Work Text:
Alex Danvers had once disarmed a bomb with a paperclip and a hairpin, and she had never in her life been so nervous.
She stood in the middle of Kara's living room at seven o'clock on a Tuesday evening, with a manila folder in one hand and a laminated chart in the other. She was in her best DEO jacket. She had practiced her speech in the car. She had practiced it, twice, in the elevator. She had brought, for emotional support, a large pizza and an even larger bag of potstickers, which now sat on the coffee table in a stack, steaming faintly, as a kind of peace offering.
On the couch, with a blanket over her knees, sat Kara.
She was texting.
She was smiling at her phone, a soft, sappy, helpless smile, with her thumbs moving in a blur and the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth. Her glasses had slid down her nose. She did not look up when Alex came in, or when she cleared her throat, or when she dropped the folder on the table with a very loud thump.
"Kara."
"Mm-hm."
"Kara."
"One sec."
"I need you to put the phone down."
"It's Lena."
"I know it's Lena."
"She sent a picture of her lunch."
"Kara."
"It's a salad," said Kara, with such love in her voice that Alex's eye twitched. "She put the dressing on the side. Look at how neat."
Alex took a deep breath.
She counted to five. She set down the chart. She crossed the room in three long strides, and plucked the phone out of her sister's hand, with one smooth, practiced, federal-agent motion, and put it face-down on the table.
"Hey!"
"We need to talk."
"Give it back."
"In a minute."
"She's going to think I'm ignoring her!"
"She's going to be fine."
"Alex, she's eating, I wanted to say good job."
"Kara," said Alex, in the careful, gentle voice she reserved for bomb victims and hostage negotiators. "I think you have a problem."
Kara blinked.
"What kind of problem?"
"A green-eyed problem."
"I don't, I'm not, I have brown eyes." Kara stopped. "I mean, blue. I have blue eyes. They're, I'm not jealous."
"Not your eyes."
"Whose?"
"Hers," said Alex, and pointed at the phone.
There was a pause.
"Lena's eyes are not a problem," said Kara, with great dignity. "They're emerald. They're the color of a forest pool. They're..."
"That."
"What?"
"That," said Alex, throwing up her hands. "That right there. That's the problem. Everything is Lena. Every little thing. Every single sentence you say has Lena in it."
"That's not true."
"You told me about your breakfast for twenty minutes yesterday, and eleven of those minutes were about how Lena drinks coffee."
"She does it very elegantly."
"You called me at three in the morning to say that Lena had a nice laugh."
"It was a very nice laugh."
"You named your goldfish 'Luthor.'"
"I thought it was cute."
"You have a whole folder on your phone labeled 'Lena (Good Photos).'"
"It's very well organized."
"You have a subfolder," said Alex, in a strained voice, "called 'Lena: Reading.'"
Kara opened her mouth.
She shut it.
She had gone slowly pink.
"That's, that's a lot of photos of her reading," she mumbled.
"Kara. I am a federal agent. I have seen people in the grip of some very bad habits. I've seen it with coffee. I've seen it with video games. I once watched a man lose his house over a cheese subscription." Alex put a hand on her sister's shoulder. "And I'm telling you, as someone who loves you more than anything, that you are an addict."
"An addict?"
"A Lena addict."
"That is not a thing."
"It is absolutely a thing."
"There is no such thing as a, as a Lena addiction!"
"Isn't there?" said Alex.
She opened the folder.
-----
It was a very thorough folder.
It had tabs. It had color-coded dividers. It had a title page, in Alex's tidy block capitals, that read PROJECT SUNRISE: A COMPREHENSIVE 30-DAY PROGRAM FOR THE REDUCTION OF LENA-RELATED DEPENDENCE. Beneath it was a picture of a sun, and, in smaller letters, a motto: One Day At A Time.
"I had Winn make the graphics," said Alex.
"I can tell."
"And Brainy consulted on the science."
"He what?"
"He's prepared a six-page document on The Neurochemistry of Romantic Attachment in Kryptonians." Alex flipped a page. "It's very comprehensive. It has a glossary."
"I'm going to kill him."
"Here are the rules."
She held up the laminated chart.
It was a large one. It was neatly laid out in a grid, with a bright blue header and a column of black type. Alex held it at arm's length, like a magician revealing a trick.
THE RULES OF PROJECT SUNRISE
1. No texting Lena. (Exceptions: emergencies, world-ending events, and "I need a ride.")
2. No calling Lena. (See Rule 1.)
3. No "accidental" detours past L-Corp. (We know about the detours. We know about the "coffee run" that is a forty-minute flight.)
4. No saying her name. (Use "the Subject.")
5. No looking at photographs. (Including the folders. We know about the folders.)
6. No standing outside any building in which the Subject is present, "just in case."
7. No narrating the Subject's coffee preferences.
8. No narrating the Subject's lunch.
9. No narrating the Subject's hair.
10. In the event of a craving, call your sister.
"I made you a sponsor card," said Alex, brightly. She held up a laminated rectangle. "It's got my number on it."
"I have your number."
"It's official."
"I've had it for fifteen years."
"It's got a sun on it."
Kara stared at the chart.
She stared at it for a long time, with her mouth slightly open and her eyes very large. Her lower lip had begun, very faintly, to tremble.
"Thirty days," she said, in a tiny voice.
"Thirty days."
"No texting."
"No texting."
"Not even, not even a good morning?"
"Not even a good morning."
"What if she needs me?"
"Then she can call me."
"What if she's sad?"
"Then she can call you. But you can't call her. You can only answer." Alex sat down on the arm of the couch. She put her hand on her sister's knee. "I know it sounds hard."
"It sounds impossible."
"But I think it's what's best."
"Why?"
"Because," said Alex, softly, "I think you've stopped being able to tell where you end and she begins."
Kara looked at her.
For a moment, something flickered across her face, a quick, strange, wistful shadow. Then it was gone, and she lifted her chin, and squared her shoulders, and said, in a bold and wobbly voice:
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'll try."
Day 1
She lasted four hours.
It was a very good four hours. It began at nine a.m., with a cup of tea and a long stare out the window. Kara sat on her couch with her hands folded in her lap, like a woman waiting for a verdict, and did not touch her phone. She was very proud of herself. She said so, aloud, to the empty room, three times.
At ten, she went for a walk.
At eleven, she did a crossword.
At twelve-fifteen, she found herself, with no memory of how she'd gotten there, standing on the sidewalk outside the L-Corp building, staring up at the fifty-first floor.
"Kara."
She jumped.
Alex was standing behind her, with her arms crossed and her chin up, in a black baseball cap and sunglasses. She had a clipboard.
"Rule three," said Alex.
"I was just walking."
"It's a forty-minute walk."
"I like to walk!"
"It's eleven blocks from your apartment."
"It's good for my cardio."
"You're on the sidewalk," said Alex, "outside her office, with a look."
"What look?"
"The sad puppy look."
"I don't have a sad puppy look."
"You have several."
Kara sagged.
She lowered her head, and her shoulders drooped, and a little sigh escaped her, a long, shaky, wistful breath. She dug the toe of her boot into the pavement.
"I just wanted to be near."
"I know."
"It's not talking. It's not texting. It's just, I'd be nearby."
"It's a slippery slope."
"It's a sidewalk."
"Come on," said Alex, and took her by the elbow. "We'll get a smoothie."
"I don't want a smoothie."
"It'll be good for you."
"I want Lena," said Kara, in a very small voice, and let herself be led away.
Day 2
By the second day, the symptoms had begun.
She was not sleeping. She lay in bed, for hours, with her eyes fixed on the ceiling and her phone clenched in her fist, which she had been obliged, under the terms of the program, to place under a pillow, and then in a drawer, and, finally, at Alex's insistence, in a safe. She could hear it. She was certain. She could hear it buzzing.
She was not eating.
This was perhaps the most alarming development. She sat at the kitchen table, at breakfast, in front of a plate of eggs, and stirred them, once, with a fork, and pushed them to the side.
"You're not eating."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're always hungry."
"It's, it's the program."
"It's a detox, Kara. You're supposed to feel better."
"I feel awful."
"That's normal."
"I feel empty."
"That's the withdrawal."
"I feel like," said Kara, in a low, hollow, stricken voice, "someone took my sun."
Alex rubbed her forehead.
She had been warned. Winn had warned her. Brainy, with a very grave expression, had said: "The subject may experience severe emotional symptoms in the early days. These include irritability, lethargy, sleeplessness, and an overwhelming desire to describe a person's laugh." She had written it down.
She had not believed it.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Let's try a, a distraction. What do you like to do?"
"Lena."
"Something else."
"I like, I like her things."
"Like?"
"Like, her books. And her tea. And her, her hair."
"Kara."
"What?"
"You're doing it."
"I'm not."
"That was three Lenas in one sentence."
"I didn't say her name."
"You said 'her.'"
"That's a pronoun!"
"It's a loophole," said Alex, firmly. "Rule four. No Lena, no Lena-adjacent pronouns. Use 'the Subject.'"
"I can't call her the Subject."
"Why not?"
"Because," said Kara, miserably, "she's not a subject. She's, she's the most, she's the best," She stopped. Her eyes had filled. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying."
"I know."
"I'm trying so hard."
"I know you are," said Alex, and, despite herself, felt something in her chest begin to give.
Day 3
On the third day, Kara went to work.
She sat at her desk at CatCo, in a gray cardigan, with a cup of cold coffee and a half-finished article on her screen. She stared at it. She typed a word. She deleted it. She typed another. She deleted that, too.
It was an article about wind turbines.
She had been writing it for six hours.
She had produced two sentences.
The wind, she wrote, is a renewable resource.
It is also, she added, after a long pause, very good at blowing Lena's hair into her face, in a way that she tucks back, with a small, annoyed, adorable...
She hit delete.
"Danvers."
She jumped.
Snapper Carr was standing at the edge of her desk, in his shirtsleeves, with a stack of papers under one arm and an expression of deep, weary scrutiny. He looked down at her screen. He looked at her face. He frowned.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
"You look like a dead fish."
"I'm fine."
"You've been staring at that wall for an hour."
"I'm thinking."
"About?"
"Wind."
"Wind."
"It's a, it's a very compelling topic."
Snapper looked at her for a long moment.
"Danvers," he said, slowly. "Is this about a person?"
Kara's eyes went wide.
"No!"
"It's a person."
"It's not."
"It is, it's definitely a person. I've been editing for thirty years. I know the look." He squinted at her. "Is it that Luthor?"
"I, no, I, no, I, you can't, I'm detoxing."
"Detoxing."
"It's a program. My sister's idea."
"I see." He tapped his pen against his chin. "And how's that going?"
"It's awful," said Kara, and put her head down on the keyboard.
She lay there for a very long time, with a long string of the letter l gradually filling the screen. Snapper stood over her, in silence, with his arms folded and a strange, stony, unreadable look on his face.
Then he sighed, and patted her on the head, with surprising gentleness.
"Take the afternoon off," he said.
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask."
"I'm a professional."
"Go home, Danvers," said Snapper. "Eat a sandwich."
The Cardigan
It was at that point that things took a darker turn.
Alex found out on the fourth day.
She had gone to Kara's apartment at seven in the morning, with a bag of bagels and a freshly printed copy of Phase Two: Reintegration, and let herself in with the spare key. The living room was quiet. The curtains were drawn. A faint, strange, rhythmic sound was coming from the bedroom.
She followed it.
She pushed open the door.
And stopped.
Kara was sitting in the middle of her bed, cross-legged, in the gray light, in her pajamas. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She had a cardigan clutched in her arms, a soft green one, and she was rocking, slowly, back and forth, with her face buried in the wool.
"Kara?"
Kara looked up.
"It still smells like her," she whispered.
Alex stared.
She did not say anything. For a moment, she genuinely could not. She stood in the doorway, with her bagels in one hand and her folder in the other, and felt her whole world tilt.
"Where did you get that?"
"I, ah. I found it."
"Where?"
"In the, there was a donation box."
"A donation box."
"At L-Corp."
"Kara."
"It was going to be thrown away!" Kara cried. "She wore it, once, and she left it on a chair, and Jess put it in a box, and, and I just, it was getting cold, and I..."
"You stole it."
"I rescued it."
"From a donation box?"
"It's got her smell!"
Alex sat down on the edge of the bed.
She set the bagels on the nightstand. She put the folder on the floor. She put one hand over her face, and sat there for a long time, with her shoulders heaving, in a state of silent and profound despair.
"Alex?" said Kara, in a very small voice.
"I'm all right."
"Are you laughing?"
"I'm not."
"Are you crying?"
"I'm recalibrating," said Alex, in a strangled voice.
She tried everything.
She tried hobbies. She bought Kara a set of watercolors, and a book of Sudoku, and a very large jigsaw puzzle of a mountain. Kara painted a sunset, which turned out, on closer inspection, to be a portrait of a woman in a green dress. She solved four Sudoku puzzles in a row and wrote the answer to each, in the margins, as a love poem. She sat down in front of the mountain puzzle, and assembled, with fierce concentration, an enormous, glittering, perfectly accurate image of a pair of green eyes.
She tried exercise.
She dragged Kara to the gym, and the pool, and the park, and the DEO obstacle course. Kara ran six miles, in a blur, and stopped at the end, in front of a dumpster, to gaze wistfully at a passing woman with dark hair.
"It's not her," said Alex.
"I know."
"She's five-four."
"I know."
"She's wearing a hat."
"I thought maybe she'd, you know. Changed."
She tried socializing.
She took Kara to a bar. Kara sat on a stool, with a glass of ginger ale, and stared into space. A tall, friendly man offered to buy her a drink. She said, in a flat voice, "I'm sorry, I'm in love with someone." The man, with great delicacy, withdrew.
"I meant," said Alex, in a low voice, "that you should talk to people."
"I did."
"You said you were in love."
"It's true."
"It's not part of the program."
"It's not a symptom," said Kara, with great dignity. "It's a diagnosis."
She tried, finally, in a last desperate act of strategy, to enlist the help of the entire team.
-----
They sat in a circle, in the DEO break room, on folding chairs.
It was Winn's idea. He had said it would be supportive. He had drawn up an agenda. There was a coffee urn, and a plate of stale cookies, and a banner on the wall, hand-lettered in glitter marker: WE LOVE YOU, KARA (BUT NOT AS MUCH AS YOU LOVE LENA).
Kara sat in the middle, hunched in her chair, with her chin on her chest.
"We're here," said Winn, solemnly, "because we care."
"We're here," said Brainy, "because the probability of a successful outcome is, ah, low."
"Brainy."
"I am merely stating a statistic."
"Okay," said James. "Everybody's going to share, one at a time. Winn, you start."
"Right." Winn cleared his throat. He stood up. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, and unfolded it, with a little tremor in his hands. "Kara. I want to say, for the record. I love you. You're my best friend. And I, I have never seen anyone so, so happy as you are when you talk about Lena."
"Thank you."
"But it's concerning."
"I know."
"You called me four times last Saturday to tell me that she liked the soup."
"It was a very good soup."
"I know, you told me, and you told me again." Winn sniffed. "It was a very good soup."
"Thank you, Winn."
"Brainy?"
Brainy stood.
"I have prepared a chart," he said.
He held up a poster board.
It was a bar graph. It was extremely detailed. It was labeled, along the bottom axis, with the months of the past year, and along the side with a scale of Mentions Per Day. A thick blue bar rose from the left side of the board and climbed, in a smooth upward curve, to a towering peak on the far right.
"This," said Brainy, gravely, "is the frequency with which you have said 'Lena' in conversation."
"It's very tall."
"It is off the chart."
"It's a very nice chart."
"Thank you."
"It literally goes off the board," said James.
"I ran out of paper."
"Nia?"
Nia raised her hand, with a faint wince.
"I just want to say," she said, in a soft voice. "I had a dream about you last week."
"You did?"
"You were standing on a mountain. And you were holding, ah, a sign."
"What did it say?"
"It said, 'Lena.'" Nia looked at her shoes. "In very large letters."
Kara hung her head.
There was a pause. A long, awkward, creaking pause, in which twelve people sat in a circle and tried, with all their might, not to look at one another.
Then Kara, in a very small voice, said:
"Can I say something?"
"Of course," said Alex.
"I'm trying."
"We know."
"I'm trying so hard." Her voice cracked. She lifted her head, and her eyes were red, and wet, and very bright. "I'm trying not to think about her. I'm trying not to text her. I'm trying not to, to, to breathe her name. I've been so good. I've been so, so good."
"You have."
"And it feels like, it feels like," She stopped. A single tear slid down her cheek. "It feels like I've forgotten how to be me."
Nobody said anything.
"It feels like a, like I'm a plant," said Kara, in a thin, unsteady voice. "And someone took away the sun. And I'm, I'm trying to grow, and I'm, I'm trying to be fine, and I keep, I keep, wilting."
Alex looked at her.
She looked at her sister's face, at the dark hollows under her eyes, and the paleness of her skin, and the tremble in her chin. She looked at the cardigan, which Kara was clutching in both fists, wrapped around her like a shawl. She looked at the shaking hands.
She thought about a chart, and a folder, and a laminated sponsor card with a little yellow sun.
Oh, thought Alex.
Oh no.
I'm an idiot.
-----
She went home that night with a headache.
She sat at her kitchen table for a very long time, with her chin on her fist and a cold cup of tea at her elbow, staring at the folder. It lay there, in the circle of lamplight, with its neat tabs and its color-coded dividers. PROJECT SUNRISE. She turned a page. She looked at the rules. She looked, for a very long time, at the one in the middle.
4. No saying her name.
She had thought it was a joke.
That was the stupid part. She had thought, at first, that it was funny. She had thought it was a sweet, silly, harmless quirk, an adorable, hopeless, puppy-like devotion, the sort of thing you tease someone about, at Thanksgiving, over turkey. She had thought: she'll laugh. She'll roll her eyes. She'll say, 'You're being ridiculous, Alex,' and go and text her anyway.
She had not thought it would hurt.
She picked up her phone.
She scrolled to a photograph. It was a recent one, from a week before the program began. It showed Kara, in a green cardigan, at a picnic table in Central Park, with a paper cup in her hand. She was laughing, with her head thrown back, in the golden light. Beside her, out of focus, in the edge of the frame, was a dark-haired woman in sunglasses, looking at her with an expression of such naked, helpless, besotted tenderness that Alex had had to look away.
She looked at it now.
She looked for a long time.
That's not an addiction, she thought.
That's just love.
That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like, when someone is so happy that it makes her whole face change.
And I took it away.
She put down the phone.
She put her head in her hands.
"Idiot," she said, aloud, to the empty kitchen.
She sat there, in the quiet, for twenty minutes.
Then she picked up the phone again, and scrolled to a number she had never, in all her years, expected to dial.
She pressed call.
-----
Lena's Side.
Lena had been checking her phone since Monday.
She did not like to admit it. She was a grown woman. She was the CEO of a multinational corporation, with eleven thousand employees and a net worth in the billions. She did not sit in her office, in the middle of the afternoon, with her phone propped against a stack of quarterly reports, glaring at it as though it had personally offended her.
She did, however, glare.
It was Thursday.
It had been three days.
Three days, she thought. Seventy-two hours.
She had checked the log. She had checked it twice. Kara's last message had been on Sunday night, at 9:47 p.m. It had said: Goodnight, Lee! Sleep well. Dream of potstickers. Beneath it, in bright, round, cheerful type, was a little yellow smiley face.
There had been nothing since.
Nothing.
No good morning. No lunch photographs. No stream of urgent texts about a cat she'd seen on the subway. No four a.m. voice memo, whispered into the dark, about an amazing idea for a new flavor of ice cream.
She's busy, Lena told herself.
She's got a story.
She's on a deadline.
She's fine.
She picked up a pen. She put it down. She straightened a pile of papers that did not need straightening. She walked to the window, and looked out at the city, at the long gold light on the buildings, and the tiny red dot of a plane crossing the sky.
She's mad at me.
It came out of nowhere. It arrived all at once, cold and heavy, and settled in her stomach like a stone.
She's mad at me. I did something. I said something. I wasn't paying attention, and I, and I said something stupid, and she was too polite to...
She turned from the window.
She checked her phone.
"Jess," she said.
Jess looked up from her desk, in the outer office, with her pen in her hand.
"Yes, Ms. Luthor?"
"Has Kara been, has she called? Or sent a message? Or, or left a..."
"No, Ms. Luthor."
"Not at all?"
"Not since Sunday."
"Hm."
"Is something wrong?"
"I'm sure it's nothing." Lena smoothed her skirt. "She's probably very busy."
"I'm sure she is."
"I'll just, I'll send her a quick, you know. A check-in."
"That seems wise."
Lena sat down.
She typed a message. She read it. She deleted it. She typed another. Hi, just wanted to say hello! She deleted that one, too. It was far too chipper. She typed: Is everything all right? She looked at it, with her head tilted, and thought, with a sudden stab of horror, it sounds like an accusation.
She deleted it.
She typed: I miss you.
She stared at it for a very long time.
Her thumb hovered over the button.
No, she thought. You can't. You can't just say that. You'll scare her. You'll make it weird.
She deleted it, and put her phone face-down on the desk, and covered her eyes with her hands.
I did something.
I did something, and I don't know what.
And she won't tell me.
Her phone buzzed.
It was a number she did not recognize.
She snatched it up. She almost dropped it. She fumbled it open, and pressed it to her ear, with her heart hammering in her throat.
"Hello?"
"Lena."
It was a woman's voice. It was low, and tired, and a little hoarse. It sounded, for some reason, as though it had been shouting.
"It's Alex."
Lena's stomach dropped.
"Alex. Is she, is Kara..."
"She's fine."
"Is she hurt?"
"She's not hurt."
"Did something happen?"
"Nothing happened. She's not hurt. She's just, I mean, she's," There was a long, ragged pause. A faint, tired, hysterical sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Okay. I need you to listen. And I need you to not, to not, get angry."
"What's wrong?"
"I did something stupid."
"What?"
"I put her on a program."
"A what?"
"It's called Project Sunrise. It's a detox. It's, it was supposed to be for her own good. I thought, I thought she was, I thought she was addicted." Alex's voice cracked. "To you."
There was a long, strange silence.
"I'm sorry," said Lena, very slowly. "To me?"
"It was a joke. It started as a joke. I swear to god. It was a bit, it was a, and then it, I don't know. I got carried away."
"You put Kara on a detox," said Lena, "from me."
"I'm so sorry."
"For three days."
"It's been four."
"Four."
"And she's not, Lena, she's not doing well."
Lena stood up.
She did not know that she had. She was simply on her feet, with her hand clamped around the phone and her heart pounding like a drum.
"What do you mean, not doing well?"
"She's not eating. She's not sleeping. She's been sitting in her apartment, with, with a cardigan, and I, I think I, I think I broke her." The words came in a rush. "She said it felt like someone took away her sun."
Lena closed her eyes.
"Please," said Alex, in a small, cracked, almost inaudible voice. "I'm so sorry. I was trying to help. I was trying so hard. And I just, I just made it, I made it worse. And I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix it. I thought, maybe, if you..."
"Where is she?"
"She's at home."
"Is she alone?"
"I'm with her."
"Stay there."
"Lena..."
"Stay there," said Lena, "I'm coming."
------
She did not take the car.
She did not take the elevator. She did not stop to tell Jess. She did not stop to pick up her purse, or her coat, or the phone she had slammed down on the desk. She flung open the door of the outer office, and said, in a clear, tight, trembling voice, "I'll be back. Cancel everything. Everything."
Then she ran.
She ran down the hall, in heels, and past the elevators, and straight through the door at the end that led to the roof. She took the stairs two at a time. Her breath came in sharp gasps. Her hair came loose from its pins. She burst out onto the roof into a blast of wind, and stood for a moment, at the edge, panting, in the cold gold light.
Fifty-one floors.
Two miles.
I can't fly.
I don't have a car.
I don't...
She looked down.
She saw, in the street, below, a long red motorcycle, parked against the curb, with a key in the ignition and a sign taped to the seat that said, in neat blue letters, PROPERTY OF L-CORP SECURITY: DO NOT TOUCH.
"Right," she said.
She had never driven a motorcycle in her life.
She did it anyway.
She flew down the stairs, and across the lobby, and burst out of the revolving door like a woman fired from a cannon. She threw a leg over the seat. She turned the key. The engine roared. A pair of startled security guards, standing by the entrance, dropped their coffee. She did not look at them.
She tore out into the street.
She ran four red lights. She cut off a taxi. She mounted a curb, and veered across a plaza, and scattered a flock of pigeons, and a very surprised hot dog vendor. A traffic cop, whistle in his teeth, took one look at the black-haired woman in the designer suit, doing fifty on a stolen motorcycle, and decided, wisely, to have a cup of tea.
She went two miles in four minutes.
She skidded to a stop outside a small brick building on the corner of Fourth and Maple. She did not turn off the engine. She did not park. She flung herself off the seat, and let the bike fall, with a clatter, onto the sidewalk, and sprinted for the door.
It was open.
Alex stood in the doorway, with her hair in disarray and her eyes red-rimmed, and a stricken, hunted look on her face. She had clearly been standing there for some time. She had a laminated card clutched in one hand, bent almost in half.
"Lena," she said.
"Where is she?"
"In the bedroom, she's, I'm so..."
"Later," said Lena, and pushed past her.
The apartment was dark.
The curtains were drawn. The lamps were off. A faint, gray light seeped in around the edges of the shade. In the middle of the living room floor lay a very large, very tragic jigsaw puzzle of an eye. A set of watercolors sat on the table. There was a plate of cold eggs. There was a stack of papers, scattered across the couch, labeled PROGRAM NOTES.
Lena crossed the room in four strides.
She pushed open the bedroom door.
Kara was sitting on the bed.
She was cross-legged in the half-dark, in a pair of rumpled pajamas, with her hair in a tangle and her glasses crooked. She had a green cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. Her face was pale. Her eyes were huge, and shadowed, and very bright. She was staring at the wall.
She did not look up.
"Kara."
Nothing.
"Kara."
Slowly, as if in a dream, she turned her head.
For a moment, she did not move. She only looked, with her mouth slightly open, as though she were seeing a ghost. Her lips moved. She said something, too faint to hear.
"What?" said Lena.
"You're here."
"I'm here."
"You're really here."
"I'm right here."
"I'm, it's, I'm not supposed to, I'm not allowed to," Kara stopped. Her eyes had begun to fill. Her whole face was beginning to crumple. "I'm supposed to be, I'm trying, I'm trying so hard, and I, I failed, and I'm so sorry, I..."
Lena crossed the room.
She did not speak. She did not say a single word. She only sat down on the edge of the bed, in the gray light, and took Kara's face between her palms, and kissed her.
It was not a gentle kiss.
It was fierce, and sudden, and a little desperate. It tasted of salt. Lena's fingers shook against Kara's cheeks. Kara made a small, startled, broken noise, deep in her throat, and then her arms came up, and wrapped around Lena's back, and she clung.
She clung.
She held on like a woman who had been drowning, and had just broken the surface. She pressed her face into Lena's neck. Her whole body was shaking. A harsh, ragged, wondering sob tore out of her, and then another, and she dissolved, completely, into tears.
"Lena," she gasped. "Lena, Lena, Lena."
"I'm here."
"I missed you."
"I know."
"I missed you so much."
"I know," said Lena, and she was crying, too, with her cheek against Kara's hair. "I know. I missed you. I thought you were angry."
"Angry?"
"I thought I'd done something."
"No!"
"I thought you were mad at me."
"No, no, no, no."
"I thought you'd stopped," said Lena, and her voice shattered. "I thought you'd, that you'd decided, that I was, that I'd been, too much, or not enough, or..."
"I'd never."
"You didn't write."
"They took my phone!"
"They what?"
"It's in a safe!"
"There's a safe?"
"Alex has the combination!"
Lena pulled back.
She stared at Kara's tear-streaked face, with its red nose and its swollen eyes and its absurd, miserable, hopeful grin. She stared, for a long second, in perfect silence. Then, quite helplessly, she began to laugh.
It tore out of her in a long, shaky, cracked peal. She put a hand over her mouth. Her shoulders shook. She doubled over, with her forehead on Kara's shoulder, laughing and crying at once.
"They put your phone in a safe?"
"It's very secure."
"They put you in a, in a detox?"
"It's got a chart!"
"Oh my god."
"There's a sun on it!"
"Oh my god," said Lena, and laughed until she cried.
The Confession
They sat on the bed for a very long time.
They did not say much. They did not need to. Lena lay propped against the headboard, with her shoes kicked off and her hair a ruin, and Kara curled against her side, with her head on her shoulder and the green cardigan wrapped around both of them like a blanket. The light in the window had gone from gray to gold. Somewhere in the apartment, a very small and very guilty sniffling noise was coming from the direction of the kitchen.
"I'm sorry," said Kara.
"For what?"
"I'm a mess."
"You're not."
"I'm an addict."
"You're not."
"Alex says."
"Alex," said Lena, "is an idiot."
"She was trying to help."
"I know she was." Lena stroked her hair. "She loves you. She just, she got the diagnosis a little wrong."
"I do talk about you a lot."
"I know."
"I have a folder."
"I know about the folder."
"You know?"
"You showed me the subfolder," said Lena, "last Christmas. On accident. You were showing me a picture of a dog."
Kara went the color of a tomato.
"That was a very good picture of a dog."
"I'm sure it was."
"It was a corgi."
"I saw."
"You were in the background."
"I was reading," said Lena, and her lips twitched. "I'm told I do that a lot."
Kara buried her face in her shoulder.
"I'm so embarrassing."
"You're," said Lena, and she paused. Her hand had stilled in Kara's hair. When she spoke again, her voice was low, and soft, and very serious. "You're the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me."
Kara went still.
"You're the best, and the kindest, and the warmest person I've ever met. You make my whole life brighter. I don't, Kara, I don't know how to say it. When you walk into a room, it's like someone's switched on a light." She swallowed. "I've never been looked at like that. I've never been, I've never been loved like that."
"Lena..."
"I'm not saying this because I want you to stop."
"No?"
"I'm saying it," said Lena, "because I want you to know that I'm just as bad."
Kara lifted her head.
"What?"
"I keep a file, too."
"You don't."
"I have a spreadsheet."
"Lena."
"It has tabs."
"I knew it."
"It's," said Lena, with great dignity, and a flush rising up her neck, "very well organized. It includes your coffee orders, your preferred pen, the exact shade of blue you wear when you're nervous, and a log, by date, of every time you've laughed so hard you snorted."
Kara stared.
"Why?"
"Because I adore it."
"You log my snorts?"
"They're very precious."
Kara began to laugh.
She laughed so hard that she fell over, sideways, onto the pillows, and lay there, wheezing, with her glasses falling off and her hands pressed against her stomach. Lena grinned down at her, with eyes shining, and a bright, helpless, unguarded smile.
"I have an addiction to you," said Lena.
"That's terrible."
"I know."
"That's the worst."
"It's a disaster."
"I love it," said Kara.
-----
Alex was standing in the kitchen, with her back to the counter and her arms crossed, when they came out.
She had not moved in an hour. She had made a pot of tea, and not drunk it. She had washed a plate that did not need washing. She had looked out the window, and at the clock, and at a very small, very battered laminated sponsor card, which she was now holding in both hands, bent into a V.
She looked up.
Her eyes were very red.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," said Kara.
"I'm, ah." Alex's voice cracked. She cleared her throat. She tried again. "I'm so sorry."
"It's all right."
"It's not. It's not. I, I was an idiot. I was a, a complete idiot. I put you through a, I made a chart."
"It was a very good chart."
"It had a sun on it."
"It was a really nice sun."
"Kara."
"I know."
"I was trying to," Alex stopped. She pressed a hand to her mouth. For a moment, she looked, quite suddenly, very young. "I got scared. I thought, I thought I'd lost you. I thought, you were so, you were so everything, and I didn't want, I didn't want you to get hurt, if..."
"If what?"
"If it didn't work out."
There was a short, soft silence.
"Alex," said Kara, gently.
"I'm sorry."
"You're my sister."
"I know."
"You don't have to protect me from this."
"I know."
"It isn't a thing that can hurt me," said Kara, with a slow smile, and her eyes went, almost helplessly, to the woman standing at her side. "It's the best thing that ever happened."
Alex looked at her.
She looked at her sister, and the dark-haired woman beside her, and the hand that had slipped, without either of them noticing, into Lena's. She looked at the way the two of them were standing, a half inch closer than any two people strictly needed to be, with their shoulders touching and their fingers laced. She looked at their faces.
She had seen that look in a photograph.
She had not known, until now, that it could be so bright.
"Okay," she said, in a very small voice.
"Okay?"
"Okay." Alex took a long, shaky breath. She dropped the sponsor card into the trash. "Program's cancelled."
"Really?"
"Terminated."
"Thank god," said Kara.
"I'll get you your phone."
"Now?"
"I'll run," said Alex, and did.
----
It took her fourteen minutes.
When she came back, she was sweating, and out of breath, and carrying a small steel lockbox. She set it on the kitchen table, and spun the dial, and the door swung open with a clang. Inside, on a bed of red velvet, lay a single battered smartphone, face-down.
Kara took it out as though it were a baby bird.
She turned it over.
She pressed the button.
It buzzed.
It buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed, for nearly a minute, in a long, endless, vibrating torrent. A tide of notifications flooded the screen: four hundred and eleven unread messages, thirty-one missed calls, eleven voice mails, and a single small, desperate, increasingly frantic string of texts from a very familiar number, sent over four long days.
Hi, just checking in!
Hope you're ok!
Are you busy?
It's okay if you're busy!
I just wanted to say hi.
Hi.
Did I do something?
Please tell me if I did something.
I'm sorry if I did.
I miss you.
Kara looked up.
Her eyes were very bright.
"I did get a text," she whispered. "It was Alex's. She said not to read them."
"They're all from me," said Lena, and went very pink.
"They're so sweet."
"They're humiliating."
"They're the best thing I've ever read."
"They're," said Lena, and covered her face, "embarrassing."
"I'm going to frame them."
"Don't you dare."
"I'll put them in a folder."
"Kara."
"I'll label it," said Kara, radiantly. "'Lena: Worried.'"
Lena dissolved.
She laughed so hard that she had to sit down. She sat on the kitchen floor, with her back against the cabinet and her hands over her face, shaking with helpless mirth. Kara slid down beside her. She put an arm around her shoulders, and rested her chin on top of her head.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you too."
"I'm so glad you came."
"I took a motorcycle," said Lena, into her palms.
"What?"
"It was L-Corp security's."
"Lena."
"I think I ran over a hot dog cart."
"You didn't."
"I think I did."
"That's," said Kara, with deep reverence, "the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me."
-----
Alex's final report on Project Sunrise was filed that evening, at 11:42 p.m., on her kitchen table, in her own neat block capitals. It ran to a single page. She did not send it to anyone. She read it once, folded it in half, and put it in a drawer.
It said:
PROJECT SUNRISE: FINAL REPORT
Subject: Kara Danvers Duration: Four days (terminated early) Outcome: Failure.
Observations:
The Subject's dependence on the Target (L. Luthor) was found to be total, irreversible, and mutual.
Attempts at separation resulted in significant distress in both parties, a stolen cardigan, a puzzle of an eye, and the destruction of one motorcycle.
Reunion resulted in immediate and total recovery. The Subject has since eaten four pizzas, two bagels, and a quantity of potstickers that I am not at liberty to disclose.
The Target has also been observed exhibiting symptoms, including (but not limited to): checking her phone every twelve minutes, drafting and deleting messages, maintaining a spreadsheet, and running over a hot dog cart.
Conclusion:
The Subject is not an addict.
She is in love.
This is a different condition, and I am no longer qualified to treat it.
Recommendation:
Leave them alone.
(Also, buy more potstickers.)
She closed the drawer.
On the other side of the city, in a large, soft, warm bed, two women were lying in the dark, tangled together under a green cardigan. One of them was asleep. The other was awake, with a hand in the other's hair, and a small, contented smile.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
She looked at it.
It was a text, from a number she knew, and had known, in one form or another, for years. She picked it up. She read it, in the dim glow of the screen, and her smile grew.
ALEX: Sorry again. ALEX: Tell her I said congratulations. ALEX: On the whole "being loved" thing. ALEX: She deserves it.
Lena glanced at the sleeping woman beside her, at the soft rise and fall of her chest, and the spill of golden hair across the pillow.
She typed, with one thumb:
LENA: I will. LENA: She already knows.
She put the phone down.
She turned onto her side, and drew Kara close, and kissed her softly on the forehead.
"Goodnight, my love," she whispered.
"Mmph," said Kara, in her sleep. "Lena."
Lena smiled into her hair.
It was, she thought, the only name in the world that had ever sounded like the sun.
Fin.