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Kara comes to the bar sometimes. She dresses so invisibly that no one would recognize her, as Supergirl or even as Kara Danvers, mild-mannered reporter. She loses the glasses when she walks inside, and she tells M’gann after half a heavily watered-down drink that they keep her from seeing through things. “Like...like walls. And people.”
“You see through people?” M’gann asks, amused.
“To their bones,” Kara says. She’s looking right into M’gann’s eyes, and then she collapses into giggles.
“All right, lightweight,” M’gann says. She rolls her eyes, but it comes out fond.
-
She comes in exhausted, one night. The kind of tired that’s bone-deep, heart-deep. She doesn’t drink; she just sits at the bar with her head in her hands. M’gann is busy with customers for a while, but after a half hour or so things start to clear out, and she moves over to the corner of the bar where Kara’s taken up residence and sets down a cherry Coke beside her.
“Hey, Danvers,” she says.
Kara looks up. Most people would let their eyes pass right through you with this tiredness, but Kara sees M’gann, and the tiniest of smiles curls at the corner of her mouth. “How’s it going, M’orzz,” she says.
M’gann leans against the wall and looks her over. “Did something happen today?”
Kara takes a sip of the soda M’gann brought her and shakes her head. “It’s stupid.”
M’gann doesn’t say anything; she just looks at Kara and waits.
Kara sighs. “Alex said something today. A cousin I’ve never heard of is having a baby, and I just...they haven’t been in touch for fifteen years. Before I came here.” She swirls the ice in her glass. “Alex has family that I never even knew about. And I know she’s my family, but my—my biological family, the people I spent my childhood with? They’re all dead.”
M’gann looks at her and says, gentle but steady, “Mine too.”
Kara looks back at her now, meeting her eyes once again. “How do you live?” she says, so softly it’s almost inaudible. “Knowing that everyone who loved you as a child is gone.”
“Well, you know. My people weren’t big on love,” says M’gann.
The words seem to change Kara. “Oh,” she murmurs. “Of course...I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” M’gann says gently. “But it’s a privilege, to have been loved.”
Kara looks at her steadily, until M’gann finally looks away.
She pushes a bowl of peanuts in Kara’s direction. “You should eat,” she says.
Kara obliges, crunching down on a handful.
“I get off in half an hour,” M’gann says. Hesitates. “Can I walk you home?”
Kara meets her eyes, carefully, and nods.
It’s more like an hour before M’gann can finally shoo out the last of the customers and lock up, but Kara waits for her, seated on her stool at the bar nursing her peanuts and Coke. She puts her glasses back on when they walk out, and M’gann, shifting under her humanoid skin, recognizes the expression on her face. She walks alongside Kara down the dimly-lit side streets, and it feels different than walking alone. Even without sensing Kara’s thoughts, she can feel the heat radiating from her skin and listen to her breathing. M’gann has been accustomed to solitude for a long time, and she doesn’t fall in step with Kara—she wouldn’t know how to—but she likes the sound of footfalls next to her.
They stand outside Kara’s apartment door for what feels like a long time. M’gann shifts uncomfortably, eyes flashing from Kara’s collarbones to her face to the floor. Finally, she starts to say, “I guess I should probably—” and Kara looks up with sudden resolve and crashes her lips against M’gann’s, like a hurricane.
M’gann doesn’t react, stunned into paralysis, and Kara pulls back at the lack of response. “Oh no, M’gann, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—I thought—”
M’gann wets her lips, and feels the residue of Kara’s kiss, as if she were experiencing it on a delay. Kara is still fumbling through an earnest apology and M’gann is standing stock-still.
Kara looks near tears when M’gann’s mind finally catches up with her and she gravitates toward the strong, gentle body in front of her. “You don’t need to be sorry,” she murmurs, and her hand meets exposed skin at Kara’s waist when she kisses her.