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The first time Lena Luthor jumped out of a window, she was wearing one shoe.
It was a Thursday night, and there were four men in her apartment. She'd known about three of them when she picked up the phone to call security. She had not known about the fourth, who was standing in the hall with a pistol, and the phone had gone dead in her hand as the door to the bedroom came off its hinges.
She did not think.
She ran. She ran across the carpet in her stocking feet, past the bed and the long white curtains, and flung open the glass door onto the balcony. It was the twenty-second floor. A thin cold wind came up out of the dark. The street, far below, was a ribbon of orange lights, and the rail came up to her hip, and behind her, in the bedroom, a man's voice said, quite calmly, "Ms. Luthor. Please don't make this difficult."
She stood on the balcony of her own apartment with her back to the drop and her hands braced on the rail.
I can't, she thought.
It's twenty-two floors. I can't, I'll,
A hand closed on her ankle.
She screamed.
She would be a little embarrassed about it, later. She was a Luthor. She had been raised not to scream. But the sound came tearing up out of her chest in a high wild shriek that startled even her, and she heard herself shout, in a voice she did not recognize, the only name in the world:
"KARA!"
And she jumped.
It was a stupid thing to do. It was the most irrational act of her whole rational life. She went over the railing in a flailing, undignified tumble, with one shoe off and her heart in her teeth, and the wind took her hair, and the city turned upside down, and for one long, bright, absolutely terrified second she thought, oh, God, she isn't coming, she's across town, she's at the, she can't possibly,
Something hit her in the middle of the back.
It was warm. It was strong. It wrapped around her like an arm, and the world swung out in a long soaring arc, and a breathless voice in her ear said, "Got you! I've got you, I've got you, I've,"
"Kara," sobbed Lena.
"I'm here."
"You're, how did you,"
"I heard you scream," said Kara, and her arms tightened. They were rising now, up past the broken glass and the long dark line of the building, into a sky full of cold stars. "I heard you, and I just, I was in the middle of a, it doesn't matter. I came."
Lena clung to her.
She had her face pressed into Kara's neck, and her fingers knotted in the front of the cape, and she was shaking so hard that her teeth chattered. She could feel Kara's heart. It was going as fast as her own.
"I'm sorry," she said, stupidly.
"What? Why?"
"I jumped."
"Yeah," said Kara, and let out a shaky, incredulous laugh. "You did. That was, Lena, that was really brave."
"It was incredibly foolish."
"That too." Her face was flushed. She was grinning, wild-eyed, as though she'd been handed a miracle. "But you did it anyway. You just, you trusted me."
Lena did not say that she hadn't had a choice.
She was not, in that moment, entirely sure it was true.
----
The elevator cable at the L-Corp parking garage snapped on a Tuesday in March.
It was not sabotage. It was nothing so dramatic. It was a thirty-year-old piece of steel in a building that had changed owners four times, and it gave way with a sound like a gunshot, and the car in which Lena Luthor was riding with a stack of quarterly reports dropped eleven floors in the space of a breath.
She did not have time to scream.
She had time to think, with a sort of distant clarity: this is a stupid way to die. She had time to notice that the lights had gone out. She had time to see the numbers on the panel flashing past, 11, 10, 9, and to lift her head and say, in a clear, ringing, perfectly steady voice, the way one might call for a taxi:
"KARA!"
The car stopped.
It stopped between the sixth and fifth floors with a bone-jarring crunch, and hung there, swaying, with a long groan of tortured metal. Dust sifted from the ceiling. The emergency lamp flickered on, a thin red glow.
And the doors, the steel doors, were being pried open from the outside, with a screech of bending metal, by a pair of very familiar hands.
"Lena?" said Kara, from the dark. "Lena, are you,"
"I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm," said Lena. She looked down. She was still holding the reports. She had a death grip on them. A single sheet of paper fluttered out of her hand and went spinning, slowly, down the empty shaft. "I think I'm fine."
Kara laughed.
It was a half-hysterical sound, and she braced herself in the doorway, one hand on each side of the opening, and said, "You didn't scream."
"I'm sorry?"
"Last time you screamed."
"I did not,"
"You did, you screamed so loud I heard it in, like, three different zip codes." She was beaming. "This time you just said it. Like you were ordering a coffee."
"I was busy."
"It was so cool."
"It was a near-death experience."
"It was amazing," said Kara, and reached in, and picked her up.
----
By the time it was spring, it had become a sort of joke.
It wasn't, quite. Nobody laughed. But there was a certain tone it took in the DEO, in the break room, over the stale coffee. Lena Luthor's fallen off something again. Alex had a chart on her whiteboard. It was titled THE LUTHOR FALL INDEX, and it had columns for height, duration, and Kara response time, and it was getting, to everyone's mild horror, a little crowded.
There was the balcony. There was the elevator. There was the fire escape of a safe house in Metropolis, which had come away from the wall in a hail of rust. There was a cliff, on a ridiculous team-building weekend in the mountains, where Lena had stepped carefully onto a ledge to look at the view, and the ledge had said no.
And somewhere in the middle of it, without anyone noticing, a change had come over the way she called.
It was the cliff, in the end, that she would remember.
It was a long drop. It was three hundred feet of crumbling red rock, and a river at the bottom, and she was falling backward through the air with her arms flung wide and her coat blown up around her like a flag. She'd looked up at the sky. It was a very clear, very bright blue. She'd thought, quite calmly: oh. Well.
She hadn't screamed.
She hadn't shouted.
She had simply said, in an ordinary, almost conversational voice, to the empty air, "Kara."
Not a plea. Not a command. Just a name. The way you say it into a dark room, when you know someone is awake.
She was caught before she'd finished the second syllable.
"You didn't yell," said Kara, later.
They were sitting on the edge of a rock, in the evening, with their feet hanging over the drop. A blanket lay around Lena's shoulders. Down in the canyon, the river was turning pink. Kara had her arm around her waist, and her chin on her shoulder, and she was, Lena noticed, still trembling a little, in the quiet aftermath of terror.
"I didn't have to."
"What?"
"I didn't have to yell." Lena was watching the river. "You were already coming."
"I was?"
"I could hear you."
"I was still," said Kara, "like, a mile away."
"I know."
"How could you hear me?"
"You've got a very distinctive," Lena paused. "Whoosh."
"I do not,"
"You do. It's rather loud."
"It's a sonic boom."
"It's a whoosh," said Lena, and smiled, a small tired smile, against the shoulder of the woman who had caught her. "And it means you're there."
Kara did not say anything.
She tightened her arm. She put her face in Lena's hair. And they sat there together, on the edge of a red cliff, in the long gold light, and watched the river go dark.
-----
It happened on the roof of the Calloway Hotel, on the night of the gala.
It had been a long evening. A thousand people, a string quartet, a gown that cost more than a car. Lena had given a speech. She had danced with a senator. She'd spent three hours smiling, and at ten o'clock, when the party was at its height, a bomb threat had come in, and a very polite man in a headset had said, "Ms. Luthor, we need to clear the building," and the whole ballroom had begun to empty, in a long, orderly, anxious stream.
It was a hoax. They did not know that yet.
She had gone up to the roof to think. It was the one place in the building where it was quiet, a flat, windswept expanse of tar and chimneys, and the whole of the city shining below her, and she'd stood at the parapet in her long silver dress with her arms wrapped around herself and tried to breathe.
Footsteps.
She heard them behind her. She didn't turn. They were soft, and quick, and they stopped about ten feet away.
"Ms. Luthor," said a voice.
It was a man's. It was cool, and smooth, and polite, and it was not the voice of the man in the headset. She felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.
"Don't," said the voice. "Please don't turn around. I'm so sorry about this. Your brother sends his regards."
She stood very still.
There was a click behind her. A sharp, mechanical, unmistakable sound.
And she did something that she would think about, later, for a very long time.
She didn't say Kara.
She didn't look at the sky. She did not scream, or shout, or whisper a name. She stood quite still, with her eyes on the city lights, and the wind in her hair, and she took one deep breath.
She's coming.
It wasn't a hope. It wasn't a prayer. It was just a fact, as plain as gravity. It sat at the bottom of her chest like a stone, warm and heavy and absolutely certain, and she felt it, the way you feel the floor beneath your feet.
She's coming.
She put one hand on the parapet.
She stepped up onto the ledge.
"Ms. Luthor!" said the voice, sharply. "What are you,"
She was looking out over the edge.
It was a hundred and eighty feet. It was a long, clean, glittering drop, and at the bottom, the street was a river of light. She was wearing a thousand-dollar gown and a pair of heels, and a man was aiming a gun at her back, and a cold wind lifted her hair like a hand.
She'll be there.
She did not look behind her.
She did not look down.
She leaned out over the edge, with her arms by her sides, and her eyes on the stars, and let herself fall.
It wasn't a scream. It wasn't a prayer. It was a kind of peace.
She fell through the air, and the wind sang in her ears, and the city rushed up to meet her, and she was calm. She was entirely, impossibly calm. She was falling through the dark with her eyes open, in a silver dress, as though she had all the time in the world.
Three, she thought.
Two.
One.
There was a rush of wind. There was a flash of red. A pair of arms swept under her, knees and shoulders, with the soft, firm, absolute certainty of a door closing, and the whole world tilted, and turned, and went up.
She opened her eyes.
Kara's face was inches from hers. It was white. It was pinched and wild and furious, and her eyes were enormous. "Lena," she said, in a strangled voice. "LENA. You jumped off a roof.*"
"I know."
"You didn't even, you didn't even call me!"
"I know."
"What if I'd been late?!"
"You weren't."
"But what if I had?*"
"Then," said Lena, "I'd have been very sorry. For about a second."
"That's not," Kara sputtered. She was rising now, in a long smooth curve, over the glittering dark of the city, with Lena cradled in her arms like something precious. She was shaking. "That is not funny! That is the least funny, Lena, you could've,"
"Kara."
"What?"
"Look at me."
Kara looked.
Lena's hand came up. It was light, and cool, and steady. It rested against the side of Kara's face, her thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone, and for a moment neither of them said a word.
"I wasn't afraid," said Lena.
"What?"
"I wasn't afraid. I should have been. I know I should have been. But I wasn't." Her voice was very soft. "I knew you'd be there. I never even thought about it. I just knew."
Kara's mouth worked.
Something shifted in her face. It was slow, and wondering, and a little bit stunned. She looked at the woman in her arms as if she had never seen her before.
"You," she whispered. "You really, you really trust me."
"With my life," said Lena. "Every day."
They were hanging in the air, high above the city, with the whole wide glittering world at their feet. Down below, a long way away, a crowd of people in evening dress were pouring out of the doors of the hotel, pointing up at the sky.
"Well," said Kara, in a small, husky, shaken voice. "That's, that's a lot of pressure."
"I know."
"I'm, I mean, I'll do my best."
"You've been doing it for three years."
"I have, haven't I?" said Kara.
She was smiling. It was a crooked, watery smile. She bent her head, and pressed her forehead to Lena's, and the two of them hung there in the dark, breathing the same air.
"You're going to give me a heart attack," she said.
"I'll try not to."
"You won't."
"I probably won't."
"Good," whispered Kara, and kissed her.
----
There were so many, after that.
She lost count, in the end. There was the time on the yacht, off the coast of Greece, when a wave took her off the deck and into the black water, and she'd drifted there, in the dark, and said "Right," and begun, calmly, to wait. (Kara arrived in forty seconds. She was wearing a bikini. She was furious.) There was the time at the airport, when the glass atrium came down, and Lena had stepped, without a backward look, off the edge of the mezzanine into the empty air, while Kara's arms came out of nowhere and gathered her up like a cloak. There was the time in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, when she had gone out onto the bedroom balcony in nothing but a T-shirt, to look at the stars, and had leaned too far.
She was never frightened.
It was, she thought, the oddest thing. There had been a time, a long time ago, when the very idea of heights had sent a cold little thread of fear down her spine. She'd been a careful child. She'd been a careful girl. She had looked before she leaped, and she had measured every distance, and she had never, in the whole of her life, stepped out onto anything without knowing exactly where it would hold.
And now she did.
She did it all the time. She did it without thinking, in the middle of a sentence, on a rooftop, at a window, at the edge of a pool. She'd be talking, and she'd step back, and the floor would not be there, and she would simply fall. She didn't look. She didn't turn her head. She would feel it, in the half-second before the arms came round her, a sweet warm weightless stillness, like a held breath.
She's there.
She's always there.
It had become, in some way she could not have explained, a part of who she was. It was in her bones, now. It was a kind of faith. It was the single most reliable fact in a universe full of lies, and she'd built her whole life on it, like a house.
"You know," Alex said, one evening, over the rim of a beer, "you're kind of a menace."
"I'm sorry?"
"To yourself. To, like, the laws of physics." She gestured vaguely. "You fall off everything. And you don't even look."
"I know where she is."
"Do you?"
"Always," said Lena.
Alex studied her.
She was quiet for a long time. And then she put down her beer, and her face did something odd, something soft and tired and fond, and she said, "You know what? Okay."
"Okay?"
"I take back the chart."
"The Luthor Fall Index?"
"I'm taking it down." Alex shook her head. "It's not a chart. It's a love story."
"Alex."
"I'm just saying."
"It's a perfectly respectable safety record."
"Sure," said Alex, grinning. "Sure it is."
----
Lorelei Daniel Luthor Danvers was seven months old on the afternoon that her mother learned to be afraid again.
It was a Sunday in June. The sun was hot and bright. The yard behind the house was a sea of green, with a crooked maple at one end and a plastic wading pool at the other, and Lena sat in a deck chair in the shade, with an iced tea sweating in her hand and a pile of unread reports on her lap, watching her wife and her daughter.
They were a sight.
Kara was on the grass, barefoot, in a pair of ancient cutoffs and a T-shirt that said WORLD'S OKAYEST SUPERHERO. She was holding the baby in both hands, high over her head, and the baby, a small, solemn, black-haired creature in a yellow sunhat, with her mother's green eyes, was making a high, delighted, burbling sound of absolute joy.
"Who's the best girl?" said Kara, in a ridiculous voice. "Who's the bestest girl in the whole wide world? Is it you? Is it you, Lori? Is it? Is it?"
"Ahhhh," said the baby, kicking.
"That's right! It's you!" Kara gave her a little shake. She was grinning like a lunatic. "You're so strong! You're so big! You're gonna be a, you're gonna be a giant!"
"Kara," said Lena, mildly, "don't give her ideas."
"She's gonna be great.*"
"She's seven months."
"Great at being seven months."
Lena smiled. She turned a page.
And Kara, with a delighted whoop, threw the baby into the air.
It was a very small thing.
It was a gentle toss, no higher than a man's head. The baby went up like a bubble, a bright yellow sunhat and a small round startled face, and hung for a moment, at the top of her arc, against the blue sky. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth made an O.
And Lena's heart stopped.
It did not slow. It stopped. There was a single, enormous, soundless instant in which the whole bright afternoon went white around the edges, and she felt every muscle in her body clench, and a thin cold voice at the back of her mind began, quite distinctly, to scream:
She's in the air. She's in the air. She's in the air*,*
She was on her feet.
She did not remember rising. The iced tea was on the grass. The papers had fallen. She was standing in the middle of the yard with both hands pressed over her mouth, and her whole body shaking, and her eyes fixed on a small yellow hat tumbling softly through the sunlight.
Kara caught her.
She caught her easily. She did it with one hand, lightly, the way you'd catch a ball, and drew her in against her chest, and the baby, who had not for one second stopped smiling, let out a long, bubbling, gleeful shriek.
"AGAIN!" said Kara, delighted.
"Don't you dare!"
"She loves it!"
"Kara Zor-El Danvers, if you throw my daughter into the air one more time,"
"Lena," said Kara.
She was laughing. She was standing in the sun with the baby tucked against her shoulder, and her eyes were full of tears, and she wasn't laughing at her. It was something softer. It was something that looked, Lena thought, like wonder.
"Look at her," said Kara.
Lena looked.
The baby had twisted in Kara's arms. She was staring up over her mother's shoulder at the sky, and at Kara's face, with an expression of absolute, serene, untroubled delight. She was beaming. She had both fists in the air. There wasn't a flicker of fear in her whole small body.
"She wasn't scared," said Kara.
"I was."
"I know. But she wasn't. Not even a little." Kara bent her head, and rubbed her nose against the baby's, and the baby gave a wet, crowing giggle. "You know why?"
"Because she doesn't know any better," said Lena, faintly.
"No." Kara shook her head. She looked up, and her eyes were very blue, and very bright. "Because she knows I'll catch her."
Lena didn't say anything.
She stood there, in the long green grass, in the hot June sun, with her hands still pressed against her mouth. And slowly, as she looked at her wife and her daughter, something tight and cold and frightened in her chest began to loosen. It unclenched, one thread at a time, like a fist opening.
She had been so afraid.
She was still afraid. But under the fear, deeper than the fear, was something else. It was warm. It was heavy. It had been there for so long that she'd stopped being able to feel it, like a floor, like a wall, like the ground under her feet.
She knows I'll catch her.
Because she's mine.
Because she's been learning it, thought Lena, with a sudden, dizzying surge of understanding, from the first day. She's been watching.
She's been watching me.
"Oh," said Lena.
She sat down on the grass.
She did it rather abruptly. Her legs seemed to have gone. She sat there in the middle of the yard, with her knees drawn up and her face in her hands, and a small, helpless, hiccuping sound escaped her. It might have been a laugh. It might have been something else.
"Lena?" said Kara, in alarm.
"I'm fine."
"Are you,"
"I'm fine. I'm just, I need a minute." She wiped her eyes. She was laughing, now, in a strange, shaky, breathless way. "I've spent six years jumping off things. And I never once, I never thought about, what it looked like. From the outside."
"What did it look like?"
"Terrifying," said Lena. "It looked absolutely terrifying."
Kara knelt down in the grass.
She settled the baby in her lap, and put one arm around Lena's shoulders, and pulled her in. They sat there in a tangle, the three of them, in the sun, in the warm grass, with the baby gurgling and chewing on a corner of Kara's shirt, and Kara's lips resting against Lena's temple.
"I'm sorry," said Kara, softly.
"Don't be."
"I didn't think. I should've warned you."
"I'd have said no."
"I know."
"I'd have said no, and you'd have listened. And she'd never have," Lena stopped. She drew a long, uneven breath. She was looking at the baby, at that small, round, shining face, those wide green eyes, that wet, delighted grin. "She'd never have had that."
"Had what?"
"The sky," said Lena.
She swallowed.
She was silent for a long moment. She turned her head, and looked at Kara, and the sun was in her hair, and her face was radiant, and in the whole of that long bright afternoon there was nothing else in the world.
"Later," said Lena.
"Later what?"
"I want a turn."
Kara blinked.
"Sorry?"
"A turn. Later." Her mouth was trembling, and she was smiling, through the last of her tears, with a sort of fierce, bright, tremulous defiance. "When she's down for her nap. When nobody's looking." She lifted her chin. "I'd like you to throw me."
Kara stared at her.
"In the air?"
"In the air."
"Like, up? High up?"
"As high as you like."
"Lena," said Kara. Her face had gone pink. Her eyes were enormous. She looked as though she'd been handed all the stars in the sky at once and was not at all certain what to do with them. "Are you serious?*"
"I've been falling for you," said Lena, "for six years."
She paused.
"I believe I'd like to try going the other direction."
For a long, long moment, Kara didn't say anything.
And then she began to laugh. It was a bright, helpless, wondering laugh, and it rang out across the yard like a bell. She put her head back and laughed up at the sky. The baby, delighted, clapped both hands. A pair of startled sparrows burst out of the maple tree.
"Okay," said Kara, wiping her eyes. "Okay. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. After the nap.*"
"After the nap."
"I'll be so careful."
"I know you will."
"I'll catch you," said Kara, and the words were nothing, and the words were everything, and they hung there in the bright air, between the two of them, like a promise. "I'll always catch you."
"I know," said Lena.
She leaned in, and kissed her.
And when it was done, and the baby had begun to fuss, and the long afternoon had begun, slowly, to deepen into evening, she took her daughter in her arms and held her close, and whispered into that small, warm, sunlit head:
"You're going to be so brave."
The baby sighed. She nestled in, and closed her eyes.
Because you'll know, thought Lena, that somebody's always there.
That whatever happens.
Whatever you jump into.
Somebody's going to catch you.
-----
It was nine o'clock at night, in the last of the light, when Lena Luthor stood in the middle of her own backyard in her bare feet and a pair of soft gray pajamas, and said, "All right. I'm ready."
Kara hovered in front of her, six feet off the ground.
She had changed into the suit. She did not usually, for anything so private, but she'd said, with a shy and slightly sheepish air, "I think it'll feel more official," and she looked, in the dusk, like a figure out of a painting, with her cape lifting a little in the evening breeze and her face lit with a nervous, shining joy.
"You're sure?"
"Quite."
"You're, you're really,"
"Kara."
"Right." She took a breath. "Sorry. Okay. So, I'm just going to, I'll take you under the, and then I'll,"
"Kara."
"Yes?"
"I'm not going to look."
Kara's lips parted.
"I'm going to close my eyes," said Lena. "I'm going to hold my arms out. And you're going to do it. And I'm not going to say a word." She smiled. "And you're going to catch me."
"I,"
"You always do."
Kara's eyes shone.
She came down to earth. She stood in front of Lena, in the green-gold dusk, and put her hands on her waist, very carefully, the way you'd hold something made of glass. And Lena closed her eyes.
It was the strangest feeling.
She could hear the crickets. She could smell the cut grass, and the faint smoky sweetness of someone's barbecue two streets over. She could feel Kara's hands, warm and steady, on either side of her ribs, and the fine fast tremor of her breath.
"One," said Kara, in a whisper.
I'm not afraid, thought Lena.
"Two."
I've never been afraid.
"Three."
She went up.
She went up like a bird. It was a smooth, soft, gentle push, a lift of the whole body, and the ground fell away beneath her with a long sweet whoosh, and the evening air rushed past her face, cool and fragrant and alive. She had her arms flung wide. She had her eyes shut. The whole world was a rush of dark and gold and wind.
She was flying.
And at the top of her arc, at the very peak of it, for one infinite, shining, motionless second, she opened her eyes.
The sky was a deep, soft violet. The first stars were out. Beneath her, a long way down, the roofs of the neighborhood lay spread like a quilt, each window a small warm square of light. She saw the maple. She saw the wading pool. She saw her own house, with its crooked chimney, and a nursery window glowing yellow, and a little shape in a crib.
She saw, below her, a pair of upturned eyes, shining like stars.
Oh, thought Lena.
This is what it looks like.
This is what she sees.
And then she was falling.
She was falling, and she was laughing, and she wasn't afraid. She went down through the soft dark air with her arms spread and her hair streaming, and she didn't say a single word, she didn't whisper a name, because there was nothing to say. There never had been.
She's there.
She's always there.
Kara caught her.
She caught her in the circle of her arms, with a soft, firm oof, and whirled her once in a dizzy, joyous circle, and set her gently on her feet. They stood there in the dark, face to face, both breathless, both shaking, both laughing.
"Well?" said Kara. She was glowing. She was radiant. She had tears on her cheeks. "How was it?"
"Again," said Lena.
"Again?"
"Again." She clutched Kara's cape in both hands. She was beaming, wild and dazzled, her hair a tangle and her eyes alight. "Again, again, again! Please!"
"Oh my God," said Kara, in rapture. "You're exactly like her."
"Throw me!"
"You're, you're exactly like,"
"KARA!"
"Okay!" said Kara, and laughed, and lifted her. "Okay! Okay! Here we go!"
And she threw her into the stars.
Fin.