her own stubborn sense of pride. Her grades never faltered, but the same could not be said for her flagging mental health.
One night towards the end of term, when Lena had stretched herself so thin that she was liable to snap, she’d stepped from her dorm in search of her nightly espresso to find that her favorite late-night café was unexpectedly closed. With the pressure of finals, her research deadlines, and her embarrassing lack of self-care bearing down on her, this minor inconvenience was too much to handle, and Lena found herself indulging in a much-needed sob on the steps of the library. It was nearly two in the morning, and the campus was all but deserted, so Lena was startled by the unexpected weight of a soft hand on her shoulder.
It had been over two years, and the very thought of it defied all logic, but somehow Lena just knew it was her.
“You okay?” Kara asked softly, taking a seat next to Lena on the steps.
Lena, overcome both by sleep deprivation and the absurdity of Kara’s sudden reappearance, let out a wet laugh and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Kara, to her credit, didn’t play dumb or ask what Lena meant, just kept a supportive hand resting on her shoulder.
“It’s nothing,” Lena said finally, drying her eyes with the back of her sleeve. It was bad enough to have been caught in a moment of weakness; she wasn’t about to explain the questionable life choices that had preceded it.
“Are you sure?” Kara asked, and the genuine concern in her eyes made Lena’s blood boil.
“Is there a reason you’ve turned up now?” she snapped. “Considering a transfer to MIT, I suppose?” She was still hurt by the way Kara had disappeared after their last meeting, and that was not helped by the audacity of turning up again now as though everything between them was fine.
Kara recoiled at the bitterness in Lena’s tone, finally withdrawing her hand to her side. She began to fiddle with the sleeve of her sweater, looking painfully contrite.
“Who are you?” Lena asked, undeterred by the change in the blonde’s demeanor. “I mean, who are you really? Why do you keep showing up in my life and refusing to tell me a single thing about yourself? What are you hiding?”
Lena’s breathing was heavy, and Kara seemed caught off guard by the intensity of the outburst.
“Lena,” she said softly, “I never meant-”
But Lena cut her off. “Enough,” she said, tone brokering no further argument. “Tell me your full name this instant. I’m far too busy for whatever games you’re trying to play here.”
“I-” Kara’s eyes locked with Lena’s own, and for a fleeting instant Lena thought Kara might actually tell her the truth, before the blonde let out a strangled breath and said, “I can’t.”
Lena narrowed her eyes. “Then we have nothing more to say to each other.”
And she turned and left a stunned Kara standing on the steps behind her.
By the time she was seventeen, Lena had completed her undergraduate studies and transitioned into MIT’s graduate program. Her ever-mounting accomplishments and accelerated course of study, coupled with the success of her brother’s rise at LuthorCorp, began to garner attention, and the anonymity she’d learned to find solace in evaporated almost overnight. Students that would once have walked past her in the halls now stopped to applaud her achievements, or ask for advice, or hand her their resumes. Magazines sought her out for everything from puff pieces to 30 under 30 features. All at once, the whole world seemed to recognize that Lena Luthor was poised for greatness.
Around the same time that Lena was struggling to adjust to her newfound fame, Lex seemed to be buckling under the weight of his own. Her brother had always had an ego, certainly, but what had once been a charming sort of cockiness had morphed into a twisted fixation on being perceived as the best. He would suffer no criticisms or unfavorable comparisons, verbally eviscerate anyone who dared to even suggest a shortcoming. His fixation evolved into a growing obsession, and at the center of that obsession was a certain flying alien in blue.
Superman had been around for years of course, ever since Lena was a girl. He and Lex had been on friendly terms in their younger years, had even collaborated on occasion, but it was as though Lex had suddenly recognized the Kryptonian as a rival for the public’s love and attention. Where once her brother had been accepting of, even thrilled by, the presence of alien life on Earth, he now only seemed to be growing ever more bitter and jealous.
“They haven’t earned what they have, Lena,” her brother had grumbled during her most recent visit. “They stand above us due to quirks of biology, not because they are any more deserving of their power.”
Lena hadn’t yet realized how fervent her brother’s rhetoric had become. She’d made the mistake of mentioning one of Superman’s recent feats of heroics, and now there was a manic gleam in his eye that made Lena deeply uneasy.
“Surely it doesn’t matter, as long as they’re not using that power for harm,” Lena had argued. “Superman has averted countless disasters, prevented so much loss of life. Surely what one does with such abilities is more important than their source of origin.”
“We don’t need him,” Lex had snarled back, startling Lena with the force of his response. At the look on her face, he seemed to remember himself, and he straightened his tie and said, more calmly, “I plan to show the people that one of their own can be as powerful as any alien.”
Lena had shuddered to think what he meant by that.
Her brother’s deteriorating mental state a growing concern, Lena redoubled her efforts to complete her degree as quickly as possible.
She’d been so close. With only weeks left in her final term and her master’s thesis almost completed, Lena was poised to take her place as LuthorCorp’s new head of R&D. Her brother had been growing more vocal about his mistrust of Superman, and of aliens in general, but the company was still humming along, and there was nothing to suggest that his views were anything more than misguided bigotry. Lena had still been laboring under the delusion that she could save him, that she could be the one to change his mind.
Then Lex had turned the sun red, and all of Lena’s dreams for the future had crumbled.
All she could think while she was tied to that chair, while the brother she’d once looked up to stood rambling at her back like a madman, was that she should have done more to stop it. She’d placed her trust in the fact that Lex was still a good man underneath it all, that he was not so far gone that he couldn’t be pulled back from the brink. Lena had bet everything she had on it, and she’d been completely, calamitously wrong.
Lex was arrested for his crimes, and overnight the name Luthor began to take on a new sort of notoriety. The burden of her family legacy had always been a heavy one for Lena to carry, but now it had become more of a curse. Whispers began to follow her, questioning whether Lena was just as volatile and hateful as her older brother, whether the entire Luthor family was rotten to its core. The very same people who had once raised Lena up now delighted in her fall, and instead of preparing to take her place at her brother’s side, she was preparing to testify against him.
Now nineteen years old and facing the backlash to her brother’s actions with a non-existent support system, Lena began to turn to more questionable sources for comfort. Underage drinking was hardly difficult when you had Luthor money to flash around, and Lena found it painfully simple to drown her sorrows in the bottom of a bottle.
She began to flirt with more than just alcoholism. Though she had become something of a social pariah, Lena was still a very attractive woman, and she had little trouble finding men and women alike who would jump at the chance to sleep with her. Her nights became a blur of drunken, casual sex with partners she could hardly remember in the morning, a preferable alternative to spending them alone with her thoughts.
Somehow, even in the midst of a downward spiral, Lena still managed to limp her way to the finish line. She completed her dual master’s degree on time and with honors, though the future it promised was a far deal bleaker than it had been when she’d begun.
On the eve of her graduation, Lena had celebrated by accompanying a beautiful redhead from the undergraduate engineering program to a divey bar in downtown Boston. She’d bought several rounds of shots and champagne for the entire room, enjoying the drunken cheers such generosity earned her, but in the midst of the revelry she’d managed to overshoot her own limits. At some point she’d found herself emptying the contents of her stomach into the grimy toilet of the bar’s restroom, and when she emerged it was to find that her date had abandoned her.
It was no matter. Lena pulled up a seat at the bar, ordered a bottle of their finest scotch, and proceeded to drown whatever remaining feelings she had in its contents. It was only after last call, when she attempted to rise from her bar stool and nearly toppled to the floor, that she realized she’d made a mistake.
Heels in hand, she stumbled out into the night with the world still swirling around her. She had little memory of exactly where she was or how she’d gotten there, and it was taking most of her focus just to remain on her feet. She made her way over to the curb with the intention of hailing a cab, but the drivers must have taken one look at the state of her and decided the fare wasn’t worth it, for none of them bothered to stop.
Deciding that the only course of action left to her was to wait until she sobered up, Lena picked a direction and started to walk. She had no idea where she was headed, but she hoped she’d be better able to hail a taxi from her eventual destination once she’d managed to compose herself.
Lena was vaguely aware of the late hour and the very visible extent of her intoxication, but she tried to keep her eyes focused resolutely ahead and her wits about her as best she could. She’d managed to make it several blocks, before she caught an uneven gap in the sidewalk and stumbled forward. Disoriented, she attempted to brace herself for the impact, only for a strong pair of arms to catch her before she hit the ground.
Blinking in confusion, she glanced up just in time for a familiar pair of blue eyes to swim into focus.
“There’s a man following you,” Kara said, her tone serious. “He has been for the past couple of blocks.”
Lena straightened up to her full height and pushed herself out of Kara’s arms. It was a bit of an overcorrection, and she staggered, only for a steady hand at her back to keep her upright.
“Look, I know you don’t want my help,” Kara said, keeping her arm steadily in place, “but I can’t leave you here like this. Just let me take you home, and then I promise I’ll go.”
Lena’s first instinct was to deny Kara’s help, but even for all of her stubbornness, she couldn’t ignore the fact that she was sorely in need of it. Without further argument, she allowed her arm to be draped over Kara’s shoulder and leaned her weight into the blonde’s side.
They straggled along for a few minutes, Kara patiently keeping Lena on her feet each time she stumbled, before Lena could bear the silence no longer. “Are we still being followed?” she asked, speech slurring despite her best efforts.
“No, he’s gone. He turned the other way at the last corner,” Kara answered, seeming quite certain of that fact even though Lena hadn’t seen her turn around to check.
“How did you even find me?” Lena asked. Kara had a habit of popping up out of nowhere, but in their past encounters she’d at least had reasonable cause to know Lena’s location. There was no logical explanation for how she’d run into Lena tonight, wandering blindly through the streets of downtown Boston.
Kara was silent in the face of the question, which Lena took as yet another instance of her patented evasiveness. Were she in her right state of mind, Lena might have called Kara out on it, but as it stood, she’d only grown progressively more disoriented since leaving the bar. Her vision was beginning to blacken at the edges, and she was no longer confident in her ability to stay on her feet unassisted. She settled instead for lapsing into a chilly silence.
She was surprised, then, when Kara spoke up a few seconds later. “I’m going to tell you something,” she said, voice quiet but resolute as she half-dragged Lena off the main path of the sidewalk and into the mouth of a nearby alleyway. “Something I don’t tell a lot of people.”
Even through the haze of her alcohol-soaked thoughts, Lena had the presence of mind to wonder if this was the best time to be having this conversation. However, before she could manage to voice the thought, Kara had taken a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and said, “I’m an alien.”
It took Lena’s sluggish brain a second to process the words, and then another to take offense to them.
If Kara was an alien, it was inconceivable that she would choose to share that information with Lena now, not when Lex had just revealed himself as one of the world’s most dangerous xenophobes. Lena had known Kara for years, regardless of how tangential her presence had been to Lena’s life. What were the chances that Kara had been an alien all along, before the entire world had even decided for Lena that such a thing should matter?
Then, a more sinister thought occurred to her. Perhaps Kara was sharing this information now because she thought as little of Lena as everyone else seemed to. Perhaps she wanted to send some kind of message.
“Why are you telling me this now?” Lena asked, backing away from Kara and shifting her weight to a nearby railing for support. The ground tilted beneath her feet, and she fought back a rising wave of nausea.
Even as she tensed in anticipation of Kara’s answer, she could tell that the look on the other woman’s face was not one of resentment or fury, but one of concern.
“Well, for one thing, it’ll make this a lot easier to explain,” Kara said, and then, with a furtive glance over her shoulder, she scooped Lena up into an effortless bridal carry and the world around them disappeared in a chaotic blur.
They came to an abrupt stop a short time later, directly after which the contents of Lena’s stomach finally won their ongoing battle with gravity.
As she finished dry heaving, Lena became vaguely aware of a voice from somewhere over her shoulder saying, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think- Are you alright?”
Lena straightened up to find a worried Kara fretting over her near the entrance to her dorm building, which they’d somehow materialized in front of.
“What?” was all Lena could muster in response. Her dizziness had abated somewhat, but she was still struggling to make sense of what had just happened.
“I’m sorry,” Kara repeated. “You seemed really out of it, and people were starting to stare. I just thought- I didn’t mean for you to get sick.”
Lena’s mouth still tasted like bile and cheap scotch, but her head was marginally clearer. “You’re an alien,” she said, looking Kara up and down in case she’d somehow managed to miss a tail or a pair of antennae.
“Yes,” Kara responded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“But why tell me now?” Lena asked. “You must have heard the news about my brother. What he did. How can you be sure I’m not just like him?”
“You’re nothing like him,” Kara responded. “I know you, Lena. You’re a good person.”
Lena could feel all of her old uncertainties bubbling up to the surface. “But why?” she asked, voice cracking. “How can you be so certain of that, when I’m not even sure I believe it myself?” A stray tear slipped down her cheek before Lena could stop it. She was still half drunk, her bruised psyche a riot of confused emotions, and Kara’s earnest expression was more than she was presently equipped to handle.
Without hesitation, Kara leaned forward and gently brushed the tear away with the pad of her thumb. “There’s a lot I still need to tell you,” she said quietly. “I promise, the next time we meet, I’ll explain everything.”
Lena leaned into the touch, feeling hollowed out and suddenly terrified of being alone. “Will you stay?” She asked, voice devoid of its usual confidence. Intoxication had stripped her raw, leaving her heart bereft of the walls she usually kept in place to protect it.
A deeply buried sense of longing rose up in her chest, battering itself painfully against the inside of her rib cage. Kara might be an enigma, or a liar, or a ghost, but she was also warm and solid and close enough to reach out and touch, and Lena knew what she could offer to keep her here, at least for the night.
With a confidence only whiskey could buy, Lena snaked an arm around Kara’s shoulder and tangled her fingers gently into the hair at the nape of her neck. Emboldened by the small, shuddered intake of breath this elicited, she leaned forward to close the distance between them, only to be stopped by a firm but gentle hand on her chest.
Kara’s eyes were wide and her cheeks were flushed pink, but she’d angled herself away from Lena’s advances. “We shouldn’t do this,” she said, voice wavering. “You don’t- You’re still pretty drunk.”
Mortified in the face of Kara’s rejection, Lena pulled back at once. “I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing around a steadily forming lump in her throat. “It’s like you said, I’m still drunk. You don’t have to stay. I should be okay from here.”
“Hey,” Kara said softly, stepping forward to bridge a bit of the distance that Lena had put between them. “Of course I’ll stay.”
And Lena didn’t bother to ask why or for how long. For some reason, it didn’t seem terribly important.
That night, Kara curled up on the large, fluffy couch that served as Lena’s guest bed, and Lena sunk almost immediately into a restless, fitful sleep. She had vague, half-formed memories of someone speaking soft, soothing words in a language she didn’t understand, and of gentle fingers brushing her hair from her forehead, but it was entirely possible she’d dreamed them, and when she awoke in the morning, Kara was gone.