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Lena was pretty good at reading people. She had been raised in a household of smoke and mirrors. Words were suggestions of actual meaning. Every conversation was a labyrinth, one wrong turn and you missed something vital, you lost something important, and the price was always catastrophic.
Lena had learned to read the slightest twitches in a person’s face, detect inflections in tone, and decipher fidgets.
When Kara Danvers and Clark Kent came by her office asking her about the Venture explosion, she stripped them both down to their intentions. They were simple. Clark distrusted her, there was not much beyond that or she would have seen it.
Kara had hesitated. She was studying Lena back like she hadn’t decided what to think of her, unlike Clark who had decided before he had met her.
She expected distrust, slippery promises, cold smiles. But Kara had unabashedly just gawked at her. Just openly scanned her face when she had asked if they could understand that she was just trying to make a name for herself away from her family.
An expression like that would have been a beacon to her brother or her mother. Kara would have regretted showing that tiny bit of interest and trust.
When they came back to apologize, Clark’s words had changed, but his intentions had not, even through the apology she saw him regard her like a problem he would have to deal with eventually.
Kara had blushed. She smiled, she leaned towards Lena. She stuttered and fumbled when Lena told her she would see her again.
And Lena didn’t trust people no matter how open they left themselves, there was always something, or there would be. But her heart stuttered briefly when Kara smiled at her.
She did see Kara again. Kara sought her out asking for interviews and favours like she had already decided they were friends. And Lena liked her. There was no point denying it because ignoring variables was the easiest and dumbest way to miscalculate a situation. She liked Kara. She liked her bubbly awkward laugh, she liked her baby, blue eyes, her voice made Lena’s heart ache when she spoke quietly, softly, just for her.
And she thought Kara liked her, too. She laughed too loudly, fumbled too much, agreed to anything Lena asked for without hesitation and sometimes she looked at her in slow motion. Her eyes would go wide, lips parted slightly, her face would flush then she would take a slow breath before resuming back to real time.
And honestly, Lena encouraged it. She smiled at her in that way she noticed would bring a pink glow to Kara’s cheeks, brushed her fingers over her hands whenever she got the chance, wore lower and lower necklines because she could always count on Kara’s gaze shifting just a little south when she stood near her.
She could read Kara like an open book. She thought.
Then Kara got a boyfriend.
And Lena found out as an afterthought.
At the very least, they were friends. If Lena was somehow wrong about everything, they still would have been friends. Didn’t friends talk about things like that?
She tried not to look like she felt like there was watermelon stuck in her throat when Alex mentioned it offhand. Kara had blushed and laughed awkwardly; the laugh that usually filled Lena’s chest with butterflies but now it felt like acid in her lungs. And Lena tried not to read into the way Kara had spent the remainder of the evening at the noisy bar studying Lena’s face when she thought Lena couldn’t see her.
And Lena tried not to cry that night when she had gotten back into her quiet, predictable, controlled apartment. She hated herself for crying. She hated herself for being disappointed. She didn’t trust people. She didn’t need people. She had allowed Kara to get this close because it served a higher purpose.
But she couldn’t remember what that purpose was.
She tried to be angry because it was safer. Anger would give her the fuel she needed to drive a wedge between Kara and herself. But she couldn't do it.
Kara had never promised her anything. She had simply misread.
She remained at Kara’s beck and call because she didn’t know how to refuse her. she tried to create distance by pretending to be busy more often when Kara called, cancelling lunches, and tried really hard not to pop into CatCo or her apartment with a stupid excuse just to see her.
When Lena called Kara for advice about working with Rhea, she tried to be understanding when Kara had asked to call her back. She didn’t know why it hurt but she just thought of her with him. Of course she didn’t have time for her silly phone calls anymore. She needed to stop relying on Kara's moral compass, Kara’s opinion of her, and just make a decision.
In a tragic way, it kind of worked out for her in the end. Of course she did not expect the Daxamites to invade and if she could go back, she would unmake all of the decisions that made it possible, but the boyfriend was gone.
She tried to empathise and dredge up some guilt about Kara’s heartbreak, but that dark, ugly satisfaction was louder.
Then Kara was slipping away and she didn’t understand it.
Well, she did understand it but was reluctant to process it; Kara blamed her for sending Mon-El away.
Nothing hurt more than the cold, empty look that Kara gave her when she had to come see her for work-related reasons- actual work, unlike the interviews she used to set up with Lena just to spend the hour laughing and joking with her, notepad untouched in the pouch of her bag.
“I miss you,” she had blurted out once as Kara was walking out of her office, and Kara regarded her for a second, with the same empty expression before making some flippant excuse about being busy and continuing on her way.
It was a silly reason to have a panic attack. She was no stranger to them, but it had been about a year since her last episode. The guilt over her role in the Daxamite invasion, Morgan Edge, running a company, these were all valid reasons to be a little stressed. But Kara walking away from her with a careless brush of her hand was the final straw.
Lena didn’t chase people. She built walls, pushed people away, protected herself. So she didn’t understand why when she kept coming up against Kara’s newly constructed walls, she just kept pushing to get in, despite knowing first-hand how futile that effort would prove.
When Kara showed up in Lena’s office- for a favour again, she stopped hoping Kara would just want to see her anymore- and asked Lena to talk to Morgan Edge about saving CatCo, Lena agreed. To voluntarily subject herself to Morgan Edge. Kara could have asked for her right hand and Lena would have just sawed it off for her.
Coming up empty was not an option, so when Edge wouldn’t budge, she’d bought the damn company herself. It was the least she could do if it helped Kara get her smile back. What she didn’t expect was Kara trying to blow her life up. Lena was no stranger to self-destructive, questionable decisions made to punish herself, so she recognized the behaviour when she told Kara about buying CatCo and discovered that Kara had quit. Lena knew how much she loved her job, quitting was not a choice she had made with her best interests at heart, she was retreating, getting ready to combust. Lena had joked with her, tried to reason with her lightly to unquit because she didn’t want to push her away by asking too much from her and because she was still too scared to talk about Mon-El. His name roiled uncomfortably in her stomach. His loss was Lena’s fault. It was her fault that Kara was heartbroken but at Lena’s core, behind all of the empathy and heartache that she tried to manufacture about his loss, there was relief. It disgusted her. She shouldn’t feel so satisfied about the exact thing that made her friend look lost and empty.
It was the most selfish she had ever felt. She was relieved she didn’t have to see his face on Kara’s phone wallpaper every time she got a notification during their lunches, she didn’t have to think about Kara going home to him, Kara curling up to him and kissing him and loving him while Lena worked later and sipped more scotch than normal.
Something she said to Kara must have had an impact because Kara was back at her desk at CatCo the next morning. Lena decided to take a hands-on approach at CatCo and hired someone to cover for her at L-Corp. There were worse things than working with Kara.
Watching Kara try to keep herself together throughout the day was like a bucket of iced water in her face. That deep hidden shard of relief at Mon-El’s departure flickered and went out as she watched Kara whirl in and out of the office all day, unfocused and jittery. She wasn’t just busy, she didn’t have that fire that usually accompanied motivation to a task; she was frantic like she was desperate to be busy and keep herself moving without focus.
So Lena pushed the ache in her own heart deep down and decided to be the friend that Kara needed right now. She tried to be patient with Kara as she broached the topic, asking her about Mon-El.
She expected Kara to be defensive, she knew Kara didn’t want to talk to her lately, but it didn’t hurt any less when Kara snapped at her. Standing there, taking in the full force of the pain in Kara’s blue eyes, Lena decided whatever feelings she had for Kara needed burying. There was no doubt that Kara had loved that man. There was no space for Lena, not like that. The data was conclusive; Kara Danvers would never love her.
Sam came in to help run L-Corp while she devoted her time to CatCo and Kara was healing; life was feeling warmer. Despite the reinstated girl’s nights and lunch dates with Kara, Lena was maintaining her distance, her feelings had no space in this relationship.
“You’ve got yourself one fierce little protector,” Sam had said after she and Kara had helped uncover Morgan Edge’s latest scheme to blame her lead dispersal device for poisoning kids.
Lena shrugged and sipped her wine, Kara had just left them but the warmth from where her arm was resting around Lena’s shoulders still tingled. “Yeah, she’s good at her job, really dedicated to the truth.” Lena tried not to roll her eyes at herself.
“Dedicated to the truth?” Sam chuckled, “is that what we’re calling it now?”
Lena didn’t respond.
“You like her?” It only sounded like a question, Sam knew.
“It doesn’t matter, Sam, please.”
“She really cares about you,” Sam offered, Lena closed her eyes and tried to breathe.
“Don’t give me false hope, I can’t. Please just drop it.”
Sam scootched closer, hugging her tightly. “You can call me any time. I’ll always be here when you need.”
When James started flirting with her, she didn’t shut him down. Some sad, broken part of her was relieved at the attention. She flirted back, she let him get closer to her, and she was able to look at herself again despite the small part of herself that told her she was unlovable. She didn’t like James, she hardly even noticed him while she was flirting back, but she felt good having someone smile at her, ask her out, pursue her for a change.
She had asked Kara what she thought of James, hoped Kara would object, tell her to stay away from him, that he didn’t deserve her, anything that would indicate that Kara cared. But she had been so encouraging, pushy even.
“He’s a great guy! It didn’t work out with us but he’s a really good person.”
Lena froze, “Didn’t work out…?”
Kara’s eyes widened and she flushed, “oh, yeah, it was just a couple of dates, nothing serious.” and she changed the subject.
So she asked James about it. Not outright, just started with relationship goals, history and worked up to exes.
“Ah, yeah, I guess I should mention Kara and I dated for a bit,” he chuckled, rubbing his neck.
Lena pretended to look mildly curious.
“Yeah, it was- She liked me for a while but I was working through things with Lucy, my other ex- this isn’t as bad as it sounds I promise!” he joked.
Lena didn’t care; what happened with Kara?
When she didn’t say anything, he nervously laughed and kept going. “We tried to go on a few dates then just out of nowhere she told me she didn’t think it would work out afterall. We just went back to being friends.”
“Out of nowhere?” Lena pressed, as casually as she could manage, her heart in her throat.
“Yeah, I guess things were changing in her life, she had just decided to be a reporter and a lot was happening for her.”
Around the time that Kara met Lena. She had stood in Lena’s office, looked at Lena like the air had been pulled out of her then went and broke up with James. Lena really didn’t want to read into it but that naive hopeless flutter in her chest could not be ignored.
For someone who prided herself on her manipulation skills- she was a Luthor and a CEO, that didn't just happen without knowing what you wanted from people and how to get it- Lena really didn’t know how to handle her personal relationships.
Lena was so tired of scanning every crowd for blonde curls, cancelling meetings at the drop of a hat when Kara called and the constant ache in her chest. And then there was James. She didn’t know what she wanted from him. She saw him enough but usually only when her distance became a problem for him. Ignore him, appease him, ignore him. It was a cycle of “go away; no, don’t leave me!”
Then James was gone, things with Kara were stable and life became routine. Life was never boring with Supergirl drama; there was always a crisis, but she found emotional stability for the first time in her life. She could always depend on Kara to be a call away, and Lena had been folded right into her ever-growing friend group. Even Alex stopped looking at her like she was waiting for the scorpion stinger to come out and take Kara out.
In fact, Alex started looking for moments to talk to her, her eyes studying Lena in a completely different way; she was looking through her for the first time instead of imposing her fears onto Lena.
The first time she had heard Kara sing, Lena thought she was done for. This was it. She was going to keel over and just die in the middle of this bar surrounded by her friends. Alex had pushed Kara onto the stage and it didn’t actually take a lot of convincing, Kara was not shy.
Kara’s voice moved through her chest like honey; smooth and sweet and probably not good for her health.
Alex pushed a fresh glass of water in front of her, “you look thirsty,” she smirked.
Lena was going to die tonight.
Alex finally got her moment a few days later, at game night. Kara had scrambled away to deal with some emergency, Nia and J’onn were distracted in the kitchen and Lena was left alone with Alex in the living room.
“So what’s new, Luthor?”
Lena shrugged, “been working on a deal with King Industries that will-”
“You like Kara, don’t you?” Alex interrupted.
Lena did not spill her drink, she thought she deserved credit for that, at the very least. What she did do was choke and fall off the couch.
Alex helped her up, but she never stopped smirking.
“Is this the part where you tell me to stay away, that I’ll never be good enough for her.” That’s what she had spent the past three years telling herself.
Alex’s face scrunched in horror, “No, Lena! I was just going to tell you you can talk to me about it if you need to, this can’t be easy for you. I know my sister, she’s loyal to a fault and she loves with her whole heart. She would never hurt you on purpose. But she can be a bit dense about reading people. Whether she means to or not, I can see how much this hurts you.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“Yeah. But it doesn’t work like that, does it?”
Lena hoped life would just stay stable like that for a while with Kara as close as she was ever going to have her. She always worried that Kara was a moment away from meeting the love of her life and breaking this illusion, what Lena didn't expect was Lex’s final words shattering everything she had learned to rely on. Kara was Supergirl. Everyone knew but Lena.
And maybe lena was a fool because she had let herself give into denial. The truth was that she could have found out Supergirl’s identity anytime if she wanted; she had the resources, hell she could have asked Lex or Lillian, of course they knew. She figured out that Sam was Reign and she wore a mask.
But acknowledging that her closest friend didn’t trust her with her whole self hurt too much to look at directly. So she fell into the most common human error; she had ignored variables and calculated wrong.
She wanted Kara to hurt like Lena hurt. That’s what she told herself because it was easier to swallow than the truth; she wanted to hurt herself, she wanted to scream and cry like a child, she wanted Kara to see how much she had hurt her. She wanted to punish both of them. She wanted the world in all of its treachery to burn, she would cleanse it and show them all. She just wanted someone to see her and love her for a change. She wanted Kara.
After she betrayed Kara at the fortress and made away with Myriad, the iron in Lena’s spine that had held her up for the last few months had dissolved. She spent all of her energy making herself strong enough for that moment, the moment she knew she could never come back from. No more denial, no more pretending Kara loved her in any capacity just so she could exist in her light a little longer. That was it, her hardest moment.
She almost faltered and let it go a hundred times. When Kara had stolen Lex’s journals for her and declared there were no boundaries between them, Lena was ready to throw it all away. Kara glowing at her at game night and declaring Lena her partner had warmed her so much, she had to consciously remind herself to be angry afterwards. Lena jumping off a cliff because she knew Kara would catch her. In an adrenaline fueled moment, in her purest instinct, Lena had trusted Kara with her life. And yet her entire defence for her plan to betray Kara was that she couldn’t trust her anymore.
When Kara had invited her to the Fortress herself because she was excited for Lena to see the most alien part of her, Lena wondered again what she was doing.
But despite the good moments, the hurt in Lena was deeper than anything she had known. Those moments of hope were an anomaly because Kara it had taken Kara five years to let Lena in and she needed Kara to see how much that hurt. She just wanted Kara to see it, but she didn’t know how else.
The next day, she had the flu. That’s what she told her assistant when she cancelled all of her appointments for the week. That’s what she told herself when she spent so long in bed that it was bedtime again before she had gotten up. She took flu medication to convince herself she was actually sick and because without them she would lay awake in the dark, her eyes burning and her chest aching.
She took the time to comb through every interaction she had had with Supergirl and came up more confused than angry. Because Supergirl was there for her all of the times that Kara couldn’t be. But she had also lied to her.
Kara didn’t leave her alone with Edge while he threatened her in her office, Supergirl had shown up and thrown him on a cargo ship for daring to harass Lena.
Supergirl hadn’t flinched at Lena when Lillian ran Cadmus, in fact she had passionately advocated for Lena to Lena, urging her to stand up for herself; she saw lena for who she was despite her family even when Lena doubted herself. She had shown up to save Lena from Cadmus, despite the stack of evidence against her and the known presence of a Kryptonite weapon.
Lena remembered being upset with Kara for not supporting her during Lillian’s trial, but Supergirl was with her every day.
Then the time Supergirl had begged Reign to spare Lena, offering herself up instead.
If she factored in Supergirl’s protectiveness and dedication to her safety along with Kara’s bright smiles when she saw Lena, her constant closeness at game nights, her thoughtfulness when she added meals to orders that Lena knew nobody would eat but her, the results spelled something that Lena refused to consider because hope hurt.
And none of it made any sense.
And Supergirl had doubted her, antagonized her for making Kryptonite to help Sam. She had violated her trust, and sent James to spy on her.
Lena lingered on that. It was safer to remember the betrayal.
She would fix the world and take all the pain away.
It was ironic that denial had gotten her into this situation by refusing to connect Kara to Supergirl despite having all of the evidence laid out before her, because denial sustained her rage through those months working on Non Nocere, going as far as listening to Lex and Lilllian just to keep up the narrative that Kara secretly hated her this whole time.
Then the illusion broke and she was left in a cold lab, her work warped into something evil in her hands, her brother screaming her deepest insecurities at her.
When she looked past the jagged edges of the reality she had constructed for herself, it was Kara she saw. It was always going to be Kara.
When she tears herself apart and rebuilds herself into something she can’t look at, she goes to Kara because nobody else can fix what she had done. She had given Lex a weapon despite her best intentions and she needed to set it right.
Lena was always going to be her own biggest obstacle. When Kara had let her back in, accepted her apology and her help with Leviathan, Lena held onto her guilt, wore it around daily like a lead coat. She refused invitations back into group activities, created distance between herself and everyone, especially Kara.
Kara was all too glad to welcome Lena back into the fold, but Lena knew she would never deserve her trust so she took it upon herself to protect Kara from herself. Lena maintained contact only as a way to make penance. She could help; she could build suits and weapons and gadgets to keep Kara safe and she owed her that.
And Kara tried. She visited her in her makeshift lab at the Tower frequently, brought snacks and jokes. She sat quietly when Lena answered politely in monosyllables and Kara ran out of topics to try to spark a conversation. More than once, she dozed off with her head against one of the desks while watching Lena tinker and pretend she didn’t feel her presence in the room like a hair shirt.
Lena knew Kara was not naive or dumb. She had told Lena plainly exactly how much she had hurt her then looked through her and decided to forgive her.
Then Alex found her.
“Honestly, I’ve had enough of this, Luthor.” She announced, bursting through the door, “I know what you think you’re doing but this drama in your head is getting ridiculous and now it’s affecting my sister. I cannot spend another night listening to her doubt herself because she thinks you hate her.” Alex sat in the chair nearest Lena, hands on the table, making it very clear that she was not leaving without a resolution.
“If you cared about her, you would keep her away from me.”
Alex rolled her eyes and groaned loudly, “Lena, I seriously can’t do this anymore. I know you’re trying to punish yourself but you’re hurting Kara. Have you stopped to consider that maybe she wants the same thing that you want?”
“I want her to be happy.”
“Yeah? So talk to her!” Alex threw her hands up in exasperation.
“This conversation is doomed to go in circles. We have opposing views of what will make Kara happy.”
“Listen. I was ready to blow up a damn mountain a few weeks ago to stop you. In my ideal world, Kara would be happy enough just knowing you weren’t going to try to mind control the planet, maybe date that William guy and just move on. You hurt her multiple times over the past year, you’re still hurting her. If you think I’m here playing matchmaker because I believe you deserve her, you’re wrong. I agree with you, I wish she could stay away from you, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Lena lingered on words like ‘date,’ and ‘matchmaker,’ and that sounded more intense than what her and Kara’s relationship ever was.
“She loves you, Lena, and if you think stonewalling her is in her best interest, well it’s not. She just wants you back.”
And the years of evidence that Lena was too cowardly to look at floated to the forefront of her brain. The flushed awe that Lena had catalogued on Kara’s face from their first meeting to “I’ll always protect you,” and “let her go, please, take me instead!”
“But Mon-El,” She said weakly because that was the moment she stopped trusting her read on Kara.
Alex furrowed her brow in confusion, “He’s been gone three years, that’s really your excuse?”
“If she liked me, she wouldn’t have loved him.”
“Lena.” Alex sighed, dropping her head in her hands. “He was an alien frat boy. She saw someone who could understand her in a way that she didn’t think other humans could at the time. She’s always struggled to belong. He was handsome and charming and honestly, she’s Kara. More than anything she wants to be loved and she did what billions of girls before her have done, got stuck on the potential of a relationship, confused flattery for affection and just dove in because the alternative is loneliness. She thinks she loved him because she lost him so soon into the honeymoon phase. I honestly don’t think they would have lasted a year.”
“And me?”
“Before your last venture into world domination, I really believed in you. You’ve always had her back, you always knew what she needed and you understood her in a way most humans could never, even before you knew about Supergirl. I’m not going to get into the mushy stuff because, gross, but from a logical, big sister perspective, I might have approved.”
Lena didn’t know what to say, she lowered her head to study the desk in front of her.
“She never stopped believing in you. Not even once while you were kidnapping people, stealing from the Fortress of Solitude, working with Lex, aiming Kryptonite canons at her. She just insisted on defending you. It was exhausting and terrifying. She wouldn’t have been able to stop you but I knew if she didn’t and you went through with it, it would destroy her. But if I made the decision and you had… not made it… that would have destroyed her, too.
“I don’t understand how you can still deny that she likes you. I don’t know how she denied it for so long.”
“Did she say something?”
“It all clicked for her a few nights ago while she was crying about you hating her for the billionth time.”
Lena was sure the air filtration system was malfunctioning, there suddenly didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the room. Kara didn’t know she liked her, that was the missing variable, why the equation never balanced. The mixed signals; hot and cold; friends to flirting.
Alex leaned forward over the desk and lightly placed her hand over Lena’s. “Just think about it. You don’t need to keep punishing yourself. It’s been long enough of this, just act like an adult and talk to her.”
“I don’t think you should be telling me this,” Lena tried to joke weakly.
“Yeah, Kelly would not approve of my methods. But it’s been years and I really can’t watch this anymore. It’s like watching a ball hurdle at my face and deciding not to catch it.”
Lena knew she missed her chance when Lex sent Kara into the Phantom Zone. She had pulled down her walls but after the past few weeks of coldness towards Kara, Kara had learned to maintain her distance. Lena didn’t know how to reach out and tell her it was OK, that she would let her in if she still wanted.
She should have told her a million times; when she brought her coffee, when she asked her what she was working on, when Kara decided to sacrifice herself to catch Lex.
She should have told her at the Fortress. Should have kissed her and pulled her through the portal with her. Nothing is worth Kara’s life and she shouldn’t have let Kara convince her that facing Lex was a necessary risk.
She hadn’t believed it at first, she saw the Phantom projectors and heard Brainy’s explanation and Lex’s smug satisfaction, but remained detached.
It hit her all of a sudden while she was running tests on the tracking device she was developing to find Kara. Logically she knew she needed to find Kara because Kara was trapped in the Phantom Zone, but unconsciously she still expected to see her pile of blonde curls across the room where she had taken to sitting while Lena worked in her lab.
When she glanced up and saw only an empty chair, her heart had exploded, leaving her gasping painfully. She clenched her fists over her chest until she could breath again, a sob ripping out of her. And the dam was broken. Her body shook as sobbing turned into screaming.
Someone caught her when she let her legs give way, pushing her into a chair and holding her.
Alex was stroking her hair softly and Lena hardly had the presence of mind to wonder if they were close enough for her to be crying into Alex’s neck.
“She’s all alone,” she whimpered. “She could be hurt, scared, defenceless. She won’t know that we’re coming. What if we never find a way to her, what if we get there too late?”
“She knows. She believes in us as much as we believe in her.”
When Brainy had a similar breakdown, Lena sat with him like Alex had sat with her.
Kara was laughing when they found her. Lena understood that it was a relieved reaction but her heart lurched protectively. Her leg had been broken, she had been fighting for her life for weeks and yet she found a way to laugh. She would never fully understand Kara’s capacity to find the light in everything.
The initial joy was short-lived as Kara was quickly swept away by Alex and a medical team before Lena could see her properly.
By the time Kara was medically cleared, they had all gathered at the Tower to welcome her back properly and Lena was rethinking the public reunion. She had hoped she would see Kara before the party, suss her out, find out where they stood and if Kara even wanted her there, away from prying eyes. So she lingered back and waited for Kara to come to her.
When Kara had greeted everyone else, Lena stepped forward, just a little, just enough to communicate that she was not avoiding her. And Kara glowed like she always did, but there was something deeper, warmer under the surface when she smiled at her.
Kara opened her arms and Lena gladly stepped into the embrace. Kara squeezed her tight and Lena screwed her eyes shut as she felt Kara’s voice rumble against her and breathed in the scent of her hair.
It was over too soon; Kara pulled out of the hug but kept looking at her. Then she leaned in. Lena’s heart fluttered and Kara kept leaning, picking up speed as her face came closer. Lena didn’t need to calculate the trajectory, she knew where Kara’s face was aiming and she felt her lips tingle in anticipation. Then it was taking too long and Lena burst forward. She had waited five years, one more second would have killed her.
Lena’s arms flew around Kara’s neck and her lips smashed against Kara’s with an oomph, but Kara automatically held her hips and pulled her closer.
The room disappeared and Kara just kept kissing her.
Their friends’ cheering and laughter eventually filtered through the bliss and Lena pulled back in embarrassment. She kept her eyes firmly shut as she heard Kara chuckle and pull her against her chest.
“Oh, father!” She heard Kara gasp and buried herself further in embarrassment. “This is Lena,” Kara spoke softly, stroking Lena's hair.
With a steadying breath, Lena opened her eyes and pulled away from Kara to shake the man’s hand. This was not how she imagined meeting Kara’s family. Or her first Kara kiss.
Zor-El did not seem offended at her as he shook her hand so she tried not to overthink it.
When she was finally brave enough to look at Kara, she was beaming at her proudly and Lena decided to just believe what she saw. She didn’t need to control everything. She didn’t even need to understand everything. She just needed to trust Kara enough to let her in. And Kara always managed to find the key to her walls anyway, her defences were useless against her.