Chapter Text
The high-visibility glass windows of L-Corp’s penthouse office suite reflected the amber, indigo, and bruised violet hues of a National City sunset, casting long, geometric shadows across the polished obsidian floors. Outside, the bustling metropolis hummed with the ambient roar of evening traffic, the distant wails of sirens, and the rhythmic blinking of aviation lights atop neighboring skyscrapers. Inside, however, the atmosphere was suffocatingly still, heavy with the sterile scent of expensive leather, high-grade electronics, and the sharp, acidic tang of stale espresso.
Kara Danvers hovered just outside the balcony threshold, her red cape billowing slightly in the updraft of the wind before she allowed her boots to touch the concrete ledge with a soundless, practiced grace. She stood there for a moment, adjusting the heavy frames of her glasses, her heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against her ribs. For twelve days, three hours, and roughly forty-two minutes, the digital space between her and Lena Luthor had been a barren wasteland of unread bubbles, unreturned calls, and a deafening, agonizing silence. It wasn’t just that Lena was busy; Lena was always busy. Running a multi-billion-dollar tech and aerospace conglomerate while simultaneously trying to scrub the blood of a tyrannical family name from the global lexicon tended to occupy one’s schedule. But this was different. This was a total eclipse. Kara had sent memes, clumsy photos of pastry mishaps at Noonan’s, articles on alien sociology, and simple, vulnerable texts that read *thinking of you, hope you’re eating.* Every single one had vanished into the ether of Lena’s radio silence.
Stepping through the cracked-open balcony door, Kara let out a breath she felt she’d been holding since Tuesday. The office was dimly lit, illuminated primarily by the cold, harsh, blue-white glare of multiple computer monitors and the holographic projections floating above the central desk. And there, sitting in the eye of the technological storm, was Lena.
Lena looked like a ghost trapped in a machine. Her usually immaculate dark hair was pulled into a messy, structural bun that looked as though it were held together by sheer willpower and a few stray bobby pins. Strands had escaped, framing a face that was strikingly pale, almost translucent under the fluorescent luminescence of her workspace. The sharp, aristocratic angles of her jawline and cheekbones seemed pronounced, carved out by exhaustion. But it was her eyes—hidden behind a pair of thin-meshed reading glasses Kara had rarely seen her wear—that sent a pang of genuine terror through Kara’s chest. They were bloodshot, surrounded by deep, purplish-gray shadows that looked less like a temporary lack of sleep and more like a permanent bruising of the soul.
On the desk sat an army of empty cardboard coffee cups from the premium café downstairs, alongside a sleek, silver espresso machine that looked like it had been run ragged, its drip tray stained with dark, dried rings. A half-eaten protein bar, crystallized and stale, lay abandoned on a napkin.
Kara cleared her throat, intentionally stepping heavily so her heels clicked against the floor.
"Lena?" Kara said, her voice a soft, tentative offering in the quiet room.
Lena didn't blink. Her fingers, long and elegant but moving with a terrifying, mechanical speed, flew across the chiclet keyboard of her sleek matte-black laptop. The clacking of the keys was deafeningly fast, a frantic, rhythmic code that seemed to dictate the rhythm of her entire being.
"Lena, hey. It’s me. It’s Kara," Kara spoke louder, taking three long steps forward, her satchel bouncing against her hip, her civilian clothes feeling suddenly tight and restrictive.
Nothing. Not a twitch of an eyebrow, not a pause in the terrifyingly rapid keystrokes. Lena’s gaze remained locked onto a dense column of glowing green algorithms and schematic drawings of what looked like an atmospheric stabilization matrix—remnants of the heavy, lingering trauma of the Daxamite invasion that had plagued her mind since the spring.
Kara approached the edge of the massive mahogany desk, leaning forward slightly.
"I know you’re mad at the world right now, or maybe you’re just incredibly focused on saving it, but you haven't answered my texts in almost two weeks, Lena. I was getting ready to fly to Ireland or scan the entire western hemisphere for your heartbeat, but thankfully, your heart is right here. Though, wow, it is beating incredibly fast. Like, dangerously fast, Lena," Kara murmured, her super-hearing locking onto the frantic, triple-time thumping inside Lena’s chest cavity. It sounded like a hummingbird trapped in a glass jar, fueled entirely by synthetic stimulants and adrenaline.
Lena’s hands shifted from the laptop to a secondary tablet, her thumb flicking through pages of financial data with a cold, unfeeling precision.
"Okay, silent treatment. I get it. I can take a hint, but usually, your hints involve sharp wit or a very polite dismissal, not complete physical erasure," Kara said, crossing her arms, a mixture of profound worry and slight frustration wrinkling her brow. She walked around the perimeter of the desk, stepping into Lena’s immediate peripheral vision. She bent down slightly, bringing her face directly into the line of sight between Lena and her secondary monitor.
"Hi. Hello. Earth to Lena. Or Krypton to Lena. Whichever planet you’re currently residing on," Kara smiled, a small, hopeful, goofy expression designed to crack the ice of any normal human being.
Lena’s eyes simply tracked through Kara’s face, focusing entirely on the digital text behind her. It was as if Kara were made of glass, a mere atmospheric distortion in the room. Lena reached out, her hand trembling slightly with a fine, low-frequency tremor, and grabbed a lukewarm mug of black coffee. She brought it to her lips, took a long, mechanical swallow without tasting it, and set it back down, her eyes never wavering from the glowing display.
"Oh, wow. You are really committed to this," Kara muttered, her smile faltering. She leaned closer, until she could smell the bitter, roasted bean aura radiating from Lena’s skin, mixed with the faint, comforting scent of her expensive jasmine perfume. "Lena, seriously. Look at me. Just give me one sign that you can hear me. A nod. A sigh. Tell me to go away. Just say *Danvers, leave me to my misery.* Anything."
The only response was the frantic *clack-clack-clack-click* of the mouse wheel.
Kara let out a huff, straightening her posture. The silence was starting to feel heavy, an physical barrier between them. She knew Lena had been struggling since the departure of Mon-El—or rather, since Lena had been forced to trigger the lead device that saved the planet but broke Kara’s world. They were both grieving, both drowning in the murky, unsaid aftermath of that choice. But while Kara had thrown herself into being Supergirl, trying to shed her human skin like a weight, Lena had clearly thrown herself into the cold, predictable logic of mathematics and corporate survival, trying to erase her humanity through pure productivity.
"Alright, if you won’t look at me, maybe you’ll look at this," Kara said, reaching into her canvas bag. She pulled out a white paper bag, grease-stained at the bottom, holding it directly over the laptop keyboard, blocking the screen entirely. "I brought pastry. From the place across town you like. The ones with the actual lavender glaze, not the synthetic stuff. They were still warm when I bought them five minutes ago."
Lena’s fingers didn't stop. They simply shifted, navigating around the obstruction of the bag with an eerie spatial awareness, her head tilting slightly to look past the paper barrier to catch the edge of the code on the screen. She didn't even sniff the air. The smell of fresh sugar and butter, which usually drew an appreciative, albeit restrained, smile from the CEO, was completely ignored.
"You’re ignoring pastry. This is a code-red emergency," Kara whispered, her voice dropping its playful edge, replaced by a genuine, creeping dread. She set the bag down on a stack of folders. She used her super-vision, letting her eyes adjust, scanning the vital signs of the woman before her.
What she saw made her stomach drop. Lena’s hydration levels were dangerously low, her muscular structure tense to the point of literal crystallization, and the neural activity in her prefrontal cortex was firing in erratic, chaotic bursts. Her brain wave patterns resembled a city experiencing a massive power surge just before a total blackout.
"Lena, when was the last time you slept?" Kara asked, her voice soft, pleading. She looked down at a smart-watch lying face up on the desk, its screen glowing with health metrics. She leaned in to read the data synced to the corporate profile. *Average sleep duration over the last 72 hours: 3.8 hours.* *Average caffeine intake: Extreme.*
"Four hours? You’ve been living on less than four hours of sleep? For how many days, Lena?" Kara’s hands came down onto the edge of the desk, her palms flat against the wood. "This isn't just work. This is self-destruction. You're trying to kill yourself with spreadsheets."
Lena’s left hand reached out, blindly grasping for a pen. She began sketching a complex chemical structure on a pad of paper, her movements erratic but precise, her breath coming in shallow, faint puffs. She was completely dissociated, locked within the fortress of her own intellect, using her mind as a shield against whatever pain was clawing at her from the inside out.
Kara felt a familiar, stubborn determination rise within her. She was Supergirl. She fought rogue alien factions, held up collapsing bridges, and stopped speeding trains with her bare hands. Surely, she could get her best friend to look at her.
She took a deep breath, deciding to try a different tactic. She walked to the other side of the desk, standing directly behind Lena’s ergonomic chair. She leaned down, her lips close to Lena’s ear, allowing the natural warmth of her body to radiate against the cold aura of the CEO.
"Lena," Kara whispered, her voice carrying the low, resonant frequency she used when comforting citizens during disasters. "I'm right here. You don't have to carry the whole world by yourself. The Daxamites are gone. The city is rebuilding. You did it. You saved us. But you need to rest now. Please."
Lena didn't flinch. She didn't even show the micro-expression of someone hearing a sound. Her fingers continued their furious dance across the keys, updating a spreadsheet that tracked logistics for L-Corp’s sub-divisions in Europe.
Kara frowned. She stepped back, looking around the room for inspiration. If words wouldn't work, maybe physical movement would. She began to walk around the office, deliberately making noise. She picked up a heavy glass award from a shelf and set it down with a loud *thud* on a nearby side table. She opened and closed a filing cabinet with an intentional clatter. She even hummed a loud, slightly off-key tune—a song they had listened to during one of their rare, relaxed nights at Kara's apartment before everything fell apart.
The room echoed with Kara’s artificial noise, but Lena remained an island of absolute silence and focus, her eyes darting across the screens like a predatory bird tracking movement in the grass, though her prey was nothing but numbers and data points.
"Okay, let's try something a bit more direct," Kara said to herself. She walked back to the desk and stood right next to Lena’s chair. Carefully, making sure to regulate her Kryptonian strength down to the gentlest human standard, she reached out and placed her hand over Lena’s right hand, stopping the mouse from moving.
The moment Kara’s warm, soft skin met Lena’s ice-cold, trembling fingers, she expected a reaction. A gasp, a pulling away, a sharp look of reprimand. Instead, Lena’s hand simply went limp under Kara’s palm for a fraction of a second before her left hand immediately took over, reaching across her body to continue typing on the laptop keyboard using a one-handed shortcut system. She didn't even try to pull her right hand back; she simply treated Kara’s touch as a temporary physical obstacle, an inanimate weight to be worked around.
Kara felt a cold spike of panic. "Lena, please. Look at me. Just look at my face."
Kara moved her hands away, feeling a sudden, deep sense of helplessness. She stood in front of the desk again, her mind racing. She tried waving her hands in front of Lena’s face, creating small gusts of air that fluttered Lena’s stray hairs. Lena merely blinked, her eyes watering slightly from the dryness of the room and the lack of sleep, but her focus didn't shift by a single millimeter.
"Are you even real right now?" Kara asked, her voice cracking slightly. "Or am I a ghost? Is this what it feels like to be invisible?"
She decided to use her abilities in a way that wouldn't harm Lena but would be impossible to ignore. She hovered a few inches off the ground, bringing herself level with Lena’s seated position, floating directly over the desk. She crossed her legs in mid-air, dangling her boots just above the laptop screen.
"Look, Lena! I'm defying gravity inside your office. You love physics. You love things that defy explanation. Look at the spatial anomaly sitting right over your hardware," Kara joked, though her eyes were shining with unshed tears.
Lena’s gaze moved upwards slightly, but only because the text on her screen had scrolled to the top. She looked right through Kara’s hovering form, her eyes fixed on the code, her fingers continuing their relentless, rhythmic assault on the keyboard. *Clack, clack, clack, clack.*
Kara descended back to the floor, her boots hitting the ground with a soft, defeated click. She felt small. She was the Girl of Steel, a symbol of hope for millions, a protector who could stop a missile with her shoulder, yet she couldn't break through the invisible, impenetrable wall her friend had built around herself.
"I don't know what to do," Kara whispered, her shoulders slumping. She walked over to the couch against the wall, sitting down heavily, her eyes never leaving Lena’s profile. "I don't know how to reach you when you're like this. You’ve locked yourself in your own head, and I don't have the key to this door."
She sat there for several minutes, watching the tragic, beautiful precision of Lena’s exhaustion. She watched the way Lena’s breath would catch every few minutes, a tiny, involuntary shudder running through her shoulders before she would force herself to straighten her spine, her posture stiffening back into that rigid, corporate perfection that hid the crumbling foundation underneath.
Kara stood up again, her stubbornness refusing to let her give up entirely. She walked back to the desk, her expression softening into something deeply tender and profoundly sad. She leaned over the desk, her face inches away from Lena’s cheek. She could see the tiny, faint blue veins beneath Lena’s pale skin, the slight tremor in her lower lip, the absolute, overwhelming weight of the world resting on those slender shoulders.
"Lena," Kara said, her voice dropping to a soft, intimate register, free of any performance or bravado. "I'm not going to leave you. You can ignore me all night. You can type until your fingers bleed, and you can drink every drop of caffeine in this building. But I'll still be right here. Because I love you, Lena. And I need you to be okay."
Lena’s fingers froze.
The silence that followed was sudden, vast, and deafening. The frantic *clack-clack-clack* that had filled the office for hours simply stopped, leaving only the faint, mechanical hum of the computer fans and the distant roar of the city below.
Kara held her breath, her heart stopping in her chest.
Lena’s head turned, slowly, as if the movement required an immense, agonizing physical effort, her neck muscles straining against days of accumulated tension. Her reading glasses slipped slightly down the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, wide, glassy, and completely shattered by exhaustion, finally drifted away from the green light of the screen and locked onto Kara’s face.
For a long, agonizing moment, Lena just stared at her, her eyes scanning Kara’s features as if trying to determine if she were a vivid hallucination born of sleep deprivation or a physical reality. A small, trembling breath escaped Lena’s lips, her chest rising and falling in a sudden, ragged heave.
"Kara?" Lena’s voice was barely a whisper, a cracked, ruined sound that sounded as though it hadn't been used in days.
"Yeah," Kara said, a single tear escaping her eye and running down her cheek, her face breaking into a soft, relieved smile. "Yeah, Lena. It’s me. I’m here."
The sudden, total collapse of the digital fortress that Lena had constructed around herself left the office feeling vast and empty, the silence ringing in Kara’s ears like the aftermath of a sonic boom. For days, the only metric of Lena’s existence had been the cold, green-and-white data streams scrolling past her retinas, a rhythmic and predictable universe where inputs guaranteed outputs, and where pain could be neatly categorized into statistical anomalies or logistical hurdles. But now, with her head turned and her glassy, bloodshot eyes fully locked onto Kara’s face, the artificial reality shattered. The illusion of her corporate armor evaporated, leaving only a profoundly exhausted, deeply traumatized young woman drowning in a sea of mahogany, high-end electronics, and overwhelming grief.
Kara didn't hesitate. The absolute terror that had been tightening like a vice around her chest for the past twelve days suddenly released its grip, transforming into a desperate, kinetic surge of pure relief. She didn't walk around the desk; she moved with a fluid, breathless velocity that blurred the space between them.
With a soft, choked cry that was half-sob and half-gasp, Kara threw herself forward, her boots leaving the polished floorboards as she literally launched her body across the small distance separating them. She plummeted into Lena’s space, her arms wrapping around the CEO’s stiff, trembling shoulders with a fierce, uncompromising desperation. The momentum of Kara's arrival caused the expensive, ergonomic leather chair to roll backward with a sharp, protesting screech against the obsidian floor, the wheels spinning wildly until the back of the chair collided with the heavy credenza behind the desk, sending a stack of unopened corporate mail cascading to the ground like a flock of wounded birds.
Kara didn't care about the noise, nor the mess, nor the structural integrity of the office furniture. She buried her face deeply into the crook of Lena’s neck, her glasses sliding crookedly up her nose as she pressed herself as close as physically possible to the woman she had spent nearly two weeks fearing she had lost to the shadows of National City’s latest tragedy. Her hands clutched at the fine, expensive fabric of Lena’s silk blouse, her fingers bunching the material into tight, wrinkled knots as if she were trying to tether herself to Lena’s very soul.
"Lena," Kara cried out, her voice a muffled, raw friction against Lena’s pale skin. The word was thick with tears, the carefully maintained dam of her civilian composure completely bursting under the pressure of the embrace. "Oh my god, Lena. I was so scared. I was so, so scared."
Lena’s body remained entirely rigid for the first few seconds of the impact, her muscles locked in a state of catatonic shock. It was as if her central nervous system, conditioned by days of continuous alertness and deprivation, could not comprehend the sudden, overwhelming influx of human warmth, of soft cotton, of the scent of fresh air and sunshine that always followed the resident reporter into a room. Her arms remained hovering slightly above her armrests, her fingers still curved in the shape of a keyboard shortcut, twitching faintly against the empty air.
But then, as Kara’s warmth began to penetrate through the chill of Lena’s skin, a profound change occurred. The mechanical stiffness in Lena’s spine collapsed all at once, like a tower of cards struck by a sudden gale. A long, ragged, shuddering breath tore its way out of Lena’s throat—a sound so hollow and broken it made Kara’s own heart ache in response. Lena’s head dropped forward, her forehead sinking heavily into Kara’s shoulder, her reading glasses tumbling from her face to clatter uselessly onto the desk below.
Slowly, almost painfully, as if her limbs were weighed down by lead, Lena raised her hands. Her fingers hooked into the fabric of Kara’s cardigan, her grip weak and trembling at first, before tightening with an unexpected, feral strength. She pulled Kara closer, burying her face into the soft wool of Kara's clothes, inhaling deeply as if she were a drowning swimmer finally reaching the surface after being trapped beneath the ice.
"I thought I lost you," Kara whispered fiercely, her words tumbling out in a breathless, frantic torrent against Lena’s skin, her super-hearing focusing entirely on the erratic, stuttering rhythm of Lena’s heart, which was finally beginning to slow down from its caffeine-induced panic pace, matching the steady, grounding thud of her own. "You weren't answering. You weren't typing back. Every time I checked my phone, it was just... nothing. Just blank space. I sent you so many messages, Lena. I sent you stupid pictures of the cats outside my apartment, I sent you updates on the CatCo editing drafts, I sent you everything I could think of just to see those little typing dots appear at the bottom of the screen. But they never did. Days went by, and it was just a black hole where you used to be."
Kara shifted her weight, dropping to her knees on the hard floor beside the chair so she could wrap her arms completely around Lena’s waist, burying her face into Lena’s lap while keeping her upper body pressed tightly against the older woman’s chest. The position was clumsy, entirely lacking the dignity expected within the executive suites of L-Corp, but neither of them mattered to the universe right now.
"I was flying through the city earlier, Lena," Kara continued, her voice trembling, a stray tear soaking into the dark fabric of Lena’s trousers. "I was doing my patrols, trying to look for fires, trying to stop bank robberies, trying to be what everyone else needed me to be, but my mind was completely here. Every second I was in the air, the wind was just screaming your name to me. I was in such an absolute frenzy of worry. I kept thinking, *What if something happened to her? What if Cadmus found her? What if the lingering lead in the atmosphere affected her in a way we didn't predict? What if she hates me?* That was the worst one, Lena. I thought you hated me for what happened with the Daxamites. I thought you couldn't bear to look at me because my face reminded you of the choice we had to make. Of Mon-El. Of the device."
Lena flinched slightly at the mention of the device, her fingers tightening their grip on Kara’s shoulders until it would have been painful for a normal human. But to Kara, it was the most beautiful, reassuring sensation in the world—a tangible, undeniable proof of life.
"I flew over here so fast," Kara stammered, her breath hitching as she lifted her head slightly to look up at Lena, her blue eyes wide and swimming with a mixture of sorrow and fierce devotion. "I didn't even care if someone saw me land on the balcony in broad daylight. I just needed to see you. I needed to know your heart was still beating. And then I walk in, and you’re like a statue. You were looking right through me, Lena. It was like I was a ghost. I tried everything. I waved, I talked, I brought the pastries you like, I even hovered right over your laptop like a ridiculous person, and you didn't even blink. I felt so helpless. I’m supposed to be able to save anyone, but I couldn't even get my best friend to notice I was standing in front of her."
Lena stayed silent, but her chest was heaving now, the stoic, unyielding facade she had worn like a death shroud for two weeks completely disintegrating. A single, heavy tear leaked from her eye, tracing a slow, glistening path down her pale, hollow cheek, catching the faint blue light of the still-glowing laptop screen before dropping onto Kara’s hand.
"You're freezing," Kara murmured, her hands moving up to cup Lena’s face, her thumbs gently brushing away the tears that were now beginning to flow more freely down the CEO’s cheeks. Kara used her own internal, Kryptonian warmth, letting it radiate through her palms to thaw the icy chill that had settled into Lena’s skin from days of sedentary isolation. "Your skin feels like winter, Lena. And your heart... it’s running a marathon while you’re just sitting still. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You have to stop. You have to let me help you."
Lena’s lips parted, trembling violently as she tried to form words that had been locked away in the dark corners of her mind for far too long. She looked at Kara, really looked at her, seeing the genuine, unadulterated terror and love shining in the reporter’s eyes, and the final defenses around her heart crumbled into dust.
"I didn't..." Lena choked out, her voice a fragile, gravelly rasp that sounded completely broken by the weight of her exhaustion. "I didn't mean to ignore you, Kara. I just... if I stopped working, if I let myself think about it for even a second... the noise wouldn't stop. The voices wouldn't stop."
Kara leaned her forehead gently against Lena’s, closing her eyes as she let their breaths mingle in the quiet space. "What voices, Lena? Talk to me. Please."
"The world," Lena whispered, a fresh wave of tears spilling over her lashes, her hands moving to cover Kara’s wrists, holding them against her face as if Kara’s hands were the only thing keeping her head from exploding. "The city. Everyone talking about the Luthor who poisoned the air. Everyone talking about how I saved the world but at what cost. And every time I looked at my phone, every time I saw your name pop up... I felt like an executioner, Kara. I knew what that device took from you. I knew it banished the person you loved. I thought... I thought if I spoke to you, if I saw the look in your eyes, I would see the blame. I would see the hatred. And I knew I wouldn't survive that. So I just... I turned it off. I turned everything off. I thought if I could just fix the city’s energy grid, if I could just stabilize the atmospheric monitors, if I could make L-Corp perfectly safe... then maybe I’d earn the right to look at you again."
"Oh, Lena," Kara groaned, a deep, sorrowful sound that came from the very bottom of her lungs. She pressed closer, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces for the brilliant, lonely woman who always managed to blame herself for the sins of the world. "How could you ever think that? How could you ever think I would blame you? You saved us, Lena. You saved every single person on this planet, including me. The choice we made... it was hard, and it hurt, and it’s going to hurt for a long time. But it wasn't your fault. It was never your fault. I could never hate you. Don't you know that? I could never, ever hate you."
Lena let out a long, trembling sigh, her body finally going completely soft against Kara’s, all the residual tension of the last twelve days leaving her limbs in one massive, exhausting wave. She slumped forward, letting all her weight rest entirely on Kara, her eyes half-closing as the sheer, suffocating reality of her physical deprivation finally caught up with her. The four hours of sleep a day, the endless river of caffeine, the skipping of meals—it all came crashing down upon her like a tidal wave now that the adrenaline of her manic focus had been dissolved by Kara’s touch.
"I'm so tired, Kara," Lena murmured, her eyelids fluttering, her voice growing smaller, younger, stripped of all the sharp, defensive confidence of the L-Corp executive. "I'm so incredibly tired."
"I know, Lee. I know," Kara said softly, her voice shifting into a tender, protective lullaby as she shifted her position. Carefully, treating Lena as if she were made of the finest, most brittle crystal, Kara slid her arms underneath Lena’s knees and behind her back, lifting her out of the office chair with a seamless, effortless strength.
Lena didn't protest. She simply curled her small frame into Kara’s chest, her head resting against Kara’s collarbone, her fingers still loosely clutching the fabric of Kara’s cardigan as she allowed herself to be carried away from the glowing screens, away from the spreadsheets, and away from the digital fortress that had very nearly become her tomb.
Kara carried her across the dim office toward the large, plush leather sofa resting against the far wall. She stepped carefully over the scattered papers and the abandoned espresso cups, her focus entirely narrowed down to the woman in her arms. She laid Lena down on the soft cushions, immediately reaching for a heavy, folded cashmere throw blanket that sat on the edge of the couch, spreading it gently over Lena’s shivering form.
As Kara began to pull away to give her some room, Lena’s hand shot out from beneath the blanket, her fingers catching Kara’s wrist with a sudden, desperate panic, her eyes flying open, wide with fear.
"Don't go," Lena begged, her voice a tiny, frightened sliver of sound in the quiet room. "Please. Don't leave me alone in the dark."
Kara’s expression softened into something so deeply loving it bordered on devotion. She didn't say a word; she simply kicked off her civilian flats and climbed onto the wide sofa beside Lena, sliding under the cashmere blanket with her. She pulled Lena back into her arms, tucking the CEO’s head under her chin, her long legs tangling with Lena’s beneath the cover, creating a warm, impenetrable cocoon against the rest of the world.
"I’m not going anywhere, Lena," Kara whispered into the dark hair near Lena's temple, her hand gently stroking up and down Lena’s arm, a steady, rhythmic motion designed to soothe the remaining tremors from her body. "I’m right here. I’ve got you. You can sleep now. I’ll keep the world away until you’re ready."
Lena let out one final, deep breath, her hand resting over Kara’s heart, feeling the steady, powerful, supernatural thumping beneath her palm. Surrounded by the warmth of the only person who truly saw her, the terrifying noise in her head finally fell completely silent. Her eyes closed, her breathing deepened, and within moments, she sank into the first deep, healing, dreamless sleep she had known in weeks, safe in the arms of the girl who had flown through heaven and earth just to bring her back from the dark.