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Chapter Text

Darth Lex swung his lightsaber, cutting down the last person between himself and Lena. She stumbled backwards, tripping over the length of her black robe. The panic bubbling in her began to boil over.

“Alexander, you don’t want to do this,” she warned him. She held out one hand as if that would be enough to stop him—a feeble, last-ditch effort. “Please, stop. Alexander, please.”

He slashed downward again. Lena screamed, hands trying to cover the fresh wound on her torso. Alexander smiled under his hood like this was all somehow satisfying. She clutched her side, breathing hard through her nose as she tried to stem the pain. He smiled, pushing back his black hood off his bald head.

“You know that’s not my name anymore, Lena.”

“Darth Lex—Don’t hurt her!” A young Sith apprentice—one Lena had known, liked—flew from the shadows to grapple with Darth Lex. One flick of his wrist was enough to bisect his surprise assailant, legs and torso twitching for a moment before the body fell completely still, but the distraction was just enough to give Lena enough time to slip away and conceal herself in a side hallway. She watched from the shadows as he growled, gritting his teeth, and swung his saber in another wide arc, driving it deep into the wooden wall.

Dreshdae burned.

///

“Danvers, hurry!” Maggie called. Fire was rapidly devouring its way across the city. People screeched, and Maggie watched with bated breath as her wife dove from rooftop to rooftop, narrowly avoiding the flames. “Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered under her breath, jogging a leg in anxiety.

“Help!” Someone called from the crowd. “Please, help!”

Maggie paid them no mind. Everyone was calling for help. They couldn’t afford to help them all. We’re helping everyone by getting whatever information Alex managed to collect back to the Resistance, Maggie told herself, although it didn’t make her feel much better. Her eyes stayed locked on the approaching form of her wife. Even despite the circumstances, she couldn’t help but admire Alex’s lithe acrobatics, the way she leapt and dove with such precision. Kriff, Alex Danvers was beautiful.

“Help, please!”

“Come on, Alex,” Maggie muttered again. Alex was directly above her now, and she dove off the roof as casually as if she were diving into water, landing on an awning and tumbling to Maggie’s feet. Alex tossed her head back, spitting a stray hair out of her mouth before looking up at Maggie. Maggie offered her a hand and pulled her out of her landing crouch. “What took you so long?”

“Help, help!”

“No time,” Alex pulled Maggie behind her into the craft. “Where’s Krypto?”

KRY-P2, their blue-and-gold Kryptonian droid, one of the last surviving artifacts of the planet, beeped once.

“Let’s blow this backwater planet, Danvers,” Maggie said, slamming a fist on the button to close the door.

“No, wait!”

Before either woman could register what had happened, a third individual was holding open the closing door. “You’re Resistance, aren’t you? I need your help, please! Please!”

Alex blinked. “What? Who are—?”

“Babe, we don’t have time! Your cover’s been blown, we have to go!” Maggie tugged on Alex’s arm. The woman in black slid through the door into the cargo hold as it whooshed shut behind her. She clutched her side, leaning heavily on the back wall.

“Please, you don’t understand! I can help you! I know the Luthors, I have information about them that you can use, about Darth Lex—please, you have to help me!”

“You know the Luthors?” Alex asked, but the woman had collapsed to her knees. She nodded. “How?” Alex demanded, but the woman only swallowed heavily.

“I’m… I-I’m…” She collapsed, hitting the metal floor with a painful, hollow thunk.

“Shit,” Alex muttered, running a hand through her hair. “Shit!”

“Babe, we don’t have any more time,” Maggie insisted, dragging Alex by the hand to the copilot’s seat while she got situated in her own. “We’ll figure out what to do with her once we make the jump to hyperspace, but we have to go. They’ll be on us if we don’t go now.”

///

Once Maggie locked in autopilot, she and Alex slipped out of their seats and returned to the loading bay of the Oracle Bat, where the strange woman remained unconscious. She wore her dark hair in a tightly braided bun, but downy flyaways framed her face, some stuck to her forehead with dried sweat. Her expressive eyebrows were pinched even in unconsciousness, lips turned gently down, stuck in a pained frown. Alex was careful as she turned her over on her back, wincing at the way the woman’s arm moved at a strange angle, at the way her cut and blistered skin stuck to her clothes. She wore the all-black attire of a Sith, but her wounds indicated attack by lightsaber—by a fellow Sith? And, kriff, the woman had been torn to ribbons.

“Her shoulder’s dislocated,” Alex reported finally. “That’s the only thing I can fix here. The rest of this will require bacta treatments. Can you hold her down, Mags?”

Maggie nodded. KRY-P2 rolled over from the edge of the room. It hovered behind Maggie and Alex, beeping quizzically.

“Normally, I’d count to three,” Alex mused as she popped the shoulder back into place.

Maggie sighed, running her hands through her dark tresses. “What the hell do we do with her?”

Alex shook her head, eyes wide. “Beats me.”

“We can’t bring her back to the base,” Maggie said.

“No,” Alex agreed. “But she said she could help.”

“Babe, she’s a Sith.”

“So was I, for a month.”

“You were undercover,” Maggie corrected. “That’s different.”

“Point is, we don’t know who this woman is,” Alex retorted. “Sith or not, she needs medical treatment, and we are not the kind of people who are going to leave her to die.” Alex paused. “She said she could help us. Said she knew the Luthors. That could be… If she really means to help us, that could be invaluable.”

“Or,” Maggie replied, “she could kill all of us.”

“I have to get inside her head,” Alex murmured. She winced momentarily, turning her attention to the stranger. “Sorry, I wish you were conscious so I could ask first.”

Though there was no reason for it, Maggie backed off a few steps as Alex pressed two fingers to the woman’s temple. Alex’s face scrunched in concentration. Sweat began to bead on her forehead, and after several moments of intense focus, Alex lifted her hand away, her breathing heavy.

“What?” Maggie asked, darting back to Alex’s side at her wife’s stricken look. “What did you see?”

“Nothing.” Alex shook her head, eyes not leaving the woman’s face. “I couldn’t see anything. That’s—that’s never happened before. I mean, it’s always difficult to get into someone’s head, but…” Alex shook her head again. “It was like a kriffing wall.”

Maggie wrapped a hand over Alex’s shoulder. Alex curled a hand over Maggie’s, looking at the dark-haired stranger for a moment longer.

“So, what do we do with her?” Maggie finally asked. “We can’t exactly take her back to Korriban, but we don’t know… We really shouldn’t take her back to base, either.”

“She’s not going to last very long if we don’t get those wounds looked at,” Alex decided, standing up. “We need to get her into bacta before anything gets infected—or, well, more infected. It’s a miracle she’s still alive, honestly.”

“We can’t trust her, Alex,” Maggie insisted sternly. “If you can’t get into her head—”

“Then we go to someone who can,” Alex decided, turning to Maggie suddenly. “We need a real Jedi for this.”

“Kriff,” Maggie muttered. “J’onn.”

Alex nodded. “And Kara.”

KRY-P2 beeped joyfully from the corner, rolling circles around Maggie. Kara, Kara, Kara, it seemed to be shouting. Maggie stopped its victory laps with a gentle hand on the top of its round blue-and-gold dome.

Maggie straightened up, quickly tying her hair back in a low ponytail as she paced back to the cockpit. “I’ll go reroute.”

Alex ducked to pick up and carry the stranger to her and Maggie’s cabin, laying her on their shared cot. She folded her more injured arm up against her chest so she’d be less likely to accidentally roll over on top of it. The woman groaned lightly in protest but didn’t wake, and Alex couldn’t stop the flicker of worry that struck her.

“Don’t worry,” Alex murmured. “We’ll help you. If we can.”

///

Maggie and Alex watched two figures approach across the grayscale landscape of the ice planet, turning from fuzzy smudges in the distance to humanoid figures. When they were close enough, Maggie opened the door to the cargo hold, wrapping her arms around Alex’s shoulders to try to preserve some heat as the freezing air and snow rushed in. The figures hurried to step inside, and the doors swung shut again.

The smaller figure pulled back her furry hood and pulled down the mask covering her face before she decided she couldn’t wait any longer and launched herself at Alex in a flurry of blonde hair.

“Alex, thank god,” she mumbled into the woman’s shoulder. “I was so worried.”

“Kara,” Alex sighed, holding her tightly.

“I felt the disturbance on Korriban—I felt Dreshdae, and I knew you were there.” Kara shook her head, and Alex squeezed her shoulders a little tighter. “I was so scared, Alex.”

“I’m okay,” Alex assured her. “I’m okay.”

“I’m glad to see you’re well, too,” the man accompanying Kara said, gripping Alex tightly by the shoulder.

“Get in here, J’onn,” Kara murmured, and J’onn rolled his eyes lightly before wrapping an arm around Alex’s shoulders, too.

“I hate to interrupt this family reunion,” Maggie cut in. J’onn let Alex go. Kara pulled back, and Maggie dimpled at her. “Hi, Kara.”

“Maggie,” Kara replied, smiling down at her much shorter sister-in-law.

“I wish we were here under better circumstances,” Maggie began, and Kara pulled completely out of Alex’s grasp.

“That’s right, you said something about a woman with information about the Luthors?”

“She passed out in our loading bay, but I moved her to our cabin,” Alex explained, leading Kara and J’onn through the narrow hallway. “She was still unconscious. She’s not in great shape, but we couldn’t exactly bring her back to Bakura without knowing anything about her. So—”

“You brought her here,” J’onn finished for Alex, lingering in front of the doorway. “I’ll see what I can do. You made the right choice, Alex.”

“Thank you again, J’onn,” Alex nodded to him and Kara. Kara spared one last glance at her sister before following her mentor into the room, Alex and Maggie on their heels.

“Oh, Rao,” Kara pushed past J’onn the moment they entered the small cabin. She crouched beside the woman, giving her wounds a once-over. “How long has she been like this?”

“Basically from the moment she boarded our ship,” Alex confessed. “We came here as quickly as possible once we realized we weren’t going to be able to bring her back to base.”

“Our medical supplies are nothing compared to what you guys have,” Kara fussed, prodding at one of the woman’s wounds. “I’m sorry, but she needs to be in bacta now. Reading her mind can wait—she might not make it long enough to be useful if any of this gets infected. J’onn…”

Kara turned to her mentor, who knelt gently next to her, assessing the woman for himself. After a moment, he nodded in agreement.

“Kara’s right. This woman needs medical attention. I’m not going to put her through the mental strain of pulling information from her mind when her energy should be directed towards healing her body.” He stood. “Our medical facilities back at the temple aren’t much, but they’re obviously more than you have available on Ms. Sawyer’s ship.”

“We just need to get her across the airfield and indoors,” Kara reported, as she began to shed her thick layers. “Someone help me get this onto her,” she mumbled, pulling her thick jacket off.

“No, whoa, Kara, you’ll freeze!” Alex argued, and Kara finally looked away from the injured stranger to shoot her sister a look.

“This woman is on the brink of death, Alex. I think I can survive sixty seconds in the cold.”

A gust of wind rocked Maggie’s little ship, creaking across the metal joints. KRY-P2 beeped nervously, rolling a little closer to Maggie’s side.

“Kara, we both know it’s not just cold outside.”

Before the sisters could argue, J’onn was shrugging out of his coat and draping it over the robed stranger before scooping her up in his arms. Her head lolled at a funny angle, and for a second, Alex worried that she might have died on their watch until she reached out with the Force and felt the woman’s life-force still coursing through her. Alex sighed in relief as Kara grudgingly put her jacket back on. Maggie and Alex bundled quickly, and Maggie gave a quick countdown before throwing open the doors to the raging storm outside.

The four individuals stumbled in the knee-deep snow. Kara cast a worried glance at J’onn, who grit his teeth and bit back a pained groan, and at the stranger, whose torn Sith garb certainly wasn’t enough, even with J’onn’s jacket to cover her torso. KRY-P2 let out a sullen whine as its tracks got momentarily stuck in the snow. Alex hip-checked the machine and it rolled alongside her, sticking closer to her side than before. The trip across the airfield could’ve taken seconds or hours. Alex slipped her hand into Maggie’s when her wife stumbled a bit.

The New Jedi temple was a shimmering monolith of glittering ice on the rare clear day the ice planet of Morvolo experienced, a sparkling homing beacon from miles off. That day, it seemed to rise up out of nowhere at all through the snow and clouds. They stumbled inside and the metal doors shut behind them with a creak.

“Lord, this place is almost worse than Hoth,” Alex complained, shaking out her jacket and pulling her scarf down under her chin. Maggie grinned, nudging her wife with her shoulder.

“We didn’t have such an awful time on Hoth—we found ways to keep each other warm.”

“Ew, don’t say it like that!” Kara gagged, pulling her protective mask off again. “I do not want to know what you guys did on Hoth.”

Alex quirked an eyebrow. “Good thing nobody’s telling you, then, huh?”

The sound of footsteps down the corridor forced them to attention.

“Martin, Jax,” J’onn barked, calling out to the approaching Jedi and his padawan, “tell Sara to prep the bacta tanks immediately! We have a medical emergency on our hands.”

“Yes, Master J’onn.” Martin nodded once at his companion before turning down a shiny hallway, Jax on his heels.

“Come on,” J’onn hefted the woman in his arms again, and she groaned only a little bit, leaning into his warmth in the cold, drafty entryway of the Jedi temple of ice. “Let’s get her to medical and see what we can do for her.”

///

Bacta immersion pretty much universally sucked. Sith or no, Kara felt for this mystery woman, she really did. She hated the stuff.

“Kara,” Alex snapped, and Kara’s attention refocused on her sister again. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Um, I am now?” Kara grimaced, and Alex glared wearily at her. “What is it? What were you saying?”

“I asked,” Alex said, and poked her sister in the thigh, “how you’re holding up with… all this.” Alex gestured around, at the walls of the New Jedi temple. Kara sighed, looking down.

“It’s fine.” Kara bit her lip. “I kinda hate it here, though.”

Alex’s look softened, and she opened her arms for her baby sister. Kara leaned into the hug right away, her head coming to rest in the crook of Alex’s neck.

“It’s not Morvolo, per se,” Kara tried to reassure her. Alex smirked a little.

“Really?” she teased. “Because I’ve only been here a couple hours and I hate Morvolo.”

Kara smiled a little. “Okay, so maybe Morvolo is part of it. But more than that, I just… I hate the hiding. And I hate the divisiveness, and feeling like… I don’t know, like I’m somehow to blame for how it all happened.”

“Shh, no.” Alex tightened her grip on her sister. “This is not your fault. You didn’t ask for this, Kara.”

“I know, I know, I just…” Kara sighed. “I know it’s not my fault. I know that, Alex. I guess it’s more like… this whole thing, this whole divide within the Jedi Order, the whole reason we were forced to hide out here on Morvolo—it’s all because of me, whether or not I asked for it. I am the most powerful Jedi in the history of the galaxy, and that’s…”

“A lot of responsibility,” Alex finished, and Kara nodded.

“I was gonna say scary, but yeah,” Kara replied weakly. “J’onn and M’gann think the best thing for me to do is to lay low here and help the Resistance out where I can, which is, like, way better than what the Jedi Council wanted from me back on Coruscant, which was to remain completely neutral and stay out of it, but… I feel like I have all this power, and if I’m not using it to save people, to do what I think is right, then what’s the point of it?”

“It’s hard,” Alex agreed, rocking her sister softly. “But J’onn and M’gann and the rest of the new Council also have a point—you saw what happened when the Luthors learned about the Force baby born on a planet in the Rao system, what happened when they thought it was your cousin. The way Darth Lex pursued Kal-El was—”

“I know,” Kara interrupted Alex swiftly, stiffening at the cold wash of guilt she felt for not being able to protect her big cousin.

“He’s fine now,” Alex reassured Kara. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that up. I just… I guess I mean to say, I don’t know what we’d do if they ever actually found you, Kar,” Alex said. “But I also understand where you’re coming from. Jedi insistence on complete emotional detachment was what forced me to leave. I know exactly how frustrating it can be to have this power and to not be able to use it to do what you think is right.”

“It’s so frustrating,” Kara groaned. “I hate it. Plus, everyone’s always so scared of me turning to the Dark Side, I might do it just to spite them.” Kara sulked. “Why can’t I just come with you and Maggie when you leave? You can take me back to the Resistance base on Bakura and we can binge-eat ice cream and play sabacc until the middle of the night, like we did when we were little. We could go out to that place. It would be so much easier.”

“I don’t think you’d—uh-oh, you’re pouting,” Alex observed, pulling away from Kara.

“Am not!”

“Are too,” Alex teased. “Come on, let’s go down to the kitchens before they close. We can drink some caf and then you can tell me all about what’s going on with Mon-El.” Alex wiggled an eyebrow.

Kara groaned, burrowing her face further into Alex’s shoulder.

“Are you ever actually going to believe me when I tell you it’s nothing?” Kara whined.

“Nope!” Alex grinned cheerily, pulling away from Kara to stand. Kara slumped, and Alex pulled her to her feet. “He bugs me for the location of this godforsaken ice planet like every four days because he wants to visit you. Plus, I’m a human with eyes and I’ve seen the way that boy looks at you, Kara.”

“Okay, but have you maybe paid attention to how I look at him?” Kara grumbled.

“We’ll discuss it in the kitchen,” Alex teased, tugging Kara along by the wrist.

“Wait,” Kara said, stalling in the doorway and looking back towards the bacta tank.

“Go with your sister, Danvers,” Sara said, slipping into the room through a side door. “I’m on hot mystery lady duty now. You’re off the hook.”

“Okay,” Kara agreed suspiciously. Sara grinned and winked at Alex.

“Danvers Senior, you look good these days.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “I’m married, Sara.”

“Worth a shot,” Sara said with a shrug. “Alright, go on. I know there’s still some Neuvian ice cream left down in the kitchens, and I’ve never heard of Kara Danvers passing up an opportunity to eat dessert.”

“Promise you’ll let me know when she’s out of bacta, Sara?” Kara asked, eyes darting to the woman suspended in the tank again. “I want to talk to her.”

“Cross my heart,” Sara swore. “Now go. I’ve got this.”

“C’mon,” Alex said, wrapping an arm around Kara’s shoulders and directing her into the hallway. “Sara’s good at this. Let’s let her work.”

///

Lena awoke in the dark.

That was the first thing she noticed. The next was that the air was just a touch colder than necessarily comfortable, and that she was laid out on a stiff cot and swaddled in scratchy hospital blankets. Her hair had been let down and it smelled sharply of bacta. She winced when she moved to sit up, breathing labored even as she tried to push herself up on her elbows.

“Where am I?” she rasped.

She didn’t expect a response, so her heart rate jumped when she heard a mumbled, “Huh?” cut through the silence of the room.

“Who’s there?” she called, and then suddenly she was blinking in the sudden white light.

“Ugh, I’m sorry about how bright it is,” the blonde woman said, also blinking rapidly and shielding her eyes. Her robes were the traditional cut and shape of the Jedi’s, but inexplicably bright in color—all royal blue and crimson and gold, a color combination that struck her as familiar although she couldn’t place how. “My name is Kara, and you’re at the temple of the New Jedi Order on Morvolo.”

“Morvolo,” Lena repeated, smirking a touch. “So that’s where you’ve been hiding.”

Kara blanched, just slightly.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to share your secret,” Lena winced again, trying a second time to sit up a little more. “How—how did I get here?”

“I—you—my sister,” Kara stuttered. “My sister brought you here from Korriban. Do you remember what happened?”

Memories flashed through Lena’s head, and she shut her eyes. She groaned slightly.

“The coup… didn’t go to plan,” Lena told the girl. “As far as I know, I’m the only one who made it out alive. I boarded a ship, a Resistance ship, I think…”

“The ship belongs to my sister-in-law, actually,” Kara told her. “They brought you here.”

“They’re Jedi?” Lena’s eyebrow drew together in consternation. She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. I could’ve sworn…”

“No, no,” Kara replied. “You’re right. They are Resistance. They just… well, frankly, they weren’t sure whether or not they could trust you, so they brought you to us, but your wounds required… massive amounts of treatment before my mentor Master J’onn felt comfortable probing around in your mind.”

Lena stiffened. “I would rather you didn’t.”

Kara blushed. “It wasn’t my idea,” she confessed. “But they wanted to make sure you were trustworthy before taking you back to Bakura, because they…” Kara trailed off, realizing suddenly what she’d just said. Her eyes widened and she stared down at her hands.

“The Resistance base is on Bakura, then, huh?” Lena mused. Kara paled further. “You know, for a Jedi knight, you really aren’t good at keeping a secret. You can relax, though. Like I said, I’m not interested in sharing any secrets.”

“I believe that,” Kara assured her. “But my sister and her wife need to be absolutely certain before they take you back to the base. My mentor J’onn will come see you in the morning and—”

“No,” Lena shook her head, grimacing as she scooted back up the bed. She was starting to ache around the temples. “Please, I would rather you didn’t do that. I’ll answer any of your questions, and you can tell if I’m lying, but I can’t let you into my mind. I need you to—to trust that I am who I say I am, and that my information is sound. Please.”

“And who is it that you say you are?”

Lena glanced up. The girl’s eyes were so kind, so blue—like the Tatooine sky—and her expression was so unbearably gentle, Lena wasn’t sure what to do with it. Lena took in a deep breath. Her body ached for the effort of it.

“My name is Lena Luthor, and Darth Lex is my brother.”

Those kind blue eyes widened, that gentle expression hardened into something unreadable. Lena hadn’t realized how close Kara had been sitting until she suddenly backed off. Lena shut her eyes. Of course. She’d known people wouldn’t trust her once they knew of her true identity—it had been part of the bargain of surviving the destruction in Dreshdae. Still, rejection wasn’t exactly the first thing she’d wanted to wake up to, even though she knew she was lucky to be waking up at all.

“Hey, no,” Kara rushed back in, suddenly concerned again. “I’m sorry, I just—There are more people who need to hear that than just me. I do believe you—Lena, was it? I’ll be back.”

In a flurry of oddly colorful robes, Kara disappeared. She turned off the light in the med bay as she went—strangely thoughtful of her, all things considered, though Lena doubted she’d be able to sleep again, knowing the conversations that awaited her.

///

Lena knew how to conduct herself before a crowd. She knew—she’d been raised a Luthor (granted, before the Luthors had become the Luthors—back when Lillian had been a ruthless and tactical Galactic Senator and Alexander simply her petulant, privileged son)—so this crowd of Jedi and the pair of Resistance fighters at her bedside shouldn’t have rattled her as much as it did. Kara and J’onn J’onzz, her mentor, as well as Master M’gann M’orzz, the head of the New Jedi council, stood to her left, while Alex paced restlessly beyond the foot of the bed and Maggie fiddled with a variety of medical supplies to bide her time. In the doorway, Lena could spot several more Jedi masters and padawans, all eager to hear what the prodigal Luthor had to say, to know whether she was truly on their side.

“So, let me get this straight,” Alex said finally, planting her feet and turning to Lena. “You’re the daughter of the Empress—sorry, of Lillian Luthor?”

“No,” Lena crossed her arms defensively. “I was adopted by her when I was four, after it was discovered that I was—” Lena paused, picking her words carefully. “—that I was a Luthor.” She finished lamely. “Alexander—Darth Lex—is technically my half-brother. We share a father. Lex is twelve years my senior.”

“Darth Lex has a baby sister,” Maggie repeated, setting a syringe full of green liquid down. “Who’d have thought, huh?”

“I imagine it must come as quite a shock,” Lena said.

“What’s more of a shock is that you want to help us,” Alex continued. “Why? Why would you just… decide to turn on your family like that?”

Lena’s grip on her own arm tightened. She clenched her jaw. “We all have our own reasons for doing what we do, don’t we, Miss Danvers?” When she looked up, Alex’s expression was stony and severe. “Is it so hard to believe I wanted to do the right thing? To choose the side of the light?”

“If you’ll forgive my saying so,” Alex responded, “yes, it kind of is.”

Lena swallowed. Kara looked stricken, but J’onn placed a hand on his padawan’s shoulder. Alex was in charge of this interrogation. It made Lena feel somewhat better that the young Jedi seemed willing to leap to her defense.

“The Luthors have done terrible, atrocious things—Lillian and Alexander,” Lena explained. “The children in that Sith academy outside Dreshdae had their childhoods stolen from them. That’s what they do. They take children and turn them into pawns in their awful war. I had the opportunity to liberate some of those children, and I tried to take that opportunity.”

“Dreshdae burned to the ground, and the Luthors disappeared,” Alex growled. “Those children were never liberated, they died.”

“I said I tried,” Lena murmured, hanging her head. “I never said I succeeded. But I wonder if death might not have been a small mercy anyway. The things that happened there…” Lena shuddered. A flicker of sympathy lit up Alex’s eyes, if only for a moment. “I tried to do what I thought was right.”

“Why now?” Maggie asked. Alex turned to her, and Maggie leaned back against the wall. “It’s a legitimate question. That academy has been up and running for ages, and you never did anything about it then. What happened to make you turn like you did?”

“I was educated at that academy; I like to think I would’ve acted eventually no matter what,” Lena snipped. “But Lillian is building a weapon. Its capabilities… It’s horrific. I knew once it was built, nobody would be able to stop it, so I had to sabotage it before she and Darth Lex could bring it to fruition. It had to be me. I did what was necessary.”

“What kind of weapon?” M’gann pressed.

“A bioweapon—a disease,” Lena admitted. “They called it Medusa. It has the capability of wiping out all life on a planet without destroying the planet itself.” Kara and J’onn exchanged a look, and the lines of M’gann’s face hardened.

“Did it work?” Alex asked, voice softer than it had been. Lena returned her attention to the woman. “Did you sabotage it?”

“I—” Lena’s voice cracked. “I don’t know. It all—the operation went sideways. I was barely able to escape.”

“How much do you know about Medusa?” Alex continued.

“Everything,” Lena replied in a rush. “If the Resistance will have me, I will do anything I can to track down the Luthors and stop them from ever using the Medusa weapon, to get justice for the children who lost their lives back on Korriban. I owe you my life. You could have left me on that planet, or dropped me off on any other planet along the way to fend for myself, but you didn’t. If the Resistance will have me in any capacity, I would be eternally indebted. Even if all I’m needed for is cleaning freshers.”

Alex and Maggie shared a look. Kara stepped forward.

“I believe her,” Kara said, and that seemed to be the final word on the matter.

“If you’re willing to help us, Lena Luthor,” M’gann said, touching Lena’s shoulder gently, “we would be lucky to have you. Your knowledge of the Luthor regime is… well, it goes beyond impressive. You’d be an invaluable asset to the Resistance.”

“And here I was expecting that famed Jedi neutrality.” Lena shot Kara a confused glance, which Kara returned with a sheepish shrug.

“J’onn, Kara, the two of you and Master Kal-El will accompany Miss Luthor, Miss Danvers, and Miss Sawyer to Bakura,” M’gann decided, ignoring Lena’s quip. “Be ready to depart as soon as Miss Luthor is cleared to travel, which should be—within the week, right, Sara?” A freckle-faced blonde nodded from the doorway. “And Jax,” M’gann called over a young Jedi hanging near the door, “please check Miss Luthor’s wounds again and reapply bacta and bandages where needed. With the severity of her trauma, it will be difficult to avoid infection, but we need to make sure we do just that.”

The group swept out of the room without another word. Before she left, Kara lingered in the doorway for a moment. She met Lena’s eyes, and she smiled.

Chapter Text

Lena spent the next few days in the medical ward being aggressively flirted with by the blonde, braid-wearing Jedi named Sara. She was even more aggressively doted on by Kara, who brought her little snow flowers after her hours in the bacta tank and played rounds of horansi and sabacc with a beat up old deck of cards to keep her entertained.

After about four days, Sara and her nursing companions, Jax, Martin, and Cisco, grudgingly deemed Lena fit for travel. She wasn’t anywhere near recovered yet, but she was no longer at risk of slipping into an anemic coma or developing blood poisoning, so she bid her med bay friends goodbye. She boarded Maggie’s ship with Kara, Maggie, Alex, their droid, Master J’onn, and another Jedi knight named Master Kal-El. Kal-El was a tall, broad-shouldered man with perfectly wavy black hair and striking blue eyes the same color and shape as Kara’s. He, too, wore Kara’s absurdly bright trio of colors instead of the traditional Jedi browns, and the familiarity of that color scheme niggled at the back of Lena’s mind again.

The journey from Morvolo to Bakura was long—all the way from the Inner Rim to the far edge of the Outer Rim—and Lena had burned all her energy with anticipatory nerves. She was already exhausted by the time they landed. Kara, meanwhile, all but leapt from Maggie’s ship, almost before they’d even fully landed.

“Kara!”

The blonde Jedi was suddenly accosted by three young men, all whooping as if she were the physical embodiment of the liberation of Coruscant. Kara let herself be picked up by the waist and spun in circles by the tallest of the bunch, a dashingly handsome man with brown skin and a bald head dressed in the signature orange of a Resistance pilot. Kara doled out tight hugs to the other two men before she turned to Lena, who had managed to limp her way out of the ship and was now glancing nervously around the busy base. The trio of men greeted KRY-P2 at Kara’s feet, and the little droid beeped pleasantly up at them. Though she couldn’t be sure, Lena suspected these were the close friends Kara had kept promising would drastically improve their games of sabacc. Apparently, they, Alex, and Maggie had a tradition of drinking and playing games whenever they were all on base at the same time.

“Lena,” Kara waved her over, “come meet everyone! Guys, this is Lena, the mystery woman Alex and Maggie rescued on Korriban. Lena, this is James,” she indicated the tall, handsome one, “the best pilot in the Resistance.”

“Kara, please.” James ducked his head bashfully. “It’s nice to meet you, Lena. I heard Sara Lance has been in charge of fixing you up—I hope her shameless flirting hasn’t been too taxing on you.”

Before Lena could could tell James that she was actually quite fond of Sara Lance’s bluster and bravado and that she’d made a lively companion to Lena’s recovery those first few days, the second man interrupted, “You’re related to Darth Lex, aren’t you?” Lena glanced at Kara for a cue as to how to respond, but Kara simply shook her head and muttered, “Mon-El,” under her breath.

“I am,” Lena answered him quietly after a beat. “I’m his sister.”

“Then that’s all I need to know about you,” Mon-El decided. “I’ll catch up with you later, Kara, but I don’t think I can do this.”

“Mon-El,” Kara said a little more forcefully, reaching out to grab him by the wrist. “Lena almost died!”

“Maybe she should’ve,” he growled, pulling away. “I’m sorry, but the Luthors killed my family and destroyed my planet. Her brother and her mom have taken everything from me. I can’t just forget about that. And I certainly can’t stand here and pretend to think it’s a good thing that she’s here on our base right now. Frankly, I’m surprised that you can.”

With that, Mon-El shoved forcibly past Lena, though there was plenty of room. She winced and recoiled, her lacerations burning where they’d been pressed.

“Awkward,” the third man chimed, standing next to James.

“I am so, so sorry,” Kara rushed to steady Lena. Lena faked a smile.

“It’s to be expected,” Lena replied honestly. “As a member of the Luthor family, I owe something of a debt to the galaxy.”

“But that,” Kara assured Lena, gesturing in the direction Mon-El had disappeared, “is not how you need to repay it. How he acted just now was so inappropriate. I’ll talk to him later for you, I promise. He really is fun when he comes around! I’m sure he’ll warm up to you!”

“It’s alright, Kara,” Lena said gently, laying a hand on Kara’s arm. She leaned in conspiratorially. “I believe you have a third friend waiting to be introduced?”

Kara jolted, remembering James and his companion. “Right!” She turned towards the pair again. “Lena, this is Winn—”

“—Trustiest mechanic in the galaxy,” the spiky-haired, shorter young man finished, grinning widely. “At your service.”

“Nice to meet you, Winn.” Lena accepted his proffered handshake, but gingerly. He had a gentle energy about him. She liked him instantly—she felt at home with him, though she didn’t know him.

“I’m going to be honest,” Winn began, before turning to Kara and James instead. “Can I be honest?” Both Kara and James shrugged. Winn turned back to Lena. “You’re totally not what I expected when Alex radioed in saying that their mystery woman was the sister of Darth Lex. I wasn’t expecting you to be so… so…” Winn gestured about frenetically, wildly looking for the right word.

“Not evil? Lacking in villainy?” Lena supplied, trying to avoid listing to the side as a stinging pain flared up in one of her wounds. Kara righted her gently anyway, letting Lena lean on her shoulder a bit.

“Well, that,” Winn admitted, running a hand through his hair. “But I was thinking more… Normal? Pretty? Quiet? One of those is the word I’m looking for, I’m sure of it.”

Lena felt herself blush. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kara smile at her.

“It looks like, between you and Mon-El, Lena’s had enough honesty for the time being,” James said thoughtfully. “Forgive me for speaking for you, but you look pretty exhausted. How about we get through this tour of the base so you can get some rest? It must’ve been a long journey from Morvolo.”

Lena nodded gratefully. Kara looped her arm under Lena’s so she could provide a little support, although she traded James for the task after her excited jumping had caused Lena to hiss in pain one too many times. Winn and Kara riled each other up like a pair of mooka pups, devolving into inside jokes and bouncy antics as they tried to explain various parts of base to Lena (“And that’s where Winn got his hand bitten by a thwip James and Mon-El and I told him not to feed—” “Okay, but that’s where Kara assured us she could land on her feet after jumping off that railing up there, told us the Force was with her—”). KRY-P2 seemed to agree enthusiastically with everything Kara had to say, if its incessant humming and dinging was anything to go by.

“You doing alright?” James whispered. Lena nodded, grateful that he cared. “We’re almost done, then we’ll show you to the bunks.”

“Thank you,” Lena whispered back. She wasn’t sure how to convey the true depth of her gratitude—to get across that she didn’t just mean thank you for the tour, but thank you for not pressing me about my allegiances, thank you for letting me use you as a crutch while I hobble around even though I’m sure you have two dozen more important tasks to be doing, thank you for not assuming things about me just because I’m a Luthor. James simply smiled down at her.

“Kara trusts you,” he said. “And I trust Kara. Which means I trust you, too.”

Lena couldn’t hold his gaze. She bit her lip, nodded once. Kara turned, face falling when she noticed how drawn and pale Lena had become.

“Hey,” Kara slipped her arm under Lena’s shoulders from her other side, and James let her go—a seamless transition. “The only other place we had left to show you was the cantina, but that can wait. Let’s get you to the med bay.”

“I thought I was getting a bunk,” Lena murmured, exhaustion hitting her suddenly. Winn and James exchanged a glance and bid Lena and Kara a speedy farewell, KRY-P2 on their heels as they went to fix up James’ X-wing.

“Once you’re all fixed up, maybe,” Kara replied. “You’re still pretty Raggedy-Lena looking right now, though. I want Vasquez to take a quick look at you. Is that alright?”

Lena supposed there were worse ideas. She changed the subject. “You were right—I like your friends. Winn and James were kinder than they had to be, and I appreciate that.”

“I’m sorry about Mon-El,” Kara apologized again, face a slight grimace. “He can just be… a little protective of me, sometimes, I think. And he—his planet was destroyed by Darth Lex and the Empress. But I really do think that once I talk to him, he’ll warm up to you. He’s not a bad guy.”

“I understand, really, Kara.” Lena winced as a misstep made one of her cuts ache again.

“You shouldn’t have to, though,” Kara insisted, steering Lena down a side hallway towards the med bay. “He should be giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“He’s not obligated to do that.”

Kara didn’t seem to have a response to that, so she simply grumbled. They turned into the med bay itself and Kara helped ease Lena onto one of the cots while a pair of med-droids and a young woman Kara addressed as Lieutenant Vasquez rushed over to her.

Once she was safely in bed, Lena was out cold almost right away. Kara lingered only for a moment before retreating to seek out Alex again.

///

Lena awoke to the sound of a raging argument—or, not even necessarily an argument; the conversation was too one-sided for that. She kept her eyes closed, listening to a strange female voice bark at someone in clipped quips, listening to—was that Alex?—respond to a comment every minute or so.

“She openly admits to being a Luthor, and you thought, what?” the woman questioned. “Or did you think? I suppose it might be difficult to do that, what with having bantha fodder for brains and whatnot, but I figured that even so it might occur to you that bringing an admitted Luthor into our base of operations was a bad idea.”

“That’s why Maggie and I didn’t bring her here at first,” Alex said forcibly, with all the measured frustration of someone who’s had to repeat themselves several times already.

“That’s right, I’m sorry,” the older woman said, not sounding sorry at all. “You brought her to our most vulnerable allies, to a place where my thirteen-year-old son is currently living and being trained, not to mention Kira, who just so happens to be the most valuable asset the Resistance currently has and the Luthors' number-one target for almost thirteen years now. And then you chose to bring the Luthor here.”

“Kara believes in her,” Alex pointed out. The older woman gave pause at this, allowing Alex to continue. Lena mused that Kara’s faith in her seemed to be a selling point. “Listen, if she’s telling the truth, can you imagine the kind of resource she would be? And so far she’s given us no indication that she’s not completely honest in her desire to take down Lex and Lillian.”

“A good spy never does,” the older woman hummed. “I’m afraid this is one of those situations that simply seems too good to be true.”

“She was also the organizing force behind the uprising at the Sith academy in Dreshdae,” Alex went on. “That, at least, should prove she’s not with Lex and Lillian, even if she’s not necessarily with us.”

Both voices paused. Lena slowly blinked one eye open, and in that instant—

“Well, now that you’ve gotten your beauty rest...”

—a tiny blonde woman marched across the room to her bedside. She looked to be in her fifties, and she had the prim body language and the fitted attire that told Lena she’d been raised on a Core planet. Despite her small stature, the woman seemed to fill the entire room. Her sharp blue gaze sucked the breath out of Lena, and Lena wriggled in place a little, sitting up straighter to accommodate this woman’s silent demand for utmost respect.

“Lena,” Alex began, walking to the other side of her cot. “This is General Cat Grant.”

Lena’s eyes went big. She knew the name—she had been her mother’s most formidable opponent for as far back as she could remember—although she guessed one would be hard-pressed to find someone in the galaxy who hadn’t heard of the infamous General Cat Grant. “General Grant, it’s a true honor to meet you.”

“Save the formalities, Miss Luthor,” Cat snapped, and waved Lena’s greeting off with a manicured hand, “I need to know everything you know about where your brother and his mother might have gone, what this Medusa weapon is capable of, and what exactly you meant to achieve in Dreshdae, and I need to know it two days ago.”

“I—I have no idea where they could’ve gone,” Lena confessed.

“Then let’s start with a question you can answer. Tell me everything you know about the Medusa weapon. Danvers says you attempted to sabotage it?”

“That was what the coup on Korriban was about, yes,” Lena began. “I needed to denature a specific isotope in order to render the bioweapon inert, but I have no idea if I was successful—as I’m sure you became aware, things went haywire. My brother chased me off the weapon with his lightsaber and I wasn’t able to properly finish the job.”

“That’s… upsetting,” Cat growled. “Especially considering you blew the covers of my best agents in the process, and as a result, we have no idea where your brother and mother went. Have you been trained in the Force? Were you ever a Sith apprentice? Are you Force-sensitive in any capacity?”

“No,” Lena answered quickly, and a cold tingle ran up her neck.

“So you’re no help in tracking them,” Cat concluded. “We’ve no use for you.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lena responded, folding her arms. “Even though I may not be able to reach them through the Force, I know my brother and my mother. And whether or not my attempts at sabotage worked, I’m still your best bet for figuring out how to beat that weapon.”

Cat regarded Lena with a scrutinizing eye, shifting her weight from one hip to the other and tapping her fingernails on the end of Lena’s bed. She pursed her lips.

“I suppose you’re right,” Cat admitted. “You understand why I’m not eager to trust your motives, Miss Luthor.”

“I do,” Lena responded quietly.

“Then you understand that one infraction, and you’re under arrest by the Resistance, indefinitely and without trial,” Cat continued.

Lena nodded. “I would do the same.”

Cat raised an eyebrow. Lena locked eyes with her.

“I want you working with Danvers and Sawyer to track them down. With your understanding of your family and Danvers’ and Sawyer’s intel, hopefully we’ll be able to make quick work of understanding the nature of their weapon and finding their new location.”

Alex and Lena nodded at one another.

“Danvers, I want you in the command center in fifteen minutes. Luthor, I want you resting until Vasquez clears you, and then I want you in the command center, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alex nodded, hustling out of the room. Cat took her time, however, floating lazily about Lena’s bedside like some sort of glamorous jellyfish. She took a deep, dramatic breath, leaning against the end of Lena’s bed, before looking at the young woman.

“Pity, isn’t it, that you never learned how to utilize the Force?” Cat asked, and that tingly feeling returned to the back of Lena’s neck—like someone pressing a wet ice cube to the top of her spine. “Kira Danvers told me you didn’t want to have your mind read, but her sister Alex told me it was impossible to read your mind. Now, Alex may not be a Jedi, but I still find that strange—the fact that someone who supposedly isn’t Force-sensitive is able to block out a fairly formidable user of the Force. Don’t you?”

Lena refused to be cowed. Her eyebrows drew together, and her gaze never wavered from Cat’s. “You’d be surprised, the ways you’re forced to adapt when you’re a child being raised by Empress Lillian and Darth Lex.”

Cat’s expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes softened just a touch.

“I would just hope you weren’t holding out on us because of fear,” Cat said. “You can’t live in fear, Miss Luthor. If you’re able to find them and you don’t because you’re afraid of them finding you… ” Cat trailed off, but the accusation hung in the air. Lena clenched her jaw, eyes casting down. “I’ll leave you be, Miss Luthor. You should rest.”

When Cat turned to leave, Lena’s eyes flicked up, following the General’s back until she was out of her line of sight.

“You can’t live in fear,” Lena repeated to herself, and it wheedled her. She leaned back into the pillows again and mulled the conversation over.

///

Lena Luthor had only ever really used the Force for one thing in her entire life, and that was to hide.

She hadn’t exactly lied to the formidable General—she had never been a Sith apprentice, although she’d gone through many of the brutal teachings of the Sith academy nonetheless, and she’d never been formally trained in how to use the Force. She wasn’t incredibly sensitive (she remembered Lillian’s distinct disappointment at this discovery—the only reason she’d allowed her and Alexander’s father to bring his lovechild home at all was the promise of little Lena’s Force sensitivity). She was certainly never sensitive enough to have made a half-decent Sith or Jedi apprentice.

Lena had always been quite skilled at hiding, though.

She’d never so much as attempted seeking.

She’d spent two days in the med-bay before being declared fit for work by Vasquez, and had spent the next three mostly-sleepless days and nights poring over the intel Maggie and Alex had collected while undercover at the Sith academy and comparing it to what she knew from years of living with Lillian and Lex. At this point, they knew enough about the Medusa weapon to construct one of their own out of kitchen scraps if they had to, but the three of them hadn’t even the blurriest idea of where the Luthors and their forces could be hiding out.

But Lena was staring down the barrel of her fourth sleepless night in a row, and she was starting to wonder if Cat was right, if she was letting her fear keep her from doing the right thing.

“You alright, Lena?”

She hadn’t even noticed Kara arrive, and she did her best to smile cheerily. Kara saw right through her.

“You’re starting to look pale again,” Kara worried. “Are you feeling alright?”

“It’s the lack of sleep,” Lena confessed. “I’ve been working with your sister and Maggie for days now and we’re still no closer to tracking down my brother and Lillian.

Kara laid a gentle hand on top of Lena’s and slid a fresh mug of caf over the tabletop towards her.

“This was yours,” Lena said, pointing to the cup and frowning.

“Yes, and now it’s yours,” Kara answered with a grin. “I can get another. You seem like you need it more than me.”

“Thank you,” Lena sighed, taking a small sip off the top.

“What are friends for?” Kara giggled, smiling that sunshine smile across the table at Lena. Lena smiled back.

Friends. She called us friends! Lena thought, trying to think back to the last time someone had referred to her as a friend and coming up blank. She hid her widening smile in the cup of caf and shook off the exuberant glee as quickly as she could.

What are friends for? If she were really Kara’s friend—or Alex’s, or Maggie’s, or James’, or Winn’s, for that matter, though she wasn’t sure all of them quite considered her a friend yet—then she shouldn’t be afraid. She should be doing all she could to help these people. She owed them her life. Cat’s voice was there in her head again: You can’t live in fear.

“Excuse me, Kara,” she said, pushing the caf back towards her friend. Kara tilted her head a touch to the side, a silent where are you going? that Lena wasn’t about to answer. Kara took a sip from the opposite side of the mug. “I’m such an idiot, I just remembered, I had a—um, a meeting. With Alex and Maggie, to continue discussing Darth Lex and Lillian. I’ll talk to you later, though, yeah?”

“Of course!” Kara replied brightly, although she still looked a little concerned. “Do you want to come to game night? Alex, Maggie, Winn, James, Mon-El, and I were going to play sabacc and dejarik and stuff in Alex and Maggie’s bunk room tonight. You could probably just tag along with them after your meeting!”

Lena had the distinct feeling of having been caught in a lie, which bothered her since she wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. She smiled tightly at Kara.

“That… sounds nice,” she agreed. “I’ll see if I’m not too tired.”

“Take care of yourself, Lena,” Kara told her sincerely. “I hope we’ll all see you there.”

“Yes, I hope I can rally.”

Lena nodded at Kara before slipping off, back to the meager bunk room they’d assigned her at the end of a long hallway. She wondered if it hadn’t been meant as a janitorial closet at some point or another, but it had a small sink and a cushy mattress and was just a couple doors down from the communal fresher, so Lena could hardly complain.

For the first time since she was eleven years old, Lena sat down and meditated and reached out for her brother through the Force.

It felt like re-learning how to walk. The pathways felt weak, shaky—like rotted rope bridges instead of the strong paved roads they used to feel like. Her mind wanted to snap closed again, to throw up those iron walls she’d worked so hard to construct. She fumbled through the dark, feeling her way across the Force-signatures of her new friends (there was Kara, having dinner with Alex. Crap. She’d have to show up at Game Night with an excuse now.) and probed the darkness for her brother.

Where did you go, Alexander? she thought. Where are you hiding?

The thread that she’d used to feel that tethered the two of them together felt worn, frayed. Her sense of him petered out the further she tried to reach for him, and exhaustion was starting to overtake her, to drag her back into her own head like gravity.  

By the time she’d fully retreated back into her own mind, she was drained. Nevertheless, she refused to shield her mind from him again. Cat was right: you can’t live in fear.

///

When Lena showed up to Game Night, everyone was already there.

“I thought you said you had a meeting with Alex and Maggie,” Kara said, pulling her aside and looking a little hurt. “If you didn’t want to talk to me, you could’ve just said so.”

“I must’ve gotten confused,” Lena lied smoothly, internally frantic at the idea that Kara thought she wouldn’t want to talk to her. “Lack of sleep and everything, I promise. When I showed up to the command center and they weren’t there, I realized my mistake, so I went back to my bunk to nap.”

Kara seemed to accept the excuse, the worried lines of her face smoothing over as she turned to the group and announced, “Lena’s here!”

Winn whooped. “Ready to lose shah-tezh, Lena?”

Lena smirked.

“Get the girl a drink first,” Alex suggested as Maggie did exactly that, handing Lena a tumbler of what she whispered was, “James’ nice stuff.”

“I heard that,” James called.

Only Mon-El seemed to fuss that Lena was there, and he skulked around the back corners like an ornery cat when he saw how comfortable everyone seemed with her. Lena couldn’t help but feel a little sorry—she hadn’t meant to ruin his evening, really.

“Hey,” Kara nudged her shoulder after Lena finished off a second tumbler of Corellian fire whiskey. “He’ll come around. I promise.” For a moment, Lena frowned until she remembered that Kara had promised not to read her mind without her permission. Kara was just starting to get decent at reading her, she supposed, and she wasn’t sure whether that should make her feel as light and airy as it did. “Oh, and Winn’s been dying to play shah-tezh with someone but he’s really good at it and he can be kind of a jerk winner, so nobody wants to play him. Are you any good? Because, and this is going to sound mean, I really want to see him lose.”

Lena smirked. “I’m decent at shah-tezh.”

“Bring it, Luthor!” Winn called from his place on the floor in front of the shah-tezh board. Lena sat down cross-legged in front of him. He dramatically cracked his knuckles, craning his neck from side to side. “You’re the only one I have left to beat. Let’s do this!”

Kara and Alex cheered when Lena finally beat Winn after a fraught, hour-long game, breaking his twenty-eight-game streak. Kara even coaxed Mon-El into playing a game of Holochess against her and Lena (losing to Lena didn’t really endear her to him, even though that was obviously Kara’s goal in getting them to face off, but she surprised herself by not minding all that much).

When Winn drunkenly walked her back to her little bunk at the end of the night, Lena felt perfectly content for the first time since she was a young child. She fell asleep satisfied and comfortable, unguarded and smiling.

Chapter Text

“Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lena!”

Kara rushed through the doorway to Lena’s bedside. Lena whimpered, her body tense and twisted in the sheets. Her hair was stringy with sweat, her cheeks and forehead shimmering. Most of her wounds had healed enough that she’d been cleared to work, but a thin line of blood was seeping through a laceration on her side and into the fabric of her nightshirt. Kara was worried that if she hadn’t already torn her stitches, she might yet.

“Lex,” Lena choked in her sleep. “Lex, no.” Her breathing grew shallower and shallower. Kara gripped Lena by the shoulder, but the bleeding cut on the other woman’s side made her nervous. Careful to avoid aggravating any injuries, Kara shook Lena awake.

“Lena, wake up,” Kara demanded.

Lena sat up suddenly, shivering and gulping down air like she hadn’t taken a breath in years. Her gaze found Kara and she scrambled back, hitting her head loudly on the wall. “Ow!” Her eyes welled.

“Hey, hey, whoa,” Kara held her hands up to show they were empty, to show Lena she wasn’t a threat. “You’re okay.” Lena continued to hyperventilate. “You’re okay, right, Lena?”

It took another moment for Lena to figure out who was in the room with her. “Kara?” She blinked a couple of times, the threat of tears receding.

“I think you were having a nightmare,” Kara explained, gently easing up so she could sit on the foot of Lena’s bed, still giving Lena adequate space. The other woman clutched her pillow against her chest, knees pulled in tightly. “I wasn’t reading your mind, it was just…”

“Pretty obvious, I’m sure,” Lena finished, chewing on a lip.

“I could feel your distress from down the hall and I came to check on you,” Kara explained. “Was that okay?”

Lena contemplated for awhile. She wasn’t sure. It was better to wake up with Kara there than alone. She just hated feeling like Kara’s burden.

“It’s nice, having you here,” Lena said finally. A bit of tension seemed to leave Kara at that, but Lena still felt coiled. A sense of too much buzzed in her veins, like she might combust at any second. She bit her lip.

“Do you hug?” Kara asked, scooting a couple inches closer to Lena. “When I used to have nightmares, Alex would hold me and we would talk about it until I felt like it was all out of my system. I don’t know if that would help you.”

“I, um—maybe,” Lena admitted. “I wasn’t exactly offered a lot of hugs in the Luthor household, or the Sith academy.”

Kara looked impossibly sad at the confession, but she opened her arms wide for Lena. “It’s a good thing you’re friends with me now, because between you and me, I give the best hugs. Everybody says so.”

Lena smiled a quiet half-smile, setting her pillow aside, and scooted forward to wrap her arms gingerly around Kara’s middle. When Kara’s arms came up around Lena’s shoulders and tugged her in, Lena relaxed entirely, eyes fluttering shut. Kara rubbed small circles down Lena’s back.

“You can talk about it, if you think it’ll help,” Kara suggested after awhile. “Or I can talk to you about something, if you’d rather be distracted. Or, I guess we can just stay quiet for a little bit longer. It’s up to you.”

Lena didn’t answer right away. When she did, she said simply, “It was Alexander—no, Lex.” She’d been working on separating the brother she’d loved growing up from the power-mad Sith Lord he’d become, but it was more challenging some days than others. Calling the two versions of him by different names helped with that. “He was strangling me. He forced me to watch as he… as he tortured you. He told me he was going to make me kill you…” Lena trailed off. Her arms tightened almost unconsciously around Kara’s middle. “Then you woke me up, I guess.”

“Gosh, Lena…” Lena shifted so she was pressed a little closer to Kara, and Kara sighed. “It’s okay. I’m right here. I’m not in any danger,” Kara assured her. “I’m kinda glad I woke you up, though.” Lena began to pull back.

“I’m sorry I woke you up, though,” Lena rasped. “I haven’t had a nightmare in years, and never like that before. I had no idea—”

“Hey, no,” Kara said, running her fingers through Lena’s hair and scratching at the base of her skull, effectively trapping her there. Lena relaxed back into her. “Seems like you needed me. I’m happy to help.”

Lena nodded, letting her eyes fall shut again. She sighed heavily, imagined the fear coming out of her mouth like a cloud of smoke. Finally, she took a deep breath and asked, “What did you dream about? You said you used to have nightmares.”

“I did—sometimes still do. It’s always the destruction of my planet,” Kara answered. She said it like she was talking about something out of a fairy tale—contemplative, just a touch melancholy, but not devastated like Lena might’ve expected. “I was a week away from turning thirteen. My planet, Krypton, was destroyed by Luthor forces.” When Lena tensed a little, Kara’s hand switched direction on her back, from clockwise to counterclockwise. “I wasn’t there, of course. My cousin Kal-El and I—We didn’t see it happen. We were both in training on Devaron. But I remember—I felt it. Billions of lives, all connected to mine, just… gone in an instant. My mother, my father…” Kara trailed off. “I used to wake up crying almost every night when I was a kid, just reliving that feeling.”

“I’m so sorry, Kara,” Lena whispered, tightening her arm around Kara’s middle. “I’m so sorry. If I could’ve done something to stop it, I—”

“Lena, you were, like, what, eleven? Twelve?” Kara interrupted. She sounded almost amused. Lena shrugged. She must’ve been eleven—eleven was when she vowed to shut herself off from Alexander and Lillian, when she’d stopped using the Force entirely. Kara continued: “I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you all this to make you feel bad.”

“I know,” Lena said, though her voice sounded a little wobbly.

“This isn’t working,” Kara decided, releasing Lena after squeezing her shoulders one last time. Lena rubbed her own arms as she sat back up, pretending she didn’t already miss Kara’s enveloping warmth. “You’re still sad.”

“I’m alright,” Lena insisted.

“No, you’re not,” Kara said, hand falling to Lena’s knee. “I’m sorry. You should try to get a little more sleep. I know Cat has been running you kinda ragged.”

“I don’t think I can,” Lena argued. “Not after—I can’t remember having a nightmare like that in my entire life.”

“Hm...” Kara tapped fingers against Lena’s thigh, a small crinkle between her eyebrows, and Lena suddenly wished she hadn’t spoken. Before Lena could redact anything, though, Kara snapped her fingers and stood, grinning widely. “I know! Come with me!”

She offered Lena a hand, which Lena took tentatively, letting herself be pulled to her feet and pulled along behind Kara.

“Oh, wait,” Kara said, pausing in the doorway. “Put your shoes on.”

Lena wordlessly did as she was told, then followed Kara out into the hallway. She trailed Kara through the night-silent base, through the cantina and the hangar, before they reached a small metal door on the far end of the hangar.

“Are we supposed to be doing this?” Lena asked nervously, remembering Cat’s one-infraction rule. Kara hummed as she pushed open the door with a loud, echoing click.

“It’s not against the rules or anything,” Kara explained, “as long as we don’t do it too often. The locals on Bakura know we’re here—we go into Salis D’aar for supply runs periodically—but we still try to keep a bit of a low profile.”

The air outside was mild and humid, just a little bit sticky on Lena’s skin, and it smelled like sweet, intoxicating namana blossoms. A sudden, distinct memory washed over her—Lillian yelling at Alexander for sneaking Lena namana fruit candies, while Lionel fussed over her, worried his six-year-old might become addicted to the drug-like fruit. They must have been in Salis D’aar for Lillian’s senatorial duties. Later that night, Alexander had come to her room looking the very picture of contrition. He’d pulled her into his lap and whispered to her what she now knew were Sith legends, but at the time were simply bedtime stories. Lena stood in the doorway for just a moment, just breathing, before Kara took her gently by the hand and led her over the threshold, letting the door swing shut behind them with a heavy, metallic cthunk.

“It smells beautiful,” Lena sighed. Kara dropped Lena’s hand and leapt up, hovering for a moment as she snagged a handful of the tree’s yellow leaves and blossoms. She smoothed out one of the flowers and tucked it gently behind Lena’s ear.

“There,” Kara beamed, tucking a matching flower behind her own ear before scattering the rest of the leaves and petals on the ground.  Kara twined their fingers back together and led the way as they marched uphill on a narrow, dusty path. Occasionally, the pair had to fight their way through thickets of undergrowth, but Kara seemed to have a goal in mind and Lena was content to follow, just breathing in the namana-scented air.

“How are you adjusting, though?” Kara asked after walking in silence awhile, though she spoke like they’d already been talking for hours. It startled Lena a bit, and Kara’s fingers tightened around hers in brief, silent apology. “It seems like everyone really likes you!”

“I suppose,” Lena agreed. “I like the work. I like feeling like I’m doing something to help right this wrong my family has done. But I just… Nobody trusts me. Sometimes that can get frustrating.”

“That’s not true!” Kara argued quickly. “Alex and Maggie and James—”

“Trust me on your account,” Lena interrupted. “Don’t get me wrong, Kara, I appreciate it. And I understand why people wouldn’t trust me or want me around. I can’t begrudge people like Mon-El when I know what my brother and my mother have done to their homes, to their lives. I would be exactly the same way, if the roles were reversed. But… I guess it just gets tiring sometimes.”

“I trust you,” Kara said firmly. Lena smiled, stopping in place and pulling Kara back towards her. Bakura’s twin moons hung in the sky behind Kara’s head, one full and one a crescent sliver.

“Thank you.” The sincerity of her own gratitude was overwhelming, and Lena glanced down at her feet for just a moment before looking back up at Kara. “For trusting me. It can’t be easy, trusting a Luthor, especially after what happened to Krypton, but…” Lena shrugged a little helplessly.

“You’re not just a Luthor to me,” Kara tugged on her hand, pulling her just a little closer. “You’re Lena Luthor. The Lena part is the part that matters to me.” Kara hovered over her for a beat, their eyes locked in the dark. “People are already starting to realize how incredible you are, Lena. They’ll get there.” Lena nodded shallowly, and Kara smiled slowly. “Anyway,” Kara began again, walking backwards and tugging Lena along after her, “we’re still not there yet. I’m taking you to my favorite place on this whole planet. You’re gonna love it.”

Kara babbled the rest of the way there. Lena giggled, watched as the flower behind Kara’s ear fell and tangled in her loose curls, listened to the bright and cheery sound of her friend’s voice.

“Alright, we just have to make it over this one steep hill and we’ll be there,” Kara promised. Kara had to drop Lena’s hand in order to scramble up a sheet of scree. Lena could smell fresh water in the air. She followed just behind Kara, careful to avoid any particularly loose-looking patches of pebbles. As the hill started to flatten out, Kara offered Lena a hand, and then the whole valley became visible.

It was still night, but the stars were starting to disappear as the sky began to lighten again, a reminder that Bakura’s days were quicker than many inhabited planets’. There would be a hike back down again, but a narrow body of water too big to be a creek but too small to be called a river wove its way through a thick grove of bright yellow namana trees, sparkling in the distance.

“When the New Jedi Order split off from the real Jedi,” Kara began, sitting down, “we came here for awhile. I was about eighteen at the time. The Resistance took us in because the whole point of the split really came down to Jedi involvement in the fight against the Luthor regime. Well, that, and my involvement—there’s a lot of concern in the Order about me, specifically, and the role I should play in everything.” Kara didn’t elaborate further. Lena sat, too. “Alex had just left the Jedi Order a few months earlier. She actually quit her training to come fight in the Resistance, so she had been living here for about three months by then. My second night here, I had a nightmare and this,” Kara motioned to the landscape spilling out around them, “is where she took me. Since then, I always make a point of coming here when I’m on Bakura whenever stuff with the Resistance gets too overwhelming.”

“It’s beautiful,” was all Lena could say, although that didn’t seem nearly enough to capture it. Some species of bird native to Bakura was calling in the distance, and Lena was tempted to lean her head on Kara’s shoulder and soak in the moment. She didn’t; she curled her arms around her knees and rested her head there instead.

“It’s only ten more minutes of walking to get to the river,” Kara said, standing up. Lena hesitantly stood, too, glancing at the trail back.

“Is it safe to go much further from base?” she asked.

“I’m a Jedi knight, Lena,” Kara answered with an eye-roll. “I can protect you.”

“You’re a padawan,” Lena mumbled, eyebrows raised but letting Kara take her by the hand again.

“I’m the most powerful Force-user in recorded history,” Kara teased, pulling Lena along. “We’ll be fine.”

Ten more minutes of Kara-babble later, they reached the shore of the river. Kara had led them to a wide, sweeping elbow with shallow, sandy banks. They had to stumble and scrape their way through the thick underbrush. The water was murky, lazy-paced, but Kara immediately threw off her heaviest robe and dove right in. The royal blue linens she wore underneath swirled at the top of the water around her arms and shoulders, and her golden hair glistened in what was fast becoming morning light.

“Come on in!” Kara called. Lena stalled, uncertain. “Lena.” Kara waved for her again, and Lena took off her shoes, wriggling her toes in the pinkish-brown sand.

“I’m fine right here,” Lena called back.

“Come on, Lena,” Kara whined. “The water’s so warm this time of year!”

Lena made for the water, but changed her mind, deciding to sit down on the packed beach instead.

“You have fun, Kara,” she insisted. “I’ll be here.”

Kara sighed dramatically, flopping back into the water so she could float lazily on her back. “Fine, I guess,” she sighed again, all pouty and dejected. Lena smothered a giggle. “I guess I’ll just have to…”

The very next moment, a gush of water broke over Lena’s head, soaking her hair and her clothes, and Lena jumped to her feet.

“What!?”

Kara was snickering, and she ducked her face halfway under the water, watching Lena like a crocodile. Understanding dawned: Kara had just used the Force to soak her with river water. Lena laughed.

“Why, you—”

Lena waded knee-deep into the river. Kara was right; it was warm, but it was also mucky, and she placed her hands on her hips.

“Happy now?” she demanded, raising an eyebrow.

Kara raised one back. “Are you?”

For one brief, shining moment, Lena was.

And then she caught sight of something shiny and white in the underbrush.

“Kara, watch out!”

Lena heard three things in quick succession:

The sound of a blaster going off.

The splash of Kara hitting the water.

The rustle of the Stormtrooper disappearing as Lena dove into the water after her friend.

She was lucky the water was shallow and lazy, and she was able to haul Kara back onto the beach easily enough. Kara winced, breathing shallow and bleeding heavily from her shoulder.

“What—what happened? What was that?” she asked Lena through gritted teeth.

“We need to get back to base,” Lena said urgently. “Can you run? Walk, even?”

“What was that, Lena?”

“Stormtrooper,” Lena replied. “We need to warn them back at base. I think Lex and Lillian have found us.”

///

By the time they made it back to the Resistance base, Lena and Kara were both bleeding—Lena moderately from the ripped stitches on her side and Kara profusely from her blaster wound.

“Sawyer, restrain the Luthor girl, I don’t have time for this,” Cat growled. “Kira, I need you in the med-bay, now.”

“You’re not listening!” Kara insisted angrily. When Cat gave Kara a scathing look, Kara stuttered a little, fiddling with her hands. “General Grant, please. Lena isn’t behind this! She saved my life! She could’ve left me in that river, but she didn’t.”

“Kara’s right,” James insisted. “If Lena were really a Luthor spy, she would have left Kara for dead, and she wouldn’t have come back to base to warn us.”

“I don’t care,” Cat sighed, sounding melodramatically put-upon and beleaguered despite the actual severity of the situation. “It’s like I work with a pack of tauntauns, how little you people understand. We can worry about pointing fingers later. Right now we need to be able to safely evacuate the base, and that means that she needs to be out of the way, just in case.”

“Sorry, Lena,” Maggie whispered as she clapped metal cuffs around Lena’s wrists. Lena was starting to shiver, and Kara shot her a sorry look over her shoulder.

“Sawyer, lock her up in your cargo hold. Be ready for departure in under ten minutes,” Cat ordered. Cat spared another look at Lena. “And for god’s sake, tell someone to get her a blanket or a towel or something. That shivering is just on the verge of becoming annoying.”

“Come on,” Maggie said gently, solemnly, leading Lena with a firm hand on her shoulder and cuffing her to a pipe in the hold.

“Maggie,” Lena called out as the Resistance spy turned to leave. Maggie turned back, lingering in the doorway. “Do you really believe I led them here?”

“Honestly?” Maggie ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know what to believe. I can’t let myself think about it too much right now.”

Lena slid to the floor, hands chained just a little uncomfortably behind her, wet hair chilling the back of her neck still. Maggie stepped out of the ship and back into the anxious buzz of a base preparing to abandon everything.

Then the doors of the base exploded inwards. Everyone screamed.

///

“Go, go, go, go!” Maggie ushered as many people into her cargo hold as possible. “Alex, get the engines running! Where’s James?”

“Where’s Kara?” Lena asked, struggling to stand.

“He’s piloting one of the X-wings, he’s going to try to keep the Luthor forces off our tail,” Winn answered Maggie. “He’s got Krypto, and he’ll contact me if things start to go south.” Maggie nodded and disappeared. The ship began to hum and shake under Lena’s feet.

“Where’s Kara?” Lena repeated herself. The engines were starting to roar and the whole crowd was thrown sideways as Maggie took a sharp turn.

“I’m here!” Kara burst through the wobbling crowd, eyes finding Lena. Her face fell at the sight of Lena, still soaked and chained to a pipe, bleeding through her thin white tank-top where she’d ripped her stitches. Lena’s eyes roved over Kara, too—saw the ginger way she held her arm, saw how tightly she clutched the wound at her own shoulder. Still, Kara sighed out the most pitying, sorrowful, “Oh, Lena.”

“Kara, are you okay?”

“Susan, I think Lena ripped her stitches—”

“Kara, are you okay? ”

“—and can someone please unchain her? She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Kara—”

Something hit the side of the ship (fire from a Luthor vessel?) and everyone was thrown again. Lena hit the wall behind her and winced.

When she looked up again, Mon-El had reached out to steady Kara, checking her over to make sure she was okay.

“I’m fine, Mon-El,” she assured him, extricating herself from his grasp to examine the restraints around Lena’s wrists. “Help me get Lena out of these cuffs, she doesn’t need to be in them.”

“Doesn’t she?” Mon-El asked, a hint of hostility in his eyes. “I’m sorry, but are you seriously naïve enough to think it’s a coincidence that the Luthors find us just weeks after she comes to our base, when before this they didn’t know where we were for years? Are you honestly that blinded by your little girl-crush on her?”

Kara’s face twisted in anger, but Winn stepped in quickly.

“Hey, man, don’t talk to her like that,” Winn placed a hand on Mon-El’s chest and directed him to step backwards about a foot. “We’re all stressed out right now. It’s not Kara’s fault.”

“No, it’s that Luthor’s fault,” Mon-El insisted, nostrils flaring as his eyes fell on Lena.

“You don’t know that,” Kara stepped in front of Lena, hands on her hips in a posture that reminded Lena suddenly of Alex.

“Kara, you don’t know it’s not Lena, either,” Winn placated his other friend. “Not that I want her to be behind it, or anything, but you’ve gotta admit, it’s a little suspicious. We can’t just… let her walk because you think she’s innocent. We need to figure out what the truth is.”

Lena didn’t love being talked about like she wasn’t there at all, but she didn’t have much to say. Mon-El was right to suspect her, but she also knew she hadn’t done anything intentionally wrong and too much defense would look like guilt.

There was a fury in Kara’s posture, something barely-contained glowing in her eyes. “Fine,” she spat, folding her arms tight.

“Kara,” Vasquez interrupted, looking jittery and nervous. “I still need to finish patching your shoulder up.”

“Of course,” Kara acquiesced, although she still looked tense. “You need to look at Lena’s stitches on her side next, though. I think she tore them when we were running back.”

///

Kara sat next to her, but didn’t touch her cuffs. At some point after Vasquez had patched the both of them up, Kara had wrapped her thick red cloak around Lena’s shoulders to try to stem her shivering. Maggie and Alex had made the jump to hyperspace, and Alex was now fretting about the hold while Maggie steered them to a location only pilots were allowed to know.

“I need to tell you something,” Lena said, voice low so only Kara could hear. She kept jumping every time someone in the hold spoke too loudly, and Kara noticed.

“If it’s Mon-El, trust me, I don’t—Lena, he’s not—he doesn’t mean—”

“It’s kind of about what Mon-El said,” Lena interrupted the beginnings of a ramble. “I’m worried he might be right, that I may have led Darth Lex to you all, albeit unintentionally.” She couldn’t bring herself to look at Kara, so she tilted her head back against the wall so she could look at the ceiling instead. The warm red fabric bunched behind her neck. “What if that nightmare I had wasn’t just a nightmare? What if—what if he got inside my head, Kara?”

“Alex told me your mind is basically impossible to get into,” Kara said. “It must’ve been someone else. And… even if it was you, it wasn’t your fault. Darth Lex is the most powerful Sith Lord in the galaxy, the right-hand man of the Luthor Empress.”

“I did something that might’ve been foolish, though,” Lena confessed. “Something that may have allowed him to find me.”

When Lena lowered her head, Kara was looking at her, and Lena allowed herself only a moment to meet that comforting gaze before she broke it again.

“I’ve never been incredibly sensitive to the Force,” she began. “I was never very attuned to it, even though Lillian… the only reason she allowed my father to take me home was because she thought I would be. My birth mother was, apparently, quite a powerful Sith Lord in her own right. Not that I ever knew her. But I do have some level of sensitivity, even though it’s weak.” Kara nodded in Lena’s periphery to show she was listening. “I stopped using the Force for anything when I was eleven, after my father died. Perhaps around the time Lex and Lillian destroyed the entire Rao system. The only thing I ever used it for after that was hiding. I became quite adept at shielding my mind from Lex and Lillian, from anyone. For years, I never let my mind open back up to the Force.”

“Until you came to Bakura,” Kara finished, and Lena looked up with her in moderate surprise. “I wasn’t joking when I told you I was the most powerful Force user in history. I felt your presence that night you finally beat Winn at shah-tezh. You were looking for your brother.”

“Not to tell him where the Resistance was hiding, I swear,” Lena rushed to explain, and Kara nudged her shoulder, calming her a little.

“I know,” Kara sighed. “I believe you. I think you were looking for him because you and Alex and Maggie weren’t making any progress, and you hadn’t slept in several days and you were all exhausted.” Kara nudged Lena again. “Am I getting warmer?”

Lena nodded tiredly. “I’m worried I didn’t shield my mind properly after that. It’s been so long…” Lena shook her head.

“It’ll be okay,” Kara murmured. “I know it’s not your fault, Lena.”

At that moment, Maggie burst into the cargo hold, a wide, dimpled smile on her face.

“We did it!” she shouted, grabbing Alex around the waist. “We outran the Luthor ships!”

A cheer went up, and Alex leaned down to kiss Maggie. Maggie spun Alex around, dipping her to kiss her more soundly, and a second, more jeering cheer went up in the hold.

“Oh, piss off, Brian,” Maggie growled at the specific alien rebel who had the nerve to wolf-whistle Alex Danvers and Maggie Sawyer. She seemed too relieved to put any venom into her voice, though. Lena found herself slumping in relief, too. “We managed to get a message through to the New Jedi council, they’ll be meeting us at our undisclosed location, just in case the temple on Morvolo has been compromised as well. M’gann and the rest of the New Jedi Order will be there when we arrive.”

It was Kara’s turn to slump in relief, knocking shoulders with Lena.

“We did it,” Kara mumbled, almost unbelieving.

Lena took a deep breath, sighing out her nerves. Maggie kissed Alex again before the two of them returned to piloting the ship.

Chapter Text

The Resistance finally landed on a planet thick with jungle. They touched down in a large grassy clearing, but everywhere beyond its edges was choked with impenetrable walls of vegetation. People and droids were already hard at work digging a series of tunnels to turn into a semi-underground base, and pilots were piling leaves over their spacecraft to camouflage them. Maggie unchained Lena from her place in the hold of the Bat and led her wordlessly into the harsh daylight.

Kara made the rounds, checking on each of her Jedi friends, most of whom Lena was surprised to still recognize. When James emerged from behind his X-wing, KRY-P2 tumbling along behind him, Kara left a conversation to launch herself across the field and into his arms. KRY-P2 beeped a friendly greeting at Kara, Winn, and Mon-El. Winn gave James a brief hug as soon as Kara released him. Mon-El affectionately patted the dome of the little droid. In the distance, Lena spotted Cat Grant clutching a child of about twelve or thirteen, rocking him slightly and running a hand methodically over the back of his head. She assumed that must be the padawan son she had mentioned. Lena looked away—she felt like she had just glimpsed a side of the General that people weren’t permitted to see.

“Lena Luthor,” a familiar voice called, and Lena was suddenly enveloped in strong arms and wavy blonde hair. “Good to see you’re still with us.”

“Sara,” Lena smiled despite herself. “All thanks to you, of course.”

“Aw, shucks,” Sara grinned, pulling back. She seemed to notice the cuffs for the first time then, and her face morphed immediately into concern. “Lena, did something happen—?”

“Luthor!”

Lena stiffened. She and Sara both turned. Sara, too, straightened up when she realized that the General was marching across the clearing for the two of them. The young Jedi saluted, prominent chin jutting out as she adopted a more serious expression.

“I’ve just had a very long conversation with Master M’orzz on our journey here,” she began, but stopped upon noticing Sara. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“No, ma’am,” Sara bowed her head, “but I believe I know your son, Carter.”

“Hm, interesting,” Cat replied, in a tone that indicated she hardly found it interesting. “I’m sure you have something better to do than loiter about and eavesdrop. Don’t you Jedi enjoy meditating, or something like that?”

“Some of us do, yes,” Sara replied with a smirk. “We’ll catch up later,” Sara assured Lena, snapping at her with a pair of finger-blasters before bounding away.

Cat examined Lena with her eyes narrowed, one finger tapping her lower lip like she was working on solving a puzzle.

“You had something you wanted to talk to me about, General Grant?” Lena asked, and Cat sighed.

“Give me your hands,” she ordered by way of answering. She quickly unlocked the cuffs. Lena rubbed her wrists where the tight metal had left impressions in her skin. “We have undeniable proof that there is a mole within our ranks, but we simply do not have adequate proof that that mole is you,” Cat explained.  “You saved the life of the Jedi that your mother and brother are most eager to capture and convert, and you risked personal safety to warn us of the impending attack. There is too much evidence to the contrary to believe you our traitor, although you haven’t yet been ruled out. You are free to go about your duties as before, and I want you to continue working with Danvers and Sawyer to hunt down your family and their army. You will, however,” Cat held up a hand to stop Lena before she could speak, “be supervised at all times from here moving forward. And not exclusively by your Jedi friend Kira this time. She will, no doubt, find this patently unfair, as she seems to believe you hung the stars themselves and could do no wrong, but nonetheless, this will be the arrangement until further notice.”

“Thank you,” Lena breathed, feeling like she could float with all the weight coming off her. “Thank you, General Grant.”

“Don’t thank me,” Cat insisted. “Thank Kira Danvers and her misfit band of cohorts. They’re the ones who convinced me and Master M’orzz to look into this more deeply.” Cat began to walk away, then paused. “Don’t think this means I like or trust you, Miss Luthor. I’m just not stupid enough to write you off as a Luthor double-agent just yet.”

///

The first people assigned to watch her were Mon-El and a young, budding Resistance pilot named Thea but called “Speedy” by pretty much everyone. Speedy had a pretty, elfish face and wore her brown hair in a short bob. Her pilot’s suit hung off her narrow shoulders just a touch.

Lena knew she should’ve been sleeping, but her fear of leading Lex to them again dissuaded her from trying to catch even a short nap. Speedy kept her distance, drawing patterns in the dirt with a stick and periodically looking over at Lena, while Mon-El sat next to her in the doorway of the Bat in what felt like an odd show of… friendship, maybe? Lena wasn’t sure.

“Even if you’re not the one behind the leak,” Mon-El told her suddenly, “I kinda want you to be.”

So not friendship, she thought to herself. Lena smirked bitterly at the ground, wringing her hands. Mon-El continued to stare into the distance, where Kara, Sara, Cisco, and a thin, brown-haired young man called Barry sparred with their lightsabers. Kara’s had a blue blade and a brassy gold handle, matching the clothes she wore beneath her red robe.

“I was almost a Jedi,” Mon-El explained wistfully, and Lena refrained from acting surprised. His eyes were trained on their Jedi friends in the distance, too. “The Jedi Order actually approached my parents when I was very young. Three or four, maybe. But my parents wouldn’t let me go because I was the crown prince.”

Lena did a double take. “You were the crown prince of Daxam?”

Mon-El nodded. “All my life, I always felt like I could’ve been something great. I was sad, growing up, that I’d never gotten to train to become a Jedi knight. I felt like I could’ve been a great hero, and I never really got the chance. But it was okay, because one day I was going to grow up and become King of Daxam, represent my planet and lead us into a better future, and I’d be great in a different way, right? I would still be a hero to my people.”

Lena stayed silent. Mon-El shook his head.

“But then the Luthors came along and destroyed my planet. I lost everything. I went from being the beloved eldest child, the prince of an entire planet, to having nothing. I was fifteen years old and an orphan, stranded in space on the only escape pod they managed to launch before the planet was disintegrated. No parents, no siblings, no title, no home. And I’d lost my chance at becoming a Jedi. When Daxam was destroyed, I became nobody.”

“If it helps,” Lena said finally, fiddling absently with the ends of her hair, “the Luthors stripped me of my happy childhood and my opportunities, too.”

“But you’re one of them,” Mon-El pointed out, and Lena shrugged. Only in name, she wanted to say, although she wasn’t sure that was entirely true, either. “Look, all I’m saying is that there’s a reason I don’t want you around. Kara looks at me like I’m some monster, but Kara is also way too trusting. Sometimes she doesn’t know what’s best for her. But the problem with Kara is that other people trust her, so it’s not just herself that her lack of judgment is going to end up hurting. And that would be bad enough. Kara—you’ve seen how special Kara is. Even if it were just her on the line…”

“I understand that,” Lena agreed. “Kara is special.”

They lapsed back into silence. Their Jedi friends powered down their lightsabers and disappeared. Lena leaned forward onto her knees and decided she’d rest her eyes, even if she wouldn’t sleep.

///

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence, either,” Mon-El said suddenly, jolting her from an almost-doze. The stars had shifted—it was almost morning now. “The fact that the Luthors’ forces found our base just as you arrived. That seems suspicious, and I’m not alone in thinking that.”

Lena didn’t say anything, but she agreed.

///

The sun was rising over the woods when Kara and two Resistance members (a mechanic called Jess and a strategist named Lucy) arrived to relieve Mon-El and Speedy of their posts. The first thing Kara did was wrap Lena in a hug, burying her nose in Lena’s hair.

“I’m so sorry about all this, Lena,” Kara sighed. “I should never have suggested leaving base. I just never thought—and then you got hurt, and General Grant—”

“You’re the one who got shot,” Lena responded sternly. “It was a lucky thing we were out there. Otherwise, my brother and mother might have gotten the jump on us. We were able to evacuate the base on Bakura safely.”

“But Cat’s orders—”

“—are bearable,” Lena interrupted, pulling away. “And generous, and frankly, much more than I probably deserve.”

“But you didn’t do anything,” Kara whined. Lena gently touched Kara’s forehead, one finger running between her brows.

“Put that crinkle away, Kara Danvers, I’m fine,” Lena teased.

Kara continued to pout. “Not that you’d tell me if you weren’t.”

“Kara,” Lena sighed, taking her hand away. “Stop worrying so much about me. I promise I’m okay with the surveillance. I’m a lot more okay with it than being handcuffed to Maggie’s ship, at least.”

“Whatever you say,” Kara grumbled, and dropped the subject. She lit up again, however, as she introduced Jess and Lucy to Lena, both of whom already seemed to have a camaraderie with Kara. Lena liked the two other women immediately, particularly Jess. The trio oversaw her work with Alex and Maggie from a distance, and that evening, Jess snuck her a glass of expensive Chandrilan wine as an offer of newfound friendship.

///

They held another game night, this time in Winn and James’ shared bunk room. It seemed much more crowded—a collection of Jedi had tagged along (Sara, Kal-El, and Cisco, whom Lena knew, and Barry, whom she did not), as well as Vasquez, Jess, Lucy, and two women named Caitlin and Iris, who worked in the Resistance but seemed particularly close with Cisco and Barry.

Jess was the only one to beat Lena in holochess. It was the toughest match Lena had ever played. Lena took the second round, and she and Jess had to promise a tiebreaker match in the future when Kara pouted about wanting to play Barry and the pair were forced to give up the holoboard.

Lena sat close to Kara’s side and whispered plays into her ear until Barry accused them of cheating and insisted that “If Lena gets to help you, then I get to draft Iris onto my team!”

Kara laughed and slung an arm around Lena’s waist. When she tucked her head against Lena’s shoulder, Lena made a truly valiant but ultimately vain effort not to blush.

///

Cat stalked into the room one day while Alex, Maggie, and Lena, with the addition of Lucy, were poring over the details of an exchange a source in Kachirho sent to them that might indicate Luthor presence on Kashyyyk. The General stood in a corner, saying nothing but watching them all with her sharp blue eyes. She observed them for an hour and a half before she stalked back out of the room just as wordlessly.

///

“The Old Religion of Krypton worshipped our sun, Rao,” Kara explained one night over evening cups of caf with Lena. “People believed it was the origin of the Force, back before people knew it as the Force. Rao was the Force.”

Lena hummed, sipping her caf. She loved when Kara shared pieces of Krypton with her.

“By the time Krypton was destroyed, there were very few people left who followed the Old Religion. But most people still referred to the Force and the maker as Rao, because there were some parts of it that we as a people were too stubborn to let go of.”

Kara had that wistful look in her eye as she stared up at the stars.

“The first thing I do every time I land on a new planet is find Rao in its constellations."

"Have you found it here?" Lena asked quietly.

Kara smiled. "Come here.” Kara beckoned Lena over, pulling Lena in close to her side once she was within reaching distance. “There,” Kara leaned their heads together so they were close to sharing the same perspective and pointed. “That red one, in the middle of that cluster? That’s Rao. Even though his planets are gone, he still burns on. Isn’t that neat?”

Lena found it utterly tragic, that Kara’s home could be there and still not be there, but she smiled and nodded for Kara’s sake.

///

One night after many in a row without sleep, Lena simply passed out over her work. She slept for twelve hours, missed an important meeting with M’gann, Cat, and J’onn, and woke up with a raging head cold and a slight fever.

Everyone seemed to forgive her, which she found odd. She promised herself she’d be better next time anyway. Kara was less than pleased with her, though.

“Your body needs rest, Lee,” Kara reprimanded her while she braided her hair.

“Not as much as the Resistance needs to stay safe,” she countered stiffly, a biting, cold edge in her voice that usually wasn’t present around Kara. “And, as you’ll recall, I’m a Luthor. I’m already a hazard to its safety.” Kara’s hands stilled in her hair.

“Please don’t get defensive with me,” Kara said earnestly, running her fingers through Lena’s hair to undo the braids. “I’m just asking you to take care of yourself.”

“And I’m trying to take care of everyone else,” Lena snapped sharply as Kara started braiding again. “We can’t all be the galaxy’s most powerful Jedi knight.”

“Hey,” Kara stopped again, sliding down to sit next to Lena and urging the other woman to face her. “What’s with all the prickliness, huh? Talk to me.”

Lena glared daggers at the far wall. It took a long minute for her to respond. Kara reached out and tucked a dark lock of hair behind her ear, breaking Lena’s train of thought. She sighed and slumped, shooting Kara an apologetic glance. “We still have no idea where Lex and Lillian are, or what they could be doing. Normally they would be attacking less defensible planets by now, but we haven’t even the faintest clue what they could be up to. It’s killing me. And if we don’t know where they are or what they’re doing, I can’t let myself sleep when they could use that vulnerability to find the Resistance again. It feels like this is the only thing I can do to help, but I’m just so tired.”

“You’re doing more than most people to help,” Kara assured her, twining their fingers together loosely.

“I’m really not.”

“You really are.” Kara squeezed her hand. “I’m serious, though. Get some sleep.”

///

“Hey, Lena,” Winn called, struggling with repairs on KRY-P2. “Can you hand me that wrench? Krypto’s back panel won’t come loose.”

“Here, let me,” she suggested, leaning over and lightly nudging Winn aside. He looked on in awe as Lena detached the panel and fixed the problem in under a minute, wiping her hands on her pants as she stood and went about the rest of the day.

“Hold on,” he said after a moment. “I’m supposed to be the mechanic. Lena!”

He stood to chase her down.

“Lena, you need to teach me what you just did.”

///

In her spare time, Lena began fixing droids. They seemed to prefer her to Winn, who seemed to feel more comfortable with ships and jets, anyway. Jess, too, had a good hand for droid repairs, so she worked closely with the other woman most days. She fell seamlessly into the rhythm of the mechanic team. Resistance machinery needed to be in top working order for when they next encountered the Luthors.

Lena, Alex, and Maggie’s leads began to dry up. There was nothing to do but sit on their hands and wait.  

///

Mon-El began to greet her around base. It wasn’t a huge deal, obviously—it still wasn’t like they were friends or anything—but Kara’s grin and thumbs-up behind his back was enough to make Lena feel joyful and fluttery as she waved back to him.

///

Kara seemed to grow antsier and antsier the longer they stayed in one place, so she took to “exploring” in the jungles. Alex, Maggie, Winn, and James tagged along when they could. Lena tagged along even when she couldn’t.

“I need you to teach me how you shield your mind like that,” Kara suggested one day, as she scooped up a poisonous frog in her hands and let it jump up her arms. Lena eyed the creature suspiciously. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s only poisonous if you ingest any part of the frog. It can’t hurt me like this.”

Lena raised an eyebrow in disbelief, wiped sweat from her hairline. “You want me to teach you how to close off your mind to the Force?” Lena asked, redirecting their conversation. “Why?”

“We’re fighting a war. It might come in handy,” Kara explained, though her focus was still on the frog in her hands. “And, I don’t know, sometimes I feel like it might be nice. To just… shut that part off for a little bit. I always feel so connected to everything, maybe I want to feel like just Kara for a bit.”

Lena nodded sharply. “It’s not hard,” she said finally. “It just takes a lot of concentration, at first. But it’s not difficult.”

Kara beamed at her and gently placed the frog on a leaf, wiping her palms on her pants before reaching for Lena’s hands. Lena wheeled back.

“Not until you’ve washed your hands,” Lena warned. “You may be comfortable handling venomous jungle frogs, but I don’t want to risk it.”

“They’re poisonous, not venomous,” Kara explained, as if it mattered. Lena’s eyebrow flicked up. Kara grumbled and shoved her hands in her pockets instead. “Fine.”

///

Every day the Luthors didn’t do anything, Cat grew antsier.

“They’re biding their time,” Cat whispered. “But for what?”

“They could be trying to reconstruct their weapon,” Alex suggested nervously. Cat tapped her chin, looking imperiously down at the papers strewn about the table.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she answered. “Leela,” she said, turning to Lena, “what do you think?”

Lena was taken aback by her sudden involvement. All eyes were on her. She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, “the weapon took years for them to develop. Assuming my sabotage was successful, it would still take them several more months to locate and refine the isotope needed to carry the virus in the bioweapon. At this rate, we don’t have to worry about them using the Medusa weapon quite yet. Again, that’s assuming I was successful. They could be trying to recoup some of their forces, find vulnerable individuals to convert. After what happened in Dreshdae, they not only lost a lot of their people, but I imagine faced a fair deal of desertion, as well.”

Cat tapped her chin again. “Interesting. Thank you, Leela.”

Kara stifled a giggle across the table.

“Now someone get me some caf,” Cat demanded, snapping her fingers. “I’m going to need it.”

///

It was another week before they found the Luthor forces again.

Or, more accurately, the Luthor forces found them.

Lena was elbows-deep in a malfunctioning med-droid when the Luthors descended from the sky out of nowhere on a bright blue afternoon. The jungle was peaceful, the day was normal, when suddenly—

“Lena, get down!”

A body hit her from behind as blasterfire obliterated the droid she’d been working on, scorching the ground where she’d just been. Kara lifted her back to her feet and together they ran and stumbled for shelter, ducking behind one of the larger ships as pilots scrambled to their fighter jets.

“Are you okay?” Kara gave her a once over, and Lena nodded vigorously. “Good. Take this,” Kara pressed a blaster into Lena’s hand. “You know how to fire it?” Lena nodded again. “Good.”

With an electric whoosh, Kara’s blue lightsaber powered up.

“Try to conserve your fire,” Kara instructed as she began to edge away, back to where the Luthor ships were beginning to land. “Please stay safe, Lena.”

Lena leaned forward and hugged Kara tightly. Kara fumbled her lightsaber, dropping it in the grass. Lena pulled away just as quickly.

“You stay safe,” Lena insisted, cupping Kara’s jaw briefly. Kara gave her a longing, fearful look before she picked up her saber again. She briefly touched her cheek where Lena’s hand had been before squaring her jaw and diving into the fray.

Chapter Text

The zinging, electric sounds of blasters firing and lightsabers swinging filled the air. Lena rolled beneath one of the larger transport ships, a ship a little bigger than the Bat. She used the cover to fire off blasts periodically, downing Stormtroopers with deadly aim. TIE-fighters and X-wings screamed overhead.

Panic began to well up like water in her lungs to suffocate her; those white helmets just kept coming.

Where was Kara? Where was Winn? Where were James and Alex and Maggie and Sara and Jess and all the other people she’d slowly come to care about?

She fired again. Another ‘trooper down. She forced herself to take a deep breath, trying to expel the pressure of anxiety. Lena reminded herself that she wasn’t exactly a stranger to loss of life.

The shrieking of the jets overhead grated on her ears. Lena clenched her jaw, pulled the trigger again. She wasn’t equipped for this; hadn’t been equipped for the coup in Dreshdae either. She hadn’t even been equipped to become a Sith apprentice, for the maker’s sake!

Somewhere behind her hiding spot, someone screamed. Lena startled, but refocused. She couldn’t let herself become distracted.

The fighting continued, and Lena continued to fire judiciously upon the encroaching Stormtroopers. She worried for her friends. Were they alright? Would they make it out of this unscathed?

She heard a familiar voice whisper her name: “Lena…”

The next moment, she spotted Darth Lex. She froze. White Stormtroopers parted like magnets repelled from his flowing dark robes. He pushed his hood back off his shiny bald head. Lena felt a sudden, strong pressure at her temples and on the back of her neck, and she winced, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead. Other rebel fighters, too, began to hiss and whine, hands flying to heads as if to keep them from piecing apart.

Lex swung his red lightsaber almost lazily, as though it weren’t a deadly weapon and were instead a harmless toy. He’d always been like that, though—so cavalier until he wasn’t. The fighting began to quell and quiet, until everyone in the clearing stood stock-still. The only indication that the battle was still raging was the occasional rushing noise of a jet flying overhead, but even the jets had stopped firing on one another.

Lena collected herself, staving off the pain for now, and traced the path of Lex’s eyes as they scanned over the crowd of rebels and Stormtroopers alike. She could still hear her name, whispered in his voice. Lex was looking for her. She crept backwards, deeper out of the way. She reinforced those steel walls in her head, pouring every ounce of her energy and focus into being undetectable. The headache began to ease.

“She’s not here.” Even though she was meters away from him, Lena could hear Lex’s soft voice as clearly as if he’d spoken directly next to her. She shivered despite herself.

Lex roared. He swept out with his saber, stabbing a Stormtrooper unfortunate enough to be near him through the stomach. The ‘trooper dropped quickly. Lena squeaked, hurrying to cover her mouth and nose with her hands. He couldn’t find her, he just couldn’t. Lex breathed heavily, clenching and unclenching his fists. “She’s not here!” he shouted.

Lena shut her eyes, lest he somehow feel her gaze upon him. She rocked quietly. He couldn’t find her. He’d kill her.

“Kara Zor-El is not here,” he repeated, and Lena’s eyes flew open. Her heart stuttered to a stop in her chest. He wasn’t here for her—he was here for Kara. She was tempted to bash down her own walls and reach out for Kara in every direction, just to make sure she was safe, hidden, safe.

She was glad she’d at least taught Kara how to properly shield herself.

“Well,” Lex breathed, suddenly regaining some semblance of composure. He powered down his lightsaber, stashing it in his belt, and clasped his hands behind his back. “I’m sure one of you will be able to get my message to her, then. I want the last daughter of Krypton to know this: I have now in my possession three individuals I have reason to believe are of great importance to Kara Zor-El, and to this sentimental Resistance. Their names are Jessa Serpentarius, Winslow Schott, and Alexandra Danvers.”

Lex paused. The beat lingered. Then he smiled like a predator. His voice grew just a touch louder, projected over the assembled crowd.

“If you’re listening, Kara Zor-El—Sorry, was it Kara Danvers you’ve been calling yourself these last few years? That does sound awfully like Alexandra Danvers, the spy I currently have in my custody. She wouldn’t be the sister you adopted, would she?” Lex paused again. “If you’re listening, Kara, you have two Felucian days and nights to turn yourself over to me, or else Jess, Winn, and Alex—” (He said the nicknames as though they were a funny joke.) “—will be executed. I’ll be waiting in the Cadmus station just beyond the atmosphere. I trust you have the means to get yourself there.”

With that, Lex turned and walked back out of the clearing. The Stormtroopers seemed to dissipate as well.

Lena clambered out from beneath the ship, blaster falling from her loose grip. She hadn’t realized she was crying until she absently touched a wet cheek. She wiped her fingers on her pants.

“Kara, where are you?”

///

“Where is Alex?”

Kara looked as desperate as Lena had ever seen her when she stormed into the middle of their meeting, Barry hot on her heels as though having tried to restrain her. Maggie barely looked up—she was seated in the corner with a cooling mug of caf between her palms, face swollen from crying—but Lena and J’onn both stood immediately.

“Kara,” J’onn began in his deep, steady voice, walking slowly towards Kara, “you need to calm down.”

“No, I don’t need to calm down,” Kara snapped back. “I need to find my sister. Where the hell is Alex?”

Nobody replied.

“Kriff, where is she?”

Never in the time they’d known each other had Lena heard Kara curse, and that was twice in as many sentences.

“You know the answer to that question, Kara,” M’gann said, standing up, too. Tears swam in Kara’s eyes and she rapidly blinked them away. “She’s been captured by Darth Lex. She’s being kept prisoner on the Cadmus station. His demands were for you to give yourself over in exchange for her life, along with Jess and Winn.”

“Then I guess I know where I’m going,” Kara huffed, making to leave the command center again.

“Oh, no you don’t,” James stepped in front of her. Kara tapped her foot impatiently.

“Get out of my way.” Kara glowered up at him. “James.” There was a barely-contained threat in her voice, but James simply crossed his arms. Lena watched Kara fiddle with her lightsaber, as though she were contemplating turning it on.

“Not until you sit down and help us come up with a plan,” he answered.

“I have a plan,” Kara snarled impatiently.

“One that doesn’t involve you going on a suicide mission and playing right into the Luthors’ hands,” James amended, and Kara’s free hand balled into a fist, while her other clutched the handle of her lightsaber even tighter. “Come on, Kara, you know that’s not what Alex would want. She would want you to think about this rationally.”

“My sister is being held prisoner by Darth Lex, James,” Kara insisted desperately. A tear ran down her cheek, dripped from her chin.

“We’re all scared,” James said, putting a gentle hand on Kara’s shoulder. “Which is why we can’t do anything rash right now. We need to think things through before we make any moves. For all we know, Darth Lex could kill Alex, Winn, and Jess the minute he has what he wants.”

Kara swallowed a sob.

“James, I just want her back,” Kara rasped. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” James whispered. Kara fell into his arms, saber clattering to the ground next to them as the most powerful Jedi in history bawled. Maggie, too, began to cry again, hiding her face in her caf. J’onn stood sentinel over the young spy, rubbing her shoulders gently. Lena awkwardly sat back down.

“Let’s all give ourselves a moment,” M’gann suggested. Cat nodded in agreement, barking out a brusque:

“Dismissed until further notice. Be prepared to reconvene soon.”

J’onn ushered Maggie out of the room, arm protectively slung around her shoulders, while rebels and Jedi alike drifted out until only Lena, Kara, and James were left in the meeting room. Kara hiccupped and sobbed, breath hitching as she buried her face in James’ chest.

Lena sat ramrod straight at the table, letting the guilt wash over her.

Her brother had done this to Kara.

Somehow, some way, she was complicit. She should’ve known.

After several minutes, Kara had seemed to calm a little. She mumbled against James’ shirt, “Where’s Lena?”

“She’s still here,” James informed her in a low, quiet voice. Kara turned hesitantly, spotting Lena lingering at the table. The look on Kara’s face nearly cracked Lena in two. She felt her own tears on the verge of spilling, but she refused to tear her gaze away from Kara.

“Lena,” Kara reached for her, and the next moment, Lena stood and wrapped the taller woman in her embrace. Kara held her tight, maybe tighter than was entirely comfortable, and buried her face in Lena’s neck. Her quiet tears leaked warm onto Lena’s skin.

“I’m so sorry, Kara,” Lena whimpered, and hated herself for how unsteady her voice sounded. Kara was the one who might lose a sibling; Lena felt she’d already lost hers. “I’m so sorry.”

Kara simply sniffled, nuzzling deeper into Lena’s hair.

///

They reconvened an hour later and discussed plans well into the morning and the next day. Before Lena knew it, an entire night and day had passed, and they were still no closer to a satisfactory plan that would keep Kara safe while also allowing for Alex, Jess, and Winn to be rescued.

Lena briefly suggested the prospect of letting her go in—she could keep her brother distracted, she knew the layout of the Cadmus station, she was less valuable than Kara—but Cat Grant had immediately shut down such a proposition.

“Leela, you’re our second most valuable asset after Kira,” she’d said. “I don’t much care for the thought of losing you to a harebrained suicide mission, either.”

Time was running out. Lena held Kara’s hand under the table when the Jedi began to fidget and twitch.

///

They’d been excused for another short recess to eat and sleep a little. Kara wore a storm cloud on her face.

“Lena, I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to tell Cat or M’gann or J’onn, or, well, really anyone,” Kara said finally, turning to her friend. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“Promise,” Lena replied without hesitation.

Kara pursed her lips. “If it gets down to the wire,” she said finally, “I’m going. If it gets to be tomorrow morning and we still don’t have a plan, I’m stealing an X-wing and flying up there on my own.”

“That won’t happen,” Lena rebuffed her quickly, squeezing her hand.

“It’s been a full day and a half and we’re still coming up short,” Kara insisted.

“No,” Lena shook her head, stepping into Kara’s space and meeting her eyes. “That will not happen. You are not prepared to face off with Lex. You’re not going anywhere. Promise me.”

“Lena—”

“Kara, I made you a promise. Now promise me.”

And Kara had a hard time resisting those opal green eyes, but she’d already made up her mind. She sighed through her mouth and shook her head softly. Lena squeezed her hand. She’d just made up her mind, too.

///

Kara’s stolen lightsaber was heavier than Lena expected it to be, tucked into her belt next to the blaster Kara had given her and the receiving end of a tracking beacon. She made sure to be as quiet as possible, leaving a file with all the information she could remember about Lex and Lillian next to Kara’s bed along with the tracking device itself, on the off chance that the Resistance might be able to track her down and save her before Lex and Lillian had her executed for treason.

Silent, she lingered outside the door to Kara’s dug-out little bunk room, trying to recall the Kryptonian prayer Kara had taught her—their most sacred. Lena wasn’t sure what it meant, but it definitely felt like a goodbye, and Lena wanted to have that, just in case.

“You have been the sun of my life,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “My prayers will be the sun that lights your way on the journey home. I will remember you in every dawn and await the night I join you in the sky. Rao’s will be done.”

Lena bowed her head. She wasn’t entirely sure if she’d even said it correctly, only that Kara gasped quietly from inside her room, like she was waking up. Worried that someone might try to stop her, Lena sprinted across the airfield and clambered into one of the X-wings. As she started the engines, she could’ve sworn she heard someone calling her name, but she didn’t have the time to look back and check.

She programmed the destination for the Cadmus space station and whirred off into the dark Felucia sky.

Chapter Text

“Let go of me!” Alex snarled as she attempted to twist free of a Stormtrooper’s grip. “Let me go!” Behind her, Winn marched quietly, buzzing with fluttery, nervous energy. Jess, mostly unconscious and bleeding profusely from her nose and mouth, had to be lugged between two ‘troopers.

A pair of metal doors whooshed open into an open hall with an expansive window looking down on the sparsely inhabited jungle planet of Felucia. The imposing, adorned figure of the Empress stood silhouetted in the window. At the sound of marching feet, she turned, regarding her captives with a cool smirk.

A ‘trooper shoved Alex and Winn roughly to their knees, simply dropping Jess by their side. The droid mechanic groaned weakly.

“So this is the sister of Jedi legend Kara Zor-El,” Lillian mused, pacing over to Alex. She relished standing over the rebel spy for a moment, until Alex screwed up her face and spit on Lillian’s feet.

“Keep my sister’s name out of your mouth,” Alex growled.

Lillian snorted. “Charming. I have to say, I expected quite a bit more from you. You’d think the sister of the most powerful Force user in the galaxy would have a little more fight to her. Enough to not get captured, at very least.” Before Alex could say anything in response, Lillian gripped Alex’s chin hard, nails digging into her cheeks and jaw. “But I understand you, Alexandra Danvers. You’re weak, and you resent yourself for it, don’t you?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Alex hissed, pulling out of Lillian’s grasp. Lillian’s nails left long pink marks along Alex’s cheeks.

“Oh, I know plenty,” Lillian laughed, straightening up again. She sounded legitimately amused by Alex’s indignation, which only infuriated Alex further. “We’re not so different, you and I. While the power that your sister possesses needles you to no end, it makes you feel good, knowing she’ll come to your rescue, doesn’t it? Knowing she’s loyal to you? I feel the same way about my son.”

“Shut up,” Alex snarled. “I am nothing like you.”

“Well,” Lillian said on a lordly sigh, “I was just trying to make conversation. The fact of the matter is that Kara will come for you. When she realizes how alike you and I truly are, your sister’s journey to the Dark Side will have begun.”

“You bitch,” Alex growled. “You don’t know very much about me, but you clearly know nothing about Kara.”

Lillian smiled, serene and haughty. “We’ll see about that, Alexandra.”

///

“Rao’s will be done.”

Kara woke suddenly. Her head pounded from lack of sleep, but she forced herself to sit up. Something felt wrong. She just couldn’t figure out what.

Had someone just been reciting the Kryptonian death prayer?

She took stock of her surroundings. She fumbled in the darkness, stepping out of bed. Something crunched beneath her feet. “Oh, Rao.” She noticed a little file disk and a tracker had been placed there, although the tracker had now been crushed beneath her heel.

“Krypto?” she called, and the droid blinked to life in the corner, whistling a tired greeting at her. “Was someone just in here?”

KRY-P2 hummed an affirmative.

Kara’s stomach dropped. She remembered Lena’s stubborn assurances (That won’t happen.) and asked KRY-P2, “Was it Lena?”

She was already pulling on her boots when the droid confirmed her suspicions. She stumbled out of her room to spot Lena in the cockpit of an X-wing. Does Lena even know how to fly? she wondered.

“Lena!” she shouted, sprinting across the field as fast as her legs would carry her. “Lena, wait!”

The X-wing began to rise into the air. Kara leapt higher than she ever had before, letting the Force guide her, but there was nothing she could do. The jet rocketed off into the night, and after hovering a few moments, Kara landed softly in the grass again.

“Kriff, Lena,” Kara murmured, giving herself only a moment to stare after the disappearing fighter jet before running to her mentor’s bunk.

“J’onn! J’onn,” she called, thundering into his space with all the grace and finesse of a rancor. “Lena’s gone!”

“What?” J’onn was up in a heartbeat. “What happened?”

“You know how she suggested going on a rescue mission by herself?” Kara rambled, barely sparing a moment for breath. “I think she actually did it. She stole an X-wing, which I didn’t even know she knew how to fly, and took off, and I think it’s because of something I said to her, so I need to go after her, and I need you to—”

“Kara, slow down,” J’onn instructed, placing a hand on her shoulder. “What’s going on?”

Kara took a deep breath. “Lena went to go confront Lex and Lillian on her own, to try to rescue Alex, Jess, and Winn. I need to follow her right away.” J’onn looked less than happy about the prospect. “There’s no time! Lena will die if she tries to confront them on her own. I need you to gather backup, but I need to go now.”

“I’ll wake everyone,” J’onn agreed. “You go save Lena.”

Kara nodded, a severe look on her face, and began to bound away.

“And Kara,” J’onn called after her, giving his padawan pause. “Be. Careful.”

Kara pursed her lips, nodded once, and disappeared from view.

///

When the tractor beam began to pull her X-wing in, Lena relinquished the controls on the jet and slowly pulled Kara’s lightsaber from her belt. She had no idea how to wield it—no idea if it would even work in her hands—but the metal was slightly warm beneath her palms and it carried the same sweet, invigorating energy Kara did. Having it made her feel safer, like she could actually face Lex and Lillian.

She closed her eyes. Lena was too afraid to open herself up to the Force in such close proximity to Lex, but she sent out a silent prayer to the maker that, whatever happened, Kara would be okay, reunited with her sister and her friends.

///

Kara pushed her jet as fast as it would go. She could’ve screamed in frustration—she was still impossibly far behind Lena. She’d never make it before Lex and Lillian captured her.

Kara channeled every bit of her Force-energy into her X-wing, propelling it past speeds it was meant to go and igniting a fire on its nose. She screamed with the effort, fists clenched tight around the steering apparatus.

///

When Lena’s vessel was pulled in, fully landed aboard the station, she made quick work of the ‘troopers waiting around the hangar, knocking them out with deftly-placed blows Alex and Maggie had taught her.

After the pair of Stormtroopers had been taken care of, Lena powered up Kara’s lightsaber and began to walk the familiar halls of Cadmus, the Luthor base station. She knew exactly where such important hostages would be held.

///

As the tractor beam pulled Kara’s vessel the rest of the way in, she cursed Lena briefly for taking her lightsaber with her when she left. Kara could’ve really used that right now.

She Force-choked the consciousness out of the trio of Stormtroopers who’d brought her X-wing in, apologizing to them as they hit the floor. (“Sorry! Agh, I always hate doing that. I know you guys are evil, but, still...”) She stripped them of their blasters, stepped over their unconscious forms, then closed her eyes and reached out with the Force.

While she couldn’t exactly find Lena, as she had likely intensified her mental shielding for this, she felt Alex, Winn, and Jess, strong and alive, and quickly began to make her way in their direction.

///

“Do you feel that, Alexandra?” Lillian grinned. “She’s here.”

Lex stepped into the room from a side door, sidling up to Lillian to look down on their captors as well.

“Mother,” he said quietly, “we have a small problem.”

///

When Lena burst through the doors of the throne room, it appeared empty at first. Then she noticed Alex, Winn, and Jess, bound and gagged against the far wall.

Alex was frantically shaking her head, trying desperately to shoo Lena away, but Lena began to move towards Alex anyway. Before she knew it, Lena was laid out on the floor clutching the back of her head. Lex towered over her. Lena ignited Kara’s lightsaber again, feeling the comforting hum of it in her bones.

“A lightsaber?” Lex eyed the weapon with an air of judgement. “Lena,” he tsked, “that’s a Jedi toy.”

“Let them go,” Lena demanded, pushing herself back up to her feet.

“Now, why would we do that?” Lillian’s voice cut through the room, and Lena lowered the saber only a touch. “They brought the Jedi prodigy right to us.”

Lena’s brow furrowed. “What—?”

“Let my friends go!” Kara shouted, opening blaster fire on Lex and Lillian. Lena ducked, though she wasn’t concerned about Kara’s blaster going haywire with her Force-guided aim. Lex’s lightsaber powered up, and though its sound was similar to Kara’s, something about it was endlessly more sinister. He lunged furiously at Lena, and Lena parried quickly.

Lex furiously struck back Kara’s blaster bolts, all while dodging Lena’s wide lightsaber swings. The pair worked together to corner him, but Lex easily forced them both back with one well-maneuvered swipe. Lillian, ill-suited for battle, silently slipped out a side door.

Alex took the opportunity the distraction provided to break her weak restraints with the Force, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible as she did the same for Winn and Jess.

“Go,” Alex whispered harshly, urging Winn to hoist Jess to her feet. She ushered the pair of them to a doorway before turning.

“Kara,” she called, “blaster!”

Kara turned for a brief second, tossing Alex her blaster and pulling the spare one from Lena’s belt in one smooth motion. Lena lost her balance for a brief moment and Kara righted her, shoulder against shoulder.

“Rao, I am going to be so mad at you when we get back to base, you complete laser-brain,” Kara snarled at Lena through gritted teeth. Lena had figured as much. With the two of them and Alex, it was enough to beat back Lex again, although they would need to dispatch him and get out of here before Lillian was able to alert more Stormtroopers and flood them into submission. “Backup’s on its way!” Kara shouted, and Alex and Lena nodded, safe in their ability to fall back and collect the injured Winn and Jess.

“Oh, kriff,” Kara muttered. “Cadmus is preparing to jump to hyperspace! We need to get out now!”

Lena didn’t have time to think. The next thing she knew, they were sprinting as quickly as they could back to the hanger. The next thing she knew, she was climbing after Kara into one of the two jets, the other woman holding her hand out for Lena to grab. The next thing she knew, Lena was choking, yanked away from Kara’s grasp and suspended in the air by her neck.

Kara reached out, almost tumbling out of the jet. “Lena!” Alex pulled Kara back into the jet by her belt.

Lex stepped out of a side hallway, hand suspended menacingly as Lena’s legs kicked for contact with the ground again. She powered down Kara’s saber and let it clatter to the floor. Alex Force-lifted it away and into the jet before Lex could grab for the weapon.

“You want her, Jedi?” Lex raised one eyebrow sharply, a mannerism that was so quintessentially Lena it looked wrong on his face. “Stand down. I’ll even let your sister and your little friends go.”

“Kara, go,” Lena managed to choke out. Conflict raged in Kara’s eyes. “Jess—” she wheezed.

“Come with me and the Empress, and you get your little toy back. I’ll let you play with her all you want. I bet you’d like that,” Lex promised. Kara’s eyes didn’t leave Lena’s. “You really do like my sister, don’t you, Jedi? God, you just reek of lust and sentiment. It’s revolting . ”

“Go,” Lena choked out again, feet kicking even harder, begging for purchase with something solid. “Hyperspace—”

Lena was right. Still, Kara’s eyes swam with indecision.

"Alex," Lena choked, despite her eyes still fixed on Kara. "Please—"

“Kara, we need to go,” Alex tugged on Kara’s arm. “Lillian has redirected the entire Luthor army to this floor.”

“Wait, Alex—” Kara began.

“Lena, I’m sorry,” Alex said, and she truly looked it, “but we can’t let them have Kara. I promise we’ll come back for you. Winn, get ready to fly.” Alex slammed shut the cockpit to her and Kara’s X-wing.

The last thing Lena heard before the X-wings took off was Kara’s muffled scream.

“Lena, no!”

///

Kara paced restlessly, tugging at her own hair.

“How dare you, Alex?” she hissed, turning on her sister. “I mean, how dare you? Lena—” she choked on the name, hands fluttering helplessly. “That was Lena!”

“We’re going to get her back,” Alex promised.

“They’re going to kill her,” Kara seethed. “If you had just waited—two seconds, Alex!”

“I had to make a hard call, I didn’t want this either!” Alex defended herself. “Lena was my friend, too—is. She is my friend—”

“Yeah, well Lena’s not just my friend!” Kara spat back in defiance. A strange silence hovered over them after all the shouting.

“What?” Alex asked. Kara seemed to realize what she’d just said. She shut her mouth, sat down on the edge of the mattress, put her head in her hands. “Kara, what?”

“Lex was right!” Kara burst. “I do—care about Lena. Like her. More than… oh, Rao.”

“You, like… care about her?” Alex asked. Tears began to well in Kara’s eyes. Alex reached for her. “Oh, sweetie…”

“Don’t,” Kara snapped, “touch me right now, Alex. Just don’t.”

“Kara, I promise you,” Alex swore, clasping her hands together in her lap, “I promise you, I will do everything in my power to make sure we get Lena back. I made a split-second decision, and it’s one that I regret immensely. You understand that, right?”

Kara shook her head.

“Are you going to be okay?” Alex asked after a beat.

“I’m… I’m so furious,” Kara answered, voice quaking. “At so many people. At Lena, for being so stupid and going in there by herself with no plan. At you, for abandoning her. And…at myself.” Kara paused, trying to breathe away the tears, but they seemed to be there to stay. “I wasn’t strong enough to save her, Alex.”

“You can’t save everyone, Kara,” Alex insisted. Kara sniffled.

“I didn’t want to save everyone,” she whispered glumly. “I just wanted to save Lena.”

///

“Find her,” Cat snarled, throwing down Lena’s file on Lex and Lillian on the tabletop. “I want Lena Luthor found and returned to us in pristine shape. If there is so much as a scratch on that girl’s skin, so much as a single hair mussed, I will hunt down each and every person even tangentially responsible for her capture and see to it that they are arrested and made to suffer painfully.”

The Resistance and the Jedi council stared up at her with wide eyes.

“Now go!” Cat waved them off. “Find her!”

///

“Kara?” Alex asked, knocking on the doorway to her sister’s room as they prepared to pack up and move their base to a new location. Kara laid on her back, busy staring at the tracking device Lena had left her. “Still trying to figure that out, huh?”

“I tried to fix it! I don’t know why it still isn’t working,” Kara whined. “I just want to bring her home.”

Alex sat down at Kara’s bedside, rubbing a hand across Kara’s shoulder. “We will,” Alex promised. “I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t.”

“I should’ve told her,” Kara whispered. “How much I like her, I mean. I should’ve told her.”

“You’ll have time,” Alex assured her. “When we get her back. You can tell her how much you care then.”

Kara sniffed, rolling over so her back was to Alex. It wasn’t a rejection this time—not like it had been when they’d first returned to the Resistance—but rather an invitation for physical comfort. Alex snuggled up against Kara’s back, wrapping her arms around her little sister.

“I swear on my life, Kara,” Alex whispered into Kara’s hair, “we will find Lena and bring her home.”

///

Lena awoke in a slate-gray cell. On the bench across from her, Lex sat with his fingers steepled in front of his face.

“Hello, little sister,” he greeted her, and a cold chill entered Lena’s bloodstream. “So, the funniest thing happened yesterday. I wanted to have a talk with that little blonde Kryptonian Jedi, when lo and behold, you show up instead. I never actually got the chance to have my conversation with her, so I was hoping you could help answer some of the questions I had for her. How does that sound?”

Before Lena could answer, a searing sting lit up through her body, nerve endings crackling with electric pain. She screamed. Lex chuckled.

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

Chapter Text

Lena spent most of her adult life building up impenetrable steel walls around her mind.

Lex spent the next seven days forcibly ripping, peeling, crushing those walls back down.

“Mother and I need to know everything you’ve ever learned about Kara Zor-El,” Lex said. He reached out a hand and twisted.

Lena cried out. Everything imploded.

///

The Resistance moved and moved, never staying anywhere long enough to settle. Everywhere they went, it seemed to take the Luthors’ forces no time at all to find them again, shiny white Stormtroopers tramping across every terrain in the galaxy to seek them out. Cat’s rage seemed to grow every single time. The General locked herself away for hours discussing logistics with M’gann and J’onn.

Kara spent every night staring out at the stars, wondering where among them Lena could be hiding. She offered up prayers to Rao for Lena's safety. She fiddled with the tracking device in her spare time, but it never seemed to lead her anywhere definitive.

///

Lena wasn’t sure how long she’d been with her brother and mother for anymore—a week? Several weeks? A year?

It didn’t really matter, she figured. She would die here anyway. Whether they decided they were done with her and killed her or she simply perished from the torture, she would die here.

She wanted to think of Kara. She wouldn’t let herself, in case Lex or Lillian were reading her mind.

She was going to die.

If she had to die, though, Kara Danvers was a cause worth dying for.

/// 

The Resistance captured a Stormtrooper in the wake of a battle over Jakku. Before they'd even really decided what to do with him, Alex stormed to his cell and greeted him with her fists.

"Where is she?" Alex snarled. "Where is Cadmus? Where are you hiding Lena Luthor?"

"I don't know, I—"

Alex hit him again, and he spat a bloody tooth. She hit him again, again, again, as if he were the guilt she kept curled up in the back of her head.

"Alex, stand down!" J'onn's voice sounded distant, but suddenly his hands were around her biceps, forcibly tugging her away from their prisoner as the 'trooper teetered on the edge of consciousness.

"He knows where they're keeping her, J'onn," Alex insisted.

"This," J'onn motioned to the battered, bleeding man at their feet, "is not how we get him to tell us."

"You're crazy," the Stormtrooper sputtered. "I don't know anything." Alex threw up a hand, Force-lifting him by the throat. Her black eyes burned. 

"I said stand down, Alex," J'onn ordered, pulling her hand down again. The 'trooper dropped to the ground, and J'onn marched over to him. "But I'll give you this one warning: if you refuse to cooperate with us moving forward, she is about to become the least of your worries. Am I understood?"

The Stormtrooper nodded. J'onn led a glowering Alex from the Resistance's makeshift prison.

///

“I won’t ask you again, Lena.” Lillian’s voice was so pedantic for a torturer, Lena thought snidely. She struggled to control her pain. “What can bring Kara Zor-El to us?”

Lena’s bones felt like they were cracking, splintering, ground to dust. Dark purple bruises bloomed like violets on her skin. She cried out.

“I don’t know,” Lena wept. “I don’t know anything, please…”

“Oh, please,” Lillian scoffed, “don’t be so humble. Your brother tells me that you and the Kryptonian were bosom-buddies, of sorts. I know you know more than you’re telling me, Lena.”

“I swear, I don’t know,” Lena insisted. She writhed sharply. She could feel a thin line of blood trickling from a nostril, but her bound hands wouldn't allow her to wipe it away. Sweat bulleted on her forehead. She wanted to pass out from the pain—the edges of her vision were growing blurry and dark—but Lillian skillfully kept her right on the brink. “I swear, I swear. Please.”

“Lena, dear, begging never looked good on a Luthor. Now, what can bring Kara Zor-El to the Dark Side?”

“Nobody,” Lena sobbed.

Lillian paused. She smiled wickedly. “Hm. Interesting. A person, then. Thank you, Lena.” 

Lillian walked out of the room. The pain persisted for awhile before Lena finally slumped and lost consciousness.

///

“Are you really still worried about Lena?” Mon-El asked Kara one night as she looked for Rao among the constellations of a new solar system.

“Of course I am,” Kara responded with a furrowed brow. “I… I care about her.”

“Is that what’s… I don’t know, is that what’s getting in the way of us?”

Kara did a double-take. “Us?”

“You know,” Mon-El seemed to shuffle awkwardly. “Us. You-and-me. Together.”

“Us?” Kara asked again, more confused.

“I really like you, Kara,” Mon-El began, “and I was wondering if—”

“No, Mon-El, stop,” Kara said, placing a hand on his arm. “I’m really flattered, but this is really not the time. You’re right, I am worried about Lena. I just have too much going on, and frankly, I need to figure out my feelings for Lena before I think about anyone else like that.”

"Oh, come on, Kara," Mon-El laughed. "You've been working too hard on this lately. Maybe it's time to move on, you know?"

"Even if I didn't have feelings for her," Kara snapped, "I couldn't leave her behind. Lena is my friend before anything else, Mon-El. I would do the same for you."

"Sure you would," Mon-El scoffed. Kara sighed and looked at him.

"You know I would," she began to protest.

"Come on, lighten up," Mon-El interrupted, changing tactics. "Let me distract you for a little bit. We haven't had a game night in forever."

"Everyone's busy," Kara said, pointing at a cluster of stars in an attempt to refocus.

"How about a private game night? Just the two of us?" Mon-El nudged her shoulder. "I can think of plenty of games we can play with two people. What do you say?"

"Mon-El," Kara groaned in frustration. "I already told you no."

“Have you ever considered the fact that Lena might actually be fine?” Mon-El pressed, a bitter edge to his voice. “I mean, she is with her family, you know?”

“No she's not," Kara replied distantly. "Her family is here."

///

“What are the full extent of Kara Zor-El’s powers?”

“Is she aware of the full extent of her capabilities?”

“What are the names of the people she cares most about?”

“What are the Resistance’s plans regarding Kara Zor-El?”

“Does Kara Zor-El have a weakness? How can we exploit it?”

///

“Kara? Kara!” Winn howled, stumbling through snowbanks and racing through their makeshift base with a glowing little device in his hands. “Kara!”

“What, Winn?” she asked, throwing open the door to Alex and Maggie’s ship, where she’d been sleeping in the cargo hold.

“The device, I got it to—look!” Winn shoved the tracking device under Kara’s nose. Kara grabbed it quickly.

“What?” Kara held it out in awe.

“I don’t know whether the Luthors discarded her tracking beacon—it could lead us to the middle of nowhere in the cold vacuum of space, but…”

“But it could also lead us to Lena!” Kara gasped, beaming. She threw her arms around her friend’s neck, holding him tight enough for him to choke a little. “Winn, you genius!”

“Kara, gentle,” he sputtered, and Kara quickly released him.

“Oh, right, sorry,” Kara said. She held the tracking device gingerly. “We need to tell Alex. We need to tell J’onn and Cat!” Kara bounded past him, not bothering with a jacket despite the chill, and left Winn to trail behind. She turned breathlessly, smiling. “We need to go.”

“We’re gonna bring her home, Kara,” Winn assured her. “We will.”

They were quick to assemble a team. Alex, Maggie, James, Winn, and Kara loaded up Alex and Maggie’s ship after M’gann and Cat had granted them permission to chase down Winn’s lead.

“Kara,” M’gann said softly, “I hope you find her. We’ll keep this quiet around camp, just in case our double-agent has a mind to pass along any information before you get there.”

“Kira,” Cat snapped, “you bring her home.”

At the last minute, Sara had stumbled aboard the ship. “M’gann says you’re probably going to need a trained medic on hand for when you find her,” Sara explained. “Plus,” she teased Kara, “I wanna be here to sweep her off her feet in case you don’t. Lena’s hot.”

Kara blushed all the way down her neck.

“Hey, Kara, I wanted to talk to you about earlier. I know I was a little forward, but my feelings for you—Wait, what’s going on?” Mon-El stepped into the Bat amidst the subdued bustle. 

“I’m not supposed to say anything, but we found Lena.” Kara grinned breathlessly at him. “We’re going to get her.”

Mon-El nodded. He looked contemplative. “Be careful, Kara,” he finally said, looking away.

“Do you want to come with us?” Kara asked suddenly. “We could always use another fighter.”

“I’m needed here,” Mon-El answered, looking up. He opened his arms for a famed Kara hug. “You can do this.”

Kara nodded resolutely, leaning in to hug Mon-El back. He held her close, nosing at her hair, and Kara giggled a little. When she pulled back, she grinned at him. Mon-El's returning smile was nervous and tight, and his expression quickly became serious again.

"Mon-El, are you alright?" Kara asked.

"I'm—" he began.

“Kara, let’s go,” Maggie called, and Kara beamed, bouncing on her toes.

“Sorry, I need to go! I’ll see you when we get back. I promise we can talk then,” Kara assured him, gripping his shoulder. Mon-El smiled awkwardly at her, stepping out of the spacecraft again.

“Yeah.”

///

The ship pulled into hyperspace almost the moment they passed the atmosphere of Carlac. James trailed along in his X-wing, KRY-P2 with him, while Maggie and Alex piloted everyone else towards the homing beacon.

They dropped out of hyperspace and there, gleaming like a hideous, detached moon, was the Cadmus station. Kara shivered.

“We found her,” Winn said softly, and Kara nodded in awe.

And then suddenly they were surrounded on all sides, locked in by a tractor beam and unable to escape.

“Shit,” Maggie exclaimed from the cockpit. Kara, Winn, and Sara crowded in to get a glimpse of what was going on. “We’ve been compromised! This was an ambush!”

“What?” Alex asked. “How? M’gann said this mission was covert, she wasn’t going to tell anyone! Nobody should've known about this! How could they possibly know we were coming?”

Oh no. Kara stiffened. But he wouldn’t—Would he? No... She remembered suddenly Mon-El's awkward glances, his hesitance to come with her, the way he hugged her like it was a goodbye. I'm needed here, he'd said. But for what?

“What is it, Kara?” Alex asked, swiveling around.

“I… I told someone,” she said. “One person. But…”

“Who was it?” Alex asked. The whole cockpit held their breath. Kara twisted her fingers together.

“Mon-El.”

///

Shiny white helmets seemed to approach their camp from every direction, stark and obvious even amidst the snowy terrain.

“Hold them off!” Cat shouted, firing her blaster into the crowd of Stormtroopers.

“General, we’ve got a message incoming from—hold on, why isn’t Maggie here?” Lucy said, ducking behind the General with her back against a wall of ice. “A message incoming from Maggie Sawyer’s ship.”

“What is it?” Cat growled, peering around her cover to fire again. “I’m busy.”

“It was a setup!” Maggie’s voice came through loud and clear. Cat stiffened. “They wanted Kara out of play so they could take the base, and they wanted to lure her here so they could capture her. Cat, Mon-El set this up. If you’re hearing this, you need to leave Carlac now and make sure Mon-El can’t talk to anybody. I don’t know if this message is going to get there in time—oh, kriff!”

“A little late, Sawyer,” Cat grumbled as the recording ended abruptly, firing again. “Lucy, get cover!”

///

“You ready?” Sara asked as the tractor beam pulled them into the Cadmus station’s hangar. Kara powered up her lightsaber.

“I’ve been ready,” she answered finally. “Winn, you okay?”

“It’s a little tight,” he groaned from his hiding spot in the walls of the ship. They needed him there in case they had to make a speedy getaway, and, compared to the rest of them, Winn wasn’t much of a fighter.

“We’ll be back,” Kara assured him. Maggie slammed open the door, and the four women met the Stormtroopers on the threshold. James piloted his X-wing in after, firing down on the crowd of Stormtroopers.

“We’ll hold them off,” Alex insisted. “You go find Lena!”

Kara nodded, closing her eyes and focusing on her breath for just a moment. She felt those walls build up in her head like a turtle-shell, felt the rest of the galaxy grow hazier in her perception. It only took a moment, then she sprinted off, outrunning a pair of ‘troopers until she was alone in a long hallway.

///

“Someone find Mon-El,” Cat barked. “Where is he?”

“Um, General Grant?” A young soldier scurried up to her. “We have a problem.”

“What is it?” Cat asked petulantly, reloading her blaster.

“The Luthor forces appear to have some sort of weapon,” he said quietly, almost too quietly for Cat to hear him properly. “It appears as if the ‘troopers here are meant as a distraction while they load up the real weapon. M’gann thinks we should draw back and evacuate.”

Cat’s sharp blue eyes cut back to the soldier. “Did she say what kind of weapon it was?”

“No, ma’am.” The boy—because he was that, just a boy, Cat thought to herself—shook his head. “But she said she was worried it might be something called Medusa.”

“She said it was what?” Cat asked.

Overhead, an explosion rang out. Red and orange smoke began to drift down towards the Resistance camp, scenting the air with the sharp tang of explosives as the Stormtroopers began to quickly draw back.

“Take cover!” Cat ordered, watching the orangey-red haze drift closer and closer towards the ground.

///

Kara wanted to reach out with the Force—it would make finding Lena a lot easier, even if she was still shielded—but she had to use her wits instead to make her way to the Cadmus prisons.

The prison ward was eerily empty. Something about that struck Kara as a trap, until she remembered that it was exactly because this was a trap. Most of the Luthor forces had been redirected to the Resistance base, and she supposed that included most of the prison guards, too.

She did run into one Stormtrooper, but she quickly knocked him out and hurriedly changed into his uniform, leaving him folded up in the fetal position in a service closet. The armor hung a little loose on her frame, but she hoped she’d be able to slip through less detectably this way. She hurried down long hallways of nondescript cell blocks, her desperation to reach out for Lena through the Force growing with every uncertain step she took.

She closed her eyes, opened them again. It was hard to see through the goggles of the helmet, but she glanced at her surroundings with a refreshed gaze. That door over there had been used more often—it scraped on the floor when it opened and closed.

“I hope I’m right,” Kara mumbled, powering up her saber and driving it into the locking mechanism. The lock sputtered and sparked before the door clicked and swung open, and Kara powered down her lightsaber and tucked it away again.

And there she was.

Lena.

“No, please,” Lena mumbled, pushing herself up on heavily bruised, atrophied arms. Panic was clear on her face. “I don’t have anything else to say to them.”

“Hey, wait, Lena,” Kara began, reaching out for her. Lena flinched back, and Kara suddenly remembered her outfit. She took off the Stormtrooper helmet, letting it drop to the side. She shook her blonde hair out. “It’s me.”

Lena blinked hazily. “Kara?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Kara assured her, dropping to her knees next to Lena. “We’re gonna get you out of here, alright?”

“You—you came?”

“Of course I came,” Kara growled fiercely. “I was never going to leave you here.”

“Thought you were a little short for a Stormtrooper,” Lena mumbled. “It’s dangerous for you to be here. They want you.”

“I don’t care,” Kara insisted. “Come on, we need to get you out of here.”

Lena tried to push herself up again and failed, grunting in frustration.

“You don’t have time,” Lena insisted after a couple attempts. “You need to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” Kara assured her stubbornly. “I came all this way. I am not going to leave you.”

“Kara, please, I—please.”

“You can’t walk,” Kara observed suddenly, and Lena grimaced. Before either woman was fully aware of what Kara was doing, Kara had scooped Lena up bridal-style, holding her close against her chest as she made her brisk way down narrow, sterile corridors and labyrinthine halls. Lena curled her hands around Kara’s shoulders.

Lena groaned a little as Kara jolted her, battle sounds from the hangar growing closer and closer. As they stepped back into the hangar, lingering near the walls like a pair of thwips, Lena suddenly shrieked.

“Kara,” she wept through gritted teeth, “you need to leave now! They’re—Lillian—she’s—agh!”

“Lena?” Kara pulled Lena a little closer. “Lena, what’s happening? Are you alright?”

“She’s in my head,” Lena cried. “She’s—ah!” Lena curled herself closer into Kara, folding up like a piece of paper in Kara’s arms. Her voice was a sliver of what it had been before.

“Lena?”

“You have to leave me,” Lena squeaked. “She’s in my head, she’ll find you—please, Kara, you have to—”

“I already told you, I am not leaving you here,” Kara said sternly. She surveyed the hangar. Most of the fighting was happening on the far end. Just as planned, Alex, Maggie, and Sara had led the ‘troopers away from the ship while James cornered them from above.

“Please,” Lena begged, breath rattling as she exhaled. "Please don't let them find you because of me. I'm not worth it." 

“I wouldn't have come all this way if you weren't worth it. Here’s what we’re going to do,” Kara whispered, bringing her head in closer to Lena’s. “I’m going to fly as fast as I can to get you on board. Sara, Alex, and Maggie are going to retreat, and we’re going to take off as quickly as we can, and then Sara is going to treat your injuries. James will hold off anyone who tries to follow us. And I am going to make sure Lillian and Lex can never, ever get to you again—not even in your head.”

“Kara, please,” Lena murmured, burying her face in Kara’s shoulder.

“On three, I’m going to go for it,” Kara whispered, drawing back into the shadows behind a dormant TIE-fighter. “I want you to hold as tightly to me as you can, alright? You’re going to make it out of here, Lena. We’re so close.”

Lena squeezed Kara’s shoulders and nodded faintly. The tension in her body told Kara she was still in pain, and Kara wondered how far they would have to get for Lillian’s or Lex’s torture to stop having an effect—whether they could ever get far enough. She shook off the thought.

“Ready?” Kara said. “One, two, three!”

The Jedi launched up from the floor, hovering above the action, and Lena gasped. One of the Stormtroopers seemed to notice them hovering, too, and aimed at blaster at Kara, but Alex kicked him in the side and swiftly disarmed him.

“Let’s go!” Kara shouted, and she flew for the open door to Maggie’s ship. Maggie, Alex, and Sara turned tail and sprinted. The hum and whirr of Maggie’s engines starting up filled the air. Kara landed on the metallic floor of the loading bay with a clunk, cradling Lena close for just a moment.

Sara leapt into the bay first, followed quickly by Alex and Maggie. The ship began to rise, but before Maggie could close the doors, a Stormtrooper leapt up and latched on. He hung suspended on the edge of the door, fingers gripping tight, weapon dropped on the floor below.

“She’ll kill us!” He shouted. “She’ll kill us if we let the Jedi girl go!”

Alex pressed a boot to his hand, and he released his grip, dropping only about a meter to the hangar floor. Maggie slammed the doors shut, and Winn steered them out into space and around the side of the Cadmus station before another tractor beam could lock them down. Everyone stumbled as Winn swung the Bat sharply around another curve, Kara’s back hitting the wall to try to cushion Lena from the blow.

Everyone stood in the loading bay for a beat, breathing heavily.

Lena broke the silence. “When you said you were going to fly,” she wheezed quietly against the hollow of Kara’s throat, nose brushing Kara’s clavicle, “I didn’t think you meant literally.”

“I can lift a seventy-five-ton spacecraft with the Force,” Kara replied. “Did you really think it would be that difficult for me to lift just the two of us?”

The ship swerved again.

“Winn, get out of my seat!” Maggie called, stomping off for the cockpit with Alex hot on her heels.

“Let’s head to the cabin,” Sara said, directing Kara and Lena with surprising gentleness. “I can look her over in there.”

///

“We need to get back to Carlac,” Alex told Maggie. “If the Luthors’ forces are there, this battle needs Kara.”

“We need to wait for Cat to tell us what to do,” Maggie insisted. “I don’t want to bring Lena anywhere she could be in physical danger. Plus, Kara managed to pretty much evade the Luthors the entire time we were on the Cadmus station. They know we’re on Carlac, and they’ll know she’s headed there now.”

“Am I the only one who thinks that rescue mission was too easy?” Alex murmured. Maggie shook her head.

“Yeah. It was almost like they let us take Lena.”

“Yeah,” Alex murmured. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” 

“Me, too,” Maggie agreed. “But put that bad feeling away for now. We should just be happy that we’ve got her back.”

///

Sara retreated to the loading bay of the ship to play rounds of sabacc with Winn after checking Lena over, wanting to give Kara and Lena some privacy.

Stress fractures, she’d reported, were everywhere, as though someone had been pulverizing Lena’s entire skeletal system. “Usually I’d slap a splint on it and be done with it,” Sara had reported, “but it’s your whole body, Lena. When we get back to base, I’ll prescribe you some painkillers. The only way to fix this is going to be to wait it out.” 

“And how long will that be?”

“Probably around six to eight weeks, provided you take it easy.”

Lena reclined in Alex and Maggie’s cot, propped up on a somewhat ridiculous mountain of pillows. Kara sat beside her, legs dangling off the edge of the bed, watching Lena carefully. Lena’s face flickered through a range of emotions, but she said nothing, and she wouldn’t look at Kara.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked finally, eyes brimming with tears.

“Lena,” Kara cupped her face softly, gentle fingers on her temple, cheek, jaw. “For what?”

“I—I told them things,” Lena hiccupped. “About you. I swear, Kara, I never would have told them anything that would allow them to hurt you. I never wanted them to—”

“Hey, shh,” Kara tucked a strand of hair behind Lena’s ear, meeting those opal-green eyes for real for the first time in way too long. “I trust you. I know you. I know you would never do anything to intentionally hurt me, or the Resistance.” Lena’s eyes roved over Kara’s face, looking for any hint of pretense there, but Kara simply smoothed her hand over Lena’s cheek again, brushing away a tear with her thumb. “Rao, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Lena replied immediately, placing her hand over Kara’s and shooting the other woman a watery smile. “I thought I was going to die in that Cadmus station,” Lena confessed. “And I thought… I thought that if I was going to die, dying to protect you was a perfectly fine way to go.”

Kara couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears because, Rao, she didn’t even want to imagine what she’d do if she ever found out Lena had died, let alone for her. She spent a long moment just looking at Lena’s bruised face, her impossibly bright bluish-green eyes. Then she shut her eyes, cupped Lena’s face between both palms, and kissed her.

The kiss was soft, gentle, careful of Lena’s injuries, and over too soon. When Kara pulled away, Lena leaned forward a little in an attempt to chase those warm lips. Kara gently, so gently knocked their foreheads together, fiddling with the ends of Lena’s hair.

“Don’t ever,” she breathed, voice suddenly stern, “ever do something like that again.”

Lena wasn’t sure whether she meant going rogue all those weeks ago to save Alex, Winn, and Jess, or getting herself captured and tortured, or being willing and ready to die for Kara, or something else entirely. Whatever she meant, Lena joked tiredly, “I’m not eager to.”

“I lost my whole world when I was young, Lena,” Kara whispered earnestly, still close enough that Lena could feel Kara’s breath on her lower lip. “I can’t handle losing anything else I care so much about.”

Lena tilted her head forward just a touch, and their lips met again. Kara was still cautious, and Lena still ached sharply all over, but Kara didn’t pull away this time. When Lena leaned back into the pillows, Kara followed her, bracketing her head with her elbows so she could keep tenderly kissing Lena. They remained like that for awhile, lost in the pleasant, soft warmth of one another. Lena slipped a slow hand into Kara’s hair, scratching gently at her scalp. Kara perched on one elbow, sliding a gentle hand across Lena’s jawline, down Lena’s neck, settling gingerly at the side of her ribcage. She slowly, carefully drew Lena in closer until their chests were flush, then let that hand wander up and down Lena’s side.

“Oh, kriff!” A voice at the doorway startled them apart. Alex was blushing bright red, eyes glued to a corner of the ceiling. Kara’s cheeks started to pink up, too, and she scooted away from Lena and bit her lip. “I, uh, I came to talk to Lena, but I can—if you guys were, um, having a conversation, or whatever, I can, uh—”

“Having a conversation,” Lena repeated, a little amusement leaching into her voice. “You can talk to me, Alex. Kara and I can wait to continue our riveting conversation.”

At this, both sisters went redder. Kara coughed into her sleeve and quickly excused herself from the room. Alex sat gently at the foot of the bed, staring at Lena for a long while.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Alex confessed finally. “I didn’t think that you’d—well, I just, I didn’t think. Everything happened so fast, and that’s—Lena, trust me, I know that is no excuse for what happened to you, but I need you to know that I never wanted this to happen. You’re my friend, and I care about you a lot. I honestly thought we would be able to come back for you. It—it’s my fault you were captured, and I’m going to carry that with me for the rest of my life, I think. And I just wanted to let you know that I am so, so glad that we were able to find you and get you back.” Alex sighed, looking up. “That was a lot. I’m sorry. I’m just so relieved that you’re—well, not okay. But…”

“I did blame you,” Lena confessed after a beat. “I don’t anymore. At a certain point, whose fault it was stopped being important.”

“Kriff, Lena, I’m so sorry.” Alex hung her head, a determined sniffle working its way free despite Alex’s best efforts to stay composed. Lena was a little too exhausted to sit up again, but she reached out a hand for Alex, who slipped their fingers together.

“You came back for me,” Lena murmured sleepily. “Like you promised.”

“And I will never, ever abandon you like that again,” Alex swore fiercely. A small smile graced Lena’s lips, her dark eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks as she blinked, slow and drowsy. Lena seemed to be fighting to stay awake, so Alex squeezed her hand, gentle as could be, and dropped it. She stood and smoothed Lena’s hair back. “You can get some sleep now, Lena. We’re headed back to our temporary base on Carlac.”

“Hm, snowy,” Lena mumbled quietly as she descended into sleep. Alex spared one last look at the woman before she turned to leave the room.

When she turned into the corridor, Sara leaned against the wall, smirking up at Alex. “A conversation, huh?” she waggled her eyebrows.

Alex stopped, looking over her shoulder on her march to the cockpit. “Piss off, Sara.”

Chapter Text

Maggie dropped the ship out of hyperspace just a little beyond Carlac’s moon. James flew just ahead of them to scope out any potential battles and determine how safe it would be to bring them close or land.

Kara carefully opened herself back up to the Force, following James in her mind and feeling for the people she knew back at their base camp. She was thrown from her meditation by a sharp jab of anxiety from Lena. She shook the prickly feeling out of her limbs as she made her way down the hallway and back to the cot where Lena dozed.

Lena was completely stiff and motionless in her sleep, but Kara could still feel the buzz of her anxiety. Must be having a nightmare. She eased herself down on the cot next to Lena, resting her head on the pillow next to hers and placing her right hand over Lena’s heart. She could feel its rhythm, its elevated pulse. Lena drew in a sharp breath, eyes fluttering open for only a brief moment. She exhaled slowly and rolled to her right, tucking herself into Kara with the crown of her head pressed gently to the top of Kara’s ribcage. Her arm crept around Kara to keep her close.

“I still think she’s in my mind,” Lena mumbled, half-asleep.

“I’ve got you,” Kara assured her, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of her head.

“They ripped open my head, Kara,” Lena continued, sounding very much like her stint in consciousness was going to be brief, like she was in the process of falling back asleep already. “I’m vulnerable now.”

“You should rest,” Kara whispered. “You need sleep, Lena.”

“Stay?” Lena fussed, the arm slung across Kara tightening by a fraction. Kara couldn’t help but smile.

“Of course I’ll stay.” She kissed the top of Lena’s head again, letting her lips linger there for a moment longer. “I’m not going anywhere for a long, long time. You’re going to wish you could get rid of me.”

A small smirk flickered across Lena’s lips. She didn’t say anything, though. She simply closed her eyes again and readjusted so she could lay her head against Kara’s heart, slinging a leg over Kara’s hips and clinging to her like a baby ro-roo. Kara sighed gently and let herself drift off, too.

///

“There was no one there,” James explained, sliding down the hatch into Maggie’s ship after docking his jet to the top. “It was obvious there had been fighting, but the whole place was completely abandoned. It was… uncanny. No messages from General Grant or M’gann?”

Alex and Maggie shook their heads. Sara muttered a barely contained, “Kriff!”

“What do we do?” James asked.

“Wait,” Alex said, “for them to get in contact with us. If they get in contact with us.”

“We should head to a sympathetic city,” Sara suggested. “Lena needs painkillers and I sure as hell need a strong drink.”

Maggie looked at Alex. “Cloud City?” she suggested.

Alex crossed her arms, contemplative. “We haven’t been to Bespin since…”  

“Our anniversary two years ago,” Maggie finished. Alex waggled a finger in her direction.

“That’s right!”

“So we’re just going to wait out contact from Cat and M’gann in Cloud City?” James confirmed.

“Sounds good to me,” Sara said with a shrug. Murmurs of agreement came from Alex, Maggie, and Winn, too.

“And… how’s Lena doing?” James asked, voice lowered a little.

“Well, Kara, for one, has been taking great care of her,” Sara teased. Alex whirled around, pinning Sara with a glower. Sara schooled her expression, but continued: “They’ve been having some really in-depth conversations—”

“That’s my little sister! What was I supposed to say?”

Sara held up her hands in mock defeat, whistling as she sat back down to her and Winn’s abandoned game of horansi.

“Lena’s injured,” Maggie answered James finally. “But she seems happy to be back. Kara’s been keeping her company.”

Sara snorted, and Winn bit back a snicker, too. Alex blushed, and Maggie rolled her eyes.

“Am I missing something?” James pondered aloud.

“Keeping her company,” Winn repeated. Maggie and Alex skewered him with a joint dirty look, and he began to stutter. “I-I mean, yeah, no. Kara’s just. Been keeping her company. Completely platonic company, no making out on Alex and Maggie’s bed happening here.”

“Winn!” Alex and Maggie groaned in unison.

“Oh,” James said. “Oh! Well, good for the two of them.”

“To Bespin?” Maggie asked, turning to Alex. Alex nodded resolutely, slipping her hand into Maggie’s.

“To Bespin.”

///

A few hours into their journey, Sara, Winn, and James stood in the doorway of the cabin. On the cot, Kara and Lena dozed on top of the sheets, legs tangled together and arms wrapped around each other’s waists.

“Come on,” Sara whispered with a smirk. “You’ve got to admit that’s adorable.”

“I can feel you watching us,” Kara croaked, not turning over. Lena seemed to stir a little, but only to bring herself a fraction closer to Kara.

“Hey,” Alex gripped Winn’s shoulder suddenly, and all three of the friends jumped. “Leave them alone. Lena needs rest.”

“That’s cute, though, right?” Sara insisted as Alex led them away and slammed the door.

Lena jumped a little at the noise of the door closing, footsteps clomping down the hall. Her eyes shot open.

“It’s nothing,” Kara assured her before she could worry. Kara stroked her hair back and placed a light kiss there. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mhm,” Lena mumbled, her hand slipping down to Kara’s lower back. Her jumpy pulse steadied and her soft breath fanned out over Kara’s neck as she let sleep pull her back under. 

Kara hid her blush in Lena’s hair. Yeah, she thought, Sara’s right. Cuddly Lena’s pretty cute.

///

Sara had a ridiculous amount of contacts throughout the galaxy. In Cloud City, they were greeted by a friendly-faced woman named Guinevere that Sara had probably slept with in the past who showed them to their accommodations. Kara carried Lena, and Guinevere was kind enough not to ask about Lena’s bruises and dishevelment.

(Lena, for her part, pretended to be asleep.)

After they’d gotten set up, Sara, Alex, and Maggie set off for a bar, while James set off for Lena’s medicine and Winn set off for a long, solitary nap.

“How are you feeling?” Kara asked nervously, setting Lena down on the bed.

“Everything still hurts,” Lena admitted. “But better, after having slept. And safer with you around.”

“Still worried that Lillian’s… in there?” Kara asked, tapping Lena’s temple lightly. Lena seemed to consider for a moment before shaking her head. “Well, good. She can stay out.”

“Kara, I don’t know how I can ever repay you,” Lena said, reaching out for Kara. Kara quickly took Lena’s hand and sat down next to her.

“Trust me, seeing you here, alive and recovering, is repayment enough.”

“Sap.”

“It’s true.”

“Well.” Lena couldn’t stop the smile that split her face. “I’m incredibly glad you feel that way.”

///

The worry built with each day they went without contact from the Resistance.

The group distracted themselves with their excitement at Lena’s progress. Under Sara’s medical care and Kara’s affection, Lena made quick strides towards a full recovery. The dark red and purple bruises that littered her skin faded. For a while, she was a patchwork of jaundiced greens and yellows, but her complexion slowly returned to normal.

Her motor capabilities were slower to come back, but after a week’s worth of encouragement, Lena was able to stand weakly against Kara’s side. In another week, she was taking feeble steps across the room and back to her bed, still supported by Kara, and five days after that, she was hobbling around with only the assistance of a cane. She hated the pain meds—hated how unsteady and foggy they made her feel—but she would take them over being stuck on the Cadmus station any day.

Still, she wrapped an arm tightly around Kara’s waist as Kara helped her walk to the kitchen one day. She gripped Kara’s side a little hard as she tried to avoid stumbling sideways, but if Kara noticed, she didn’t say anything.

“I don’t like this,” she murmured.

“Don't like what?” Kara asked, easing Lena into one of the chairs as she went to heat up food for the two of them.

“The medicine,” Lena answered. “It feels like everything’s moving.”

“Would going back to bed help?” Kara asked sweetly. Lena’s eyes were unfocused.

“I don’t—I don’t know,” she answered after a while. “Damn it. I’m sorry, what was the question again?”

“I can ask Sara when she thinks it’s a good idea for you to stop taking the pain meds,” Kara suggested, setting two plates on the table and crouching down to sit in front of Lena. “I just don’t want you to be in pain. I want you to be able to rest and heal.”

Lena nodded, eyes cast down to her lap. 

“My question was, do you want to go back to bed? Do you think it would help to sleep it off a little?”

Lena looked from her lap, to her meal, to Kara. She pursed her lips and nodded.

“Alright. C’mon.”

///

The seven of them began to fall into a rhythm of life on Bespin. Sara, particularly, seemed itchy to return to the Resistance. Most of her conversations began to revolve around Jedi friends only Kara seemed very familiar with: Jax and Martin and Gideon and Amaya and Rip.

Kara wondered if it wouldn’t be too easy just to stay here. She loved the beauty of Bespin, the colors of the atmosphere above and below them. She loved the hustle-and-bustle of Cloud City—she’d never been permitted to spend time in a big city before, beyond what was necessary.

“When this is all over,” she told Lena one restful evening, the two of them staring out their window at the cloud cars zipping by, “the Resistance and all that, we should come back here.”

Lena nodded against Kara’s shoulder. “I like it here, too.”

“It would be a really nice place to practice my flying,” Kara continued. “Ooh! And you could learn to drive a cloud car so we could go flying together. We could race each other!”

“You really think you’re any match for a cloud car?” Lena teased, raising an eyebrow.

“You think you’re a match for me?” Kara retorted, nudging Lena with her shoulder.

“Can I say something cheesy?” Lena asked, biting her lip. Kara’s eyes sparkled as she looked at Lena.

“Go for it.”

“I think…” Lena sighed, meeting Kara’s gaze. “I think you’re just about the only match for me.”

Kara wrapped an arm around Lena and pressed a kiss to the corner of Lena’s mouth. Lena sighed and moved to kiss Kara properly, only to catch sight of someone out of the corner of her eye.

“Can I help you, Sara?” she asked flatly. “How long were you standing there?”

“Long enough. I came by to drop off your last round of meds,” Sara answered, smirking. She set a packet of pills down on their coffee table as she sat down on the couch, kicking up her feet. “That may just be the gayest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I feel like I might have to one-up you guys now.”

///

It was a full twenty-seven days before the Resistance made contact.

“Where in the maker’s name are you right now, Sawyer?” Cat snipped over the comm unit. “No, actually, don’t answer that. I’m not interested in that part. I want the full story.”

“General Grant, we came back to Carlac and the base camp there had been completely abandoned,” Maggie began to explain.

“Well of course it had,” Cat huffed. “We were attacked.”

“We couldn’t get in touch with you,” Maggie continued. “I imagine you couldn’t risk being tracked?”

“Something like that,” Cat agreed. “You know what? Nevermind. I redact my earlier statement. Where the hell are you?”

Maggie glanced behind her at the crowd hovering in the doorway, eavesdropping.

“Bespin, ma’am. Cloud City.”

///

“Lena Luthor, you beautiful, magnificent, astonishing lantern bird!”

Lena shot Kara an alarmed look as the tiny General all but bowled her over, wrapping her arms around Lena’s shoulders and swaying her slightly. Lena winced—Cat was none too gentle, and Lena had made progress but was only just fresh off the pain meds. Lena’s physical comfort didn’t seem to matter much to Cat.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re alive,” Cat continued. “You talented, wonderful genius!”

“I—I’m glad you’re so happy to see me,” Lena replied with a blush, awkwardly patting Cat on the shoulder.

“Your sabotage worked!” Cat exclaimed gleefully. “Your mother and brother attempted to use the Medusa weapon against our camp, but it failed. All thanks to you and your perfect, gorgeous brain! Oh, I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Cat released Lena, and seemed to realize suddenly what a scene she’d made.

“What are you all looking at?” she snapped at the Resistance fighters and Jedi who’d seemingly stopped in their tracks to watch Cat’s reunion with Lena. “Get back to work!”

“What happened with the Medusa weapon?” Lena asked, and Cat turned back to her.

“The Luthors deployed it over our camp directly after retreating,” Cat answered. “We played possum until we were certain they thought they’d destroyed us, and then quietly evacuated to Florrum.”

“General Grant.” Kara stepped forward, slipped her hand into Lena’s. Cat’s eyes flitted down to their hands then back up to Kara’s face again, and a sudden look of understanding moved across her features. “What happened with Mon-El? Did you catch him? Also,” she glanced around at the business—it was like the entire Resistance was here, “what is going on right now?”

“He eluded us,” Cat confessed. “And the Resistance has friends on Bespin. We’re staying here until further notice.”

“But isn’t that—setting up base in a major metropolis, isn’t that a little… dangerous?” Kara asked.

“Life is dangerous, Kira,” Cat sighed dramatically. “If anything, it may make the Luthors less likely to follow us here, given this is a large, educated, and Resistance-sympathetic population. And with Mon-El no longer among us, I’m much less concerned about anyone leaking our information or location to the wrong people.”

Kara seemed deep in thought, biting her lip and furrowing her brow. Lena squeezed her hand. Kara smiled slightly, leaning in to kiss Lena on the cheek.

“Anyway, I have plenty to do, so if you two don’t mind,” Cat interrupted. “I don’t need to be witness to this egregious unprofessionalism within my ranks.”

///

“Hey,” Kara whispered, stirring Lena from her sleep. “Can I…?”

Lena hummed. “Kara,” she giggled, “you sleep in my bed almost every night. Do you really still feel like you need to ask?”

“Hey, I’m all about consent,” Kara replied sternly, and slipped under Lena’s comforter. Lena made a low, happy, tired sound in the back of her throat when Kara cuddled up to her, pulling Kara’s hand to her chest. Kara nuzzled the back of Lena’s neck. “Kiss goodnight?” she pleaded, and even though Lena was kind of still asleep, she rolled over to place a peck to Kara’s lips.

While Lena was in the process of rolling back over, Kara leaned back in, lips brushing the long column of Lena’s neck and planting several light, fluttery kisses there before she nuzzled into the pillow to sleep.

Suddenly Lena wasn’t so tired.

Suddenly Lena was thinking about Kara’s mouth hot and wet and open on her neck, thinking about Kara’s hands everywhere, thinking about all sorts of things her body wanted but had been too battered for until recently—but Kara was already snuggling up to her side and beginning to doze off.

It took Lena another thirty minutes to go back to sleep. Kara was deep asleep in two.

///

The Resistance resumed business as usual. Cat began sending out reconnaissance missions again (though the Super Seven, as Kara, Alex, Maggie, Lena, James, Winn, and KRY-P2 were starting to be known, were benched indefinitely from anything of that sort—they were too infamous by now to be of much use, which irked Cat to no end, since Alex and Maggie had previously been her best undercover operatives).

They began meeting the Luthors blow-for-blow, stepping in to defend planets and cities that came under Luthor attack. It was a delicate tug-of-war. It felt like for every city they saved, there was another that fell under the Empress’ control, but at least it felt like they were stopping the Luthors from gaining more ground than they would otherwise.

///

News came from one of their sources that the Luthors were mining for something called Isotope-454 in the Vatha sector. When the information was announced in the control center, Lena, Alex, and Maggie grew immediately pale.

“They’re rebuilding the Medusa weapon,” Lena announced. “They’re making sure it works this time.”

“Then we stop them before they can,” Cat declared. “James, I want you and Master Kal-El to lead a squadron out there to destroy that mine.”

James and Kal-El smiled across the war room from one another.

“Sawyer, Danvers, Luthor,” Cat called them forward, “I want you working on figuring out how to destabilize the virus in case worse comes to worst.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

///

Cat and M’gann sent Kara and J’onn on a mission to Coruscant to meet with the leaders of the official Jedi Order and discuss preliminary plans for a potential reconciliation. Lena was glad—it was something that needed to be done, and something Kara needed to be involved in, as her role was the crux of the division in the first place, but it didn’t make it any easier. It was the first time she’d had to be without Kara since her rescue.

She found it nearly impossible to sleep without Kara’s heat beside her to keep her grounded in reality, to keep the nightmares at bay. She threw herself into droid repairs, learned how to drive a cloud car with Winn, and went cantina-hopping in Port Town at night with Maggie and Alex to knock back shots of Corellian fire whiskey.

She missed Kara.

It took four days for Kara to return. To her credit, Lena displayed a great deal of patience once Kara arrived, waiting for her to debrief with Cat, M’gann, and Alex. Once Kara was done with all her meetings, though, Lena wasted no time at all grabbing her by the hand and hauling her back to their flat.

(Sara may have whistled when they passed her in the hallway. Lena wasn’t about to dignify that with a response—and it wasn’t like Sara had the wrong idea about Lena’s intentions, either.)

“I missed you,” Kara said as Lena slammed the door behind them.

“Uh-huh,” Lena replied distractedly before she was pulling Kara towards her, hands bunched in the fabric on Kara’s hips.

“Did you miss me?” Kara teased, pulling back a little so her lips were just out of kissing reach.

“Uh-huh,” Lena mumbled, deciding Kara’s neck would have to do. She leaned forward and began scattering kisses there.

“Ah,” Kara gasped, hands moving up to Lena’s hair. She unpinned the other woman’s bun, running her fingers through dark hair. Lena’s teeth grazed the side of her neck lightly and Kara’s knees buckled for just a second. “Lena, I—”

Kara pulled Lena’s face from her neck, their lips meeting in the next moment. Everything felt rushed, desperate, longing. Their kisses were sloppy, a mess of tongues and teeth and squeaky gasps from Kara. Lena pulled Kara with her, backing up until her back hit the wall with enough force to rattle the bookcase next to them.

“You okay?” Kara murmured. Lena laughed a little—

“Uh-huh.”

—and resumed fervently kissing Kara. Kara’s hands grabbed their way down Lena’s sides, to Lena’s hips, to the backs of Lena’s thighs, and suddenly Lena was being hoisted up. Pressed between Kara and the wall, Lena wrapped her legs tight around Kara’s hips, draped her arms over Kara’s shoulders. She tangled her hands in Kara’s hair, tugging gently. Kara stopped kissing her lips to focus her attention on Lena’s neck.

Lena’s sighs and moans were quiet, but breathed right into Kara’s ear, they wrapped their way around all of Kara’s senses like rolling fog. There was a spot Kara found that Lena particularly liked—right under and behind Lena’s right ear—and when she sucked a bruise there, Lena gasped sharply and rocked her hips against Kara.

Game-changer.

“I’m not going to be able—to wear my hair up,” Lena panted, chuckling a little, as Kara’s lips began to travel. Kara smiled against the side of Lena’s neck, made her way back to that spot again. Lena’s hips rocked up desperately again. Her hands tightened in Kara’s hair. “Kriff.”

Lena let go of Kara’s hair, shoved her back by the shoulders, and unwrapped her legs from Kara’s waist. She reversed their positions, pinning Kara to the wall this time. Her frenzied kisses made their way down Kara’s neck. One hand palmed one of Kara’s breasts through her clothes while her other hand made its way higher and higher up the smooth skin of Kara’s thigh, pushing the soft linen of Kara’s skirt up and out of the way.

She dropped quickly to her knees.

“Lena!” Kara sighed, a loud, breathy sound, and Lena blushed. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to hear her name spoken to her again without thinking of her name being said like that, with that desperate little hitch in the middle that made it sound more like Le-ena!

Kara’s hands tangled in her hair. Lena scraped her nails along the backs of Kara’s thighs, gripping her ass and making Kara gasp. Lena sucked a stripe of hickeys up the inside of Kara’s left thigh.

“Lena,” Kara sighed again.

Lena bit down just on the inside of Kara’s right thigh, and Kara jumped a little before Lena soothed it with her tongue.

“Ah!—Lena!”

A knock at the door.

They both stiffened in surprise.

“Kara,” Alex’s voice called, “you in there? Cat needs you.”

Lena slumped, forehead resting against Kara’s stomach. Kara ran a hand over Lena’s head. They both tried to catch their breath.

“Yeah,” Kara shouted back finally, hands still smoothing over Lena’s hair, “I’m in here.”

“Cat wants you in the command center in five minutes,” Alex said. “She’s in a foul mood today, so I’d avoid being late.”

“Thank you, Alex,” Kara said, still sounding a little breathless. They listened to Alex walk away.

“Tell Cat you won’t go,” Lena mumbled against Kara’s belly. “Or I can tell her. I’ll get her on the commlink right now.”

“Lena.” Kara sounded amused.

“You just got back.”

“Lena…”

“They can’t make you go,” Lena insisted, fingernails scraping gently down the backs of Kara’s thighs again.

“They kinda can,” said Kara mournfully. Lena’s chuckle was rueful. “Maybe this’ll go quickly. You never know.”

“Hm.” Lena sounded unconvinced. Kara giggled, combing her fingers out of Lena’s hair to pluck the other woman’s hands from the back of her thighs. She pulled Lena to her feet and Lena wrapped her arms around Kara’s neck and tucked her chin over her shoulder. Kara’s hands settled on Lena’s hips. They simply stood there for a moment.

“I should go,” Kara whispered.

“No,” Lena breathed, holding her closer. “I missed you.” Kara giggled a little. Lena nuzzled the side of her neck.

“Lena, I’ll make sure they don’t take too long,” Kara insisted. Her tone was light and teasing when she asked, “When did you get this clingy, huh?”

“I had a hard time sleeping without you for the last four days,” Lena replied honestly. Kara pressed a soft kiss to Lena’s temple.

“We can sleep together tonight,” Kara promised, and Lena smirked, not sure if Kara was entirely aware of what she’d just said. Teasingly, she turned her head to kiss Kara’s neck, whispering right into her ear:

“Promise?”

Her teeth tugged lightly on Kara’s earlobe. Kara’s neck went red. “I really do have to go, though.”

“Mhm.”

“Lena, you have to let me go.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” Kara said emphatically. When Lena unwound her arms from around Kara’s neck and pulled back, Kara was grinning. She leaned in to peck the corner of Lena’s mouth, smoothing a thumb over Lena’s cheekbone. “We’ll catch up tonight, I promise. I’ll tell you all about Coruscant. Ooh, maybe we could have a game night here!”

Lena didn’t have the heart to tell Kara that maybe the last thing she wanted to do was have anyone in their flat but Kara for the next ten hours or so. But seeing everyone would make Kara happy, so she nodded with a sheepish smile of her own. “That sounds lovely.”

///

Cat was a ball of nerves, worried because James and Kal-El’s mission to destroy the Isotope-454 mine had gone awry. The pair had been ousted, forced to turn back, although they reported that it seemed as though Darth Lex and Lillian already had the materials they needed, since the mine was hardly very active and the Cadmus station was nowhere in the vicinity.

“We need to be on high alert,” she warned everyone. “Our informants don’t have a good idea of where they plan to strike next, but if they’re able to repair the Medusa weapon, the next attack could be catastrophic.”

After hours upon hours of meetings, scurrying about the city to organize and to train and to repair and to discuss, the pair invited their friends over for a casual game night. They drank wine and laughed and played a few games, but all were basically passed out on various surfaces after only around an hour. Lena had fallen asleep on the couch resting on James’ shoulder, with Winn sprawled across her lap.

Kara yawned, smiled at the image. She brushed a hair out of Lena’s face, and Lena unconsciously moved towards her warmth.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Kara teased as Lena blinked blearily up at her. Lena groaned, letting her head fall back against James’ shoulder. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”

“Carry me?” Lena mumbled.

“Lena,” Kara giggled. “Come on.”

“You can lift a seventy-five-ton spacecraft with the Force,” Lena pointed out, raising an eyebrow. Kara rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

“Fine, you big baby.” Kara moved Winn over, careful not to wake him, and hefted Lena carefully into her arms, taking them back to bed.

Chapter Text

“ALL CIVILIANS PLEASE PROCEED CALMLY TO THE LOWER LEVELS.”

“ALL CIVILIANS PLEASE PROCEED CALMLY TO THE LOWER LEVELS.”

“ALL CIVILIANS PLEASE PROC—”

“Kara?” Lena reached out in the darkness, repeating herself to be heard over the blaring of the alarms. “Kara?” She was alone in bed. She scrambled to her feet. She could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips.

“I’m here.” Kara stepped out of the bathroom, crossing the bedroom to Lena. She wrapped her hands lightly around Lena’s forearms. “You okay?”

Lena nodded. “Fine. What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Kara said.

“—LY TO THE LOWER LEVELS.”

“ALL CIVIL—”

“We should find Cat, shouldn’t we?” Lena asked.

“Yeah,” Kara nodded. “Get dressed, I’ll wait for you.”

“—O THE LOWER LEVELS.”

“ALL CIVILIANS PLEASE PROCEED CALMLY TO THE LOWER LEVELS.”

“ALL CIVILIANS PLEASE PROCEED CALMLY TO THE LOWER LEVELS.”

Lena fumbled for her clothing in the darkness. She changed into a loose linen shirt that was almost definitely Kara’s and a pair of pants that were probably her own and then made her way back to the doorway. As they stepped out into the light of the hallway, Kara caught the shoulder of the shirt Lena wore, a sweetly amused look on her features.

“Is this mine?” she asked.

“It was dark,” Lena replied quickly.

The pair spotted Maggie and Alex up ahead, KRY-P2 clicking and beeping at Alex’s feet, and hurried to catch up.

“Any idea what’s going on?” Kara asked Alex.

“No,” Alex replied, “but I’m worried.”

Together, they silently made their way to the command center. They fought against the tide of worried civilians, trying to remain calm as they descended further into the city.

When they stepped in, the command center was already buzzing. Winn and Barry spotted them from across the room.

“Kara,” Barry waved. “Does anybody have any idea what’s going on?”

“No,” Kara shook her head, “we were hoping someone here could tell us.”

“Out of my way,” Cat snapped, pushing through the crowd. Kara and Barry each backed up so she could get through and then came together again. Cat stumbled, glowering, into a small huddle of exhausted pilots. “Are you just going to stand there like a herd of moronic nerfs? I have an announcement to make!”

The pilots quickly stepped aside to let the blustering General through.

A hush fell over the room.

“I’m sure you’re all aware that civilians have been ordered to evacuate to the lowest levels of the city,” Cat began. “Well, obviously.” She sighed, rubbing her temple dramatically before she began again. “We’ve just received word from one of our inside sources that Luthor forces are headed to Cloud City with a now-functional Medusa weapon.”

Despite the fact that the crowded room was growing hot with bodies shoved together, Lena felt a shiver run down her spine. Kara looked stricken, and Lena reached out to hold Kara’s hand in hers. Alex held Kara’s hand on the other side, and James placed a hand on Lena’s shoulder.

“We’re evacuating the civilian population as efficiently as we can. We have to be ready to meet the Luthors and disable the Medusa weapon once and for all.”

A murmur ran through the crowd.

“Ms. Luthor has already disabled the weapon once before, so she’ll be leading a small team on board the Cadmus station. Pilots will meet the Luthor forces before they can reach Bespin’s atmo. Everyone else will be helping to evacuate the civilian population. The Luthors’ ETA is currently about two hours according to our source, so I expect everyone to be ready in one.”

Everyone was silent.

“Dismissed.”

///

“I can’t believe she’s making you do this,” Kara paced fretfully while Lena anxiously checked her blaster over and over again. “This is so not fair. If she’s making you go, then I’m coming with you.”

“Kara,” Lena sighed heavily, tucking her blaster into its holster on her belt. “You know that’s not an option.”

“You’re still injured,” Kara insisted, gliding towards Lena in just a couple of steps. “You can’t go! You’re still… You’re still hurt, from before!”

“Kara.” Lena placed a hand on Kara’s arm. “I’m not hurt. I can do this. Plus, I’m not going by myself. I’ll have backup.”

“Promise me,” Kara said shakily, gripping Lena’s shoulder almost uncomfortably tight, “promise me you won’t do anything reckless. Just… Just tell me you’re going to stay safe up there, please.”

“I promise I won’t do anything reckless,” Lena said. Her expression turned grave and she looked away from Kara. She clenched her jaw. Her nostrils flared. “But I will do whatever it takes to end this.” Her eyes flicked back up.

Kara stepped into Lena’s space. Lena brought her hands up to hold Kara’s face. They simply looked at one another for a long moment before they both closed their eyes and leaned in for a kiss.

Not a minute later, Cat harrumphed from the open doorway.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to pick a more opportune time to be consorting with Kira, Leela,” Cat quipped. “Now, both of you, to your stations.”

Kara and Lena held onto each other for just a moment longer before they separated. Lena rubbed the hem of the shirt she’d borrowed from Kara between her forefinger and thumb. Her expression hardened into a glare. This would end today.

///

“Maggie, wait!” Alex called. Maggie was already halfway into an X-wing, but she turned around at the sound of her wife’s voice.

“What is it?” Maggie asked as Alex clambered up after her, leaning into the cockpit to steal one last long kiss. When Alex pulled away, breathless, she tugged on a lock of Maggie’s soft hair.

“I love you.”

Maggie dimpled sweetly. Her hand came up to brush Alex’s cheek. “I know.”

///

Lena took a deep breath, assuming the cold poise that she’d been trained into since her childhood. If she didn’t let it affect her, it wouldn’t. Or so Lillian had always told her.

She couldn’t afford to be bothered right now. She just never thought she’d be back on the Cadmus station after Kara had rescued her.

Steeling herself, Lena took one more breath. “This way,” she ushered her two companions—a pair of rebel soldiers named Zed and Chas.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Zed whispered.

It was amazing how well she remembered the layout of this station. She knew Lex and Lillian would have their fingers on the trigger, ready to deploy the weapon at a moment’s notice, so in order to take out Medusa, she’d have to avoid them entirely. Her ability to hide herself felt weaker—she wasn’t sure whether it actually was weaker now or whether she was just getting lost in her own thoughts about the last time she’d been onboard. Still, she paused her small cohort in a side hallway and gave herself another moment to breathe and slow her racing heart before pressing onward.

///

“J’onn, please,” Kara begged. “I have to be up there. I’m not asking to be with Lena, or Maggie, or James,” she insisted quickly, before he could suggest that. “I need to be involved here. I can’t just sit here and do nothing! Isn’t this the entire reason we went to Morvolo, all those years ago?”

J’onn sighed, hanging his head. “I’m sorry, Kara. M’gann and Cat have made a decision.”

“What about my decision?” Kara argued. “Please, J’onn, I cannot sit this one out.”

J’onn leaned out, glancing over Kara’s shoulder before meeting Kara’s eyes. “You have my permission. If Cat or M’gann ask, I will tell them I told you to go.” Kara’s expression was solemn and resolute, her blue gaze never wavering from J’onn’s dark eyes. “Go, Kara,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “Make me proud.”

///

Lena turned down the corridor that led to the platform where the weapon was held. She only felt a moment’s fleeting elation before she heard a menacing whirr from behind her.

“Lena, Lena, Lena,” Lex’s dark voice chuckled. She turned, her companions already prepared to fight with their blasters out. Lex didn’t even seem to see them; his eyes were only for Lena. “You were always so predictable.”

///

Once Kara landed on the Cadmus station, she found the first out-of-use supply closet she could and dove inside to meditate. She reached out with the Force, feeling for each of her friends and making sure they were safe. There was Maggie, drawing fire for James while he targeted TIE-fighters with collected precision. Alex was back in Cloud City, directing the hordes of civilians and overseeing evacuation to Ugnorgrad. Winn was pacing the command center restlessly while Jess tried valiantly to divert his anxiety.

She reached out for for Sara, Barry, Speedy, Cisco, Lucy, Vasquez, Kal-El, Oliver, Jax—everyone, before she finally reached out for Lena.

She couldn’t feel Lena anywhere. She supposed that probably should’ve made her feel good—likely it meant that Lena’s Force-cloaking trick was still in effect—but the pit of her stomach went cool with dread—because what if it meant Lena had already been killed?

But then there was Darth Lex’s imprint on the Force, and she knew Lena had to be nearby, because she could feel every ounce of Lex’s complicated rage swilling around inside her as if the feeling of betrayal were her own.

Kara stumbled out of the closet and sprinted in that direction.

///

“Hold him off,” Lena demanded, hating the way her voice shook just a little. Her pair of fighters launched into battle as Lena hurried down the hallway to the weapon.

For being such an advanced piece of weaponry, the Medusa weapon resembled a tangled nest of wires attached to a vat of red goop. It sat out on a platform hundreds of feet up inside the Cadmus station to make dispersal easier. It wouldn’t be enough to simply steal or switch out the isotope like last time—not now that the Luthors had control of an Isotope-454 mine. She knew she would have to destroy the weapon entirely.

“Think, Lena, think,” she muttered, staring at the mess of wires and switches. Somewhere nearby, Zed shrieked, gurgled, and fell silent. She couldn’t let herself look right now.

She knew this weapon inside and out.

Another harsh scream. This time, Chas continued screaming for several long moments before being cut short in the middle of a breath with an electric whrr.

“Kriff!” Lena breathed, turning quickly. Chas and Zed lay dead on the ground. Lex stood over them, face cast dramatically in the low red of his lightsaber. He stared at her for a long while, and for a second, Lena though she could see hints of Alexander in him again. She allowed herself just a moment to imagine the much-older boy who’d taught her to play strategy games, who’d defended her against Lillian when she stopped improving in her Sith training at age seven, who’d found her an odd delicacy to eat on every new planet they visited growing up.

Then he looked up and stepped forward. Everything about him turned predatory. The Alexander in him disappeared.

“How disappointing,” Lex clucked, circling her like a dire-cat. Lena turned, never letting her back be to him. “You know, you were supposed to be so powerful, Lena. When Dad brought you home for the first time, we all thought—well, he thought, at least, that you would be the best of us. Mother hated you for it, but in time, her jealousy faded. Even she came to realize that you, regardless of how much or how little talent you possess, are a part of our family.”

“Is there a point to this little soliloquy, Alexander?” Lena asked, eyebrows drawing together.

“You’re still a part of this family,” Lex said. Lena froze, and Lex took this as an opportunity to step closer. Lena should’ve raised her blaster. She didn’t. “Mother and I—we still love you, in our own way. You could be powerful again, Lena, at our side.”

Lena narrowed her eyes. “What’s the catch? The only time you or mother ever said you loved me was when you needed something from me.”

“There’s no catch,” Lex insisted. “No ulterior motive. Mother and I—we realize now how horribly we've treated you. You've just been acting out. You're barely more than a child to me, Lena. You didn't know what you were doing." He paused. "All I want is my baby sister back.” Lex took another step forward. This time, Lena did raise the blaster, eyes round and eyebrows scrunched. “Please, Lena. We could give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

“You act as though there is anything in the galaxy that you could give me that would make me join with you and Lillian again,” Lena growled, hand steady. Lex hung his head, sighed through his nose.

“We were afraid you might say that,” Lillian’s voice rang out from behind, and Lena whirled. “Lex, get her. We’re going to need her to lure out the Jedi girl.”

Lex began to approach. Lena’s heart rate kicked up a notch. Everything around her started to come into sharper focus.

“This is going to go a lot easier for you if you just cooperate, Lena,” he warned, reaching out to grab her by the wrist.

“Don’t touch me!” she snarled, throwing up her hands. A wall of pressure rippled out from her being, flinging Lex against the far wall and sliding Lillian across the smooth concrete-and-metal floor. Lena stared at her own hands in shock as Lex groaned, staggering to his feet, but when Lena looked up, Kara was standing in the doorway.

“Oh, god,” Lena almost laughed, “I thought that was me!”

Lex lunged for Kara, and Lena fired off a shot. He flicked her blaster bolt away with his lightsaber as though it were little more than a pesky fly, but the distraction was enough to give Kara the upper hand.

The sound of lightsabers clashing filled the room. Lillian began to stagger towards the Medusa weapon. Lena lunged at her. She fired her blaster at Lillian’s hand, and, while she missed, Lillian quickly withdrew her hand from Medusa’s controls. She smirked at Lena, holding out a hand and lifting her into the air.

Lena snarled even as her airway constricted. She imagined shoving Lillian back hard against the wall, and when she swiped out a hand, she tumbled back to the floor and Lillian slipped backwards (not all the way to the wall, but enough that she seemed utterly bewildered).

Lex screeched in rage as Kara landed a swipe that grazed his skin, and Lillian lunged to assist him.

Lena didn’t have time to think. She took the opportunity of Lillian’s distraction to dive for the Medusa control panel herself. She thought back over her long hours spent learning this machine with Alex and Maggie. Think, think, think! She had to be overthinking this.

Kara shouted, and when Lena glanced, she was fending off attacks from Lex’s lightsaber and Lillian’s Force-lightning at the same time. Kara screamed louder, the force of the dual attacks driving her back. Her arms strained to keep holding her lightsaber up and protect herself.

Don’t think, Lena. A calming presence washed over her, and she breathed. Let the Force guide you.

Suddenly, Lena’s hands were working faster than she thought they could. She disassembled the weapon bit-by-bit while Kara kept Lex and Lillian distracted. Here, she ripped out a handful of wires. There, she fired a blaster bolt through a series of circuit boards. She was shredding Medusa faster than she should’ve ever been able. Finally, she detached the canister of Isotope-454 from the bottom of the red vat—without it, the bioweapon would become inert, useless, only this time, they wouldn’t be able to just replace it. The whole machine was scraps.

“No!” Lillian shouted, seeming to notice Lena’s quick handiwork for the first time. In one hand, Lena held her blaster still, and the other held the canister of Isotope-454 overhead. Lillian and Lex both abandoned Kara at once to charge at Lena. In the same instant, Lena slammed the canister on the ground, watching it crack open. The liquid Isotope-454 began to ooze out over the floor.

“You bitch!” Lillian snarled, thrusting her hand out. Red Force-lightning jumped from her palm into Lena’s body, and Lena dropped her blaster. Lillian drove her back, back, back towards the railing and a steep, endless drop below.

“Lena, no!” Kara called, rushing towards them. Lex stopped her with his lightsaber, and Kara was only just quick enough to parry. 

Still Lena stumbled back, gasping and doubling over in pain. She gripped the railing.

The lightning stopped. Lena had only a moment to register how unsteady she was, how close to the edge, before Lillian smiled serenely. “Goodbye, Lena.” One shove, and Lena toppled backwards over the rail.

“No!” Kara screamed. Her saber dropped from her hand. As Lex swung at her, Kara launched herself into the air, hovering at the peak of her arc for just a moment, before she, too, dove over Lillian’s head and over the railing.

She had to push herself faster than she’d ever gone before in order to catch up with falling, screaming Lena. Almost there, almost there, almost there! She grit her teeth and pushed herself that last little bit, hands reaching out. Her fingertips touched the soft linen of Lena’s borrowed shirt, and then she was catching Lena around the waist, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Lena’s head. They stopped abruptly.

“Gotcha.”

Lena blinked. Her breath shuddered out of her, and her hands scrabbled to grip Kara’s shoulders almost painfully. Her heart continued to beat uncomfortably quickly. “You caught me.”

Kara readjusted Lena in her arms so she could carry her more easily. “You used the Force. Like, really used the Force.”

“You dove off a railing after me,” Lena observed. Kara nodded, although when she looked up, her expression steeled into rage.

“What do you say we go finish things with Lex and Lillian?”

Lena nodded stalwartly.

Kara shot back up again.

When they reached the deck again, Lex and Lillian were gone. Only the scattered, ruined parts of the Medusa machine and the mangled bodies of the two rebel soldiers remained. Kara delicately placed Lena back on terra firma, and the two simply stood there for a moment.

“Can you sense them?” Lena asked after a beat. Kara shook her head.

“They’re not onboard the Cadmus station anymore,” Kara reported. “I can’t feel them anywhere. They got away, just like Mon-El.”

Lena slumped.

“But we did it, Lee,” Kara said, a hint of relief cracking in through the hard concern over Lex and Lillian’s escape. When she looked at Lena, her pride was so bright and shiny, Lena almost had to look away. “You did it. You destroyed Medusa!”

Lena smiled tiredly. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”

Chapter Text

As they landed on Bespin, all the rebel fighters could hear was wild cheering from the citizens of Cloud City. Lex and Lillian had abandoned the Cadmus station, which meant it was now the Resistance’s— General Grant’s , realistically—to decide what to do with. Medusa was destroyed, and their planet was safe once more.

Alex waited on one of the landing pads. When Maggie landed her X-wing, she clambered out of the cockpit and straight into Alex’s arms.

“I love you,” she murmured. Alex smiled softly down at her, running her hands over Maggie’s hair.

“I know,” she said, brushing their noses softly before leaning in for a kiss.

KRY-P2 beeped wildly, circling little victory laps around Alex and Maggie.

Winn wrapped James in a tight, fierce hug. “I’m so happy you’re okay, man.”

Sara snuck a celebratory kiss from Vasquez, which turned very quickly into a celebratory let’s-get-out-of-here.

Cat clutched Lena and Kara by the shoulders, and didn’t let  them go for a good long while. Lena, exhausted, sunk into the embrace. Kara extricated herself quickly to speak with M’gann and J’onn.

“Are you alright?” Cat asked Lena. Lena nodded against her shoulder. “Good.” Cat’s voice was curt, but her hand was gentle as she patted Lena’s back. “That’s very good. I would hate to lose you again.”

“You made me proud today,” J’onn told Kara. M’gann nodded in agreement from just behind him. Kara beamed.

///

“For your incredible bravery and devoted service to the freedom of the galaxy,” M’gann announced, “I hereby grant to you these medals of honor.”

Kara, Lena, James, Winn, Alex, Maggie, Kal-El and Sara stood before M’gann, who was bedecked in the garb of her home planet of Mars. Kara wore traditional Kryptonian clothing in red, blue, and gold, and her red cape swayed when she moved. On her chest, she proudly displayed the Zor-El family crest. Looking at her, Lena’s heart swelled a little.

“May we all strive to uphold the ideals you’ve embodied over the past six months. The Resistance thanks you for your dedication.”

When the eight rebel heroes finally turned around, a raucous cheer went up.

“Look! Look at this!” Winn pointed excitedly at the medal now hanging from around his neck. James smirked, clapping his friend proudly on the shoulder, while Kal-El wrapped an arm around James in turn. Sara winked, shooting finger-blasters to a girl in the front row. Lena glanced softly at a smiling, waving Kara from the corner of her eye.

///

Well after the ceremony, the freshly-dubbed heroes found themselves in Port Town, at a local cantina called Noonan’s. Winn struck up a conversation with a roguish Starhavenite girl while James and Sara chattered excitedly. Alex and Maggie stayed for a couple drinks but slipped away early.

“Hey,” Kara tugged at Lena’s hands, “let’s dance!”

Lena sputtered but let herself be dragged along: “Kara, I don’t—I’ve never—”

“Come on,” Kara urged. “It’s fun!”

And Lena wasn’t exactly drunk , but she was a couple drinks in, so she let herself get swept up in the tide of Kara’s enthusiasm without much of a fight. Kara pulled her in by the waist and Lena draped her arms over Kara’s shoulders, letting the taller woman guide her along to the rhythm. 

Kara leaned forward to bump their heads together before pressing in to kiss Lena. Lena smiled into the kiss, and Kara moved her lips quickly down Lena’s jaw to her neck. Lena sighed, then laughed. She pulled herself closer into Kara. 

“Enjoying yourself yet?” Kara asked against her ear. 

“I’m a pathetic dancer, Kara,” Lena insisted, though without much conviction. “It’s embarrassing.”

“I guess I’ll have to teach you, then, huh?” Kara teased. She grabbed Lena’s hands, and Lena gave in and let Kara push her and pull her to the beat of whatever song was playing. Without much warning, Kara spun Lena away from her and then back in. Lena crashed into her chest, and they both stumbled back into another group of dancers. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Lena giggled, feeling bubbly and light. “I told you I was pathetic, Kara.” When Kara rearranged her arms to hold Lena close, Lena buried her head against Kara’s shoulder. The song changed. Minutes passed. Kara continued to lead Lena around the floor.

“Hey, cutie,” Kara whispered into Lena’s hair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you may have had a little fun dancing there for a second.” Lena said nothing but smiled against Kara’s neck. “ Knew it. ” As the music turned slow, they began to sway more gently and Lena pressed her lips to Kara’s thrumming pulse.

They danced for a few more minutes before Lena suggested getting another drink. Kara found Lucy at the bar and the pair of them launched into an enthusiastic conversation about James and his piloting that Lena had a little trouble following. Lena excused herself when she spotted Jess, and the pair of them eyed Winn’s new “friend” from Starhaven nervously.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about her,” Lena murmured, sipping a cocktail. Jess agreed vehemently. Lena finished what was left of her drink, feeling warm and loose and a little tipsy.

When Jess bid her a good night, Lena navigated her way back over to Kara. She curved an arm around Kara’s waist, leaning into her side.

“Want to get out of here?”

There must’ve been something in Lena’s eyes, in her tone of voice, because suddenly Kara slammed the rest of her drink, grabbed Lena by the hands, and pulled her out of the bar without so much as telling Lucy or their other friends goodbye.

///

“I came so close to losing you,” Kara said, brushing Lena’s hair behind her ears. “I was so scared, Lena. There was a second I thought maybe you…” She trailed off. Shook her head.

“You didn’t lose me,” Lena reminded her firmly, squeezing her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I was so scared I wasn’t going to get a chance to tell you...” Kara started, and her expression was far off. Lena’s heart skipped a beat, but before she could ask Kara what she meant to tell Lena, Kara refocused on a new train of thought. “And you used the Force! And I mean, Lena, you used the Force. That was… I mean, for most Jedi, that’s some pretty advanced stuff!”

Lena smiled coyly, staring down at her feet.

“Rao, I love you.”

Lena jolted a little. Kara said it so easily—like it was natural, like it was fact—that it stopped Lena in her tracks. Kara seemed to realize, and glanced at Lena.

“Sorry, I—”

“Was that what you were afraid you wouldn’t get to tell me?” Lena asked.

Kara nodded.

“I love you, too.” Lena gripped Kara’s hand tighter. “I love you so much, I don’t even know what to do with it.” When Kara leaned in to kiss her, Lena met her easily. The kiss was sweet and longing, although it was hard to stop grinning long enough to kiss Kara properly.

“I swear to the maker, if you two aren’t just like a pair of desperate teenagers, then I have the worst luck in the world.” A voice said behind them. The pair jolted apart, turning to spot Cat Grant dressed more casually than either of them had ever seen before. It took them both by surprise. “Oh, please , you two have your own apartment. Go there. Spare the rest of us.” Cat brushed past the two of them before she paused, turning back. “But for the record, the two of you made me and the Resistance immensely proud. Take the next month to yourselves. You’ve earned it.”

Lena’s eyes were sparkling when she glanced at Kara again, and she tugged Kara along the rest of the way to their flat.

///

“Did I mention—” Kara said between breathless kisses, “—I really—liked my shirt on you?”

“No,” Lena breathed, gripping Kara’s back.

“I did,” Kara said. “Really like it.”

Lena smirked up at Kara. “How would you like my shirt off me?”

Kara blushed furiously, nodding once, and that was all the encouragement Lena needed. She slipped it  over her head, Kara’s hands eager to help her pull it off, too.

Lena stretched up on her tiptoes, pressing as close to Kara as possible. Lena could feel the heat of Kara’s skin through her thin linen top. Kara used one arm to catch Lena around the waist, and her other hand came up to squeeze the warm weight of Lena’s breast. Lena pressed closer, eager, breath only catching when Kara rolled a thumb over Lena’s nipple. Lena bit down lightly on Kara’s lower lip.

“Your turn?” Lena asked breathily, fiddling with the hem of Kara’s top. She waited for Kara to nod to start slipping the long-sleeved shirt off, and then they were skin-to-skin.

Still kissing, Lena steered the pair of them towards the bed. Her nails scraped down over Kara’s abs, and she smirked at the way the muscles twitched under her touch. Her hands migrated lower until her fingers were dipping just below the waist of Kara’s pants.

“Can I—?” Lena asked quietly. Kara nodded. Lena rolled pants and underwear down over Kara’s hips and moved back so Kara could step fully free. The fading line of pink hickeys was still visible on the inside of Kara’s thigh from their last attempt at this. Lena pushed Kara back by the hips, and Kara sat on the edge of the bed.

Lena knelt in front of her, gently spreading Kara’s knees so she could scoot in closer. She placed a hard kiss to Kara’s sternum, and Kara sighed loudly.

Lena smirked. She dragged her lips down.

Lena’s fingers traced delicate patterns up and down Kara’s thighs, while her lips and teeth worked their way slowly down Kara’s abdomen. Kara squirmed and sighed. Lena nipped at the top of Kara’s thigh.

“ Lena ,” Kara keened. She tangled her fingers in Lena’s hair.

Lena pulled away just a little, dazzling green eyes looking up at Kara’s face—the furrowed brow and the slightly open mouth. “Is this okay?” she asked.

“ Rao , yes,” Kara exhaled quickly. She opened her eyes, blushing a little when her gaze met Lena’s. Lena smirked. Kara’s eyes squeezed shut again as Lena’s mouth returned to her body, this time right where she wanted it. “ Yes! ”

Lena’s hands crept up the outsides of Kara’s thighs. Kara grabbed one of her hands, threading their fingers together, while she let Lena’s other hand continue to wander. Kara moaned loudly, a belly-deep sound.

Lena was kind of glad Kara’s eyes were closed, because that noise definitely made her blush.

She dug her nails into Kara’s lower back and did that thing with her tongue against Kara’s clit again, and Kara groaned even louder. Her hips and thighs were starting to twitch, breath coming in sharp pants and gratuitous little “ Ah! ”s and “ Yes! ”s and “ Lena! ”s. The hand holding Lena’s hand tightened and the hand in Lena’s hair shook as she tried to scratch Lena’s scalp. Lena could tell she was close.

“ Lena—Lena, yes! ”

Lena kept a steady pace. She felt the tension in Kara grow and grow until suddenly it broke. Both of Kara’s hands gripped almost painfully. Kara threw her head back, letting out a loud, pitchy moan. A rush of new wetness covered Lena’s face. Kara grunted a couple times before she relaxed, boneless, and Lena pulled away, resting her cheek against Kara’s thigh (and trying to surreptitiously wipe her face there). Kara’s breath was still mostly satisfied sighs.

Kara finally giggled a little, but it was thinner than her usual laughter. She didn’t open her eyes quite yet.

“We—we should’ve done that awhile ago,” she breathed. Lena kissed her thigh. “ Oh, Rao. ” Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at Lena, and then mild panic flashed across her features. “Oh, Rao. Lena, I am so sorry .”

Hot, humiliated fear ran through Lena, but Kara quickly leaned forward to wipe Lena’s face with the edge of the sheets.

“Oh, gosh,” Kara fumbled. “I didn’t mean to—I swear , I didn’t even think—it’s been such a long time for me and I—I guess I forgot that sometimes I just let loose —” At this, Kara blushed furiously. “Oh, Rao. Oh, gosh.”

“Wait, are you apologizing for—?”

“It was on your face ,” Kara groaned apologetically.

“Oh, god,” Lena let out a shuddery laugh. “Don’t scare me like that! I thought you were about to tell me you didn’t want to be with me after all!”

“Rao, Lena, no! ” Kara pulled Lena up onto the bed, flopping back so Lena hovered over her.

“I don’t care about my face ,” Lena continued.

“Well, I happen to care about your face quite a bit,” Kara’s warm hands came up to frame Lena’s face, like she was proving a point. “And every other part of you. I was worried you’d be grossed-out!”

Lena laughed, ducking her head to kiss along Kara’s jaw. “If I were grossed out,” she whispered against Kara’s neck, “I wouldn’t have gone down on you in the first place, Kara.” Kara went red, and Lena laughed again.

“Gosh, you have the prettiest laugh,” Kara sighed. Lena knocked their foreheads together and Kara reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind Lena’s ear. “I really do just love everything about you. Is that sappy?”

“Very,” Lena mused. Then she pressed her lips to Kara’s.

Kara sat up with Lena straddling her lap. Kara’s hands found Lena’s breasts again, thumbs brushing rhythmically over her nipples. Lena’s breath caught in her throat. Kara’s lips moved away from Lena’s own, going to that spot behind Lena’s ear again. Lena felt a sharp heat low in her belly, and she hummed. She went to move aside her hair with one hand to give Kara better access, but Kara’s lips were already moving down her throat.

Kara’s mouth found Lena’s nipple, and Lena breathed in sharply through her nose. Her hands came up to scratch at Kara’s scalp. She could feel the wet heat between her legs.

“Kara,” she whispered, and Kara, seeming to understand without being told anything else, moved her hands down to toy with the waistband of Lena’s pants. Kara unbuttoned her pants and rolled them down over Lena’s hips, taking her time. Kara moved her attention to Lena’s other nipple, leaving a sudden chill where her mouth had just been.

Kara was able to slip Lena’s pants and underwear partway down her thighs before their position made it more difficult to go further. Kara’s fingers slipped between Lena’s legs, and Lena laughed breathily.

“Impatient,” Lena murmured.

“Hm,” Kara hummed, pulling away. “Says you.” Kara tugged on the uncomfortably bunched fabric. “Off?”

Lena nodded. While she stood to kick her pants the rest of the way off, Kara scooted back towards the pillows and the headboard, reaching out a with grabby-hands for Lena and making a grabby motion in the air. Lena laughed, crawling over to straddle Kara again.

“You are impatient,” she teased, leaning down to kiss Kara languidly.

“I just want to make you feel good,” Kara replied between kisses. Kara’s hands traced the contours of Lena’s body. Her right hand slipped between Lena’s thighs while her left buried itself in Lena’s hair. One finger traced the folds between Lena’s legs, spreading the moisture it found there. Lena sighed gently at the soft, curious ministrations. She gasped a little as Kara slid that finger into her. 

“Is this okay?” Kara stopped kissing to ask.

“Yes,” Lena whispered, leaning down to pepper Kara’s neck with kisses. Kara curled that finger and Lena sighed softly against the hollow of Kara’s neck. “More than okay.” She captured Kara’s lips again, kissing her with a renewed fervor before breaking away suddenly to tell Kara, “But I—I need a little bit more.”

Kara quickly acquiesced, slipping a second finger into Lena and positioning her palm near her clit. Lena sat up, hands splaying across Kara’s abs as she moved her hips. She rolled out her neck, breathing softly as she rode Kara’s fingers. Kara’s free hand came up to her hip to steady her.

Kara’s thrusts became stronger, deeper. She added a third finger. Lena bit her lip. Her nails scratched lightly on Kara’s abdomen. Her brow began to furrow, and her next sigh was shakier.

Lena leaned forward again, hands on either side of Kara’s head. She kissed Kara, but the kisses were sloppy, unfocused, an incoherent mess of tongue and lips and teeth. She pulled away, resting her forehead against Kara’s temple, and panted, hot breath right on Kara’s ear.

“Kara,” she murmured, an unfamiliar, high-pitched quaver in her voice, “I think I’m close.”

Lena’s thighs began to shake, and her hips faltered. Kara bent a knee between Lena’s legs, giving Lena something sturdier to grind against, and shifted the angle of her fingers. That pooling heat in Lena built, built, built. Her face screwed up in concentration as she teetered on that precipice, breathing fast and unsteady. She ground her teeth. She was so close , but—

“ Come on ,” she hissed, knocking her head against Kara’s.

“You okay?” Kara asked breathlessly.

Lena nodded tightly. “ So close ,” she murmured. “ So, so, so close. ” Kara pulled her fingers out and Lena whined in frustration, but groaned in satisfaction as Kara began to rub methodical, wet circles around her clit.

Then Lena tensed. Everything froze for a moment, like she was hovering, and then everything rushed back in. She gasped, burying her head against Kara’s shoulder. There was a noise—had she made that noise? She wasn’t aware she was capable of sounding so strident and desperate. Kara kept rubbing at her, drawing her orgasm out until everything wasseemed fuzzy and electric and just a little uncomfortable. 

“Okay, okay,” she whispered airily, reaching down to stop the movement of Kara’s hand. She panted against Kara’s cheek, trying to catch her breath again, and Kara turned her head to plant a kiss to Lena’s forehead. The tall blonde wrapped her arms around Lena’s waist, pulling Lena down to rest on top of her. Lena’s hips twitched again as Kara straightened out her leg, but Lena simply sighed contentedly. Her fingers traced swirling patterns on Kara’s skin. After a minute, she spoke again. “You were right. We should’ve done that awhile ago.”

“So it was good, then?” Kara asked, caught somewhere between teasing and seriously inquiring.

Lena hummed affirmatively. With another satisfied exhale, she nuzzled her face further into Kara’s hair.

“We should get under the covers,” Kara suggested.

“Hm, but I don’t want to move,” Lena whined.

“If I get up, you have to get up.”

“Don’t get up, then.”

“ Lena. ”

Lena groaned, making a dramatic show of rolling off Kara so that Kara could slip beneath the comforter. Without Kara’s warmth, though, the sweat cooling on her skin made the room suddenly icy cold, so she put forth the effort of wriggling underneath the comforter, too. Kara immediately reached out, wrapping an arm around her and kissing her cheek gently.

“Night, Lena.”

Lena touched Kara’s cheek with gentle fingertips. “Good night, Kara.”

///

“Gosh, a whole month off,” Kara babbled excitedly, shoving breakfast food into her body at a rate Lena wouldn’t have thought humanly possible until meeting the young Jedi. “What’re we gonna do with ourselves?”

“Chew with your mouth closed,” Alex snapped, sitting down at the table next to her sister. Kara turned to Alex and opened her food-filled mouth wide. Alex poked her in the side. “ Ew , who raised you?”

“I think I’m gonna take some time to travel around the Core planets,” James said. “Maybe take up art or something.”

“That’s sweet,” Maggie smiled. “Alex and I may take a trip to Spira to spend some time on the beaches.”

“ Ooh , can I come?” Kara piped up. “It’s been so long since I’ve spent time on the beach! Alex, please? ”

“How about you, Lena?” James questioned. Lena smiled, blushed down at her plate.

“Well, I—I’m happy to just go wherever Kara goes.”

“ Ugh ,” Alex and Maggie groaned in unison, but Kara beamed that bright, bright smile at her and reached a hand across the table, which Lena took readily. KRY-P2 beeped from its hiding spot under the table, knocking pleasantly into Lena’s knees.

“Hey, guys!” A frazzled looking Winn finally entered the room, that pretty blonde Starhavenite in leather trailing after him. “You guys remember Lyra from last night, right?”

Alex and Maggie exchanged a confused glance, but James, Lena, and Kara all nodded politely.

“Well, she and I are about to take off, but I wanted to come say goodbye.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Alex asked.

“Tatooine,” Lyra and Winn answered in unison. Lyra continued: “Winn’s offered his help with a—a business dealing of mine.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at this.

Lyra wrapped her hands around Winn’s forearm and grinned like a skinflayer. “Ready to go?”

“You bet!” Winn agreed cheerily. “See you guys in a month!”

As soon as they were out of the room, Alex turned to face Maggie across from her.

“She was definitely a smuggler, right?” Alex asked.

“Oh, absolutely. A ‘business dealing’ on Tatooine?” Maggie scoffed.

“I have a bad feeling about her,” Alex continued.

“That’s what I said!” Lena insisted.

“Should someone warn him?” Kara fretted.

“ Pfft .” Alex waved Kara’s concern away. “Nah. He’ll be okay.”

James glanced nervously at the door. “Yeah, I still might check in on him in a day or so.”

///

The beaches of Spira really were lovely. The longer she stayed on this planet, the more Lena saw the appeal. The sea and sky were blue in every direction.

Alex and Maggie had gone motosurfing that day, leaving Lena and Kara to their own devices. Lena stood thigh-deep in the swirling blue, while Kara kicked lazily past, floating on her back. It was so perfect. Except…

Lena trailed her fingers through the water. Suddenly, Kara was standing and wading back towards her, catching Lena by the hips. The pair swayed slightly with the motion of the shallow waves.

“You’ve got your thinking face on,” Kara whispered, leaning in. Cool water dripped from the ends of her hair onto Lena’s dry shoulders and chest. “Not your good thinking face, either. What’s up?”

Lena didn’t see the point in dampening Kara’s good mood. She smiled. “It’s nothing.”

“ Lena .” Kara was giving her a stern, no-nonsense sort of look. Lena let the fake smile drop.

“It’s just—Lex and Lillian are still out there,” Lena explained, shaking her head. Kara nodded, pulling Lena just a little closer.

“And Mon-El,” Kara agreed. “We’ll find them.”

“It’s just hard to enjoy a beach vacation when I’m worried about whether or not my brother is out there murdering civilians.”

Kara didn’t quite know how to reply. She wrapped her arms tighter around Lena’s waist, and Lena’s arms came up to wrap solidly around her shoulders. “We will get them, Lena,” Kara finally said, and it sounded like a promise. Lena nodded against Kara’s shoulder. “In the meantime, would a distraction help?”

“What did you have in mind?” Lena purred, teasing quietly. Her fingers toyed with the wet hair at the nape of Kara’s neck.

Kara pulled back. “I don’t believe I’ve ever taken you flying when your life hasn’t been in imminent danger, and the islands look really beautiful from above.” Kara smiled sheepishly. “What do you say?”

Lena smirked, raised an eyebrow. She kissed the corner of Kara’s mouth.

“Up, up, and away, Ms. Danvers.”