Work Text:
Lena discovered the first power on a Tuesday morning, the day she crushed her favorite coffee mug without meaning to.
She had only been trying to pick it up.
It was the blue one, the chipped one, the one with the little hand-painted owl that Kara had bought at a flea market and presented to her with great ceremony and an alarming amount of glitter. It had survived four years, two moves, and a very bad earthquake. It did not survive the sixth week of her pregnancy.
The ceramic simply gave up. It turned to blue dust between her fingers. Coffee ran across the counter in a slow, dark river, and dripped onto the floor.
She stared at her hand for a long time.
"Lee?"
Kara stood in the kitchen doorway, in her pajamas, with her hair in a bird's nest and one eye still closed. She had been halfway through a yawn. She froze in the middle of it, with her mouth open, looking from the puddle on the floor to the powder on Lena's palm, and back again.
"Did you just..."
"I think," said Lena, very carefully, "the baby is sharing."
----
It had begun, as most things did in their house, with a lot of paperwork.
It had taken two years. It had taken Lena's laboratory, and Alex's equipment, and a very sensitive and very private panel of experts, who had been brought together in a windowless room beneath L-Corp and sworn to eternal secrecy. It had taken Kara's DNA, and Lena's, and a series of careful, delicate, extraordinary procedures that neither of them liked to describe in detail.
Kara's only comment, on the day the test came back positive, had been a faint, wondering whisper: "Science is weird."
And then, after a pause: "Also the best thing that has ever happened to us."
It was their child.
It was biologically, genetically, undeniably the child of both of them, carried in Lena's body, and half of it, the golden, glowing, impossible half, came from a planet that no longer existed.
Nobody had known what that would mean.
Alex had said, bluntly, in the lab, with a stack of printouts in her hand and a frown on her face: "No one in the history of the universe has done this. I can't tell you what to expect. I can tell you to be careful."
Lena had said, "We will."
She had not said: We'll be fine.
She was a scientist. She did not lie about outcomes.
---
It was Alex who figured it out.
She sat in the DEO medical bay, on a rolling stool, with a pair of glasses on her nose and a tray of vials at her elbow, staring at a screen. On the bed, in a blue hospital gown, sat Lena, with a bandage on her arm and a very small, very guilty smile.
Kara hovered by the door, practically vibrating.
"Well?" she said.
"Give me a second."
"Is she okay?"
"She's fine."
"Is the baby okay?"
"The baby," said Alex, slowly, "is more than okay."
She turned the monitor around.
On the screen was a long, bright, shimmering line of data, spiking in a regular, rhythmic pattern, like a heartbeat. Beside it ran a second line, thick and gold, humming with energy.
"Here's your baby," said Alex, tapping the first. "Healthy. Growing normally. Everything is where it's supposed to be." She tapped the second. "And here's the problem."
"What problem?" said Lena.
"Your blood."
"My blood?"
"It's not just yours anymore." Alex pushed her glasses up her nose. "The placenta is shuttling something across. A kind of, I don't know. Solar radiation. The fetus is metabolizing it, and, ah. Sharing."
There was a short silence.
"Are you telling me," said Lena, in a very calm voice, "that I'm running on yellow sun?"
"I'm telling you that, for the duration of the pregnancy, you are roughly half Kryptonian."
Kara made a small, strangled sound.
"Define 'roughly,'" said Lena.
"I can't."
"Alex."
"There aren't any studies. I'm making this up as I go." Alex rubbed her forehead. "Strength, probably. Speed, maybe. Heightened senses. Invulnerability, we don't know. It'll come in, probably, in stages. As the baby grows."
"And afterward?"
"It should fade."
"Should?"
"It's a, it's a theory."
Lena looked at the screen.
She looked at the bright, shimmering line, and the little gold heartbeat that went with it, and her hand, without her noticing, drifted down to the soft, small curve of her stomach.
"Well," she said. "That's something."
"It's something," Alex agreed.
"Is there a manual?"
"There's a very short pamphlet," said Alex, "that I wrote last night. It's titled Please Don't Break Anything."
----
Day 3
Lena tried to open a jar of pickles.
The lid came off.
So did the top third of the jar.
There was a soft, ringing crack, and a spray of glass, and a long arc of cloudy green brine that sailed across the kitchen and painted the ceiling. A small, damp, perfectly intact pickle landed on Kara's head.
Kara stood very still.
"Don't," said Lena.
"I'm not."
"You're about to laugh."
"I'm not."
"You're shaking."
"It's a cough."
"You have a pickle in your hair."
Kara removed it, with great dignity, and set it on the counter. Her shoulders were quivering. Her whole face was red. She pressed her lips together so hard they went white. Then she broke, and the sound that came out of her was a kind of high, helpless, wheezing whoop, and she slid slowly down the cabinet to the floor, clutching her sides.
"I can do it myself," said Lena, wiping brine from her eyebrow.
"I know, honey." Kara wheezed. "That's the problem."
-----
Day 4
It started as a faint sound, like the hum of a refrigerator.
By the evening, it was a roar.
Lena sat on the couch with her hands over her ears, wincing, and trying not to cry. She had not slept. The apartment was filled with noise. A pipe ticked in the wall. A neighbor, three floors down, was arguing with his wife. A pair of pigeons were courting on a ledge across the street, and she could hear every single one of their awful, gurgling coos.
"I can hear the elevator," she said.
"I know."
"I can hear it thinking."
"I know, honey."
"I can hear a man in the building next door chewing," said Lena, and her voice cracked. "He's eating celery. It's so loud."
Kara knelt in front of her.
She had been through this. She remembered it very clearly, the first week, the long terrible week when the world had been too bright and too loud and too much, when she had hidden in a closet in the Danvers house with a pillow on her head. Alex had found her there. She had said nothing. She had just sat down in the dark, next to her, and held her hand.
"Okay," said Kara, gently. "Listen. I'm going to show you something."
"What?"
"Close your eyes."
Lena closed them.
"Now. Don't listen to everything. Pick one thing. Just one. And hold on to it."
"What thing?"
"My voice."
"I can hear your voice."
"Then follow it." Kara took her hands. Her thumbs moved in slow circles over Lena's knuckles. "Everything else is just, it's like static. It's like a radio between stations. You can turn it down. You just have to, to choose."
Lena breathed.
She listened to Kara's voice, low and warm and patient. She felt her own heart, thudding in her chest. She felt the pull of the sound, the long ragged edge of the world, and she reached for it, and turned it down.
It was like closing a window.
The roar dimmed. The man with the celery faded. The pigeons were a distant murmur. And, in the quiet, in the soft dark of her own mind, there was Kara's voice, and Kara's breath, and the steady, rhythmic thrum of her heartbeat, slow and strong and sure.
"There," said Kara.
"Oh," breathed Lena.
"You've got it."
"I can hear you."
"I'm right here."
"I can hear your heart."
"I know." Kara's voice was soft, and a little unsteady. "It does that."
Lena opened her eyes.
She did not say anything. She only leaned forward, and rested her forehead against Kara's, and listened to the sound of the woman she loved, alive and warm and close.
"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard," she whispered.
Kara kissed her.
----
Day 6
Flight arrived without warning.
Lena had been reaching for a book on the top shelf of her home office. One moment her feet were on the floor. The next, she was gently, quietly, politely bumping her head against the ceiling, with the book still in her hand, looking deeply offended by gravity's sudden betrayal.
She did not move.
She had learned, in the last few days, that it was wiser not to.
Kara found her there ten minutes later, still floating, still holding the book, with her legs crossed in midair and her mouth set in a thin, tight, dignified line.
"Don't you dare laugh."
"I'm not laughing."
"You're smiling with your entire face."
"It's, it's a very supportive smile."
"I'm stuck."
"You're not stuck." Kara drifted up from the floor. She floated across the room, light as a feather, and hovered in front of her, a foot away, eyes bright with delight. "You're flying. It's amazing."
"I'm levitating at a bookshelf."
"It's the best kind."
"It's the most undignified kind."
"You look beautiful."
"I look," said Lena, "like a very annoyed balloon."
Kara kissed the underside of her jaw.
She did it slowly, gently, with a smile against her skin. She slid an arm around her waist, and tucked her in close, and began, very carefully, to guide them both back down toward the carpet, an inch at a time.
"We're going to need a lot more practice space," she murmured.
"I'm going to need a helmet."
"I'll buy you three."
-----
At three in the morning, on the ninth day of powers, Kara woke to a cold space in the bed.
She sat up.
"Lee?"
No answer.
The apartment was dark. A faint breeze stirred the curtains. The window, which had been closed when they went to sleep, stood wide open to the night. Kara threw off the covers, and was halfway to the door, with her heart in her throat and a dozen terrible scenarios whirling through her mind, when a gust of wind blew through the room.
There was a whump.
Lena was standing in the middle of the living room.
She was in her bare feet, in an old gray T-shirt, with her hair standing out in a wild cloud. She had a paper bag in each arm, and another in her teeth. There was a small, square, pale-green smudge on her cheek. She looked, for all the world, like a woman who had just been caught red-handed.
"Hi," she said, around the bag.
"Where were you?"
"Out."
"Where out?"
Lena took the bag from her mouth.
"The all-night grocery on Fifth," she said, with great dignity. "It's eleven blocks."
"You walked eleven blocks."
"I ran."
"It's three in the morning."
"I know."
"You can't just, Lena, you can't..." Kara stopped. She stared. She leaned in, and sniffed. "Is that ice cream?"
"It's a pint."
"With pickles?"
"On top," said Lena, and her voice wobbled. "I needed them. I needed them so badly. I didn't want to wake you. I thought I'd just, I thought I'd be fast."
"How fast?"
"Eleven seconds."
Kara blinked.
"Eleven seconds?"
"There and back."
"Lena, that's faster than I," She stopped. She considered. "That's about my speed."
"I'm so sorry."
"Don't be."
"I scared you."
"I'm just..." Kara put her hands on her cheeks. "I'm just proud."
"Proud?"
"You ran to the store at the speed of sound, for pickles."
"And ice cream."
"And ice cream."
Lena began to laugh.
It was a shaky, tearful sound, half giggle and half sob. She set the bags on the floor, and pressed a hand over her eyes. Her shoulders shook. There was a dollop of vanilla ice cream running down her wrist.
"I think," she said, "I cleaned out the entire dairy aisle."
"I'll go and apologize."
"It's three in the morning."
"I'll leave a note," said Kara, and kissed her on the nose.
-----
Day 9
Lena sneezed.
It happened at 10:47 a.m., during the quarterly review, in the middle of a presentation by the head of Operations, and it came out of nowhere. She had a tickle in her nose. She had no tissue. She tried to stop it. She pressed a knuckle against her lip, and shut her eyes, and bit back the rising, ticklish, inevitable ah.
Ahh.
AHHHH...
She sneezed.
Two neat, bright, pencil-thin beams of red light shot out of her eyes, sliced through the conference table, severed the leg of a chair, and punched a clean, perfectly round hole through the far wall.
There was a deafening silence.
The head of Operations, with a pointer in his hand and a slide projected behind him, stood completely frozen. A faint curl of smoke rose from the edge of the table. The chair gave a tragic little groan, and collapsed.
Twelve board members stared.
Lena opened her eyes.
She looked at the hole in the wall. She looked at the burning chair. She looked at the very small, very neat line of red that was fading from the corner of her vision, and the dawning, stunned, appalled expression on the face of every person in the room.
She cleared her throat.
"As you can see," she said, calmly, "that is a prototype of the L-Corp Precision Cutting Laser."
"It's, it's what?"
"A new product. We're, ah, currently in beta."
There was a pause.
"I would like to move to the next slide," said Lena.
Nobody moved.
At the back of the room, by the door, Jess had very slowly put her hand over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. She looked at the ceiling, and then at the hole, and then, with an effort that cost her visibly, at her notepad.
"I'll note it as a controlled demonstration," she said, in a very faint voice.
"Thank you, Jess."
"Of course, Ms. Luthor."
"Let's continue."
They bought a metal coffee table.
It was heavy, and gray, and ugly, and absolutely fireproof. Lena stared at it in the living room, with her arms folded and her chin up, and Kara, kneeling beside it on the rug, patted the surface with great tenderness.
"It's very sturdy."
"It's hideous."
"It's safe."
"I'm never sneezing again."
"It's okay," said Kara, and looked up, and her face was so soft that Lena's chest tightened. She reached out, and took Lena's hand, and kissed it. "We'll buy as many tables as you need."
"I'll destroy them all."
"Then we'll get a warehouse."
The Mood Swings
It was an unusually sunny Saturday afternoon when Lena burst into tears.
She had been watching a commercial.
It was a commercial for dog food. It showed an old golden retriever, trotting down a long country road, to the sound of a soft piano. There was no particular reason for it. It was not especially sad. But somewhere in the middle, as the dog reached a gate, and a small child ran out to meet him, something inside her cracked.
She began to sob.
It started as a small, quiet snuffle. It grew. It swelled. It rose through her chest in a huge, shuddering, unstoppable wave, and she put her face in her hands, and howled.
The windows rattled.
It was a very subtle thing. A tiny tremor, a faint ringing in the glass. But Kara, who was in the kitchen, with a spatula in one hand, felt it in her teeth. She dropped the spatula. She was in the living room in a blur.
"Lena?"
"It's the DOG," Lena wept.
"What dog?"
"The dog! He's, he's old! He's coming home!"
"Oh, honey."
"He's so happy to see her!"
"I know."
"It's the saddest thing I've ever seen!"
"It's a dog food commercial."
"He had a LIFE!"
A crack ran, with a sharp, bright snap, across the glass of the east window.
Kara looked at it.
She looked at Lena, who was crying with her whole body, with her fists clenched at her sides and her eyes squeezed shut. A thin, feathery fracture was spreading across the pane. A china figurine on the bookshelf began to vibrate.
"Okay," said Kara, in a soothing voice. "Okay. I'm going to hug you now."
"Don't!"
"Okay."
"I'm going to break you!"
"You're not."
"I'll snap you in half!"
"You won't."
"I'll, I'll crush you!"
"Lena," said Kara. "I've been hugged by Doomsday."
Lena stopped.
She lowered her hands. She stared, with a red, swollen, tear-streaked face, and her mouth open in a perfect O.
"What?"
"It's a long story."
"You were hugged by..."
"Come here," said Kara, and opened her arms.
Lena fell into them.
She did it with such force that Kara was bowled backward across the room, onto the couch, with Lena on top of her and a half-ton of sobbing, trembling, emotional woman in her arms. She held on. She put a hand on the back of Lena's head. She rocked her.
"It's okay," she murmured. "It's okay. It's the hormones. And the baby. And the dog."
"The dog," Lena sobbed.
"The dog was very sad."
"He was so old."
"I know."
"And happy."
"I know."
"I love you."
"I know," said Kara, and kissed her hair. "I love you too."
Behind them, in the east window, the long crack in the glass gave a faint, tragic little tinkle.
The pane fell out of its frame, and into the garden.
"We'll get a new one," said Kara.
"I'll pay."
"I'll fix it."
"I'll fix it."
"Okay."
"With my laser."
"No," said Kara, firmly.
----
It was not a serious argument.
It began, as the worst ones always do, over a sweater. It was a green cashmere cardigan, soft and thick, that Lena had worn in the second year of their relationship. She was trying to put it on. It would not button. Her stomach was too large. She stared at it, with a growing, furious sense of betrayal.
"It doesn't fit," she said.
"It's the baby."
"I know it's the baby."
"We'll buy you another one."
"I don't want another one. I want this one."
"It's, Lena, it's a sweater."
"It's my sweater!"
"I know, but..."
"I loved this sweater!"
"I know, honey, but you're pregnant."
"Don't," said Lena, with a rising tremor in her voice, "honey me."
"I'm sorry."
"You did this to me!"
"We did this."
"You impregnated me with science!"
"I..." Kara opened her mouth. She closed it. She was, she realized, hopelessly outmatched. "That's, that's technically true."
"I can't fit in my sweater!"
"I know."
"I'm so FAT!"
"You are not."
"I'm enormous!"
"You're glowing."
"I'm a moon!"
"You're," said Kara, helplessly, "the most beautiful moon I've ever seen."
Lena stared at her.
For a moment, there was a profound silence. Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes, very wide, began to brim. And then, with a kind of strangled sob, she swung her fist.
It was not a punch. It was a gesture, a wild, frustrated, helpless swing.
It hit the wall.
There was a sharp crack, and a puff of dust, and a deep, round, four-inch dent in the plaster. A framed photograph fell off its nail. Lena stared at her fist, and the wall, and the long, jagged fissure running up toward the ceiling.
She burst into tears.
"I broke the wall!"
"It's all right."
"I broke our wall!"
"It's just plaster."
"I'm a monster!"
"You're not," said Kara. She was across the room in a heartbeat, with her arms around her, and her chin on her head. She was laughing, helplessly, into her hair. "You're the most wonderful, gorgeous, terrifying monster in the whole world."
"I hate you."
"I know."
"I love you."
"I know."
"I'm sorry about the wall."
"I'll put a poster over it," said Kara. "A big one."
-----
The Advantages (There Were Some).
Morning sickness became almost theoretical.
The baby's metabolism, quick and bright and tireless, burned through nausea faster than Lena could feel it. She woke up each morning, clear-headed and rested, to find the kind of ferocious, ravenous appetite she had not known since she was seventeen. She slept through the night for the first time in weeks. She could hear, from two rooms away, the slow, steady drumbeat of Kara's heart, and found it strangely comforting, a reminder that she was not alone in any of this.
She could see, from across the park, the print on a newspaper.
She could read, through three walls, the email on a coworker's screen.
She could, on one memorable Tuesday afternoon, catch a falling flowerpot, a toddler's runaway ball, and a stray cat, in a single graceful motion, without spilling a drop of her tea.
She also, on that same Tuesday, stopped a runaway bus.
It was a very ordinary bus. It was a city bus, with a faulty brake line, careening down a hill toward a busy crosswalk. Lena was standing at the corner, with a bag of groceries in one arm, thinking about nothing in particular. She heard the screech. She turned.
She did not think.
She stepped into the street, and put out one hand.
The bus stopped.
It stopped with a long, grinding groan, and a rush of hot air, and a shudder that ran through its whole body. The front bumper crumpled against her palm like a paper cup. A woman screamed. A man dropped his coffee. The driver stared, wide-eyed, through the windshield.
Lena took her hand away.
She looked at it. She looked at the bus.
"L-Corp," she said, calmly, to the gaping crowd. "Experimental support brace. Very effective."
She adjusted her grocery bag, and walked away before anyone could ask follow-up questions.
That night, at the apartment, Kara kissed her senseless against the front door.
She did it with such feeling that the doorknob came off in her hand.
"You're incredible," she said.
"I'm a walking workplace hazard."
"You're my walking workplace hazard."
"I crushed a bus."
"You saved it," said Kara, and pressed her forehead against Lena's, with her hands on her cheeks and a look of such fierce, bright adoration that Lena's breath caught. "You saved a hundred people. You were so brave."
"I didn't think."
"That's what bravery is."
"I thought of the baby."
"I know," said Kara, softly.
"She'd have been so proud," whispered Lena.
"She is."
----+
Lena tried to brush Kara's hair.
She had meant it as a gift. She had been standing behind her, in the soft light of the bathroom, with a hairbrush in her hand, watching her wife tilt her head back, and close her eyes, and sigh. She had wanted, quite badly, to do one gentle thing.
She accidentally pulled out three strands by the roots.
There was a little, bright, awful snap.
Lena froze.
She looked at the brush. She looked at the three pale, golden hairs wrapped around the bristles. She felt something in her throat begin to close.
Kara did not even flinch.
She did not say ow. She did not turn. She reached up, quite slowly, and took Lena's hands in her own, and brought them to her mouth. She kissed each palm, one at a time.
"Maybe I'll do my own hair," she said, "for a while."
Lena's voice was very small.
"What if I hurt the baby?"
Kara turned.
She did it slowly, with Lena's hands still held in hers, until she was facing her. Her face was soft. Her eyes were steady. She waited, patiently, without a word, until Lena looked up and met them.
"You won't," she said.
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"I crushed a jar, Kara. I broke a wall. I took the hair out of your head. What if I, what if I squeeze too hard, or I lift something, or I..."
"Lena."
"What if I'm not careful?"
"You're the most careful person I know," said Kara.
She said it without any hesitation. She put one hand on Lena's cheek, and the other, very lightly, on her stomach, over the bright, steady thrum beneath. She smiled.
"You measure everything three times. You wear two coats in the summer. You once spent forty minutes deciding which of two identical pens to use." She tilted her head. "You're already the most careful mother in the world. And the baby is half me. They're a lot tougher than they look."
Lena swallowed.
"Are they?"
"They kicked me."
"They what?"
"Last night. When I put my ear on your stomach. They kicked me in the face." Kara grinned. "I had a little bruise. It was adorable."
Lena let out a wet, startled laugh.
"They're strong."
"They're going to be extraordinary."
"And we'll," said Lena, "figure it out."
"One crushed mug at a time," said Kara, and rested her forehead against hers.
-----
Eliza arrived on a Sunday.
She came on the train, with a bag of knitting and a casserole dish wrapped in a towel, and stood on the doorstep in her sensible raincoat, smiling the calm, bright, ageless smile of a woman who had once raised a Kryptonian through adolescence and lived.
"Hello, girls."
"Mom!"
"Eliza."
She took one look at the apartment, the metal table, the dented wall, the missing window, the broken doorknob lying on the entry mat, and said, quite gently, "Oh, you poor things."
They sat in the kitchen, and ate casserole.
Eliza listened. She did it with her chin on her hand, and her eyes crinkled at the corners, as Lena described the mug, and the jar, and the sneeze. She laughed at the bus. She tutted at the wall. When Lena got to the part about the hair, her voice cracked, and Eliza reached across the table, and took her hand.
"Lena."
"Yes?"
"When Kara was thirteen," said Eliza, "she broke the kitchen door."
"She did not," said Kara.
"She did. She was angry. About a boy. She slammed it, and it came off in her hand, and then she stood there with the whole door, looking at me, and burst into tears."
"I did not."
"And I said, 'Kara, sweetheart, it's all right. It's only a door.'"
"That's not what you said."
"And she said, 'I'm a monster.'"
Lena's eyes filled.
"I told her," said Eliza, "that the only difference between a monster and a hero is what you do with your hands."
She patted Lena's fingers.
"You'll be fine," she said. "You've got better hands than most."
Lena could not speak.
She turned, and put her face against Kara's shoulder, and Kara slid an arm around her, and Eliza went back to her casserole with great composure, and a pair of very bright eyes.
"Now," she said, briskly. "Who wants more?"
-----
Day 18.
They were lying in bed, in the dark, with Lena's head on Kara's chest, and the soft light of a street lamp painting the ceiling gold.
It was very late.
They were listening.
It was a small, simple thing. They did not speak. They simply lay there, tangled together, the way they did every night, and listened to the sound of two hearts. Kara's, strong and slow, a big, deep, steady drum. And, beneath it, faint and quick and bright, a tiny, fluttering beat, like a bird in a cage of bone.
It was the baby's.
Lena could hear it perfectly.
She could hear it from across the room, or across the building. She could hear it, she thought, from across the whole city. It was the most extraordinary sound she had ever heard. It went thump-thump-thump-thump, too fast, too light, too wonderful, and every time it rang in her ears, a hot, bright, unbelievable joy rose in her chest.
Kara's arms tightened around her.
"Do you hear it?" she whispered.
"Every beat."
"Me too."
Lena lifted one hand.
She held it up, in the lamp-light, and watched the faint glow of sunlight move under her skin. It was soft, and warm, and golden. It rose and fell, in a slow rhythm, like breath.
"I can feel them," she whispered. "Not just the movement. I can feel how strong they're going to be. How bright."
"Yeah," said Kara, softly. "Me too."
Outside the window, the city kept moving.
Inside the apartment, a woman who had never asked for powers and a woman who had been born with them lay tangled together, learning the new shape of their family, one careful, ridiculous, miraculous day at a time.
-----
The powers left on a Wednesday.
They went out the way the tide goes: quietly, gradually, so slowly that nobody noticed. Lena woke up on the second morning after the birth, and reached out for the glass of water by the bed, and picked it up, and set it down, with a perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary, perfectly human hand.
She did not break it.
She stared at it.
She lay very still for a long time, in the pale gray light, listening. There was a pigeon on the sill. There was a car on the street. There was the faint, far-off hum of the refrigerator. But there were no neighbors, no celery, no distant elevator, and, most of all, there was no heartbeat.
Not the baby's, anyway.
Not from here.
She lay very still, in the early light, and felt, to her astonishment, a small, sharp, secret ache.
"Lee?"
Kara had come in.
She was standing in the doorway, with a bundle in her arms, and a sleepy, rumpled, radiant expression. She was in her pajamas. Her hair was a mess. There were bags under her eyes, and a smear of something suspicious on her shoulder, and she looked, Lena thought, like the happiest woman in the world.
"You're awake."
"I'm awake."
"How do you feel?"
"Strange."
"Strange good, or strange bad?"
"I can't hear her."
Kara's smile softened.
She came across the room, and sat on the edge of the bed, very carefully, and held out the bundle. It was a tiny, warm, wrapped thing, soft as bread, with a cap of dark hair and a small, serious, scrunched-up face.
Lena took her.
She did it very gently. She cradled her, in the crook of her arm, and looked down. She was so small. She was so warm. She smelled of milk, and talc, and something very faint and sweet, like sunlight on grass.
She opened her eyes.
They were big, and dark, and unfocused. They were looking at nothing. They were looking, it seemed, straight through Lena's face, to a point somewhere very far away.
She yawned.
"I can't hear her heart," said Lena, in a tiny voice.
"I know."
"I used to hear it all the time."
"I know, honey."
"I miss it."
Kara said nothing.
She slid an arm around Lena's shoulders, and leaned her head against hers. She did not say it's all right. She did not say you'll get used to it. She simply sat there, in the soft gray light, with her wife, and their child.
She put a finger gently against the baby's chest.
"Listen," she said.
Lena frowned.
"I can't, it's, I don't have the..."
"Not with your ears."
She took Lena's hand.
She laid it flat against the baby's ribs, over the thin blanket, and held it there, her own fingers wrapped around it.
There was a long stillness.
Then, under her palm, small, and quick, and warm, and perfect, Lena felt a tiny, determined, fluttering thump.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Her breath caught.
She had thought it was gone. She had thought it was something she would only get to keep for nine months, a loaned and borrowed miracle. But it was here. It was under her hand. It was beating, steady and strong and bright, right where it had always been.
She had only needed to touch it.
"Oh," she whispered. "Oh, Kara."
"I know."
"I can feel her."
"I know."
"It's the same."
"It's the same," said Kara, and her voice shook, and a tear ran down her cheek, and she did not wipe it away.
Lena let her head fall back against Kara's shoulder.
She sat there, in the quiet morning, with the sun climbing the wall, and her daughter breathing against her heart, and she thought: I will miss the hearing. I will miss the flying. I will miss the heat, and the strength, and the bright, strange, wonderful noise.
But I will never miss the coffee mugs.
She smiled.
Some trade-offs, she decided, were more than fair.
---
It was exactly a week later when the baby floated.
It happened in the middle of the night, at two in the morning, in the nursery. Lena was in the rocking chair, with her eyes half closed, in a state of exhausted, dreamy bliss. Kara was on the floor, with her back against the crib, snoring softly, a burp cloth on her shoulder.
Lena had been dozing.
She did not know what woke her.
It was a feeling, a faint tingle in the air, a hush, like the moment before a storm. She opened her eyes. She blinked. She looked at the crib.
It was empty.
Her heart stopped.
She was on her feet in a heartbeat. She was across the room, with her hands clutching the rail, staring into the soft yellow glow of the nightlight. There was a small, rumpled blanket. There was a stuffed owl. There was a little warm dent in the mattress, where a very small person had been lying.
Where...
"Lee."
It was Kara.
She had woken. She was sitting up, very quietly, with her eyes wide, and her gaze fixed on a point just above the crib. She did not move. She did not breathe. She only lifted one hand, and pointed.
Lena looked up.
Her daughter was hovering in the air.
She was about a foot above the mattress, curled up like a seed, fast asleep, with one small fist tucked under her chin. Her dark hair stuck up in a cowlick. She had a drop of milk on her lip. She was rotating, very slowly, a half inch at a time, like a bubble in a stream.
She was glowing.
A soft, pale, golden light came off her skin, like sun through a leaf. It lit up the crib, and the owl, and the faces of the two women standing beneath her.
"Oh," breathed Lena.
"Yeah."
"Oh, my god."
"I know."
"Kara."
"I know," said Kara, in a strangled whisper. Her eyes were swimming. She was laughing, silently, with her whole body, her hand pressed over her mouth. "I think she, I think she's, it's her. It's her turn."
"She's three weeks old."
"She's ahead of schedule."
"We're going to need," said Lena, slowly, as the baby drifted a little higher, and turned over, and yawned, "a much higher ceiling."
Kara dissolved into helpless laughter.
She slid down the wall, with her face in her hands, wheezing, as the baby bobbed above her, a tiny glowing star in the dark. Lena stood very still, with a hand on the rail and tears of pure, bright happiness running down her face.
She reached up.
She cupped a hand under her daughter, very gently, and held it there, an inch from the little curled back. She did not touch her. She did not need to.
Welcome, she thought.
Welcome to the family.
We're all a little bit super.
Fin.