Chapter Text
Lena Luthor died on Sunday.
And yet, somehow, when Lena’s alarm went off at 5:25 am, Monday morning, Lena was very much alive to swipe the alarm back to sleep.
For a moment, Lena simply curled into her pillow, groggily slipping into her morning ritual of pretending she wasn’t going to be crawling out of bed in the next five minutes to prepare for her twelve-hour day at L-Corp, plus however many additional hours it would actually take to complete her day.
Then, she remembered dying.
Lena did not bolt upright. She did not gasp. She did not scream. She did not burst into sobs. She did not clutch her chest or pinch her arm. Lena laid very still and thought very, very fast.
A series of religious solutions ran through Lena’s brilliant mind with the speed of a forty-car pileup. Just like that pileup, she didn’t get anywhere safe.
The backup alarm on her phone sounded.
She swiped that alarm silent too.
Lena shifted away from religion and clung to scientific explanations. She had always felt safer there. Physics were reliable. Math repeatable. Outcomes could be tested for. Results proven or disproven. Usually. Right now, Lena wasn’t so sure. Against her will, terrified, Lena considered a few supernatural options, just for good measure. None of the hypotheses gave Lena any comfort.
Then again, she really didn’t have enough data to formulate a solid conclusion. She didn’t have any data at all.
Lena sat up slowly, expecting to be stiff from the paralysis of death, not to mention the sheer violence of being incinerated by an antimatter wave, but there was nothing wrong with her.
Nothing more than the usual dull pain in her joints, the twinge in her lower back, and the slight ache that never left her feet.
Still, that was a data point. Lena stored the information carefully and moved on to gather more. She planted her aching feet on the floor, pressed down gingerly, and stood up.
Immediately, Lena noticed that the floor was wrong.
The hardwood was too hard. Too uneven. Too cheap.
The next thing she noticed was that her bedside lamp wasn’t where it should be. It wasn’t there at all.
Lena had to use the light of her cellphone to find an unfamiliar wall switch. There was a slight flicker as the lights turned on and warmed up emitting a soft yellow instead of the pure white light Lena was used to. They hummed faintly for a moment until the coils seemed to settle and go still. Silence filled the room.
Lena frowned at the bulbs. At first glance they looked like modern versions of old-fashioned Eddison bulbs, but they weren’t. The glass was too thick, the wiring more complicated than necessary making the design foreign to her even if the function was familiar.
The rest of the room proved to be the same.
The sparse furniture, the one painting, the drapes, the throw rug laying at a diagonal across the wooden floor, none of it was the right material. It was subtle. Thread counts too low. Paint too thick. Colors too thin. Everything was wrong.
It was close though. Or it would have been. Six years ago.
That thought sent Lena’s pulse wild.
She rushed to the window, throwing the drape back, fully convinced she was about to be met by the Metropolis skyline. Mercifully, it was still National City outside. Except. The skyscraping center of the city was visible. Lena wasn’t nested in it. She was looking at it. An outside observer. Through a thin canyon between old apartment buildings.
“Where the hell am I,” she hushed.
Lena’s breath fogged up the glass.
She had never seen this side of the city before. Not from this height. Not from this borough. Not even from Kara’s rent controlled, hand me down, apartment.
Kara. The name burned. Fresh and old memories colliding like the surf against a grey stone cliff. Deceptively beautiful from a distance. Destructive up close.
Lena flinched away from the memories. Her fingers tightened around the hem of her nightshirt. Trying to ground herself.
It didn’t help. She was distracted by the textile in her grip though. Eventually. The smooth shirt had the correct aesthetic, yet, like everything else, the texture of the material was off. Lena would never have bought this. Not even as a freshly graduated ideologist working out of a garage with Jack Sphere.
Lena had been young when her apartment looked like this. Nineteen. She hadn’t been poor. She still owned the top of the line of everything. Lillian would never have stood for anything less. Not even for Lionel’s bastard daughter. Especially not from Lionel’s bastard.
Another crash of memories slammed into Lena’s rattled mind.
Lena closed her eyes. Let out her breath. Moved on from the trauma of her parentage.
Think of something else. Anything else.
Lena left the window and the view she didn’t recognize. Explored an apartment she had never seen before.
The bedroom was small. The attached bathroom the smallest she’d ever owned. Correction. The second bathroom connected to the hall was the smallest bathroom she had ever owned. Kara’s wasn’t even—
Lena shook her head. No. Don’t go there.
Lena opened the other door the very short hallway had. It was a second bedroom that had been converted into an office. A drafting table took up almost all of the space. Low filing cabinets were tucked in around the edges. Corkboards on the walls. Several light stands, all with the same not quite right Edison bulbs directed towards the table.
Lena went to the drawings on the drafting table. She ran her hand along the layers of pages. The tracing paper was thick. The line drawings precise.
She recognized her own handwriting. Neat. Slanted. Clinical. Easy to read. Hard to misunderstand.
The engineering was complex. Needlessly so. Lena preferred minimal infrastructure to her designs. Yet. The density of the gears, the tubing, the…
“Steam powered?” Lena gasped as her mind caught up to what her eyes were looking at.
An absurd thought crossed her mind.
Had she woken up in a steampunk world?
She chuckled at the thought. It wasn’t funny. The laugh wasn’t happy. She was, ironically, just letting off steam. The absurdity of that stray thought gave her mind something to cling to.
An alternate universe. That could explain it.
Or hell.
One of the two. It had to be.
Lena had died. Earth had been destroyed. Wherever she was now, it wasn’t her home. This wasn’t her life. This was something else. Something real. Tangible. Layered. Old.
She looked around the little office crammed with drawings. There wasn’t a laptop. Just paper. Books. Folios. Tracing paper instead of scanners. Pens, pencils, rulers, compasses, craftsman’s tools instead of digital surfaces and styluses. There wasn’t dust on any of it. There was depth. Too much to be a cover up. Too detailed to be a slight of hand.
If not for the cellphone, white knuckle gripped in her shaking left hand, Lena would have thought she’d woken up in the past. But the phone was there. Loaded with familiar apps.
Whatever this new world was, it was a hybrid of technologies. It wasn’t archaic. It wasn’t the past. It was modern, just with another version of modern overlapping it.
Lena was intrigued. Lena was also terrified. Her neck buzzed with nerves. Her stomach tightened. Her grip on the phone stayed painfully tight. She didn’t know what to do.
Was this her life? Was this someone else’s? Was another version of Lena Luthor about to walk through the door? Or had that version died with the rest of the universe?
Alex had told Lena the antimatter wave was destroying all the earths. The whole multiverse was being erased. There hadn’t been time to process that. There had only been time to act. To repurpose. To open a rift between universes. Sending as many refugees of Earth through the gate Lena had created through her wormhole technology.
Lena’s work hadn’t been meant for that. It had been for interstellar travel. Not interdimensional. The calculations had been raw. The risks far too great to move forward with in any other circumstance. But. Given that they were all going to die either way, Lena had tried. Alex had helped. A little. Mostly Alex had cheerleadered in that menacing military stone-faced way of hers. One hand on a gun. The other on the back of Lena’s chair. You can do this energy mixed with you’d better do this intensity.
Perversely, Lena had missed working with that storm cloud at her back. Alex was predictable in a way that was soothing to Lena’s nervous system. Alex didn’t suffer fools. Alex also wasn’t a fool. More importantly, Alex had never treated Lena as a fool. Alex had always seen Lena’s genius. That had always been the problem.
Lena had always been a Luthor to Alex Danvers. A threat. An asset. A necessary evil. Useful. Needed. A consultant. A calculation. Someone to keep close. Someone to never let in.
Kara had admitted it had been Alex that had forbidden Kara from telling Lena she was Supergirl sooner. Lena understood. Lena didn’t care. Following orders, was never an acceptable enough reason. ‘Protecting you from the DEO’, had wrung equally off pitch to Lena’s ears. Kara had lied. Kara. Not Alex. Kara.
Alex had never pretended. Kara had. For five years. Over forty-three thousand hours of lies. It was unforgivable. And yet…
Lena shook off the thought. Again. Blew out her breath. Again. Steadied her mind when she couldn't her heart. And still her inner voice asked, ‘did they make it?’
She closed her eyes, trying to push the hopeful thought away.
The Danvers sisters moved from the center of her mind. They didn’t go far. That, unfortunately, was the same as always.
Kara was always there. Somewhere. Sweet memories turned bitter. Warm days turned into dark nights. A best friend turned into an enemy. The love of her life, unrequited to her last breath. Even now, wherever the hell Lena was, she couldn’t get her heart to unclench its hold on the Kryptonian.
Frustrated by her circling thoughts, Lena’s feet moved her to the balcony. At least she still had one of those even if the two-story penthouse had been replaced by a cramped two-bedroom apartment.
She slid the heavy glass door open onto a cement ledge with a chest high railing. There was a garden box in one corner, devoid of plants, and a single patio chair in the other corner next to a small folding wooden tray table with a round ashtray at its center.
No. Lena gulped at the ashtray. No, no, no, no, no.
Lex had given her that ashtray.
Unlike everything else in the apartment, the ashtray looked correct. To the last detail.
The crystal cut of the glass was perfect. The slight yellowing along the contours. The little chip on the bottom edge. The way it caught and refracted the nearby lights of the neighboring buildings. Every single detail of that one item was perfect.
It wasn’t possible. Yet there it was.
Lena had smashed the ashtray the night Lex had been arrested for turning the sun red. It had hurt too much to remember Lex giving her the ashtray on her sixteenth birthday with a wicked grin, and a cheeky, ‘I won’t tell Lillian, if you won’t.’ Lena had loved that ashtray. She had loved the brother that had been on her side, supporting her, even in her worst vices.
Or so he had claimed.
It wasn’t true. It had been a lie. Lex had never been supportive. Lex had been manipulative. Lex had encouraged Lena to stray just this side of acceptable, time and again, all so he could ensure that Lillian never shifted her affection to Lena, just Lillian’s unwanted attention.
It was a game.
A game Lena didn’t realize she was playing until far too late.
The ashtray hadn’t been a gift. It was Lex’s crystal trophy. Proof that he had outsmarted his little sister. Proof that he controlled Lena. Proof that he controlled Lillian too. Proof that he controlled everything. Even Lena’s teenage addiction to cigarettes.
When Lena realized what he had done. No. When Lena had realized who he was, she hadn’t been able to handle owning that nicotine-stained proof of Lex’s lifetime of deceit. Not after that night. Not after Lex had tried to destroy the world. Not after Lex had tried to destroy Lena in the process. So, she’d destroyed the ashtray.
But there it sat. Pristine in all its flaws.
A wave of dread flooded her body, pooling heavily in her stomach.
Lena sank onto the little patio chair. The wood creaked. A gust of city generated wind stirred against her hot skin. It felt ominous. With shaking hands, Lena lifted her phone, swiped it open, pulling up her favorites list.
Lex’s name was at the top.
Trembling, Lena pulled up her recent call log.
She barely made it to the bathroom before she vomited out a wave of terror that shook her to her core.
* * *
A brief internet search confirmed what her phone had already made impossible to deny.
Lex was alive. And he was very much a part of Lena’s life.
Lena sat on the floor, clutching a towel to her chest, her eyes counting the tiles on the shower, her mind racing over the details of the nightmare she had awoken to.
Lex was alive. How was that possible? Lena had killed him. Three shots to the chest. In that horrible little prison and the lab Lex had carved out of it, not to escape prison, but to run it. No. To run the world.
He was about to succeed too. Again. Unstoppable. Still. In charge. Always. Gloating. Victorious. Unstoppable. Until Lena had pulled the trigger before Lex could push the button to unleash his latest world altering plan.
She had watched him die.
Stunned into inaction as her own guilt and horror of having to kill her once beloved brother caused her body to freeze.
And then Lex had started to talk.
He monologed to his last breath. Smirking and sneering. Destroying Lena’s life by confessing Kara’s lies, revealing the blonde reporter to be none other than Supergirl.
Lex died smiling.
Proud. Confident in the destructive wake he’d left behind.
But he had died.
Lena had made sure of it. When she could move again. Breathe again. Think again. She had checked him for life. Stayed with him. Made sure that his body was handled correctly. Buried completely. That none of his henchmen could bring him back. Lena had made sure that Lex couldn’t come back. How was he back?
“I died too,” Lena muttered to the stillness of the bathroom.
Her voice didn’t echo. It didn’t vanish either. It lingered. Heavy. Solid. Inescapable. Lena died.
She remembered it clearly. The terror. The loneliness. The longing. The regret. The wishing. Every thought. Every heartbeat. Every hope that wasn’t realized. Still. Lena had stood her ground. The spaceships left earth. Millions escaped. Lena stayed.
It wasn’t suicide. It wasn’t sacrificial. There was no moment of heroic martyrdom. The untested controls simply needed to be manned and Lena Luthor was the only one who could do it. So, she had stayed.
Lena kept the interdimensional rift open. Watched as the last escapees slipped from the only reality Lena had known into a new version of the universe. And then the antimatter wave consumed Earth and Lena died with everyone else there had been no time to save. And then she’d woken up here. Which meant what?
“I’m in hell,” Lena muttered.
It was the only thing that made sense. Lex had died a year before the antimatter wave. A full year. For him to be alive here too…it made more sense that they were both dead than they were both alive.
This wasn’t an alternative universe. This was hell.
Hell wasn’t anything like she had imagined it would be. There were no flames. It wasn’t hot. At least not in her apartment, on the bathroom floor, her back pressed to the same tiles on the wall that occupied the cold floor underneath her.
Then again, hell didn’t need to be hot. There didn’t need to be flames. All there needed to be for this to be hell, was Lex.
* * *
Lena spent the next hour on her phone deep diving into internet searches, online articles, and a painfully, eerily familiar Luthor Corp company website.
Lex was everywhere.
Except, it wasn’t the Lex of old. Lex was beloved here. Lex was the Man of Tomorrow he had always wanted to be. Lex was in charge of everything he shouldn’t be, from the family company to the DEO itself. Lex was even being presented with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Lena got sick again. It wasn’t a normal reaction for her body to have. Nothing about this was normal.
“This is hell,” she repeated over the sink as she brushed her teeth and looked into her own haunted eyes in the mirror.
Of course it was hell.
Where else did she think she would wake up after dying?
Her phone buzzed. Lena jumped at the sound of it vibrating on the tile floor. She didn’t respond, just read the first line of the text before her screen went dark again.
She didn’t recognize the name. The tone was familiar. An assistant checking in. Lena was late. People were starting to panic.
Lena let out a tired sigh, and despite it making absolutely no logical sense, she automatically pulled herself together, shoved her trauma into boxes of cobalt, and climbed into the shower to get ready to go into work.
The handles for the water were complicated. Not difficult. Just different. Too much hot, not enough cold. The pressure was weak. The pipes groaned. The shampoo and conditioner were cheap, the scent too strong. The body wash lathered well, but it was thick, abrasive, effective in a way that was unpleasant.
The shower did not help.
Neither did the far too abrasive towel. Or the clothes with a noticeable weave. Or all the wrong creams and makeup that waited for her in the very narrow, very limited, medicine cabinet hidden behind the simple mirror above the sink.
Then again, Lex was alive. No shower could wash away that pain. No clothes could mask the fear that Lex was also Lena’s boss. She had found out that harrowing detail in her internet search too.
Lena appeared to be an engineer here. Specializing in steam technologies. It was low level. She was on a team. Not the head of the team. A junior member. She still had her doctorates, but just barely. No accelerated track here. No skipped grades. Her genius was hidden by a biography, that while impressive, looked ordinary compared to the rest of the team.
She scoffed at the information. Annoyed. Hurt. Deeply unsettled. Not about the lack of advancement. At the erasure of her achievements. Her life’s work was gone. There was no L-Corp. There was no mention of her time working with Jack Sphere. There was only her graduation and hire dates. As if she was just another nepo baby who, while skilled, had only been able to land a job at her family’s company.
The idea set her teeth on edge.
She already hated this. So much.
Still. This was her reality. Lena needed to face it.
She needed to learn. Then she could adapt. Then she could…she had no idea what she could do then. Could you get out of hell? Wasn’t the answer, no? Wasn’t that the whole point of hell?
Unless…
No. Lena shook her head.
She locked eyes with herself in the mirror.
No. She repeated.
She couldn’t think that. Couldn’t go back to the hope of having arrived on another universe. The multiverse had been destroyed. Gone. Alex had said. Alex was many things. Alex wasn’t a liar.
All the earths but one were being erased. Lena had sent the others to that earth. Lena wasn’t there. This wasn’t that. Lena was alone. Lena was dead. This was hell. This—
Lena jumped when the unfamiliar ring of the doorbell sounded loudly throughout her apartment.
It was an actual bell. Not a synthesized chime. A bell. Brass. Mounted just above the front door. The mechanics seemingly as complicated as a chain that had been pulled on the other side of the wooden door. Rudimentary. Effective. Clean in a way that Lena loved despite her general hatred of everything she had woken up to so far.
Her heart pounded. She hesitated. She was afraid to answer the door.
She was more afraid not to.
Lena left the safety of her short hallway.
She was still barefooted. She wished she wasn’t. The extra inches her heels gave her always helped with unknown situations.
At least she was dressed well. Her makeup was flawless. Despite the inferior products. It wasn’t much. It was all the armor Lena had.
She let out her breath. Smoothed the sides of her skirt. Steadied her hands. Pulled open the heavy, solid wood door, a polite smile fixed to her face—
It was Kara.
Right there. On Lena’s doorstep.
Lena drank in every detail at lightning speed.
The hair was right. Sun bleached blonde. Tied back in a ponytail that looked just slightly windblown.
Kara’s eyes were exactly as they should be. That, oh so specific, baby blue. Stunning. Bright behind the thick shield of lead lined librarian style glasses.
The sweater combined with a button-down shirt, fitted dress slacks, held up by a thin belt, that somehow hid her Supergirl figure in the layers of shy pastels, was all exactly right too.
There was nothing secondhand about Kara’s appearance. It was perfection. She was perfection.
Lena swallowed. Her hands shook. This really was hell.
“Lena,” Kara breathed out, her voice quivering noticeably in relief and something far deeper. “You’re alright. Thank you, Rao.”