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This gala is important and feels in more than one way like a battlefield.
Lena Luthor stands at the edge of the grand hall in National City’s most expensive hotel, watching investors, politicians, and opportunists swirl together like predators sniffing for secrets and weakness, hunting connections.
Due to her brother’s legacy, the company has taken hits lately—public, loud ones.
So tonight isn’t just a gala paid for by her company, organized by her team after her own choices. It is also a test of loyalty and the stability of the static of her business and herself.
“Hey.”
The single word gives ground to her racing thoughts. Lena turns.
And there she is.
Journalist, superhero and best friend Kara Danvers - in a dress that doesn’t hide that her best friend is a very gorgeous woman. Stunning even. Blonde, strong, sweet, and wholesome present, smiling at her like nothing in the world could possibly go wrong.
“I promised, remember?” Kara says gently. “I’m not leaving your side tonight.”
Lena lets out a breath she hasn’t realized she was holding.
“Right. My personal bodyguard.”
Kara grins, a glint in her eyes. “I am your hero, right?”
In moments like this, Lena almost forgets that she has ever felt lonely. Kara and she have gone through a lot together, but since they have forgiven past betrayals, their friendship has grown stronger than ever before. Lena feels safe with her best friend again. Save and protected.
And knowing she has Kara in her corner changes everything. Even a night like this.
Opening up her heart to Kara has opened something inside her to the world. And though this should frighten her, making her feel too vulnerable it doesn’t. Because it also made her stronger.
When a businessman lingers too long, his voice oily and too close, Kara steps in with effortless warmth that somehow becomes a wall.
When a sharp-eyed woman tries to corner Lena with veiled threats disguised as networking, Kara’s posture shifts—subtle, protective, unmistakable.
And when people lean too close—too invasive—
Kara moves closer. Always closer. A hand on the small of Lena’s back. Almost possessive. And if she is honest to herself Lena craves these moments, sometimes provokes them. Because they have become the best part of the whole gala ordeal.
“You’re staring,” Kara murmurs at one point, her voice pitched low enough that it does not carry beyond the narrow space between them.
Lena blinks, drawn back from her line of thought. “Am I?”
Kara’s mouth curves, not quite a smile, more an acknowledgment of something gently amused. “A little.”
Lena exhales softly, allowing her gaze to move past Kara for a moment, as though the act of looking elsewhere might grant her the distance she needs to reframe the thought into something safer.
“You’re making this easier than it should be.”
“That’s my job for tonight, isn’t it? Am I overdoing it?” Kara adds, slightly self-conscious.
“No. You are perfect. Thanks.”
A man Lena recognizes only vaguely approaches them, his confidence preceding him in a way that suggests he has already decided how the conversation will unfold before it has even begun.
“Ms. Luthor,” he says, his smile wide enough to imply familiarity where none exists. “I was hoping I’d have a chance to speak with you tonight.”
Lena inclines her head, her own expression settling into something appropriately neutral. “Mr. Brown, of course.”
The conversation begins predictably enough—compliments that are not quite compliments, inquiries that carry more implication than curiosity—and Lena engages with the same measured precision she always employs in such situations, offering responses that are informative without being revealing, polite without being inviting.
Kara remains silent, but still very present.
Lena becomes aware, after only a few exchanges, of the way the man’s tone begins to shift—not in content, but in confidence. He leans in slightly, his voice lowering in a way that might be intended as conspiratorial.
“I imagine,” he says, “that recent developments must have been… challenging.”
Lena meets his gaze evenly. “Challenges are not unfamiliar.”
“Of course,” he replies quickly, though his eyes flicker briefly toward Kara, as though reassessing. “Still, one wonders whether certain… associations might complicate matters further.”
There it is.
Not direct.
Never direct.
Kara shifts, just slightly.
Not enough to interrupt.
But enough to be noticed.
Lena does not look at her, but she is acutely aware of the change—the subtle straightening of Kara’s posture, the way her presence seems to settle more firmly into the space beside her, no longer merely accompanying but actively reinforcing.
“Associations,” Lena repeats, her tone light but edged with something sharper beneath, “are only problematic when they lack clarity.”
The man hesitates, just long enough to register.
“And do yours?” he asks.
Before Lena can respond, Kara speaks.
Her voice is calm, almost conversational, but there is something in it—something steady, immovable—that alters the tone of the exchange entirely.
“I think Mrs Luthor been very clear,” she says.
The man looks at her fully for the first time, as though recalibrating his assessment of her role in the interaction.
“And you are?”
“Kara Danvers,” she replies simply.
There is no elaboration.
No justification.
Just her name.
It is, Lena realizes, more effective than any carefully constructed rebuttal she might have offered. Because it shifts the dynamic.
The man smiles again, though it does not quite reach his eyes this time. “Of course.”
And then, with a politeness that is now unmistakably performative, he excuses himself.
Lena watches him go, then turns slightly toward Kara, allowing herself a small, almost incredulous exhale. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” Kara says. “I wanted to. I didn’t like the way he talked to you. Was that okay?”
There is something disarming about that—not the sentiment itself, but the absence of calculation behind it.
Lena finds herself studying Kara for a moment, her gaze tracing the familiar lines of her expression and finding, as it often does, more there than she is entirely prepared to confront.
“You’re very good at this,” she says eventually.
Kara blinks. “At… talking?”
At protecting me, Lena thinks, but that feels like too much.
“At bodyguarding,” Lena clarifies.
Kara’s expression softens. “Bodyguarding? Is that even a word?” Kara teases, then clears her throat. “Please tell me if I am too much. I don’t like when people get too close to you, especially creeps like him.”
Lena takes Kara’s hand in hers. “Thanks for making me feel safe.”
“Always.”
Her name is called. The moment fractures. Duty reasserts itself.
“I should—” Lena gestures toward the stage.
Kara nods immediately. “Yeah. Of course.”
There is a brief pause, something unspoken hovering between them, and then Kara adds, softer, “You’ll be amazing.”
Lena almost smiles at that—not the practiced version, not the one she offers to rooms full of observers, but something closer to the one she rarely allows herself.
“Try not to look too impressed,” she says.
Kara huffs a quiet laugh. “No promises.”
As Lena steps onto the stage, she can feel the shift in the room—the recalibration of attention, the subtle tightening of expectation—and she moves through it with the same controlled confidence she always employs, allowing the structure of the moment to settle around her before she begins.
Before she starts to speak she looks at Kara. Her friend, the woman who doesn’t know how much of Lena’s heart she is holding tenderly in her hands, is watching with an intensity that makes Lena, for a second, drop the immaculate professional persona and smile a private smile.
Lena adjusts the microphone and allows the room to settle into silence. Then she begins to speak.
The words come easily—structured, deliberate, each sentence constructed with the precision that has long since become second nature to her, addressing the challenges her company has faced without conceding to them, reframing instability into opportunity with a clarity that invites confidence without demanding it.
She can feel the room responding.
Not entirely convinced, perhaps, but attentive.
Engaged.
Willing, at the very least, to listen.
It happens quickly.
A sound, sharp and wrong, cutting through the careful cadence of her speech.
Lena’s gaze snaps upward.
It seems as if the air is torn open, and then a figure stumbles through a milky tear that has somehow appeared not far from her place on the stage.
The room reacts in gasps, movement, confusion—but Lena’s attention narrows, focusing only on the singular fact that the man emerging from that fracture is holding a weapon, and that weapon is being raised toward her.
“LUTHOR—”
There should be time to think—time for calculation, assessment, strategy, response.
There is none.
And in the instant that the weapon aligns with her the world falls apart.
*******
The stage, the lights, the floor does not disappear all at once. Its edges soften first, as though whatever holds it in place has begun, quietly, to fail, and then—without warning—the weight of it shifts, leaving Lena unsteady not because she is falling, but because the ground beneath her has vanished.
And then - there is wind, but also warmth.
Kara - close. Her arms carrying her and Lena can feel blood pumping forcefully through veins, almost like words of an intimate language made to reassure Lena that she is still alive.
Her hands are gripping fabric—Kara’s uniform, she thinks dimly. It’s hard to hold on to it because her hands are trembling, though she cannot quite identify if it is because of the near death experience some minutes ago or from something else entirely.
“Kara—”
Kara tightens her hold immediately, one arm firm around her back, the other coming up to steady her, to anchor her in a way that feels instinctive rather than deliberate.
“I’ve got you,” Kara says, her voice low, close, real in a way that cuts through everything else. “I’ve got you.”
Lena exhales, though it comes out uneven, her breath catching against the tension still coiled through her body.
This isn’t real.
It cannot be real.
And yet—
The warmth of Kara’s arms is.
The steady pressure of her hand is.
The way her voice settles somewhere beneath Lena’s ribs, easing something that had been spiraling—
There is ground under her feet again. They are somewhere high. A skyscraper maybe, somewhere over the city.
Kara shifts slightly, just enough to pull Lena closer, her chin brushing against Lena’s hair before she presses a soft, almost absent-minded kiss there, as though the gesture is not something she has chosen, but something she has done a thousand times before.
Lena stills - almost - just a subtle tremor, somewhere deep inside her body.
“I thought—” Kara begins, and then stops, as though the words themselves are difficult to voice.
Lena tilts her head slightly, not pulling away, just enough to look at her.
Kara’s expression is not composed.
Not in the way Lena is used to seeing it.
There is something raw in it.
Unfiltered.
“I thought I lost you. I thought I failed to protect” Kara admits.
The words land harder than they should. Harder than anything else that has happened.
“You didn’t,” Lena replies, trying to give strength to her voice, still feeling the aftershock of the attack in her body.
Kara shakes her head slightly, her hold tightening again,
“I’m always afraid, of being to late, l,” the next words stuck in her throat.
Kara tries again: “I’m always afraid that one day I won’t be fast enough. That I will -” she exhales, her gaze dropping briefly before returning to Lena’s face, “loose you, too.”
Something in Lena shifts with a undeniable gravity. It freezes her body, but calms her mind.
She studies Kara for a moment, really studies her—not the hero, not the certainty, but the fear Kara has never quite hidden, only carried more carefully than most would notice.
“I never feel safer then when I am with you,” Lena says.
Lena feels the truth of her words with an intensity that almost frightens her. maybe because this truth isn’t the only one. There is the other, that wants to break free with a force she never felt before. The one she is fighting against maybe since she met Kara, because this truth is so powerful that once she lets it slip out of the careful crafted box, it will never go back in there. And the fear that it could destroy everything is overwhelming.
Was overwhelming.
Because for the first time, she doesn’t feel panic. For the first time the thought of letting that truth out to the real world feels like the only way to survive.
And when Kara opens her mouth again, Lena just knows what Kara is about to say. And she wants to hear those words, but she also can’t wait to feel, to stop thinking - just be as close as possible to the one person that holds her heart, inspires her hope and feels like home. She can’t wait any longer and kisses Kara and the world blurs a second time.
******
When the world reforms, it does so differently.
Softer. Closer. Contained.
Lena is aware of soft linen beneath her hands, of the familiar lines of her own space reshaping around her. Her bedroom.
She can’t remember how they got here, but Kara is still with her. Her lips still tingling, after been kissed what feels like for hours.
She feels Kara’s eyes on her, looks up to her, and all questions that already penetrating the border between subconscious and conscious dissolve into the warm air around them.
They kiss again, the kiss deepens, shifts, becomes something less tentative more needy, wanting, exploring.
Everything else is irrelevant. What Lena is aware of instead is the way Kara responds to her with a certainty that feels inevitable and predestined.
And Lena—
For once doesn’t think, but falls.
They are falling together, again and again, deeper and deeper, transcending into a beautiful, exciting new way of being. Together.
*******
The transition is gradual. Like a sun rising behind a sky filled with clouds, soft enough to give the rays ways to warm the atmosphere.
Something is about to change again. But Lena doesn’t fear it. Doesn’t question it.
The familiarity of her bedroom dissolves, replaced by something clinical, structured, into the quiet sterility of a room designed not for comfort, but for certainty.
She recognize the private practice of her doctor.
Lena is sitting on a comfortable chair. She knows Kara is beside her, without looking at her, but there is her warm palm in her hand. Reassuring.
The doctor’s voice is calm. Measured.
Detached in the way of someone accustomed to delivering information that carries weight without allowing themselves to absorb it.
“You’re pregnant.”
The words land without context. Without preparation.
Lena blinks.
Once.
Twice.
“That’s not—how?” she begins, then stops, the sentence failing to complete itself.
She looks at Kara and the thought that being with this woman everything might be possible - apparently - is running through her mind. There will be time for explanations about the how.
She exhales sharply, her hand coming up almost unconsciously to rest against her stomach, as though the gesture might anchor the reality of it into something she can process.
“I can’t—” she says, quieter now. “I never wanted to. I am a Luther. I can’t…”
It had been a decision. Made years ago. When being part of her family seemed unbearable.
“I promised myself and any unborn offspring of myself,” Lena continues, more to herself than to anyone else, “that I wouldn’t. Not with my history. Not with this heritage.”
The weight of that promise settles heavily, not because it is being broken, but because it is being challenged by something she had not allowed herself to consider.
She turns to Kara. Suddenly aware, that she is also part of this situation.
“What do you want?” she asks, a part of her hoping that there is an option to delegate the decision, knowing that this is impossible but craving a short moment of alleviation.
Kara does not answer immediately. Not because she does not know.
But because she is choosing her words with care.
“I want you to be okay,” Kara says first. Lena’s expression tightens slightly, something like frustration flickering through it. “That’s not an ans..”
“I know,” Kara says gently.
And then, more carefully, “But you are my priority and I’m going to support whatever you decide.”
The certainty of that is not surprising.
But what comes next is.
“But,” Kara adds, her voice quieter now, something softer threading through it, “the idea that… that something of Krypton might continue—” she pauses, as though the thought itself is still unfamiliar, still being shaped as she speaks it, “—and that it would be also living on with being part of you—”
Her gaze lifts, meeting Lena’s fully now. “I think that would make me incredibly happy.”
The admission is careful.
Not demanding.
Not persuasive.
Simply—
True.
“But,” Kara continues, her expression softening further, “if the thought of it makes you miserable—if it’s something you don’t want—then that matters more. I promise!”
*******
The room shifts again.
Not abruptly.
But inevitably.
The clinical sterility dissolves, replaced by something brighter, more open, the sounds of life filtering back in—laughter, movement, the distant rhythm of something uncomplicated.
A zoo. Lena does not question it. Not immediately.
Kara is beside her. Still. Always.
And there, looking up from a sling connected to her body, is a baby.
Tiny. Dark hair.
Bright blue eyes staring at her with a clarity that feels almost impossible.
And she feels - happy. There is a carful warmth in her heart looking down at the little face, the little nose, reminding her of own, there is shock to, but the happiness is just more.
„Oh I know that look,“ thats Kara talking to her.
„You know she is about to poop, and you don’t want her to be connected to you when that happens. Let’s find the bathroom before she can cause havoc again.“
Apparently Kara is able to be in good spirits and genuinely concerned at the same time.
„But I wanted to see the pengweens,“ commands a much younger voice and Lena sees another kid, maybe three years old (could also be six, because what does Lena know about kids). She has blond hair, but Lena’s green eyes.
„Yes, Lori, we will, after we let your sister do her thing, clean her and afterwards we go see the penguins. I promised - remember.“
There is a pout on the girls face, that looks so much like Kara and a lot of differ kinds of feelings rising in Lena’s chest. And all of them support one certainty- she want this.
Suddenly it’s like someone is turning up the sun. The light becomes too bright, too much.
She feels a stage under her feet, mumble noises of people then the light turns green and something is brushing through her body.
She looses the ground under her feet and is in Kara’s arms again, before everything collapses into black.
*******
The DEO is anything but quiet.
“Tell me again this wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Winn Scott says, arms crossed, though his tone suggests he already knows the answer.
Across from him, Alex Danvers doesn’t soften it.
“It was worse.”
Winn exhales sharply, turning away for a moment, then back. “Start talking.”
Alex doesn’t hesitate.
“They weren’t just targeting Lena. She was the entry point.”
Winn frowns. “For what?”
“A message,” Alex says. “And leverage.”
A pause. Then, more clearly:
“They wanted her to watch.”
Winn stills.
“They planned to kidnap Kara,” Alex continues, her voice tightening despite her control. “In front of her.”
Winn’s expression hardens. “And then?”
“Record what they were planing ro do to my sister,“ Alex says. A beat.
“Make sure Lena sees every second.”
Silence.
“Thats horrible.“ Winn looks terrified.
Alex meets his gaze.
“Then they planned to destroy the city.”
Winn lets out a breath that almost turns into a laugh, sharp and disbelieving. “And somehow blame Lena for it.”
Alex nods once. “That was the plan.”
Winn shakes his head slightly. “That’s not revenge. That’s…” He doesn’t finish.
Alex doesn’t push. It’s too hard to think about what could have happened.
“The weapon?” Winn asks instead. “What was that?”
Alex gestures toward a secured containment unit across the room.
“Alien tech. Not from here. Designed to project the future.”
Winn’s brows draw together. “Future?”
Alex clarifies. “Not random. Personalized. Psychological overload. Lena should know what was about to happen, without being able to stop it.”
A pause.
“It shows you what’s coming. Like visions of your future.”
Winn’s voice drops. “They wanted her to break before they even touched her.”
“Exactly.”
Another pause.
“But it didn’t work,” Winn says.
Alex shakes her head. “No.”
“What changed?” Winn asks.
Alex hesitates.
Just briefly.
“Our team took the rest of them down before they could move on Kara,” she says first. “That part of the plan collapsed.”
“And the weapon?” Winn presses.
Alex glances toward the containment unit again.
“It didn’t show her what it was supposed to.”
Winn studies her. “Meaning?”
Alex crosses her arms.
“Instead of their version of the future…”
A small pause.
“…she saw something else.”
Winn’s expression shifts slightly. “Something better?”
Alex doesn’t answer immediately.
Then:
“I don’t think it was what they wanted her to see.”
Another beat.
“But maybe,” Winn says quietly, “it was what she needed.”
****
High above the city—
There is a Luthor in the arms of a super - looking over the city.
The wind is playing with their hair, Lena's back to Karas front, Karas arms protecting.
„ I was so afraid I would loose you.“
Lena turns around and murmurs: „Darling, I believe we only just begun,“ and then she lifts herself up and kisses Kara.