Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shall I write it in a letter?

Shall I try to get it down?

Oh, you fill my head with pieces

Of a song I can’t get out.

Can I be close to you?

-Bloom, The Paper Kites

- - - -

If pressed, Kara will insist that she approached the subject matter as smoothly and as delicately as possible, all things considered.

“Alex,” she says one day, between alternating bites of bacon, pancakes, and sticky buns. “How do you know if you’re in love with someone?”

Her sister slowly lowers the thick debrief file she’d been looking over and gives Kara one of her patented odd looks. It’s the same one that she’s been using on Kara since they were kids— squinted eyes, tilted head, pursed lips and all. As she reaches over to grab what’s left of the scrambled eggs, she clears her throat and answers.

“Why are you asking?”

“Because… you just proposed to Kelly like, what, three days ago?” Kara offers with a confused frown. “I made you all of this food just to celebrate.” When Alex raises an eyebrow, Kara relents. “Okay, fine. Not made myself, per se. More like… I supervised. But really, Lena only came over to cook because she’s seen me burn one too many sheets of cookies and she wanted actual edible leftovers when she comes over later.”

Alex, who had already heard Kara’s weak excuses earlier, continues to stare. And Kara could be imagining things, but it seems as though it only intensifies when she brings up Lena. It’s understandable, of course; things between Kara and Lena always seemed to attract Alex’s careful scrutiny, even now that they’ve put most of their problems behind them. Something about them together has always caught her sister’s eye.

“I’m not asking you why you’re asking me. Why are you asking at all in the first place?”

Kara falters, no longer sure that this is a good idea. Actually, she kinda wishes the question had never forced its way out of her mouth in the first place. “No reason,” she squeaks out, and she knows it isn’t a convincing answer, knows that she’s a sitting duck right now for her sister’s talent for interrogation. But maybe it’s because it’s early in the morning, or because she hasn’t had her second cup of coffee yet, or maybe it’s because Alex really has just gotten engaged to the love of her life and she doesn’t have it in her to hound Kara about this right now— but whatever the reason is, Alex lets her answer be, simply narrowing her eyes.

“Okay… well, I don’t know how to describe it, Kara.” Alex shrugs, but there’s a hint of a smile on her face now. Kara guesses that she’s thinking about Kelly and wants to call her out for being a dope— but at the same time, is way too afraid to face an unamused version of Alex right now. “But you know it when you feel it. It’s that feeling when you come home after a mission, and your hands are still shaking from adrenaline, but at the same time, it’s like… like crawling into a warm bed at the end of a long, cold, rainy day. Being with that person makes you happy and excited and maybe even a little scared, but also so, so safe. Like you could do anything you wanted to and they’d be right there by your side.”

When she finally stops talking, Kara is beaming at her sister. Alex, knocked out of her haze by the sudden conspicuous silence filling the apartment, looks up, and immediately blushes. “What?” she asks, lifting a hand to scratch at the back of her neck. “Oh, don’t you look at me like that. You asked, didn’t you?”

“You’re a romantic,” Kara teases, wiggling her fingers in the air and giggling as Alex’s blush only intensifies. “Deep down, you’re all sweet, and soft, and gooey, and-”

She cuts herself off with a gasp when Alex reaches over and grabs the last sticky bun from Kara’s plate, popping it into her mouth before Kara can get over her shock enough to stop her. “Not so sweet now, huh?” Alex asks between bites, smirking. “You’ve just lost your food privileges for the day.”

“Tell me you didn’t just do that.”

Her sister’s face grows more self-satisfied. “You forced my hand.”

“I needed that!” Kara whines. “I have a busy day at Catco, and then Clark asked me to fly up to Canada to help lift that sinking barge out of the Pacific, and Lena’s coming over for dinner.”

“Oh, and you really need to work up an appetite for that, huh?” Alex mutters under her breath, but Kara still catches it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, still pouting, but Alex just rolls her eyes and grabs a napkin, wiping the corners of her mouth before standing up.

“Nothing.” Alex drains the last of her coffee before honing her gaze back on her sister. “Now, why are you asking me about this?”

“I already told you,” Kara says, but it’s like her record’s skipped and Alex certainly isn’t going to ignore it this time. She really shouldn’t have started teasing. “No reason. Call it… simple curiosity, now that you’re getting married and all.”

She thinks it’s a pretty good answer, actually, but Alex obviously doesn’t feel the same, not by the way she’s putting her hands on her hips and giving Kara another one of those piercing stares that make her squirm just a bit. Sometimes, Kara feels like Alex is the one with the X-Ray vision, not her.

“You haven’t… met anyone, have you?” Alex asks, but the question is a half-hearted one. There’s something else hiding behind what her sister is saying— something that she actually wants to ask her— but Kara can’t decipher it and frankly, doesn’t want to. “Someone secret?”

“Of course not,” she replies. “If there was, I would tell you.”

“So just the same old same old?” Alex persists, and Kara gulps down the rest of her hot chocolate before answering. Something about the look in her sister’s eyes makes Kara want to take a moment to compose herself.

“I mean, I wouldn’t put it like that,” Kara says, wishing she had that sticky bun to eat. “The people may be the same, but it feels like everything’s changed, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not following.”

“You know… things are out in the open now. Like my identity.”

Something dawns on Alex’s face and Kara isn’t sure if it’s a happy reaction or not. If anything, her sister looks like she’s trying not to give anything away, and keeps her face calm and neutral. It makes Kara feel like she’s on a slippery slope, with no footholds in sight.

“Sure,” Alex ventures, and while they both can hear the careful hesitation in her tone, neither acknowledge it. “Everything has changed, at least when it comes to that. When it comes to Lena. You two are in uncharted waters now. Anything could happen.”

“Exactly!” Kara says, and she should be relieved at the fact that her sister has caught on. But Alex’s face is still a little too blank, and Kara’s heart is still hammering a little too fast for reasons she can’t describe, and so she isn’t at ease, and nothing that Alex has said has helped matters. Not at all actually, but she sighs and lets her shoulders slump anyway. Fake it until you make it, isn’t that the saying? “Things are so much more exciting now, you know?”

Alex shrugs and stoops over to hug Kara quickly in farewell. “Whatever you say,” she mumbles, heading towards the door.

Kara stays where she is, poking at the dregs of her hot chocolate and swiping her finger into the chocolate for good measure, unable to resist a taste. She decides to let this conversation end, no matter how stilted, because she doesn’t want to think about it for another second. Her excuse isn’t even sounding good to her own ears anymore, and she doesn’t want to psychoanalyze herself right now— or ever, if possible.

She thinks she’s escaped it relatively easily, until Alex stops at the door and spins back to her slowly. “Why don’t you ask Kelly?” she suggests.

“Ask Kelly what?”

Alex shifts back and forth on the balls of her feet, still giving Kara a weird look. She should probably be used to it by now. “Ask her about that love stuff. She’s a psychologist. I bet she’ll have all the science and the data behind it. It’ll be a better answer than mine, that’s for sure.”

Kara sees an opportunity and seizes it, wiggling her eyebrows and sending one last goofy grin over at her sister. “I bet you would adore hearing your fiance talk all about romance and love and all that mushy stuff, wouldn’t you? Because you’re so, so, SO in love with-”

“Alright, I’m leaving now,” Alex announces, and slams the door behind her. Kara lets herself laugh at her sister’s graceless exit for a few spiteful more seconds. She did take the last bite of her food, after all.

But as she stands up and speeds around her apartment, getting dressed and ready for the day, Kara mulls over what Alex suggested. Maybe she should ask Kelly, especially if this is something she can’t get out of her head. Kelly is a professional, after all, and she would undoubtedly give Kara a more polished answer. Besides, she’s practically family now. If Kara can’t talk to her about it, then she can’t talk to anyone.

…

It doesn’t go as well as Kara had hoped it would.

And it’s her fault, really. Probably. Maybe. After all, Kara is the one that had the last few days to think over exactly how she wanted this conversation to go. She had the advantage, and the foresight, and all the opportunity in the world to strategize in some way.

But, Kara is also… well, she’s Kara, and sometimes that means she gets in way over her head. By the time she plants a timid knock on Kelly’s office door and perches on the edge of the couch cushion when Kelly waves her in, she’s already taken the plunge, the water well above her head. She swallows with an oddly dry throat and forges ahead, not sure why she’s this nervous but unable to ignore it all the same.

Kelly, being the kind, observant woman that she is, takes the lead.

“Kara!” she greets with a warm smile. Kara raises her hand awkwardly and returns to fiddling with the buttons on her shirt. Kelly’s smile never drops, but she leans forward in her chair and regards Kara for a moment. “Alex told me you might be stopping by.”

“Of course she did,” Kara chuckles through gritted teeth, wishing her sister was here so she could send a dirty look her way. “And what else did she happen to mention?”

“Not much, just that you may have a few questions for me,” the other woman replies breezily, standing up, crossing the room, and sitting down right beside Kara on her office couch, smoothing out her skirt and turning fully to face her. It makes Kara feel less like a patient who should be rummaging through her bag for her insurance information and more like a friend. That’s all this is, after all. She’s just a friend, seeking out friendly advice from a friendly face. Kara doesn’t know why so much fuss has been made about the subject matter of her visit.

“Are you sure you’re not too busy?” she asks, adjusting her glasses as she peers with X-ray vision at the handful of people milling about in the lobby. With Kelly at a private clinic now instead of at Obsidian North, there’s less chaos— and no domineering Andrea Rojas capable of kicking through the door at any minute. It’s calmer here, and entirely more Kelly Olsen’s speed, but Kara still hates feeling like an imposition. “Because I can leave if there are people who are waiting for you.”

Kelly is like her in that aspect, Kara knows. They both love to help in any way that they can, both devote the majority of their time doing exactly that, so Kara half expects Kelly to graciously shoo her away so she can get back to it. But instead she just waves her off, smiling all the while.

“I get an hour for lunch every day, and I finish my food with plenty of time to spare,” Kelly says, motioning to her empty lunch bag on her desk. “There’s really no rush. Besides, what kind of a future sister-in-law would I be if I kicked you out a minute after you sat down?”

“Knowing you, still a very good one.” Kara smiles back, and she means every word she says. She really couldn’t have asked for Alex to marry anyone better.

Kelly lets out a flattered little puff of a laugh, and it only endears Kara more to her. That is, until the other woman’s smile turns into something that means bad news, and Kara remembers that part of why Alex fell in love with Kelly in the first place is that the woman has a surprising penchant for stirring up mischief, especially with Alex as an accomplice. To Kara, this just brings with it more trouble.

“So, you want to talk about falling in love,” Kelly begins, no preamble to be found, and Kara actually wishes that Kelly had stayed across her desk because now, sitting two feet from her, the other woman can easily watch her squirm— a worm on a hook. “Your sister thought it was an interesting line of questioning, coming from you.”

“I don’t see why it is,” she answers, slow and vague. Despite the fact that she had made the decision to visit Kelly and walked there with her own two feet, this is starting to smell like her sister has everything to do with it. Normally, that would be a good thing; but this time around, Kara remembers the look in Alex’s eye right before she’d stolen her breakfast. She knows that this conversation was never completely voluntary on her part, despite her belief to the contrary. “It’s a pretty universal curiosity, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Kelly answers with a poise that Kara would skip lunch to borrow for the next few minutes. “Most people have wondered at some point in their lives. Love is an intense, sometimes indescribable thing. It doesn’t have an easy answer.”

“That’s not a comforting thought,” Kara jokes, mostly serious.

“Oh, it can be frightening,” Kelly agrees. “Around the right person it feels like you can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe. You know, the Ancient Greeks thought love was a sickness, for a time. And even once they understood it better, they still sought out a cure. Love is scary in its lack of control.”

Kara thinks of the myths and plays she read as a kid, smarter and lonelier and more restless than anyone else in Midvale, especially her classmates who barely spared her a passing glance. She remembers reading the tragedies, reading the stories of Eurydice and Orpheus, Penelope and Odysseus, Achilles and Patroclus. There had always been a sense of sadness to even the greatest of the stories. Kara can understand why the Greeks feared love for what it could be.

“Why now?” Kelly prods, gently bringing Kara back to the moment at hand.

Kara opens her mouth and begins to repeat the same spiel she’d given her sister. “Well- you and Alex- you’re getting married and that’s huge. It’s wonderful, and I am so happy for you, but, I mean- a wedding? Falling in love? It’s great, but-”

“But it’s a big step?” Kelly guesses, and she’s put her finger right on the pulse of it.

“A massive one.” She nods her head and looks over. Something about the other woman makes Kara want to keep talking. It’s easy, talking to Kelly, in a different way than it is with Alex. Her sister carries with all of their history, all of their memories— all of their baggage. That means that Alex usually understands Kara better than she understands herself. With Kelly, it feels more like holding hands along the way, both leading and being led to your own conclusion. “Making that decision, spending a life with someone else… I’ve been thinking about what that’s like.”

Kelly hums, looking thoughtful. “Have you been in love before?”

Kara stutters to a stop. It’s a logical next question for Kelly to ask, and one she really should have been more prepared for, but it causes a sudden burst of nerves all the same. “I- well, I mean…” She winces, remembering that one of her short-lived relationships was with Kelly’s own brother. “Long story short, I don’t think so. I guess… I’m not sure what I felt.”

“That’s a natural feeling to have when looking back at the past. I know you’ve been in a few relationships. What were they like?”

“They were nice,” Kara says simply, trying to put to words the pining she’d felt for James, the whirlwind that had been Mon-El, and the myriad of emotions she’d felt for the other people she’d tried to date in the past. “They were good, but they never lasted. With me, it doesn’t last.”

“A lot of people think that,” Kelly says.

“Sure they do,” Kara replies, butting in before Kelly can tell her something calming and comforting and entirely inapplicable to Kara. “But those people don’t have superpowers.” She sighs. “Look, I’m not trying to justify it, or explain it away, or anything like that. It’s just… romance has never been a priority. Not once. Not when there are so many other things to juggle in my life.”

“You’ve certainly been busy,” Kelly agrees. “I can barely get Alex away for one night with how much she’s been hunting after what’s left of Leviathan… not to mention Lex Luthor. I know you’re even harder to pull away from that particular mission.”

As she’s picked up the habit of doing every time Lex’s name is mentioned, Kara’s jaw clenches. She hasn’t been able to let go of the past, not when it comes to that man— not when it comes to what he did to her and to Lena. Though they’ve managed to forgive and move mostly past the rift that he caused, it’s a bruise that is still tender to the touch, and one she knows Lex is eager to exploit again. If Kara had her way, she wouldn’t rest until he was put away in a place where he could never touch anyone she cared about ever again, but Lex has been infuriatingly impossible to track down. With Lillian also missing in action, they’re dangerous variables to have out in the world. The fact that they’ve been completely quiet has been even more terrifying.

Kara’s knee bounces, and she tries and fails to keep the anxiety out of her tone. “It’s hard to relax. But it’s fine. I’m fine.”

Kelly takes a breath, pursing her lips. “I know what you do is important. But your sister- she wishes you wouldn’t do so much on your own-”

“I’m not alone,” Kara interjects gently. “You two and all of my other friends have been there for me this whole time. Plus… Lena doesn’t hate me anymore. I have her again.”

For some reason, this answer doesn’t seem to have the effect on Kelly that Kara had imagined it would. The other woman only continues to stare, a subdued curiosity overtaking her features. What Kara really notices is the same careful neutrality that had been on Alex’s face the last time they’d had a similar conversation. She wonders how many of her friends understand the full story between her and Lena— or if they’re willing to even hear it after what happened.

“Right,” Kelly says. “And how have things been going between the two of you?”

Now this is something that Kara can talk about. A small smile grows on her face unbidden, and Kelly’s face softens even at her wordless expression of contentment.

“It’s… it’s been incredible. I mean, there aren’t enough words in- in any language to describe how happy I am to have her back, to be working together again, to be friends again…”

“I’m really glad to hear that.” Kelly’s eyes sparkle as she continues to watch her. It still feels like an active examination, but one that is easier for Kara to ignore now. “There was a time where I was really worried for you. Your sister was too.”

Had Kelly said something like that even a few months ago, Kara would have treated it like bait, one that she would have snapped at gladly. Back when Kara and Lena were still standing on rocky ground that was still actively falling out under their feet, when the cruel words and actions that they both had said and done were still too hard to bring up— back when Kara would go to a team meeting and have to convince her sister that Lena wasn’t plotting something, wasn’t going to hurt her again— Kara wouldn’t have been able to see through to the well-intentioned heart of what Kelly is saying. No, Kara would have stiffened or glared or immediately leapt to the offensive, letting her hot-headed nature rear its head. She would have let her fear and her anger and her grief that were always swirling in the air when it came to Lena push her into doing or saying something cruel.

But she isn’t so scared when it comes to Lena, anymore. At least, not in the way she used to be.

“I know,” she responds instead. It’s simple, but it seems to get the message across well enough because Kelly’s shoulders relax and she reaches over to squeeze Kara’s hand. At the gesture, Kara’s shoulders sag a little too. “But that’s all in the past now. Things are back to the way they were. Actually, Lena and I… we’re better than we’ve ever been.” Kara swallows hard, and takes a breath. “As a matter of fact, with her, sometimes I-”

Before she can say… whatever it is Kara had been about to release from her chest, she hears the sharp trill of her Supergirl phone combined with a vibration pattern against Kelly’s coffee table that can only mean one thing: Alex has sniffed out some new lead on Lex, and Kara is eager and itching to help out.

She pockets the phone as she stands up abruptly, already making an apologetic face in Kelly’s general direction. But Kelly doesn’t seem phased; if anything, by the way she leans back against the couch, eyes glimmering with something caught and intrigued, Kara would guess that the only thing Kelly is disappointed about is not hearing Kara finish that thought.

“Sounds like a job for Supergirl,” Kelly says, reaching up and bringing Kara in for a one-armed hug. It’s quick and it’s fleeting but it’s warm, and as Kara returns it, she realizes just how excited she is for Kelly to join the family. “Do me a favor and keep Alex out of too much trouble, okay? We’ve got champagne to taste test sometime this week.”

“Always,” Kara promises. It’s breezy and light, but Kelly knows that she means it. She strides over to the office door, turning and giving Kelly one last smile. “And thank you for this. Falling in love… I’m not sure I’ll ever feel it, but I am really glad it happened for you.”

Kelly doesn’t try to object to doubt in her voice, like some of Kara’s friends would do. She doesn’t attempt to reassure Kara, doesn’t insist that she can have it all if she tries hard enough, doesn’t tell her that even Supergirl deserves love. Maybe it’s because Kelly knows that for Kara, duty comes first, and that love will always feel like a little moment of selfish weakness. No, all she does is raise a hand in goodbye, and smile.

“You may not be looking for it, Kara, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t find you. And as for your question… trust me. You’ll know love when you feel it. Sometimes the realization is the hardest part.”

…

The end of the day is normal, or it fits neatly into Kara’s new definition of the word. Alex’s lead ends up being a cold one, as has been the case with all the others, but Kara can shake it off. Lex is out there, as is Lillian, and out of anyone in the world to find them, she knows their team has the best odds. So she rolls her shoulders in an attempt to release some tension, drops off some coffee for Alex, J’onn, and Brainy on the way out, and does two sweeps of the city, making a note to do a few more later that night. Just in case, she tells herself, watching people wander in and out of a park. Kara has never loved National City more than in these past few months— has never loved her life here more— and she won’t let anything ruin it.

When she swipes through her texts as she’s hovering above the trees and sees a handful from Lena, Kara is reminded exactly how lucky she’s been. No, she won’t give this up without a fight, and if that means a few less hours of sleep a night, then Kara is happy to make the sacrifice. They’ve always come naturally for her anyway.

The rest of the week follows suit in the same typical fashion. Kara wakes up and goes to Catco, greets Nia with donuts on Friday and a not so subtle request for a girl’s night that weekend, and finishes up shoring up her sources for an article due. She takes her lunch break and flies straight to the Tower to pester Alex and company for any developments, and when there are none, goes on patrol. It’s strange not having a DEO-issued earpiece to play with any more, but Kara had realized early on in the wake of the agency’s destruction that maybe she would have been better off solo this whole time, free of murky governmental oversight and irritating red tape. Besides, she’s still got her team, and National City has still got her. She’s got things handled.

Then, as she does every day, Kara goes to visit Lena.

It had been… hard, at the beginning. Really hard. Kara isn’t so proud that she would deny that during those first few weeks, she had truly wondered if there was anything left salvaging between her and the other woman. They would end up in tense silence most days, and honestly, Kara preferred that compared to the days when they talked, because without fail, those days ended up in quiet, painful arguments that would end in one of them storming off and with Kara wiping away at wet eyes.

The one sign of hope that Kara had clung to at the beginning was the fact that no matter what, no matter how bad it got, neither of them yelled. No one ever raised their voice, and neither of them ever said anything unfair. It was awful, at times, but it never felt like torture without payoff. Kara clung to her belief that the two of them together were going to make it through together. They would be Sisyphus pushing his boulder, but together, they wouldn’t let it roll all the way back down. There was comfort to be found in the certainty that neither of them ever wanted things to go back to rock bottom, and for a while, that comfort was enough, even if it felt hollow.

Things changed once more the night Lena started asking Kara about Krypton.

It had been after a long, long day, preceded by a brutal and endless week— so long and so busy, in fact, that Kara only had the time to visit Lena on a Saturday night, the other woman dutifully still at her LCorp office. Even if Kara and Lena were very different people to each other now, some things never changed; Lena would always work well past the sunset, and Kara? She would always inevitably wind up on her balcony, waiting to be let inside.

But Lena was different that night. She hadn’t waved Kara in with a small and slightly forced smile, hadn’t hidden away behind her desk and her computer, hadn’t kept her posture perfect and her face impassive. Instead, the other woman stirred at the sound of Kara’s boots touching down; she turned slightly towards the noise, took a deep, slow breath, and then powered off her computer altogether. Kara watched her clean up the scattered prints and files on her desk, and place them neatly into her purse, and then she watched as Lena finally turned towards her completely, pushing open her balcony doors.

Instead of inviting Kara in, Lena moved to join her instead. Kara hadn’t known what to say or what to do, so wordless, she turned back towards the city and waited for Lena to reach the railing.

What Kara wasn’t expecting was the hand that wrapped gently around her forearm. She jolted, startled, but when she finally met Lena’s eyes for the first time that night, Kara found something familiar in them. Something old, in fact; something soft and kind and entirely Lena that Kara hadn’t seen in months. She couldn’t stop staring, and Lena let her, her gaze turning searching, but no less unguarded.

“You were hurt,” Lena said at last, breaking the strange spell that had fallen over them. Kara flinched again, like she hadn’t expected Lena to speak. If she were being honest with herself, until Lena said something, Kara hadn’t been sure that any of it was real at all. “The news, they got footage of you getting hit,” Lena continued, her grip on Kara’s arm tightening almost instinctively. “And I called Alex.”

Kara stayed still, opening her mouth and trying to read the person she used to know so well. She wasn’t sure what to say, only knew that Lena’s eyes were wide and full of something— something that Kara needed to respond to.

“It was a Fort Rozz escapee,” she said slowly. The two of them were studying the other with equal intensity, and Kara wasn’t sure what it was she was trying to find hidden behind the moonlight. “He followed me around for most of the week, picking fights. I haven’t encountered one of those in a long time. Sometimes I forget that with them, it’s personal.”

“Because of your mother?” Lena asked, but it wasn’t as much of a question as it was Lena looking for confirmation. Kara nodded, breaking away from their locked eyes for the first time and staring out at the skyline instead.

“Because of my mom,” she confirmed simply, but something about the way Lena didn’t look away made Kara want to say more. This felt like a chance to tell Lena about the things Kara had always ached to share with her, and Kara couldn’t let it slip away. “I want to believe that most of the time, she made the right call. That she protected Krypton— protected me— from the worst of the universe. As a kid, my mom was my hero, putting away the bad guys, sending them away to the Phantom Zone. But now…”

She sighed, then, her memories turning darker and sadder. She could still feel the weight of Astra’s spy beacon in her hand, could remember the way her blood had looked etched into Kara’s hands the night she’d died. Kara had learned the hard way the role that she’d played in her family tragedy— and the role her mother had.

“Now I know firsthand what it’s like in the Phantom Zone. It’s cold, and it’s quiet, and it’s agony. When you’re in there, you wish you were dead. Death would be kinder than anything in that place. It’s hell, and my mom sent people there all the time. She sent her own sister there.”

Lena didn’t understand, Kara knew. No one could understand the Phantom Zone unless they’d been there, seen its desolate vastness for themselves. It was hard to know how hopeless it made you feel until you spent an eternity there, willing to do anything if it even meant seeing the stars again. But Kara did know, and she did understand, and that was why she could never forget what her mother had done.

“Astra was the one who used Myriad, wasn’t she?” Lena asked, and Kara’s breath hitched. They were venturing into dangerous waters, talking about Myriad. Lena must have known it too, by the way her fingers trembled and she too turned to look over the balcony. “You mentioned that, the day in the Fortress. Kara, I-”

“It was her,” Kara said, butting in. She wasn’t sure if she would have been able to handle whatever Lena was going to say next. The strangeness of all this— of talking to Lena about the ugly side of Krypton, of confiding in her at all while wearing her cape— somehow made the words come out sharper, more honest. “Created by my family, all in the name of doing good. Same reason my father created the Medusa virus that killed all of those aliens, and the same reason my mother sent criminals to die, trapped and alone. The same reason I put on this suit and wear my family’s coat of arms every day. I’m sure you can see the irony in that.”

Lena met her gaze once more, and it was just as strong as before. That time around, Kara could recognize the conviction behind it. “We are more than just the legacy of our families. We’re more than our past. You taught me that.” Lena almost smiled. “You do good, Kara. You make a difference, and if you can’t see that, you don’t need to look any further than me.”

Kara scoffed. “You’re not exactly a shining example of my virtue or integrity. I ruined everything between us. Any good I did was destroyed by me lying to you.”

Lena stayed quiet for a moment, before eventually moving closer. When she finally spoke, her voice belonged as much to the roaring cars and the thundering heartbeats below them as it did to this moment. “It wasn’t just you who ruined things. I have spent most of my life trying to decipher what parts of myself are mine and which belong to my family and their legacy. There was a point, this past year, when I thought there was nothing left of me worth saving. But you, Kara, you never thought that. You never gave up on me.”

“Don’t give me so much credit,” Kara responded, remembering the past year just as well as Lena, but from a different perspective. “I wasn’t there for you in the ways that mattered. I was so blind to it all— so self-centered and focused on my own hurt that I let us grow even further apart. I promised I’d treat you like any other villain. You think I’ve forgotten that?”

“No. Of course not. I didn’t forget about that either,” Lena replied, and there was a trace of bitterness in her tone that made Kara wince. But Lena didn’t move away, and her eyes didn’t lose their shine. “You know, you’re not the only person I’ve been trying to reconnect with. Your sister, namely.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alex told me what you went through after I stole Myriad,” Lena explained. It was blunt enough to stop Kara in her tracks, mind reeling. Revisiting that night couldn’t have been fun for Lena or Alex. Even the mention of it sent Kara’s heart sinking. “That was my darkest moment. I hurt you, that day, and not just emotionally. I poisoned you, and used your biggest weakness against you, and left you trapped there. Out of everything I did Kara, know that what I did then is what I regret the most.”

“Lena, we’ve talked about this,” Kara tried. “We both did things that we regret-”

“Alex told me that she was going to fire on me with Claymore, when I was hunkered down in Mount Norquay,” Lena continued, almost nonchalant in her directness. Kara couldn’t remember if they’d ever had as honest of a conversation as this one, before or after her identity was revealed. “She says that after she found you at the Fortress, she had no qualms about shooting me down and burying me in rubble for what I did to you.”

“Alex… you know how Alex is. How she can get about me.” It was a weak defense, but Kara had to say it. If things were ever going to be fixed, she needed Alex and Lena on the same side of things. “She didn’t mean it.”

Lena raised an eyebrow in an almost comical sense of timing. “Trust me. She meant it.”

Kara couldn’t argue against a point they both knew was true.

“What I’m trying to tell you,” Lena continued after a beat, “Is that your sister explained to me how you refused to let her. Even after everything I’d done to you, despite the fact that I was a threat to the entire world— you wouldn’t let me go. You never gave up on me, Kara. Never.”

“That’s because you were my best friend.” Kara’s breath caught, and she heard Lena’s do the same. She turned and grabbed Lena’s hand, still holding idly onto her arm. “You still are.”

Even in the dark, Kara would swear she could see the tears well up in Lena’s eyes. “I am?”

A dam broke, and Kara couldn’t have stopped herself if she tried from doing what she did next. “Can I hug you? Please?” she asked Lena, voice high and more than a little fraught. She’d never had to ask if she could hug Lena before. It was a harsh reminder of just how far they’d fallen away from each other and it only made Kara more desperate. The question came out sounding like a plea, but thank Rao because before the words had even finished tumbling from Kara’s dry throat, Lena was already nodding, was already moving forwards and into Kara’s tight embrace.

It was the first time they’d hugged in months, but to Kara it had felt like years. Despite that, it felt like falling back into an old favorite dream. Lena was still so warm, and she still gripped Kara with the same surprising strength, and for a moment, there was no doubt. They stayed there on the balcony, swaying slightly against the wind, and this— this is what Kara was fighting to get back.

“You’ll always be my best friend,” she said, words muffled against Lena’s shoulder but unwavering all the same.

“And you’re mine,” Lena replied, voice just as muffled and also maybe a little teary— not that Kara could hold it against her when she was fighting tears herself. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you.”

Kara only squeezed tighter. If Lena noticed that she was now undeniably crying, she chose not to point it out.

“I’m sorry too, Lena. I just don’t want to lose you. Not ever.”

“You won’t.” To her surprise, the other woman let out a strangled sort of chuckle. “We’ve both been pretty stupid, haven’t we?”

Kara laughed too, swept off her feet by its warmth and the fact that Lena hadn’t moved away. “We had our moments,” she conceded with a crooked smile, the moment of levity bittersweet but worth the world. “But this is good, isn’t it? The start of something really good.”

“I hope so.” Lena pulled away, chewing at her lip in a nervous tick and staring down at Kara’s boots. “I’m glad you told me about this. If you want, I’d love to hear more.”

“About Krypton?” Kara asked, more than a little surprised. “Even after everything I just told you?”

“Before I found out you were Supergirl, I think a part of me still knew that there were parts of you that I’d never gotten to see. You had a history that you never shared with me, but I could always see it in your eyes. All those years, and all I ever really wanted was for you to let me in as much as I’d let you.” She let out a shaky breath. “I want to be there for you, this time. Really be there, through it all.”

“I want to tell you about Krypton, but… ” Kara said, hesitating. The thought of having Lena as a confidant— lending Lena her eyes, holding a hand over hers as she traced the faultlines of her memories, even just telling her about the little things, like the color of Krypton’s sunset or how it had been her father that taught her how to braid her hair— it was nearly enough to take her breath away. But there was a terrible, awful, ugly side to her past that Lena hadn’t ever seen. Kara couldn’t help but wonder if the other woman would change her mind after meeting it.

“But what, Kara?” Lena asked, gentle. Kara looked down at her coat of arms. Hearing Lena say her name like that while she was wearing it sent a wave of something strong crashing against her heart.

Kara shrugged, helpless under the weight of Lena’s voice. “You might not like what you see.”

Lena just smiled. “It’s you, Kara. Whatever it is, if it’s you, I could never hate it.”

More than a little touched, Kara smiled tight, determined not to let anymore tears fall that night. They’d cried enough, and would cry again, but right now, this was the beginning of something that was really going to matter. Kara could feel it in her bones.

She reached her hand up in the air, holding out her pinky and finally meeting Lena’s eyes. “No more secrets,” she said, and Lena smiled too.

Carefully, she interlocked their fingers. Kara could swear that that night, under the stars, she’d never seen anything like Lena. “No more secrets.”

Feeling practically dizzy with the promise they’d just made to each other, Kara couldn’t hide her excitement. “I really, really want to tell you about Krypton.”

Lena glanced down at her watch, eyes kind and clear. “Why not now?” she suggested. “I’m not feeling that tired anyway. And besides, I’ve missed talking with you. Really talking,” she amended.

When Kara looked back up, she was grinning. It was the biggest smile she’d had on her face in a very long time. “You know, I think that one diner we used to go to is still open…”

“So long as you promise not to eat all of the pancakes this time around… I’d love to, Kara.”

Neither of them got much sleep that night, but Kara supposed that a fresh start with your best friend would do that to you. For something that Kara had feared would be impossible, it was worth it.

…

That girl’s night Kara had promised her friends shows up before she knows it— and before she has a chance to mentally prepare for it.

It’s not that she needs to prepare herself in a bad way, per say; the best moments of her day are when she’s in the company of friends, and so having a night all together without the weight of the world getting in the way of things is her favorite thing. Just her, her friends, a movie, and copious amounts of wine is Kara’s ideal night, especially now that Lena is fully in on everything. Now they can all share in the strong bond that is being a close group of friends and moonlighting as heroes, all in their own way.

Plus, Kara no longer has to pretend to be getting more ice when she has to slip off to stop a robbery or chase down a lost dog. That excuse was run ragged the first time she used it, after all.

No, Girl’s Night isn’t bad in any sense of the word. But that doesn’t mean that Kara doesn’t have to brace herself for the ball of sheer chaos and rumors that is Nia Nal when she’s even remotely tipsy. And on those nights, getting Nia drunk is easier than it is for Kara to beat her sister in an arm wrestling match.

Drunk Nia is practically lethal with the trouble she can cause, and unwittingly, Kara usually ends up in the middle of it. It’s the unpredictability of her behavior that manages to send Kara reeling every time; one night, it can be aiding and abetting Nia as she makes brownies and blasts 90s R&B in the kitchen— and other nights, it can be Supergirl sheepishly collecting Dreamer from the exclusive club she was trying to talk her way into. The paparazzi photos that came out the next day were enough to humble the usually shameless younger girl, and she had agreed to make an oath to Kara that the next time she called an Uber, she would actually be going home like she claimed she was.

Really, though, the part of the night that Kara had to really watch out for was when Nia decided to gossip— or worse yet, meddle. And because Kara never really gets lucky, while she had shown Nia the ropes both at Catco and as a superhero, Alex had also taken a shine to the younger girl— except her mentorship involved her sister teaching Nia just how fun it was to mess with Kara. Nia is a natural at it, and that evening was no exception.

Things start out relatively tame. Lena shows up first, as she had gotten back into the rhythm of doing, and brings the expensive bottles of wine that were potent enough to even make the room spin a little for Kara. That should have been the first warning sign, but Alex and Kelly and Nia show up so quickly after that before she knows it, things are well underway and Kara is along for the ride.

They go through the usual motions, joking and catching up and bickering over a movie selection that none of them will pay all that much attention to anyways. Kara smiles, and feels her cheeks get warm as she drains her glass and Lena sits right next to her on the couch, legs curled up under Kara’s. It’s a familiar pattern: Kara smiles and stares down at the floor, and Lena, despite not making eye contact, smiles back. She knows that that kind of smile is for her, a type of silent, private moment between the two of them. It’s an acknowledgement of the months where that spot on the couch sat empty and cold, just as it is confirmation that they won’t let that happen ever again. Then Alex eyes the two of them with a look that clearly signals something to Kelly and Kara squints right back, unexpectedly content to be mystified about what it could mean. After all, Alex giving her a strange look is part of the routine. Girl’s Night just wouldn’t be complete without it.

Besides, Eliza had always told her to never look a gift horse in the mouth, and while Kara isn’t always the best with the Earth phrases and wisdoms, she understood the gist. Whatever she had going right now was nice, and she wasn’t about to disturb it by looking too closely at it.

Everyone is well into their third or fourth glass when Nia clears her throat, cheeks rosy and eyes shining with something giddy and dangerous. She locks eyes with Kara, and she gulps. She really wishes Lena hadn’t brought the good wine tonight.

“So, Kara,” Nia drawls as she sits on the couch facing Kara, spinning the wine around in her glass even as it sloshes and comes dangerously close to spilling over. It’s a small miracle that only a few drops escape and drip onto the coffee table, but Kara will take good fortune where she can find it. “How have you been?”

Kara knows it’s a trap. She knows it. Firstly, because Nia never asks such an innocent question if she’s up to something, and secondly because the two of them talk every day. Nia knows exactly how Kara is, and the fact that she is asking simply to trick Kara into following her secret agenda has her taking another sip of her wine.

She furrows her eyebrows, staring into her cup and doing her best to play dumb. “I’m doing alright,” she says. Maybe if she really commits to the question, she can somehow steer the conversation away from wherever it is Nia wants to go. “I finally wrote that annoying fluff listicle about the best pets in National City. Somehow, Andrea made me hate looking at dogs.”

Nia just hums and yawns, grinning more than a little evilly behind her hand in a way that proves to Kara that she’s not even trying not to attempt to hide behind her false pretense any longer.

Kara sighs. For one reason or another, she’s mostly resigned to her fate. “And how are you?” she adds, despite knowing that this is her simply welcoming the end.

“Oh! Fine, fine.” Nia reclines back against the cushions, then prepares to reel Kara in, hook line and sinker. “Your sister mentioned a cute little conversation you two had a few mornings ago…”

Alex fights off a snicker, and Kelly sends Kara a smile that is equal parts amused and supportive, and if she didn’t already know what conversation Nia was referring to, she does now.

“She did, did she?” Kara replies through gritted teeth, sending Alex a death glare and trying her best to delay the real start of this conversation for a moment longer. “How considerate of her to fill you in.”

Kara is almost unconsciously aware of Lena’s presence pressed against her side. Despite the fact that her attention is focused on Nia and trying desperately to plan out a defensive strategy on the fly, Kara knows innately that despite the fact that she hasn’t said anything, Lena is interested in what Nia is about to say next. What Kara doesn’t know is why the knowledge that Lena will be a part of this conversation makes her palms sweaty.

“So, are you still asking around about how to know if you’re in love with someone?”

The look Kelly shoots at her is definitely pitying this time. Kara feels Lena shift slightly beside her as she keeps her eyes on Nia, like if she let the other girl out of her sight for one second she might actually attack. It’s moments like these that Kara misses the night that Nia burnt cookies so badly the fire department was called and Kara had to talk her way out of the suspicious amount of frost coating her kitchen despite the fact that her fire extinguisher had remained unused. At least then it wasn’t her personal love life she was grilled about, which has somehow always been worse to discuss.

“I don’t like whatever you’re insinuating with that tone,” she replies, crossing her arms. Her shoulders go tense, but when she feels Lena place a gentle hand on her back, Kara can’t stop most of it from dissipating immediately.

Nia’s eyes practically glint as she observes the scene. “What tone?” she asks. “I’m just genuinely curious if you’ve come to any conclusions. No sudden realizations?”

Kara’s eyes dart sideways in Lena’s direction before quickly returning to Nia. For some reason, with Lena in the room this conversation seems heightened in a way that makes Kara swallow against a dry throat. Lena must be picking up on the same thing because Kara can hear her heartbeat pick up.

Trying to shake off the sudden unsteadiness, Kara fiddles with the stem of her wine glass and stops trying to maintain her staring contest with Nia. “I- it was nothing like that,” she says, keeping her voice as light as possible. “It was just an innocent question— and besides, you really think I wouldn’t tell all of you if that ever happened? Come on? What is a Girl’s Night for if we don’t share our gossip?”

Kara forces a laugh at her own uncomfortable attempt at humor, but everyone else stays silent. There’s a strained smile on Lena’s face, but her back is far too straight for it to be genuine and there is also the fact that she is studiously avoiding meeting Kara’s gaze. Kara clears her throat. Looks like her best friend won’t be rescuing her from this situation anytime soon.

Nia leans forward, balancing precariously on the balls of her feet and probably putting way too much trust in how quick her reflexes are while drunk. Her eyes study Kara and even Lena on the couch, and Kara does her best not to squirm. Then, Nia purses her lips, looking reluctant and maybe even remorseful. Kara doesn’t want to think too hard about what could make a tipsy Nia regretful.

“How is William, by the way?” she asks, her face twisting as if she’d eaten something sour, her words sounding just slightly too clipped to be genuine. “Are you two still an item? You know it’s okay to admit if you’re in love with-“

Whatever reservations Nia apparently had about bringing this particular topic up, it certainly yielded a noticeable result. Kara gaped over at the other girl, genuinely confused. The words don’t hit until Kara hears one noise above the rest; Lena’s thundering heartbeat stops and then skips a beat altogether, and startled, Kara squeezes her cup with too much strength. The glass shatters, wine spilling down Kara’s shirt and pants, and getting onto Lena’s expensive-looking blouse as well, and the whole room goes silent.

Everyone is staring at Kara now, except for Lena, and Kara comes to the realization that she’d inadvertently hidden something else from her best friend.

Kara, unable to do anything else, leaps right into action, using her superspeed to grab an armload of towels and wet wipes before speeding right back to Lena’s side, dabbing at the growing red stain rather lamely.

“I’m so sorry,” she mutters, cheeks flaming and unable to look Lena in the eye— not that the other woman is making any effort either. “That glass- it’s so thin and- and I held on too hard.” She stops mumbling apologies long enough to speed around and clean up most of the shards of glass, giving Lena a twice-over. “You weren’t cut or anything, were you?”

“It’s okay,” Lena chokes out, words tight and much too quick. She must sense how guilty Kara really is about the whole incident because she meets Kara’s eyes for just a moment, just to reassure her. “I’m not hurt, I promise.”

“Your shirt…” Kara says, chewing at the inside of her cheek.

“-Doesn’t matter. Really, Kara. It’s alright.”

There’s another long beat of silence, before Kara is bailed out by her sister of all people. “Don’t worry, Lena. I’m pretty sure everyone in this room has had something spilled on them by Kara,” Alex says, blessedly casual. It’s as if she hasn’t picked up on the tension in the air despite the fact that it might as well be a cloud hovering over them. “As a matter of fact, she even spilled on Cat Grant once. Did you ever tell her that story, Kara?”

Despite the fact that Alex was to blame for all of this in the first place and her idea of helping was making Kara blush an even deeper shade of red at the memory of Cat’s astonished look and the charcuterie board and red wine spilled all over her office floor, Kara couldn’t be more grateful for an excuse to escape Nia’s clutches.

“Oh Rao,” she mutters, burying her face in her hands. “That was a long day.”

“You actually spilled on Cat Grant?” Nia asks, and she must have felt at least slightly remorseful for what her button-pushing caused because when Kara meets her eyes, she knows that Nia won’t be meddling any more tonight. Besides, the other girl seems satisfied, like her job has been completed. No need to string Kara along any longer. “And she didn’t vaporize you where you stood?”

Kara’s head returns to its rightful place between her hands, muffling her groan of embarrassment, and everyone laughs, even Lena. “Well now you have to tell me, darling,” she teases, and while to most people Lena would seem perfectly normal, Kara can hear the hesitancy in her voice. She knows that Alex’s interference hasn’t completely done its job. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you blush this much.”

When she looks up and meets her best friend’s eyes, something passes between them. Mutual understanding. Lena sends her a small, barely there smile, hidden beneath her raised eyebrows and unsmudged red lipstick and her trademark smirk. It’s meant to reassure, and it does— for the time being.

They’ll talk about this later, that much Kara knows. But Kara also knows Lena. She knows that for her, she’s always been patient, and for someone who was lied to for so long, Lena is sweetly and steadfastly gentle when it comes to learning the truth.

“Let’s just say that even the Queen of all Media has had to learn a dry cleaning trick or two thanks to me,” she mutters, face still blazing, and as everyone leans back and gets ready for one of Kara’s famous klutz stories, Lena leans in. Kara swallows against a dry throat as she feels Lena’s hand return to rubbing circles against her back. She can feel the stickiness of the wine set in against her collarbone and the ends of her hair, and watches as her friends all smile, content and unbothered.

All in all, Kara supposes that this is a perfectly normal Girl’s Night when things are all said and done.

…

Not that she expected her to, but Lena really doesn’t wait long to start that unspoken conversation they were due to have.

For them, it’s practically textbook for how the rest of the night plays out. The others leave sooner than later, with Alex and Kelly each looping a supportive— and restrictive— arm around Nia’s back. Alex promises Kara that they’ll get her safely home and there won’t be another tequila incident like there was over New Years.

“We’ve got her handled,” she says, eyes flitting over Kara’s shoulders briefly to where she knows Lena is lingering in the kitchen, already changed out of her ruined blouse and into one of Kara’s sweatshirts. “You just enjoy the rest of the night, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow sometime before dinner.”

“If you hear anything about Lex, tell me as soon as possible, alright?” Kara butts in, her request more of a demand. Lately, she’s gotten the feeling that her sister has been growing more and more reluctant to allow Kara to continue her pursuit at the pace she’s been going at, but Kara refuses to let him slip through the cracks because of her relaxing. She sees her sister roll her eyes, and presses harder. “Alright, Alex? I need to know.”

Alex purses her lips, but gives her a small nod. “Like I said, just enjoy the rest of the night. Everyone deserves a break every once in a while. Especially you.” Her nose wrinkles. “And change out of those clothes, will you? You look like you stepped out of Carrie.”

As the door shuts, Kara sighs, but perks up when she hears Lena’s voice float across the apartment to her. “Your sister is right, you know.”

Kara turns towards her automatically, before joining her in the kitchen. Lena has already washed up and put away most of what they’d made a mess of that night, and Kara smiles in thanks. Lena is like her in that way. Always helping— and always needing an excuse to keep her hands busy.

“Well, not everyone can pull off a bloodstained look,” she snips back lightly, glancing down a little morosely at the state of her wine-covered shirt. She’d only just gotten it last year over the holidays, and it was one of the few she hadn’t already torn the buttons off or otherwise damaged due to her Supergirl duties. “Trust me, I’ve done it before. It’s never looked good on me.”

Lena winces just slightly at that, probably thinking of Reign or Red Daughter or her own brother, the only ones really capable of getting Kara to bleed. One of their many balcony talks had been about this very subject, about Lena explaining to Kara the terror and guilt she’d felt in hindsight realizing that the person injured in the rubble was her best friend, not a stranger, and so Kara knows that her joking hit a tender place.

Her smile fades, growing more caring. “Sorry,” she says, reaching over and squeezing Lena’s hands before busying herself with drying the rest of the unbroken wine glasses.

“I wasn’t talking about that,” Lena says, frowning. “I meant that your sister is right about you taking a break sometimes.”

Kara lets out an amused scoff. “I’m Supergirl,” she says.

“As if that explains it,” Lena interjects, voice just light enough to keep Kara at ease. Secretly, she’s always wondered when they would have a fight about this— about Kara’s dual identities with their own, often opposing set of duties— but she hopes it won’t be tonight. Tonight, they have enough to talk about already.

“Girl’s Night was a break, wasn’t it?” Kara tries, but it’s a weak excuse and Lena knows it. Out of all nights, tonight could not be defined as restful or relaxing for Kara.

“You’ve been working yourself to the bone going after my mother and my brother, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to,” she persists. Her voice is softer now, and Kara hears the affectionate worry behind it all. Lena looks down, toying with a dishrag and wrapping it idly around her hands. “Believe me, I know that feeling well. I’ve been struggling with it too, the urge to just… drop everything and not rest until they’re found and our friends are safe. But…”

“But?” Kara asks, her voice soft too.

Out of everything that’s been strengthened since their reconciliation, their willingness to be vulnerable around the other is one of the things that’s become rock-steady. Other than Alex, she never thought she’d be able to find a person who she could let her guard down completely around, but Lena took on that role naturally, her own openness on equal display.

“But, sometimes, there are more important things in life than Lex. There are more important people,” Lena says, meeting her eyes. Kara’s shoulders loosen, and she gives Lena a lopsided, encouraging smile. “My family has dictated my entire life. Every decision, every insecurity, every fear… I can trace it back to them in some way or another. But I’m done allowing them that power over me. I’m striking off on my own, free from their influence, and the feeling of controlling my own future is freeing. I just don’t want you to fall into the same trap I was in all those years.”

“You’re right,” Kara says after a moment. “And I don’t want to get stuck on them. It’s just… they’re always in the back of my mind. I think of what they could do to hurt everyone that I love… what they could do to hurt you. That’s the last thing I want, and the sooner they’re gone, the less I’ll be worried about that.”

“Kara, if that’s what’s keeping you so stressed, know that I can take care of myself.” Lena raises an eyebrow, bringing some levity to the table. “You do know that, don’t you?”

She’s coaxed into a smile, no matter how weak. “Of course! The amount of times you’ve saved yourself while I made a fool of myself trying to find an excuse to change into my suit… I know you’re capable. But it doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

The other woman moves closer, dropping the towel and wrapping her hand around Kara’s bicep. It causes a shiver to run down Kara’s spine, one that she has no real explanation for other than the possibility that her drenched shirt is causing hypothermia.

“I worry too. And maybe that’s not something we can ever change. But how about we agree to at least do it together, and protect each other where we can?”

“I can work with that,” Kara says, grinning. “Stronger Together is sort of my motto, after all.”

Lena gives her a mock frown, rubbing her chin thoughtfully and curling her lip. “Any chance that’s available for editing? I’m not sure if something that cheesy is going to pair well with my brand…” She breaks character with a giggle as Kara, taking offense, starts poking at her side.

“Seeing as how you’re secretly the biggest softie on the planet, I think my family crest will work just fine for you.” Lena stills and starts blushing, and Kara doesn’t know why until her own words register. “I mean- not that- of course you- I’m going to go change!”

She speeds into her room to save herself the agony of having to choke on her words for another second longer, and to spare Lena from witnessing it. By the time she throws on her own pair of pajamas and walks back out with a little too much forced pep in her step, however, Lena seems to have forgotten all about it. Or, maybe more accurately, she’s simply ignoring it. Either way, Kara is more than eager to move on.

“I’m proud of you, by the way,” she says idly as she pads back over. “What you just told me… you’re not the same person I met all those years ago.”

“I can only hope that’s a good thing,” Lena says after a beat of silence, trying to laugh off a compliment that Kara knows means the world to her.

Kara takes a breath. “Lena, in all the years that I’ve known you, you only get better. And not having the shadow of your family looming over you… it suits you.”

“Well, thank you, Kara. You know that means a lot to me to hear you say that.” Kara nods, and Lena’s bashful smile turns more wicked. “Though I’d imagine your family motto suits me even better-”

“Let’s change the subject,” Kara rushes out, feeling the tips of her ears getting warm, but when Lena’s smile turns no more acquiescent, she realizes belatedly that she played right into Lena’s hands— and the impending conversation from earlier suddenly looms large.

“Anything for you,” Lena smiles, but it is not at all comforting. “So,” she says, returning to washing dishes that Kara is pretty sure have already been cleaned, “Do you want to tell me about why you’ve been flying around National City looking for the mysteries of love?”

Despite the fact that she should have seen this coming, Kara still feels like a fish out of water, her mouth flapping open and closed wordlessly. She knows that the same reasoning she’s been using on everyone else won’t work on Lena— the other woman knows her far too well for that, and it’s not like it was a good excuse in the first place. It won’t fool anyone, least of all Lena, but the problem is that Kara still doesn’t have a real answer as to why she’s been so fixated on the idea of love lately.

So, as she’s been so committed to doing with Lena lately, Kara decides to tell the truth.

“Honestly? I really don’t know,” she says, walking over to the couch and draping herself down on it without any grace. Lena follows right behind, and cup of tea in hand, and rearranges Kara into a more comfortable position, curling up close. “It’s just… been stuck in my mind lately, and I can’t get it out.”

“What about it is so tantalizing to you?” Lena asks, her brow furrowed.

“I- I don’t know,” Kara says, searching for something more tangible to give her best friend, who seems truly interested in why Kara is asking these questions. “I guess… on Krypton, that sort of stuff… everything was predetermined, from your future career to your partner. There was no nuance, no doubt, and no agency, for better or worse. I suppose you could say we had soulmates, in a sense.”

“That’s fascinating,” Lena says, shifting closer. Kara can tell that her curiosity.

She nods, pressing her lips together in a firm line. “That’s how I understood love as a child. But, when Krypton exploded, and I was sent here, things were so different. There was so much more choice, and uncertainty. I’m a stranger to this planet in so many ways, even still. I think that… a part of me has always wondered if my idea of love died along with Krypton. I mean, I’m Supergirl. I’ve always known that my version of a happy ending has never been typical. Maybe I’m not meant to find that sort of connection here.”

It’s a dangerous truth to reveal to her best friend, who frowns, looking like she wants to say something in response to that. But the moment passes, and Lena, still looking like she’s teetering on the edge of something, clears her throat and continues.

“What about what Nia and Alex were talking about earlier?” she asks, meeting Kara’s eyes.

“That’s the thing,” Kara answers, feeling close to the edge of something herself. She swallows hard and forges ahead, staring at the way their hands are loosely twisted together. It’s a comfort for the both of them, having this type of physical touch back in their lives. Kara hadn’t known how much she missed it until it was gone, and she craves it even now. “Lately… I don’t know. Now, everything feels like it’s changed, in a good way, and I’ve started wondering… it feels like this is the start of something new, and exciting, and maybe something could come from it. Maybe what I’ve always thought isn’t true. That’s why I’ve been going around asking our friends. I wanted to understand what it means to fall in love.”

Lena tilts her head, regarding her carefully. “And something… or someone, has changed your mind? Do you know what?”

Kara, not knowing how to answer that, turns the tables instead. “What do you think about it?” she asks, turning more fully towards her best friend.

Maybe it’s her stalling for time, but Kara does genuinely want to know what Lena thinks about the concept. She knows the woman has been in relationships— knows that like Kara, none of them have ever ended well— but what Kara doesn’t know is the other woman’s perspective on it. There’s something about Lena that makes asking her this question scary for Kara, but at the same time, Kara knows that Lena is the one person she wants to hear and answer from above everyone else.

Lena scoffs as if on instinct. “What, love? Romance? Soulmates?” Mercifully, she lets her own unanswered question fall to the side, though she looks slightly disappointed.

Kara nods, her heart doing something strange inside her chest when Lena mentions that last word out loud. “Yes, that,” she breathes out, and Lena’s eyes widen just a fraction.

“Honestly, Kara? I think love is a bit absurd,” Lena admits, but her voice is quiet now, charged with something that makes her words land differently than they normally would. “It defies all logic, and it makes you do foolish, irrational things.” She pauses, and looks away for a moment. “I suppose it’s like the concept of quantum entanglement I told you about. In theory, I understand it, and I can recognize it in the people around me but I- I’ve never understood why it has the effect on me that it does, wanting someone in that way, and that has always frightened me.”

Kara’s breath catches, and for a moment the world stops in its tracks. The way Lena is talking about it… it almost sounds like she’s-

“Have you been in love before? Are you?” Kara asks, breath coming shallow and trembling. She doesn’t want to question why this possibility makes the room spin. The way Lena’s own breath comes out shaking, and the way her fingers tighten impulsively around Kara’s— it makes the moment utterly hypnotic.

Lena is staring across the room with a fiery intensity, and Kara knows that the fact that she isn’t meeting her eyes is telling of something. Kara knows it, and can feel something rising like a wave in the room all around them; she knows that whatever Lena says next will be important.

“I-” Lena falters one last time. Then, she takes a deep, shuddering breath, and finally meets Kara’s eyes. “I have been in love. I think I may always be, when it comes to them.”

Kara finds herself unable to look away. She takes in all the small details of this moment of revelation: the way Lena wets her lips; the way her heart pounds hard and fast against her chest; the way her fingers have begun tapping a nervous rhythm against the insides of Kara’s wrists.

“What?” she says, the words coming out in a heap. Her heart is doing its own uneven routine between her ribs, and Kara isn’t sure she likes the queasy feeling in her stomach. If Lena’s in love with someone, and apparently has been for a long time… Rao. Kara feels a little blindsided, though she isn’t sure it’s in a good way. “You are? For how long?”

“Quite a while, now,” Lena confesses. There’s a desperate, uneasy shine to her eyes, and despite getting that load off her chest the other woman seems no less nervous. “If I’m being honest with myself, probably since one of the first moments I met them. I just couldn’t admit it to myself for the longest time.”

Kara thinks back to what Kelly had told her. “The realization is the hardest part,” she echoes, and Lena’s face softens.

“It was for me,” she says. “But once you do realize what those feelings mean… you can’t ignore them. There’s no cure for it, even if you wanted one.”

“You never told me,” Kara says after a moment. It’s not accusatory, or meant to put blame on her best friend. If anything, Kara feels guilty. She has a feeling she knows why Lena had never told her this secret, and with their long, tumultuous journey towards honesty, she knows she has no ground to stand on. “Lena, I’m sorry-”

Knowing exactly what Kara’s going to say, Lena cuts her off. “No Kara, don’t be. It wasn’t because of what happened between us— at least not completely.” She heaves out another breath, slower this time. Kara can tell that it’s on purpose, Lena’s way of attempting to regain control of the moment. “Yes, when I found out you’d been lying to me, it changed things. Telling you the truth then would have hurt me in ways you don’t even realize. But the problem was, I didn’t fully come to terms with it until it was too late. We drifted apart, and for a long time I believed there was no use in talking about it. I’m still not sure there’s any point.”

Kara bites her lip, hating the fact that for a time, she’d ruined Lena’s chance to be vulnerable about something as life-changing as this. “Who?” she asks at last, keeping her voice gentle. She isn’t sure that she’s re-earned Lena’s confidence enough to know the answer.

“Someone very dear to me,” Lena says in the silence. Her face is shrouded in shadows, and Kara thinks that it’s for the best. She isn’t sure that she can handle the full intensity of Lena’s gaze at this moment. “An old friend. But it’s meaningless now. Irrelevant. I get the feeling that they’re moving onto something different, and I love them too much to try and get in the way of that. That ship has sailed, I’m afraid, and I suppose I’ll just have to learn to live with it.”

Kara feels her heart sink deep into her chest, and for some reason fights off the urge to blink tears from her eyes. There’s no reason to be crying about this. After all, Kara is pretty sure she knows exactly who it is that Lena has fallen so hard in love for. Kara is surprised, to say the least, but maybe she doesn’t know Lena as well as she thought she did. Maybe, Kara’s been too selfish about her own understanding of love to support her best friend through it.

Besides. While Kara had never seen them working out, James is a good man, and while no one could ever come close to deserving someone like Lena’s love, he’s as close as anyone could get. If Lena is in love with James, then Kara can understand it.

What she doesn’t understand is why that realization doesn’t make her happy. In fact, Kara doesn’t feel happy at all. She wonders why knowing Lena is in love with James makes her heart beat so achingly.

“Oh,” Kara says, struggling to keep her voice from shaking. She needs to put on a good face for her best friend, even if this has sent her night south at an alarming pace. “Lena, I- don’t give up hope. You never know, maybe this person, whoever they are, cares just as deeply about you.”

Lena shrugs. Kara swears that she can see tears glittering in her eyes when Lena gives her a half-smile. “Maybe,” she says. “I just know that the last thing I want to do is get in the way of their happiness. If this is the cross I have to carry, at least it’s for someone I love.”

Kara, feeling winded and frantic and bruised in a way that she has no grasp on, doesn’t have the energy left to save face for much longer. She stands up, and Lena does the same after a long pause. Even in the better lighting, her face looks dark. Sad, too, though Kara refuses to pay too much attention to that. The idea that it’s about James makes her want to run to the bathroom and dry heave.

“I- I’m sorry, I’m not feeling that well,” she says, and Lena nods immediately, like she had been searching for an out as well. “I think I might head to bed.”

“You should do that,” she replies, though she lingers in place for a moment more, searching Kara’s face for something. She must not find it, because she smiles a little wistfully to herself before moving towards where her coat and purse are at the counter. “Please do. You’ve had a crazy week, and I can’t have my best friend getting sick on me.”

Kara forces out a laugh, but it’s weak and humorless and they both know it. There’s a feeling of tension in the air that Kara hasn’t felt since the first few weeks after her secret was revealed, and she hates it— hates the inkling in her already sore chest that she caused it, somehow.

“I promise,” she says, still forcing a smile that is probably only making things worse. “National City really doesn’t give Supergirl many sick days.”

Lena doesn’t try to fake a laugh for either of their benefit. She can just barely disguise the wounded look on her face as she slips on her coat, though Kara can see through to it all the same. “I’ll let you get some rest, Kara. Goodnight.”

“Hey,” Kara says, reaches out and stops the door from closing completely. Lena spins around, with what looks like hope on her face. Kara plasters on another watery smile. “How about brunch sometime this weekend. I think it’s time that we re-instated that best friend tradition.”

Whatever had been on Lena’s face is wiped off for good, and as she gives a non-commital shrug, Kara notices that she won’t meet her eyes. “We’ll see. I’ve got a pretty packed schedule coming up, but I’ll let you know if I’m ever free.”

“Oh, well, alright!” Kara says, and at that, Lena turns around like it’s a release, and begins to walk away down the hallway. “Get home safely,” Kara calls out, but there’s no answer.

As she shuts and locks her door, Kara can’t help it. She tunes into her hearing and finds Lena’s familiar heartbeat with ease, but it’s beating hard and unevenly. If she listens closer, Kara can hear the unmistakable sound of Lena crying in the elevator, and her heart breaks at the realization.

Whatever had just happened between them, it wasn’t good, and Kara had no idea what went wrong or how to fix it. She trudges into her bedroom and sits down slowly, fighting off tears of her own. For someone who’d just shared what was supposed to be a wonderful, special moment with her best friend, Kara feels like she’d just gotten beat badly in a fight, and she doesn’t know why it’s making her feel more miserable than she’d felt in a long time. What is it about Lena that made her heart break in this way?

She tries to forget about it, or at least push it away for the time being. Still, she can’t stop herself from allowing a few tears from falling. Maybe Alex and Lena were right. She’s had a long week, and is going a little crazy trying to catch Lex, and maybe this is her body’s way of letting off some of what she’s kept so bottled up.

No matter what’s going on, Kara knows this: she’s definitely hosted better Girl’s Nights before.

And Rao, she really hopes she hasn’t ruined something with Lena. If she did that again… well, Kara isn’t sure she’ll be able to forgive herself this time around.

Chapter Text

Things are suddenly strange between them once more.

Kara absolutely hates it.

The worst part of it for her is that this time, there’s no explanation for it. She can’t for the life of her figure out why they’ve returned to staring at their shoes and startling whenever the other enters a room, like two spooked animals circling around the other. There’s no faultline that’s been glaringly exposed, no clues to trace back to a culprit, no burnt fuse hanging limply from what’s left of an explosion. There’s nothing and nobody to incriminate, or accuse, or point her finger at, and that’s driving Kara off the wall.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Kara has always been good at blaming herself for any problem that she sees, and there’s no reason to break that habit now. Not when there’s a cold, clammy feeling running down her spine that makes her wonder if this really is her liability this time around.

They’ve always been good at dancing around each other. It’s a familiar rhythm that was perfected long before her Supergirl secret was revealed, and maybe that’s why Kara is having such a difficult time finding the cause now. It’s such a smooth slip back that Kara only notices once they are firmly returned to retracing the steps they know so well, and when it was far too late for an early diagnosis.

Admittedly, there’s a sizable part of her that doesn’t want to question it. They’d only just made it back to a good place— only just reached a level of trust and support and unguarded affection that Kara had feared they’d never have again— and she doesn’t want to ruin it with her over-thinking. It could be a gentle peace she’d be shattering, and the last thing Kara wants to do is upset the balance they’ve managed to find. Besides, Kara isn’t even sure that Lena is aware of this newfound tension between them, and she isn’t about to be the one to cry wolf on something that might just be in her head.

(Then again, if it had been nothing, then Lena wouldn’t have been crying in the elevator after the last time they’d really talked.)

Of course, there’s also the issue of James Olsen.

Kara has never, ever thought of any of her friends as being issues, before, but it is an undeniable fact that even thinking about James is causing complications in her life to a concerning degree.

In the aftermath of their conversation, Kara finds herself unable to think about anything else but the thought of Lena and James, back together. Lena and James and candlelit dinners and soft touches and waking up slow in the morning, bodies warm and wrapped around each other. Lena, sending James a brilliant grin from across a table and laughing at his jokes at a time of night that only lovers do and making breakfast with him on lazy mornings. Lena, being happy and sated and so, so in love that the rest of the world seems just as lovely as if in response.

Now, the thought of Lena like that, Kara doesn’t mind. If she’s being honest with herself, she could picture Lena being that content all the time and would never be bothered by the images her mind conjures up. No, what Kara has come to the startling conclusion to is that James is the variable that is causing her so much distress.

Kara has nothing against James. Nothing. He’s one of her oldest, truest friends on this planet and a good man to boot. She’d nursed her own crush for him for a long time, so Kara knows how it is that Lena could have fallen in love with him. She can slip on her old pair of rose-tinted glasses and remember how handsome James is when he talked about something he was passionate about, how her heart used to flutter when he encouraged her and stuck up for her in ways that no one else had before, both as Kara Danvers and as Supergirl. He’s an uncomplicated symbol of everything that life could have been had Kara decided to take his hand. So Kara knows how easy it is to imagine a future with kind, safe, stable James Olsen, no matter how far removed she is from those dreams now.

She just can’t understand why it has to be Lena that’s now caught in that same web.

Those two questions of how and why should be complementary to one another. But when it comes to imagining Lena and James together, it feels instead like they couldn’t be starker opposites. The how Kara has a handle on. It’s the why that is causing her so much strife and making her do things that Kara really doesn’t want to be doing.

Suddenly, Kara finds herself nearly causing a traffic accident downtown when she’s flying low over the streets and distracted— too in her head about this revelation about Lena to notice the light change. All she can muster up is a sheepish smile at the honking cars and the man whose stack of newspapers he was selling she blew two blocks away making too sharp of a right turn. Then, two days later, she bumps into not just Maddie from the Science Division of Catco, but the new intern, Jackson, as well. Kara has always been clumsy, with or without powers, but the fact that she barely even noticed the wide eyes and spilled coffee until she was nearly halfway across the bullpen is something new even for her.

Despite her profuse apologies and promises to pay for dry cleaning and coffee for the next month if needed, Kara feels no better. She’s becoming a legitimate hazard to the people around her, and it’s not even her fault.

If not for this newfound tension between them, this is the type of thing that Kara would have normally gone straight to her best friend about. Lena has always been good at sorting out Kara’s messes— good at unraveling the knots of whatever tangle Kara’s gotten herself into this time and understanding the root of the problem beyond Kara’s ceaseless pacing and rambling. Lena has always been the person who Kara wants to go to when she’s in trouble.

There have only ever been two points in her life when Kara hasn’t felt able to go to her best friend, and thinking back on the awfulness of the first is enough to send her a little further down the spiral she’s spinning in.

Still, Kara has never been good at keeping things to herself, and in both a moment of weakness and a serious need to stop any more collisions during either of her jobs, she cracks and sends her sister an SOS text. It’s simple and it’s vague, but it gets the message across just fine.

The dutiful, endlessly patient sister that she is, Alex shows up that same night, with leftover cake from her wedding tastings in tow. The overabundance and variety of samples are exactly what Kara needed to distract herself. After greeting her sister with a hug and a rumble of gratitude from her stomach, Kara dives in. Alex is left perched on the couch, watching her sister tear into the cake with a tilted head and a hint of something in her furrowed brow.

“Kara,” she says after at least fifteen minutes of uninterrupted feasting. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or do I need to take that last slice away from you?”

“Don’t!” Even with a mouth full of frosting, the sudden panic in her eyes and her waving hands keeps Alex far away from making good on that threat. “This is the best one! You two are picking this one for the reception, right?”

Her sister makes a face. “Kelly and I both agree that that one has got way too much buttercream frosting on it-”

“That’s the best part!” Kara argues back.

“We could hardly finish our own tiny samples without feeling sick. Not all of us can inhale sugar the way you can.”

“Well… not all of us can break the sound barrier either. Just let me live in peace with my extra calories, please.”

Alex cracks a smile and moves to sit fully on the couch. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Kelly and I already ordered you your very own cake with all of the buttercream in the world heaped on top.” She reclines back and throws her legs over Kara’s lap in the same annoying way she used to do in high school. Not that Kara’s in any position to complain. Besides, she knows a trap when she sees one. Despite this lighthearted beginning, Alex didn’t come here to allow Kara to keep skirting around this. That’s exactly why Kara had texted her in the first place.

“Have I ever mentioned how wonderful of a sister you are?” Kara asks cheekily, offering Alex a pillow which she takes gladly.

“You could stand to do it more often, that’s for sure.” Alex clears her throat, and just like that, it’s time to spill. “Talk to me, Kara.”

And Kara does.

By the time she’s finished, Alex doesn’t have her legs strewn across the cushions anymore. In fact, Alex isn’t sitting on the couch at all. She’s leaning against the kitchen counter with a look that’s completely inscrutable even to Kara’s eyes, and that look started sometime around when Kara finally fessed up to the stilted ways she and Lena had been acting after Game Night.

“So you two are, what? Fighting again?” she asks once Kara has trailed off long enough for her to get a word in. “I thought things were getting better.”

There’s a veiled sort of alarm to Alex’s voice that sends Kara wheeling back. “No! We are not fighting.” Kara’s spine goes straight even at the insinuation of returning to that behavior. “I won’t do that with her. Not again, ever,” she says before sinking back into the couch with a huff.

“Then what’s really going on?”

“You tell me!” Kara just shakes her head with a frown, waiting for her sister to finish digesting. In the sudden silence, she feels compelled to voice her thoughts one more time before Alex takes over completely. “It’s just… Alex, I feel like I did something wrong. Or, I don’t know, like I’m missing something important. It’s like how we were after she found out I was Supergirl all over again— and I hate that this time, I don’t know what’s changed.”

“Have you tried talking to her about it?” Alex tries.

Kara grimaces and digs her nails a little deeper into the throw pillow she’s been attacking during this entire conversation. “The last time we really talked about something… it didn’t go well. In fact, it might be why we got into this situation in the first place.”

“Hold on a second. When and what did you two talk about?” her sister asks, interest newly piqued, and Kara winces. She had hoped to avoid divulging this particular bit of information.

It isn’t that she doesn’t trust Alex. Kara trusts her sister more than anyone else in the universe, and Alex knows more about her than it feels like she knows about herself, sometimes. But when it comes to this secret, when it comes to sharing this moment of confession between her and Lena, Kara feels reluctant to allow anyone else to bear witness to it. Something about the way she felt that night, her heart clenching in a way she wasn’t used to— something about the way Lena wrung her hands and had something fragile shining in her eyes… it isn’t something to give away easily.

But there’s no getting out of it now, not when Alex has her in her sight and has sniffed out withheld information. There’s no escaping her sister’s grasp when that happens.

“It- it was after we had that Game Night,” Kara says, throat bobbing and stalling for more time. She has an uncontrollable urge to spin this story in a certain way, like there’s a part of her that knows that however Alex will react, it will only mean trouble. “You know, after you and Nia took me to task about those questions I’d been asking?”

Alex has the maturity to frown at the memory in hindsight. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. With what Nia said about you and William, you know she didn’t really mean it. She was just trying to get you to-”

“Lena told me she’s in love with someone, Alex.”

There’s a tremble to the way she tells Alex that Kara doesn’t understand. It’s the same way her throat closed up and burned when Lena had told her herself that night, but Kara is no closer to knowing why this is what’s eliciting that type of reaction. She should be smiling, right now; she and Alex should have their heads bowed together gossiping, eyes glittering and giggling as they used to on the playground. This is the type of news that should be shared with joy, and excitement, and maybe even a bit of pride. It’s not every day your best friend falls in love, after all.

But instead, it’s all Kara can do to get out the words without choking on them, and her sister freezes in place. The room feels colder, suddenly, but Kara suspects that might just be her.

“What?”

Despite the churning of her stomach, Kara keeps talking.

“Once everybody else had left, we talked about what you had said, and I asked her what she thought of it. About falling in love.” She swallows and reaches blindly for the glass of water that she knows she’d drained a long time ago. At least it’s something to hold onto, and she traces her fingertips along the edge of the glass and wills them to stop shaking. “And she told me the truth. How she’s been in love with someone for a very long time, and there’s no getting rid of it now.”

Alex takes the information in with a confused frown, her forehead scrunching up in a way Kara knows it only does when her sister is juggling multiple things at a time. She doesn’t know what response she’d been expecting from Alex, but she knows that this isn’t it. There’s got to be a reason why Alex keeps glancing over like she’s gauging the temperature. This is reactionary, not genuine, and it’s throwing Kara off even more.

“And… Lena didn’t say who this person was?” Alex asks, prodding carefully.

Kara scoffs, unable to explain the bitter taste in her mouth so she ignores it altogether. “No, but she didn’t have to. There’s no need, don’t you think?”

“I’d say so.” Her sister opens her mouth and then shuts it, seemingly reconsidering whatever she had been planning on saying. Alex shrugs instead. “Well actually, I… You know her best, Kara. Who do you think it is?”

“Come on, Alex.” Kara gets up and begins a familiar route around and around her couch. It’s where she’s always done her pacing, and Alex scoots further up on the counter, wise enough to get her legs up out of the way of her sister’s warpath. “She laid it out pretty clearly.”

“What exactly did she tell you?”

Kara turns the corner again and starts the loop over. In a strange way, its redundancy was the only thing keeping her sane enough to keep talking. “She told me it’s someone very dear to her. An old friend. She thinks she may have been in love with them since the moment she saw them, but they’ve moved on now. Lena doesn’t think there’s any use in trying to get them back.”

She waits for Alex’s eyes to light up with the same realization as hers had, for Alex to draw the same impossible, mind-boggling conclusion as her. Kara isn’t sure if she’ll feel relieved by the fact that Alex will also realize that it’s James that Lena loves, or if it’ll only make this knot in her stomach tighter.

Somehow, Alex not saying anything at all is the worst outcome of all.

“Well?” she asks after the beat of silence drags on for too long. Kara even stops pacing, turning on the dot in her old socks to face her sister, who remains enigmatic. There’s no sudden realization on her face, no shock, not even any confusion. Instead, it’s like Alex is schooling her face into a perfect mask of neutrality, refusing to give ground in one direction or the other. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Alex keeps her mouth shut, simply raising an eyebrow. Kara can’t take it any longer.

“It’s James!” she cries out, throwing her hands up in the air. “Lena is in love with James.” Her voice sounds quieter, stranger through the ringing in her ears but Kara doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to unpack that at the moment. All she can do is look over at her sister and wait for something to hold onto.

For a split second, Kara thinks she can see absolute disbelief in her sister’s eyes, like it’s Kara who has a massive blindspot or has missed some obvious clue. But that’s gone by the time Alex blinks again, and there’s nothing but cautious support remaining.

“Right, James.” her sister echoes. It sounds artificial when she says it, like sound rattling around in a tin can. Kara doesn’t buy it for a second.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

Alex shakes her head adamantly, but her eyes are still scurrying around the room. “No, I do! James is… well, he’s the logical choice, I suppose.”

Kara scrunches her nose, utterly baffled as to why Alex isn’t as far into this theory as she is. Her sister has always been the better one out of the two of them at reading situations, reading people. Kara thinks it’s what makes her such a good person to turn to for advice; out of anyone, she knows that Alex understands her and whatever situation Kara finds herself in. The fact that there’s a disjointing feeling between them now makes Kara wonder if it’s her that’s not on the same page.

“Logical? This isn’t a science experiment, it’s Lena. Who else would it be?” she asks, eyes boring into Alex’s.

Her sister chooses not to answer that question. “It’s just, if it’s James, why decide to finally tell you now? I know you two haven’t exactly been on the best of terms for the past year, but when Lena and James ended things you were still her best friend-”

“I still am her best friend, Alex,” Kara cuts in, unable to resist.

At this point, it’s become an almost Pavlovian response whenever her sister or anyone else brings up Lena like she’s still someone from Kara’s past. When someone is as important to your past, present, and future as Lena is to Kara’s, she can’t help but make sure everyone else knows it. Especially her sister.

Alex doesn’t forget as easily as Kara does, at least not when it comes to Lena. But this feels like something entirely different.

Her sister raises her hands in apology, uncrossing her legs and moving back over to the couch. “I know she is,” she says, softer. “I know how important you are to each other. That’s why I wonder why it took her so long to tell you about someone like James if he’s really been that person for her for so many years.”

“Telling somebody something that personal is a hard thing to do,” Kara says. “Trust me, I’ve done it enough times to know that the drop in your stomach never goes away. To be that vulnerable ever is brave. To tell me now, after everything that happened between us? After Lena thought she’d never be able to trust me again? Honestly, Alex, I don’t care about when she told me. I’m just glad that she did at all.”

“Are you really?”

Kara lets out a huff. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Isn’t this what’s causing this weird tension between the two of you?” Alex asks, and Kara has no good answer for that, at least not one that would appease either of them. “How happy can you be about it if it is?”

“For Lena? Are you serious? If she’s happy, then- then I’m ecstatic about it!” Kara wonders why it sounds like a bluff even to her own ears.

“Are you sure about that, Kara? Because I don’t buy that for a second.” Alex says it like she’s on a roll, like she’s settled on something that’s imperceptible to Kara. Maybe she’s letting her wife-to-be rub off on her too much, but Kara doesn’t want to hear it.

“What don’t you buy?” she asks, voice growing just a little bit snippy.

“First off, it doesn’t seem like Lena is much happier about this than you are.” Kara glowers but remains silent. She’s got no rebuke for that. Alex’s gaze grows firmer and she continues. “Second of all, I’m your sister. I’ve seen you when you’re excited, and frustrated, and exhausted. I’ve seen you at your saddest and at your happiest— and maybe most importantly, I’ve seen how you are when it comes to Lena. I know you, and I know you’re not feeling whatever you’re claiming you are.”

Kara turns on her heel and begins a fresh round of pacing, refusing to meet Alex’s eyes at the moment. What she just said holds weight— not that Kara is about to admit it. “I am too! I just… it’s just a sudden change, is all. A big change! Gargantuan, even-”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “Kara,” she deadpans, an unspoken demand for her sister to stop paging through the volumes of her mental dictionary.

“Maybe this is just something I need to get used to,” Kara suggests. The floor creaks with each step she takes, and she makes a mental note to surprise her downstairs neighbor with some brownies sometime soon. “I mean, it’s the least I can do for her after she had to combine my two identities into one. Compared to that, it’s not asking that much.”

“Maybe,” Alex offers, leaning forwards on the couch and moving her feet out of the way of Kara’s rampage, “Nothing’s changed. Maybe that’s part of the problem,” she suggests in a way that makes Kara feel like she’s being led towards something. Like Alex has a hold of the reins but refuses to do anything but lightly tug in the right course. For someone who feels like they’re falling in the entirely wrong direction, it’s more than a little maddening.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?” Kara asks, and she really wants to know because her sister just sounded like a fortune cookie and this is not the kind of advice she had ever expected to hear from her. “Everything has changed.”

“To you, maybe.” Alex sighs and pats the spot next to her on the couch, throwing some pillows off to the side to make room. Reluctantly, Kara pads over and sits down gingerly, still staring down at her socks. “But really, nothing is different. You two have always… look. All that’s different now is that you know, and she told you. What’s changed other than the realization?”

Something about that cuts deep, causing her heart to skip a beat. It reminds her of what Kelly had told over lunch, her kind, gentle eyes a far cry from Alex’s slightly exasperated ones.

“Exactly,” Kara ventures out cautiously. “Which is why I just need to adjust.”

“No, you need to ask yourself why it is that you're so fixated on doing everything but facing this head-on.” Alex chuckles, some teasing returning to her tone. “No more deflection, and no more pushing it aside, and definitely no more adjusting.”

Kara wrinkles her nose. She wants to ask what’s even left for her to do then, but she knows that would lead her to nothing but an eye roll and a pillow to the gut, courtesy of her sister. She decides to phrase it more carefully, then. After all, she did come to Alex for advice. She should at least hear her out completely.

“What should I do?” she asks simply.

Alex lets out one last breath before reaching for the remote. As she switches on the television, she turns to face Kara in the faint blue glow cast across the living room.

“You care about her, don’t you? And you want to be there for her no matter what?”

Kara nods. She doesn’t have to speak when it’s something so indisputable.

“Then stop worrying so damn much and let yourself be there. And most importantly, stop pretending-”

“Pretending?” Kara interjects, confused as to what her sister believes she’s concealing.

“Stop pretending everything is fine when it isn’t,” Alex finishes, eyes more beseeching now. “I watched you do that with Lena for years, and when it comes to her, putting on a mask and ignoring what’s really in front of you was nearly your fatal flaw.”

“I’m not ignoring anything,” she tries, but Alex silences her with a look.

“You asked for my advice, didn’t you? Or are you going to keep skirting around everything I say?”

“I’m sorry,” Kara concedes after a beat. “I do want your advice. It’s just, you know how I get sometimes, how I just can’t stop thinking long enough to really listen or understand.”

Alex grows gentle once again, her features softening somewhat. “I know, I know. Look, this is Lena we’re talking about. You don’t have to try to be anyone but yourself around her now. If you overthink something that comes so naturally, then of course it’s going to feel forced.”

She stands up and starts towards the kitchen cabinet where the popcorn kernels are, meaning that the conversation is essentially over. Alex shakes them around in their container before turning on the stovetop, sending Kara one last look that means something. If only Kara knew what that something was.

Kara fiddles with the sleeve of her sweater, listening to the slowly increasing pops coming from across the apartment. When she speaks again, most of her fight is gone. “I just don’t want to accidentally make things worse. What if me brushing things off and acting myself again only causes her hurt?”

“Don’t see it as brushing it under the rug,” Alex says from over the counter. Kara watches her grab the salt and shake a liberal amount over the snacks. Despite the entire cake she’d consumed only a half-hour before, Kara’s stomach growls loudly. “See it as you no longer feeling like you have to hide away based on how you think Lena feels about all this. And how about you just talk to Lena if you’re feeling so confused? I mean, Jesus, you two are experts at this by now. Just talk to her, Kara. If you do that, I think you’ll find that things are a lot less murky than they seem.”

Kara chews on the inside of her cheek but can feel herself settling down. Though the worry lines aren’t gone from her forehead she knows, they are fading. It’s a start, at least. For the first time all night, Alex has stopped acting so cryptic— mostly, at least— and is actually starting to make sense. As for the lingering lack of explanation for some of her sister’s comments, Kara decides that it’s a problem to solve on a different night.

“You’re right,” she says quietly, muttering mostly to herself, but when her sister turns to her and raises an expectant, halfway-teasing eyebrow, she raises her hands in surrender and cracks a genuine smile. “You’re right,” she says again, louder this time, and Alex grins in response.

“Aren’t I always?” As she plops back down on the couch with a massive bowl of popcorn in tow, Kara can feel the rest of the world slip away. All of her troubles, big and small, don’t seem so bad when her sister is next to her. “I give some damn good advice. That means I get to pick the movie.”

“You picked last time!” Kara points out, but it’s a half-hearted argument when she’s already laughing and handing her sister the remote back without a second thought. Still, the pout remains firmly in its place— not that it sways her sister in the slightest.

“Nothing too scary, I promise.” Alex snatches it up with relish, a gleeful shine growing in her eyes. “Hey… how about a rom-com? Just in case you need some more inspiration.”

“I hate you,” Kara manages to muster up through her blush, but her sister just laughs. They both know that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Yeah, right, you sap,” she chuckles, raising an arm in invitation. Kara takes it eagerly, curling up and resting her head on Alex’s shoulder as she scrolls aimlessly through Netflix.

“I’ll talk to her. I promise,” she says a few minutes later, easing into the comfortable silence they’d reached. “And what you said about me needing to stop pretending…” Kara sighs, and Alex looks down at her without judgment or incrimination. “For so long, that’s all I ever did around her. It’s a hard habit to break, I guess.”

As she finally decides on some new thriller movie that keeps popping up on their queue, Alex gives Kara one last side-eyed glance. At this point in the night, Kara would have believed that Alex had exhausted all of those in her repertoire by now, but apparently not.

“No more pretending, right?” she says, reaching for her glass of wine as the opening credits finish up. “For either of you. And you have all the time in the world to unlearn those habits, no matter how naturally they come to you. Nothing wrong with easing into things, right?”

“Nothing wrong with that at all,” Kara echoes, eyes trained on the movie but still lost in thought. She wants badly to buy into what her sister is telling her, no matter how reluctant she is to admit when she has a point. But because this is Lena— and nothing has ever been simple when it comes to how Kara feels about her— she can’t help but think about the last time Alex told her to wait on talking to Lena about something important.

What happened isn’t Alex’s fault, Kara knows. By the time she’d found the nerve to tell Lena the truth about Supergirl, it would have been too late regardless. Lex made sure of that even in death.

But this is different. Things are better now with Lena, more trusting and open and stable than they’d ever been before. This isn’t something Kara needs to dread. She’s braver now than she’s ever been, and it isn’t because of a victory over a villain, or newfound confidence in her powers, or anything to do with being Supergirl. It’s because of Lena, and the way that she looks at her again. If for nothing else, then Kara needs to talk to her if only to see that look again.

She owes it to her best friend, and regardless of what comes in the way, Kara is going to do just that. Everything else— like Alex’s weird looks and Nia’s leading text messages and the coffee spills and scattered papers she’s left in her wake— Kara will handle in due time. Lena comes before almost anything else in Kara’s life right now.

It’s just her luck, then, that Lillian Luthor rears her head the very next day.

…

It’s a biting, windy day during National City’s coldest winter on record when they find Lillian.

They pin her location down in an underground lab, beneath a decrepit opera house in Metropolis that’s been a part of the Luthor heritage for generations. It’s an opulent and privileged shell hiding something truly awful, and if Kara were writing an article on this, she wouldn’t have been able to resist the obvious comparison to be made between the building and the woman caught inside it. Beneath her pearls and inherited wealth and sharp, educated primness, Lillian was nasty and dangerous, and quite frankly, Kara didn’t think this old building with its cobwebs and faded carpet deserved to be compared to a monster like her.

She flies with Lena there. There are many reasons why.

The official explanation, the one she pitched to Alex and Brainy when they first briefed her at the DEO, was that Lena was an asset to the mission. She is the most valuable weapon they have against the other members of her family, civilian status or not, and Kara needed to ensure her safe arrival. They needed the best shot possible to nail down Lillian once and for all, and Lena was their ace in the hole.

The real reason, however, is that Kara knows this isn’t something Lena should have to face alone. Even if it means Kara has to sit idly in a plane instead of flying through the open air, she’ll do it. If it gives her best friend even an ounce of extra strength to go toe to toe with her mother, it’ll be worth it. Alex and the rest can go ahead and handle things until Kara arrives, because there is nothing that could convince her that she belongs anywhere but sitting next to Lena, pointing out the window at the clouds until the other woman cracks a smile, however forced.

Lena agrees to join the mission, of course. Regardless of authorization, Kara knows Lena would have shown up in Metropolis one way or another, and it makes her feel better to know that it’ll be with Kara at her side, not an empty jet and plenty of liquid courage.

Alex hadn’t wanted Lena with in the first place, both as the Director of the DEO and as a friend. She told Kara exactly that as they waited on the tarmac for Lena’s private jet to finish fueling up.

“This isn’t a good idea,” she tells Kara for what feels like the hundredth time. “You know it, and I know it. She should stay here until this is finished.”

“We need her there,” Kara argues back. It’s clear from the way her words come out flat and rehearsed that they’ve gone through these motions before— in an empty hallway of the DEO, Kara’s apartment, their favorite pizza place, and on the way to the airport, actually. In the days that they’ve spent scoping out the mission and making final preparations, this has been one of the few constants no matter the location. “No one knows Lillian better, except for maybe Lex.”

“And you’re not even a little bit concerned about that?” Alex asks. “That’s a two-way street, Kara. Lillian knows her just as well— and she’s had years of practice using that to hurt Lena. You want to send her into that?”

Kara frowns, not liking the way Alex is choosing to frame this last-ditch attempt at changing her mind. “Don’t make this out to be based on my blessing. I’m not making anyone do anything they’re not willing to do. This is her choice, and you know there’s no stopping Lena from this. Besides, this is the best lead we’ve had in months, and we can’t lose it now. Lena can handle it.”

“There’s a thin line between Lena being an advantage for us or a liability. This is her mother we’re talking about.”

Alex has a point. Kara isn’t so blinded by her belief in Lena’s capabilities that she doesn’t recognize the risk in this. Lena will be able to take her mother down. That Kara has no doubt about. No, what Kara is worried about is what the fallout could be for Lena emotionally. There will always be consequences from a mission this personal, and this time around, Kara fears that her best friend will be bearing the brunt of them.

She’d always sworn to herself to protect Lena no matter the cost, and Kara hates the clammy feeling in her palms that’s coming with the understanding that this isn’t something that she can shield Lena from.

Kara runs her fingers through her hair and switches tactics. “You said it, Alex. It’s her mom. Don’t you think she deserves whatever closure she can get from this?”

Alex’s eyes just narrow, but before she can open her mouth and bring up any of the other talking points they’ve been sparring with the last 24 hours, they see a black town car glide through the gates. Lena is here, and they both know that there’s no talking anyone out of anything now.

There’s no disguising the fact that they had only just ended their argument, and that Lena was at the center of it; Alex’s nostrils are still flared, and she has her signature worry lines across her forehead, while Kara realizes belatedly that every muscle in her body is tense and flexed. Not that it would have mattered even if their tells were better disguised. Lena is one of the most adept people Kara has ever met at reading a situation; she’s told Kara stories about her lifetime of practice feeling out unfriendly galas and picking apart the body language of her boardroom. There’s also the fact that anyone with common sense— which undoubtedly includes her best friend— would recognize the friction brought out by this situation. Lena knows Kara, but she also knows Alex, which means that she probably already understands where the two sisters stand on this mission.

Despite their glass expressions, Lena’s face betrays nothing as she slides out of her car, sending her driver a polite nod before facing them. There’s a grim sort of frown on her face, and she’s paler than usual, but make no mistake: Lena Luthor showed up ready. She’s dressed to kill, her face partly hidden by a long black coat, and peeking out underneath Kara can see one of her designer suits. This is Lena at her most armored, her most weaponized. Still, all Kara can do is stare at the precise way her hair has been put up, and the way her lipstick draws out the deeper, cooler blue hidden behind the green of her eyes.

She’s nervous, as is Lena, as is Alex. Kara is Supergirl; she’s supposed to be the one with the rousing speeches, with enough steel in her voice to straighten the back of anyone. Instead, Kara blushes and speaks the way she always does with Lena.

“You look beautiful,” Kara tells her, making sure to snap her mouth shut after the honest, earnest comment slips out. “You really do.”

Lena’s entire body swivels, her eyebrows raised. Kara swears she can see the beginnings of a blush form high on her cheeks. Clearly, that wasn’t what Lena had been expecting her to say. After a pause, Lena clears her throat, reaching automatically up to tuck a loose strand of hair back into place.

“I- why thank you, Kara. I appreciate the compliment.”

Kara nods animatedly. Despite the fact that she’s wearing her Supergirl suit, cape rippling in the wind, the way she bounces back and forth on her feet is a move that is all Kara Danvers. “That’s a great color on you,” she adds a little lamely, but Lena’s eyes soften around the edges and that makes it worth it.

Kara can hear the way Alex’s jaw snaps shut, the way her teeth grind as she watches the exchange. If she were to use her x-ray vision right now, Kara would bet money that Alex is currently biting her tongue, fighting for her life against the urge to say whatever is on her mind.

After a beat of silence, Lena takes initiative. “I spoke with the crew on the way over. Everything is ready to go.” Her eyes dart over to Alex. “I know it’s not a DEO-issued vehicle, but I can assure you that this trip will remain covert and confidential. It’s completely self-automated, and the coordinates and the existing hard drive will erase upon landing.”

Kara bites back another nervous comment, thinking about the last time she and Lena relied on the autopilot on this thing, but she has enough sense to know that this isn’t the time. For her part, Alex accepts Lena’s peace offering for what it is, but still can’t wipe the look of reluctance off of her face.

“I’m sure your flight will be fine.” Alex takes a breath. “But that’s not what I’m worried about-“

“I know,” Lena cuts in effortlessly, her features growing serious again. “But that’s the only guarantee I’m able to make you. Everything else… well, you know my mother. I want you to know that I’m willing to do what I have to in order to put her away— and that you need me on this mission.”

Kara’s sister shifts her weight back and forth, not eager to budge even if she knows it’s futile. “As your friend… I just don’t want this to cause any hurt. You don’t have to do this. You know that, don’t you?”

Alex means what she says; she’s worried for both of them when Lex and Lillian are in the mix. Lena’s head tilts in somber acknowledgment, but she remains sure.

“Maybe I don’t have to. But I want to, Alex. Please, let me help. I’m asking you to let me put this to rest once and for all.”

It’s the same argument Kara’s been wearing away at her sister with, but Lena says it with a kind of gravity that Kara couldn’t. This is the Lena hellbent on fixing what her family has done, and when she says something in that way, it’s impossible not to believe her, and not even Alex can stand against it.

That doesn’t mean she can’t grumble about it, however.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be letting the two of you fly there together,” she says, but her eyes crinkle just a bit. Kara knows she isn’t serious, and it adds a hint of levity to a high-stakes situation. “You’re starting to sound much too alike for my sanity.”

“Nonsense, Director,” Lena replies, but she smiles too, just a bit. Even in the worst circumstances, Lena can keep up. “Supergirl and I have an entrance to make, after all. Any other passengers just wouldn’t get the same reception from my mother.”

With a roll of her eyes, Alex steps aside, letting them board the plane without further incident. She, Brainy, J’onn, and Nia would be going ahead to secure the perimeter and make the official arrest. If everything went well, Kara and Lena’s presence would be more of a formality than anything else, something for the Daily Planet to swoop in on and snag their front-page story— along with the perfect message to send to Lex.

But this is Lillian Luthor they’re dealing with, and Kara never expects a smooth ride where she’s involved. Her nerves don’t abate in the slightest just because her sister is letting them proceed with this.

The one silver lining from this entire ordeal is that the sudden re-emergence of Lillian is significant enough to make any remaining awkwardness between Kara and Lena from the conversation at Game Night utterly insignificant. Sometimes, there are things more important to worry about, like being a good friend. Right now, Lena needed one badly.

Lena’s demeanor changes once the doors of the jet close and the wheels touch off, as Kara had expected it would. As soon as National City’s skyline is firmly behind them, she turns away from her view from the window that she’d remained steadfastly peering out of and meets Kara’s eyes. Nothing needs to be said. This isn’t the same woman who had talked Alex into letting her join this mission, and it also isn’t the same woman that Kara is so used to being around day after day.

This is the Lena that used to shine through in the moments when Kara was first getting to know her, the Lena who is more cognizant and more fixated on her tie to the Luthor name than anything else in the world. This is the Lena who feels it’s her duty to make an atonement for the actions of her family, the one desperate to make a lump-sum payment— in blood, if necessary— to wipe away what she believes to be her sins, and it’s the Lena that Kara had been most worried to see make an appearance.

Not that Kara is surprised by the weight of the world thinly-veiled through the glaze over Lena’s eyes. No, she’d known that this is how Lena would feel because when it comes to her family, her best friend has never moved past that sense of guilt and anger and fear that she was exactly like the rest of them, in the end.

That’s why Kara is here on this plane instead of where she probably should be, storming Metropolis herself and ensuring by her own hand that Lillian is captured and put away for good. But when it comes to Lena, Kara is willing to live with her own sense of anxiety and sense of responsibility for finding Lillian if it means she can be here now. So long as she can dim that look of shame in Lena’s eyes even slightly by the time their wheels hit the tarmac, it will have been worth it to not see the shock on Lillian’s face in person.

Besides, with Lena, Kara has found that the rest of her world— with all of her duties, responsibilities, and needs— tends to get just a little blurrier.

“Are you okay? Really?” Kara asks, even if she already knows the answer and Lena does too. It’s an invitation to speak, to say anything at all, and it’s enough to break Lena out of her self-imposed haze.

Her mouth can barely even curl all the way into a grimace when she takes a breath, and Kara can feel her own gut start to churn in response. It’s been a long time since Lex or Lillian have been a tangible presence in their lives, much less an active threat, and watching the way Lena’s throat bobs makes Kara remember all that’s at stake here. How vulnerable their lives can be when they hang in the balance like this, and how much Kara would do anything to make this go away once and for all— if only to never see Lena look this troubled ever again.

“It’s harder to keep up appearances around you,” Lena says, at last, skirting around the topic but still acknowledging it. It’s a start, at least, one that Kara can take the baton and run with. “With your sister, while she may not believe anything I say, at the very least she’s still reluctant to call my bluff out unless she’s truly upset. You, on the other hand…”

“I don’t mean to pry,” Kara says, even if prying is an accepted part of their friendship at this point. Still, showing concern and accidentally poking into open wounds are two very different things, and she doesn’t want Lena to think this conversation is meant to be the latter. “I really don’t. I’m just worried about you, no matter what I said to Alex about you belonging on this mission.”

Lena pauses, doubtful eyes darting to meet hers for a split second. “You don’t think I should be going either?” she asks, voice smaller than before, and Kara finds herself backtracking quickly.

“Of course not,” she answers adamantly, leaning forward in an attempt to catch Lena’s gaze once more to show her just how much she means it. But the other woman’s eyes are back to being firmly fixed out the window, and so Kara’s fall back to tracing the tightness of her best friend’s jaw, lingering on the muscle that jumps there. “You belong here, same as everyone else. It wouldn’t be fair to leave you behind on something this important… even if it does involve-”

“You can say her name, Kara. I’m not allergic to it.” Lena tilts her head up, squaring her shoulders. “No matter how venomous my family can be, they’ve never seemed able to harm me quite as much. I guess you can make of that what you will.”

There’s an acidic taste to Lena’s words that immediately catches Kara off guard. While she had expected honesty, Kara can’t say she expected it to come this swiftly or bitterly.

“And what would you have me make of it?” she asks, praying for a moment to at least catch her breath. But Lena’s upper lip curls and she shakes her head, eyes shuttered and dark, and Kara knows there will be no respite for either of them.

“I would assume you’re well on your way to coming to the same conclusions as your sister,” Lena states simply, refusing to elaborate, and Kara just wishes she knew where this was going.

“Don’t pay Alex any mind right now, okay?” Kara tries valiantly. “She’s in her DEO Director mode right now, which means she’s at her most fatalistic and cynical. That has nothing to do with you. Just the bad memories that she can’t get out of her head.”

“Memories of what, exactly?”

Kara flounders. She knows as well as Lena does that Alex still has the metallic taste of bad blood in her mouth following Kara and Lena’s brief dissolution, try as she might to move past it. Kara wishes sometimes that she’d gone through the pain and misery of it alone, because Alex isn’t one to forget the sight of her little sister with Kryptonite running through her veins at the Fortress or the way Kara sobbed as she begged Lena to punish her and not the world through her mother’s hologram. Alex can’t forget, but she’s trying as hard as she can to show Lena as much mercy as she can, and Kara is adamant that this isn’t about that.

“Of your mother. Of how she’s hurt you and hurt me. She doesn’t think either of us should be coming with to be perfectly honest with you. I mean, you know Alex.” Kara cracks a desperate smile that lands dead on arrival in the suffocating space between them. “She’s too vigilant for her own good, sometimes.”

“Not everyone is as forgiving as you can be, Kara. Especially not your sister.” Lena’s expression only darkens further, and Kara shifts forwards, trying for a new angle.

“Well hey, she’s not the only one worried about this, you know?” she mentions, and Lena says nothing. There’s nothing between them but the smooth hum of the machinery. “We all had our own concerns to bring up about this.”

Lena tilts her head in a way that makes Kara shiver. The ice is back, and as bone-chilling as it is and as much as Kara wishes Lena didn’t feel the need to use it on her right now, it’s still beautiful. Rao, Lena is absolutely breathtaking even in the middle of something as dire as this, and Kara almost blurts something out again.

She’s always felt that way, Kara knows. Even during the worst of their fights, Lena looked ethereal in a way that drove Kara more than a little insane. It lit a fire in her that she didn’t have an explanation for at the time, and so she used it to fuel her words in some twisted, maddening cycle of self-perpetuation.

Not that she has a better explanation for it now— especially when the other woman clearly has the same devastating effect on Kara.

“And what were your concerns, Kara?” Lena asks, and the purr of her words doesn’t fool Kara for a second. Lena is teetering on a very thin edge, and whatever Kara says could be the deciding vote in which way she falls.

“Look, I- I just wasn’t sure what kind of hold she- Lillian, has over-” Kara stops and swallows, choosing to restart and choose her words with a bit more finesse this time. “I remember what she’s done to you, Lena. And I know you say I’m good at forgiving, but not when it comes to you. Not when it involves the people that have hurt you, and that includes me as well. I just… the blood is on my hands if something goes wrong, or if she makes you-”

As Kara feared she might, Lena takes her stumbling words the wrong way, her own private misgivings dictating everything.

“What? Because it’s my mother that’s involved, you all don’t think I can handle myself? That my emotions will get the best of me just like when I-” Lena stops herself there before she can say whatever it was she wanted to, but her voice shakes and rattles and it’s never been clearer what it is that Lena’s really scared of. Her restraint does nothing to soothe the sickness that’s begun growing in Kara’s gut ever since this conversation took this sudden turn, and she kicks herself for not understanding sooner.

Kara doesn’t blame Lena for being defensive about a thing like this. Not when it comes to the festering hole of cruelty and trauma that being around the rest of the Luthors has forced Lena to exist in for most of her life, and not when only a year or so ago, Kara herself confirmed one of Lena’s deepest fears by comparing her to the likes of her mother and brother.

Out of all the things said and done by the two of them during that horrible, dark year, calling Lena a villain and losing her faith in the other woman is still the thing that haunts Kara the most. And yes, it’s true that they worked through it; Rao only knows that the slow, oftentimes torturous progress that they made while trying to learn to forgive and trust in each other again amounts to something. But that slipup— that mistake piled on top of all the others— is one that Kara suspects she will try to rectify for the rest of her life, if only so Lena never believes that Kara could think of her in that way ever again.

That urge takes hold of her now, sending her out of her seat and into the one directly next to Lena. When she grabs onto Lena’s hands, Kara takes it as a good sign that the other woman doesn’t flinch or even stiffen, instead finally looking at her with open distress. It’s a look that’s begging for someone to snuff out her uncertainty and fear before it can completely catch fire, and Kara meets it head-on.

She has to stop this right now before everything goes to hell.

“No. I don’t believe any of that, and neither do our friends. You want to know why you’re really here?” Kara’s hands get a tighter grip and Lena just shakes her head, her eyes closed and her lips pressed thin against the wall of emotion threatening to break through.

“I provide an advantage. A trump card to play against my mother.” Lena’s grimace makes itself known again, and Kara can tell that Lena wishes this conversation wouldn’t go in this direction either. But the two of them are used to honesty in all of its sharp, uncomfortable, sometimes brutal forms, and so Lena doesn’t stop talking. “Bait, maybe. I honestly don’t know why I’m being allowed to come with, Kara. Not when I pose such a liability to the success of this mission if I lose control even for a moment.”

Kara frowns, studying Lena carefully. She can’t believe Lena could ever think that they would use her as some sort of unwitting offering to bring her mother out of where she’s holed herself away, but she also understands that this is Lena’s self-loathing talking. If Lena sees herself as a risk, or a weakness, then of course she makes the theory that that’s how everyone sees her too. It’s one of the downsides of being so brilliant and logical and yet so disbelieving of her own abilities.

“You’re here, Lena because I need you with me.” Kara lets the meaning behind the words sink in. It’s the truth; more so than being a good ally, or someone deserving to get their due revenge on Lillian, Kara wants Lena with most of all out of a personal need. “We could probably bring your mother in just fine without any of this fanfare. Rao, I don’t think that Supergirl needs to be there at all when she’s arrested. I trust Alex and the rest of our team. But I- I haven’t been sleeping ever since we found her. I’ve just been so pent up and nervous and scared that I have to be there.”

Lena’s face grows softer, then more concerned. At the very least, Kara will take a victory out of the fact that it’s for her sake and not because of Lillian. This time, she squeezes Kara’s hand, not the other way around. “It’s going to be okay,” she soothes, and it borders on ridiculous how much those words, no matter how superficial, actually cause Kara to sink back into her seat, heart beating just a bit slower now. “Really. This is going to end, and it’s going to be soon, and then you and I will never have to worry about my family ever again.”

“Remember what you told me at Game Night?” Kara asks, and out of all the things she could bring up from that night she can’t believe it’s this. Not when there’s still an elephant on the plane, so to speak, which Lillian Luthor effortlessly overshadows but nonetheless is still there, just waiting to be discussed.

Lena knows it’s there too, and she shifts in her seat, her face momentarily clouded by different troubles altogether. “What about what I said, Kara?” she asks, and her voice is so delicate it’s like she could be doing surgery on this conversation, careful not to disturb anything she doesn’t need to.

Kara swallows hard. No matter what, this talk can’t happen today. “You told me that anything we do, we’re going to do it together, and protect each other in any way we can,” she says slowly, and Lena catches on, her features growing no less stormy but of a different nature. Kara sighs, and pinches her nose for a moment as she glances away. “And I believe that— and Rao, I swear I will. I’m going to protect you no matter what, but… that still doesn’t explain why I fought so hard for you to be here.”

“Tell me,” Lena breathes out. She is completely gentle now, all of her sharp edges and nervous wildness replaced by the openness of her gaze. It’s vulnerable and emphatic and intoxicatingly coaxing, and Kara knows better by now than to bother turning away from it.

Kara’s voice feels impossibly small and much too large for the tiny cabin of this plane. “It’s selfish. But I need you with me when it comes to these things, even if it puts you in more danger than you ever should be. It’s not about protecting you or using you like some wild card for an advantage, it’s just for me. When you’re with me, I don’t know, it-”

“It feels like I can breathe, for once,” Lena finishes for her, and Kara lets out a sharp exhale, chuckling a bit as Lena’s words very literally apply to her.

“Exactly. I have a little more strength to do what needs to be done when I know you’re right with me. It’s… you’re special, in that way. Somehow, you make things easier just by being there.”

She shrugs, chuckling a little sardonically. Just because it’s the truth doesn’t mean that she doesn’t hate herself just a little for it. How can she claim to want to protect Lena above all else when she also insists on putting her at risk? Kara isn’t sure she has the right to lean on her best friend in this way, not when she’s Supergirl. Not when this weight is something she’s supposed to be used to carrying by now.

“That’s not selfish, Kara. Not at all. That’s just being human, just like the rest of us. It’s certainly forgivable.” Lena smiles, and it’s like she reaches in herself and holds Kara’s skitterish heart in her hands, convincing it to settle if only for a moment. “And for the record, I feel the same way around you. You bring ease when everything else brings strain.”

Kara watches Lena begin to run her fingers through the loose ends of her hair. It’s a nervous tick, and she masks it by standing up, moving to where the cart of alcohol sits unmanned but ridiculously well-stocked. For a flash of a second, Kara is reminded of their trip to Kaznia, where Lena had stood in the same exact spot and Kara’s hands had gone up to her glasses, almost ready to take the plunge but missing her chance all the same. This plane is practically hallowed ground for them, not consecrated by good memories, but instead, by lessons learned the hard way.

“I’m sorry for being so harsh, earlier,” Lena says, facing away from Kara just as she was all those months ago. It could have been another lifetime for all that they’ve endured between these two trips, and yet Kara feels the same way she always has for Lena. This time around, there’s less to fear about what comes after. “And I’m sorry if I’ve been avoidant, lately. You know me. By now I would hope that I could keep my insecurities in check around you, but my family, they bring out the ugly in me. I didn’t want you to have to deal with that. Everything that happened gets so much harder to move past when they’re involved. The last thing I want is for you to think that I can’t be trusted, or that I could be capable of slipping back-”

In that other lifetime, Kara stayed where she was, hands frozen and mouth unbearably silent as she let Lena ride out her doubt on her own, all because Kara was too scared to let her in. This time, things are different. Things are better than she ever could have imagined, and Kara knows just how lucky she is that they are so she stands up and closes that distance in a second.

There’s no uncertainty anymore that either of them needs to weather on their own, and so when Kara gets close enough, she doesn’t hesitate.

As she pulls Lena into a fierce, spontaneous hug, Kara whispers into her ear. “Lena, I trust you more than anything. More than anyone. And I don’t care what’s happened, or what could happen still. I’m willing to risk whatever I need to for you to believe that as much as I do.”

Lena stiffens at first, drawing in a rushed inhale at the force of Kara’s embrace and her words. But she sinks into them as surely as the sun used to set ruby-red over Argo City, and by the time she breathes back out Kara knows that Lena believes every word.

After everything they’ve gone through together, that’s all that matters to Kara.

“Thank you,” she says into Kara’s shoulder, and if there’s a sniffle in between the words, Kara knows better than to point it out. Not when she feels close to tears herself— not when this moment, however small, makes her grateful for every moment of time she’s gotten to spend with Lena like this again— even after she’d thought she’d ruined that for good.

“What are best friends for?” she asks with a grin, her smile brushing right below Lena’s ear where her head is still nestled. For just a moment, Lena’s hands tighten as if on instinct against Kara’s shoulders, as if scrabbling for purchase. Kara wonders if Lena will bring up the distance between them again, will try and draw Kara in while they’re already vulnerable and fragile. But another moment passes, and her hands loosen as Lena pulls away, a small smile fixed upon her own features.

Nothing can truly prepare either of them for what’s waiting in Metropolis. But that doesn’t make this any less of a gift.

“I’ve never had a best friend like you before,” Lena answers as if on cue, but there’s a curious lilt to her response that catches Kara off guard like there’s more to Lena’s thoughts just waiting to be unearthed. That will have to wait for another day, however. They’ve got a problem to take care of and a villain to defeat.

After that, Kara hopes she’ll have all the time in the world to unravel each of Lena’s beguiling mysteries.

…

Things don’t go to plan.

To say that might be the understatement of the century, actually. As soon as she steps foot out of the plane and hears a disquieting mumble ripple through the crowd of reporters and lawyers and law enforcement gathered, Kara knows that something isn’t right. Sure, she doesn’t travel places by plane typically, but she doubts that that’s the reason for the trepidation clear as day on those people’s faces, nor for the suspended breath of air that seems to be hanging over everyone. She whips her head behind her and sees Lena surveying and coming to the same conclusion, Kara knows that it’s not just her paranoia over Lillian coming into play either.

The look on her sister’s face as she meets them on the steps of the opera house is what really seals the deal that whatever is going on really isn’t good.

“That fucking bitch,” Alex seethes as soon as they’re barely in earshot, and Kara’s eyebrows raise. She can’t remember the last time she’s seen her sister look or sound this blatantly furious, and it sets the alarm bells off in her head for another round. “She can’t do this. She can’t manage to do this to us every single goddamn time we-”

“Whoa, Alex.” Kara holds out her hands and injects some authority into her tone. It’s not enough to shut her sister up completely, but it is enough to slow her down. Kara needs details before she can grasp the severity of whatever’s gone wrong. “I need you to tell us what happened.”

“It was a trap. She knew we were coming this whole time. We went in blind, and got screwed, and now-”

Kara’s alarm spikes even more. “A trap? Did someone get hurt? Where are the others?” she barks, interrupting her sister again.

She can’t prevent the familiar gut-punch combination of guilt and worry from reacquainting themselves with her intimately. It’s a constant in her life, really: the uneasiness every time she lets someone go out into the field instead of her, and the anguish that falls squarely on her shoulders when something happens that shouldn’t have because of her inaction. It’s her number one responsibility as Supergirl. She’s the one who’s supposed to take the bullets and the blows and the ambushes because she’s the only one who can. Because she’s the only one that Kara won’t lose any sleep over if she gets hurt, or kidnapped, or worse.

Kara would rather have everything fall onto her back than on anyone else’s, and damn the consequences on her own soul. What’s the point of all this power, all these abilities, if she still allows other people to be hurt in her place?

Alex latches onto her change in tone almost immediately, and finally, she understands what Kara needs to hear first before anything else can happen. “Nobody, Kara. We’re all fine, okay? Really. Unless you want to count the vein in J’onn’s head that could burst any second as a grievous injury.” She reaches out for Kara’s forearm and squeezes in reassurance, and if she didn’t still have adrenaline coursing through her veins Kara’s knees would have buckled from the relief.

At the very least, her family is safe. Kara will be able to take whatever comes next so long as that fact remains true.

“What did she do?” Lena asks quietly from behind her, and in her haze of panic, Kara had nearly forgotten that she was there. Lena’s voice contains all of the poise and deadly ice that she had dropped momentarily in the plane, but the cracks are plainly there. Kara feels her stomach lurch in preparation for whatever Alex is going to tell them.

Her sister’s eyes are still flaming when she regards Lena, chin tilted up. It’s a meeting of fire and ice, two people with very different paths to anger, and from the way Alex’s lip curls Kara shifts her stance automatically in front of Lena.

Alex is all compulsivity and frustration and spitting rage when she’s upset, and based on who’s involved that’s making her so mad, Kara is very worried some of this vitriol might get hurled Lena’s way.

“In the eyes of the public, at least, your mother is not only completely innocent but also a fucking martyr. She’s the new poster child of unjust witch hunts, and now we’re the bastards who tried to burn her at the stake.”

“That’s not possible,” Kara mutters, glancing discreetly at the quickly gathering throng of people. Her sister is right. Instead of the hateful jeers and cheers when they brought out Lillian in handcuffs, all Kara can see are narrowed eyes and open distrust. She knows if she used her super hearing right now, she’d hear even worse. “No, we had dirt on her. We had our leads, and they were legitimate. I checked them out myself!”

“Then we were idiots.” Alex crosses her arms tight across her chest. Despite the biting cold, she seems too worked up to notice the way her breath is coming out in rapid, frosting clouds. “Apparently none of us saw it coming that Lillian would have a fall guy in place for this exact scenario.”

“A fall guy?” Kara repeats, incredulous. Surely a bumbling henchman offering to lie to spare Lillian’s neck wouldn’t be enough to beat their investigation that they’ve been carrying out for months. It couldn’t be that simple.

“Otis Graves,” Alex spits out. “You both know him well. Between his rap sheet that stretches from here to National City and his absolute glee in telling us that he’s been the master mind all along, there’s nothing we can do under law to stop her.”

Kara scoffs, her hands on her hips. “Come on. There’s no way that anyone will believe her story. Alex, she’s a Luthor. The people know what she’s capable of by now.”

She can feel Lena shift behind her, knows that she could have worded that in a way that doesn’t indirectly indict her best friend as well, but Kara is too worked up to bother with the delicacy of her words.

“Without the jurisdictional power of the DEO, we can’t prove shit,” Alex says bluntly. “We’re dead in the water, and she’s doing victory laps inside as we speak.”

“Fine,” Kara says, huffing out a breath. “Maybe we can’t do anything through the courts, but there are other ways to cause damage to her operation. I can write an article, like I did with Lex. If the people are against her, the truth will come out no matter what.”

“Not in this world,” Lena says, face pale, and slowly, reality starts to sink in. “In this world, your article doesn’t exist, and the Luthors are still the best of the best. Lex has a personal partnership with Supergirl, and my mother is the head of multiple charities that give away millions of dollars every year, dirty money or no. You forget, Kara, that my family still has the benefit of the doubt after what happened when the earths merged. We’re still America’s favorite family, and there’s no changing that without undeniable proof.”

“You’re definitely still adept at twisting the narrative to your liking,” Alex butts in, guns blazing. She stalks up even closer to the two of them, and there’s nothing Kara can do or say to shield Lena from the hostility radiating off of her sister right now. “Your family always ends up being innocent in the end, don’t they?” she asks Lena, whose eyes have gone wide.

“Hey,” Kara warns, tone darkening, but her sister brushes her off without a care.

“You want to know how we found her, Kara?” Alex asks, eyes still firmly fixed on the woman behind her. “Panicked and shaking, with Otis holding a revolver to her head and begging us to not let him kill her. Claiming she was captured, but her eyes were as emotionless as ever. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

Kara’s eyes widen, and she can hear Lena draw in a quick breath. She can’t believe her sister is upset enough to bring up old wounds like this, when they’re all angry and ready to explode. It’s willingly lighting a powder keg under your own house, and Kara tries to do what she can to prevent it.

“Alex, knock it off right now. This is the last thing we need,” she snaps, nostrils flaring and her own temper flaring up but it’s far too late. Her sister is too angry and too worked up and nothing can stop her from digging in even further.

“I can see where you got your acting skills from, Lena,” Alex presses in, twisting the knife with an impulsive sense of relish. “It certainly runs in the family.”

“ALEX!” Kara yells, and she slams her foot down hard enough for the ground to resettle. In the shocked silence, she can tell that Alex shakes herself momentarily out of her haze. Her eyes widen just a fraction, and her mouth drops open, and she takes a faltering step forward.

“Lena, I didn’t mean-“ Alex starts, but the damage is done and they all know it. She turns to Kara, eyes beseeching. “Kara, you know I-”

Past the roaring in her own ears, Kara can hear the thundering way Lena’s heart is hammering against her ribcage; she doesn’t need to look behind her to picture the glassy look on her face or the tremble to her lip. Kara knows what Lena looks like when someone cuts her deep, and by reaffirming all of her deepest, darkest fears, Alex has done just that.

Kara seethes, too furious to even look her sister in the eye. “I don’t want to hear it. Just… go. You can handle this circus just fine on your own I think.”

Alex opens her mouth again, clearly wanting to say something else, to squeeze in one last apology before she retreats, but the rigid way Kara’s entire body is locked in seems to tip her off that that isn’t an advisable choice right now. Her sister certainly isn’t stupid, after all. Face ashen and no longer angry, she walks off without another word, her fire promptly extinguished by Kara’s full force.

She doesn’t waste any time, whirling around to meet Lena’s eyes. “Lena,” she says, wishing more than anything they weren’t in this maelstrom, weren’t boxed in by disgruntled police officers and sharp-eyed tabloid reporters and local gossips alike. If she wasn’t Supergirl right now, if she was just kind-eyed Kara Danvers, she would pull Lena into the kind of hug that could convince entire worlds that things would turn out alright. She’d wrap Lena in her arms and not leave her post until the worst of it was chased away.

But she isn’t Kara Danvers right now, and she’s certainly not a nobody. She’s Supergirl, cutting an imposing, attention-drawing figure even from afar, and there are some things that not even a superhero is allowed to do without it drawing the worst kind of scrutiny.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing,” Lena says numbly, but it’s a lie from the moment it leaves her lips fully-formed. Kara knows that Lena can brush the worst kinds of hurt to the side, knows she does it more days than not, but this is a blow that not even she can shake. Just when her confidence was bolstered on the plane, all it took was a few harsh, rash words to send it toppling back down.

“No, no. It’s not fine.” Kara moves closer, casting a furtive glance around them and squaring her shoulders even more, doing what she can to shield Lena from view. It isn’t enough, however, and she knows it. “Let’s go. Come on, I can get you away from this.”

“We can’t.” Lena takes in a heaving breath, using the brief moment of privacy that Kara’s cape affords her and wiping at her eyes for the first time. “We can’t just leave.”

“Who says we can’t?” Kara asks, her own voice verging on hysterics. The flashing camera lights and the shouts of the reporters and Lena’s red-rimmed eyes, paired with the terror that comes with knowing that Lillian is going to walk away from this free and on a new mission to retaliate in the worst ways possible is a deadly concoction that’s making her head spin. If not for Lena’s sake, then Kara needs to find an escape route out of here for herself.

This is everything that Kara had promised herself she wouldn’t let happen, and she wants to throw up from the force of it. She’d lost sleep over this exact scenario, and she knows what happens next. They lose this battle and come out with the target on their backs redone with bright, fresh paint. And with Lillian and Lex out in the open with the public none the wiser, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.

Lena stares at her hard, looking like she’s fighting the urge to propel herself into Kara as much as Kara is resisting the same urge. Something cracks in her resolve, though, and Kara doesn’t know what causes it but she doesn’t care.

“Okay. I want to go,” Lena breathes out, and that’s all the permission Kara needs.

As she strides forwards and places her hands on Lena’s waist, preparing to rocket the two of them up into the sky, she hears a voice. A terrible voice, filled with all of the venom and hate and smugness that Kara had hoped Lena would only have to face through prison bars, and yet it reverberates through the open air now, landing like a slap to the face in the frigid air.

“Now hold on just a moment, Supergirl,” Lillian calls out from behind them. Kara freezes where she is, hands twitching compulsively against Lena’s waist. “I’d like to say a few things to my daughter before she flees this failed coup of hers.”

“Stay with me. Please,” Lena murmurs into the wind, so quiet that even Kara can barely pick it up. Despite its volume, it’s brimming with enough urgency that Kara understands immediately.

Lena can’t face her mother alone, this time around.

“Always,” she says, nodding just once and giving one last squeeze before dropping her hands from Lena’s body and crossing them across her chest, muscles tense and her family crest practically shining against the grayish gloom of the city. It’s a display of power and a threat, and Kara just hopes that it’s enough.

Lillian studies the interaction closely, regarding them from the top of the long set of stairs leading down from the opera house. It’s a decadent perch, and a demanding one, and as soon as Lena walks over with purpose, Kara trailing dutifully behind, she knows they’re on Lillian’s side of the battlefield now. And judging by the throngs of people around, whatever bloodshed might happen is going to be very public— and is going to send a message.

“Interesting,” she observes, eyes lingering on Kara’s hands, knuckles drawn white against the skin, and the way Lena subconsciously leans into her stance, mirroring it with one of her own and a look of indifference to match. “I take it that during my sabbatical you two patched things up. Going stronger than ever, aren’t you?”

“We are,” Kara grits out, doing her best to not growl completely. Not when there are recording devices all around. “No thanks to you.”

“What can I say?” Lillian preens, making no move to come down from where she looms over them. “I’ve always disapproved of the… company my daughter tends to keep. Seeing as you’re personally leading a baseless crusade against my name, it seems I’ve been proven right.”

“Don’t take it all so personally, Mother,” Lena says. Kara barely manages to conceal her shock at how smooth and controlled her voice is. Lena is strong, she knows that much, but facing her family now, after everything had gone wrong? It’s a Herculean task, and Kara is dumbfounded by the fact that Lena’s head remains high and her features schooled into a perfect blank slate. “We can’t all stay in the good graces of terrorists and fear-mongers. I chose to branch out from the traditional network our family maintains to find something slightly less… rotten.”

Lillian just sneers, eyes flickering to the reporters practically hanging off of the bannisters to get an earful of their conversation. “We’ll see how long you two manage to last this time around.” Her eyes land back on Lena with a heavy gaze dripping with false sincerity. “You suffered so much from the lies she told you. And then you… oh, you hurt her right back, didn’t you? That wasn’t the good nor right thing to do. What a terrible sin to atone for— and what an easy slip back into that kind of cruelty.”

Kara listens to Lena tighten her jaw until her teeth groan from the strain, but she gives no outside indication that Lillian’s words have affected her at all.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you all that well,” she drawls, letting a cutting, vicious smile out. Lillian’s eyes just narrow, but she sends back a fake smile as well. What a picture this could make, Kara can’t help but think. “A little gauche, wouldn’t you say?”

“No matter. At least I know where my true loyalties ought to belong.” The older woman tuts and shakes her head, waving over a police officer who had taken a post right beside her. At her whispered words the officer motions for a medic, and just like that Lillian wraps herself up in one of the blankets victims of trauma are given, looking every bit the martyr Alex had claimed she’d become. “Really, Lena. I’m kidnapped, attacked, and nearly murdered, and yet you come here to, what? Throw me in a different prison of your own design? All this time I’ve been missing, and you remained as cold and uncaring towards me as ever.”

Lena arches her brow. “If it’s any consolation to you, I certainly have been looking for you. Seems you didn’t want to be found until it best suited your interests.”

“Blaming the victim, are we? And to think, the board was already so furious at you.”

It’s a leading comment, undoubtedly designed to provoke and force a reaction out of Lena, and she’s powerless to ignore it. Her eyes flash back up to Lillian, features no longer quite as inscrutable or aloof as they were moments ago.

“Last I heard, the board offered to buy me dinner for the next week after I introduced a new round of prototypes,” Lena says, but her voice trails off at the end and Lillian smiles a little truer this time, smelling the blood in the water.

“Oh, dear. You haven’t heard, have you?” Lillian looks around dramatically, over-exaggerating a grimace and a sickly sweet look of sympathy. It looks like it was made in a lab, and Kara fights the urge to punch the expression right off her arrogant face. “It seems that someone tipped off the board that you were directly involved in this extremely misguided raid led by Supergirl. And accusing your own mother of something so horrendous when really she was simply another would-be casualty in that madman’s plan… well, I don’t think I need to tell you how bad of optics those are for the family company.”

Kara’s gut does the same churning motion it’s been doing since before they boarded that damn plane, and this time, she knows Lena is experiencing it too. Her eye twitches as she stares down her mother, mind racing. If Lillian is hinting at what Kara thinks she is, they’re going to need a new strategy, and fast.

“Just get to the point,” Lena snaps, her motions jerky. “Lord knows you love to make things torturous, but I’m growing rather bored of this conversation and I have better things to do.”

“The board just finished voting,” Lillian explains simply. Through her own mask of innocence, Kara can see the glee in her eyes; Lena’s mother is enjoying this immensely, and judging by the way she keeps skirting around something, the worst is yet to come. “In the wake of this… incident, an overwhelming majority has made the decision to place you on an indefinite leave of absence as both CEO and CIO. I’m afraid that until their internal investigation is finished— as well as the official federal investigation being launched into your history as well— your assets and investments will be seized and you will be barred from entering LCorp or any of its subsidiaries.”

Based on the intensity of the silence around them, Kara would have sworn that a bomb had just gone off. Lena certainly looks shell-shocked; she doesn’t think that the other woman has ever shown this much clear, unbridled emotion around her mother as she is now.

Lena doesn’t seem capable of speaking at the moment, so Kara steps in. “You can’t do that,” she says, hating the way she sounds clumsy and childish and entirely useless in helping Lena face something like this. A hostile takeover isn’t something either of her two identities has any power in stopping. Lillian bites down a chuckle, and Kara sees red. “It should be you who loses everything, not Lena. She’s done nothing but good with your corrupt company!”

“Hush, Supergirl. Don’t dip your toes in waters you can’t punch your way out of.” Kara opens and closes her mouth lamely, and Lillian bares her teeth.

“Impossible,” Lena says, voice stunned but still defiant. Kara draws hope from the fact that Lena still sees a point in fighting this battle. “I’m the majority shareholder. That decision still falls to me, regardless of what action the board urges me to take.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. As it turns out, your brother and I decided to combine our remaining shares into one hand, and several of your newer board members were… persuaded into allocating a portion of their own slice back into our hands. We wanted to keep this a family business first and foremost.” Lillian replies, taking in the ripple of dismay and devastation that crosses her daughter’s face. It is a sight to behold, Kara can begrudgingly admit; it isn’t often that someone blindsides Lena this completely. The only other time would be… well, it would probably be when Lex told his sister Kara’s real identity. “The decision came down to your brother and I, and no matter how difficult it was, we believe it’s the best thing for the sake of the company and all of our employees. I do worry for your finances, however. We all know how much of your money you invested right back into that company.”

“No,” Lena says, taking a stumbling step backwards. If Kara hadn’t shot out a hand to give support against Lena’s lower back, she has no doubt that the other woman would have actually fallen backwards. “That can’t be true. That’s my company. It can’t just be seized without me getting a say in it.”

“I’m afraid that it can, Lena,” Lillian practically sings out, and her daughter shudders at the way her name comes out. “Though it will still need approval from the board, starting tomorrow I expect to be the temporary CEO until we can get all of this nastiness sorted out. It will require relocating to National City, but you flew here, didn’t you?”

Lena nods numbly, and Lillian’s scornful smile only grows. “Well, that’s my plane now, I expect,” Lillian says, and Lena actually shudders. “Should make the move easy on my heart. All of this fuss and what I really need is a vacation away from all this. The things we do for family though, don’t we?”

“You won’t get away with this,” Lena grits out, eyes wide and furious. “If it’s the last thing I do, I won’t let you taint the legacy I’m creating for myself. I’m through with that.’

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lillian replies, the picture of naivete but her eyes are dull and black and vicious. This is exactly the monster Kara was so afraid of Lena facing on her own. The only problem is that Lillian struck in a way that no one could have imagined, and there’s no defending against it now. “Your brother and I intend to use the work you’ve done already as a building block to bring this company soaring to new heights. If the blueprints that I suspect are hidden somewhere are there, I have no doubt that we’ll be able to make the world a much better place than it is now.”

If it’s even possible, Lena grows paler. She turns to look at Kara for the first time since this entire miserable conversation started, and the message is clear. They need to get out of here, and fast.

Kara follows along immediately with Lena’s unspoken plea. As she reaches out for Lena once more, she fixes Lillian with the most withering glare she can muster, eyes glowing for emphasis. It certainly has an effect on the other woman; for just a moment, she falters, fear in her eyes. Then it’s gone, replaced only by pure hate. It is in that moment that Kara is reminded of how much Lillian despises aliens— and how much she would give to get to kill Supergirl herself.

“This isn’t over,” Kara snarls, and by the way Lillian’s eyes narrow, she takes it as a challenge.

“It certainly isn’t. I’ll see you soon, Supergirl. We have something special in mind just for you. Paying you back for all you’ve done for this family over the years. I have a feeling I’ll be in a much better mood next time around.”

It’s a threat, and not a hollow one, but Kara doesn’t care. She scoops Lena up bridal style and leaps up into the sky without another word, leaving nothing but a gust of wind in her place.

…

By the time they reach the private oasis of the roof of the Daily Planet, Lena has started to cry.

Kara doesn’t blame her for it one bit, no matter how worried she is about Lena catching a cold from being out in the elements like this. With the day she’s had, if Kara were Lena, she would have been crying hours ago. Between the plane ride and Alex’s senseless anger and the brutal revelation delivered by Lillian, Lena’s had one of the worst days Kara can remember her having.

She knows how much LCorp means to Lena, knows how closely the other woman has tied it to her own personal atonement, knows she wanted it to be the seeds of good she planted to help the world for years and years to come. With Lex and Lillian in control, all of that changes. The work becomes corrupted, the seeds poisoned, and worst of all, there’s nothing that Lena can do about it now except watch it all fall apart.

They’ll get a lead, Kara tries very hard to believe. Eventually, whether it takes days or weeks or months, the tide will turn and they will rid themselves of Lex and Lillian’s shadows for good. What she worries about now is what damage will be done in the meantime, both to Lena’s company and to all of Kara’s loved ones.

Kara knows she doesn’t have to express any of this to Lena, but she tries to anyway.

“We’re going to fix this,” she says to Lena’s back, the other woman leaning against the railing and overlooking the city. Kara hates that she can’t see her face, only her heaving shoulders. “Lena, I swear to you,” she tries again, softer this time, “I’m going to fix this. I won’t let them ruin our lives anymore.”

“We lost, Kara,” comes Lena’s voice, muffled by the sounds coming from all around them. All the way up here the city is remarkably quiet, but this wind is howling and Kara can hear thunder in the distance. A storm is coming, might already be on top of them, and they’re stuck in the middle of it. “Without that company, or that technology— hell, without any of my money, it’s over for me. Don’t you realize what they have in their hands now?”

Kara shrugs, taking a few tentative steps forward. She finds her own spot against the railing, leaning the opposite way and staring up at the golden globe adorning the crown jewel of the Metropolis skyline. If she has to play the unceasing optimist in this scenario then so be it.

“I don’t know, your office view? A handful of private jets, and endless floors of coffee machines and stressed out scientists?” she asks, going for a joke, but Lena barely acknowledges it, just tightening her knuckles against the cool metal.

“All of my designs, all of my prototypes… Kara, they’re more dangerous now than ever before.”

Something about the graveness in Lena’s voice transcends the already serious conversation they’d been having, and Kara sobers. “What do you mean, ‘more dangerous’?” she asks, and Lena screws her eyes shut tight.

“I stored every blueprint I ever drew in that building,” she starts. “Under serious security protocols and a generous dose of my own personal firewalls, but the fact remains that it’s only a matter of time before they find what they’re looking for.”

Kara straightens up, fully facing Lena. “And what is it that you think they’re looking for?” She’s pretty sure she already knows the answer based on the cold hand that’s found a chokehold around her heart, but she needs Lena to say it out loud.

“I never get rid of a prototype. Never,” Lena says, just barely keeping her poise. She refuses to meet Kara’s wide, questioning eyes. “Meaning that everything I’ve ever created for the sake of protecting the city: the lead dispersal device, the technology I used to dampen Reign’s powers, the Harun El… artificial Kryptonite. Eventually, they’re going to find all of that.

Kara reels back, heart hammering. It’s one thing for Lena to have access to all of Kara’s weaknesses. After all, following their reunion Kara gave her express permission to do what she thought was best if it helped the city and kept their friends safe, and she meant what she said. She wasn’t going to let their fight about Kryptonite turn into a corrosive, recurring argument that burned away at everything they’d built. But the knowledge that that same information, that same technology, was now in the hands of her worst enemies? Rao, that scares her to death.

“I- that’s okay,” she manages to get out through a lead tongue, swallowing down the worst of it. “The tower has its own resources, and between you and Brainy, we can find ways to counteract whatever they find, maybe even prevent them from accessing it in the first place. I can-”

“That’s not all,” Lena interrupts, face as pale as it was right before they fled from Liliian, and oh… Kara is realizing now that this is the reason Lena looks so terrified. “There’s something else. You’re not safe.”

Kara’s brow furrows. It isn’t often that someone can say that to her face and mean every word of it, but her invulnerability seems to be nothing compared to the gravity of whatever else is weighing on Lena. “Tell me.”

Lena heaves out a sigh. “After the DEO fell apart, your sister came to me. There were all these files that she refused to let the government get their hands on, but she also didn’t want to destroy. Only problem was, she was only just beginning to trust me again after what I’d done to you.”

“What?” Kara asks. She hadn’t heard any of this from Alex before.

The other woman continues slowly and methodically, as if leaning too much into the implications of the story she’s telling will set her off again. “So, I swore to her two things. One, that I would never tell you about these files or the fact that she had even had them at the DEO in the first place, and two, that I would store them with the rest of my most sensitive documents and never look at what was inside any of them.”

“And you’re telling me this now, why?”

“Honestly Kara, I’ve never been all that good at keeping promises to anyone except you. I’m telling you this because I already broke the second part of the oath I swore to her.”

“You know what’s inside the files,” Kara guesses, and Lena just nods, guilt clouding her features.

“I shouldn’t have, I know, but when I first transferred them into my database, I caught a glimpse of a few things by accident. Not enough to learn the full extent of them, but little details here and there. Names like Alura, and Astra, and mission reports that talked about incidents involving Black Mercies and Red Kryptonite and the Phantom Zone. I didn’t pay the details any mind… until you came fully back into my life and started telling me more things from your past. Suddenly, everything clicked.”

“Rao,” Kara breathes, the intensity of what Lena is implying hitting her without pause. “So you think that Lex and Lillian could very possibly have access to information about every weapon that’s ever been used against me?”

Lena just nods, face contorting into something anguished. “Your sister couldn’t bear to destroy them. Several of them were from Krypton, like your mother’s hologram, and I think… well, based on what you’ve told me about Astra, I would guess that she never wanted to rob you of anything from your past ever again, good or bad.”

“Sounds like her,” Kara says, but her throat is tight and the words sound funny. Even the thought of Lex getting ahold of something like a Black Mercy to use against her, or the fact that he could soon know intimate details of all of her victories and losses, it sends a chill down her spine that Kara can’t shake.

She isn’t afraid of much, but this? This is leaving the best of her composure rattled.

“Kara,” Lena chokes out, breaking the silence. Her eyes are wide and pleading, tears starting to gather again. “They’re going to try and kill you.”

“Lena, they’ve been trying to kill me for the past five years or so, in case you haven’t noticed,” Kara responds automatically, and it’s a stupid answer but it seems to catch Lena off guard enough for her to huff out a surprised, morbid laugh. Kara smiles too, however grim, and finally closes the gap between them.

Lena’s expression hardens once again, but not because of Kara at her side. “I’m serious,” she says, and Kara spins to face the city below. She feels a few drops of rain hit on the back of her neck, and it does nothing to improve her mood. The view of the sparkling streets below, however, do, but Lena doesn’t pay much mind to the beauty below, choosing to bore holes into Kara’s side profile instead. “This is serious, Kara. Didn’t you hear my mother? You’re going to be the first person they go after now, and with what they could have at their disposal-”

“I know,” she responds simply. There’s no point in mirroring Lena’s despair right now. No matter how terrified Kara may be, she needs to make damn sure that Lena doesn’t feel the same way by the time they leave this roof. “But we have time, don’t we? Your firewalls are nearly impenetrable— or at least strong enough to give Lex a massive headache— and that buys us opportunities to stop them before anyone gets hurt.”

“Before you get hurt,” Lena corrects, eyes never flickering, and Kara bites back a grimace. She knows that her line of thinking isn’t the same one that Lena has at the moment. Kara is worried about what the consequences could be for the world if Lex and Lillian get access to this kind of power; Lena is just concerned for her best friend.

“Don’t worry about me. I always make it out in the end. What we really need to consider is how to start fortifying the Tower and the rest of the city if you all are the next targets-”

“You’re not listening to me,” Lena says, raising a hand and breaking off whatever rabbit hole Kara had been about to go down about security and the like. She draws in a deep breath, holding it a moment before releasing it through her nose. “I have a feeling that this is the last thing you want to listen to anyone about.”

“What are you talking about?” Kara asks, genuinely curious. Sure, she’s being stubborn, and maybe even purposefully obtuse, but it’s for the sake of easing her best friend’s conscience. Even if they haven’t touched on it directly, Kara knows without a doubt that Lena blames herself for this as much as anyone else.

“You aren’t going to be safe in National City. Your life is at serious risk here. You realize that, don’t you?”

There’s a hint of exasperation to Lena’s tone that brings a type of bleak humor to the situation, but Kara knows better than to flash a grin right now. Not when Lena is talking about her life being in the balance, and the fact that she seems more bothered about that than Kara does.

“And my life wasn’t at risk when your mother first showed up in National City, or when your brother did?” Kara asks, and Lena’s eyes narrow in irritation even more. “Lena, that kind of threat is a constant in my world. I wear the cape, and I pay the price. My life has never been a certainty, and I’ve made my peace with it. I wish I’d told you my identity a long time ago for many reasons, but this is one of the biggest ones.”

“So I could know just how many times you’ve nearly or actually died?” Lena bites back, voice sharp, and Kara winces.

“No,” she forges ahead, starting to regret letting Lena in on this particular secret more and more. “So you had time to adjust to the reality of what I have to do to protect people. What I may need to do someday in the future for the sake of the people I love.”

Lena doesn’t say anything for a long while, so long that Kara starts to get nervous again, like she’d felt on the plane. When she finally speaks again, her voice is deceptively quiet.

“Do you really think that that’s ever something that I can do for you?” she asks, throat raw. “That I can ever adjust to that horrible, awful image? That I can just… numb myself to the possibility of you gladly sacrificing yourself to someone as cruel as my family? Because if that’s what you’re asking from me, then you’re never going to get it.”

“I would never ask you to-” Kara tries, but Lena has her own plans now, and she’s going to see them through.

“After I found out you were Supergirl, do you want to know what some of the worst, loneliest nights were? It wasn’t when I was angry, or feeling sorry for myself, or picking out every tiny little inconsistency that I cursed myself for not seeing sooner. No, night after night, I found myself thinking back on one of the best Christmases I’d ever had.”

Kara’s stomach drops. She knows exactly what Lena is going to say next.

“God, I still think that might be one of my favorite nights ever— if I can convince myself to forget about what happened later. Your apartment was so bright and kind and you just looked so warm. Knowing now what you were dealing with at the time, I can’t imagine how you managed to smile like that at me but you did anyway and I just felt so, so special.” Lena forces out a dry chuckle, sounding almost pained as it scratches out through her sore throat. “I remember looking at you from across the counter and just being in awe that I could- that someone like you wanted to be friends with someone like me.”

“I loved that night too,” Kara echoes, all of her bravado gone. They’ve had versions of this conversation before, have talked in detail about what she knows with certainty Lena will bring up next, but that doesn’t make the way Lena looks at her now hurt any less. “I loved being there with you, and with everyone else.”

“You slipped off so quietly that I never even got the chance to say goodbye,” Lena recollects, her voice getting lower and lower each syllable. There’s no need to raise her voice; Kara is already hanging onto every word. “Imagine that. If you’d have- I never would have gotten to say goodbye. My best friend in the world, disappearing off into the night for good.”

She shakes herself out of a trance, eyes refocusing with renewed intensity on Kara’s. At the very least, Kara can take comfort in the fact that she doesn’t look away. “I went off with James and told myself that I’d see you on Christmas Day and that was that. It was so easy to think like that, even if there was a supervillain flying around. Even if I had seen Supergirl nearly get her skull smashed in right in front of me. There was comfort in knowing that you’d still be there the next morning, because where else would you be? You, Kara Danvers, were always meant to be safe.”

“I did what I had to, Lena,” Kara croaks out. Belatedly, she feels wetness on her cheeks that is too warm to be from the rain, and she wonders when she started to cry. “I wish more than anything that it hadn’t been that way, but it was. There’s nothing I can do to change it now.”

“Those were the worst nights,” Lena repeats. She’s crying too. “The realization that that next morning, or any other morning during our entire friendship, you would have just been gone. Kara Danvers would have been wiped away like she’d never existed in the first place, and I would have been friends with a ghost of a woman. Even at my angriest and most bitter, I grieved for you. I think I’m still grieving a little bit now. So don’t tell me I’ll get used to it. Don’t tell me things are going to be okay if it’s you who’s going to give the most in the end. I- I care about you so much, and I can’t lose you again.”

Kara doesn’t know what to say. Her eyes are blurry and her nose is running and her hands are practically screaming against the urge to reach out for Lena but she abstains. Honestly, she doesn’t know what Lena needs right now either, and she won’t ruin this day any more than it already has been.

“You’re not going to lose me. I swear to you,” she says, throat bobbing against the foolishness of this promise. She’s made ones just like it before, and she knows that every one of them aren’t ones that she can guarantee she’ll keep, but she makes them anyway. Whether that’s for her sake or for the sake of her loved ones, Kara can’t say.

She isn’t so sure it’s something she wants an answer for.

“How can you say that?” Lena asks, faltering. “You know you shouldn’t make those kinds of promises. Those are too dangerous for someone like you.”

“Not if I’m making them for you,” is all Kara can say, and she isn’t sure if it even makes sense— isn’t even certain herself of what it is she’s really trying so hard to say— but the feeling gets through. She knows it does as soon as she meets Lena’s eyes.

For a moment, Kara thinks Lena is going to do something. Kara doesn’t know what, and she doesn’t know why, but the magnetism between them that’s always there pulls taut, practically causing her ears to ring. She can’t for the life of her explain it, but the world seems to screech on its axis, and Lena seems utterly consumed by need. She leans in just slightly, eyes still wet and wandering, and Kara can’t help but do the same.

There is a line in the sand that Kara can feel them lingering near, and when she takes a heaving breath in, she knows in her heart that whatever that line is, she’s ready to cross it.

But there’s a clap of thunder that rolls through then, close enough that the windows around them rattle in their slots, and as soon as it starts to pour the moment is gone. It passes, washes away in the rain, and leaves Kara wondering if she imagined it.

Along with the tension between them, most of the despair disappears from Lena’s eyes as well— or at least, is more properly masked. There’s something about rain that changes even the most momentous of things, and this is a prime example. She looks down at the state of her clothes and scoffs. As if her day hadn’t been unlucky enough.

“Great,” she says, hair already soaked. Kara stares at the way Lena’s fly-aways have started to curl around her ears. Whatever passed, she’s still just a little entranced by it, and it makes it that much harder to look away. “You know, I had half a mind to march into LCorp and take it back myself, but there’s no way I’ll achieve anything looking like this. God knows that those men only pay attention to what I have to say when I look particularly imposing.”

“I’m more worried about you catching a cold,” Kara says, their previous talk seemingly over— at least for the time being. Their relationship was nothing if not made of unfinished conversations and interrupted moments, after all. For now, she’s content to let Lena take the lead.

The other woman eyes the sky. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better for a while,” she admits, and Kara can see the goosebumps break out against her neck. She glances away; something about that small detail feels much too intense, right now. “There isn’t much to do about that.”

Instead, she focuses on loosening the clasps of her suit, removing her cape in one fluid motion. “Well, at least I can do this,” she says, raising her eyebrow in an unspoken offering. When Lena sends a surprising smile her way, a blush growing high on her cheeks, Kara wraps the cape around her snugly, clasping it back around her neck and stepping back to admire her handiwork.

There’s a thrill to this gesture, a rush of warm blood to the head that comes from smiling down at Lena with her cape on that Kara can’t understand. There are a lot of things that she doesn’t understand right now, and it’s more than a little maddening.

The way Lena lets out an amused chuckle, practically swimming in the size of the sweeping cape, is more than enough of a distraction. “I always forget how heavy it is,” she mentions. Kara’s own cheeks heat up at the pride and the wonder alike mixed up in her voice, and when she shrugs her shoulders, she feels bashful in a way that only Lena can make her feel.

“As cliche as it sounds, after a while, you really do get used to it.”

Lena smiles, eyes sparkling more than they have all day. It reminds Kara that there’s still so much for them to fight for. No matter what this day has brought— no matter how much dread is still crawling around and burrowing into her skin— there’s hope yet. There’s still reason to smile, and there’s certainly still a reason to be like this with Lena at the top of the world.

“You don’t happen to have a change of clothes hidden in one of your secret pockets, do you?” Lena bites her lip, some of the worry returning to her face. “I’d ask you to fly me back to my penthouse, but judging from the text I got from my doorman, it’s best I avoid there for as long as I can. The place is already swarming with all the wrong people.”

Kara frowns. “Your apartment isn’t an extension of LCorp,” she says, confused. “Why would it be messed with?”

“With the power she gained from this move, Lillian is more than capable of convincing all sorts of different agencies to tear through the place,” Lena explains. “Besides, even once I can manage to shoo away the investigators and the tabloids alike, My mother was right about me not being very liquid, now or ever, really.”

“So, what does that mean for you?” Kara asks.

Lena sighs, and sends her a tight smile that clues Kara into just how exhausted this all has truly made her. “It means that there’s no quick way to fix this… and that honestly, I don’t know what will happen to me now.”

Looking at Lena now, adrift in circumstances that she knows the other woman has never in her life had to tread through, Kara has an idea. And it may be a terrible one, based on the new level of danger she’s found herself in. It certainly isn’t thought out, and is pretty blatantly reckless, but Kara goes ahead and rushes it out anyways.

“Things are going to be okay,” she announces without any room for doubt. “Really, you will be. You’ve got a new family now, and I’m going to make sure you’re looked after.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Kara, but-”

“Move in with me,” Kara blurts out, stunning Lena into silence. “I’ve got the room for you, and you already sleep over there enough for a decent chunk of your wardrobe to be hanging in my closet somewhere, and… well, I want you with me.”

Kara trails off a little lamely, and Lena’s silence isn’t helping matters one bit. If anything, it’s making Kara regret saying anything at all.

“I’m sorry,” she says compulsively, shuffling her feet against the railing and cursing herself for thinking that this could have ever been a good idea. Lena isn’t used to rent-controlled living spaces after all, and seeing as they were going to deal with an extra heaping of stress brought on by Lex and Lillian, Kara can’t believe she deluded herself into thinking Lena would ever be able to relax around her until it was finished. Not after the talk they’d just had. “It’s a silly idea. We can find you a hotel room somewhere, or maybe you’d feel safer staying with Nia or Brainy or J’onn or-”

“Okay,” Lena breathes out, the strangest look on her face.

Kara freezes, not sure she heard the other woman correctly. “Okay?” she asks, just to be sure. “Really?”

A shy smile breaks unbidden across Lena’s face. “Of course I’ll move in with you. You’re my favorite person in the world. I would love that.” She reaches out and squeezes Kara’s bicep, and she starts to grin goofily as well. “It would make me feel a lot better about everything, actually.”

Despite the mental fireworks whistling and exploding between her ears, Kara plays it coy, grabbing Lena’s hands right back and swinging them between the two of them. “A Luthor and a Super… being roommates?” she teases. “People will start to talk.”

With Kara’s cape around her shoulders still and hair glistening in the rain, Lena practically glitters as her smile grows. Despite the cold and the hellish day, she looks warm to the touch. Hopeful, even. Kara’s heart does a little flip at the thought of it.

Lena raises an eyebrow and steps boldly into Kara’s space, turning the tables and beating Kara at her own game. No one can tease the way she can, after all, and Kara’s a fool for even trying.

Not that she minds if it means holding Lena like this. It’s moments like this that Kara can’t believe her luck in finding a best friend as utterly alluring as Lena Luthor.

“Let them talk,” Lena whispers, and Kara feels the world shift back into place. She’s back firmly in Lena’s gravity, and though she won’t admit this to anyone, Kara can’t say that she minds it.

Chapter Text

It’s been a long day, one of the longest in recent memory, and Kara feels it in her bones. It rained hard on the entire, slower flight back with Lena in her arms, and Kara was so nervous that Lena would freeze to death halfway across the country that she convinced the both of them that it was best to make a couple of pit stops, even if it was just enough for Lena to step inside somewhere to warm up her hands.

Lena brings it up somewhere near Iowa, where she coaxes Kara inside a tiny railcar diner for a cup of coffee and some much-needed food. They look ridiculous sitting in the cramped, timeless corner booth; she doubts that the elderly waitress who walked over to inform them of the soup of the day and their world-famous pie expected to see a capeless Supergirl and a rumpled, travel-weary Lena Luthor sit down during her midnight shift. Kara’s a little too busy zoning out and staring at the flashing red and blue lights dance across Lena’s face to pay much attention to anything else, so the other woman orders for them both.

“What about your sister?” Lena asks as soon as the waitress disappears behind the swinging doors of the kitchen. For the time being, they’re the only ones in the place, which means that Lena is lowering her voice, not for the sake of formality, but because this is likely a topic of conversation that she wants to avoid as much as Kara does. “How is she going to feel about all this?”

“What does it matter what she cares?” Kara asks, a storm behind her words that she knows is little more than hot air. Still, she finds herself unable to drop the gruffness. When it comes to her sister, the rare times that they do fight, Kara always sees red. “It’s my life, and my decision. It’s our decision,” she adds, a touch softer now. “No one else gets a say.”

No matter her fierceness on the subject, Alex and what she said to Lena today is something that is going to need to be resolved as quickly as possible. Now that the stakes are suddenly sky-high compared to where they were just 24 hours ago, Kara is going to need everyone on the same side— if not for their sakes, then for hers.

Maybe more than ever before, it’s Kara’s life on the line, and she knows that people like Lena and people like Alex will do whatever they need to in order to protect her. Kara just hopes that it’s not just a surface-level fix. Whatever resentment Alex is still feeling is not something that can be healed with a Band-Aid, no matter what’s on the line.

Lena knows as much, Kara recognizes. As the waitress comes breezing back over to their table with coffee and creamer in hand, the other woman waits to speak until Kara has helped herself to a boatload of both, watching the piling mounds of snow blow across the parking lot from the window.

Kara pours the other woman a full mug too. She knows that Lena needs it just as much right now, maybe more.

“She’s your sister. I’d like to think she’s one of my closest friends,” Lena says, and Kara’s heart twinges at the implied uncertainty of that sentence. “Like it or not, Alex is always going to have a say in things, and we are all going to need to work together if we have any chance of stopping my mother and my brother.”

Eyeing the frayed corner of the coffee-stained tablecloth, Kara just frowns. She isn’t sure what else there is to say, not when every option of what to do next seems so unpalatable. She knows for a fact that she has at least 12 missed calls from her sister, and yet the thought of picking up the phone seems equally as horrible to the churning guilt she’s been stomaching from ignoring her.

Alex doesn’t just do that— doesn’t say the things she said and act so brutally without there being something much deeper going on behind the scenes, and Kara is well aware that if they’re going to do anything together, she’s going to need to find out what it is that has Alex this incendiary.

Lena studies her from across the booth, their feet brushing together below. As she cups her mug in her hands and holds it up to her mouth, she tries again. “If it’s me you’re worried about in all of this mess, don’t be,” she says thoughtfully, and that’s enough to knock Kara out of her self-imposed stupor.

“Don’t be-? Lena, who else am I supposed to feel for after that mess? Everything Alex did was completely out of line, and I have half a mind to-”

“I’ve heard worse,” Lena interrupts. She says it like it’s simple, like that explains it. Like that excuses Alex for being so harsh. “And I’ll likely hear it again. Don’t pick a fight with your sister over something that may be a losing battle for everyone involved.”

“Sure, you’ve heard those things before,” Kara allows, flabbergasted. “Does that justify any of what the tabloids or the businessmen or strangers in the street have said? Absolutely not! Why would you think it is? Nobody has a right to speak to you like that— least of all someone who is supposed to be a part of your family! Your real family.”

Lena holds up her hands, her lips set tight.

“Right now, it’s more important that Alex finds a way to work with me rather than forgive me. We just don’t have time for anything else,” Lena says calmly, slowly, like she’s explaining this just to placate Kara for the moment. Whatever her strategy is, Kara isn’t buying it. “Kara, if there’s one thing your sister and I can agree on, it’s that helping to keep you safe is in both of our best interests. I can certainly respect that, and she will too.”

“What matters is that what she said hurt you,” Kara objects. “There’s no point in only caring about the bigger picture. That’s how people get ignored, forgotten, and cast aside, and I won’t do that with you anymore. You’re my best friend, and my sister said some awful things to you, and that’s what matters right now. That’s what matters to me.”

Lena just shoots her a look, one that’s halfway between grateful for Kara’s insistence on ensuring that Lena’s okay and admonishing for the exact same thing. “Don’t be so hard on her,” she says, and Kara is already narrowing her eyes before Lena can even finish. “…Alex was out of line, but she wasn’t all wrong. I deserved my fair share of it.”

“How can you say that?” Kara asks, voice grating and just barely controlled. She should have seen this coming; this is exactly how Lena was always going to approach this conversation—like it was her that did something wrong—and it’s paining Kara to no end to witness it happening so predictably. “After everything, how can you?”

“Because not everyone is as noble and as- as stubborn as you!” Lena answers, her fingers tightening around her coffee and her knuckle shining white. “You could have given up on me a long time ago, Kara. Most people interested in any form of self-preservation likely would have. Your sister just might be one of those people, and that’s something we have to come to terms with.”

“Bullshit,” Kara spits out in reply, and her swearing is enough for Lena’s eyes, once so distant in the reflection of the diner window, to snap back to attention. “If that’s true, then you should have given up on me, too. We should have become the worst of enemies, and everyone else who’s ever had their heart broken or been betrayed should have done the same. There would be no forgiveness, no kindness, no mercy… and if that were true, then the world would be a hateful, bitter place.”

“Some would argue that it is,” Lena argues back, ever the pessimist and a rather unhelpful one at the moment. “Most of it, anyway.”

“I don’t think so,” Kara says right back, with as much conviction as she can muster. It’s not hard to find, really; this is something that Kara truly does believe with her entire being. If the world wasn’t a place worth saving, then she would have never put on the cape, and probably would have remained the despairing, phantom of a person that first crash-landed here. “How could it be, with people like you in it?”

“Don’t try flattery,” Lena tries, but her words falter just slightly. Kara can tell that that’s exactly what she needed to hear right now. “You made up your mind about Earth far before I came into your life.”

Kara shrugs and continues to stare back at Lena. The contest between them continues to wage, like waves building on top of each other. Kara looks at Lena, and Lena looks right back, and in another lifetime, without anything else in the way to complicate and muddle things, this would be all Kara needed.

“Maybe that’s true,” she says after a beat. “But it wasn’t until I met you that things felt concrete. I met you, Lena, and everything just came into focus. Even when you challenged me, it was like a breath of fresh air. A type of clarity, I suppose, about who I was and what I wanted out of life here on this planet. Proof that everything I’d hoped for was real, and is worth fighting for.”

“You were the opposite for me, really,” Lena admits, and just like that the whole diner seems to shift. Kara settles back against the cushion and Lena lets out a breath through her nose and even the smell of coffee seems to return to the air. “I was convinced that the world worked a certain way, and that I wasn’t meant for much more than making as graceful of a descent as I could muster down into the hole Lex had already dug for me… and then I met you.”

Kara sends a bittersweet smile her way, one that Lena closes her eyes to and sends one back in turn. She grows a bit wistful, then, like maybe she’s remembering those early days just as Kara does. Things seemed so much simpler then. Kara wonders if she’ll believe that for the rest of her life, will always lean into the comfort that the past offers—not a warm comfort, perhaps, but the kind of comfort that only comes from something being knowable. The past is as solid in her mind as the ground beneath her, and for someone who comes from a planet made of crystalline debris and stardust now, it’s the type of comfort that Kara turns blindly to.

“I met you, and you changed my mind about all of it,” Lena finishes, opening her eyes and tilting her head. “About myself, about the world… about what I wanted, or what I needed. What I was willing to give to keep you with me for as long as possible. Once upon a time, that meant allowing a certain sense of… blissful ignorance into my life.” She takes a breath, and Kara knows that they’re re-centered, back to the task on hand. “Now, it means putting my own hurt feelings aside for the time being. Won’t you allow me that?”

“I would if that was what this was really about. You know, I don’t think you want me to talk to Alex,” Kara says, pointing out an observation that’s been on the back-burner of her mind for a while now. “Is it because you don’t feel willing to take your own side?”

Lena just shakes her head, dismissive. “Kara, you know how I feel about this. You know the answer to that.”

“I sure wish it wasn’t that answer, though,” Kara responds swiftly, and Lena rolls her eyes.

“Do you really want to go in circles like this when we’ve already had a long day?” she asks, and it’s a fair question, maybe even an unspoken plea for a reprieve, but Kara isn’t letting this slide just yet.

“You know how much I love you, right?” Kara asks, and Lena chokes on air, freezing in place. When the waitress swings back around with their plates heaped high with food, Lena accepts hers with shaking hands.

Seemingly grateful for the distraction, Lena uses the food as an excuse to regather her poise. “I think so, yes,” she says intently, eyes firmed on her club sandwich and not on Kara.

“So, then you must understand that for someone I love as much as you, I’m willing to do just about anything.”

“Well- yes, but I- Kara, Alex is your sister. I know how much she means to you.” Lena drums her fingers along the lip of her dish, grabbing at the napkin beneath her silverware and whipping it under the table to her lap. “I just don’t feel willing to get in the middle of things when it could cause a big fight between the two of you. Add in the fact that it’s a fight that’s practically on my behalf, and suddenly it’s easy to feel like the bad guy in this situation.”

Even as Kara tears into her burger, she takes care to keep her voice as steady and as genuine as possible. “Number one: you are not the bad guy here. Not now, and not ever again. If Alex thinks otherwise, then she’s deluding herself just so she doesn’t have to feel guilty about it herself.” She brandishes a fry in the air, swinging and poking for emphasis. “Number two: I think you underestimate how often Alex and I get into fights. We love each other, of course we do… but we are sisters, and neither of us are saints. We mess up, and we call each other out on it when it happens. If I don’t do that now, then Alex won’t stop. It’s for her sake just as much as it is for yours that I put my foot down here.”

“I know that,” Lena allows. “And I certainly know that most siblings can fight and argue without the collateral damage that my family tends to cause. But… it just makes you so unhappy, fighting with your sister. Whenever it happens, whenever I’m around you, I can see it in your eyes. The thought that any of that unhappiness could be caused because you’re acting as a battering ram for my own cause… well, you know how I feel about getting in the way of what you have with Alex. You know how I feel about her, after everything.”

And Kara does, whether she’s ever explicitly acknowledged it or not. She knows that for most of her time in National City, Lena has considered herself an ancillary member of the family that Kara has mixed and matched and found in her time on Earth. Despite the fact that that assumption grew less true every year they all spent together, every battle they all made it out of— every person, from Nia to Brainy to Kelly that Lena left her own indelible mark on, Kara knows that for Lena, Alex is different.

Maybe it’s because, in so many ways, Alex and Lena are eerily, maddeningly, remarkably alike, from the quick way they assess people to their fierce passion for what they care about to their taste in alcohol. Maybe it’s because for a time, before everything went wrong, Alex and Lena were friends; good friends, in fact— better friends than Kara had ever thought they would become. Or maybe it’s because Alex is the closest thing that Kara has to blood, other than Kal. And while Superman may be an altogether misty figure in Lena’s life, hovering mostly in the dark and tragic background of her time in Metropolis, Alex is not. For as close as Lena and Kara are— and it’s a closeness that Kara had never expected nor could have possibly needed more— Alex is Kara’s sister.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what Lena’s reasoning is, just that she has almost as long and as complex of a history with Kara’s sister as she does Kara. And after what Lena and Kara both did to each other, after they each mutually assured the other’s destruction, after Lena burned most of the bridges that she had built here, Kara knows full well that Lena still isn’t sure how to face Alex. Not when she’s still working on granting herself amnesty from her own reflection.

“She doesn’t hate you, Lena,” Kara says, prodding gently with her words. She knows it’s been a long day, knows that Lena would much rather go on tracing the edge of her coffee mug and pitch herself into her own spiral of thoughts, but this needs to be said. “She doesn’t hate you in the same way that I could never bring myself to. You, me, Alex? We’re family, and none of us are going anywhere, not for a long time. It’s my job to remind her of that.”

“Maybe,” Lena says, dark and morose and uncertain. Kara thinks she can feel her heartstrings strain in response. A bit more pressure, a bit more emotion tearing at the seams, and she wonders if any of them will snap. “But forgiveness is a brittle, jagged little thing. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who handles it with such care. For everyone else, it’s bound to break. It’s bound to cut. For your sister and I, perhaps that’s what it’s come to.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t try,” is all Kara can say, and Lena nods her head just once, like that was exactly what she expected to hear.

As Lena stares rather miserably at her leftover food, Kara watches her with the type of longing that she’s never fully understood but knows that she’s always carried with her. This town, this diner, with the snow falling and the neon lights buzzing idly and the streetlights blinking at the four-way stop somewhere in the distance reminds Kara of Midvale—and even more strangely, a little bit of Krypton. There’s a type of ache she feels, sitting by someone she loves so dearly and yet so weighed down by what could come next that Kara supposes she associates intimately with her dead world now. She can remember the pained look on her father’s face in the weeks leading up to Krypton’s destruction; Kara hears the echo through the halls as her mother would pace ceaselessly along the floor, how her aunt and uncle seemed to clutch Kal-El with a type of desperation she’d never seen before, and Kara remembers sitting there idly through it all, something dreadful being etched into her permanently—and without her truly understanding what that was.

It’s the type of weight that Kara is sick and tired of feeling. She’s already had a lifetime of it, and just this once, she wishes for something else. And with someone like Lena, Kara feels foolishly hopeful enough to wonder if a wish as pointless as that could ever be indulged.

“Why don’t we just pretend?” she proposes, throwing all caution to the wind and leaning forwards across the table. Lena looks up, and through the red shadows slanting across her face, Kara convinces herself that Lena feels the same immeasurable thing that she does right now. “What’s done is done, and it’s too late to cry. How about, for tonight, let’s forget about all this and just pretend.”

“Pretend?” Lena asks, her hands tightening around her napkin that she’d been so methodically tearing apart during this whole conversation. Kara knows how hard it is for Lena’s hands to stay still; inaction is a bane to her, and so the thought of being so powerless in a time like this must be driving her mad.

“To just… be normal,” Kara clarifies, and Lena just scoffs, a rueful smile on her face.

“I despised that word, once upon a time,” she says, shaking her head. “I used to think normal meant the same as not amounting to much of anything. Growing up with Lillian, that may well have been the same thing as a death conviction—come to think of it, she would probably prefer that to one of her children being unremarkable.”

“Ordinary, then,” Kara amends, but she can tell just by glancing up at Lena that the other woman doesn’t buy this one bit. “You and I are both extraordinary in our own way. Haven’t you ever wanted not to be?”

So, maybe some of the strength is lost from Kara’s argument as she sits in her super suit and with her best friend in her cape, but at the very least the hypothetical proves a welcome distraction. Lena keeps that thin smile firmly in place, begrudgingly enticed. “Why would I? You can’t change the world without some degree of singularity. No one would pay any of us any mind otherwise.”

Kara lets her voice get quieter, lets some of her own burdens creep ever closer to causing a hunch in her shoulders. “You also don’t witness what I have. Not every day,” she says, and it’s an innocent enough statement, but Lena finds the melancholy behind it and latches onto it, eyes growing wide.

“Well, of course, I mean- Kara, you’re different. You’re more special than me by leaps and bounds, and I-”

“For my first birthday here on Earth, Eliza taught me how to blow out my candle and make a wish,” Kara says, interrupting Lena but knowing that the other woman won’t care. “She told me that whatever I wished for, if I believed in it hard enough, it would come true. I was a little girl whose parents had just died, and I didn’t give a damn about logic. Can you guess what I wished for?”

And of course, Lena knows. Kara wouldn’t even bother finishing the story if not for the fact that she’s trying to get at something important, here. Some vulnerable piece of herself that at this moment, she wants to share with Lena over their cooling cups of coffee and away from the swirling storm outside.

“I wished to see my mother again too, when I was younger,” Lena echoes, whole body soft. She understands, and Kara loves her for it even more. “That my new family would bring me back to that lake, and she’d come wading back up to meet me. That she’d take me far away from them.”

“You can understand the feeling, then, when you wake up the next day and they’re all still gone,” Kara says, and Lena nods.

“I can.”

“I learned the hard way, that first birthday, that Earth magic isn’t real—at least not in that way. So, in the years after that, I tried to lower my expectations somewhat. I probably asked for all the things that most teenage girls do: tickets to the latest boy-band concert, for a pet, for that boy from English class to ask me to Homecoming, or to get a starting position on the high school soccer team.”

Lena smiles again faintly, likely at whatever her mind is conjuring up when imagining Kara in soccer shin guards and cleats or daydreaming while the class read Shakespeare aloud.

“But you know what? Those wishes never quite came true either,” Kara says, and the words become just a tiny bit harder to get out in the open now. She loves sharing things with Lena, and has never regretted it once, but these are painful things she’s unearthing, and it’s never easy to look back on them. “I had one of my first panic attacks at that concert, and probably would have really hurt someone had Alex not been able to talk me down. That’s the reason why Eliza never let me join any sports teams, and nearly hid Streaky away from me because she was so worried that I’d accidentally snap his neck. And that boy who took me to Homecoming ended up with a broken nose and told everyone he knew that I was a freak. I didn’t have many friends after that.”

“That’s horrible, Kara.” Lena reaches out a hand and Kara grabs onto it gladly. With her childhood so fresh in her head, she can’t help but marvel at how used she’s gotten to needing to show restraint. When she was a kid, holding Lena’s hand like this would have resulted in bruises or fractures at the minimum; now, she can rub her thumb across Lena’s knuckles and let her eyes flutter shut at how soft everything feels.

“And this isn’t me asking for pity or feeling bitter over the past. I love my adoptive family and the life they gave me in Midvale. But I would be lying to you if I said that there were never times that I wished more than anything that I could be normal. No matter how many people I’ve been able to help with these amazing powers, no matter how happy I am to use them for good, there will always be that part of me that wants to throw it away. Because that small, childish, naïve part of me still believes in birthday candles and magic. She believes that if she had been completely ordinary and human and had played JV soccer and a nearly-perfect Homecoming and all that, then maybe her parents would also still be alive. And maybe she would amount to absolutely nothing—but she would have never lost anything either.”

Kara sniffs back the worst of the past and lets herself settle back down into the padded fabric of the booth seat. She manages to school her features just in time for the waitress to come out with their pie and ice cream, and the smile she sends back in thanks is genuine as anything she’s ever done. As she fixes her gaze steadily back on Lena, the other woman looks touched, seemingly moved by whatever Kara had managed to get out.

“I’m not normal. Never have been, and neither have you,” she finishes, gesturing to the pair of them. “My white picket fence would have never existed on Krypton anyways, and most days I can make my peace with that. I’m alien to this world, and I’m proud to be. But I’ve always been good at pretending I wasn’t—and I do believe that at least for a moment, those wishes do come true, at least in your mind.”

Kara watches Lena’s face intently, and the other woman stares right back, her green eyes wide and beseeching and sympathetic. Somehow, even though she knows it’s impossible, Kara truly believes that Lena understands all of it, human or not. She can’t say that she shares that understanding with a great many people outside of this diner.

“What would you wish for right now if you could?” Lena asks, says it like she really wants to know, and Kara doesn’t resist the magnetism of the conversation any longer.

Her eyes flicker shut and she thinks back on her best days, as well as her worst. She thinks of the people she would bring back if she could, the ones she couldn’t save or maybe didn’t even get a chance to. Once upon a time, Kara would have asked for her planet back. She would have wished to turn back time, to preserve Krypton up amongst the stars forever. Or maybe she would have asked for a proper do-over, a chance to raise Kal, to watch over him the way she’d vowed to. Maybe, in the darkest parts of her, there’s a selfish, angry voice that wishes that none of this had ever been expected of her. She hadn’t asked to be the Last Daughter of Krypton, after all. Perhaps it would have been better to follow her parents into Rao’s light, red capes and blue tights and glowing kryptonite nothing but a strange dream in the back of her mind.

But Kara is older now— and she would like to think just a little bit wiser. Her life… everything is here on Earth now, and there’s nothing like the threat of death to remind a person of how precious that time is. Her mind forms a hazy shape of a future that she knows she wants desperately, but it’s hard to focus on anything else at the moment but the steady pump of Lena’s heartbeat, acting as soothing as it always did to her frayed nerves. When she opens her eyes, she finds Lena’s once more, blazing bright. Brighter than any of the stars she’s ever seen on Earth or on Krypton.

Kara knows the answer, deep down. She feels it in the diner right now, the same longing pull that spurred her into this wishful thinking in the first place. She just doesn’t know how to put any words to it that will do it any justice, not when she still can’t recognize what exactly it is.

“I have nearly everything that I’ve ever wanted,” she says. “All that I’ve fought for here on Earth— my family, my friends, getting to be Supergirl and Kara Danvers… getting to meet someone like you.” She breaks away from Lena’s piercing stare to trace the symbol on her chest with idle hands. “If you’d asked me that even a few months ago, my answer would have been to get a second chance with you.”

The way Lena blushes and bows her head makes Kara certain that that’s a wish they would have both shared. Remorse has a powerful way of painting the whole world an unforgettable shade of blue, and Kara doesn’t doubt that the regret that she felt during the worst of their time apart would have driven her to do anything to fix things. Mr. Mxyzptlk can attest to that.

“But now?” Kara muses, letting out a breath through her nose. It feels like she’s grasping at straws here, trying so hard to put this sweet ache for something more into words. All she knows is that it has everything to do with the woman sitting so patiently across from her, pie and ice cream forgotten amidst the bareness of the conversation. “I feel so close to something. So, so close to having it all, and figuring out a way to keep it. I guess, in the end, I would wish that I would never have to lose anyone ever again. No matter what it takes. I won’t lose anyone else.”

“I can’t promise that will happen.” Warm hands find their way back to Kara’s, and her heart eases at the touch. Rao, is Lena a sight to behold. “But I can promise that you will never lose me. Not in the way that you did. I don’t think I could bear to leave you like that ever again.”

And for now, that promise is enough. For Kara, it’s more than enough.

She reaches for her plate, a soft smile playing at her lips. “And what about you?” she asks.

“What about me?” Lena asks, eyes hazy like she’s still caught up in their sharing of memories.

“What would you wish for? If you could.”

Lena is speechless for a moment, like she hadn’t expected her to ask back, but as Kara takes a bite of her pie, something intense passes through the other woman. She doesn’t reach down for her plate once; instead, she keeps her hands firmly wrapped around Kara’s.

“I- I would wish for… so many things. You don’t realize how much. That’s a temptation I try to avoid if I want to stop myself from causing my own needless devastation. There are some things that I want that I know I will never have, and so it’s best not to linger too much on them.” Lena heaves in a breath and reaches for her fork, breaking the spell between them just enough. Kara suspects it’s to stop her from saying something Lena thinks she’ll regret. Still, when Lena does look back up, her eyes are full of unshed tears. “I think I’d hope for our stories to be just a little bit kinder to us. I’d wish that my best friend wasn’t in danger of being taken away from me so unfairly. I’d wish for more time with you, doing things like this—without the weight of anything hanging over us.”

Kara nods. She knows in her soul that she feels the exact same way. “I can’t make promises that all of those will come true,” she says, and Lena chokes out a wondrous laugh. It makes this table, this diner, this little town in the middle of nowhere—feel so much more real. “But I do know that this diner is open 24 hours.”

“We can’t stay here forever,” Lena points out, eyes sad and searching. Kara just smiles.

“I know. But a little while longer, please? We can play pretend, just this once. We can ask each other what movies we want to go see in theaters, or what new restaurants we’ve been trying out. We can talk about anything we want. Stay with me and do that?”

And because she knows Lena so well, knows that the other woman cares for her as much as Kara does for Lena, she doesn’t really need an answer.

Lena is Lena, and Kara is Kara. If they could, they would stay together until their bones drifted off somewhere into the cosmos, so long as the wind let them go together.

…

Despite her bravado in the diner, confronting her sister with the deliberate intention of picking a fight proves nearly impossible for Kara to go through with.

It’s not that what she told Lena was a lie. She fights with Alex more than most people other than maybe J’onn would readily assume. Rao, they’ve been arguing viciously over things as petty as the hairdryer ever since they were teenagers— enough that Eliza would joke that she had the fire department on call for when they would inevitably start a fire with their clashing. If Kara is as strong and unbendable as steel, then Alex has always been her sparking flint and that makes Kara dread what’s coming even as she marches up toward it.

Alex gets home-court advantage this time around. Kara doesn’t cause too much of a fuss about it; Lena is currently freshly showered, wrapped in a thick blanket, and sound asleep on the couch at Kara’s place, and she isn’t about to bring this anywhere near her. Besides, Alex may need whatever advantage or comfort she can find in sitting on her own couch because right now, Kara is coming in much too hot to be tactful about any of this.

She’s lucky enough as is that Kara doesn’t burst in through her window and immediately launch into a tirade. Instead, Kara walks all the way there, taking the extra time to gather as much composure—and nerve—as possible, and then she knocks on the door and waits, listening to her sister shuffle across her kitchen floor.

When Alex opens the door, Kara already knows that her day is about to get even longer.

Her sister’s face is a mix of emotions, and its composition not a particularly welcoming one. She’s pale, that’s for sure, and clearly drained from the events of the day just as much as Kara is. There’s a certain kind of meekness to the way she ushers Kara inside and immediately balls her fists further inside the pockets of her hoodie, and something must be said about the way she won’t meet Kara’s eyes. But there’s the undeniable, aggressive slam of the door behind her, and that paired with the defiant way she’s jutting out her jaw proves to Kara that Alex has no intention of waving a white flag, no matter how much ice Kara injects into her glare as she stalks inside.

They take their starting positions on opposite sides of the kitchen island: Kara, backlit by the glint of the city slanting in through the window, and Alex, within reach of the bottle of wine that Kara has no doubt she’s been nursing throughout the night. If Alex is tipsy, then so be it. Kara knows her sister too well to expect anything different after a day like this.

Alex’s eyes stay locked on the stem of her wine glass, and Kara takes it upon herself to drag them both into this headfirst.

“What were you thinking?” she asks, already gritting out her words, knuckles flexing as she grips the edge of the counter. If Alex doesn’t think carefully about what she says next, this granite could turn to dust in an instant. “Do you have any idea how badly you screwed up today?”

There’s a beat of silence across the counter, like a bated breath, before Alex scoffs and leans forwards. “I thought we were all about unconditional forgiveness around here,” she mutters, and Kara barely contains herself from squeezing her fingers together, reducing the counter to a fine powder. This isn’t going to be a lightweight encounter, that much is clear.

“You need to apologize to her. Right now,” Kara demands. “You’re supposed to be her friend. You’re supposed to know better than to say something like that to someone like Lena.”

There’s a flash of regret in Alex’s eyes as Kara reacquaints them both with exactly how ugly the scene was. There’s no need to remind her sister of how hurt Lena was, and still is. Like Kara said-- Alex is one of Lena’s closest friends. She knew exactly what those words were going to do, and she said them anyway.

“I shouldn’t have let things get that far; I can admit that. It was the heat of the moment, Kara. What did you expect me to do?”

Kara snorts, in disbelief over her sister’s talent for walking such a fine line between having a guilty conscience and continuing to let her temper carry her through the night. “I don’t know – how about have even an ounce of sympathy for what Lena went through today? What about treating someone you’ve known for years with even the slightest bit of tact and care in a situation that was horrible for all of us? We all lost today, Alex. The good guys don’t need to self-destruct right now.”

“Don’t,” Alex says. “Save me the lecture. Kelly already said enough for the both of you.”

Kara feels a surge of vindication knowing that Kelly got after Alex for the same things that she was about to, but because Alex is her sister, there’s a tinge of sympathy that she feels too. She’d wondered why there was no sign of Kelly when she’d first charged in, and while she’s not surprised by the other woman choosing to give the two of them space, a part of her hurts for Alex. Fighting with the two important people in your life is never fun, especially not when it happens right after the other. From her own experience, it can make you feel like a rat trapped in a maze, and most times, that cagey feeling only makes everything worse.

“I’m sorry about Kelly, but you’re going to have to hear what I have to say just the same,” Kara replies but tries to dull her words just a bit. Just because she’s furious at her sister right now doesn’t mean she’s going to be enthusiastically sadistic about things. “As your sister and Lena’s best friend, I can’t just let this slide.”

Alex scoffs, all sharp edges. “Well, we can’t have Supergirl neglect her most important duty, now, can we? God only knows what could happen to National City if Lena Luthor’s personal white knight gets off her high horse.”

“It’s about how Lena feels. It always is, isn’t it?” Alex interjects, and the boldness of the statement - and the way it sounds a lot like an accusation - renders Kara speechless for a moment.

Kara blinks a few times, trying hard to wrap her mind around the sheer selfishness of Alex’s “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you would put Lena’s hurt feelings above goddamn global crises. You have before, as a matter of fact,” Alex bites out, and Kara sees red. She’d honestly expected her sister to act more remorseful than this. But this, the way that Alex was holding her ground like it was her last stand, was alarming in more ways than one. Kara had thought she knew where Alex was coming from, but this angle is different, and brings back much darker memories than Kara is prepared to reckon with after the day she’s had.

“That’s ancient history,” she says, glowering over at her sister. Really, it’s an imposing plea to not bring up Kara’s biggest weak spot when it comes to Lena, but she should have known that this is where Alex would dig her heels in. “I thought all of us had moved past it. Why do you insist on using it as a weapon after all this time?”

“Because some of us don’t forgive and forget with a snap of our fingers, Kara!” Alex paces back and forth across her side of the kitchen, not daring to cross the imaginary border they’d erected from the fridge to the sofa. “Because, even after all these months, I still worry about the way you handled things when you and Lena fought. It scares me to death, thinking about what you’re willing to put aside for her.”

“How dare you. This is Lena, you’re talking about!” Kara yells. “The three of us have been to hell and back together, and this is how you’re going to act towards her for the rest of our lives? You’re supposed to be her friend, Alex!”

“She is my friend!” Alex yells back, and there’s a cracking bit of emotion behind it that stops Kara from yelling right back, barreling over whatever else Alex would have said. As she freezes and studies her sister, she can swear that she can see her eyes well up. This is the moment Kara knows they’ve been headed for, ever since Alex snapped in such an erratic way.

Kara knows her sister, and she knew there was a reason for the way she acted in Metropolis. What she hadn’t realized was just how badly this conversation needed to happen.

Alex swallows hard and continues. “And yeah, I could never hope to be as close to her as you are, but she was still my best friend. In fact, you know what? For a while there, before everything went so sour, I thought that Lena was the closest thing I’ve ever had to having another sister. I loved her almost as much as I love you and our mom, and I protected her nearly as fiercely.”

“And what, that’s all over now?” Kara asks, shaken but determined not to give her sister another inch until she explains what’s really going on here. “You’re saying this like that’s all in the past.”

“Of course, it’s not in the past! Lena is still my friend, and I still care about her. It’s not like I want her dead.” Alex heaves out a breath. “But have you ever considered the fact that what she did wounded me nearly as much as it did you? I treated her like family, and the next thing I know she trapped my little sister in a cage made of kryptonite and tried to mind control the entire fucking planet!”

“Alex,” Kara says, her tone turned halting. Things are becoming clear, and she needs a moment to regroup.

Her sister pays her little mind. “It seems to me that even calling what we did to Lena and what she did to us Shakespearean feels like an undersell. This wasn’t the story of a jilted friend, or a betrayal on a normal scale. When I found you in the fortress and learned what had happened, I wanted to crawl down and cry right next to you. But I had to be the Director of the DEO. Lena was going to do terrible, awful things, to more people than just our circle of friends. Family or not, I knew that I had to be the one to stop her by whatever means necessary. You wouldn’t have been able to, that much is clear.”

Kara feels her own share of shame swell up. Even still, removed as she is from the pain of that night, it’s difficult to look at things from any other view than her own. Everything had seemed so intimate and so vulnerable that Kara hadn’t been able to bear to remain detached. That night, she hadn’t been able to put her feelings aside, and like it or not that had meant she also never took a moment to consider what Alex must have been struggling with.

It's enough to spur her forward, crossing the kitchen and settling next to where Alex has perched herself on the back of her couch. They sit there, feet dangling just barely off the ground, and Kara tries to find the courage to accept that Lena wasn’t the only person she had failed that night.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have been stronger,” Kara gets out. “You shouldn’t have been the one to take all that on by yourself. Lena… well, you know what it’s like for me when it comes to her. And I know that you probably think I’m selfish when it comes to her, or foolish-”

Alex’s face smooths out for just a moment, and she regards Kara with a look that feels stolen from a much lighter conversation. One that doesn’t carry with it the darker undercurrents of the past. She reaches out and squeezes Kara’s hand just once, before returning her own hand to where she’s had them firmly in her lap. “You can be an idiot when Lena’s involved, but you’re not selfish for having someone that special in your life. I know how you feel about her. And if I wasn’t sure of it then, I am now. I know exactly how you love, which is why I couldn’t bear to see you like that. I- I’ve never seen you like that, in those months when Lena walked away from you. I hope to God I never have to again.”

“But things are different now, aren’t they?” Kara says, and she wishes it held more resolve than it does. But the truth is that bringing up these old memories has left her about as breathless as they did when they happened, and Kara is struggling to remember what she’s come here to fight about in the first place. Not when her sister looks so sad too. Not when Kara realizes that maybe, she’s been so busy salvaging what was left of her own relationship with Lena and starting anew that she’s never gotten around to ensuring that Alex was doing the same. “Everyone got hurt, and no one’s hands are clean. Are you telling me that I’m wrong for hoping for a new start?”

“You’re not wrong. I still love Lena as much as I did before,” Alex says simply, and Kara feels that hope return tangibly to her chest, even though she knows that there’s another part of Alex’s sentence yet to come. “Maybe that’s why I’ve had such a hard time swallowing down what’s left of my anger and moving on. How am I ever supposed to forget what she’s capable of? What she could do to you again?”

“She won’t. Not in that way,” Kara says, mustering up enough of her returning strength to defend Lena without question. She doubts Alex is surprised about that. “Come on. I understand that we all have a long path back, but you must know that she’d never- “

“Do I?” Alex asks, and Kara knows better than to speak up again blindly. “I believe that I do – or at least, I really want to believe that. But after you do the things that Lena did, it’s hard to return to the rosy image that people once had of you. The wool’s been pulled away from my eyes, Kara. I have to protect you above all else – and you should know by now that the hardest thing for me to forgive is when someone hurts you. And the one thing that I could never forgive is if I let you get hurt that badly again. Especially if it’s by a person I thought I could trust like my own blood.”

“I might get hurt again,” Kara says. “Lena is human, and I’m imperfect, and it’s not like we’re never going to fight again. You and I fight, and we screw up, and we always forgive each other at the end of the day. If you really feel that way about Lena, won’t you learn to allow her that space to mess up and be forgiven again? Isn’t that something that all of us deserve?”

“I get so furious about it, sometimes. And so terrified that things are going to hurt like they did again. I don’t know that I can go through that another time. But Lena deserves much better than the way I treated her today, and you’re right. I’ve been too hard on her.” Alex lets out a long breath through her nose, and just like that, the edge to her voice that’s been cutting through this entire conversation is gone. All that remains is Kara’s sister with her light extinguished for the moment, looking as rueful and mournful as she had earlier. This is the real Alex, Kara can’t help but think, the one scared and sorry and hidden under layers of bluster and a toughened exterior. This is her sister who is still bruised in many of the same places that Kara is, and that’s something that she can understand.

Kara stops skirting around it and wraps an arm around her sister, granting her a physical act of comfort and her forgiveness. It’s so easy, the way her own anger washes away the moment Alex leans fully into her side, resting her head against Kara’s collarbone. After all, she’d be a hypocrite if she demanded something on Lena’s behalf that she refused to give to her own sister.

“Everyone lashes out sometimes,” she whispers, voice battling with the low hum of the dishwasher for dominance. “That doesn’t make it okay, but it does make what happened understandable.”

“I can’t believe I let it get that far,” Alex responds, practically shivering at the memory of that cold afternoon, and the shattering iciness of Lena’s face. “All that venom just… escaped from the side of me that’s been shoving all that anger down, and it was so targeted too. I knew exactly how to hurt her most, and I did it so easily.” She tilts her head up to meet Kara’s eyes, who winces at the recollection. “Is she alright? Today was so awful-”

“Lena’s okay,” Kara interjects, but at the mention of the other woman, the details of the day come back to her, and she realizes that there’s information that she needs to tell her sister as soon as possible, no matter how bad the timing is. “Well, for the most part. Things didn’t get better for her after you walked away.”

Alex grimaces, breaking their half-hug to walk over to the counter and pour herself another glass of wine. “I saw on the news. Didn’t exactly ease my guilty conscience. Please tell me you didn’t drop her off at her penthouse; there must have been a dozen paparazzi vans by the front entrance alone, and her security force is going to be incredibly strung out trying to deal with all the new threats now that she’s been cast as the bad guy.”

“Of course not,” Kara says, crossing her arms and looking out at the night skyline. The idea of subjecting Lena to that kind of walk of shame seems outright foolhardy, and she hadn’t even gotten around to considering the new dangers Lena could be dealing with as the fallen angel of the holy Luthor empire, so to speak. Lillian and Lex are charismatic enough that Kara has no doubt that the conversion of the masses will be a swift one, especially if they already have the tabloids and most law enforcement on their side.

Supergirl could handle plenty more dents in her public image before she would be heckled off the streets. No matter how Lex and Lillian try to twist it, the fact that she’s still putting out fires and saving kittens from trees affords her a certain level of invulnerability that Lena’s tarnished, patched-up reputation does not. Regardless of what happens next, Lena’s road back to winning the public over will be a long one.

There’s a lull in the conversation as Alex takes a few sips from her glass, and Kara licks her lips and prepares to tell her sister the rest of story – one that she already knows Alex will not be a fan of.

“She’s going to move in with me. I asked her to, and she’s already agreed to it,” she says in the silence. Alex raises an eyebrow but stays quiet. Kara trudges forward. “She’s lost most of her money, and her living situation clearly isn’t safe any longer, and it’ll be for the best. I can protect her, and it’s the best place for me to do so.”

Alex gives a wry smile and a blank look. “I’m glad she has somewhere to go, I really do, but what makes you think Lena moving in with you is going to bring more security to either of your lives? If she’s concerned about safety, wouldn’t she prefer a DEO safe house that has reinforced walls and an actual security system instead of your cheap front door and your nosy neighbors?”

“I- that’s not really what she’s thinking about at the moment,” Kara says, trailing off. Alex’s eyes narrow. “Lena’s less worried about herself as she is about me, which is exactly why I need the two of you to come to terms with the past and trust each other. Completely, Alex.”

“What are you talking about?” her sister asks, some edge back to her voice, and Kara tells her everything.

By the time she finishes explaining Lena’s long history of blueprints, prototypes, and devices that could all easily hurt her, as well as reminding her sister of exactly where she decided to entrust all the DEO’s secret, classified files, Alex’s face is nearly as pale as Lena’s was earlier. The only thing that saves her is the ruddy pink that’s been growing on her neck and cheeks, a side effect of the wine that she swigged down sometime after Kara had told her about Lena retaining her anti-Kryptonian weaponry.

“Jesus,” Alex says, staring at Kara with wide, flickering eyes. Kara thinks her sister is fighting the temptation right now to close all the blinds and set the deadlock firm in its place. “But you said Lena has them well-protected, in secret files and behind firewalls and lines and lines of code and-”

“Lena’s good,” Kara says, keeping her own voice calm and steady, rational in the face of her sister’s fear steadily rising to the surface. “She’s better and smarter than Lex or Lillian. But they have all the power and resources on their side now, and they’re working together. It’s only a matter of time.”

And Kara doesn’t always have the best luck, she knows that, but what happens now borders on comedic if it wasn’t so surreal and horrifying. As if to prove her point, the room is suddenly illuminated by a pale blue glow. They turn, startled, and look on in disbelief as the TV turns itself on of its own accord.

A faceless, ominous, familiar head takes up the screen, and Kara feels her gut twist as the word CADMUS comes into focus.

“People of National City and the world beyond,” a low voice says, its words disguised but ringing perfectly clear through the apartment. Kara tunes her super-hearing and confirms her suspicion that every television in the city, maybe more, is playing this message. “We have remained in the shadows for too long, watching as this city defiles itself with an imposter that you have lifted up as a hero.”

“Kara,” Alex whispers through gritted teeth, but she pays her no attention, eyes boring holes into the television as if she could use her x-ray vision to decipher where this message is coming from. If she could catch Lex and Lillian in the act, if she could turn the world back against them…

“It’s understandable, what you have done. Gods, even false ones, are easy to follow. There is no shame in such a predictable error, but it is time to put a stop to this traitorous heresy. No longer can you turn away from the fight for the human race. Supergirl cloaks herself in the guise of being noble, of being pure, of being strong… but she isn’t, is she? How long before unchecked power leads to tyranny? How long until this alien’s supposed superiority results in our extermination? We are done hiding. We are done biding our time. We will show that gods do indeed bleed, and then you will understand that you have put your blind faith in someone who is not worthy of it. We are everywhere, and we will not be stopped. We are Project CADMUS, and it is now the time for Supergirl’s reckoning. Stay out of our way or know that you are doomed to share her fate.”

There’s a pause, and Kara thinks it’s finally over. But then a sound that only a Kryptonian would be able to hear pierces through the buzz of the static and she drops to her knees, clutching her ears and letting out a cry.

“Kara!” Alex yells and scrambles for the remote. By the time she fumbles with it and manages to turn the television off, Kara is curled up completely on the ground, her eyes screwed tightly shut. Her sister falls to the carpet beside her, grabbing her shoulders and hauling her up into a sitting position. “Kara, are you okay?”

She heaves out a few shaking breaths, feeling the echo of that terrible tone still rattling around in her brain, causing a splitting headache to manifest all at once. Alex disappears for a moment and returns with water, lifting the glass to her sister’s lips as she gulps it down greedily, hands still tight against her ears.

Kara takes a moment to collect herself, before sending Alex a grim smile. “I’m fine,” she says, finally letting go of her head. But Alex just blanches, eyes darting between her hairline and her hands. Looking down herself, Kara sees the unmistakable crimson of blood coating her palms. “I’m fine, I promise,” she says again, but somehow, even with the promise thrown in, she sounds less sincere.

“My God,” Alex mutters, hands reaching out to touch Kara’s face before she pulls back as if she’s afraid she’d make things worse. “You were being serious, weren’t you? We need to get the team briefed on this. Kara, you need to-”

“What I need is for you to talk to Lena,” she interrupts, shaking the worst of it out of her head. She can lick her wounds later when she’s alone and there’s no one to scare with her vulnerability. “Please, Alex. If you two aren’t united, if you can’t learn to let her back in, then I worry about what could happen. What would happen to the two of you if something does- if they manage to get to me-”

“That’s not going to happen,” Alex snaps, but after a brief flash of fire in her eyes, she sobers. The match is put out for the time being, but Kara knows there’s tinder ready to go up in a blaze. All she can hope is that Alex will be able to control the burn. “And as for Lena…” She swallows hard, her jaw softening. The remorse is back, but also with resolve. “I’ll do whatever I have to so that we’re back on steady footing. I can’t promise it will all go away at once, but I do trust her. When it comes to you, I think I may trust her more than anyone else in the world.”

Kara nods. It’s a start, and one that she knows without a doubt that Lena is willing to meet Alex halfway on. With Alex’s promise said and done, Kara focuses back on the task at hand.

“Call J’onn and the others,” she says, getting to her feet on rubbery legs. Whether it’s from the after-effects of Cadmus’s nasty surprise or her own building dread, Kara isn’t sure. “Meeting at the Tower as soon as possible. I know it’s been a long day, but this…”

“Is important,” Alex finishes for her, already back on her feet and looking for her coat. “It is for everyone, Kara. We’ve got your back, and no one is going to let anything happen to you.”

“I know,” she responds simply, because it’s better to keep it short and sweet than to let Alex in on her true fear: that regardless of who she has in her corner, it won’t matter; that in the end, it’s only going to cause more of the people that she loves to get hurt. “I’m going to go-”

“Go get her,” Alex says, waving her sister off, already knowing exactly who Kara is going to seek out first. “And tell her I’m sorry, will you? I’m going to do it myself too, but I want her to know as soon as possible that I regret what I said. You’re right about the two of us. We’re going to need each other.”

“Of course,” Kara says, and before she leaves, she crosses the room and engulfs her sister in a hug meant to comfort them both. She hopes it works better for Alex than it does for her, because her heart is still hammering in her chest, and she can feel the way her blood is drying sticky in her hair and against her neck. “Stay safe, and I’ll see you soon,” she whispers into Alex’s ear, before shooting off into the sky.

She finds Lena exactly where she’d hoped she would be – waiting by the window, peering out into the night sky with a tight face and nervous hands. Kara doesn’t bother with a greeting, barely even slows down her descent; she plows through the open window and grips Lena in the type of desperate hug that she’d been unable to give her sister moments before. Lena squeezes back nearly as hard, and Kara tries to find some solace in the fact that both of their hearts are beating just as fast.

After a few minutes of silence and Kara working on getting her breathing under control, Lena pulls away, giving Kara a once-over. Kara hears the way Lena’s heartbeat spikes at the sight of the blood. Lena just frowns and blinks back tears. She breaks away from their loose embrace long enough to wet down a cloth, and when she returns, silently works the worst of it out of Kara’s windswept hair, and dabs gently at her palms. Kara lets her do it without complaint or pretense. They’re long past hiding away from moments like these, and she doesn’t feel the urge that she normally does to pretend that everything is alright. Just the once, she lets her head droop, and her hands clutch at the bottom of Lena’s sleep shirt and be taken care of.

Lena stops eventually, but not before planting soft kisses to both of Kara’s temples. If it wasn’t for the fact that Kara’s had the longest day of her life, at least in recent memory, it would be embarrassing the way she melts into it.

“It’s beginning,” Lena murmurs into her hairline, and Kara shivers. Everything that could happen – everything that she feared was going to happen – rears its ugly head in her imagination. She shuts her eyes and focuses instead on the lavender and jasmine scent of Lena’s soap. Her grip tightens once more around her waist.

“We’re staying together,” she says, pulling away just enough to look Lena in the eye. She needs the other woman to know that she means it. “That’s the only way we’re all going to survive this.”

“I know,” the other woman says with equal sincerity. “I won’t let you get away from me. Not this time.”

Chapter Text

It shouldn’t surprise Kara as much as it does every time it happens, but they find normalcy with practiced ease.

That doesn’t mean that the threat is forgotten, or that Kara doesn’t recognize the quiet sort of wildness in the back of everyone’s eyes, like caged animals, waiting for something, any excuse to release this tension inside of them. They host more frequent team meetings now, with Kara leading the way and insisting on teamwork and mutual support above all else. She doesn’t want what happened with Alex and Lena to happen to anyone else, least of all in the inevitable moment that things take a turn for the worse again. Just because the seas are calm for the time being doesn’t mean they will be for long, and Kara needs to know that her team— her family— is looking out for each other as much as her.

Besides, Kara is nothing if not equipped to face the extreme with a facade of comfort. She’s done this before and provided they can get to Lex and Lillian before it’s too late, will in all certainty do it again. Kara understands the carefully concealed panic coming from the others, she does. She’s seen it in the mirror before. But she’s older now, and maybe even a bit wiser, so why should she let her worst enemies stop her from going into Catco, indulging herself in leisurely flights across the National City skyline, or stopping at the hotdog stand on her lunch break? Kara’s learned the hard way that the good and the bad moments come hard and fast and oftentimes with little indication of the shifting tide, and she won’t throw down her anchor and wait to be capsized.

And sure - maybe it’s causing the vein to pop out of J’onn’s forehead at an above-average frequency, and maybe Alex really is losing her hair over Kara’s refusal to cut down on her patrol time, but Kara remains firm. They don’t want her to stick her neck so far out, she knows, especially with the barrage of CADMUS videos that has grown from a trickle into a steady stream. But this is her city, her people, her life. At the end of the day, Alex and J’onn and everyone else understand that nothing was going to sway Kara away from carrying on. It’s her life at play, and her decision. No matter the sickly feeling that she chokes down every morning, Kara refuses to back down. Foolhardy or not, it’s what she’s always done. At this point, it doesn’t surprise anyone, least of all herself.

There is good reason to worry, of course. Kara isn’t so stubborn as to refuse to admit that. Slowly but surely, she can tell that Lex and Lillian are gaining traction in their quest to crack Lena’s veritable dungeon of safeguards and security. It starts small, as most things do. A strange piece of alien tech here and there, in the hands of criminals who would never have gotten their hands on weapons like that without the aid of some benefactor. There have been traces of Kryptonite found in the criminal underground, J’onn hunting them down day and night but finding new slivers pop up every few weeks. Kara knows it won’t be long before CADMUS equips any anti-alien group they can recruit with some form of the substance and knows that even the updates made by Brainy and Lena on her suit have their weak spots that will get found out. It’s been weeks, and she and her team, no matter how they fight, are pushing a boulder up a hill that she is well aware could crush them at any moment.

She goes to the med-bay more frequently than anyone wants to see, having to face the full, silent wrath in her sister’s eyes every time she forces her under a sunlamp or stitches her up. It’s for minor injuries, and Kara isn’t acting recklessly out in the field, but she suspects that that fact is only making her family more skittish. Kara knows they have meetings without her, knows that Lena’s been lying to her about the number of times she needs to have sudden, clandestine appointments with her legal and financial team. Kara can hear their heartbeats all grouped together in the Tower, elevated and highly pressurized and Lena comes back to the apartment some nights looking ragged and gaunt, no doubt spending most of the night swapping her worst fears and most terrifying scenarios with the others. Kara remembers the time two weeks ago when Lena had been by her side when Alex had to dig a piece of Kryptonite out of her bicep, remembers the look on her best friend’s face as she watched Kara bite down against her own fist, her other hand gripping Lena’s as tightly as she dared.

So, yes. It’s not all that surprising to Kara that there have been some dark patches along the way.

What does surprise her is just how much she’s been smiling. What is absolutely unforeseen and quite frankly stunning is the fact that this may just coincidentally be the happiest that Kara can remember being in recent memory— Rao, maybe ever.

And as for that, she only has Lena to blame.

Specifically, Kara can trace the root of her newfound giddiness to the fact that Lena has moved into her apartment with her. Not even in her wildest dreams had Kara expected it to be going this well. Not even she, as enamored as she is with Lena’s general being, had anticipated them adjusting so seamlessly. After all, there were simple logistics and differing lifestyles to consider. Lena had never lived with a roommate before, had never lived in a rent-controlled building with creaking stairs and a leaky shower – hell, Lena hadn’t even done her own grocery shopping since she was at MIT getting her fourth degree. Kara had expected a period of transition for the other woman at the very least, as unfamiliar she was with living with another person, but it simply never happened. Lena fit into Kara’s space like she’d been there all along, and they were both all the better because of it.

That didn’t mean that watching Lena grocery shop for the first time without unlimited funds wasn’t an entertaining evening. Kara had convinced her to accompany her on her weekly trip after they’d spent a day or two settling in, moving over the items of Lena’s wardrobe that hadn’t already found themselves in Kara’s own closet. Watching the other woman wobble up and down the aisles, lost amidst the different types of peanut butter and soup cans, made Kara grin so hard she’d been worried her lips would split open. They’d bought cookies and cream ice cream in the frozen section and a couple of gossip magazines up front by the cashiers and had been brought to tears from laughing at the various snippets about themselves inside the pages.

“This one thinks you’ve gone off somewhere tropical,” Kara muses with a winking grin, passing the carton of ice cream they’d been sharing back across the couch to where Lena sat, cocooned between Kara’s sprawling legs. “Brazil, maybe, or the Maldives. Hopefully someplace with political immunity, for your sake.”

Lena just raises an eyebrow, a large scoop halfway to her mouth as she flips through her own. “According to this, I’ve been holing up somewhere in the far north, which I think I would prefer. There are endless tangents of research potential in the Arctic Circle.”

“Imagine the paparazzi’s surprise when they catch you and I walking out of the bodega across the street,” Kara replies, earning a chuckle from the other woman. “The press may just have to shut down for the weekend.”

“You’re the reporter. I’m sure you know better than I what kind of stories generate buzz. Speaking of,” Lena says, playing coy and tilting her head back to stare Kara down. “This one hurts a bit; I can’t believe you didn’t bother to tell me that you and the Flash broke off your two-year engagement.”

Kara’s mouth drops open. “What?” she cries out. “It doesn’t say- there’s no way. Give me that!” she tries, reaching around Lena’s back and grabbing at the magazine, but the other woman sees it coming. Laughing fully now, Lena holds it just out of reach, cheeks rosy and eyes still filled with mock consternation.

“Honestly, Kara, I expected better,” she giggles, wriggling out of Kara’s grasp. “Leaving poor Barry out in the cold at a time like this? How thoughtless.”

“You’re full of it,” Kara says, getting her revenge by poking Lena’s side and using her moment of surprise to tackle her back into the couch cushions. Triumphant, she plucks the pages from the other woman’s grasp and smirks. Her eyes soften when she sees the high blush on Lena’s cheeks and the fondness with which she stares right back.

Clearing her throat, she looks at the gossip section herself, just to make sure Lena really hadn’t been lying. Finding nothing but the usual rumors she throws it aside and stands up. It’s amazing how quickly she misses the warmth of Lena pressed into her side. Hiding the sudden skittishness that’s taken over, she grabs the empty ice cream and goes to throw it away in the kitchen, praying that when she returns her neck won’t feel quite so warm.

“It’ll die down eventually, you know,” she calls from the safe harbor of the kitchen – and wonders what in Rao’s name would prompt her to consider it to be a haven in the first place. What did she think Lena had, cooties? There’s no reason to shy away from something that feels so natural and comfortable… and yet maybe it’s that comfort that is causing such grief. “The press, for as full of good intentions as most of us can be, are like dogs going at a bone. As soon as they catch a whiff of a better story, they’ll be off of you in the blink of an eye.”

“A shame. What’s a girl to do without such a constant fix for her narcissism?” Lena answers, her reply slightly cagey. It comes as no surprise, really, knowing how sick Lena has been for years now of the constant scrutiny and attempts to throw her under the bus next to the rest of her family. Now that the worst thing has happened, and Lena is the one thrown out of good graces by the hand of her family, Kara knows better than to dance around her attempt at humor. “You know, sometimes I think it was the endless television specials and investigative reports that kept my brother going in prison. He needs attention the way a dog needs a bone, and he was always less picky than I about whether that attention was good or bad. So long as they mentioned his genius intellect at least once.”

“It isn’t fair,” Kara comforts, feeling lame as soon as the words leave her mouth. They’d left the realm of fairness weeks ago, and they were all stuck with the same sorry lot together.

“No, it isn’t.” Lena’s eyes, perhaps displaying her own stubborn streak, don’t lose any of their brightness. They’d been having a wonderful night, full of laughter and lightness that had been difficult to recapture, and it seems she refused to let it slip away now. “But I’ll admit that buying junk food and gossip rags with you make the consequences seem not all bad.”

Kara blushes harder and is about to muster up the courage to say something equally sappy back when she hears the buzzing of a phone against the kitchen counter.

“Oh, that must be mine,” Lena calls absently, patting her pockets and looking under the blanket she’d been curled up in. “Would you be a darling and see who it is? I’m expecting a call from one of my lawyers.”

As if she’s capable of doing anything against Lena’s wishes when the other woman called her darling. Kara moves around the table and scoops up the cell loosely, checking the caller ID. It takes the full range of her super reflexes to stop the very expensive phone from crashing down to the floor, because for some reason, Kara saw the name and photo flash on the screen and felt her heart drop along with the phone. Clutching her chest and looking down at her hands in disbelief, Kara takes a steadying breath.

Completely unaware of the catastrophe that was just narrowly avoided, Lena leans her head back lazily across the top of the couch cushions, sending Kara an expectant, easy grin that somehow only makes her nerves worse.

“It’s uh- it’s James,” she manages to choke out by some miracle, averting her eyes and tossing the phone into Lena’s lap. Any closer would have brought on the possibility of her fingers brushing against Lena’s, and for some maddening, unknowable reason, even the notion of that is enough to set Kara’s blood on fire.

“Oh,” Lena responds, and her eyes soften. Suddenly, there’s a stitch in Kara’s side preventing her from taking in a full, proper breath. “He’s been calling every few days to check in. Really, he’s been so sweet; I think it’s hard for him to be so far away in times like this.”

“I’m sure,” Kara says blankly, treading water.

“Plus, with his sister being here too, and you and all his friends… no wonder the man is a little worried.” Lena shrugs, looks pleasantly surprised by the comfort James offers. “I forgot how easy it is to talk to him, I guess.”

“That’s- that’s nice,” Kara mumbles, hyper-focused on looking and acting perfectly normal. She prevents a grimace from appearing on her face when Lena shoots her a strange look. “James is nice. And… it’s hard to be away from you. I know how he feels.”

“You think?” Lena asks, voice soft now too, and Kara’s heart sinks.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do when this all gets sorted out and you can go back to your normal life,” she admits honestly.

“Come now,” Lena jokes. Her eyebrow quirks and James is all but a distant memory in Kara’s mind, details of a bad dream washed away like morning rain. Still, the feeling remains. “Surely, you’ll be excited to have this place to yourself again. Between my takeover of your fridge and my phone calls I answer at the crack of dawn, I know it hasn’t been easy. Besides, I take too long in the shower most days, and I still can’t figure out how to take the bus by myself.”

Kara grins absently, but her thoughts remain concentrated on a conjured image of Lena coming out of the bathroom, hair wet and swept over one shoulder, water droplets still running down the column of her neck and catching on her collarbone. It’s a scene Kara had never imagined she’d be able to picture so effortlessly, nor one that would become as crucial to her evening routine as brushing her teeth and putting on her pajamas.

That’s just it, really, Kara tells herself. Lena has become a fixture that seems rooted around Kara’s new sense of being, and the idea of her retreating back to living a largely separate life from Kara is strange to think about. Kara doesn’t want things to change back to the way they were. Maybe that’s why the thought of James and all the old memories and status quo he bears with him is bothering her so.

Maybe.

She swallows hard, forcing herself to come back to the present. “You’ll get the hang of it someday,” she says on instinct, comforting. “I don’t know,” she admits, returning to the couch and curling towards where the other woman sits languidly. Lena is wearing a ratty old hoodie, words too faded for even Kara to make them out, and Kara smiles as she spies Lena’s thumbs poking through the worn material of the sleeves. “I guess I’ve gotten used to you being here with me, and getting to hang out all day, doing stuff like this…”

Lena nods, sympathetic. “You’ve been so good to me, Kara.” She reaches across the couch and squeezes her hand. The touch travels up and down Kara’s arms in waves. “And I won’t ever forget this, what you were willing to sacrifice-”

Kara shakes her head, waving Lena’s words away. “Sacrifice? Please. You’re my best friend, after all, and what kind of a friend would I be if I hadn’t been there for you?”

“Maybe one that’s a little bit saner, given the target on my back.”

She scoffs. “No offense, Lena, but your target isn’t any bigger than mine at the moment.” She gestures over to the television, where they’ve gotten into the habit of throwing a blanket over the screen. Though it does nothing to stop the CADMUS hijackings when they happen, Kara sees it as their own small form of resistance against Lex and Lillian. A way of blocking them out from the oasis they’ve built for themselves in this apartment. “And besides, that was never going to sway my decision regardless.”

“I still worry about how safe it is, us being together like this.” She frowns, casts her eyes downwards, and takes a deep breath. “It sometimes feels like we’re tempting fate, like someone’s playing a big cosmic joke on us and they’re just waiting for things to go wrong. Like we’ll pay for this-” Lena gestures between the two of them, sitting so peacefully and content- “happiness later down the road.”

Kara mulls over the thought, biting her lip. What Lena’s put to words has been as constant of a fear for Kara as her own shadow. It’s been there ever since she first decided to put on the cape and follow in Kal’s footsteps – hell, it’s been hanging around ever since Kara got to earth in the first place, finding her cousin standing very firmly on his own. Kara as a guardian, as a crutch, as his savior – however she chose to define the oath she made to her dying family, it simply was no longer required.

It's the classic question that she knows her cousin, however independent and sure of himself he became, has wrestled with all the same. Can they ever have it all? Or is Kara simply running on borrowed time, a slip in the cracks of fate that the universe will eventually notice and correct?

She doesn’t have an answer to Lena’s questions or her own, at least not one that’s very uplifting. After all, Kara is meant to be the optimistic one within this pairing, but her fear that she is nothing more special than a statistical anomaly, a freak accident, that’s a thought that could come straight out of one of Lena’s detailed experiments and logical conclusions.

So, Kara chooses to focus on the silver lining of it all.

“I don’t know,” she answers vaguely, attaching a sincere smile to the words. “Maybe someday things will take a turn for the worst. But that could be tomorrow, or it could be next month, or it could be years from now. You want to know what I can’t wrap my head around?”

Stirred out of her darker thoughts by her relentless curiosity, Lena perks up. “Tell me.”

Kara’s smile grows sweeter. “It’s just- well, what were the chances of me ever finding someone like you?”

Lena immediately looks away, a furious blush on her face. Kara tilts her head, unsure what elicited that kind of overpowering reaction. But getting to watch Lena’s face turn rosy in the dim evening light is certainly better than dwelling on whatever cruel twist of fate may be around the bend, so Kara doesn’t need to dissect the moment any further.

“I mean, seriously,” she laughs, as Lena glances back up, the light glinting off her hair. “One in a million isn’t even close to the kind of luck I must have had to wind up with you in my life.”

“I don’t know about that, Kara,” Lena says at last, still managing only furtive looks, never lasting more than a moment. “With the trouble I’ve caused, my whole family in general… don’t call that luck. If anything, I’m the fortunate one.”

“You ever thought about that?” Kara muses, still smiling.

“Thought about what?”

“Our families. Their connection.”

Lena hesitates, lips parted slightly as she studies Kara from across the couch. “Other than the fact that you and your cousin seem to have drawn a rotten lot?”

“Maybe Clark was unlucky,” Kara says carefully. “His relationship with Lex… it was never going to last. A hopeful mirage of better times was the only thing keeping it afloat, in the end. I think that’s because they were the antithesis of one another. Not just complete opposites, or oil and water, or any of that; no, it’s like they were meant to undo one another.”

“A god who loved being a man and a man who would kill to be a god,” Lena echoes. Kara recognizes the line faintly as belonging to one of Lois’s articles, right after Lex and her cousin had had their massive falling out. To call it even that was an understatement, seeing as it had very nearly leveled Metropolis and would have caused the death of millions had Kal not scraped his way to victory. “I knew your cousin before they fought. Not well, but enough to know that he was a good man with good intentions. That he was everything I thought Lex was, before he showed his true colors.”

“It killed him, watching Lex turn into a monster.” Kara’s face darkens; despite her intentions of cheering Lena up, it’s easy to forget when they’ve slipped into the memories of the past. She hadn’t been in Metropolis when it had happened, hadn’t even heard about it until she’d gotten back from school, worried about math class and applying to college and the next dance formal around the corner. Then she’d seen the images on TV of a bloodied and battered Kal, barely escaping with his life against a threat she knew nothing about, and Kara had been reminded of how much of a failure she was to him. “And it scares him to death that the rest of the world forgot about it in the first place.”

“Kara,” Lena trails off, unsure about how to proceed. “You haven’t told him yet, have you?”

“Clark?” Lena nods, and Kara just scoffs. “If I can help it, I’d rather he remains oblivious to any threat of death looming over my head.”

Lena frowns. “He can help us. You know he can. He’d fly over in a second for you, and if he knew that my brother was-”

“We already have enough bad blood going with Lex right now,” Kara tries. This is a conversation that Lena and all their friends have been attempting to bring up around her, usually to very little success. Her jaw clenches against her will, and she can feel her fists following suit. “You want it to completely boil over with the arrival of Superman? Turn National City into a warzone?”

“No, but Lex and my mother are going to come after all of us either way. I just really think getting your cousin in the loop could be beneficial, especially since he’s the only one who can really protect you from-”

“I can protect myself,” Kara snaps, and no sooner does a stilted moment of silence pass than she realizes that there’s no reason to get upset – and this is not a good enough reason to get frustrated with the other woman. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly, her heart skipping a beat. It may have passed long ago, but she remembers what it’s like to really fight with Lena, and the thought of ever returning to that place may be one of the things she fears most. “I don’t mean to get upset.”

Lena pauses, letting out a breath through her nose. Moving the magazines aside, she scoots across the couch until their legs touch. Kara feels the warmth of Lena’s knee and her thigh, and her heart only continues to pound.

“I know that,” the other woman says gently, defusing a situation that Kara is still kicking herself for escalating in the first place. “And I know you can fend for yourself just fine. But you’re stressed, darling.” Kara opens her mouth to protest, to evade and spew whatever denials she needs to, but Lena just shoots her a look, and she gives in, shoulders sagging. “You may be doing backflips to keep everyone else fooled, but not me. I can see through it, and you’re stretched so thin, just trying to look after everyone else. Why can’t you have someone as powerful and as dependent as you to watch your back while you watch everyone else’s?”

Kara considers escaping again, of swatting this conversation to the side and returning to the exchanging of gossip and light-hearted jabs of earlier in the night. But Lena is right; this act is getting increasingly difficult to save face over, and besides, this is Lena. This is the woman who’s already been subjected to Kara’s nightmares for the past seven days in a row, of her calling out and waking up cold and clammy and with fading images of her friends dying still visceral in the air. Lena can handle any confession Kara can send her way, now, has already endured the worst one of them all, and so Kara lets her face lose its forced luster, just for a moment.

“Because I was meant to be the protector, Lena. I was the warrior. I was meant to watch over him, not the other way around.”

“You were a child,” Lena says, the voice of someone who doesn’t quite know the ground she’s treading but is walking it all the same, for Kara’s sake. “A child who already had to carry an unimaginable burden. Wasn’t it a blessing, to be able to come to Earth and know that your duty was fulfilled, even if it hadn’t been you to have done it?”

“Yes,” Kara answers, but sucks in a breath. “No. I don’t know.”

“Kara,” Lena says, an unspoken offer. She was here to listen, and Kara didn’t waste the chance.

“Look, I- I left Krypton knowing that, even if everything else had been taken from me, my little cousin hadn’t. My baby cousin. I didn’t care that I was young myself, or that I was scared, or that I had no clue what I would do or how I would keep my promise, but I was going to. That promise, the thought of raising Kal as the only remaining Kryptonian, that’s what kept me going. Even through the Phantom Zone.”

She thinks back to her pod, for a moment. Her saving grace and her suffocating prison all wrapped into one. Her mother was a jailer; Kara sometimes wonders if she knew what she had sentenced her own daughter to, however unintentionally.

“You need something to carry with you in there,” Kara continues. Lena stays still, a hand soft on Kara’s knee. It’s the line keeping her tethered to the Earth, away from the stars and their bad memories. “You need something to drive you forward, to keep you sane, to keep you alive. Without something to hold onto, you’ll wither away. Even the strongest do.” She looks away. “Sometimes, even that isn’t enough. But for me, I imagined holding Kal in my arms. Of watching him grow up, teaching him to walk and talk. I wanted to tell him all our planet’s stories, our language, our traditions. Instead, he learned it from the disembodied voice of a computer program, alone in the Fortress of Solitude.”

“I can’t imagine what it was like,” Lena says, eyes wide. Kara wonders if these glimpses into the Phantom Zone, into the darkest recesses of Kara’s memory, if these whispered digressions of loss frighten the other woman. “I’ve said it before, but I’m sorry. I wish you’d never had to go through that.”

“There’s a reason I always keep my promises,” Kara says in the silence. She stares out the window at the blinking lights of the city around her. Talk of the Phantom Zone scares her too, and the people of National City are a living, breathing reminder that she isn’t alone. “It’s because I couldn’t, with Kal. That promise was ripped out of my grasp, even if it was the only thing I remembered even as I started to doubt my own name. I guess even now, I still wish I’d had that chance with him. I still see him as that little baby wrapped in his blanket, and now…”

“You want to protect him from anything you can?” Lena guesses, and Kara nods. It’s simply put, but it’s better than anything she could have voiced.

Lena squeezes her leg, a soft smile playing on her lips. “You would have done an incredible job, had you gotten the chance. I have no doubt about that. And I think your cousin knows that too. Have you ever considered that now, he feels the same way about you? That it would hurt him to know that he didn’t get a chance to protect you?”

Kara stays neutral, eyes still downcast. She understands Lena’s point, even agrees with it, but inside her, there’s still that 13-year-old girl desperate to look after the only piece of home she had left. “He’s my baby cousin,” she repeats for emphasis. “He shouldn’t be the one who worries. And what if he gets hurt? I mean, he and Lex- you know what happened the last time they really came to blows.”

“I never want to see Superman and Lex face to face ever again,” Lena says, and Kara can tell she means it. The other woman has only ever shared snippets of what those days in Metropolis were like for her, but Kara knows that whatever she saw scared her beyond all reason. Scared her enough to leave the only home, the only city, she’d ever known, so determined to turn her back on the disaster. “I know in my heart that your cousin doesn’t want to see my brother either. But some things are bigger than that. You are, Kara. Even if getting your cousin to help shortens this nightmare only by a few seconds, isn’t it worth it? Isn’t it better to stop him together than to have to watch him go after you one at a time?”

“You think he’d go after Clark?” Kara asks, tense, even though the answer is obvious. No matter Lex’s current obsession with her, however personal his grudge is with her and her friends for being the ones to definitively – though not permanently – putting an end to his plans, Lex will always have Superman in his sights. Always.

Above all else, her cousin is the one Lex wants. Who would Kara be if she allowed herself to be used as bait?

“They’re polar opposites, just like you said,” Lena says with a shrug. “Two magnets drawn together no matter time or distance. And honestly, Kara, if something- if something happens to you first, I don’t know that I see your cousin standing much of a chance against the full force of Lex’s arrogance and cruelty. Even if he is Superman. This time, I don’t know that it’ll be enough.”

Silence falls over them as they both mull over the dismal vision of the future that Lena’s conjured up. Kara doesn’t want to imagine what would become of National City or Metropolis if CADMUS was to remain unchecked, or what would happen to her friends in the wake of her defeat at Lex’s hands. It wouldn’t end with her death, or even Kal’s; no, Kara knows in her heart that if Lex comes out of this with any power at all, it will be the beginning of the end of all that she’s fought so hard to protect.

She never got to watch over Kal. Now, the idea of her being unable to do the same towards the city she’s dedicated herself to as a way of rectifying her failure seems an even worse blow. This time, Kara gets a chance to make things right. Who would she be if she didn’t do whatever it took to keep all the promises she’s made on Earth?

“I’ll call him,” she says. “He’s off-world now, dealing with what’s left of Mongul’s supporters, but as soon as he gets back, he’ll know. One way or another he’s going to find out, but this way, he can hear the full story from me. Besides,” she says, cracking a smile that helps to alleviate a sliver of the pressure throbbing at her temples. Kara wonders if it’s the stress of the conversation that’s gotten to her or if there’s another incoming message coming from Lex. “At least now I can stop dodging calls from Lois. She keeps leaving threatening voicemails every time there’s a new CADMUS video.”

“Bold of you to assume that you could ever hide anything from that woman.” Lena smiles back. “She’s the only reporter I’ve ever truly been afraid of sitting down for an interview with. Leave it to Lois Lane to find dirt that not even I knew existed.”

“You weren’t nervous when I interviewed you?” Kara fires back, teasing. She marvels at the ease that’s settled between them again, how effortless it is to confront serious topics with Lena now that she knows everything. With Lena, Kara just knows that whatever they talk about, they’ll come out the other side of the tunnel still on the same side.

That’s one promise Kara knows she won’t have to work hard to keep.

“Please.” Lena grows sly, and just a little bit evasive. Her eyes take on a slippery appearance, and despite the change in her tone Kara wonders if Lena isn’t still lingering in the darkness. “You’re an incredible reporter, and my favorite. But I knew from the moment I met you that while you’d be fair, you’d never pursue me like all the rest. You were gentle from the start, and it was something I desperately needed in my life, professionally and personally.”

Kara tries to keep the flush in her cheeks from becoming too pronounced, melting just a bit at Lena’s sentiments. “I can’t be the only one,” she says, trying to remain humble, but Lena stays silent, lips pursing.

“I respect her immensely, but even Lois Lane distrusted me for most of my time in Metropolis,” Lena says. “For better or for worse, my association with my family’s company put me in her sights. I suspect it was her that convinced the DA to bring me in for questioning a handful of times, and I’m sure my picture was hanging up on some investigative reporting wall in the Daily Planet for a very long time. For all I know, it’s still there now.”

“I’m sure it isn’t,” Kara gets out, lying with the best of intentions. Lena just sends a watery smile her way.

“You were right, about being the unlucky souls to go down in infamy with my family,” the other woman says. “Of all the people to have your name tied eternally to, trust me – the Luthors should be last on most people’s list. It’ll be bad enough being buried with it.”

“I said that Clark was unlucky,” Kara says, firm. Lena barely contains her scoff, and Kara straightens up on the couch. Her lighthearted teasing seems to have opened a familiar wound that Lena seems all too interested in letting bleed. “He picked the wrong person to pledge his loyalty to. I chose you. I chose right.”

“Very chivalric of you, Kara,” Lena answers, words flat. “But in case you’ve forgotten, my side of history is currently the wrong one, and the longer that my brother and mother hold onto the reigns, the longer my reputation, my legacy will get squashed into the mud.”

“It won’t last forever,” Kara tries again. This is another conversation they’ve been circling around, Kara occupying the hopeful, naïve camp and Lena very comfortably resigned to watching her life go up in smoke. Lena’s always done that, Kara knows, has always been more at home with pessimism and the belief that the good guys rarely stay on top for long, but it’s no less discouraging to watch it play across her face. Kara watches the other woman break contact and stride over to the kitchen, crouching down and rifling through the meager liquor collection that she’s built inside the kitchen, shoved between Kara’s baking sheets and her hot cocoa mix. “We can fix it. And once the truth comes out – and it will – things will be right again. It’ll be like flipping a switch, Lena. You’ll see.”

Lena finds a stray mug on the drying rack and pours Kara’s very best bourbon into it. Kara cringes at the chipped, muted colors of the ceramic and the fact that Lena has probably never had worse alcohol in her life.

“There are bigger things to worry about,” she muses, taking a sip and not flinching in the slightest. Kara doesn’t know if it’s for her benefit or if Lena is simply too tired to notice what’s being poured down her throat. “I know that. Our lives are in legitimate danger, for Christ’s sake. And yet I-” Lena stops, teetering, but refusing to pitch over. “It’s nothing,” she murmurs, more to herself than to Kara, craning to look over the high frame of the couch.

“It’s not nothing,” Kara interjects. “If it’s bothering you, it’s something. It matters. Come on,” she encourages, getting up from her seat and joining the other woman in the kitchen. She hops onto the countertop and sends Lena what she hopes is a strongly encouraging stare and not one that’s the equivalent of twisting the other woman’s arm behind her back. “I just spilled my guts to you about all sorts of things. Let me listen to you, now.”

Lena takes a breath, her nostrils flaring. Likely, she’s still desperately resisting the urge to share anything, to let Kara in. It’s not because she doesn’t trust herself to show vulnerability around Kara, Kara knows that. It isn’t because of any lingering aftershocks of their separation, rather Lena’s attempt at shielding Kara from less pressing concerns, but it still stings just a bit, the underlying understanding that even if it’s to spare her from further worries, Lena can’t bring herself to be totally open with Kara.

They’ve always been good at living with secrecy, their very best habits being illusive trust and blind faith, knowing that there are always things that have been left unsaid. Their friendship was always real – Rao knows Kara spent agonizing months convincing the other woman of that much, but Kara also knows as well as Lena that they still each have their own confessions they cling to.

Kara’s wondered what Lena could have to hide from her, after all these years. Whatever it is, she’s wondered why it’s seemed harder and harder for the other woman to carry as the years pass. Mostly, though, Kara’s spent some nights wondering what it is that she can’t ever seem to voice herself. What this unknown, unnamable feeling is deep in her chest that she’s so set on keeping from her best friend. It’s not guilt, not quite, but Kara can’t help but ask herself what could be so colossal that it makes sharing her secret identity with Lena seem like an easy Sunday afternoon.

“You remember the first time we met?” Lena asks, shaking Kara out from beneath an avalanche of half-formed thoughts and unsung feelings. Kara latches onto it like a hand reaching in the dark, the opportunity to be taken back to lighter memories wildly appealing.

“Like it was yesterday,” Kara responds, a smile appearing unbidden across her lips. “You changed the trajectory of my life in more ways than one, that day. You were the last nudge I needed to become a reporter. And who knew I was going to get a best friend out of it, too?”

Lena smiles too, but its light is further away, its shine made dull by whatever is on her mind. “Even then, I knew you were different. You and Clark both walked inside with your matching trousers and oxford shoes and your gee-shucks attitudes, but you were the one who was genuine. Not that I can blame your cousin too much; after all, he learned the hard way not to let your guard down around a Luthor.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Kara asks, prodding but kind.

“You’ve always been the outlier, Kara. For everyone else, I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get myself out from underneath the wreckage of my family name. And for a moment, I thought I’d managed to do that.” Lena lets out a short laugh, falling awkwardly against the silence in the apartment. Kara just tilts her head, brows furrowing. “I’d convinced myself that after all these years, all this work, all this reparation – that I finally deserved it all. That maybe I’d managed to do the impossible and transform my family and my legacy into a force for good.”

The shadows shift slightly, falling long and heavy from the tall windows, and Kara can finally see the anger etched onto Lena’s face, clear and swirling and powerful. Kara remembers what it had been like, once upon a time, for that fury to have been directed at her with teary eyes and a snarling lip. Lena is not like the rest of her family, that much Kara knows – but her rage and the way she’s been taught to carry it is unmistakably Luthor.

“And I know I wasn’t perfect. I know I made my own share of mistakes.” Through her rage, Kara watches remorse flash across, a bit of gold shining through the silt and the murkiness. “But to wake up in a new world whose script was rewritten and be forced to watch my family not only reap all the benefits of what I’d slowly built, but bask in a reputation that is utterly unearned and is now being used against me? It’s beyond cruel, even if I do deserve some cosmic comeuppance for what I tried to pull off.”

Kara bites her tongue against the avalanche of things she’s so used to saying. It isn’t fair, she could say, or things will get better, or it just takes time. She swallows down the niceties and the well-meaning but shallow words of affirmation, understanding that her and Lena have known each other far too long for them to truly hold any comfort. No matter how true those words may be, they can do nothing to temper the pain and the frustration into anything that isn’t jagged.

Not for the first time since this whole mess began to unwind, Kara wishes she were just Supergirl. If Supergirl were here instead of Kara Danvers, things may be different; as Supergirl, when she’s talking to scared strangers in a burning apartment, or a lost little girl wandering out into a busy intersection, those words hold more power. Supergirl holds more power. Kara isn’t sure if it’s because of the great flowing cape or her strength or the fact that for most people, she is simply an alien and a mysterious source of kindness and compassion – but when she’s Supergirl, people put their faith in her, however blind.

As Kara Danvers she is simply and solely human, with all the blessings and pitfalls that come with that. And who knows— maybe, had Lena still not known those identities were really one and the same, she would have taken more stock in what Kara could say and the strong reassurance behind it. She’d see the sigil on Kara’s chest and think only of the victories, think only of the hope that Kara’s fought so hard to protect.

But Lena knows who Supergirl is, now. Really, she’s known for a long time, known better than most people that Supergirl is just as human and imperfect as anyone else and that there are times when she is just as powerless. Lena knows that Supergirl simply can’t fix everything— that some things, like the fragility of the life she’d so carefully built and the cold way it’s being held against her is one of those things. There’s no fire to blow out, no bridge to stop from crumbling, no plane to rescue from the sky. There’s no bad guy to punch out that would save Lena’s reputation or remove the threat of death that Lex and Lillian dangle over Kara’s head. As hard as it is for them both to admit, Supergirl can’t save either one of them right now.

But maybe, just maybe, Kara Danvers can.

Even as Lena stands forlornly next to her, trapped in place by reputation and duty and a maddening lack of agency, a plan begins to form in Kara’s mind. Lena may not have the ability to help her own cause – hell, not even Supergirl has the right type of power to make anything better for the two of them now – but maybe Kara Danvers does. Maybe Kara Danvers can help in ways only she can; Kara Danvers has done it before, after all, and even in a new world with its new, twisted narrative, she’s confident she can do it again.

Lena wouldn’t approve, of course. In fact, Kara is willing to bet half her salary that Lena would sooner brave a heart attack than give her blessing for Kara to chase after Lex and Lillian as a journalist and civilian. She can barely accept the fact that Kara still insists on going about her duties as Supergirl. If Lena knew that Kara was putting herself in the line of fire as both facets of her identity – especially with the fact that as a journalist, Kara was inevitably bound to find herself in close quarters with enemies without any sort of backup – Kara thinks she might just bring that heart failure upon her best friend.

No. Telling Lena about her new, shiny, admittedly high-risk plan would only scare her more, so Kara takes care to keep her face blank. She’d promised Lena once upon a time that she’d never lie to her again, but this – well, this is for Lena, and Kara can’t sit by idly anymore and watch her best friend continue to wither away in anger and despair. It’s for Lena’s own good and in both of their best interests for Kara to obscure the truth, just for a little bit.

Kara does her best to ignore the stinging, trembling whisper in the back of her head that tells her that this is exactly how it started all those years ago. That all of Kara’s good intentions and merciful false pretenses still cut Lena to the bone.

But she won’t let it get that far this time around, Kara argues back, silent in the darkness. And if this protects Lena from danger and gives Kara a real shot at fixing things for them and all their friends, then it’s worth the risk. If it works, then it may even be worth having to meet Lena’s eyes knowing she’s lying to her all over again.

She braves a glance over at Lena, who is too encumbered by her own heavy thoughts to notice the gears spinning haphazardly in Kara’s own head. This little lie is in its earliest infancy, and Kara knows from experience how easy it is to be found out, especially by a woman who’s been burned before and knows all of her tells. She can’t allow this plan to fall apart before it’s even begun.

Taking a steadying breath, Kara reaches out, taking Lena’s hand back gently in her own. Leading them both back to the couch, she sits down, watching as the other woman settles delicately next to her and, once Lena’s shoulders hit the soft fabric of the back of the couch, breaks the silence.

“I wish I could say that there was a way for me to fix things with a snap of my fingers,” she says, words true even if her aims are not. “Or that there was some obscure bit of alien tech I could stumble upon in the Fortress and use, some bit of magic to make all of this go away. You know if I could, I would. In a heartbeat.”

“Of course,” Lena answers, nimble fingers tracing up and down the veins and arteries that line Kara’s wrist. It’s a mindless habit, just fidgeting, really, but Kara’s breath catches all the same. The warm touch is almost enough to derail her completely, but she keeps her hand still all the same, letting Lena do what she wants. “But that’s not how it works for us.” She nudges Kara’s shoulder with her own, meeting her gaze with a gentle smile. “And that’s okay.”

“Sometimes there’s no quick fix,” Kara says, Lena’s touch grounding her even as she is somewhere else entirely, her head already buried inside Catco’s vast network of filing cabinets, hands itching for a pen and a notepad. If she could find a trail, even a whiff of some evidence proving Lena’s innocence, she could change everything. She’d sleep in one of the storage rooms if she had to, but she will track down whatever she has to. Kara knows she can do this. “But for the record, I believe in you, and I believe that you’ll come out of this as sure and strong and as amazing as you’ve always been. Rao, if the world could only see you the way I do…” Kara trails off, feeling shy. “It would be different. Better. If that matters at all.”

“It matters, Kara.” Lena leans back just a sliver, eyes roaming, as if she’s drinking in the scene. Kara straightens as if by habit, unable to stop herself from leaning forwards, chasing after the lost distance. Lena’s eyes widen in response, and she bites her lip, lingering just for a moment on their closeness, but then she’s meeting Kara’s eyes again and some of the charge seems to leave them, settling back down into the couch cushions and airing itself out past the open windows. “Certainly, more than any promise of magic or miracles.”

“You don’t believe in magic?” Kara asks, lips quirking up just a bit. She doesn’t know why, but she takes a giddy sort of satisfaction from the lowness of her voice and the way her breath causes Lena’s stray hairs to dance across her forehead – and how Lena takes in a shuddering breath as if in response.

What this feeling is Kara doesn’t know, but she suspects it’s the closest thing to magic she’s ever found herself.

Below her – and Kara wonders when she’d gotten so close to her best friend that her frame seems to dwarf her on the couch – Lena swallows hard, unable to look away. Any of the anger or despair that had once found a home across her features have been brushed softly away now. All that’s left is an unkempt type of look, as if Lena were reaching across the space between them with only her eyes.

And Lena, with her soft, green eyes, does reach out, hand hesitating for a millisecond in the air before it lands carefully on Kara’s chest, fingers curling into a half-fist right over her family crest. Kara stutters to a stop, every single one of her bodily functions focused entirely on Lena and her hands and her hair and Rao – on her lips, curling into a gorgeous smile, quiet and caring and reserved only for Kara.

“I believe in you,” Lena answers without a trace of doubt in her voice, and Kara – she comes to a startling, terrifying, wonderful realization slowly and then all at once, as clear, and as undeniable as her own reflection in the mirror.

She wants to kiss Lena, here on this couch at midnight, and as soon as she allows the thought to arrive fully formed in her consciousness, everything clicks into place. Everything makes sense.

The realization is the hardest part, Kelly had told her. All the careful, indecipherable looks Alex had shot her way any time she said anything about Lena or any time they were together. Nia’s blunt, clumsy attempts at confronting Kara with the truth. All those years of stolen glances and secret smiles and the intensity of the heartbreak Kara felt when she’d thought she’d lost those things forever. Those questions she’s been asking herself for years, the thoughts she’d kept buried and the absolute longing she’s always felt around her best friend, the ache she’d held wondering why she would ever want more – it all finally makes sense.

She loves Lena. No, not just that – Kara is in love with Lena, and now that she’s considering the weight of it, maybe has been all this time.

And it’s like a long-awaited drink of water, the shocking clarity of this realization. Kara can’t believe the rest of the world hasn’t caved in on itself with the weight of her own thundering heart, the pretense of all those long, long years of denial catching itself in her lungs and getting entangled against her ribcage.

Kara stares down at Lena, eyes wide, breath faltering. The other woman stares back, stuck in the moment as if in amber, eyes as welcoming and as encompassing as a siren’s call. As quickly as the realization hit her across the face, she feels an overwhelming urge to dive headfirst into the depths of it, to turn it into action. She could tell Lena now; the words are nearly fully formed on her lips, and it would be as easy as whispering out a well-worn prayer.

Better yet, she could kiss her. Kara glances down at her best friend’s lips again, and it hits her again just how long she’s wanted to do that, whether she’s understood the need or not. She thinks of all their moments together, all those times where she’d allowed her sight to linger, to dip lower and lower, the two of them in an entrancing sort of sway. She could lean closer this time, push Lena into the cushions and lower herself down over her, finally pressing her lips to hers. Kara can imagine it so clearly now that she allows herself to: Lena, lips impossibly soft and hair haloed around her on a soft pillow; Lena, a new religion to kneel at the altar of; Lena, eyes low and heavy and drunk on something more potent than any alcohol; Lena, hers, and hers alone, Kara finally allowing herself to want and touch and show her what she means to her.

It’s intoxicating, the thought, and Kara blinks, realizing how much closer she’s gotten in the throes of her bursting heart and her unrestrained daydreams.

But as the moment of understanding sinks in fully, so too comes the recognition that things aren’t that simple.

Because lost in her own euphoria and discovery of something fragile and new and yet so, so ancient, like it’s been in her bones from the very beginning, Kara’s forgotten one very important fact – that Lena is in love with someone, and that someone isn’t her.

It’s excruciating and absolute, the way her heart crumples in her chest. All at once, everything is snuffed out, leaving Kara with a lead stomach and smoky remnants of what she’d allowed herself to want.

Some of the sudden pain must show on her face because Lena’s eyebrows knit together, hand shooting from Kara’s chest to her cheek. “Kara?” she asks, innocent and concerned and unaware of the knife wedged somewhere between Kara’s second and third ribs. “What is it?” she asks, so gentle, and the knife starts to feel more like a sword, twisting and ripping up everything in its reach.

If nothing else, Kara is strong, and she can keep up her poker face under the worst odds when it comes to obscuring her pain from the people she loves.

She straightens up completely, removing herself forcefully from Lena’s field of gravity and putting a few solid inches between them, just to be sure. The other woman deflates, just a bit; the moment is over, dead and buried, and the two of them stand over it tossing down dirt.

“It’s nothing,” she gets out, trying with all her might to keep her voice steady. Kara wonders if it’s as convincing as she hopes it is. What was she thinking, allowing things to get so out of control? Now the room feels too warm, too small, too dark, and intimate. She needs to get out of here before it closes in on her completely. “It’s, uh- there’s a distress call. Uptown. I have to go.”

Her one foolproof excuse, and Lena takes it in like an experienced boxer, the abruptness of it all only causing her to raise her chin higher, eyes appraising Kara carefully. “Okay. Are you sure you’re alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Kara can barely keep her breaths from coming out in frenzied pants, but she meets Lena’s eyes, cagey but refusing to budge.

“Duty calls,” she says, and Lena’s eyes grow darker. There between them is the seed of another lie Kara’s planted at their feet, and she knows Lena sees it for what it is. Kara just looks away and stands up, clenching her shaking hands into fists behind her back. “Why don’t you go to bed. I won’t be back for a while.”

Lena stands too, looking lost and more than a little hurt by the wall that’s sprung up. Still, she plays it off, mouth pinched into a firm, worried frown. “I think I will,” she says after a pause, but stays still, hesitating.

Before Kara knows what’s hit her, Lena is back in her space, up on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to Kara’s cheek, light and brief but to Kara it may as well be a momentous punch in the gut. “Come home safe, darling,” Lena says.

All at once, it’s too much. Kara lets out a shuddering breath and leaves before Lena even realizes she’s gone.

Once she’s miles and miles away, Kara crashes to a stop at a wild and abandoned beach, sand skidding around her in an explosion of unrestrained strength and emotion. As soon as she manages to draw in a ragged breath, looking up at the moon, a proud crescent peeking through the clouds, Kara cries, and cries, and cries.

Strange, how completely everything’s changed. That moment she’d been blindly reaching out for, with all that confusion and obtuseness that she’d cloaked herself in when thinking about Lena, is finally here, and there’s no going back from it. Kara hadn’t even been sure how to feel about love, and now here she is, the weight of that love firmly on her shoulders. The realization has ripped from her all of her comfortable ideas about her life and love, and now Kara is cold and wide awake. She understands why so many people avoid it, why the Greeks sought a remedy for it.

It’s a different type of crazy, understanding everything now. With the brightness of her realization also came a devastating truth that Kara can’t turn away from no matter which direction she chooses: that if she is in love with Lena – and she is, she realizes now, fully and absolutely and without any comparison to anything else she’s ever felt before – then she must deal with the fact that everything has been about Lena. That everything has been for her, all this time, and the worst truth of all: that Lena doesn’t feel the same way about her.

Kara feels pain pick its way through her body, taking its time and leaving its scars. She understands that most of all, there is no way to change the fact that being in love with someone who is in love with someone else into anything good or kind or mild. It’s nothing short of ugly, and so Kara lets herself cry for now.

Even as she does, she makes herself a promise. Tonight, she will let herself grieve something she’s only just found. Tonight, she will put herself and the remnants of her heart first. But when the sun comes slowly pooling over the coastline, Kara will go back to National City and straight back to Lena. She will smile, and laugh, and still look at Lena as if she hung the moon herself. She will be the best friend to the other woman that she can possibly be because Lena doesn’t deserve to lose something she holds so dear just because Kara knows how she feels about her now and may not be strong enough to bear it.

No, Lena deserves the same Kara who’s stood at her side all this time. The one who’s been steadfast and supportive and welcoming, because Lena can’t lose all of that again. To allow herself to put her happiness before Lena’s would be a weakness, and one that won’t be tolerated. That’s a sacrifice Kara is willing to make, and if it means that there will be more lies that she must tell – well, she swears to herself that just like all the others, it’ll be for Lena’s own good.

She takes in a slow, crashing breath. Now, at the very least, Kara can put a name to it all. Now she can grieve her lost chance and all of the things she could have had because that’s something she’s used to doing. And if it’s grief that these blossoming, aching feelings turn into, she takes solace in the fact that it’s simply all her love with nowhere to escape to. There are worse, more brutal fates than enduring love in all its unconditional expanse. Better to die with love, knowing that she did indeed have it, if only for a moment, than to die without it.

At least it’s a wonderful sort of honor, hurting in the name of love. At least this way, one of them can remain content. So long as Lena finds what Kara can’t, it will be worth it. And so Kara makes herself one last promise. Even if it kills her, she’s going to ensure that at the very least, Lena will get a happier ending than she will. What kind of friend would she be if she didn't?

Even if it won’t ever be with Kara.

Chapter Text

By the time the sun does rise and Kara’s been sitting in the damp sand for hours, she’s arrived at the conclusion that she is in deep, deep trouble.

There is absolutely no way she can keep this to herself. It is unfathomable to believe that she’ll be able to brush off the bits of the surf from her clothes and go back to her life and act perfectly normal and unaffected as if her entire worldview hasn’t just fundamentally shifted. No way she can meet Lena in the eye. Not a chance in hell. Why, Kara doubts she’ll even be able to stop herself from putting her foot through the floor the moment she walks back in the door and finds Lena waiting for her, looking at home and at peace and so, so breathtaking-

Right. Kara doesn’t think she can come back from this the same person she was before.

She’s stunned that she hadn’t realized sooner. Can’t comprehend the fact that she lived so much of her life around Lena with flowers growing in her chest and didn’t notice them until they were far past their first bloom, and it was too late to do anything else but live with the thorns in her throat. More than that, Kara is stunned by the simplicity of it all, now that she knows. It’s as if she’d absorbed the noise and chaos of her heart and mind for ages, enduring it as they clambered and shouted over one another just drown out the other. But there is silence now, and it’s impossible to ignore. As if a dial was turned, things are calm, now, one single, prevailing, universal truth laid out neatly for her to stare at like linens to be ironed.

There is nowhere to look but at the evidence of her love, stretching across time and space, from Krypton to the soft glow of Lena’s face in the sunlight, in the nighttime, amidst sirens and explosions and soft, twinkling laughter. There is nothing to do but feel the same way she’s always felt, because they were never strangers to each other, not really. Kara thinks she’s probably known the truth since the moment Lena first smiled across her desk at her, no matter what she did to shake it from her memory and shove it far down beneath her memories and her attempts to be a good, perfect friend. That’s all Lena had ever wanted after all: a best friend. Until a few hours ago, Kara thought that’s all she wanted too.

But it was always love, for Kara. It will always be love.

And there is the problem, boiled down to its bare essentials and its raw materials. The plain, unforgiving circumstances that she faces now is the realization that all along, she’s wanted Lena in ways that she knows best friends shouldn’t. She’d fallen completely, utterly in love with Lena without even understanding what it meant. And how is she supposed to move on from that? How is she supposed to recover from this and return to normal when Kara is fairly certain this will prove to be a fatal wound? There’s no undoing this, no backtracking, no averting her eyes and praying that one day, she’ll forget all about this. There isn’t an ocean deep enough on this world or any other that she could sink this revelation into and walk away. Even if she did, she’d probably be seeing Lena in every reflection she passes for the rest of her miserable life.

Kara’s come to the maddening, confusing conclusion that, even though she’s been in love with Lena for quite some time, finally realizing it is about as shocking as it was crashlanding in her pod, and she’s just as lost as to what to do now. She needs to tell someone; Kara may be strong, may have over a decade of practice at shoving things down and making sure she seems perfectly normal, but love? Kara has no clue how she’s supposed to hide that.

So, she gets to her feet and flies out in search of the woman who was there to hold her hand the last time she arrived on an unknown world – and the one who taught her exactly how to protect her biggest secrets.

It isn’t a long trip. With a spring sun shining weakly on her back and the familiar tolling of church bells in the distance, Kara hops her way up a weathered porch and knocks on the door. Eliza opens the door in a worn pair of jeans and one of Jeremiah’s old flannels, oven mitt on one hand and the sound of old jazz playing softly in the distance. Her eyes light up in surprised delight, and Kara just smiles, holding out the bouquet of wildflowers she’d managed to find on her way over in welcome.

“Hey, Mom,” she says, mustering up a vacant smile. “Up for a surprise visit?”

“If it’s you? Any time, dear.” Eliza holds the door open wide and gestures her inside. “You’re just in time. I’ve got some blueberry muffins that’ll be done any minute now.”

Kara walks into the kitchen on instinct, following her nose like a woman possessed. The sweet smell of the muffins and that of the sea salt outside does wonders to calm her nerves; Kara wonders if this is what a hangover must feel like, with her head aching and even her thoughts coming in too loudly for her liking. If this draining, sickly feeling in her chest is anything close, Kara prays that what’s in the oven and the strong batch of coffee that Eliza has busied herself with making will prove to be as potent of a cure as anything else. Really, she thinks she may just need a miracle before she’s ready to face anyone in National City, her best friend and apparent love of her life most of all.

Oh, well. If nothing else, Kara gets the sense that the refreshment coming her way will be as good of a start as any, especially when it comes with the comfort of her childhood’s sun-streaked kitchen and the always warm presence of Eliza.

Kara goes through the formalities with the well-worn motions that are saving her only through sheer habit. Her mind is so far away that, were it not for the fact that she’s done it hundreds of times before, even hugging her own mother would have seemed a stiff, robotic action. She thinks Eliza can feel the tension in her arms despite her best attempts to sink into it, because even as she chatters mindlessly away about the weather and last night’s hometown baseball game, she keeps Kara always in her sight. It reminds Kara of when she was younger, when every other step she took resulted in a splintered floorboard or a broken vase as she tearily tried to reign in her powers. Eliza was never cruel, never angry; she simply kept smiling and looking down at Kara no matter what, kind and welcoming even in the face of glowing eyes and alien, brute force.

The more time goes by, the clearer things become. Kara would not have survived her transition to Earth without her mother by her side, and this may well be a similar scenario that she desperately needs her guiding hand for.

Finally, after she dances around it for as long as she can and get Kara settled in, Eliza begins to close in on her ever so slowly and slightly.

“So, honey, what brings you over on this part of the coast? You’ve been so preoccupied, I wasn’t expecting a visit from you or your sister for quite some time,” Eliza asks, and it’s an innocent enough question, likely meant in all sincerity, but Kara is so wired from the revelation of last night that even the voice of her own mother seems loaded with expectation and suspicion.

She wonders if everyone in the world knows that she’s in love with Lena – has always known, long before she did; it’s just like her to be behind on the learning curve. While school came effortless and simply to Kara, with her excelling at every single class that Midvale and university had to offer, she’s always been slow on picking up earthly social cues. Kara hadn’t ever imagined that love would become one of those things that she didn’t notice until she was hit square between the eyes with it.

It reminds her of something Winn had said to her, all those years ago. Wham, Kara thinks to herself, curling her hands into fists and staring blankly at the steaming coffee placed in front of her. Winn hadn’t said anything about love hurting this much.

“I was in the area,” she musters up, taking a spoon and pouring in a heap of sugar into her mug. She stirs and stirs, watching the dark liquid swirl. Does this count as drowning her sorrows? Kara doubts it; it’s much too bright and the birds are singing outside, and she thinks she’d sooner step into the opening scenes of a musical than a grungy dive bar while sitting at this table. “And I’m sorry I haven’t visited sooner. Alex, too. We’ve both just been so-”

“-Busy,” Eliza finishes for her, joining Kara at the table with her own cup and a heaping plate of muffins that Kara wastes no time digging into. “I know. Your sister has been giving me updates as much as she can spare time for. Alex doesn’t say much, but I can tell that you’ve both been under a great deal of stress.”

“Let me guess,” Kara can’t help but say, able to picture her sister’s pinched mouth and deep lines on her forehead as clear as if she were right in front of them, pacing and getting on Kara for over-extending herself. “She’s told you she’s worried about me. You’re worried about me, too.”

“Kara, I’m your mother,” Eliza cuts in gently with a wry smile. “I’m always going to worry.”

She can’t help but soften at Eliza’s words, returning to her staring match with her murky reflection in her coffee. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, everyone has just been so- you’re not the only one who’s worried. But, really, I’m fine. You can see for yourself, can’t you?”

“What I can see is that you have the same look on your face that you used to have as a little girl. The look that you got when you broke the fridge door, or put your foot through the attic floor, or fell asleep on the bus ride home from middle school and nearly started floating. It’s the look that you always have when something is wrong.”

Kara scoffs, trying to wave away Eliza’s attempts at reading her body language. She should have known that mothers can always tell, and yet still, here she is, desperately trying to appear as okay and as fine as she keeps insisting to everyone around her that she is. “I don’t know what look you’re talking about,” she lies, reaching for another muffin.

Eliza just gives her a very motherly, expectant look, watching as Kara scarfs down the food and starts to fiddle with the foil, still warm from the oven. “Sweetheart,” she says, kind and inviting as a summer afternoon. “You’ve come all this way for a reason, even if you won’t admit it to yourself. Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?”

Just for a moment, Kara hesitates. She thinks this ought to be a secret that she carries to her grave. But she’d come here for a reason, and once upon a time, Kara had believed that she should remain alone after landing on Earth and finding her mission completed without her and by the hands of foreign, unknowable strangers. But then Kal had brought her here, to this exact spot, and Eliza had been there just as she is now, with a warm smile and an outreached hand that Kara couldn’t help but grab ahold of.

Blood or not, Eliza is her mother, and there’s never been an emotion that she’s not been able to help Kara work her way through. How could she resist the same offer now, all these years later, when she knows just how much Eliza loves her enough to hold her hand through the worst of it?

“I- Well, I think I may be in big trouble.” Kara takes a sip of her coffee and begins to explain.

For someone who writes for a living, Kara’s words leave her mouth jumbled up and unsure of themselves, as if they’re still struggling to become fully fledged ideas. Kara supposes she can’t blame herself entirely, not when this thing, this massive new wave of emotions has completely invaded her body and taken control of all her systems. She hadn’t expected herself to be able to explain why she’s only realizing now exactly what it is she feels for her best friend, only that it’s happened all the same and she’s clearly at a loss for how to handle it.

Perhaps even more than she’s feeling like she’s stranded in the middle of the ocean, Kara thinks it may be more of a desert, and she’s simply looking for even the mirage of an oasis to collapse at, and hopefully, Eliza can serve as that at least for now.

Just as always, Eliza listens with a sense of patience and care that Kara doubts her rambling mess of an explanation deserves. She’s forced to leave out a good chunk of relevant information about CADMUS and the death threats and all of that, after all; she’d made a deal with Alex to spare their mother from understanding the full extent of the danger that they’ve found themselves in this time around, and just as it’s done to the rest of her life, Lex and Lillian consume her story and leave it riddled with confusing gaps and awkward non-starters. If Eliza notices the breathless way Kara has had to catch herself and start all over time and again, she leaves it be, simply sits still and eats her own breakfast with a hypnotic stillness. Eliza never takes her eyes from Kara’s, and the only sign that she’s listening is the fact that little by little, the crow’s feet around her eyes seem to grow deeper and more pronounced, her brow starting to furrow.

No matter its tangles, Kara can at least express the point of all this with absolute sincerity. As she breezes past the confusing detail of Lena having to move in with her and ignoring any unspoken questions of why that happened, she lowers eyes and tells Eliza about last night with a dry mouth. Here, there’s no need to tiptoe around anything or leave her mother to fill in the gaps herself. “I’m in love with her, Mom,” she says at last, and it’s incredible how much it feels like an act of titanic proportions to say that confession out loud.

She tries to take solace in that fact. If she can barely find the bravery to tell her own mother the truth, then maybe that means that ever telling Lena would be something that not even Supergirl could manage to do.

After the words land, there is silence, and when Kara chances a glance over at Eliza’s reaction through her eyelashes, she sees only a pronounced, straining neutrality. It looks as if Eliza is preparing herself to go and take a stroll through a minefield and is trying to decide on the safest path forward for them both.

Kara can’t blame her. She supposes that like most other things in her life, this revelation is about as high-strung and explosive as any fight she’s ever had with an alien or goon.

“Oh. And… last night, that was when you just realized this?” Eliza asks with the utmost concentration, and Kara pauses, forehead creasing in confusion.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, but the pieces are slowly coming together. Her mother has the same pinched look on her face that Alex always does, and the same stillness as Kelly when she’d talked to her in her office, and… and shit. Even her own mother knew before Kara did.

“Dear, I’m just trying to decide how best to help you,” Eliza says. “Look, I’m sorry. Would you like for me to act surprised?” There it is. Kara throws her head into her hands as a wave of agonizing humiliation washes over her. She’s never felt so big of a fool.

“Mom,” she just groans, blushing so hard that even the tips of her ears feel molten hot. She had hoped that there was maybe one other person in her life that would be as shocked and as crippled by this information as she was, but it seems like the only person in the world who didn’t know she was in love with Lena would be Lena herself. “I can’t believe this. You’re telling me you knew?”

Eliza pauses once more, seemingly gathering her words and putting them out into strategic clumps of sentences. “I think I suspected for a long time,” she says. “A mother can usually figure out these types of things, and you were so excited to have me meet her. But it was only a feeling, at first. Eventually, it became a certainty. I knew that you had feelings for her.”

“And when you realized it, whenever you did, you didn’t bother to let me in on the secret?” Kara asks with dripping sarcasm, but it holds no bite. How can she be angry with her mother for understanding something that she should have years ago? It’s no one’s fault but her own that she is stuck in this predicament now.

“There are certain things in life that you must learn on your own. And besides… well, once I knew the truth, I think it would have been far too painful for you to hear at the time,” Eliza says gently, and it clicks. Of course, that would have been when. “You two were in a terrible place, and I wasn’t sure you’d come back to each other.”

Kara lifts her head up from where it had been buried. “You realized it then?” she asks, voice taut. “After we fought?”

Eliza lets out a breath, reaching over to place a hand over Kara’s crossed arms on the table. “If only you could have seen yourself through the eyes of someone else, Kara. At Thanksgiving, the way you kept staring at the empty chair across from you – in all my years, I’d never seen you look like that. The closest thing would have been when you first got here, but that pain was muted. I knew whatever had happened between the two of you was fresh and it ran deep and- well, I knew that you’d gotten your heart broken. Not just as a friend, but something far worse. Only love can do something like that to a person.”

All she can do is shake her head, the memory coming back with sudden strength. That holiday season had been the worst one she’d ever had on earth. Even surrounded as she was by the rest of her family and friends, Kara had felt more alone than ever before. She’d kept the extra chair at the table as a reminder, refusing to move it even as Alex sidled over with gentle, sympathetic eyes and told her to stop beating herself up about everything. It’s the holidays, Alex had said. Don’t you deserve some goodwill and cheer like the rest of us? Kara just glared down at the floor and shrugged off her sister’s touch, telling her to leave her alone. Kara didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t deserve pity. She deserved to sit there and stare at that chair knowing that, while she was surrounded by good food and good company, Lena was likely alone in her office, spending her cold winter nights by herself and the unforgiving glow of her computer screen.

Kara deserved the constant reminder that it was she that had done that to Lena. Kara was the one who’d given her everything and then had taken it all away just as quickly.

“I should have known better,” she says quietly, bringing herself back from the chill of those memories. Flashes of them linger, like how she watched her friends dance and exchange gifts and make merry. The mistletoe dangled over a beaming Alex and Kelly had felt like a stab in the ribs. How had she not figured it out sooner? Was it simply because it was so all-consuming that she’d gotten as used to it as breathing? If it’s simple been a fact of life for all this time, Kara doesn’t understand why it’s so suffocating now. “I- I guess maybe I didn’t want to see it for what it was at the time. You’re right. I was barely hanging on as it was, just thinking I’d lost my best friend. Anything more than that and I may have lost my mind completely.”

“And so, why now, may I ask?” Eliza questions. “I can understand coming to terms with it now that you two are back on steady footing, but you’ve been reconciled for months and months. Besides, you’re not the type to realize something like this all on your own, not without some pressure. No offense, dear,” she adds, but Kara is already waving it off.

As embarrassing as it may be, her mother is absolutely right. Kara isn’t the type to act first. No, she needs an inciting incident to spur her into the unknown, always has, from her first night as Supergirl to right now. No matter how brave and fearless she may be in pursuit of protecting other people, Kara is not an explorer on her own terms. Not since she was a little girl and was sent out into the inky expanse of space – not since the Phantom Zone has Kara felt the need to journey out of the safety and the comfort of the life she’s built for herself. To do something like that is to flee Krypton all over again, and why would she ever do that?

“Why now?” Kara pauses, struggling to answer without divulging something that would reveal to Eliza the full extent of the pressure Kara is currently under. “Gee, I don’t know. We’ve been spending so much time together recently, and I suppose I just-”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with those nasty CADMUS videos I keep hearing about, does it?” Eliza prods with the type of insistent innocence that only mothers can wield when they’re wringing the truth out of somebody, and Kara blanches.

She’s been so wrapped up in National City and everything inside of it that she hadn’t stopped to consider the fact that the rest of the world was likely fully aware of what was going on, too. Eliza isn’t oblivious, and she isn’t willingly ignorant either. Kara is sure that the moment she caught even a whiff of trouble brewing in the city where both of her daughters lived, Eliza had made it her mission to learn everything she could about what was happening. Kara is shocked her mom had even bothered with the formality of pretending to be unfamiliar with it.

“What- I- oh, Alex is going to be so mad at me,” Kara grumbles, eyes shooting to meet her mother’s with the same guilty intensity as whenever she’d get in trouble as a kid. Even remembering the worst of her behavior now, over ten years later – like that time Alex had insisted on teaching her how to drive and Kara had accelerated the car nearly through the garage door – is enough to make her sink down in her seat.

Eliza never got angry though, Kara recalls. Even then, while her jaw dropped at the sight of the scattered lawncare tools and empty paint cans all over the cement, she’d only started to laugh. Against all odds, once Jeremiah left, Eliza seemed to make it her mission to laugh as much as she could around her girls. A gift that only a parent can give, Kara supposes. “I’m glad that a car did this, and not your superpowers,” Eliza had said, raising her eyebrow as even Alex began to giggle. “It’ll be much easier to explain this dent than one in the shape of a teenaged girl.”

That’s why Kara decided to come here. Though it may have been a subconscious desire, she knows that whatever she tells Eliza, she will find understanding. No matter the storm of other emotions wreaking havoc on her heart, Kara knows she will be able to peer through the gale and find her mother in a calm spot, and she’ll be able to tell her exactly what she should do.

“Honestly, Kara, your sister shouldn’t be,” Eliza says. “I don’t know what the two of you believed you’d be able to keep me from. You two couldn’t even manage to sneak out past curfew without me knowing about it. You think I didn’t also find out about something that’s making national headlines every day and not connect it to whatever you’re up to?”

“You knew about us sneaking out?” Kara asks, going rigid in her chair. She and Alex had actually believed they’d gotten away with that one, seeing as Kara could just float the two of them right out the window. Eliza just shoots her a look, and it’s all she can do to keep her jaw from hanging open. Maybe their mom really did have superpowers too.

As the shock of her teenaged escapades fades back to memory, Kara takes a deep breath in. “If you know about CADMUS, then you’ll understand why this is something I can’t ever tell Lena the truth about.”

Her mother tilts her head, sipping her coffee. “I’m not sure I do understand.”

“Come on, Mom. Isn’t it obvious?” As her mother gives no signs of catching on, Kara sighs and continues. She feels ridiculous even having to explain the logic that seems so looming in her mind. “It would be far too dangerous for her. Even if she were to- no matter how she would respond to it, it would place an even bigger target on her back. I would rather take it to my grave than let any of my enemies find out and exploit it as a weakness.”

“Kara,” Eliza interrupts, “Are Lex and Lillian the ones who are behind the re-emergence of CADMUS?” Kara nods. Eliza sets her mug down on the table and looks up with a furrowed brow. “Wouldn’t Lena have a target placed on her no matter what? I seem to recall her having a great deal of familial strife on her end, and she’s already been attacked by her mother and brother on numerous occasions. How would this… secret of yours make any real difference?”

Kara ignores that last question for the time being. “That’s why I asked her to move in with me,” she blurts out, before realizing immediately that that bit of information was something she’d pointedly left out for a reason. With everything coming out into the open and her mother’s eyebrows rising steadily by the minute, Kara’s shoulders square as she attempts to salvage her argument. “That way, even if she’s in danger, I’m able to look out for her. If I’m always there, I can always protect her.”

Eliza purses her lips, looking to all the world like she’s choosing her words with excessive care. “Dear, you’re telling me that- that Lex and Lillian already know how close the two of you are, you’re both under threat, and you live together, but you still think that hiding the truth from her would shield her from that danger? I’m sorry, I really am, but it seems to be that you’re both already in the thick of it. Why not tell her and clear your own head?”

She sputters out a denial as Eliza’s argument rings true. “You don’t understand,” she protests weakly. “It’s different. It would be different if she knew. It’s- it’s way too dangerous.”

“Dangerous for her? Or dangerous for your own feelings?” Eliza asks, reaching out to grab Kara’s hand. “I know that it can be frightening, telling someone how you feel, especially after everything that you went through with her-”

“That’s not it,” Kara interjects with force, pushing back from her chair and sending it rattling to a stop against the wall. She begins to pace, all while Eliza is still at the table with her hand outstretched. It feels childish to turn away from its offer of comfort, but Kara is far too wound up to remain still now. She needs to move, and so she begins to pace circles around the table, wondering if she does enough loops, she’ll be able to leave all this behind in the dust. “This isn’t about me, it’s about-”

“Of course, it’s about you,” Eliza cuts in with a gentle grace, watching her daughter wind and wind around her. “Falling in love is the most personal thing that can happen to a someone. I really think that if you take a moment to stop and-”

“-Trust me, Mom, it wouldn’t make a difference one way or another. I can’t tell her. She doesn’t-”

“-Don’t you think Lena deserves to know the truth about this?-”

“She’s in love with someone else!” Kara finally shouts out, her logic falling to pieces all around her. Eliza sits stunned in the middle, looking over at her in disbelief. Kara caves. There’s no sense any more in pretending that not telling Lena is a selfish decision on her part. “You’re right,” she says in the silence, quieter now. “She does deserve to know the truth. I couldn’t bear it if this secret causes me to lose her all over again. But she- she doesn’t feel the same way, and I- like you said. It’s dangerous for my own feelings to tell her. It would hurt me too much.”

“Honey,” Eliza says after a long pause, hand to her heart. “You never told me about that. How- and you know this for certain?”

Kara, suddenly feeling very small and very unsure of how she’s supposed to deal with the enormity of this burden, sits back down at the table, dragging her chair back over with little ceremony. “She told me herself.” She shrugs. “If I were to tell her, can you imagine the pity she’d feel for me? How strange and tense everything would become between us? Lena wouldn’t see me as her best friend. She would see me as the person who wants to be more, and that’s not something you can just move on from and ignore.”

“You don’t know that. Lena may be more understanding than you might expect her to be.”

“Mom, she doesn’t feel the same.” Kara lets out a breath. “No matter how she reacts, how she treats me after, it would never be the same. I would ruin what we have now. What’s more selfish, keeping this to myself to try and spare both of us that, or me telling her and expecting things that she can’t give me?”

Eliza doesn’t answer. Kara suspects that it might be because she doesn’t have one. “You’re absolutely sure that Lena feels differently?” she asks again, though Kara doesn’t understand why she would need to. She just shakes her head, newly vulnerable and fighting the urge to change the subject or shut down entirely. She can’t blame her mother for the sudden feeling of claustrophobia, not when she is only asking questions to better help, not to rub salt in Kara’s newly gaping wounds. All the same, Kara’s instinct is to fight back against the sting. “It’s just that I can’t imagine Lena not- she hasn’t been with anyone for quite a long time, I thought?”

“She hasn’t,” Kara allows, feeling queasy at even the thought of explaining this further. For a moment she considers stopping right there, but she knows how Eliza is, knows she will need all the facts before she can make any worthwhile assessment. “It’s James. They broke up, but I guess… I guess Lena never really got over him.”

There, as simple and as quick as ripping off a bandage. Eliza continues to stare, looking mystified and like she still can’t quite believe what Kara’s telling her. “She told me herself,” Kara adds lamely, feeling overextended and awkward as her mother processes.

“So, Lena is in love with James.” As Eliza’s parroting words echo across to where Kara sits sullen, Eliza stops. She seems to be on the verge of pressing in further, but one look over at her daughter must convince her otherwise because instead of saying anything else, she just frowns and reaches for a muffin.

They sit in silence as Eliza unwraps her breakfast with the utmost delicacy. Kara is pretty sure her mother is stalling for time, but she watches it as if in a trance. It’s not like Kara knows what to say in this situation either. If she did, she wouldn’t be seeking out her mother in the first place and would probably be back in National City already, looking for the closest and most-punchable bad guy to go after.

“I’m so sorry, Kara,” Eliza says at last, when the silence becomes too much to bear. “I can see now why this is so upsetting for you to find out now. I’ll admit that I’d hoped this moment for you would be one of happiness and clarity, or at least some relief. I know that love is something that’s always been tricky with the life you have, but this… I didn’t expect this. Not this last wrinkle with Lena and James.”

Kara scoffs, raising her eyebrow. “What, you expected these feelings to be- to be reciprocated?” As Eliza’s gaze flickers away ever so quickly, Kara grows increasingly aghast. “Come on. Lena? With me? She is… leagues above me, and more importantly, she sees me as her best friend. Nothing more. Rao, until last night, that’s all I saw her as! I told her she was like a sister to me!”

As Kara cringes at the memory in comparison to her current context and situation, Eliza sends a sad, sympathetic smile her way. Kara wonders what it is about her expression that she can’t manage to decipher. “Don’t sell yourself so short, dear,” she says simply, returning to her meal.

“She’s Lena, Mom,” Kara says, newfound feeling behind her words, and some of the humor returns to her mother’s face.

“So you’ve been telling me for years, now,” she chuckles. A blush begins to return to Kara’s face as what Eliza is implying sinks in. “You never could find the right words when it came to her. Still can’t even now that you know it’s love. I suppose some things never change.”

Silence returns as they turn back to their breakfast, though a softer, more contemplative one. Kara stands up to grab the coffee pot and refill their mugs, looking for something to do while she reflects on what’s been said. It’s a lighter load to carry now that she’s told someone else, but she gets the sense that this time with her mom will only provide a temporary release. Kara needs a more lasting method of escape, and if not escape, then a way to endure all this, at the very least.

“When you’re in love, how do you make it go away?” she asks, then looks over in alarm as her mother begins to laugh. Eliza looks as surprised by the laughter bubbling out of her as Kara is, and the fresh, scalding coffee she’d lifted to her mouth tips precariously, burning her tongue.

As Kara freezes in place, dumbfounded, Eliza continues to chuckle even as she goes off in search of something cold in the fridge to soothe her mouth. The kitchen is small and cramped, as homely and cozy as it as, and the swinging door hits dully against Kara’s bouncing knees. She stills their frenetic movement, feeling self-conscious and like she might put a foot through the floorboards if she doesn’t stop now.

“What did I say?” she asks amidst the rummaging going on in the fridge. Eliza keeps on giggling, shaking her head.

“Oh, Kara, you’re trying to figure out a way to fix this?” As Kara nods, slow and cautious, Eliza rejoins her at the table. She pushes her mug away from the edge of the table, probably just in case Kara says something else preposterous. “Honey,” she says, most of the laughter gone from her voice, “You can’t reverse falling in love. Once it’s done, it’s done.”

Kara imagines Krypton exploding and tries not to equate her doomed feelings for Lena with the end of the world. She’s never been a worshipper of finality. “That can’t be true,” she argues.

“Well, of course, it’s different if you wind up hating the other person. But when it comes to you and Lena, I’m not sure that’ll ever happen.”

Her eyes widen at the suggestion alone. “I could never,” she says, looking down at her newly clenched fists. “Even in our worst times, even after she did what she did – I never hated her. I’m not capable of it.”

“I know,” Eliza says, reaching her hands out once more and taking Kara’s hands in her own. Her fingers are warm from holding her coffee even now, and Kara’s fists unfurl and her fingers loosen as if by magic. Eliza’s always had a way of leading her out from underneath her own heavy shoulders. “And because of that, I’m afraid it’s impossible to rid yourself of. Love is not something that can be banished far away, nor should it be. You can’t cast it out without dragging yourself down with it.”

“Then how do I hide it?” Kara asks, increasingly desperate. She hadn’t expected an easy solution, but there must be something that can be done. There had better be, otherwise she is well and truly screwed.

Eliza falters, hesitant and maybe just as unsure as Kara. “Impossible,” she answers. “When I try and imagine myself hiding something so meaningful… if it had been me, the moment I knew I was in love with your father, I would never have been able to hide it from him. I could barely wait until our dinner that night to tell him. To do that for even longer? Kara, it would be to ignore the fact that your life has just fundamentally changed and insist on everything being the same as it was, when it’s not. It just can’t be done.”

Kara pictures Eliza and Jeremiah sitting at this very table all those years ago, or slow dancing in the living room to the same music crooning softly from the corner now. She remembers how tangible their love had felt, how it seemed to have its own seat on the couch and on car rides and at lunch. Their shared glances and smiles and laughter seemed to make the whole house float right alongside Kara. Framed in the light of those memories, Kara knows Eliza will never have the answers she needs.

If she wants progress, she needs to present this under a different, but familiar, context.

“You were worried once that I would never be able to hide my powers or live a normal life. You thought that having a secret identity, one that disguised something so enormous, was impossible. Just like this. If you can teach me to be an average American girl, surely this is possible, too.

Her mother looks conflicted, chewing absent-mindedly on her bottom lip. “That was far different,” she reasons. “We had your cousin to turn to when we didn’t know what to do, and he was proof that you could adapt to this planet and its people and your powers, no matter how overwhelming everything was.”

“I don’t care if I was raised by a village or not,” Kara cuts in with some force. No matter how faded and healed over her hurt is on the matter, she can’t brush aside the fact that Eliza is giving Kal far too much credit for his role in the remnants of her childhood that she spent on Earth. “Some way, somehow, we figured out how I could acclimate to a world that was completely alien. Surely there’s some way to do the same for this. I can’t be the only one who’s fallen in love with someone they can never be with.”

Kara pauses, not wanting to show her mother all her edges and roughness. The last thing she wants to do is come across as dismissive of the sacrifices her mother made for her from the first day Kara appeared on her doorstep. It’s unfair of her to try and relate Eliza’s adoption of her to anything else, no matter how similarly daunting, but Kara is running out of time. She can’t run away from National City forever.

She squeezes Eliza’s hands in apology, letting out a breath. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That sounded ungrateful. This isn’t something I wanted to burden anyone else with. It’s just… I’m scared, Mom, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without getting hurt or hurting Lena in the process. No matter what I’ve gone through, you’ve always been there for me, and I need some advice. What should I do?”

“The first thing to do,” her mother replies, voice kind, “Is to stop treating this as a burden.” Kara glances up and finds Eliza beaming over at her. There’s concern in the smile, maybe even some sadness, but it is bright all the same. “I know what it’s like to fall in love. I know that, even though it’s caused me to miss your father as terribly on this ordinary Sunday morning as I did the moment he left us, love is always a gift. To feel that way about another person is as sacred of a blessing as anything else in this world, and love gives a person wonderful things. My love gave me your sister, and it gave me you, and it gave me this home full of memories, even if some of them are sad ones.”

“I know. I know that,” Kara says, voice just as soft as her mother’s recollections. “If it was going to be anyone, I’m lucky that it’s Lena. And it’s not a burden, loving her. That’s the one part of this whole mess that hasn’t felt like a punch to the gut. But it does hurt that I can’t tell her. That’s what I need help with.”

“For the record, let it be known that I disapprove of you wanting to bottle up your feelings,” Eliza says, lifting a hand and shutting Kara down before she can even begin to think of some other noble, well-meaning excuse. “I know your reasons for doing it, but I think it’s unhealthy all the same, and it’ll cause you more harm than good in the long run. But,” she continues as Kara tries to open her mouth to protest once more, “For the sake of your current sanity, I’d suggest you do the same things I told you to do when you first arrived on Earth. Find an outlet.”

“Okay, an outlet…” Kara echoes, but trails off, sending her mother a wordless plea for elaboration out the corners of her eyes. Eliza sighs, affectionate, and grants her wish without hesitation.

“Do you remember how much you struggled with your powers when you first got her?” Eliza asks.

Kara glances up at the cracks in the ceiling and the shoddily patched up walls in the living room. “Like it was yesterday,’ she says. Few things had remained unscathed in that first year. “I think this house remembers even more than I do.”

They are incredible gifts, dear, but not ones that are easily controlled.” Eliza gives a soothing squeeze to Kara’s forearm. “I credit you for the remarkable self-control that you had the moment you arrived. But your newfound enhanced senses, they got to be too much.”

Kara smiles. Leave it to Eliza to add reassurance even as she teaches a lesson using the past.

“Everything was too loud and too close and too intense, and so one night, after we’d run out of ideas on how to comfort you, your father took you outside and told you to look up at the stars,” Eliza continues. “He told you the stories of every constellation he knew, made up more for the ones he’d forgotten, and as he talked, you began to calm down. By the time you’d listened to the story of Princess Andromeda, you began telling stories from your own night sky.”

While her childhood memory is not as clear as it used to be, made dull by time and age and likely one too many hits to the head, Kara remembers those stars. She remembers the feel of Jeremiah’s calloused, sun-dried hands, warm no matter the season, as he would take her wrists and guided her hands to point up Orion. Ever so gently, he brought her fingers over to the proud Sirius, reigning over all the rest as the brightest jewel in the sky. Eventually, Kara remembers learning to point them out on her own, and while this sky did not belong to Krypton or to her people, she felt at home in it all the same.

Krypton never saw the sky as anything beyond its scientific definition. Kara had only even been taught to treat stars for what they were, flashes of gas and heat and light projecting their glow from lightyears away and serving as navigational tools for exploration and further scientific advancement. Her own father had pointed up at the night sky with her, long before Jeremiah had, but there were no myths or legends to tell. Perhaps that is why Kara had found space to be so horribly cold and barren as she’d flown through it. She thinks she may have found more comfort in it if she’d been able to imagine the great heroes of old as she shot through the heavens.

She’d always thought that Rao would have found a fine throne nestled in near Polaris.

Jeremiah had called her his North Star. In all the years since, Kara’s wondered what it means to serve as the compass of a man who did so many things wrong. Had it been her misguidance, her arrival from amongst the stars that had eventually torn her newfound little family apart?

Most nights, high above National City and gazing up into the great blanket of space around her, Kara tries hard not to think about those answers.

“He was a good storyteller,” Kara says softly, the memories pressing against her windpipe. As unsure as she still is about her feelings for her adoptive father, she knows that Eliza remains firm in her love, and however halting, Kara knows she is fond of talking about him. “He used to make Alex and I hide under the covers with his bedtime stories around Halloween, even if Alex claimed she was too old for ghost stories.”

“That’s your sister for you.” They both smile, Kara picturing a pajama-clad Alex sulking on the stairs. She’d never been good at acting indifferent to Jeremiah’s stories about ghouls and monsters and things that go bump in the night. However fast Alex had been forced to grow up, she was still a kid then.

“We got you a telescope for your birthday, and a miniature planetarium for Christmas, and after that, you moved onto other things. You discovered how much you loved art, and so we found you a beat-up easel and the nicest paint in Midvale,” Eliza says. “It was amazing to see. You took all your frustrations and fears and grief and released them up into the night sky or expressed them on your canvas. Instead of them manifesting as random bursts of power, you put them into something you found worthwhile. Control came much easier after that.”

Kara nods, beginning to understand what Eliza is telling her. “I still paint on the nights that I can’t sleep,” she reveals. “Some days, it’s the only way for me to process what’s happening.”

Eliza’s eyes soften at the thought. Kara can only imagine what a relief it was for Eliza as a parent, finally finding something to help a daughter that had so many unspeakable tragedies happen to her before she became hers. “Your hobbies, or passions, or whatever you want to call them – they’ve always served as outlets for what you can’t express. Seems like falling in love may be something that calls for those same methods.”

Despite the soundness of the advice, Kara can’t help but frown. “It worked when I was young, and it works for those same problems even now, but…” Kara hesitates. “This feels so much more complicated now that I’m no longer a child. And it’s so… new. So huge. I’m not sure that there’s enough paint in the world to capture how I feel about Lena.”

“You may be right,” Eliza admits, thoughtful. “Maybe the things you once relied on won’t have the same ability to help you as they once did. But I believe that the principle of it still will. You need to find something that drives you forward, Kara, something that will grip you enough that you can take your mind off everything else and just focus on it. Knowing you, pick something you believe in. Something that will help people, and if you dedicate yourself to it completely, eventually everything else won’t feel so consuming.”

“How do you know that’ll work?” Kara asks. “Being lovesick feels like its own category.”

“You’re the one who compared it to controlling your powers,” her mother points out, and Kara blushes and acquiesces to the teasing. Eliza just shrugs, still smiling. “I know it will because it worked for me,” she confesses after a beat.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I suppose that in a strange sort of way, you and your sister became my outlets after your father left,” Eliza says. “After he… oh, it hurt me terribly. You two were all I had left, and so I poured myself into you. Watching you two grow, and bicker, and look out for one another – and sneak out of your bedroom window on Friday nights – it became the best part of my life. All that love that I had for your father that I could no longer give him, I gave to you. My worthwhile passion is getting to be your mother.”

“Huh,” Kara muses, thinking it over. Hobbies are one thing, but finding something like Eliza did – something that is much bigger than yourself, Kara can see how it would be easy to get lost in that. In fact, she has perfect outlets for it, can already imagine throwing herself fully and completely into investigating CADMUS as a reporter. If that’s not enough, well, Kara can always spend more time in the skies as Supergirl. There’s nothing that clears her mind more than throwing herself into the nearest crisis and helping to the very best of her ability. Both sides of her identity can create and cause real change, now – are able to be yielded in a way that will not only protect Lena and vindicate her in the eyes of the public but will also conveniently allow Kara the time and the space she needs to process this new tangle of emotions in her chest.

Kara tries to keep positive. At least now she can name this particular tangle, however freaked out she is about it.

“I can only hope that you girls saw it the same way,” Eliza says, bringing Kara back to the room with a jolt. Eliza grows silent right as the Billie Holiday song on the radio comes drizzling to a close, slow, and melancholy. In the suspended quiet of the moment, Kara pays closer attention and is shocked to find that her mother suddenly seems unsure, the sadness she’d been holding at bay slipping through the cracks. “It was hard, learning how to be a parent while knowing that I no longer had your father to turn to. I worry, sometimes, that I went about it in the wrong way, that you and Alex grew up resenting how much I devoted myself to your lives, that you wanted and needed more space than I could bear to grant you-”

Kara raises her eyebrows, panicked at the fact that her non-committal response moments ago seems to have caused some long-buried regret to show up in her mother’s voice. It’s occurring to her now that Eliza can’t read her mind, that she doesn’t know the millions of thoughts that seem to be bouncing their way around Kara’s nervous system – and the fact that Kara doesn’t tell Eliza just how important she is nearly enough. It’s a mistake she wants to rectify now, in moments like this when Eliza does allow rare flashes of self-doubt to shine through.

“Mom, no- you didn’t go about it the wrong way. Not at all. I- I should say this more often than I do, but I love you. So much,” Kara says. This time it’s her hand reaching out to cover Eliza’s. It’s uncommon that she does something like this for her mother, as strong and as calm as she usually is, and Kara’s heart tinges at the thought. Eliza needs this type of reassurance just as much as anyone else, no matter how steady she is, and her daughters are typically too busy and too engrossed in their own lives and battles in National City to give that comfort.

She decides that, when all of this is over, Kara is going to visit Eliza as often as she can make time to. After all, she knows firsthand how lonely it can be to live your life with only the rosy memories of the past to keep you company. Sometimes, those memories aren’t all that warm, and Eliza shouldn’t have to bear it alone. “So does Alex,” Kara adds, strong and sure. “And we are both unbelievably lucky to have you as our mother. Me especially. I know that my life would have been very different had I arrived in someone else’s backyard.”

Eliza takes the comfort with slight hesitation, staring down at the table. “Don’t be silly. You would have turned out just fine no matter who raised you,” she says, her knack for dismissing compliments a trait that Kara is told she’s inherited completely. Because she recognizes it in herself, Kara knows exactly what to say back.

“You know, you brought up Jeremiah and the stars, but you never mentioned all the things that you did for me,” Kara points out. There’s another habit that Kara’s picked up from Eliza, as Alex so unfailingly gripes about: minimizing her own role in helping people and in saving the day. Make no mistake, Eliza and Jeremiah and Alex were as big of heroes to Kara growing up as even Kal was. “Sure, those constellations mean a lot to me – but you were the one who taught me how to read. You showed me how to paint and mix colors and hang my canvas out to dry in the sun. You taught me how to write, and bake, and ride a bike, and if it was possible for me to get one, I know that it would have been you who would have patched up my scraped knees.”

“You were a fast learner,” Eliza says, steadfastly and unintentionally refusing to take the credit for anything. Kara fights back a teasing smile and presses on.

“Not everyone would have taken me in and given me a home,” Kara reminds her, sincere and truly believing that. She meant it when she said she was lucky to have had Eliza as a mother. Kara realizes even more every year she gets older, as she sees more and more of the intolerance and the mistrust that is out in the world, just how welcoming Eliza really was. “Not everyone would have promised to hide an alien in their own home. Not everyone would have stood up to government agents without flinching. But you did, Mom. You protected me from the worst of this world even after I caused your husband to disappear-”

“Honey,” Eliza admonishes, frowning and voice unusually sharp. She hates when Kara brings this up, when she pins it on herself. Kara knows how often she’s been told by both Eliza and Alex that it wasn’t her fault. It doesn’t change the fact that their insistence is nothing more than a merciful, see-through white lie. It doesn’t change the fact that what Kara says is true.

It had been her fault that Hank Henshaw and his gang of imposing DEO agents had shown up in Midvale. Kara had been antsy, and restless, and desperate to let out the powers that she’d been so diligently bottling up. That night, no constellation or paint brush or book had been enough; Kara had wanted to fly, and so she pleaded and pleaded with Alex to come with her and off they went.

For that one moment, everything had been spectacular. But with what came next, with what Jeremiah was forced to do and with what he unwittingly became under the domineering thumb of Lillian Luthor, Kara knows that his absence from their childhood and everything that he did for CADMUS in the years following rested solely on her shoulders, her conscience.

“There’s no point in denying it anymore,” she says gently, attempting valiantly to keep the guilt out of her voice. “Look, Mom, I appreciate it, I really do, but… Dad left to protect me. It wasn’t the first or the last time that somebody’s made that type of sacrifice on my behalf, and yeah, I’m still trying to make my peace with it. I know it was done out of love, to forgive the mistake I made. And that’s my point. Everything that you did was out of love, and I just want to thank you for that because I know that what I did, what I caused – that it wasn’t easy.”

Eliza offers her a small smile. “Raising two teenaged girls never is,” she remarks, and Kara is grateful for the small bit of humor and for the fact that, just this once, Eliza didn’t try to deny the role that Kara played.

“What I’m trying to say is that I couldn’t have asked for a better mother,” Kara finishes. She returns a difficult to muster smile of her own, but they both sorely need one and so it’s worth it. “My birth mother may be alive and on Argo, and I love her dearly, but- well, I’m not so sure she’d understand something like this. There’s a reason that I came here instead of launching myself up into space for advice.” She hears Eliza’s heartbeat pick up, hoping that it just means that the other woman is touched and not having any sort of medical emergency. “It’s because, blood or no, you are every bit my mother as she is, and it’s thanks to you that I built such a good life here on Earth – even if I do need some help every once in a while.”

Eliza is not having a heart attack Kara can tell, not from the fact that her mother’s hands have gone up to her chest, but because of the way she is beaming even through teary eyes. “Thank you, Kara,” she breathes out, voice thick and heavy with emotion. Kara thinks of what she said earlier, about all the love you couldn’t say out loud. Maybe that’s what the lump in her own throat is here for. “I want you to know, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. You’re my daughter, and you have no idea how proud I am of you. It takes courage to ask for help about something as vulnerable as falling in love, and it takes courage to face those fears head on.”

Kara’s smile solidifies. “Like I said, Mom,” she replies. “It’s easy, coming here and talking to you. I knew that if anyone could help me, it would be you.”

Unable to wait another second, Kara gets up and stoops down by her mother’s sitting form to give her a good, long hug. As Eliza hums and pats her back, discreetly sniffling away whatever is left of her unshed tears, Kara closes her eyes and lets herself pretend to be 15 years old again, trotting down the stairs and scooping Eliza up into a big hug before scarfing down breakfast. Her hug is gentler now, made more careful with age and with maturity, but Kara knows that if she wanted to, Eliza would let her spin them around the kitchen just like she used to, laughing all the way to the front door.

It feels good, knowing that, even if she lost her Krypton, Kara still has some tactile part of her childhood to return to no matter what.

While she breaks apart and makes small talk, preparing to take a breath and return to the real world and her myriad of new, complicated problems, Kara makes note of what Eliza told her. It can work, she reasons with herself – it had better work, or else she wouldn’t be able to stop the flood of words that are suddenly sitting tight against the roof of her mouth from flooding out. If she can do this for Lena, surely that will be enough. Even if she can’t give Lena her love in the way that most people who fall in love get the chance to, Kara can offer her this. She can get Lena her life back, and her company, and her status, and soon Lena will be happily up out of Kara’s apartment and back living in her own sphere, one that is not so intertwined with Kara’s

As much as even the thought of that is killing Kara where she stands, she knows that it’ll be for the best. After all, how can Lena move on with her own life and her own love if she has Kara acting as an anchor? Better to let Lena drift away back on her own, even if it means Kara will never have her this close to her ever again.

Kara begins making the proper spiel to leave, thanking Eliza for the breakfast and coffee and good conversation and looking around for her shoes before realizing that she has none. Instead, she turns by the front door with her hands deep in her pockets, sheepish and with her bare toes looking conspicuous and betraying her lack of collectedness. Eliza hovers by the kitchen table, watching her fondly.

“I guess I’d better go,” Kara says, despite making no move to open the door. Kara can’t fight back her overwhelming feeling of being directionless, like there is no wind in her sails. She knows that the moment she leaves Midvale, she’s going to have to face a challenge that’s been under her nose this whole time – and yet is nonetheless as daunting as anything she’s ever faced. “Got some things I need to do, now.”

“I take it you have an idea of something to use as a… distraction?” Eliza asks, and Kara nods.

“No reason I can’t save the world like always and use it to keep my mind off of things,” she responds, her shoulders going up. Eliza quirks an eyebrow, shaking her head.

“Only you would prefer facing down disaster zones to something like this,” she says wryly.

With nothing left to say, Kara’s hand finally seeks out the doorknob. As she swings it open and sinks into the full warmth of the morning sun, Eliza crosses the hallway, reaching out and grabbing Kara’s shirt sleeve. Surprised, Kara turns around.

“Is everything okay?” she asks, halfway out the porch.

Eliza freezes in place, looking surprised herself that she reached out. But she takes a deep breath in, fixing a smile on her face and meeting Kara’s confused gaze. There’s sadness in it, and Kara can’t help but wonder why.

“I- yes, of course, dear,” she answers, but hesitates. Kara stays where she is. She hopes that after the conversation they’ve just had, Eliza feels able to be honest with her. After all, Kara has nothing left to hide from her mother.

“Are you sure?” Kara asks gently, and the prodding is all Eliza needs.

“Listen to me, now,” she says. “When it comes to falling in love – when it comes to Lena… just, don’t throw away a good thing just for fear of losing it or else you’ll never know what it could have turned into,” Eliza urges, no longer hesitant but eyes just as distant. Kara wonders if she’s thinking about Jeremiah. She can almost see him lingering in the kitchen, his own cup of coffee in his favorite mug and looking on. “You’ve been given a second chance that most people want desperately. Lena… she cares about you too, just as much. Maybe even more than you know. I just don’t want you to regret anything that happens with her – not when you’ve been given such a rare gift to begin again.”

“I won’t,” Kara promises, taking these words to heart just like all the others, even if it is this bit of advice that’s cryptic and difficult to decipher. “Thanks, Mom.”

She considers her words as she takes off into the sky, as bright and clear as a diamond. Eliza is far more optimistic about Kara’s chances than she is, as if she’d completely ignored what Kara had told her about Lena and James. But Kara understands. If Eliza had a chance to see Jeremiah again, to say everything that she never got to, it would mean the world. There’s just one nuance that her mother doesn’t seem to grasp.

It's different with Lena. Kara knows that she barely got the chance to be her best friend again. As for falling in love and having something come of it? Kara knows that she isn’t that lucky. She doesn’t get the girl, at least not in the way she wants. That doesn’t mean that she’s going to let Lena slip away from her ever again.

This is a second chance that she’s not planning on forsaking. Lena may not be in love with her, and that may be a dagger that Kara keeps lodged in her ribcage for the rest of her life, but she knows what she can do now, to show the other woman how much she cares without ever having to say anything out loud.

First, Kara needs to go to Catco. She has an investigation to start, after all, and CADMUS is not going to implode by itself.

Hopefully this’ll be enough for Kara. It’s going to have to be, because this is all she’s ever going to get.

…

Though it takes her most of the afternoon and evening, Kara eventually manages to track down William Dey in pursuit of her new crusade.

After two weeks of intensive research on her own, Kara’s concluded that if she’s going to do this thing right for Lena, she’s going to need a partner. Lex and Lillian are exceedingly careful in all aspects of their lives both public and private, and even with her speed-reading ability and her newfound sense of righteous purpose, Kara knows that doing this alone will take her ages. There are boxes and boxes of tax returns and financial statements and investment stubs, subsidiaries within subsidiaries within shell corporations, and enough red herrings and dead ends to make Sherlock Holmes throw his pipe into the fireplace. And Kara, for as good of a writer as she as, as talented as she’s become at capturing the human, personal angle of her stories, is admittedly not the best investigator, especially when it comes to numbers.

And Kara isn’t a complainer, has been perfectly content to burn away the midnight oil with her eyes drooping and her hands searching blindly through the nearest filing cabinet, but this is going to take forever at the rate she’s going, and to be frank, that is not a good enough timeline when her best friend spends night after night at home with her legacy stolen from her. No matter her secrecy, and no matter her insistence that this endeavor remains a solitary one, Kara needs help, and she knows William will gladly offer it.

After all, William is as close of a perfect mold to the classic reporter archetype as a person can aspire to, other than maybe Lois Lane. In another life, Kara thinks he would have been a great detective with his knack for sniffing out leads and turning scraps of evidence into bonafide paper trails, and Kara suspects that if any reporter were to ever find out Supergirl’s identity on their own, it would be him. William isn’t the type to shy away from trouble or ignore the obvious signs that are in front of him, and if she’s honest, Kara knows it’s only a matter of time.

Still, after a period of bumps and misunderstandings, Kara trusts the man more than she ever thought she would.

Kara will be the first to admit that she hadn’t liked him one bit when he first arrived at Catco, but things have changed completely now. She blames her frostiness towards him as a casualty of her ongoing war with Andrea, and the fact that the man was working an undercover lead for the first few months of them knowing each other. With all that firmly in the past, Kara was pleasantly surprised to meet the genuine version of William Dey, one who shared her same zeal for telling all sides of a story and as upstanding of a reporter as anyone she’d ever met. Plus, it was simply a fantastic happenstance that he turned to be a fantastic baker to boot, and now that their relationship has blossomed into a real, amicable friendship, Kara’s gotten to reap the sugary rewards.

Above all, besides his integrity and his passion for the truth, Kara knows that William understands the power of what journalism can do for people who’ve had their voice taken from them. Even better is the fact that in the increasingly hostile Catco bullpen, William is perhaps the only person still willing to openly defend Lena’s name other than Nia and Kara.

No matter their complicated relationship, Andrea seems less concerned with preserving her old friend’s reputation and more fixated on the newest trends in digital and social media. Kara tries her best not to be too hard on the woman. She isn’t a natural journalist, isn’t Cat Grant who built the company from the ground up, and at the end of the day, treats Catco as a side project, one she keeps her distance from. Not that Kara minds; with Andrea largely away, she’s free to pursue this Lex and Lillian story without threat of micromanagement or censorship.

William is holed up in a quiet office room of his own, hunched over a pile of rough drafts spread across his desk in a semi-circle. As Kara knocks on the frame of the door, he startles, jolting forward in his chair before spinning around. Kara fights down the urge to laugh at the sight of the smeared red ink across William’s cheek and the rarity of catching him asleep on the job. The man clearly needs a jolt to his system – and a break away from whatever is boring him to death.

Just her luck, then, that Kara came prepared with both the perfect opportunity and plenty of bribery. For this, she is prepared to beg if necessary. She holds up the jumbo cappuccino she’d just picked up from Noonan’s and a fresh bag of pastries to boot, sending William a crinkling smile in greeting.

“Kara!” he says, voice bright despite only having just woken up. “By chance is that coffee you’re brandishing for me?”

“The donuts too,” she announces with glee, watching the man’s eyes widen as he takes the offerings gladly. “Franklin’s been telling me you’ve had a long week making edits, and I know how those days can drag, so… here’s a pick-me-up!”

“A finer reporter there never was,” William replies, already rifling through the bag. “Not to mention an excellent friend. Thank you for this, I needed a boost, and you always seem to know how to help. That reminds me, did the Pope ever reach out to you? I’ve been writing the Vatican stacks and stacks of letters nominating you for sainthood, and I’d imagine one of them will get through one of these days.”

“A shame I’m not Catholic,” Kara answers swiftly, smiling all the same. They share an easy camaraderie, one that’s been rare to find here at Catco, and despite her reservations about bringing him into a potentially very dangerous story, Kara can’t help but feel excited about what they could accomplish as a journalistic team. “Please send the Pope my sincere apologies.”

“Consider yourself my saint, at least. First this godsend of a caffeine break, and next you’ll be telling me you rescued my kitten out of a tree.”

Kara waves away his thanks with a high-pitched laugh. “I don’t do all that well with heights – and unfortunately for any stranded pets, I’m deathly allergic,” she laments, and William just chuckles, raising his coffee cup in a silent toast.

After a few moments of contentedly sipping away at his latte, William sets his coffee down and spins around in his chair, eyes newly brightened and eyebrow quirked.

“You know, I enjoy your spontaneous visits as much as the next guy, but I’m getting a strange feeling that you’re here for something more than half of my donut,” he says, and Kara, already blushing, grins at the floor. He caught on shockingly fast. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, now that you mention it, I was wondering if you’d be interested in helping me out with one of my stories that I’m having a tough time cracking open. It’s kind of- it’s a really big story for me, and I don’t know where you’re at with your own cases but…” she says, trailing off and gauging his reaction.

William remains unfazed. “I’m not busy,” he says, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen against his ink-stained knuckles. The mark of a diligent reporter, Lois had told her once. “It’s been a slow week for me. If I’m honest, a slow month. I’ve got more time on my hands than I know what to do with, and keeping this just between us, I despise editing.”

Kara feels a breath of relief come out her nose, just glad that the man is open and available to shoulder some of the load if he agrees to her offer. Not that Kara is that surprised. She had Nia check his slate of works in progress last week, waving off the other girl’s leading questions and disappearing into a crowd of interns.

She thinks back to her early reporting days, Snapper Carr looming over her shoulder and ready to rip her manuscripts to shreds at the first sign of a typo or grammatical error. Though she has her own laundry list of complaints about Andrea, Kara is thankful for her absent style of management, especially when it comes to sneaking off on Supergirl duty – and no longer having to hide from a tyrannical stickler who hated the Oxford Comma. “I empathize completely,” she says, hand to her heart, earning another grin.

“So,” William says after a beat, throwing away the empty pastry bag. Kara hopes he doesn’t hear her stomach growl; a small part of her had been hoping for one of those donuts, but she snaps herself out of it. Missing out on some frosting and sprinkles is a sacrifice she’s happy to make for something as important as this article for Lena. “Are you going to keep standing in the doorway, or are you going to sit down and fill me in on this story and where I should start?”

Kara blinks, startled. She hadn’t expected it to be this easy. “You want to help? Just like that?”

“Being a journalist this long has given me some pretty good instincts,” William replies with a shrug. “You’re not normally one to go out of her way to ask people for help. You offer help, sure, all the time, but you never ask. If you did all this just to convince me to pitch in, it must be a story that truly matters to you. And… judging by how wide your eyes were when you first started talking, I’d say it’s a damn colossal one to boot.”

“If I’m right, if we can find all of the evidence that I’m hoping for… this is a story that wins us the Pulitzer, William,” Kara says. His eyes snap up to meet hers, sharp and filled with renewed curiosity.

A confident, sly grin appears on his face. Kara isn’t sure she’s ever seen William so excited.

“Kara, lead with that next time, won’t you? What’s this about?”

Kara swallows hard, striding over and slamming an impossibly thick binder on top of his desk, documents and notes crammed in every which way. “Lex and Lillian Luthor… and CADMUS. There’s a connection there, and as soon as I can prove it, I think it’s time someone knocks them off their ivory pedestal.”

William, though clearly intrigued, pauses, his hands hovering just above the binder. Kara’s heart skips a beat; what if he changes his mind? The man clears his throat and turns his investigative gaze fully on her. “Why does this matter so much to you?” he asks, eyes glinting.

Kara swallows hard. If only he knew just how essential this story was to her, on so many different levels. “It’s… for a friend. A very good one,” she decides on. William keeps his eye contact with her for another long, suspended second, but then he shifts in his chair. With the squeak of the springs the moment is past, and his full attention is back on the documents in front of him.

At least for the moment, Kara remains unchallenged.

As soon as he opens the binder up, Kara watches his smile double in size. Right then and there, she knows she picked the right partner for the job. “This is going to be fun,” he declares, and Kara feels herself beaming as well. She pats him on the back, before turning and leaving the room.

“You’re the best,” she calls over her shoulder. “I’ll find us some more coffee.”

…

William is right. With his help, Kara is finding that this is a lot of fun.

He brings investigative tricks and strategies to the table that cut a path through the chaos and the scrambled bits of evidence. Soon enough, Kara can see the trail start to materialize in front of her eyes, the highlighted account numbers, rapsheets, and aliases underlined are starting to fall into place, a road to a long-awaited Babylon that Kara eagerly watches become more and more concrete by the day.

That doesn’t mean that the work is quick or painless. Kara’s time at Catco has tripled in size over the past few months, the two of them working into the late hours of the night during the summer, cramped in a room with no air conditioning and zipping theories back and forth with the speed of the lightning outside, humid and storming above them. Kara creeps back into her apartment at all hours of the night, body exhausted from her rounds as Supergirl, and her brain wiped from her time with William but excited all the same. It’s an incredible feeling, knowing that even if it’s only a step at a time, Kara is making tangible progress that she can see with her own eyes. That’s why she’s always giddy walking through the door, briefcase full of notes and a new pep in her step. She grins a hello over at Lena who always looks a bit lost, and as she slides her notes under her bed, Kara reminds herself who this is all for.

And yeah, maybe part of the reason Kara’s been spending as much of her time as possible away from her apartment is because Lena’s there, and some days, that’s too much to handle. Some days, Kara feels like she could combust just from standing too close to the other woman. Some days, she can feel her new secret, bubbling up in her throat whenever Lena sends a gentle smile her way or reaches out to grab Kara’s hand, innocent and none the wiser to the effect that simple touch has on Kara’s heart.

Kara’s concluded over these past few weeks that knowing she’s in love with Lena is infinitely worse than not knowing. Sure, she’d been driven crazy before she realized it, always grasping in the dark and in the back of her mind and on the tip of her tongue for feelings and thoughts that she couldn’t put to words. Living in the abstract was maddening, but by trading in her blind obliviousness for unforgiving, absolute awareness, Kara’s found that she misses living in the dark. At least then, everything – every word, touch, stolen glance – was entirely innocent and absent minded. Now, Kara can barely share the same couch with Lena without feeling like she’s too close, that she’s overstepping, that she’s crossing boundaries that best friends shouldn’t cross. Even if their relationship has always been a tactile one, and even if Lena returns and initiates touch just as much as Kara used to, everything is charged now.

In truth, even giving her best friend a hug seems like too intimate and too devastating, and so Kara finds that it’s best to just avoid Lena altogether. Sure, she misses her – and Kara knows Lena feels her absence just as acutely – but really, it’s the only way Kara is going to get through this alive.

Besides. As Eliza encouraged her to do, this is a passion that goes far beyond Kara. This is going to change lives – will change Lena’s life – and help get things back to normal in National City. Kara doesn’t think she could have picked a more worthwhile cause to dedicate herself to.

It's probably not the best coping mechanism, sticking her nose to the grindstone so single-mindedly that Kara is too worn down and strung out from her work that she’s simply too tired to pay much mind to the new, still-stinging, Lena-shaped hole on her chest. But it’s better than blurting out something terrible that would ruin their friendship forever, so Kara treats the bags under her eyes as a badge of honor.

Lena notices the change quicker than Kara would have liked. She’s the first one to notice the way Kara’s taken to dragging herself from one room to another, shoulders slumped and eyes distant. On the nights when Kara does let herself go home early, Lena is always there, perched on the couch and watching Kara’s slow movements with a knit brow.

“Are you taking care of yourself?” she asks one evening, when Kara is too out of it to finish her order of potstickers. The fried, delicious mouthfuls taunt her from where they’ve been deposited on the coffee table, and Lena keeps glancing at them like there’s poison laced somewhere inside them. “I’ve never seen you leave leftovers before.”

Kara shakes herself out of her thoughts, where she’d been puzzling over the real source of one of the shell companies Lex has been using to bankroll CADMUS and all their public stunts. William compared it to tracing tributaries back to the central, mighty river; if Kara can remain diligent and trace her finger back along the map, she could end up with a huge breakthrough in the case.

“Darling,” Lena says again, her voice nothing but a pleasant echo in the foggy forefront of Kara’s mind. She shifts closer on the couch, and Kara’s heart picks up. “You’re worrying me.”

“Hmm?” She glances over at her best friend, a muscle in her neck twinging sharply. That bruise from whatever alien beam she’d been hit with last week during the bank robbery was taking its sweet time to heal, and Kara winces without thinking, raising a hand to the back of her neck.

Big mistake. Lena sees the action and the grimace on Kara’s face and has closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye. “Let me,” she whispers, and suddenly, there are cool, soft hands on Kara’s back and long fingers brushing her hair out of the way and a warm, solid body pressed tight against her back. Lena presses down experimentally and Kara fights against every instinct in her body not to allow a loud groan to escape her lips drawn out from a touch that feels heavenly and sinful all at once.

Sure, she’s invulnerable, and sure, bullets bounce off her on the regular. Kara is fully aware of the logic that would suggest that it is physiologically impossible for her to ever receive a proper massage while she’s on this planet. But Kara also knows that her biggest weakness is Lena Luthor and it’s Lena who is carefully kneading into the stiff masses that are her shoulders. Her breath hits hot and focused against Kara’s left ear, and damn her physiology. Whatever Lena is doing, it is sure as hell doing things to her body. She doesn’t feel so invincible right now.

“Can you even feel this?” Lena asks casually, seemingly unaware of the profound and absolute mastery she currently wields over Kara’s nervous system right now. “Because if you can’t, I can stop… oh, this is silly, isn’t it.”

Swept off her feet and reeling from the sensations traveling along her spine, Kara is desperate and more than willing to use that convenient excuse as a way out of this, because she isn’t sure she’ll be able to control her heat vision if Lena’s hands move any lower. But then Lena presses in against a particularly sensitive spot, and Kara can’t stop herself from letting out a soft sigh of approval, arching into the touch automatically.

She’s not sure she’s ever blushed so hard in her life. “I can feel it!” Kara squeaks out, wanting to bury herself alive at how blissed out and utterly dreamy her voice sounds like right now. “It’s nice,” she catches herself admitting out loud, and Rao, Lex can come along and abduct her any time now. Kara will welcome him in with open arms. Anything to escape the horror of discovering that Kara can’t even handle a simple, innocent massage without acting like a sixth grader with their first crush.

Lena’s hands go still for just a moment, fingers barely grazing against Kara’s loose shirt. Kara hates herself for missing the touch the moment it’s gone, hates herself even more for sinking into the couch cushions the millisecond Lena’s hands are back on her body, resuming with renewed enthusiasm.

The other woman hums out a pleased sound, and it feels like it reverberates inside every corner of Kara’s head, which must be pretty empty at this point. “I’m glad you like it. I wonder if your sensitivity is still enhanced after blowing out your powers last week,” she muses, and Kara is not capable of answering any questions with any measure of grace or intelligence right now.

“Maybe,” she answers, the two syllables short and sweet and blessedly free of any more embarrassment for her. Best to keep her mouth shut tight right now, especially when she feels Lena’s hands snake underneath her shirt and return to her shoulders, skin on bare skin.

Rao. Kara clenches her fists together as tightly as she can in her lap and wills herself not to accidentally flatten the sofa or pulverize the table.

“God, Kara, you’re so stiff up here. I suppose Supergirl doesn’t get the chance all that often to release some tension, but your shoulders… you don’t actually carry the world on your shoulders, do you?”

Kara keeps her eyes screwed shut, her mouth dropping open as Lena begins to comb through her hair with one hand. “I’m just used to it, I suppose,” she mumbles, another breathy sigh escaping without her consent. It feels like some sort of black magic has taken over her body. Lena should not wield this much control over her. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Lena just keeps working, hands deft and growing in confidence. Kara tries not to jump as the other woman skims up and down the side of her stomach.

“I’m worried about you,” Lena says, voice small and soft. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how exhausted you’ve been lately. You barely get any sleep anymore, and when you do, it’s not exactly restful.”

Kara stiffens, knowing that her nightmares have only been getting worse as of late. Though she’d hoped foolishly that Lena hadn’t noticed, it’s clear that the other woman knows the full extent of her nightly battles, and she doesn’t like it one bit.

“I don’t wake you too often, do I?” she asks, and she can tell that Lena’s rolling her eyes without having to turn around to look.

“Enough that you should really stop pretending that you don’t dream when you sleep,” the other woman replies. Lena sighs, content to stop her massaging and simply trace her fingers idly along Kara’s bare spine instead. The touch is somehow just as comforting, and infinitely more intimate, and Kara bites the inside of her cheek hard just to distract herself from how hopelessly in love she is with the other woman right now. “I can hear what you cry out in your sleep. The names you keep repeating.”

Kara chokes on air at the revelation. She knows whose faces are the ones that appear to her in her worst dreams, knows that lately, more than watching Krypton explode or going back into the phantom zone, it is her friends that Kara is seeing. They’re always dead, eyes always blank and unseeing, mouths mangled into one last silent scream of pain, and their hands— their hands are always outstretched. Their fingers point crookedly at Kara no matter which way she turns, fixing her to the spot and condemning her to serve as an unwilling witness to the graveyard before her. Look what it is that you cause, their faces seem to say. Look what will always happen to the ones you love.

While Kara may not know which names Lena hears her call for in the night, she knows whose pale and ghastly face swims across her vision most, lingering even after she awakens with a start. And if it’s her own name that Lena is hearing every night, if she starts to question why that may be… well. Kara is no more prepared to have that conversation is than she is to confront Lex and put a stop to the nightmares herself.

“I… I’m sorry you’ve heard. I thought that maybe you’d be far away enough, sleeping on the pull-out couch, but I guess not,” Kara says at last, the muscles of her back firm and rigid. Lena sighs, hand splayed against them.

“I wish you wouldn’t apologize for things like that,” she tuts, still playing with Kara’s hair. It’s enough to put Kara at ease, at least for now. “And besides, you sleep on that couch more often than I do, most days. It’s your apartment, darling. Stop scooping me up and putting me in your bed when your days have been so much longer than mine.”

“I like to do it,” Kara replies, veering dangerously close to the feelings she’d sworn off while in her best friend’s presence. “You look so uncomfortable out here and you’re always shivering. My room is warmer, and that mattress is the only expensive thing that I own.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer using it yourself?”

Kara just shakes her head, smiling to herself as she picks out the fond exasperation in Lena’s voice. “Back of steel, remember?” She asks, and without considering the consequences of her actions, flexes just a little. Lena’s deft fingers find holds against the ridges of her trap muscles, and Kara nearly short circuits. “The pointy springs out here don’t do anything to me.”

“Tell that to the bags under your eyes,” Lena shoots back, and Kara sobers. She studies her hands in her lap, and even though Lena can’t see her face, the other woman leans closer all the same, as if she could sense the change in mood.

“That’s because of the other stuff. Not a bad bed,” Kara admits into the silence.

Without hesitation, Lena wraps her arms around Kara’s midsection, pulling her in for a gentle embrace as she rests her chin on top of Kara’s shoulder. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

“Of course, I do,” Kara says, and the words come out in a jumbled mess of genuine feeling. Just because there are some things she simply can’t tell Lena about now doesn’t mean that she wants her best friend to think that she’s shutting down on her. That was never part of the plan. This whole crisis of love situation that she’s found herself in was not supposed to influence the strength of their friendship.

Not for the first time, Kara fears that she doesn’t understand how friendship works. But she’s insistent upon the fact that even though she’s hopelessly in love with Lena and Lena wants nothing to do with her, she can make this work. Kara is nothing if not set in her ways, after all, and it’s easy, returning to a cat-and-mouse game of lies and thin disguises. This isn’t a secret she can allow to spin out of control. Now that she knows the word for how she feels about Lena, she dares not say it aloud.

As soon as she does, Kara knows that she won’t be able to take it back. And so, she continues to perfect the art of pretending.

If she pretends for long enough, Kara hopes that maybe someday, she’ll convince herself.

“I’ve been having them too, you know,” Lena says quietly, Kara tuning back in with a jolt. “Nightmares, I mean.”

“You have?” Kara asks, guilt presenting itself upon her twisting, restless fingers. “I had no idea.”

Lena knows exactly what bruise Kara is preparing to inflict upon her conscience and she puts a stop to it before she can even raise her fist. “Not even you would have been able to figure it out. I grew accustomed a long time ago to hiding them in plain sight. Lillian… she didn’t like such a cliche display of weakness, and she liked the sight of me standing at the foot of her bed, scared out of my mind even less. They never, ever stopped. I just learned to cover them up.”

Kara wonders what it is that keeps Lena up at night.

“Are they about your brother?” she works up the courage to ask, praying that Lena will take the offer for Kara to listen.

“Sometimes, yes. My family are certainly recurring characters in them,” Lena answers, her throat a quiet hum pressed against Kara’s back. From this angle, Kara can only just make out her delicate features. “Most times, I think I dream about the same things as you.”

Even in her periphery, Kara wonders how she hadn’t realized sooner the fact that Lena is the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen. That’s not news to the rest of the world, she knows; Lena Luthor is generally accepted as one of the most striking, stunningly gorgeous people in the world, but Kara thinks that this Lena is different. People are intimidated by the Lena that is presented to the world – scared even, of her power and her lack of flaws. Though she was never, ever scared of her, Kara understands that she didn’t know that side of Lena; she was bursting through the other woman’s walls and her carefully crafted image before either one of them realized what that would mean.

“You have to run around Catco in your underwear too?” Kara jokes, one last out for Lena if the other woman chooses to seize onto it. Lena laughs hushed and pleasant into the shell of Kara’s ear, and Kara thinks she could stay like this forever, Lena draped soft and warm against her body.

“No, I’ve never had that one before,” Lena concedes, a puff of laugh coming short and fading just as fast as it arrived. Her arms tighten against Kara’s abdomen. “You’re usually in the worst of them.”

There it is. Kara lets out a breath, remaining silent. She doesn’t want to imagine the role that she plays in Lena’s dreams. She gets the sense that the subconscious doesn’t forget, and it certainly doesn’t forgive, and she doesn’t have to consider the facts very long to conclude that she’s probably played the role of the monster in more than one of the other woman’s nightmares.

But when Lena speaks again, she doesn’t bring up Kara’s betrayal. She doesn’t bring up any of the sins of their past, not even her own. Instead, Lena’s fears seem to be anxiously looking forward. “I never see your face,” she says. “But I know that it’s you. My brother stands over you, and he- he pulls his trigger, or swings down his fists, or plunges something green and jagged into your body, and you always fall. Every time, I watch your body hit the floor and go still. And every single time, I arrive too late to catch you.”

Lena’s right. Their nightmares are more similar than Kara would like to admit. Hers are too horrible to even think about. “That’s terrible,” Kara says, a lump in her throat. And possible, she acknowledges. Maybe even inevitable.

She doesn’t say this to Lena, of course. Kara isn’t that foolish, and she’s never considered herself to be capable of something that cruel.

“It’s not real,” Lena accepts, but her voice doesn’t hold the sincerity it should. “But in the middle of the night, when it’s dark and I can’t see your face, it’s easy to forget that.”

An idea is slowly forming in Kara’s mind. A stupid one. An unhealthy one, even, given her current state of mind. If Eliza knew about what Kara was about to say, Kara thinks she would give her mother a stroke. But it builds and builds, snowballing into an all-out avalanche, and Kara convinces herself that it’s not that bad. It’s for Lena. Hasn’t everything she’s been doing lately been for the other woman? There’s no reason to stop now, not when Kara knows with all certainty that this can help Lena rid herself of those nightmares.

Lena would be happier, and really, that settles it. Even if it’s Kara’s heart that’s strung high and fragile up on the line.

“You know, my bed is pretty big. Instead of bickering over who should use it… well, if you want- we could always share it,” Kara says, before she can stop herself— and within moments, understands what Alex means when she says Kara has an inclination towards martyrdom. No matter what she had talked herself into doing moments before, it’s crystal clear now that this is a bad idea, and it will only cause her more misery in the long run.

Then again, Lena’s head perks up from her shoulder and it’s so easy to imagine what it might be like to wake up together. Kara’s heart flip flops again. Misery wouldn’t be so awful if she let herself have moments like that, would it?

Lena’s jaw works, Kara listening as it opens and shuts and opens again. Her heart is racing, and her throat is dry, and it’s like she’s just gathered the nerve to ask Lena to prom. Another moment of clarity washes over her; this is why she’d get so nervous around her best friend. This is why her skin gets hot and her stomach does flips every time Lena so much as smiles her way. All this time she’s been looking for any other reason when it’s just been because she’s in love. And just like all the movies and the books that Kara would read, wondering how anyone could ever feel that way about someone else, she realizes she is not immune to its crushing power.

“I- I mean… that’s your space, Kara.” Lena stays very still, as if moving her arms in any way from Kara’s body would cause her to jump and back away completely. Kara stays silent as well, unwilling to scare Lena off, not when she’d lose her touch along with it. “It’s enough of an imposition for you to share the rest of your apartment with me, especially given the fact that my stay has turned into a rather extended one. Surely you want to keep some semblance of privacy and independence away from me and my- my overbearing, intrusive-”

“Lena. Do you snore?” Kara asks, interrupting swiftly. She knows the answer of course; they’ve had enough accidental sleepovers and long phone conversations into the night for Lena’s soft, even breathing to become completely ingrained into Kara’s consciousness.

“Do I-? Well, no, I don’t believe so. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because you’re not an imposition, Lena,” Kara says gently, twisting around and repositioning the two of them so they’re sitting face to face. Lena’s hands fall from her back to the front of Kara’s soft sweater, fingers bunching absently into the wool. Kara tries very hard not to melt into the couch at intimacy of the gesture, and wonders if her voice betrays just how badly she wants Lena to say yes to this. “You’re not intrusive, or overbearing, or anything else that would convince me that you don’t belong here. You don’t even snore! You are not ruining my private life by being here; in fact, you’ve done nothing but make it better. And even if you did snore,” Kara adds, stubborn and stern in a way that makes the other woman blush and glance away, “Frankly, I wouldn’t care any more than if you sang opera in your sleep. I want you here, Lena. Can’t you see that?”

“I know you do, Kara,” Lena answers, still blushing and clearly touched. “And you’re right. Being around you like this… it’s been nothing but wonderful. But still, your room? It’s one thing to let me sleep on your couch. It’s quite another to offer up your bed as well.”

Now Kara’s begun to blush, but she holds firm. “Let me ask something else, then. I want you to. Do you want to? Because look, if you don’t- I mean, I would totally, completely, absolutely understand if that was something that you wouldn’t ever want-”

This time it’s Lena who swoops in to rescue Kara from her sudden moment of doubt, hands moving from her sweater to cup her face in her hands. It’s a gambit to stop Kara’s knack for rambling and it works like a charm; Kara shuts up within a second, and she wonders if Lena understands just how much power she holds over her.

“I want to, Kara. God knows it gets cold out there in your living room, especially when you leave the windows open-”

“That was one time-”

“-And it can be lonely, too. Funny, I was never all that lonely until I started waking up knowing you were right there in the other room.” Lena’s face softens as she looks Kara up and down, tilting her head and letting out a soft sigh. “I think it would help me, with my nightmares, waking up and knowing that you’re right there next to me.”

“It would help me, too. With my own.” Kara swallows hard and Lena gives her a sad smile, knowing without asking exactly what it is Kara dreams about. If she’s heard the names she cries out, she ought to have a pretty good idea of why they keep her up at night.

Lena’s eyebrow quirks, playful and sincere and giddy and beautiful. “So… we’re really going to try it? Because I’ll warn you, once you let me do this once, you’re going to have a much harder time at convincing me to ever leave your bed.”

“Yeah, I think we should. And I don’t want you to leave! Uh, well, eventually, maybe, once- after all this is over- yes, let’s please just do it.” Kara just gapes, a wide smile growing. Just this once, she lets herself confess. “Is it weird that I’m so excited about this?”

Lena grins back, her thumbs tracing down Kara’s cheekbones. “I don’t think so. Lillian never let me have sleepovers when I was a girl. What could be better than spending all day and all night with your best friend in the world?”

Kara’s heart drops, just for a moment. There is something better, but she knows she won’t ever have it. She keeps her smile rigid upon her face, however, and lets the thought slide away back under the surface. “I bet you’re going to steal all of the blankets, won’t you?”

“How dare you,” Lena says, dropping her hands and reaching for a pillow, ready to hit Kara over the head with it. “Luthors do not steal covers, or snore, or do anything so undignified.”

As Lena raises the pillow up higher, already giggling, Kara presses in, feeling giggly and nervous herself. “I would argue otherwise.”

“I’m warning you, Kara, not one more word!”

“I bet you mumble physics equations in your sleep, or the periodic table- ooh, and I bet your feet are going to be so cold, like little icicles-”

“That’s it!” With a thump, the pillow lands solidly against Kara’s chest and she feigns defeat, slumping backwards and holding a hand over her eyes, glasses askew and her hair all tangled. Lena, of course, looks effortlessly put together even still, sitting above her with a prim and victorious smirk and still gripping onto the pillow with impressive intensity. Even Kara will admit that there was a surprising amount of force behind that hit, even if her fall was for theatrics.

“I can’t believe this,” Kara mutters. “First I open up my home to you, my best friend, and now my bed, and you respond with such a vicious-” Another swing of the pillow arrives, muffling her voice completely.

“You know, I find you to be insufferable most days,” Lena jabs, but she just laughs and laughs, and Kara wishes she could live in this moment forever. Their laughter echoes just right through the apartment and Lena has a glow to her that gives warmth to things that never had it before. This is what made her fall in love, Kara knows. These are the reasons why she’s just as certain she will not fall back out of it, not even at the end of time. If she travelled this far, gave up this much, sacrificed everything she had to lose, Kara understands she won’t give up this. Even if it remains a long buried, corroded secret deep within her heart, there it will remain.

Kara can live with a little rust, so long as it is Lena that remains.

And if this means that she’ll get to wake up with Lena by her side then all the better for it. Kara knows that in the night, she can convince even herself of things that are not real and are not there. Late at night, she can pretend, alone and unimpeded, that Lena does love her, that this is everything she could ever need, and that will be enough.

Rao willing, Kara hopes it will be enough.

Chapter Text

…

The days roll on much the same as they did before, except now, Kara crawls back to her apartment after a Supergirl-related emergency or an after-hours brainstorming session with William at their favorite dive bar and collapses into a bed that has Lena in it. And every time, without fail, Kara’s brain short circuits at the sight and her heart leaps in her throat, as if it’s the first time all over again.

They’ve fallen asleep together before. Not often, sure, and certainly never as conscious and intentional as their ritual is now, but enough that Kara shouldn’t be treating the shape of Lena’s body in her bed as a momentous occasion each and every night. She can’t deny that this feels new, whatever their past may be, and it’s a distraction. Kara doesn’t want to know the hours she’s spent as quiet as she can be in the dead of night, unable to sleep or think or do anything other than feel how warm the other woman is against her side.

It's cruel. Kara can’t deny the fact that she’s subjected herself to absolute misery with this new predicament, all while she’s working very hard to convince herself that this little crush, as she’s taken to calling it, isn’t important and that she’s over it, thank you very much. Kara can’t bear to call it anything more than a passing crush, not when Lena unconsciously reaches out and curls into Kara in her sleep. If Kara allowed herself to see it as anything more, she thinks she might shoot lasers into the ceiling, and she does not want to explain any more superpowered incidents to Mr. Franklin upstairs.

It doesn’t help that as the summer rolls on by with the torturous, wonderful slowness of trickling honey, the sweet smells and the dogged heat making her bedroom hot and steamy – still, Kara lets Lena pull her into an embrace each night. They both know it would make more sense to sleep separate just to escape the sweltering, stifling heat. But she sleeps better when they’re together; Kara can’t deny that once she finally manages to control her breathing enough to let sleep take her, she doesn’t have as many nightmares as before. And when one does happen, when she wakes up frozen with her hands ripping tears into the sheets, Lena is right there.

Lena is there with soft hands that wrap around Kara’s stomach, and even if she’s not fully awake, she switches them around so she is the one wrapped around Kara. Lena is there with soft words of sleep-heavy comfort and even softer lips that accidentally brush against Kara’s bare spine, and it drives Kara crazy. Those nights are the worst – not because of the nightmares, Kara is shocked to realize, but because those are the nights that she can’t swear up and down in her mind that this is just a silly, juvenile infatuation that is wreaking havoc on her body.

She is in love. In the mornings, when she is groggy and so high on the sight of Lena, close enough to count the freckles on her neck, Kara finds that her ability to pretend, one that she’s worked so hard to perfect, grows sloppy and unconvincing in the weak sunlight of the dawn. It’s these moments where Kara understands how throats can burn with things left unsaid. She swallows down the molten words scalding her entire chest, and all it does is drive her that much crazier and that much closer to the edge of her most stubborn resolve, and anyone who knows what love is will understand why this summer becomes the longest in recent memory.

That is why, to the very best of her ability, Kara is avoiding her best friend at all costs. Anything to resist the gravitational force that nearly causes her to crash and burn whenever she’s in Lena’s vicinity. Anything to make that fire that’s found a home in her chest stop sparking and biting at her quite so fiercely.

Of course, Kara isn’t as subtle about it as she thinks she is.

Alex brings it up on a day that sees Lena out of the apartment and deadlocked in tense, frustrating negotiations with the board, her flock of lawyers acting as nervous intermediaries between the unimpressed, hostile board members and Lena, who would rather die before begging for her company and so sticks to thinly disguised insults and barbed threats. She won’t be back home for most of the day if not fully into the night, and Kara is taking the opportunity to do some cleaning and some shopping. Nothing will cheer Lena up more than coming back to see the flowers on the countertop and fresh sheets on the bed, especially because this heat wave has made everything feel sweaty and sticky no matter their efforts. This will feel like a breath refreshing air, Kara hopes, and it’ll be exactly what Lena needs after the day she’s currently having.

As she bustles into her apartment with all her groceries in tow, flowers in one hand and opening her front door with her hip, Kara doesn’t notice her sister lounging in her kitchen until it is too late. And by too late, Kara means that when Alex clears her throat and speaks, she scares the absolute living daylights out of her.

“Why are you avoiding Lena?” Alex asks, and Kara lets out a rather undignified squeak of terror. She drops one of her bags of groceries to the floor that she’d toiled so hard to lug in – pretending all the way to struggle mightily with their weight, mind you. Mrs. Carlson from down the hall is one more strange incident away from learning Kara’s secret identity – or, at the very least, calling the police to conduct a wellness check. The fact of the matter is that Kara can’t afford to zip in and out of her apartment with impossibly heavy objects slung casually over one arm like she once did.

Not that it would have mattered here. Alex scared her bad enough that not even her superpowered reflexes were enough to save her poor groceries. The bag hits the floor, cans of Campbell’s soup rolling every which way. “Rao, Alex!” she huffs out, her shock being traded in for embarrassment. A can of chicken noodle soup comes idly to a stop against her sister’s combat boots, and Alex looks unimpressed by the spectacle. No, not unimpressed; expectant, and maybe even a little accusatory. As her question finally re-enters Kara’s mind, she stoops down to attend to her bruised fruit and squashed bread, hoping that from this angle Alex won’t be able to see how red her ears are.

“Avoiding her?” Kara asks, confused and reluctant to dive into this conversation without having any idea what’s going on. She doesn’t understand where Alex is coming from and has even less of a clue about what this line of questioning is about. Never mind that, in a sense, Alex is right; Kara is avoiding Lena to the very best of her ability. For very good reasons, but undeniable all the same. There’s just no way that her sister should know that. “What are you talking about? You see us together all the time. Always. I mean, if she wasn’t so busy today, I’m sure she’d be here right now.”

Alex remains unfazed. “So, it’s true. You are avoiding her, aren’t you,” she says, phrasing it as a statement of facts rather than looking for confirmation. This time, the accusation is clear and loud in her words and Kara reels back, still not knowing how her sister even got a whiff of this trail in the first place. Everything she just said was true, after all. When Lena and Alex are together, Kara is there.

Though it hasn’t been wholly intentional, Kara will admit that she’s been doing her best to act as a buffer between the other two. While Alex did apologize and Lena did immediately offer her forgiveness, Kara suspects that that show of peace was brought on more by necessity and a mutual agreement to do whatever was best in the pursuit of protecting Kara than of their own free will. And while she will take their mending relationship under whatever circumstances happen to speed it along, Kara does what she can anyway to facilitate as well.

She is both of their favorite person in the world, and she thinks that she’s the only reason that either of them has been coaxed out of their high-strung, tense environments to socialize at all. If Alex had it her way, she’d be stalking up and down the halls of the DEO from dawn to dusk, glaring so hard at the empty containment cells that maybe Lex or Lillian will appear there suddenly, some sort of cosmic apology for upsetting Alex. As for Lena, she spends her days typing furiously away at her ongoing firewall and cyber security improvements, sparring with suits, or crunching away numbers with Brainy on an endless list of projects and ideas. But if she bats her eyelids and pouts at them both for long enough, they agree to go out for drinks, or stay in and watch a movie, or grab lunch over the weekend. Kara makes sure that she is always there in between just in case, so yeah. She really doesn’t know where Alex is coming from.

“Seriously, Alex, what are you talking about?” Kara asks again, completely sincere. “Where did you ever get an idea like that?”

“Your new roommate told me herself,” her sister replies, and Kara freezes. She hadn’t expected that.

“Lena?” she asks, dumbstruck. “What-? When- when would she have had the time to tell you something like that?”

“Most recently? While we were just out for coffee,” Alex says, squinting her eyes. “Who do you think let me into your apartment?”

Still lost, Kara fumbles around on the floor, sweeping the broken pasta noodles back into the box they’d crashed out of. Head stuck firmly under the table in pursuit of a few straggling pieces of angel hair, she shoots back a reply. “You have a key,” she points out, grumbling. “Though that never stopped you from getting inside before.” A beat of silence passes. Kara stays under the table longer than she needs to, brushing her hands across the floor and gathering her composure. “I didn’t know you and Lena did that.”

“Did what?”

Kara grimaces and searches for an answer that’s more tactful than do what friends do. “You know,” she says, trailing off. “Go out for coffee, talk… that kind of stuff.”

She hears the floorboards creak, Alex shifting her weight, and when she glances up, her sister is frowning, arms crossed. “We hang out without you, you know,” Alex informs her, and no, Kara had certainly not known that.

It must show on her face because Alex rolls her eyes immediately and continues talking. “Did you really think that Lena and I were going to let you babysit us every time we had a conversation?”

Kara falters. “Pfft, I don’t do that,” she tries. It doesn’t work for a moment.

“Yes, you do. You might as well be carrying an attendance sheet and wearing a chaperone badge every time the three of us go out for dinner.”

Clearly, the road of denial was not being offered to her. Kara shifts gears and goes down a different route. “Well, can you blame me?” she asks. “I’m just trying to make sure that the two of you are-”

“What, remaining civil?” Alex snorts. “I love you, Kara, and I love your concern, but Lena and I are both adults, believe it or not. We decided to work things out by ourselves without you nervously lurking behind us.”

“Lurking…? That’s a- an aggressive description, I feel like. I’ve just been there to, you know, support the both of you…”

Alex fixes her a look that shuts down any further attempts to ramble her way out of this. “I owed it to her to fix things between us on our own terms, not yours,” she says, softer, and well, Kara can’t object to that. “I didn’t want Lena to think that I was doing everything just because you were twisting my arm. It wouldn’t have been genuine, and besides… like I told you, she was my friend too. I missed spending time with her like we used to, once upon a time.”

Kara stands up at last, beginning the process of depositing her groceries in their rightful places. She is… beyond happy to hear this from Alex. However bluntly her sister may have criticized Kara’s insistence on monitoring them, Alex is right. At the end of the day, Kara being there wouldn’t have solved any of the problems that were under the surface. Lena and Alex knew better than to truly hash things out in front of Kara, who was, to be fair, watching their every interaction with a rapt, nervous energy. It’s really all for the best that they’ve chosen to work things out on their own terms and in complete honesty – though now, Kara can’t help but wonder what it is exactly they’ve been discussing alone as they rebuild their bond.

“And so, you… talk like you used to?” she probes quietly, hoping that her bustling around the apartment is as disarming as she’d like to believe it is. Alex hums, snatching some pretzels from the nearest grocery bag and helping herself. Kara focuses very hard on not going noticeably stiff. There is nothing like her sister stealing her food to make Kara immediately lose what cool and neutrality she’d managed to build up thus far. Call it childish, but Kara takes her food very seriously, especially because she knows Alex is doing it on purpose, pushing her off balance just enough to get her foot in the door.

“If you’re wondering whether or not we still talk about you, then the answer would be yes,” Alex answers with an accompanying snide smile. She chews on the pretzels with an air of smug victory, daring Kara to challenge her. “Among other things, obviously, but you sure do have a talent for headline grabbing. With the stunts you’ve been pulling, I think every other word out of Lena’s mouth this morning was your name.”

Kara flushes, sliding a bundle of kale reserved for Lena far, far back into her fridge and waits for her heartbeat to slow down before offering anything in response.

“I doubt that’s true,” she replies, non-committal. Alex stands up with a smirk and puts the last few food items away, robbing Kara of her excuse to flit around this conversation and keep her hands busy.

She closes the fridge with an air of finality. “Trust me,” Alex says, and when Kara finally is forced to meet her gaze, Alex’s eyebrows are raised. “What’s going on with you?” she asks, circling back to what Kara’s long been dreading. “Why are you avoiding her?”

Kara scoffs, leaning against the fridge. It creaks under her unsteady weight, and she clears her throat. “I’m not,” she lies. “Why would I be?”

Alex shrugs, continuing to pick through Kara’s newly purchased snacks. She begins to peel open a clementine, and Kara knows she is not in a position to complain. Alex is playing nice with her for the time being, letting Kara beat around the bush to her heart’s content. One wrong move on Kara’s part and her sister may just lose patience for their little dance. Kara will blink and suddenly she’ll be ensnared in Alex’s talons – and her sister isn’t the type to stop squeezing until she gets exactly what she’s after. “You tell me,” she says, setting the peel aside. “That’s exactly what I’m so curious about.”

Kara decides to try rationalizing her way out of this, even if she thinks she incapable of thinking with any type of rationale or logic now that she knows her feelings for Lena. “We live together. There is literally no way for me to avoid Lena even if I wanted to.”

Her sister’s gaze sharpens. Kara suspects she’s getting ready to lay down a trap. “Do you want to avoid her?”

“No- no. No! That is not what I said. I said if.” In a panic, Kara reaches for the nearest object she can get her hands on and winds up with a dish towel wrapped tight around her knuckles. If Alex oversteps, maybe Kara will have to snap the towel at her side, wielding it as a weapon.

“Hey, I’m just asking. All I know is what Lena’s told me, and it sure seems like-”

“What did she say?” Kara interrupts brazenly. She needs to know what it is about her behavior that’s tipping Lena off, even if her request is forced and only makes her look more culpable and guilt-laden than before.

“That you’re working yourself to death, which is something I’ve managed to work out for myself on my own. That you disappear at all hours of the night, and you’re out of this apartment so much that you might as well not even live here at this point. And apparently, though she’s been losing sleep wondering if you wandered off somewhere and got yourself kidnapped, Lena is most worried by the fact that you seem to barely be capable of having a conversation with her anymore, much less spare her a passing glance. Which doesn’t seem like you, Kara. You always make time for Lena.”

“I- I’ve been busy!” Kara says, attempting to defend herself, but she can’t help but feel deflated. She’d honestly thought she’d done a better job of disguising her emotional rift from her best friend. Hiding behind a busy schedule and a mask of well-meaning chaos had seemed a perfectly acceptable justification for why she’d been so distant; she really has been busy, and she’d hoped that would be enough. But if it isn’t working – if Lena had seen through her farce from its opening act – Kara can’t imagine what’s been going through her head.

Actually, because she knows Lena so well, Kara has a damn solid guess as to what conclusions her best friend has been hurtling towards, and none of them are good. Kara had made a promise to herself that no matter what, her feelings wouldn’t affect Lena or their friendship. Clearly, that hasn’t been going very well.

She starts chewing on her lip, frowning. “It’s not like we don’t ever see each other.” Kara hesitates, debating whether dropping a smaller, slightly less incendiary bomb on her sister would be worth the embarrassment and the lecture if it simply derailed her sister even for a moment longer. Out of any other options, and brain offering up no clever excuses, Kara decides that it is. “Rao, we share my bed now. Have been all summer long. How can I be avoiding her if we’re sleeping together every night?”

Alex chokes on a slice of her clementine. “You’re doing what?!” she wheezes.

At this point, Kara doubts there’s a single inch of her body that isn’t glowing pink.

“Not like- Alex. It’s not what you think,” she admonishes, her pride being the only reason her words hold any heft to them at all. “It’s not like I was going to make her sleep out on that old, busted couch for months on end. It’s… it’s like a sleepover, alright? We’re making the situation work for the time being.”

“Wow.” Kara can hear the sarcasm drip from even that single syllable. Her sister is unimpressed by this latest twist in the story, and for someone who is finally in on the joke, Kara can understand why. The last thing she needs to do is to fall asleep with Lena in her arms every night, and yet here she is, playing the part gladly. “Clearly, something is not working,” Alex points out. Kara takes a seat at the table and traces her fingers along the edge. No shit, Alex.

“We’re managing,” Kara says instead. Alex follows doggedly and sits across from her at the table, and for half a second Kara thinks she might haul over the lamp in the corner, just to make this interrogation a little more cinematic.

“If Lena is still worried that you’re avoiding her even with that, then you’ve got a real problem here,” Alex muses. Reaching up, she begins to play with the petals of the fresh flowers that Kara’s bought for Lena. She wrinkles her nose, unable to decide if she’s more annoyed by her sister ransacking everything in her apartment or the fact that she’s right. Kara does have a problem, and it’s apparent that not even Eliza’s excellent advice is rescuing her from it.

“Kara,” Alex starts again, dropping her hands to her lap and appearing to all the world like she’s ready to play good cop, complete with a look of gentle concern on her face and an open, relaxed posture. Kara nearly predicts the exact moment that her sister leans across the table and puts a hand on her shoulder. The scene may as well have been blocked out and rehearsed exactly, with Alex as the sympathetic, searching hero and Kara the reluctant confessor. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve been acting… different, lately.”

Kara pinches the bridge of her nose, reminding herself repeatedly not to bite. Alex is being genuine, but still Kara can’t think of anything worse than revealing to her sister the real root of her shift, which is that she’s discovered she’s hopelessly in love with her best friend. Not for any outwardly bad reason; her sister is as loyal and trustworthy and supportive as big sisters come, and Kara desperately wants to tell her everything. Rao, Alex was her main accomplice in keeping her biggest secret, but that isn’t why Kara can’t tell her.

No, Kara can’t tell her because once she tells Alex, the most important person in her life, the truth, all this becomes real. There will be no denying it ever happened, no passing it off as a phase or a brief flash of confusing, conflicting emotions, and there will be no moving on. Not ever. Besides, as she is demonstrating right now, Alex loves interfering in matters where Kara’s well-being is involved. Other enduring a multitude of exasperated sighs and a few dozen rounds of I told you so’s, Alex may hear the whole story and interpret things the wrong way. If Kara isn’t careful, her sister may decide that really, Kara would be better off telling Lena exactly how she feels about her, and if that happens her sister won’t stop until she makes that happen.

It would be a disastrous, apocalyptic turn of events, and so Kara keeps her mouth shut tight, no matter how high the pressure rises and crashes against her throat and her skull. She’s Supergirl. She’s been hiding her secret identity her whole life on earth. Hiding one single secret from her sister should be a walk in the park for her.

“Alex, it’s nothing,” she mumbles, stalling for time. Kara understands she’s going to have to give Alex some sort of answer – and it had better be a believable one. Her sister has never been one to entertain little white lies. “I’ve had a lot on my mind, is all. I guess I’ve been a bit lost inside my own head.”

Her sister sighs. “I know you are,” she says. “I know how you get when you’re faced with a problem you can’t easily fix yourself. And as your partner through most of those problems, I’m usually content to let you work things out for yourself.”

“But not this time,” Kara guesses, unable to keep some of her annoyance out of her tone. It’s hard enough to keep Alex in the dark about all this when she has time to prepare; her sister’s sudden appearance in her apartment, paired with her blind, stabbing, unsolicited advice is not helping Kara to remain calm, and it’s touching a nerve.

“This time, the stakes are a bit too life-threatening on your end to let you forge ahead on your own. Come on, Kara. This is just Big Sister 101, here. Rule number one is to not let my little sister get in over her head and get herself hurt.”

Kara fights a grimace, knowing that she’s likely been breaking every rule in Alex’s book with her decision-making lately. Alex, keeping her features impassive, speaks again. “More than that…” There, for just a flash, Kara sees her sister’s eyes soften, and she looks away. “Well, this time around, I’m trying hard to be more than just your sister. I’m also doing what I can to be a good friend to Lena. A better one than I have been, anyway. Part of my deal I made with myself when deciding to make it up to her was to look out for her as well, just as much as you. That’s why I’m here.”

Well, there’s no way for Kara to argue with intentions like that. She stares down at the table. “I really haven’t meant to ignore her,” she says. “How upset is she?”

“Oh, you know Lena,” Alex answers with a wave of her hand, and despite her airy tone, Kara’s heart sinks into her stomach. She does know Lena, and no matter how casual Alex can explain it, she knows that in this scenario, whatever her best friend is thinking, if she’s brought it up to Alex, it isn’t good. “She’s talented at hiding her emotions, that’s for sure. About everything… but you. Let’s just say I was able to glean the whole picture early on.”

Oddly, Kara suddenly fights back a surreal grin. If only Alex knew just how much of the picture she was still missing. She has no idea just how swirling these waters are that she’s decided to ford through.

“And does Lena even want you doing this?” Kara asks. “Because she’s not normally the type to hold her tongue and let other people do her talking for her.”

Alex scoffs, growing exasperated. Kara has a sudden, naïve flash of hope that maybe she can simply talk in circles long enough to wear her sister down. “Normally, no, but I don’t think you realize how many things she keeps to herself regarding you.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

Kara’s indignant response is dead on arrival, Alex ignoring her entirely. “Why does any of this matter anyway?” she asks, eyes narrowed. Kara’s ragged remains of hope that she can somehow worm her way out of this die too. “Who cares about the specifics of who brings it up or where or why. That’s completely irrelevant. Shouldn’t you be more concerned with the fact that this problem exists in the first place, and how to course-correct whatever you’ve been doing?”

“Whatever I’ve been doing- I’ve been busy!” Kara cries out, eyes wide and hands thrown up in the air, asking Alex what more she expects of her. Even without all the extra weight she’s taken onto her shoulders lately, it’s not like Kara’s ever lived a life of leisure as Supergirl. She can’t understand why that isn’t enough for her sister to buy into this time around.

Alex’s eyes dart to Kara’s expression and her hands, and takes it for a sign of surrender instead, closing in for the kill. “Sure you are, but Kara, that excuse has never once applied to Lena. You would normally turn back time if it meant having even a few more seconds to spare in your day for her. You used to be willing to do just about anything to be with her. What’s changed now, especially given what you two went through?”

It's Alex’s superpower, getting the truth out of Kara, and she resists the hypnotic pull with all she can. Still, it’s no use. Her sister has her trapped in a corner of her own making. The one constant, irrefutable, unchangeable quality of Kara’s is that, when it comes to Lena, Kara puts her first. Always, no matter what. That has always been true, even amid their fallout, and Alex knows this and has turned it on its head with deadly precision.

She’s reminded suddenly of Lena teaching her to play chess over a bottle of wine when they first became best friends, giggling and teaching Kara strategy that she immediately bowled over with clumsy moves. It was worth it to see the little smile that would grow on Lena’s face as she masterfully tore apart Kara’s defenses, taking her king with ease even while drunk.

While she didn’t learn much, she does remember this. Kara accepts that if she’s going to get out of this somewhat intact, she’s going to have to sacrifice some big pieces. “It’s been for a good reason,” she blurts out after a long, dragging silence, and Alex’s nostrils flare, triumphant and conquering and hopefully blind to Kara’s own ploy she’s trying to put into play.

“With your sense of logic lately, that could be debatable,” Alex replies, drawling and self-assured in her victory. She can tease all she wants. Kara has given her a convenient thread to pull on any time, so long as she doesn’t bother to peek behind the curtain.

“It is,” she insists, chin held high. Rao, just because this was her only option doesn’t mean that she likes what she’s about to do. Kara doesn’t want to begin to imagine just how angry her sister is about to be. She prefers this relaxed arrogance to what will likely come next. “I have my duties as Supergirl, obviously, which I can’t step away from-”

“You definitely could,” her sister interrupts, crossing her arms. Kara knows how she feels about this and considers faking a sudden emergency just to spite her. “One could even argue that you should, given our roster of perfectly capable superhero friends and the fact that you carry the biggest bounty in the criminal underworld currently.”

Kara waves that aside. “One has had this argument before, and you won’t be changing my mind the 30th time you bring it up any more than you did the first time.”

“A girl can try, can’t she?”

Sending a scowl in Alex’s general direction, Kara heaves out a breath. “I’ve been investigating CADMUS during my time at Catco. Exposing them as a reporter, too, not just as Supergirl.”

Silence falls over the kitchen, and Alex’s smile slides swift and lopsided off her face. “You’re doing what, now?” she asks, voice extinguished off all light-heartedness. Knowing that she’s dropped the bomb and there will be no safe harbor, Kara tightens her jaw and braces for impact against the sharp rocks.

“Look, before you say anything- I can bring them down this way,” she reasons. Kara keeps her voice firm and tight and leaves no room for argument. “As Supergirl I can punch my way through as many henchmen as I can find, stop crimes as they happen, maybe even get lucky and destroy a lab or a warehouse or two, but I’m no closer to fixing anything. I’m just swinging at the branches, and those will grow back. But as Kara – just Kara, no cape or boots or anything else – I can attack at the root. They won’t be able to regroup and continue to come back month after month if I use both of my identities to my advantage."

"Are you done?" her sister asks, her own voice tight. Kara squares her shoulders.

"I had to do something, Alex. I couldn’t stand it any longer.”

That little speech was as far as she’d managed to rehearse, but it’s clear that it won’t be enough to sway her sister, who’s growing more prickly by the minute. Lips thin and white as she bites back a snarl, Alex just sits there and Kara just squirms, which is probably exactly what Alex wants. One of her favorite tactics is staying back and letting Kara stew in her own mess.

“So, let me get this straight,” Alex grits out, words silky and dangerous. “During all our team meetings, when we came up with battle strategies, best practices, and safety nets that we all mutually agreed to follow to keep everyone safe, you do remember the agreement to not go after CADMUS alone, don’t you? The one aimed specifically at you?”

Kara frowns. For a person normally so ambivalent towards following the rules, Alex sure likes to throw the letter of the law right in her face. “Of course, I do,” she says. “I think you would have had me thrown in a containment cell had I not agreed to our… guidelines we put in place.”

Her sister’s eyes flash. “Not guidelines, Kara. Rules. And don’t make me change my mind about locking you up. I will do it, and throw Lena in too, and the two of you can stay in there until all of this is over and done with.” Kara gulps. A few months ago, she would have had no problem co-existing with Lena like that. But now, she thinks that that close of proximity with nowhere to go or hide would probably cause her premature death. She nods slowly in understanding, and Alex’s ears stop shooting steam.

Alex takes in a deep, barely controlled breath in. “If you remember the rules, then please share with me why you would ever think that this idea of yours would be seen as anything other than stupid, reckless, and just plain terrible.”

“I’m not breaking the rules. I’m not doing it alone,” Kara explains. “I’m working with William on this as my partner. Where he goes, I go, and vice versa.”

“William?” Alex starts to laugh hard at that, and Kara wonders if she should be offended on the man’s behalf. “Kara, what the hell is he going to do to protect you?”

She crosses her arms, ready to come to William’s defense. “He’s resourceful!” Kara argues.

“He’s probably the type of reporter that buys into the thought that a good reporter is a dead one,” Alex bites back. “Sorry, but I don’t see that serving you very well seeing as we’re all trying to keep you very much alive!”

“That’s not fair! Sure, he may not be a trained agent, or- or have any powers, but he has my back! He believes in the same things that I do, and besides – I don’t need protection. I think I’ve made that very clear.”

Her sister stares off somewhere into the distance, looking like she’s debating whether to just strangle Kara and collect the reward from Lex herself. “You need it as much as anyone else right now, and I know William is very tall and righteous and probably fancies himself as heroic, but he won’t be able to help you.”

“So what? Two heads are better than one, and he’s going to help me fix this mess that much quicker!”

Alex seethes. “So, I’m saying that your Girl Friday here is nothing but an enthusiastic lame duck, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to get the both of you killed over something pointless and unnecessary.”

That touches a nerve. Kara rears back. “Now you’re telling me that I’m not allowed to do my job anymore? That I’m supposed to ignore a story that would help save a lot of people, all of us included?”

“You can go to Catco. We all agreed on that,” Alex grates out, reluctant to even allow Kara that point. Now her arms are crossed too, and so the two of them sit in a stalemate, neither inclined to budge. Kara wonders how their mother ever survived being the negotiator in their standoffs; now that she’s considering it, perhaps Eliza was more of a hostage. Kara can certainly relate to the feeling now. “For the sake of keeping your job and maintaining your life as Kara Danvers in the long-term, you have to go to work. But none of us intended that to mean that you would then start… galivanting around and putting your neck on the chopping block just to write a more interesting story than Andrea’s fluff pieces!”

“This isn’t just some- some distraction for me at Catco,” Kara says. “I know for a fact that this can work because it did before. This is how I defeated Lex the first time around, and-”

“That was a different world,” Alex interjects, and Kara’s blood pressure rises. She knew this was the route her sister would take, but its predictability does not negate just how frustrating it is to hear. “A different reality. Not to mention that Lex remembers what happened, and he rewrote things to be this way. He is not the type to let you pull this stunt again. You won’t be winning a Pulitzer at his expense ever again.”

“William and I have been working on this all summer, and we are so close. The evidence is still there,” Kara argues right back. “Maybe it’s not as easy to thread together, and maybe there won’t be enough there to take Lex himself down, but it’ll be a start. Think about how much more you can do at the DEO once CADMUS gets crippled.”

“We’ll get to them eventually-”

“But not soon enough,” Kara cuts in, taking a breath. “I’m not after an award, Alex. I’m not doing this for glory, or revenge, or out of boredom. I’m just trying to do what I can to expose them for what they really are. Just imagine all the good it’ll do once- once people’s names are finally cleared and everything is set right.”

Alex pauses, then thinks better of it and closes her mouth completely. In a rare show of restraint, she seems to really let Kara’s words sink in before she speaks again.

When she finally does, her words ring out like a shot.

“Oh my God. This is for Lena, isn’t it?”

“I- It’s not… not only for her,” Kara says, letting her admittance slip out quickly. Alex sits forward in her chair, looking like she can’t believe the thought didn’t come to her sooner. There’s a new and different kind of intensity adding fuel to her fire, now. “Yes, will this help her get out of the hole Lex and Lillian have thrown her into? Hopefully, yes, but really, the scope of this is just so much bigger than any one person-”

“I should have known. Of course, this is about her.” Alex stares hard at her with bright, probing eyes. Kara is surprised to find no anger at Lena in her words, seeing as Alex has been prone to pointing fingers at her whenever Kara gets into something disastrous. But her sister seems to have really meant it when she promised to treat Lena differently, and now the only thing happening is Alex recontextualizing everything in her head.

After a beat, Alex actually starts to laugh. Apparently, whatever conclusions she’s come to while regrouping is causing hysterics. “Oh, no wonder you’ve been walking on eggshells around her. As soon as she finds out what you’ve really been up to, you’re going to get your ass handed to you.”

“She’s not going to find out,” Kara states, incredulous that Alex would even think that. “There is no chance I’m going to tell her anything and- and get her hopes up about a long shot-”

“Getting her hopes up should be the least of your concerns.”

Kara groans silently to herself. Alex is right again, and it’s causing Kara to feel embarrassingly huffy about every word that comes out of her mouth. “Now you know. There’s a reason I’m avoiding her,” she says, side-stepping any acknowledgement of what Alex is saying. “The less I’m around her, the more work I can get done – and the less of a chance there is for anything to slip out somehow.”

Alex suddenly stands up, looking a bit reckless. “A good plan, except for one thing. You may not tell Lena anything, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Kara actually lets out a gasp. “No, you’re not,” she says in complete disbelief, bowled over by the suggestion. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Her sister looks jumpy, legs tensing as Kara stands up from the table as well. Alex wouldn’t do something as stupid as trying to make a run for it… would she? “Yes, I would,” she says, moving away from Kara with as much confidence as she can muster. Whatever it takes for her to remain the dominant force in the room, Kara supposes. “You clearly aren’t seeing reason, and I know that I won’t be able to get you to stop. No one will be able to – nobody has that power – except for Lena.”

“Alex,” Kara warns, stepping around the table. She can hardly believe her eyes as Alex shifts and scuttles the other way around, as If they’re playing a game of tag on the playground. Kara is beginning to think that there isn’t anything Alex wouldn’t do in the name of getting Kara to listen to her. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”

“Whatever. Just try and stop me.” With that, Alex strides slowly towards the door, full of bluster and a hot head and probably hoping that her intimidation factor that normally works so well on everyone else will leave Kara stunned and in the dust.

It does not.

With her speed, Kara beats Alex to the door by a wide margin, calling her bluff. Alex tries to reach around for the door handle, but Kara blocks her every move. “Really?” she asks, eyebrow raised. “We are so not done with this conversation.” Alex’s eyes flicker over to the countertop.

“I’m leaving. We can finish this later, with more people in the room, if necessary,” Alex announces, and then waits for her sister to wilt out of her path. Kara doesn’t move an inch, and she watches as a muscle dances along Alex’s throat as she clenches and unclenches her jaw. In a sudden leap, she makes a move back towards the kitchen, and Kara catches just in time that it’s her cell phone that Alex is making a lunge for.

Luckily, Kara’s powers offer her the advantage in almost every situation, even one as childish as this. Though it’s definitely an irresponsible and ridiculous use of her abilities, she flies into the air and plucks the phone from the countertop anyway. Alex just barely misses, slamming her palms into the countertop as she tries to slow her momentum. Holding the phone just out of reach, Kara hovers slowly back down in front of the door, shaking her head.

“Seriously,” she deadpans. “A little juvenile, don’t you think?”

“You’re the one playing keep away with my phone.” Alex stomps her foot against the floor, not exactly helping her own case, but she’s clearly incensed by the entire exchange. “God, you’re so annoying,” she glowers. “I’m going to tell her one way or another.”

“And what? You’ll throw a tantrum if you don’t?” Kara counters. They’ll laugh about this someday, but right now she needs to draw all her sister’s fire and distract her until she can come up with some sort of Hail Mary, saving grace move.

“Fine. If you insist on holding me prisoner, I’ll just stay here then.” Alex crosses over to the living room and sits rigidly on the couch, much too angry and riled up to even sink into the cushions. “Lena will be back eventually, and all the better for it. This way I’ll get to see the look on your face while she chews you out.”

“Oh no, you’re not,” Kara says, moving away from the door without thinking before stopping, the reality of her predicament hitting her like a slap to the face. No matter what she does, Alex is going to tell Lena in some shape or form. Getting stuck between a rock and a hard place sounds cozier than the trap she’s currently in.

“Carry me out, then,” Alex goads, knowing exactly what’s just dawned on Kara. “I’ll give your neighbors a good show, and then I’ll track Lena down myself. There is nothing you can do to stop me.”

Kara seethes, stalling desperately for time as she tries to dig up something to use against Alex that would hold any sort of leverage.

“If you do that, I- I’ll tell Kelly that you’re allergic to shellfish and have refused to tell her even though you break out in hives whenever she cooks it for you. Or, that you ripped your pants on stage during your high school graduation,” Kara threatens, despite knowing in her heart that these are little pebbles that will not be enough to fell Goliath, no matter how hard she slings them. “I’ll tell J’onn that you don’t think he can be trusted to pick out his own outfits in the morning, and I’ll tell Brainy that it was you who broke his favorite mug, not Montoya!”

Alex scoffs, though her cheeks did grow pink at the memory of graduation. “I’m marrying Kelly. You think I never got the guts to tell her about the seafood? She’s one of my medical emergency contacts now. You know what? Go ahead and spill whatever secrets of mine that you want. Mine is so, so much better.”

With that tactic flushed soundly down the drain, Kara is forced to face the fact that her arsenal is empty and what arrows she did have were dull and broken anyways. There’s only one thing left for her to do, but as prideful and angry as she is right now, Kara really doesn’t want to do it.

An image of Lena storming in through the door flashes through her mind, and Kara’s reservations are made up. This is something she must do for the greater good that is her own personal life and tangled relationships.

“I’m asking you not to, Alex. I’m begging you. Please, keep this between us,” Kara says, the fight limping from her voice. Here is her white flag of surrender, and really, it’s up to Alex to decide the terms. “This is how I can help her get her own life back. I’ve tried it your way. It… it just wasn’t enough.”

Alex’s voice is not so soft, remaining scratchy and steely. “Don’t you realize how this is all going to play out? How you’re going to be made an example of if you dare to go after Lex with both sides of your identity? What if he reveals who you are to the world? What if you doing this is exactly the chance he’s been hoping for this whole time?”

Kara shrugs. “I’m in danger of all of that happening no matter what,” she reasons. “Lex could have given away my identity at any time, but he’s too twisted. He enjoys the game far too much to ruin the fun. And I could be attacked getting groceries, or working with the Fire Department, or walking out of the DEO. Come on, Alex. You know that.”

“I know that you’re making far too many assumptions about a man who’s capable of shedding his skin at a moment’s notice if it means putting you permanently into the dirt.”

“Rao, Alex, when are we going to stop being so afraid of him? I’m tired of cowering in the corner like some shadow on the wall-”

Alex chokes on her words in her haste to get them out. “If you’d been cowering this whole time, Kara, I’d be a much more relaxed woman. None of this counts as hiding! None of this is keeping you safe!”

“-I pulled it off last time. If you’d just give me a chance to try and do it again-”

“Okay, why don’t we talk about what happened last time, since you’re so insistent on bringing it up. You do remember, don’t you?”

Kara does indeed remember, and she isn’t so keen on revisiting it. “I caught him red-handed,” she replies with a shrug, abjectly determined to stick to only the surface level facts. The good parts of that victory, not its fallout. “The people turned against him, and that’s what’s most important. That’s what Lex is most afraid of, not being the Golden Boy anymore. He had to rewrite reality just to recover from it.”

It's true, and maybe even a halfway-decent answer, but Alex’s stare remains unflinching. “He told Lena the truth,” she says. “He took from you the one chance you had to do it right and look what it cost you. I know you remember that.”

Kara’s heart clenches around nothing. While it’s not as potent as it was the day Lena ripped the rug out from beneath her, the knowledge that she’s failed her best friend in every way she could still knocks her breath away. She’d failed to take care of Lex herself. She’d forced Lena’s hand in her willingness to look away and assume that Lex had died. She’d failed to tell Lena the one secret that she’d been guarding all her life, and because of it, they both had hurt so badly.

It makes Kara wonder about how she could feel Lena this time around if she remains true.

“That wasn’t because of my article,” she argues. “There’s no connection or indication that-”

“No connection?” Alex bats that claim aside with a roll of her eyes. “It was retaliation, plain and simple. You stole his pride, hurt him in a way only you could, and so he did the same to you. Makes you think about what he could be capable of this time around, huh?”

Kara hates that her sister has just voiced the exact fears that were running through her head.

“There are no more secrets to reveal. No- no more weaknesses to exploit,” Kara tries. “It’ll be different, this time. Lex doesn’t hold the power of that secret over me now.”

Alex’s eyebrows knit together, and Kara wonders if they’re thinking about the same thing. Her big secret may be out, but they are both aware that Kara is wrong to say that Lex has no more weak spots to abuse. If anything, she has more of them now that she’s fully in the know about her feelings. The stakes have only climbed higher.

Not that Lex knows what Kara’s hiding now. There is no indication of her feelings to anyone but her closest friends. Her enemies must be blind to it when she was so oblivious to it herself… right?

The thought of anything different is one that Kara simply can’t bear to entertain.

“What if that doesn’t matter?” Alex asks finally. “He may not have something like that to hold over your head, but that doesn’t mean he’s got nothing. What if he decides he has nothing left to lose and goes after you himself? Goes after all of us?”

“He will,” Kara states plainly, doing away with her optimism for the moment and leaning hard into the darker, swirling emotions she holds deep. Normally, that kind of unforgiving realism remains dormant and ignored, but Kara feels it waking up now. If they’re going to start talking about worst case scenarios, she thinks she ought to act a little more Kryptonian, a little more her parents’ daughter. It seems fitting, given the life she’s been leading lately. She hasn’t felt this sense of impending doom in such a long time that, if she didn’t know any better, Kara would wonder if the Earth wasn’t halfway towards collapsing in on itself. “He already has been. You’re right about the possibility that he may speed his plans along. And if we’re not prepared for it, it’ll likely be fatal.”

“You really know how to help your own case, don’t you?” Alex says, snide and clearly unhappy with whatever mental images Kara’s words have conjured up.

“But we will be prepared,” Kara urges. Even against the doom, she is reminded of how unrelenting her family stood firm against it all, hoping and praying and fighting for their planet until the very last moment. And even still, Kara can’t help but linger on the fact that not even this was enough to save them in the end – but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t matter. Their daughter carries that same hope inside her despite it all. That means something – that it was not all in vain, what they fought for. “I’m asking you to let me do this before it’s too late. Before there is nothing that any of us can do to stop what’s coming. Let me go after him in any way I can while you and the others focus on how to protect me and everyone else.”

Alex settles against the countertop, stilling and glancing at Kara in her periphery. “What do you mean?” she asks, biting at the line that Kara has so carefully cast across their oceanic divide, and Kara begins to tug back ever so carefully.

“When I publish my article, Lex will go after me in as public of a fashion as he can manage,” she reasons. “He is a smart, cunning man, but he is predictable and unimaginative when it comes to revenge. His emotions will get the best of him, and Lex will want to cause a spectacle. He will want the entire world to see what happens to me, and I can use that to force his hand.”

“So, you want to use yourself as bait?” Alex asks, looking extremely unimpressed. “And to think, you were just accusing Lex of being the unoriginal one.”

Something in Kara tightens, growing close to snapping. Her sister just can’t understand the difficulty of the situation that Kara is in, and no matter how many times they do this, she never will. That fact is getting harder and harder to swallow down by the minute. “You think it’ll be my choice one way or another?” she grits out. “You think I will ever get off from this hook? I’m the bait, no matter what I do or say or write.”

“It wouldn’t be so bad if the bait agreed to stay in her damn tin can,” her sister swipes right back. “Honestly, I thought you’d be at least slightly more cautious, given all the ways Lex can kill you now-”

“Alex-”

“But no, if anything, you’ve become more out of control than ever before! Your recklessness is turning into behavior that is far more concerning, and while I don’t want to believe it, I would say that you’re the only one who isn’t scared shitless of what could happen-”

“Don’t you DARE accuse me of not being scared!” Kara thunders, unable to control those swirling emotions any longer. This is the danger of letting these demons off their leash. They can only be kept at bay for so long, and now Alex is going to be their victim. “I am terrified, Alex! Do you have any idea what it’s been like, getting a little bit more vulnerable every week? To go out on missions knowing that it’s getting more and more likely that I’ll come back hurt and in pain?”

Her roaring outburst shuts Alex up at the very least, and her sister blanches, at a loss for how to proceed. “No, you know I don’t” she says. It’s an empty phrase full of nothing, and Kara treats it as such.

“Do you have any idea what it’s been like, limping back to my apartment more days than I’m able to walk or fly? I sit up at night because I don’t want to know what terrible scenarios my mind has in store for my dreams. Even then, I stay awake and stare at an imaginary Doomsday Clock on my wall, watching it tick down. Do you know what it’s like, knowing that it will be your head displayed on the wall first? Knowing that no matter what happens, my name is first on the list of the people who will die, and there won’t be anything I can do to protect anyone else?”

Alex leans back as far as she can against the cabinets, as if shrinking away from the shadows that Kara is casting. The sun is beginning to set, Lena will be back soon, and Kara feels as if she’s spent her entire day retreading things that only serve to make her heart heavier. It makes her want to scream.

“It’s been hard on you. I know that,” Alex tries again, suddenly on her heels for the first time and Kara knows that it’s not a place that Alex is accustomed to being. Despite her sister backing down, Kara remains intent on pushing forward.

“Do you?” she asks. “I make sure that I keep it to myself as much as I can. Nobody wants to see Supergirl fly around with her cape between her legs. But I pace around here when Lena is asleep, and I wonder if today was the day that Lillian and Lex finally got through to those files. If tomorrow, they’ll be ready to test out some awful new weapon on me. If next week, they’ll be right outside my apartment door, tired of their game and ready to put me down before any of you even realize something is wrong. And all anyone tells me to do is to sit tight, grit my teeth, close my eyes, and wait for the end to come.”

“We never meant for it to come across like-”

Kara cuts Alex down as if she’s thin air. “I’m expected to be a prisoner, here. Don’t you know how crazy I’m going? How powerless and alone and afraid I am, glancing up at that clock that keeps ticking and knowing how little progress is being made? How useless it is to do things this way when I have so much power and ability to create change as Supergirl and as Kara Danvers?”

Alex winces, staring up at the ceiling. “That’s not fair,” she protests, her words made of cellophane. “We’re only trying to-”

“Of course, you are,” Kara cuts back in, albeit with a softer tone. As angry as she is about all of this, she never wants Alex to think that Kara is resentful of the work her friends have been doing. Everyone has made sacrifices, and Kara is not blind to that fact. She is not alone in this Sisyphean resistance against what’s coming, and she knows that everyone shares in her same fears and frustrations. “We’re all trying to fix this in our own ways. Some have been given more freedom than others, and that’s what makes me mad. I can’t stand the fact that everyone else has gotten the blessing to risk everything on my behalf to stop CADMUS, while I’m expected to do nothing. Come on, Alex. You know I can’t do that. I won’t.”

“Kara,” Alex says weakly, knowing Kara’s made a point she can’t argue with any force against. Even as the glow of her burst of anger begins to fade and a healthy dose of regret takes its place, Kara can’t help but relish in the feeling of finally getting one over on her sister. “It’s your situation that’s different. Sure, we’re all risking our necks, but like you said, it’s you that Lex wants dead most. You’re his priority, so you also need to be ours.”

“If I was really the priority, you would see just how helpful I could be. How this plan will work.”

Alex’s gaze crumbles. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” she answers back.

Kara lets out a slow breath through her nose, suddenly spent. All they do is go in circles around this debate, and as two polarly opposed forces, there will never be any ground gained or progress made. They both just continue to spin, treading water with hard glares and tense jaws, and Kara can’t take another second of it. “Here,” she says, sliding Alex’s phone back across to her. Still looking like a kicked puppy, Alex’s stare jolts back up to her in surprise. “Call Lena. Round up an entire group of our friends to yell at me. Do whatever you want. I don’t care anymore.” She looks away, unable to stand another second of this. “Just this once, I wish you wouldn’t be so afraid of my failing that you refuse to trust me or believe in what I can do.”

Her sister picks up the phone, its weight heavier now. She looks uncomfortable. And yeah, maybe Kara should feel a little bit bad about just how thickly she just laid on the guilt treatment, but it was a long time coming, and it was sincere on her part. Alex tries to control her even with the best of intentions, but Kara can’t handle the restraints any longer.

This isn’t a ploy to manipulate Alex into one trap or another, it is truly a white flag. Kara is exhausted, and discouraged, and all the more determined to move forward with her plan. If that means losing Alex and Lena and whoever else in the process, then so be it. So long as it keeps them safe, Kara can live with the rift.

“I do trust you,” Alex says quietly, turning the phone over in her hands. “More than anyone. And I know that if you write that article, it will be fantastic, and decisive, and it will achieve everything that you want it to. I’m not scared of you failing, Kara. I never have been. I’m scared that I will.”

Even as new hope flutters in her chest, spurred on by the fact that Alex seems to be looking down at her hands with equal parts shame and distaste, Kara doesn’t quite catch on. She abandons her position by the door for good, stepping closer to her sister. “What? How could you fail me?”

Alex pockets her phone with a sense of finality, meeting Kara’s gaze. “You said it yourself. We know what Lex and Lillian will do. If you offer yourself up to CADMUS as an easy target by spitting in their face like this, you’ll be in immediate danger, and you’ll need me and the rest of the team to figure out how to protect you.”

Kara’s eyes squint, still feeling unsure. “You always do,” she says. “Alex, there’s never been a time when you failed to save my butt from whatever-”

“Yeah, well, there’s a first time for everything,” Alex replies, some cageyness returning to her tone. Old habits and coping mechanisms, Kara supposes – and she knows how much Alex hates talking about this. “With what Lex could have up his sleeve, whatever I do, it just… it might not be enough.”

“It will.” Kara stands firm, hoping to break Alex out of this funk. She doesn’t like to see her sister like this, lost in her own mind with her tactician’s nightmares and her cold, gnawing self-doubt coming out to play with a menace. Her sister is not a coward, and she does not hesitate much, but when it comes to Kara, fear – of loss, of failure, of death – holds jurisdiction over everything. “I know it will.”

Alex’s face pinches at the words. “And how do you know that?”

“Because I trust you, Alex,” Kara says simply, repeating her sister’s words from before. “More than anyone. And yeah, I wish it wasn’t this way, and I wish I didn’t have to burden you with something like this, but there is no one who I’d rather have my back. We look out for each other, remember?”

Alex says nothing, just stares and stares at the floor. Kara realizes far too late that the reason her sister refuses to meet her eyes is because she is trying hard not to cry. Not that she can blame her for it; really, they’re afraid of the exact same thing, and for that reason, and because she needs it too, Kara crosses the kitchen floor with a purpose and wraps Alex up into a hug.

As always, Alex tightens the embrace. It’s something she’s always done without ever thinking about it, and it’s a gesture that Kara appreciates deeply. For someone who will never be able to squeeze as tight or get as close as she desperately craves to be, it’s nice to know that at least Alex can. At least one of them can bring a fierceness to these embraces without worrying about snapping any bones or rupturing any organs.

“I’m sorry.” Alex’s voice arrives muffled and faint through the fabric of Kara’s shirt. “I… I don’t want to lock you away, or ruin your plans, or forbid you from helping, or any of that. I’m not your warden, or your boss, or bully. It’s just that I react without stopping to think, and lately, all my instincts have been coming from a dark place. It’s been easier to deal with the fear by forcing you to just… hide away from it all. But that’s not fair to you, and I know in my heart that it’s not solving any of our problems, either.”

“You’re my big sister,” Kara answers, letting herself sink fully into Alex’s arms. Even if it’s nowhere close to the entirety of the truth about what she’s been dealing with, lately, it’s a relief to be able to get some of the pressure off. The weight of everything – of CADMUS, of keeping her family safe, of falling in love with Lena and not being able to say anything about it – is still suffocating, but this feels better, even if it’s only so slight. It’s like peeling a hand from her throat one finger at a time, and Kara is thankful for any release from the oppressive hold that she can find.

“And I know how you are. If you hadn’t reacted that way, I’d have been worried that someone else had taken over your body.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers with me that one time,” Alex says, breaking their hug with a teasing shove. “You’ve been so paranoid about it ever since.”

“Can you blame me?” Kara deadpans. “I’m an alien. We fight evil aliens. J’onn can shapeshift, and I know for a fact that there are species out there that make that movie pale in comparison. I’m surprised nothing that weird has happened to us yet.”

She earns a smile from her sister, and a real one at that. The first one they’ve shared since all of this began, and Kara welcomes the return to their familiar banter. “One world-ending threat at a time, please,” Alex says with a smirk, and though there is newfound levity in the air, Kara knows that this isn’t easy for her sister. She drags her hands down her face, groaning and glancing up at Kara with a raised eyebrow. “I really can’t get you to reconsider?” she asks.

Kara shakes her head with a slow, sad smile. Old habits die hard, and she knows that this is something that Alex is fighting off with every fiber of her being. “No, you can’t,” she says gently.

The lines on Alex’s face seem to deepen in response, but she takes the answer like a champ, remaining calm save for the fact that she’s chewing on her bottom lip furiously. “I figured,” she answers, then shoots Kara a quick, pleading glance. “How about letting me send J’onn along to tail you, just for the sake of safety? You wouldn’t even know he’s there, and it would be great practice for his PI business-”

“Absolutely not,” Kara says, adding enough force to shut that thought down for good. It’s only fair to let her sister slowly recognize the death knell of all of her plans, but Kara can’t leave any room for meddling. Involving William is dangerous enough. Kara won’t entertain anyone else hoping to hitch a ride.

Alex lets out a puff of air. “Kara, you’ve got to let me do something,” she pleads. “Just because I’m going to let you do this doesn’t mean you can expect me to stand aside and watch. You’re going to make my hair turn white if you run off without me knowing.”

Like it or not, her sister has a point. Kara can’t be so eager to keep this a secret that she needlessly forsakes her own safety. A line has to be drawn somewhere, but she would be foolish to keep Alex completely in the dark after they worked through all of this.

Besides, Alex’s hair would probably start to fall out in clumps if Kara did anything stupid like that, not just change color. Kara doesn’t want to face her wrath if her sister goes prematurely bald right before her wedding next spring.

“I’ll call you when anything big happens,” Kara offers up. “Text you before I go anywhere that could land me in hot water. I’m not going to let you join us, but you’ll know where I am at all times. And if something happens, you can send in as many big guns as you want.”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “Even Clark?” she asks, testing the waters. So, Lena must have talked about that with her as well.

Kara knows that this is something she’s going to have to allow if Alex is going to be on board with this, even if she’d much rather keep her cousin out of it. “Yes,” she sighs, “Even him.”

Alex releases a very deep breath, like she’d been holding it in for quite some time. “Okay,” she says, shifting her shoulders. “Then let’s do this.”

“Really?” Kara asks, her knees nearly buckling out from underneath her. She never would have expected this kind of turnaround from Alex, and she can’t help but let a giant grin grace her face.

“Yeah, really. I mean, we’re going to all need to get our shit together, and you’re going to have to promise not to bite off more than all of us can chew, but you’re right. I’m tired of being afraid of Lex, and I’m tired of waiting for him to make a move first. Let’s go on the offensive, for once.”

“That’s great. Alex, this is great. And you’re right, we’re all going to need to work together, but so long as we do that, this plan will-”

Alex holds up a hand, something dawning on her. Kara falters, halfway towards barreling into a long-winded, excited ramble, but something on her sister’s face makes her pause.

“What about Lena?” her sister asks, and suddenly, Kara’s plans are taking on water once more.

“What about her?” Kara asks, the easy smile that had been growing on her face dimmed ever so slightly.

Alex takes in the change of expression with care. “I won’t say anything,” she promises with a frown. “I don’t like it, but I won’t do that to you. I want you to do this on your own terms. Besides, your article will work best in secrecy, and the less of us that know and start poking around ourselves, the less Lex and Lillian will suspect that anything is amiss.”

Some relief comes rushing back, bubbling out of Kara’s throat. “Thank you,” she rushes out, reaching for Alex’s hands. “Thank you so much-”

Her sister steps just barely out of reach, holding up her hands and her frown deepening. The message is clear: Kara is nowhere near being out of the woods on this yet. “But,” Alex continues, the simple and loaded word stopping Kara in her tracks, “That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to figure out how to fix this mess with Lena on your own.”

“Well, I…” Kara flounders, half shocked that this conversation has returned to this topic and half disappointed in herself for not recognizing that fact as an inevitable one. “You understand now, don’t you?”

Alex tilts her head. “I think I do,” she says, her expression impossible to read. “For the most part, anyway. Even if I still don’t buy that your facts add up. I still don’t understand how this would convince you to avoid Lena to the extent that you have been.”

Kara’s stomach coils. She cannot handle another interrogation. Not when Alex is too drained to pull her punches or use any sort of finesse, and not when Kara is so tired that even a nudge will likely send her hurtling completely off the edge into the truth. There is no way she can tell Alex that she’s in love with Lena now. Not after the conversation they just had took so long and took so much out of them both.

“It’s not my fault,” she says. “It’s out of necessity. If she finds out… Come on, it’s Lena. She’ll feel guilty about all of this, try to get involved, stick her nose in things she shouldn’t, and she’ll put herself in danger!”

Her sister looks like she’s trying hard not to scoff. “Gee, that doesn’t remind you of anyone you know, does it?”

“Alex,” Kara pouts. Just because her sister is letting herself go along with Kara’s harebrained scheme doesn’t mean she’ll be able to resist little jabs like this now and then. Kara knows that, but she also knows that if it happens enough, she’ll die by a thousand cuts. “I’m trying my best, here. I really am. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to suck it up and stop acting like Lena is so fragile that she’ll break if you’re within a ten-foot radius of her!”

“I’m just trying to keep this secret safe!”

Alex shakes her head. “That’s what I can’t wrap my head around. You never acted this way around Lena when she didn’t know your real identity. You always treated her the same, even towards the end when you were so nervous and so convinced that you were going to ruin everything. Compared to that skeleton in your closet, this should be a walk in the park, but it isn’t, is it?”

There’s nowhere to escape to, not when Alex has her pinned down so effectively. All Kara can do is remain firm, stick to what white lies she has offered up to be dissected and torn apart by her sister, and hope that at least their veneer holds true.

“Well, that last secret didn’t work out so well,” she grumbles. “I’m doing things differently this time around.”

“And you think actively avoiding her is, what? More subtle? I don’t know your understanding of subterfuge, Kara, but Lena is very much aware that something is wrong, and I cannot handle another coffee break where all she does is stress out about you.”

Kara scratches at the back of her neck. “You’re right,” she admits. “I- I’ll try to not be so distant.”

Her sister laughs. “You’re acting like that’s going to be such a struggle,” she says, completely oblivious to the fact that, under these new, lovesick circumstances that Kara finds herself bound by, being around Lena is very much an act of resisting torture. Alex reaches out and punches her shoulder. “Come on, Kara, you love Lena! What kind of best friend doesn’t want to spend time together the way you two can now?”

Kara goes rigid at the words, enough that even her sister notices. Alex lowers her hand slowly, confusion clouding her features. Unable to do anything else, Kara stares at the floor. “Like I said,” she repeats, “You’re right. I’ll be better.”

There’s a beat of uncertain silence that washes over them, and Alex clearly doesn’t know how to take Kara’s dour turn in mood. Ultimately, she decides to back off. Alex shrugs her shoulders in defeat or in a feigned sense of indifference. Kara can’t tell the difference anymore, if there is any at all.

“I won’t interfere. Believe it or not, I don’t want to get my hands dirty when it comes to this.” She crosses her arms, sending Kara a very authoritative, expectant stare that reminds her that Alex is still very much willing to play the older sibling card to get her way, even if it didn’t work out for her earlier in this conversation. “But I will say this: this is your own secret to do whatever you want with, this time around. I get that you don’t want to screw it up, but don’t be so worried about it that you take for granted what you and Lena have, right now.”

Like it or not, her sister is right. In all her frantic, heavy-handed attempts to spare Lena from any of the emotional fallout that Kara is suffering through now, she’s inadvertently done much worse. She’s made Lena feel alone, and in the face of what could be coming next, that’s the last kind of legacy Kara wants to leave her best friend with.

The worst thing would be to squander what she has now, whatever version of Lena that may be. Even if Kara doesn’t ever get what she wants, it’s better than losing Lena entirely. Better to learn how to carry on in suffering silence than to deprive Lena of the relationship that they’ve both invested so much of themselves into.

Kara sits with her words stuck in her throat and her thoughts in a blur, watching Alex leave her apartment without much ceremony. It’s strange, her sudden departure after everything that’s just happened. It feels as though they’ve made the first step forwards in a long time, no longer stalling on the runway. All Kara can do is wonder what exactly it is that they’re rushing towards. If it’s really the end, like the voice coiled in the back of her mind likes to tell her it is, then that means that Kara needs to change her behavior around Lena as soon as possible. She’s never been one to waste time when she knows that, at the end of all things, it’s more precious than anything in the universe.

So, Kara finishes cleaning the apartment in record time, putting some soft music on in the background and placing the flowers she’d bought right in the center of the kitchen table. She wanders off into the bedroom and changes into her pajamas, leaving her comfiest outfit on the bed for Lena to find whenever she comes back home. Home, Kara muses over, as she grabs a takeout menu taped to the fridge and ordering Lena’s favorites. How funny that it took her this long to wake up to the realization that Lena has always been that for her. How horrible it is that Kara will carry this with her forever.

It'll be worth it, though, knowing her place. So long as Lena allows her to remain in orbit.

When the front door opens at long last, half past two in the morning and the only lights on in the entire block being the lonely one in Kara’s kitchen, Lena staggers in. Her steps are unsteady and wavering as if she were drunk, but Kara knows she isn’t. This is just Lena at the end of her rope, exhausted after a day of being pushed and shoved every which way. Kara’s the only person who’s ever seen this side of her.

She straightens up from where she’d made a haphazard bed on the couch, shaking off her blankets and pillows to the side and waiting for Lena’s eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. Kara watches Lena take in the scene; the flowers are blooming nicely on the table, and the kitchen still, by some miracle, smells like the brownies that Kara spent most of the twilight hours making an edible batch of, and not the charred remains buried in the trash can. The candles lit on the stove flicker across Lena’s tired, surprised face, and finally her eyes fall towards Kara.

The other woman’s expression, normally so manicured and carefully controlled, is soft in the candlelight as she gazes over at Kara, reading her bashful smile with ease. It doesn’t take long for Lena to surmise what’s happening here, but she looks touched and amazed all the same by the simple bouquet and the tidy apartment.

The silence is an easy one, enchanting. Kara doesn’t want to break it, but she also knows that she must make some things right with her best friend. She won’t rat out Alex or implicate Lena in sharing her insecurities with Kara’s sister – no, that’s a slowly-repairing bond that Kara has zero intention of tampering with. But Kara can still take a step forwards, can still signal to Lena that she won’t be so distant anymore.

“You alright?” she asks, tearing through the trance with a quiet, delicate touch.

Lena lingers by the kitchen table, rounding it slowly, her hands tracing the petals of the flowers. “These are for me?” she asks, as if she can’t quite believe the ribbon tied around the vase with her name on it. “You did all of this?”

Kara nods. “I knew it was going to be a long day. A hard one.” Nervous, she slides in a little white lie, a passing acknowledgement of her absence. “And I’ve had so much of my own stuff going on lately that I haven’t been able to see you as much as I want to, so yes. It’s not much, but-”

“It’s perfect, Kara,” Lena breathes out, unable to stop staring over at her. Kara remembers what Alex had told her, how Lena felt like Kara could barely spare her a glance nowadays, and she holds it with gentle eyes and a kind smile. She owes this much to Lena at the very least, even if looking at the other woman for too long makes Kara want to shoot straight up through the ceiling, nosy neighbors be damned. “I- I didn’t expect to see you when I got back, much less any of this.” Lena’s eyes widen just a fraction, looking guilty all the sudden. “You must be very tired. There wasn’t any need to stay up and wait for me to come home-”

Kara’s heart cracks open at such a simple phrase. So, Lena thinks of this as home now, too. “I wanted to,” she says, hoping the waver in her voice isn’t terribly noticeable. “I’ve missed you.”

Lena sets her purse down on the table, tossing her shoes back over by the front door. It’s absolutely dazzling, how domestic it all is. Kara hadn’t ever thought these passing moments would be the ones that mean so much.

“I’ve missed you too,” Lena says, a little uncertain. “I suppose it’s just the lives we’ve been forced to lead right now, but I hope that someday things won’t be so chaotic.”

Kara raises an eyebrow, a wry smile growing on her face. “I can’t ever promise you peace,” she says, choosing humor to combat the tragedy of that truth. “But maybe someday, once all of this is over, we’ll be able to take a breath, at the very least.”

“How about a vacation?” Lena asks, joining her on the couch and throwing her legs across Kara’s lap, an arm thrown over her face – to cover a yawn or a look of melancholy, Kara isn’t quite sure.

Kara glances down at the other woman. “Oh?” she asks. “And where would we go?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere.” Lena lets out a strained chuckle that betrays just how badly the day must have drained her. “I don’t care, so long as it’s a place with no cell reception and you’re there with me.”

It’s a wonderful wisp of a fantasy to entertain, and so Kara indulges in it herself. Picturing her and Lena in parts unknown together, somewhere no one will be able to find them, is wildly appealing and holds a powerful sway over her mind.

“I think I know a place,” she offers, feeling hopeful and foolish and willing, for the moment, to imagine a future free of complications or restraints. “How about Argo?”

Lena removes her hand from her face, looking over at Kara with incredulity. “Argo? I was under the impression that most humans weren’t allowed to visit there.”

Kara places her hands carefully across Lena’s knees, every touch feeling much too loaded for her liking. She can relearn her place, practice her lines and memorize her steps until she remembers what it’s like to see Lena as her best friend and nothing more again, but right now, her heart is an open wound, and her feelings are liable to sneak their way out if she’s not careful.

“Yeah, well you aren’t like most people,” she answers. “And besides, my mom would love to meet you properly this time around. I mention you quite a bit whenever I contact her, as it tuns out.”

It’s a dangerous, sentimental thing to say, too close to the very raw truth of why it is that Kara talks about the other woman so much, but Lena looks like she needs some cheering up, and Kara is more than willing to provide that using whatever compliments that are needed.

And it works like a charm; a high blush crawls its way onto Lena’s cheeks, and in the candlelight, Lena’s eyes are bright green and shining with something just as sentimental as Kara’s words. Kara realizes just how much she’s missed being around Lena like this – and that Lena’s missed her just as much. That’s got to mean something, right? Kara may not get to have anything more than this, but is that so bad, if these are the moments where Lena seems the happiest?

“To Argo, then.” Lena sighs, a dizzying, sleepy smile on her face. “Sounds like a dream.”

“A good one,” Kara says, tilting her head. Hiding behind Lena’s distracting smile and tired eyes is something darker, something wounded and beaten down. Kara doesn’t know what the day was like for Lena, but she knows that whatever happened, it can’t be good. “You okay?” she asks again, a touch more insistent this time around, and Lena sighs again. Most of her smile is stolen off her face by the time she decides to speak.

“I’m fine. I don’t know. No, I suppose I’m not,” she says eventually.

“Did your meetings with your lawyers go badly?”

Lena stares out into the middle of the living room, eyes hollow. “I wasn’t meeting with my lawyers,” she reveals, and that is news to Kara.

Confused, and half-convinced that she must have gotten her dates mixed around, Kara shifts closer to the other woman on the couch. “What? But I thought that-”

“I told you that just so I’d have a reason for being gone so long,” Lena admits. “And my lawyers were there, but it was all a ploy. A hoax of a meeting to disguise who I was really getting into contact with.”

“And who was that?” Kara presses. From the way Lena won’t meet her eyes, Kara is convinced for a moment that the other woman tried to do something as bold and as risky as meeting with Lillian, or worse, with Lex. But she has faith that Lena would have at least told her the truth earlier today if that was something she’d been involved with.

“Even though it’s no longer my company, I have people who are still loyal to me at LCorp,” Lena says. “Using the pretense of my lawsuit and my legal troubles, I was able to bring in members of my cybersecurity and IT team. They debriefed me on what my family has been doing to my files. How much damage they’ve managed to do to my code. It isn’t good, Kara.”

A lump forms in Kara’s throat at the new information. All of the hypotheticals that she’d flung at Alex’s face only a few hours before had been only that – just hypotheticals. They were possible, sure, but Kara has been doing her best not to dwell too long on the fact that CADMUS really was getting towards the brink of being able to kill her in a garden variety of ways. This confirmation coming from Lena shouldn’t be a surprise, but it knocks the wind from her lungs all the same.

“Okay,” she says slowly, her hands slowing to a stop from where they’d been moving idly up and down Lena’s calves. Kara misses the motion immediately, doesn’t know what to do with her hands, but the walls are closing in on her and that reality is causing her to freeze in place. Still, she tries to play it off. “Well, we figured that would be the case, right? We knew we wouldn’t have forever. That’s why we’ve all been working so hard to-”

“I spent all day trying to restructure my firewalls,” Lena cuts in, jaw tight. “I wrote oceans and oceans of new lines of code, put in more security measures, typed until my fingers felt like they were bleeding. But it’s not going to be enough, Kara. I hate that that’s the truth, but it is. I can’t hold out against the both of them for much longer.”

“And you won’t need to,” Kara says, swooping in. “Lena, you’ve borrowed so much time for me. More than I ever thought would be possible. We’ve been working to, and we won’t be sitting ducks. I promise you that things are going to change, and soon.”

That’s true; Kara and William are achingly close to putting the finishing pieces on their research. All they need is a lynchpin, a string to tie the entire thing together and point undeniably at Lex or Lillian, and that will be it. Kara’s plan will come into motion.

All she can hope for now is that she manages to beat CADMUS at their own game before they break completely through what’s left of Lena’s defenses.

“I admire you for believing in that so strongly,” Lena says. “I wish I could be more like you when it comes to this. I’m worried that things aren’t going to end the way you hope they will.”

Her voice trembles and dies out at the end of her sentence, and Kara’s heart drops. Lena’s remained steadfast in Kara’s optimism up until now, at least around her. If she’s so defeated that this is the type of brutal honesty that’s escaping her mouth, then Kara has good reason to be worried too.

No matter how important her article has become, now more than ever before, Kara reminds herself that these are the moments that they need. Free of fear, or anxieties, or the dark cloud of the future looming over their head. “I’ll believe enough for the both of us, then,” Kara says, and Lena lets out a shaking breath. “How can I help you feel better?”

Lena just stares over at her, shaking her head. “Some nights, I can’t believe you’re real,” she whispers, a small smile gracing her lips by some miracle. Kara takes it as a small victory, the biggest one she’ll likely win tonight.

“I could make you hot chocolate,” she offers, even as the summer heat wafting in through the open windows causes that idea to be dead on arrival. “Or make you something to eat. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you got too stressed and too in your own head to take a break to eat dinner.”

“Kara-”

“Or I can fly out somewhere to get some ice cream,” Kara continues, too on a roll to actually listen to whatever Lena was trying to tell her. “Most places in National City will be closed, but maybe somewhere in Europe? You really liked that gelato I brought home that one time-”

“Can we just go to bed, please?” Lena interrupts, finally managing to get a word in. Kara looks over and sees just how tired the other woman is – how there’s something indecipherable in her eyes, something vulnerable and reaching. “I just- I would love to fall asleep with you, right now.”

Good thing that tomorrow was a Saturday. Something in Lena’s voice tells Kara that she doesn’t want either of them to have to leave that bed until they have to. “Of course,” Kara replies, soft. After the day she’s had, nothing sounds better than collapsing into bed with Lena, either. “I set out some pajamas for you on the bed, and I can…”

Glancing over, Kara watches as Lena pinches the bridge of her nose, face drawn and eyes fighting hard to stay open. The woman is exhausted beyond what even Kara had thought.

Kara straightens up, hooking one of her arms under Lena’s knees and pulling her carefully closer. With one last look over, she scoops Lena up effortlessly, and for a moment, it’s easy to forget all their years, and all their battles, and the fact that Kara isn’t quite as invincible lately as she once was. Here and now, Kara could be her younger self again, rescuing Lena out of her helicopter and placing her down on the tarmac with the same easy strength as she brings her towards her bedroom now.

As she sets Lena down carefully against the mattress, the other woman regards her with a quiet, breathtaking sort of beauty that Kara could swear that no one else in the universe possesses. “You didn’t need to do that,” Lena says quietly, but her smile betrays her.

Kara moves the pillows under Lena’s head and is unable to resist letting her hand linger briefly against Lena’s cheek. “That’s what friends are for,” she breathes out, the words sounding less and less real every time she says them. It’s a sinking raft, she’s clinging to, but Kara is willing to go down with the ship if this is what she’ll see beneath the waves.

“It’s nice to have a friend like you, Kara.” Lena answers. “It’s more than I ever thought to hope for.”

“It’s the same for me.” Kara settles in beside her, the lights in her apartment finally out. “And you won’t lose it either,” she says, newly determined to stick to her promises, no matter how far-fetched.

Chapter Text

Eventually, they get the break they’ve been looking for - and for the sake of Kara’s life and limb, it doesn’t come a moment too soon.

Kara gets the news while she’s been relegated to bedrest. For good reason, seeing as she’s nursing a dislocated shoulder and quite a few broken knuckles following her longest fight in recent memory. It’s an odd position to be in nevertheless, and a sobering one. Nothing reminds Kara of her own increasing vulnerability quite as much as the foreign purples, blues and blacks making a habit of finding their way onto her body.

And to think, it had been such a good week up until then.

As it so happened, during one random Thursday morning, Lex and Lillian decided to flex their muscles and send a newly-improved and masterfully reconstructed version of the Red Tornado to take a stroll through National City’s downtown district.

To call it a painful experience would be an understatement. Seeing as Kara drained the majority of her power supply just kicking the stupid giant robot out into the harbor and away from any civilians - and used up whatever scraps were left to put a definitive end to his mindless, destructive wandering - she’ll admit that she did not emerge spotless out of the wreckage. Meekly treading water in the middle of the bay, nursing a massive bump on the head, and feeling the drowsiness that always comes with blowing out her powers make a dramatic entrance through the spots in her vision, Kara could barely look J’onn in the eye as he fished her out of the water.

Admittedly, she had run off without requesting backup. In theory, J’onn’s frown and Alex’s glare were more than warranted, even expected - but that doesn’t mean that Kara enjoyed being shamed in the DEO bathroom as she ran a comb through her tangled, seaweed-covered hair.

She knew better than to thumb her nose at Alex’s very explicit request for Kara to sit on her couch and ice her head for the rest of the day. This had been CADMUS’ boldest stunt yet, flouting exactly how far they’d managed to crack through Lena’s files by bringing out their malicious, scarlet circus act for a few rounds with Supergirl. If they’d gotten far enough into the DEO databases to look at Red Tornado schematics, this wouldn’t be the last of the unpleasant surprises that Kara would have to wrangle with.

Kara had made her peace with taking a lazy afternoon cooped up in her apartment; better that than doped up and under the close watch of her sister and probably a handful of sheepish guards in some hospital bed in the DEO medbay.

However, one of the biggest reasons that Kara’s been content to lick her wounds in the privacy of her own place seems to have other plans in motion. Lena, who hasn’t left her side all day, suddenly walks back into the living room in jeans and a nice sweater and definitely not wearing the slippers and sweats that she had been only five minutes ago.

Kara hides her pout. She’d rather been looking forward to spending the evening with Lena with no powers and no possibility of making an excuse and running off. It was going to be good practice for her, adapting back to the platonic status quo that she was committed to maintain for the rest of her life - and really, any time spent with Lena made bruised ribs and a throbbing head seem a small price to pay.

Kara’s getting better at relearning this best friend thing, she really is. She doesn’t see anything wrong with spending long, quiet nights like these ensuring that she knows the ins and outs of it entirely— after all, if she slips up, she at least has this annoyingly convenient concussion to blame.

“Where are you off to?” she asks, poking her head up over the couch from where she’s been crashed rather pitifully for most of the evening. The Red Tornado was just as formidable the first time around, and Kara had given herself permission to lounge around and eat popcorn to her heart’s content after getting out of that battle mostly intact. The buttery, salty goodness might even get her powers back faster, she reasons with herself.

“Your sister’s place,” Lena says as she gathers her things, leaning over the back of the couch for balance and smiling down at Kara as she puts on her heels. Her hair hangs around her face like some kind of halo, and she smells like jasmine and orange blossom and something else distinctly expensive, and the combination of her senses makes Kara see stars. “Normally I would cancel and spend the night with you, as adorably drooping as you are right now, but I promised Kelly that I would help them with some wedding details. Seeing as I typically host at least one gala a year, I do know how to throw a party.”

“They’re going to need all the help they can get,” Kara replies, her heart lifting at the thought of the wedding, of greener pastures ahead. It’s important to stay focused on the good things coming, to pull herself out of the dumps of lingering doubt and fear of the future. Kara is determined to get them all to that wedding safe and sound - and if she can do that, maybe she’ll even allow herself to ask Lena for a dance. “Alex is hopeless when it comes to that stuff, and Kelly finds her antics too funny to get any of it done herself.”

Lena smiles, crossing over and crouching next to where Kara’s settled her head on top of a pile of pillows. “That’s what I’m here for,” she answers, lifting up a hand and settling it against Kara’s forehead for the hundredth time this evening. “You sure you’ll be okay here by yourself? Because if you want me to cancel, I will. Alex won’t exactly be able to complain about it if I tell her it’s to take care of you.”

Kara’s cheeks turn red. She isn’t used to being on bedrest like this, isn’t at all accustomed to being coddled or looked after in the devoted way that Lena has been all day. The other woman has been nothing short of doting, checking in on her every other minute and always reaching out in some tactile way - brushing her hair from her face, placing a cool washcloth gently across her forehead, rubbing her hands up and down the spots where she knows Kara is the sorest. The constant touch is equally maddening as it is welcomed, Kara moving into the warmth every time without fail like some dog in the sun, and even as she curses herself for it, she misses it the moment Lena moves away. Kara doesn’t want Lena to leave. Not now, and not ever.

Boundaries are important, she reminds herself. No point in drawing lines in the sand and expecting anything permanent if you trace them too close to the waves.

“I’ll be just fine,” she says, propping herself all the way up to prove her point. “You go ahead and have fun. Tell them I say hello.”

“Alright, darling, I will,” Lena murmurs, moving her hand down to brush against Kara’s cheekbone, likely a ludicrous shade of red by now. “If you need anything at all, just call.”

“Of course,” Kara says, trying not to feel too embarrassed by the amount of care Lena has been showing. Embarrassed isn’t even the right word - clearly, Kara craves this kind of attention from the other woman more than she’d like to admit. Nor is she so attached to suffering that she’ll deny herself this sweet, rare indulgence. It’s just that Kara, in her continuing quest to remind herself that she is to remain Lena’s best friend and nothing more, is rather easily distracted and prone to daydreaming, and today has been downright irresponsible in regards to how far Kara has allowed herself to stray off the beaten path and wander headlong into entertaining fantasies that she should be avoiding like the plague.

She’s ashamed of herself, of how complacent towards her own desire she’s seemed to become in the face of Lena’s sheer power over her, and Kara breaks their lingering eye contact because of it. “Now, shoo!” she says, just barely managing to inject some teasing into her tone instead of the strangled way her words threatened to come out, and Lena stands up, humming to herself and still smiling.

“I won’t be gone long,” she calls over her shoulder, throwing her coat over her shoulders in an effortless way that should not be as devastatingly attractive as Kara thinks it is, but it is all the same. “Rest up, and if I’m home early enough, we can watch a movie together. You pick. If you promise to take it easy, I’ll even give you another massage.”

Oh, Rao. Kara honestly doesn’t think she can survive one of those.

“Sounds good!” she cries out, disguising the clear and undeniable strain in her voice behind a fake-sounding cough. Hiding behind the safety of the couch, Kara doesn’t dare look up to see the expression on Lena’s face, only hears her let out a quiet chuckle. The door closes without any further torment, and Kara grabs a pillow and holds it to her face, finally releasing an anguished, love-stricken howl into the fabric.

Hey, everyone copes in their own way, and if the pillow works then so be it. Kara chooses not to be too picky about her own mechanisms if they get the job done.

Right as she manages to slow her heart rate down enough to settle back down with a long sigh, resigned to an evening alone and doing nothing but waiting for the moment her best friend walks back inside, there’s a rapid knock at the door. Lena must have forgotten her keys. Kara lightly slaps her checks, forcing herself to focus. She cannot act like a fool again in front of the other woman in such a short time frame. Lena may be fond of Kara’s awkward, stumbling behavior, but too many incidents may cause Lena to suspect that something is wrong.

Getting up from the couch with a quiet hiss, Kara treads slowly over to the door, a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. While she really is feeling much better than she was earlier today, Kara can still feel every inch of bruising and soreness that was caused by her encounter with the Red Tornado. Bruises and scrapes don’t heal as fast for her as they once did, and Kara allows herself a moment of fragility alone in her apartment.

Opening the door without bothering to check who it is, she fixes a lazy, private smile on her face, reserved for one person and one person only. “Back so soon?” she asks, before someone who is most certainly not Lena bustles in through the door like they’re escaping a fire in the hallway.

Kara rubs at her eyes, her teasing drawl cut short by the unexpected presence of a panting William Dey suddenly here, dripping copious amounts of rainwater onto her kitchen floor and holding an unbelievable amount of stuff in his arms.

“William? I thought you were- what’s wrong? Why are you here?” she asks, taking in the scene and suddenly feeling very silly in her bunny slippers and her fuzzy blanket draped over her like a cape. It’s a good thing she’s slouching, otherwise, the man might suspect that she’s National City’s one and only resident Kryptonian. “Wait, how do you know where I live?” she adds, forgetting for a moment in her drowsy state that they’ve shared an Uber home countless times before.

“You haven’t been checking your phone? I sent you about a hundred texts, and called you two dozen times! I thought you’d been kidnapped!”

“I- I lost my phone earlier today,” Kara says, not exactly able to tell William that her phone was actually smashed into a million pieces by a certain stupidly durable android. “Why, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

The man spins around with a frantic, chaotic look on his face, and Kara finally gets a good glimpse at what he’s brought. She sees a pile of very familiar-looking folders stuffed full of their research, a bag full of delicious-smelling food, and… is that a bottle of champagne she sees nestled in the crook of his arm? Kara finally looks up to see the wide smile splitting the man’s face nearly in two, and she gets the sense that he didn’t come here to ask for help at all, but rather to… celebrate?

“Am I alright? I’m ecstatic!” he crows, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. Kara, having been laid out on her butt the entire day, is nearly bowled over by the amount of energy coming off of her partner in waves. William pauses for just a moment, giving Kara a once-over, his lip curling in alarm. “Are you okay? You look like shit,” he observes.

Kara huffs, choosing to take that not as an insult, but rather a very blunt expression of well wishes and concern. “Feeling a little under the weather today,” she offers up. “Food poisoning I think. Nothing contagious.”

He deflates momentarily, lowering the food. “I’m guessing you don’t want this takeout then?” he asks, and Kara’s stomach growls loudly in protest, enough that even William hears it.

“No! No, I want it,” Kara says quickly, snatching the food from him before he can threaten to take it away again. Shuffling over to the couch, she shoots him a look. “Now, are you going to tell me what you’re so happy about, or do I have to beat it out of you?”

William crosses the kitchen in what seems like a single bound, plopping himself next to her on the couch and tearing open the containers of food. A mountain of napkins and fortune cookies come pouring out, and Kara exercises all of her patience waiting to get her chance at the food.

“You did it. We’ve got them, Kara. Finally, they’re pinned down.”

However vague, those words are enough to send a jolt of excitement crackling through her nervous system. There’s only one thing that William could be talking about, and if what is just said is true, then the champagne is more than warranted. Kara’s mind is brought off the food for a moment, which is an impressive feat in itself.

“We do? I did it? Please explain,” she demands, knowing William will take her pushiness in stride. This article is important to both of them, and she knows he won’t keep her in the dark for long. Besides, Kara really doesn’t know what she’s done lately to progress their cause. Between Red Tornado and a dozen other random incidents across town, Kara’s been decidedly unhelpful when it comes to research, other than sending William a long, rambling list of potential informants or leads to pursue and hoping that something comes out of nothing.

“Your idea, about connecting CADMUS to Lillian Luthor’s charity work? You struck gold, Kara,” he says, unable to resist letting out a small whoop of victory. “Your contact panned out, and the information he gave us led me right towards all of Lillian’s skeletons in her closet. The woman may be smart, but it seems that even she dumps her taxes and her math off on someone else - and that someone else wasn’t as discreet as they should have been.”

“You’re kidding,” she breathes out, understanding why William felt the need to burst in so hot and abruptly. Kara had long expected that Lillian would be the weak link in the CADMUS chain of command. While the woman had kept all of her hate and her cruelty coming into the new reality that Lex had written up, she lacked the same experience that the old Lillian had once possessed. This Lillian was turned fully over to her son’s side without having ever led CADMUS herself, and Kara had been convinced that if they were going to find an opening, it would be through her. “You’re serious?”

“All it took was me dropping your name, and your guy stuck out his neck for us,” William replies. “Seems like something about you inspires bravery. He snuck in and he got us these files, and look.” With a triumphant flair of showmanship, he hands a giant stack of paper to Kara. She glances down and sees lines and lines of bright highlighter and scribbled notes in pen. While most of it is illegible with how quick of a look she’d given it, Kara knows a solid piece of evidence when she sees one, and this may as well be a block of Nth metal in the form of wonderful, connecting lines of numbers and bank accounts. “It’s all there. We’ve found all the bones, but here is our connective tissue. Now, this thing has a life of its own.”

“Whoa,” she breathes out, yanking the paper from William’s grasp and examining them fully. He’s right— this is exactly what they’ve been searching for all this time. There is Lillian’s innocuous sliver of a blunder, looking so much bigger and more damning when it’s highlighted in orange. Kara bites against her cheek, a vindicated grin close behind. William has no idea how long she’s been waiting to bring the hammer down on Lillian. That cold, blustery spring day has been Kara’s motivator ever since, and she can’t believe her luck that Lillian’s overdue downfall will be self-inflicted.

For someone so self-righteous, so high and mighty and convinced of her superiority over her daughter and everyone else, Kara can’t wait for the realization to burn the woman to her core. Karma may be an unpredictable beast to try and get control over, but this time, irony seems to have Kara in its good graces for once — saving room between its crosshairs for another.

“What do you think?” William asks, peeking over her shoulder and slurping up some noodles before they fall from his chopsticks. “It’s good, right?”

Kara shakes her head, unable to believe her luck. After all this time, things are finally going her way. “Not just good — amazing. Unbelievable.” She spares one last confirming glance for William, raising the paper up to the lamplight to make sure it’s no trick. “You’re positive these are legitimate?”

“I talked to my friend on the bench of the Ninth Circuit,” he says. “She told me that while she may not operate within trial court, to her knowledge, this document is absolutely airtight. Not even the smoothest-talking lawyer in the world could poke a hole in it during the appeals process.”

“I’ll be darned,” Kara says softly, mostly to herself. William must hear her because he sends a goofy smile her way, but Kara is too taken by the news to care much about being made fun of. “Not that we even need to worry about any appeals,” she adds as an afterthought, the entire scenario getting sunnier by the minute. “All we needed was to get our foot through the door and wedge it open. The justice system can take it from there — I know plenty of lawyers who are itching to get this case — but we needed to give them a thread to pull apart.”

William gets up, paces three or four times around the room, and then settles back on the couch, too pumped up to even know what to do with himself. Using a bottle opener he’d stowed in his pocket, he reaches for the bottle of champagne and pops the cork off without much finesse. Kara’s never been one to care much about sophistication, however, and the sound of the fizz and sight of the bubbles is worth the destroyed seal William tosses blindly to the side.

Ever the gentleman in all the ways that count, William sets the bottle to the side and allows Kara to eat the food he’d brought in relative silence. She chews it all over while he sits to her side like a little kid on Christmas waiting for permission to tear into his gifts. As he idly grabs the papers again, admiring his handiwork, Kara swallows and turns back towards him.

“This is… beyond incredible,” she says after a beat, gripping his shoulders and shaking them with a grin. His energy is infectious, and Lara wonders if the two of them won’t break out into a spontaneous dance sooner rather than later. “I mean, this is life-changing, isn’t it? It’s going to finally fix things.”

“It’s the biggest story I’ve ever seen, much less been a part of,” he answers, bouncing on the couch. Kara sways with him, cheeks hurting from how wide her grin is. “Calling it life-changing may even be selling it a bit short.”

“Revolutionary, then.” Kara replies with a wild laugh. It’s easy to picture what will happen next, and Kara will give anything to be the one to bring Lillian into custody again. This time around, there won’t be anything that the other woman will be able to do but swallow down her pride like bile and accept what’s coming.

William tosses the paper back down, tapping his hands against his knees. “It’s a damn shame that Lex Luthor keeps his finances entirely separate and under miles of red tape, otherwise we could have gotten them both. Imagine that.”

“Mmm, imagine that,” Kara responds darkly, her thoughts turning for a brief moment to the things to come. She wanted a spark, and this is it. Soon, she’ll have to strap herself in and prepare to plummet into that particular descent.

Lex, of course, is a different monster altogether, but Kara lets herself have this victory and savors it for what it is. She shrugs, smiling. “For now, this is enough. CADMUS can’t do much with half of its body cut off, and no matter how many heads take Lillian’s place, we’ve got them right where we want them.”

Gone are the days when anonymous videos broadcasting over hijacked TV stations will hold any sway. This is not just a crippling attack against the heart of CADMUS, but it’s a bonafide scandal. Lex won’t be able to do much of anything when most of the world will be laughing in his face about this, and that’s exactly what Kara wants.

If Lex is silenced, he will be desperate to do just about anything to gain the spotlight back. Kara can play that to her advantage.

After a moment to finish off her potstickers, Kara regards William. “Thank you,” she says. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

William gives her a gallant smile, clearly happy to just be included in the first place, but Kara is serious when she says that. Had it not been for William’s near-constant support and a mind that was overflowing with ideas, Kara never would have gotten this article finished on time. While he may not have been aware of the very life-threatening deadline that Kara’s been sweating under, he adopted the same focused urgency that she was leading with. The man met her in the middle of all things, matched her stride without a single stumbling step, and has now delivered the final nail in the coffin for Kara to hammer down.

“Kara, you’ve given me a chance to do something that matters. Something that will be remembered long after I’m gone. I should be the one thanking you.”

Somewhere faint and dark, her mind whispers, reminding her of how much danger William will now be in because of this. Was it worth it? Her thoughts hiss, wrapping behind her ears and sending a chill down her spine. Have you traded one life for another? One more body standing in the way of your eventual sacrifice?

Kara shakes herself out of it. This is a time for celebration, not fear. That can come later, when Kara works out whatever deal she has to in order to ensure William’s safety. He's innocent in practically every sense of the word, only barely connected to her, her friends, and her life as Supergirl. Still, she knows that won’t matter for Lex, and so something will have to be done.

Later, however. Just this once Kara lets herself enjoy the moment in front of her rather than looking grimly ahead.

“So,” she says, collapsing back into the couch and sinking into the cushions, mimicking him. As the instantaneous, overwhelming excitement begins to fade into a subtle glow of contentment, Kara feels lighter than she has in months. She arches her eyebrow. “Once this article comes out, how will you celebrate your newfound stardom in the newspaper industry?”

William laughs, reaching at last for the bottle of champagne that they’ve both been eyeing. “I’ll go out to the nicest restaurant in town and buy myself a steak dinner,” he announces.

“Sounds like something you’ve done before.”

“It’s a tradition of mine,” he says, holding the bottle up and admiring the sloshing, bubbling liquid inside. “Haven’t had many opportunities to do it, but with this, I might even splurge and order some dessert along with it.”

Kara can’t help but give him a teasing smile, the imagery of something so simple and yet for a man like William, so indulgent, making her laugh. “The fame is already changing you,” she teases, and William takes the challenge, leaning sideways towards her and giving her his own ribbing expression.

“And I’m sure you’ll be celebrating with your special someone,” he drawls, and Kara’s smile freezes in place.

“What?” she asks, voice no longer quite as self-assured. “I don’t have- there’s nobody like that.”

“Come on. You expect me to believe that those are your Louis Vuitton heels by the front door?” he asks, and Kara’s eyes go wide. “You think I didn’t see the spare laptop charging on the countertop? You can’t hide anything from me, Kara. I see right through you.”

Oh, William really has no idea of the irony dripping from his words, given the fact that her spare super-suit that was just trashed by Red Tornado is currently doing a spin cycle in her washing machine. Kara tries to play it off.

“I have visitors,” she defends. “Friends who stop by and leave their things behind. That proves nothing.”

As staunchly as she’s denying it right now, there’s something open and warm about William that makes Kara want to tell him everything. Maybe it’s because after the months they’ve spent together, they’re closer friends than Kara ever thought possible - or maybe it’s because in some ways, he’s still a stranger, and one she can trust. It could be cathartic, giving him a confession like she’s repenting to a faceless priest. Unlike the Church, there will be no punishment expected, no demands of repentance and whispers of the Original Sin. When it comes to her feelings for Lena, Kara knows that William will support her regardless.

“Whatever you say,” William says, still with a mischievous smile stuck firmly in place. “I guess I was under the impression that Lena Luthor meant more to you than that. You’d better tell her to move out as soon as she gets back.”

Kara’s entire body does a 180, her head whipping to stare him down in a mixture of shock and incredulity. If she hadn’t given it away already, there’s no denying it now - not when her body language gave her away, handing her on a silver platter to a bemused William.

“How did you know that?” she grills, caught and stuck and unable to do anything but confirm his allegations as the truth, even if it could have just been a lucky guess.

“I knew the two of you were close. I called in a favor from my friend working for Homeland Security, and he told me that-”

“You did not,” Kara gasps out, indignant and unwilling to believe William would ever do something like that.

She must have called him out on his bluff, because William raises his hands and surrenders without trying to extend his bit any longer.

“No, I would never. All I knew is that your roommate had expensive taste, and it’s not like there are that many newly homeless elites wandering around the city.” He grins, shrugging his shoulders. “Plus… I, uh- I saw her leaving right as I jumped out of my taxi. Said hello and everything. I figured that Lena Luthor probably wouldn’t be living in an apartment complex like this unless she was with someone, and it was not a very far leap to realize that that person was you. Some investigator I am, huh?”

Kara imagines the scene; Lena, wrapped up in her maroon wool peacoat, raising her eyebrows at the sight of William’s long, gangly body untangling itself from the back of a taxi, food and wine stacked high in one hand and half a dozen folders gripped tightly in the other. She wonders how much Lena saw, or if William let anything slip about the real reason he was here. Kara hopes that Lena assumes nothing worse than William being a late visitor to the apartment, not sneaking in files that’ll finally allow them to expose CADMUS.

What a surprise it’ll be for Lena when in a few days, she’ll wake up to her company belonging to her again. Her wealth will be hers, and her property, her work, her non-profits, all of it. Kara grows giddy at the thought of it, but then she imagines a different scenario - Lena, packing her bags and leaving Kara’s apartment, returning back to her own, separate life. This maddening, wonderful closeness wasn’t going to last forever. Kara knows that. All of her work she’s done was to achieve this exact goal - and yet the thought of losing Lena the way she’s had her this year forever causes a newfound sadness to spread over these papers on her coffee table.

“She’s been living with me while trying to get LCorp back,” Kara admits, hiding her frown and her skittish attitude with another bite of noodles. William is excellent at decoding people who aren’t divulging information, and Kara knows that he’s doing the same to her. There’s no point in denying everything on its face around him. “It’s temporary, and…”

“Complicated? Are there feelings involved?” William asks, stabbing in the dark at Kara’s biggest, most sensitive bruise. He hits true, and Kara winces. He’s a good man and one that Kara trusts. As someone who is looking at the situation without having been a part of it for several years like the rest of her friends are, William is refreshingly direct about the whole thing. It makes it startlingly easy to let more and more slip out.

Kara draws in a deep breath. “Yes,” she confides, and it’s a rush to be able to say it out loud again. William offers her a kind, understanding smile free of pity, and Kara wants to say even more. “For me, anyway. But like you said, it’s complicated. Nothing will come of it, I’m sure of that. How’d you know?” she adds, curious if her feelings are so large that she’s broadcasting them to everyone she’s around. That doesn’t bode well for when she will eventually have to face Lex and Lillian head-on.

“Well, you’re doing all of this for her, right?” he asks. Kara’s eyebrows shoot upwards into her hairline. She can’t decide if William is simply an excellent reporter, or if she is really just that obvious about it all.

“What? No,” she denies immediately, her instincts kicking in. As usual, her honesty sneaks up on her right after the words slip from her mouth. “Well, actually? Yes. In a way, I suppose I am.” She gives him a sheepish grin, rubbing the back of her neck and hoping that William doesn’t find her to be two-faced. Really, she is - her identity depends on it - but that doesn’t mean Kara wants to be disingenuous around people she trusts. “It’s for something nobler and more significant than my personal feelings, but- how did you-?”

“I knew something was up from the moment you approached me for my help,” William explains, sipping at the champagne straight from the bottle, too comfortable to get up and grab a cup. Kara doesn’t mind, not when he passes it to her for her own very large swig. For once, the alcohol hits along with the bubbles, and Kara knows she could get drunk off of this easily. “Like I told you that day, you’re not normally one to ask for help.”

“Still, that doesn’t have anything to do with Lena,” Kara reasons, genuinely curious, passing the wine back.

He tips the bottle toward her in agreement. “True. But although I haven’t known you for very long, Kara, it doesn’t take a detective to discover that most things you do tend to revolve around her in one way or another. When you were in the office, it was usually with her or because of her. No offense, but you’re not exactly the most present reporter at Catco, especially for someone who Andrea doesn’t allow to publish articles at the rate I’m sure you’d like to.”

Kara blanches at the observation, fully aware of how close William is to put the pieces together. If he figured out her newest secret about Lena, learning her secret identity may just be a walk in the park for the man. “I just find ways to keep busy, is all,” she says, deciding to blame things on Andrea. “Our boss may keep me on a tight leash, but I’m still out there, finding informants, partnerships, people I can turn to when a story comes to me.”

“All I’m saying is that when you start showing up like you have been these past few months, it’s noticeable,” William says. “And while my tabloid story was just a cover, I’m not ignorant of the rumors. There are plenty of people in this city who think that something… substantial happened between you two.”

“Substantial? Ha! Nothing ever has,” Kara insists, ears flaming. William offers a fascinating, fresh look at how people see her relationship with Lena, but actually hearing his take is bringing with it a new shade of embarrassment that Kara hadn’t expected to have to deal with tonight.

“Really?” William asks, eyes wide and frowning. He looks less sure of himself now, as if realizing that maybe he’d overstepped and he was now stranded in the no man’s land of his assumption. “Genuinely, that’s a surprise to me. When we first met, I’d assumed that you two had had some sort of breakup or something from the way you limped around each other.”

Kara’s jaw drops. “That wasn’t a breakup- I- we had a fight. As friends. That’s all.”

The man shrugs, keeping his eyes light and inquisitive but not demanding. He seems like he understands perfectly the line he’s to tread, even if he’s new to all of this when it comes to Kara. It only reaffirms her faith in him as a partner and as a friend. “Didn’t look like a fight between friends to me,” he says simply. “Ever since then, I always thought something might be there. You coming to me with this very personal crusade against the Luthors was just confirmation. I don’t think you would have asked for help if this didn’t mean so much to you - and to her.”

At a loss for words, Kara gestures with her hands before finally settling back down on her lap. William is good, she’ll give him that. “It’s complicated,” she repeats. “And because of that, this is all I can give her. If I can do this for her, then maybe…” Kara shakes her head. “Well, I don’t know what will happen. But I do know that it’ll make her happy, and she deserves a break.”

“A story is a story, regardless of your reasons for chasing after it,” William offers, kind and understanding and willing to let Kara’s feelings remain on the table, untampered with and left alone. “I’m just glad you chose me to chase along behind you.”

Kara smiles. “So am I,” she says. “You’re a good reporter, William, and this?” She nods over at the sheets of numbers on the table. “This is exactly what we needed. We can publish it now, can’t we? It’s finally done.”

And not a moment too soon, Kara might add. In the race with the clock, they don’t exactly have very much longer to keep wandering.

William stops slouching, sitting up on the couch with excited eyes and gesturing hands. Kara grabs some of the papers out of the way before he can spill his Lo Mein all over their Golden Ticket that they’ve finally found. With one last gulp, she finishes up the rest of the champagne, the redness on her cheeks caused for once by the alcohol and not by her own embarrassment.

“Nearly. We’re so close. Add this evidence and an attention grabber, and I can guarantee you that this article will make waves,” he says, leaning so far forwards that now he’s hunched over in the opposite direction as before. “No, not just waves,” he corrects. “If we present this to the public in the right way, we’re going to have a tsunami on our hands. The Luthors won’t be able to find a dry spot to cower away anywhere.”

Kara bites down against her vicious streak, her heart booming at the thought. There aren’t many people she hates on this planet or the next, but Lex and Lillian take the cake. Add the laundry list of cruelty, mistreatment, and abuse they’ve carried out against Lena over the years, and Kara takes an alarming amount of satisfaction from imagining their downfall in any shape or form. Perhaps in a different life, one with a more malleable moral compass and maybe even a little more willingness to do whatever it takes, Kara would have thrown Lex into the sun and wiped her hands of him long ago. But that isn’t her now, and if the look of passion on William’s face is anything to go on, this method will be more than effective to achieve what Kara has in mind.

This won’t stop Lex. Not permanently. Though she doesn’t have the heart to tell William this, she knows that, no matter how important, Lex will treat this as nothing more than a poke in the side - and that is exactly what Kara is hoping for. All this is is a carefully laid fuse, woven and threaded in and out of whatever cracks and weaknesses that Kara’s managed to sniff out. With her finger balanced on the hairpin trigger, she needs Lex to be as angry and reckless as possible. After that, it’ll be up to Kara’s abilities, her team, and likely a healthy dose of luck, and Lex and CADMUS will be stopped for good.

If things don’t work out the way that Kara would like, if something were to go awry or if she were to-

Well, Kara is glad that at the very least, she’ll be able to do this for Lena.

Shaking herself out of those thoughts, Kara lifts her head. She’ll focus on the task at hand first, and reckon with her own hurricane that will be created by this article later. “What do you mean, presenting it to the public in the right way?” she asks.

William shifts, grabbing his notes and waving them every which way. Kara can’t help but smile; this is a side of William that not many people get to see, and his dedication to this project that isn’t even his to begin with - and what he knows will put him in considerable danger - is inspiring. Unlike Kara, William is very much human and very much vulnerable. It makes the fact that he’s shown up so steadfastly for Kara and this article that much braver. “Look, before you were a reporter, how many newspaper stories do you remember reading?” he asks.

Flashes of her childhood pass by, memories of her practically devouring the newest edition of the Daily Planet each time it arrived, wrinkled and weather-stained, to the front step in Midvale. Kara always scoured through the pages for any snippets she could find about her cousin and Krypton. As she grew familiar with the story beats of Metropolis and its revolving door of colorful side characters and bold villains with catchy nicknames, the Daily Planet became the closest thing to being a part of Clark’s life that Kara could manage, seeing as her English was still a work in progress and Kal spoke the language of their dead planet with a nervous stutter and the pronunciation of a detached academic. They were strangers, voyeurs in each other’s lives, but in those pages, Kara began to understand what Superman meant to the people of Earth. She began to understand what Superman meant to her cousin, and more importantly, Kara wondered if she could wear her family’s sigil on her chest someday too.

Telling William any of that wouldn't exactly fortify Kara’s already paper-thin secret identity around the man, so Kara plays it safe.

“Not very many,” she answers with a vague shrug. “Small town, not much to read.”

“You know me,” William says. “I’ll remain loyal to print until the day I die, but articles don’t gain traction on their own anymore.”

“Especially given the fact that Lex and Lillian have most media outlets firmly under their thumb,” Kara adds, understanding what William is driving at. They’re at an immediate disadvantage, publishing this in a standard way. No matter how big of a story, the Luthors have enough power to bury even the most damning of evidence if they have time to get ahead of the story. They’re going to need a catalyst.

“We need something different if this is going to catch on fire in the way we want it to,” he says. “Something big. Something that will be impossible to ignore, or to sweep under the rug.”

Sensing that William wouldn’t have brought this up without already having something concrete in mind, Kara just nods her head, deciding to trust in her partner.

“What’s your plan?” she asks, and gets immediate confirmation that William does indeed have one by the way he takes in a deep breath.

“You’re still close with Supergirl, yeah?”

As she has since the day people started bringing up her alter ego in front of her, Kara fights a blush and shoves her hands under her legs to stop them from fidgeting with her glasses. It’s a delicate balance, weaving her two identities together as if they have a living, breathing relationship with each other, but it sure does come in handy as a reporter and she has information that no regular investigator should reasonably have.

“I am,” she answers, keeping her tone neutral. Kara is so consumed by trying to play it cool that she doesn’t have enough energy to wonder why it is that William is bringing up Supergirl in the context of their regular old Catco article until it’s too late to prepare.

William meets her eyes, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He’s excited, but he’s also nervous. Kara doesn’t know why until he says, “We need to convince her to go on air with us and present the article to the audience through Supergirl, not just through Catco.”

Kara blinks rapidly, trying to process the avalanche of issues that this idea has suddenly confronted her with. “We need to… interview Supergirl? On live television? We want her to share this information with National City?” she asks slowly, stalling for time and also making sure she heard him correctly.

“We have the equipment. Even Andrea will go for it, knowing the ratings that we’re going to get with a stunt like this. We let Supergirl do her thing, and then we publish the article immediately in the aftermath.” The man nods, practically vibrating on the couch cushion next to her. Kara didn’t think he could even get this excited until now, and the fact that this energy has been brought on by this… difficult proposition is not good. If William is expressing this much emotion about something like this, it must mean that he really, truly, absolutely wants to do it.

That puts Kara in a very tricky spot indeed. She stays silent, her mouth hanging open.

“She’s done something like it before,” he says, filling up the vacuum made by Kara’s shock with ease. He grins, opening another beer with a sense of gusto that causes Kara to sink into her side of the couch. “I mean, Supergirl is famous for them. It’s inspiring, really, how much she can enact change. She goes on TV, reaches as many people as she can all at once, and the people listen to her. They believe in her. If we can use that in our favor, if we can weaponize it against-”

“Hold on,” Kara says, raising her hands. She gets the sense that she’s about to try and tame a bucking bronco that has no intentions of doing anything other than what he thinks is the best path forward. “Who’s to say that anyone would even buy what she’s saying? I mean, Supergirl was there the last time anyone tried to face the Luthors. The press, the authorities, everyone turned against her when the attempted arrest of Lillian didn’t go through.”

“The people never turned against Supergirl,” William insists. “Sure, they lost faith in whatever nameless government agency failed to get the jump on Lillian, and unfortunately enough for your roommate, Lena Luthor certainly got thrown in the dog house along with them, but not Supergirl. The people love her. How can they stop trusting in her when she’s continued to go out and save lives every day regardless of the threats that CADMUS have levied against her?”

“Well, that’s another thing,” Kara says, casting William’s excellent point aside and focusing on the new trouble he’s just brought up. She barely managed to beat down Red Tornado today, a known foe with weaknesses Kara was aware of and willing to exploit. If she agrees to something like this, Kara is inviting the unknown to attack her at any second, and even if that’s her plan anyway, Kara isn’t ready for CADMUS to throw the entire kitchen sink at her in the immediate future. “Sure, National City still has her back. But what about her? Think about the risk that she’s taking, going on television and defying the Luthors in such an open, outspoken way. Do we really want to subject her to the fallout of that?”

William’s brow furrows. He remains eager, but Kara can tell that he hadn’t expected her to have quite so many reservations about his plan. “I guess I was under the impression that Supergirl isn’t the type of person to back away from an opportunity to do good just because it means she faces a little more danger because of it. She’s never seemed the type to hide.”

How ironic, that William is now the one up to bat for Kara to come out of hiding, and Kara has unwittingly become an echo of her sister, all of her worry and her caution seeming to guide Kara’s movements like some sort of a shadow puppet. Kara’s hands go up to her glasses despite her best efforts to avoid that particular tell. William is right; Supergirl isn’t the type to pass up on something this important.

Still, she hangs in limbo. “I- I just don’t think that the two of us even know the half of what she’s really up against,” she settles on, remaining decidedly distant. This line of reasoning isn’t going to do anything to sway the man sitting beside her, but Kara is faced now with the question of whether she even wants him to change his mind. “She may be going out and putting out fires, stopping robberies, and whatever else, but… what if she fears CADMUS more than we think she does?”

William ponders the question, chewing on the tip of his pen that he always has in his shirt pocket. “I guess I’m not sure,” he says. “You know her best, Kara. What do you think? If this is a bad idea - if you think Supergirl wouldn’t do this like I believe she would, then just tell me. We can work something else out.”

Kara hides a groan and shakes off the instinct to bury her head in her hands. William has no idea the level of mental gymnastics she’s doing right now. She’s much too tired to remember the delicate framework of lies and disguises and alibis she’s built up around the man, and if he keeps inadvertently playing with her double identity like this, something is going to fall through the cracks.

At the heart of the matter is the undeniable truth that William is exactly right. Really, Kara couldn’t have thought of a better idea if she’d tried. This will not only ensure that all of her reporter work as Kara Danvers will pay off and will be shared far and wide, but as Supergirl, she’ll get to spit in the face of the Luthors in a wildly public performance. If she was hoping for an inciting incident to trick Lex into lashing out, this is it. If Kara was only thinking with her head and not her head, she should be thanking her partner a million times over for proposing as genius of a provocation as this.

But Kara’s heart won’t stop contracting unevenly against her ribcage as she imagines the aftermath of this. The end has been coming for a long time now, in a very vague, detached way. This would ensure that the end is not just near, but well and truly upon her. Kara doesn’t know what to think; she doesn’t know if Alex or her friends are even remotely prepared to deal with this storm - Rao, Kara doesn’t even know if she is. Not to mention the fact that facing Alex or Lena or any of her friends after pulling something like this makes walking up to Lex with her hands tied seem more appealing than looking anyone in the eye.

Kara knows what her decision is. Her time is running out regardless of how long she stalls, and this is the type of chance she’s been itching for all these months. How can she pass this up and be able to live with herself if CADMUS remains at full strength and hurts someone she loves because of it? Kara can handle putting her own life on the line - she’s done it enough to place all of her bets with steady hands and cool, calm eyes. If she doesn’t do this - if she lets this chance slip through her fingers, she knows she’ll regret it.

William put it better than Kara ever could. This is something that Supergirl would do. Regardless of the internal struggle between her two sides, Kara knows that she must say yes to this if it will help people.

She heaves out a breath, meeting her partner’s expectant gaze. “It’s not a bad idea,” she says. “And you’re right. If we’re going to make this work, we need Supergirl.”

“Really?” he asks, all of his eagerness coming back in full force. Kara wishes she could reciprocate the feeling fully without feeling like she’s signing over her death certificate and preparing to wave it around in front of a national audience.

“Really,” she confirms, a grim but firm smile on her face. Kara reminds herself that this is why she’d become Supergirl in the first place. She’s going to do good - she’s going to save Lena in a way she hadn’t thought she’d be able to while using both of her identities. Kara can reckon with the consequences later, so long as she can serve the killing blow to CADMUS first. “I’ll call her first thing tomorrow morning. I can set up a time for her to meet with you, and together you can figure out all of the details for that night.”

William’s head swivels back up. “You’ll be there, won’t you?” he asks.

Kara’s smile grows tight. Knowing how reckless this plan is, there is no way she’ll be able to convince J’onn to go along with it as one of her alter egos or the other. Hell, Kara knows that she should not say a word about this to J’onn or anyone else, lest she actually does get thrown in the DEO for the night. Alex may have given her the go-ahead, but she knows her sister will walk that back the moment she hears about this. Writing an article is one thing - but going on TV and basically doing the equivalent of sticking her tongue out and giving the middle finger to Lex is quite another.

“If you don’t mind doing it by yourself, then no, I won’t be,” she says, adding an apologetic twinge to her smile. “I- I wanted to be with Lena when the news broke. She’s been so miserable for so long, and has felt so powerless about the entire thing… maybe it’s selfish of me, but I want to see her face the moment she realizes that everything that was taken from her is finally going to be given back.”

William’s smile grows gentler, his eyes creasing as his entire face betrays his fondness. “That’s not selfish, Kara,” he says. “That’s you being there for the person you care about the most. If I had… anyone like that in my life, someone that special, I would be by their side too.”

“You would?” Kara says, biting her lip and in disbelief over how smoothly that excuse panned out. Probably because it was as close to the truth as she was willing to admit, and in another world, if Kara didn’t have two disparate, clashing sides of her life to contend with, that’s exactly where she would be.

In another life, Kara hopes that none of this would put them in any danger to begin with.

“I don’t have many people in my life who are that important to me,” he answers with a sad smile, and Kara is reminded of how lonely the man is. Kara knows what that feeling is like, and makes a promise to herself to remedy that in him in whatever way she can. “You’d be an idiot to let it slip away, and I know that that’s something you most certainly are not.”

Kara’s cheeks turn even ruddier and she looks away. “Thank you,” she says softly, feeling light and free and more than a little tipsy, drunk off life as well as the bubbles that he provided. “You’re a good friend, William. I couldn’t have asked for a better person or a partner to come stumbling into my life.”

Now it’s his turn to blush, but William manages to turn it around with a bit of mischief. “Does that mean my name will be first on the byline?” he asks, his words completely devoid of anything serious and his laughter immediately revealing his joke. Kara laughs along with him, her entire chest warm with contentment. She wonders if this is what it would have been like, had she been able to raise Clark. If he would have been like a brother to her, the two of them chasing after stories and sharing takeout food and teasing each other until both of their faces hurt from smiling so much.

That what-if will always serve as a steady ache in Kara’s heart, but she’s just grateful for the man giggling across from her now, so new to her life and yet so instantly kind and supportive the moment his guards came down. It may have taken some extra effort - and an article aiming at the kneecaps of CADMUS to boot - but Kara wouldn’t trade this newfound sense of camaraderie for the world.

“We can decide that after I judge your interviewing skills from my couch,” Kara swipes back with a laugh, grabbing a fortune cookie from the bag and tossing it at his chest. Game, William grabs one of his own and tosses it right back, only making them giggle more.

“I’m good!” he promises, swiping his fingers over his chest in a clumsy attempt at making an oath. “Scout’s honor.”

“Well, you’d better hope so. I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems like a worthy award for as fine of a reporter as yourself would be to meet your hero.”

William raises an eyebrow, still laughing but no longer following all that well. His breath smells like beer, and Kara realizes that the man has been celebrating for most of the night all by himself. It only strengthens her resolve to give William a circle of friends to turn to. “Lois Lane?” he asks, shaking his head. “That’ll never happen.”

Kara fights off a revealing, smug grin from appearing on her face. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” she says, playing coy and keeping her poker face rock solid. “What are your plans for the holidays?”

The fact that she’s stayed so stubbornly on this bit has piqued his interest. William’s smile grows blank, and he tilts his head. “Looking for something to do. I’m still relatively new to the States, and you don’t have very many pubs to celebrate at. Why?”

It’s impossible to hide her smile now, as Kara leans close and drops the bomb. “Come celebrate with me and my friends, and I can promise you that you’ll meet Lois,” she says.

“No way. Don’t pull my leg like that, Kara.”

Kara begins to laugh again, William’s disbelief and his wide eyes giving her a feeling of joy that’s contagious and easy to embrace. “I’m not. She’s married to my cousin, Clark. Do you need me to pull out the RSVP email as evidence?”

“Clark- Clark Kent is your cousin? You actually know Lois Lane?” William exclaims, and if Kara didn’t know any better, she’d think that the man was a few moments away from having a full-on meltdown, freaking out like some fan at a concert.

“So, you coming, or what?” she asks with a raised eyebrow, barely able to contain her laughter long enough to play things straight.

By the time he gets his mouth working again, William is nodding his head so strongly that Kara worries about the health of his neck in the long term. Before she can react or even prepare for the impact in any way, the man is launching himself at her in what is a half-tackle, half-bear hug. Because she is tired and sore and laughing far too hard to do anything about it, Kara lets it happen, trapped under his big, friendly mass, her glasses nearly knocked off her face.

“Are you kidding me? Yes!” he cries out, and Kara thinks he might be trying to give her a drunken, vicelike squeeze, wrapping his arms around her neck and shoulders and shaking her around. “Yes! I’ll bring anything you want. Wine, beer, the stuffing, an entire Christmas Ham if I have to. So long as you’re not pulling my leg, I’ll be there.”

“She’s going to love you,” Kara laughs. “Seriously, there is no one Lois enjoys talking to more than a fellow reporter. And the one who’s about to bring down the Luthor family? If she wasn’t so attached to Clark, she might just drag you under the mistletoe herself.”

“You’re the best,” William says, pulling back from her face just long enough to give her a sincere, grateful smile.

They’re afloat in this moment of uncomplicated happiness when the door suddenly swings open, and Lena returns to the apartment, and it all comes crashing down.

Though she doesn’t know why, Kara straightens up and detangles herself from William’s tangled, lethargic limbs immediately, but not before the other woman has ample time to take in the scene in front of her. Lena’s eyes roam around the room, taking in the empty food containers scattered around the floor, and the champagne bottle that had rolled halfway into the living room. She glances up at Kara’s pink face and William’s unfocused gaze and ruffled hair, and right as Kara watches, a shadow moves across Lena’s face. She goes pale, letting out a nearly silent gasp. Something drops to the floor in front of her; Kara cranes her head and sees that Lena had brought food home as well, soup that is now spilling across the floor in a slow-moving mass of tomato and onion.

“Lena! I didn’t think you would be back so soon!” Kara’s eyes dart to the coffee table, where their papers are peeking out from underneath the remnants of the Chinese food and are just begging to be found by Lena’s shell-shocked, wandering eye. With a jolt, she leans forward, gathering up the papers and handing them to William in a messy pile. Though he clearly has no idea what’s going on, William continues to prove why Kara made a wise choice in a partner in crime, gamely taking the stack and shoving them away in his briefcase without a word of direction from Kara. Clearing her throat, Kara glances back over at the front door, taking in Lena’s stricken, upset appearance. What could she be upset about? Kara wonders to herself, still frozen in place.

Kara doesn’t know where the expression on her best friend’s face is coming from, but she does what she can to alleviate the weird tension in the room. With a nervous smile, she places a hand on William’s shoulder, squeezing gently. He shoots her a look from the corners of his eyes, but Kara ignores it for now, too focused on figuring out exactly what’s wrong with her best friend.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know- I didn’t realize you had company,” Lena whispers, and Kara could swear that it sounds like the other woman is trying hard not to cry. Without her supersenses, Kara can’t tell for sure, but she frowns, not understanding what’s going on but disliking it all the same. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.”

“Interrupting-? Not at all! William and I were just- we were…” Her words escaping her, Kara looks around wildly for some sort of excuse that doesn’t involve reporting or Catco in any way. “Making plans for the holidays!” she lands on, her smile growing more glued on by the second. “He’s going to join us this year. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Oh… how nice,” Lena musters up, her words falling flat in the vacuum. “It’ll be good to have you there, Mr. Dey. We make more than enough food to go around.” Swallowing hard, she seems to get her feet under her long enough to give William a brief smile that, to anyone else other than Kara, would look perfectly sincere. But because it’s Kara, and because she knows what Lena looks like when she’s faking a smile, she doesn’t buy it for a second. Her own carefree expression fading with a whimper, Kara searches Lena’s face only to find that the other woman has put her walls back up even for her.

After a beat of silence that feels like it drags on for half of an eternity, Lena coughs briefly into her hand and takes a step back. “Well, I wouldn’t want to impose. As soon as I clean up this mess that I’ve made, I can leave and give you two your privacy back.”

“That’s not necessary-” Kara blurts out, unsure as to why the thought of Lena seeing this as something more than a passing moment between friends seems like something so devastating, but William beats her to the punch, clearing his own throat and standing up, his briefcase and personal belongings already in hand.

“Don’t be silly, Ms. Luthor,” William says, formal but with a polite, friendly nod of his head. “I need to be heading back to my place anyways. I’ll cut my losses and spare both of you my typical long-winded goodbye.”

Before Kara or Lena can make any protests against it, William has already strode past the carnage in the kitchen and is opening the door, turning back around to give Kara one last loaded look of what she suspects might be sympathy. Apparently, she isn’t the only one who picked up on Lena’s strange behavior, and William seems concerned enough that he jumped at the opportunity to give them their space.

“Call me, will you?” he requests, sending her another furtive glance. Lena watches it happen and then firmly attaches her own eyes to the floor, hands clasped tightly in front of her. “We have more to talk about when it comes to that… thing, I want to do.”

“I will,” Kara promises, giving him a nod. Getting the message and released of his duty to stay just in case Kara needs him, he closes the door slowly. “Goodnight, William.”

The moment she says it, the door shuts with a definitive click, and everything seems to come rushing back to full speed again.

Shaking herself out of this strange fever that’s attached to her system, Kara gets up and walks cautiously over to where Lena is crouched on the floor, already wiping up the spill and scrubbing hard at the remaining stain. Too hard, Kara observes; Lena’s knuckles are white with the effort she’s using to grip the sponge, and her movements are far too robotic to come across as natural.

She stops just behind Lena, at a loss for how to proceed. Something is wrong - that much, Kara knows. It’s the fact that she has no idea what that’s so challenging to navigate around.

“Lena, are you…?” Kara asks, shut down just as quickly by Lena’s quiet, measured voice.

“I’m sorry for that. You just scared me, is all,” she says, wooden and slow but not so obviously upset that Kara can call her out on it. “I heard noises, and for a moment I thought that you might be in trouble. Needless to say, I shouldn’t have barged in like that. It’s not even my apartment.”

“Yes, it is- you didn’t do anything wrong,” Kara says, still lingering just out of Lena’s periphery. Taking a deep breath, she tries to probe again, as gently as she can. “Are you sure you’re alright? Because it seemed like maybe I did something- like something was-”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Lena answers, never looking up but with a firm enough tone that signals to Kara clear as day that the other woman will not be entertaining this line of questioning any longer. “I’m glad that your night seems to have taken a turn for the better.”

“He’s a nice guy,” Kara ventures out, feeling meek and without any of the confidence that she’d had earlier this evening. “I like him. I’m glad he’s got somewhere to go for Christmas, now.”

“As am I.” Lena stands up at long last, after cleaning the floor longer than even the worst stain would demand, and Kara can see that her eyes are rimmed red. A newfound surge of concern rushes through her; she knew Lena had been close to crying, and this just proved it. But Kara holds her tongue after taking one look at Lena’s face. This isn’t something that Lena even remotely wants to talk about, and Kara is too confused and too adrift to push through and pursue it anyway.

Instead, she bites her lip, gesturing to the couch. “It’s too bad about the food, but… how about a movie? If you’re still up for it?”

She watches as Lena studies the messy couch, eyes darting quickly across the tangled blankets and the disorderly pillows and the deep indentation on the cushions, displaying the memory of where Kara and William had been flung against each other just a moment ago. The other woman lets out a shuddering, uneven sigh, and Kara’s heart sinks deeper.

“You know what? I just realized that I left something important at your sister’s.” Lena turns back to the door before the words even fully sink in, head down and steps rushed. “I need to run back and get it before it gets any later.”

“What- what is it?” Kara asks, trying desperately to get the other woman to pause for a moment and allow Kara to catch up with her racing heart and spinning mind. She curses what’s left of the champagne in her system; it’s making her movements halting and uncertain, and Lena is able to blow past her with ease. “It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

Lena ignores the first part of her question entirely. Kara doesn’t know how or when she managed to do it, but Lena’s shoes are already back on, purse slung sturdily over her shoulder. “I’m afraid it can’t,” Lena replies, not sounding all that regretful, and she opens the door.

She’s nearly out into the hallway before Kara finally reacts, lunging forwards and grabbing Lena’s arm. Spinning her around, she searches her face, finding nothing good. Lena doesn’t even meet her eyes. “Lena,” she pleads, reaching out one more time. “I just get the feeling that something went wrong, just now, and I-”

“I promise you, everything is fine.” Lena detaches herself gently from Kara’s grasp and backs away down the hallway, only meeting her eyes when she’s a good twenty feet away. “Get some sleep, and I’ll be back before you know it,” she says, sending Kara one last mask of a smile, before she is gone completely.

Kara is left standing dumbfounded and crestfallen in her doorway, unsure of what just happened but convinced all the same that something definitely did, no matter what Lena tries to tell her otherwise. The Lena that just fled her apartment now is not the one that Kara’s grown so accustomed to having around, and Kara doesn’t like the fact that this version of her isn’t one that she’s able to puzzle out. It feels like it did all those months ago, at that Game Night when Lena left crying in the elevator, and Kara just wants to know what it is she’s doing to cause it.

She won’t find out. Not tonight - maybe not ever. For tonight, her newfound loneliness and aching’ll just have to be the emotions she shares her bed with.

…

By the time she wakes up in the morning, Kara’s powers are back - and Lena is slipped under the sheets and curled up as if nothing had ever happened.

Kara reflects on last night as she sits up gingerly in bed, shaking out her tight muscles that have patched themselves back together and healed in her sleep. She rubs her hands through her hair, staring over at Lena. When had the sight of her in Kara’s bed become something so normal, so natural, and so thoughtless that Kara had tossed and turned most of the night, unable to even sleep properly without the other woman beside her.

That need is a very, very dangerous one, Kara knows. While she never should have allowed herself to grow so accustomed to Lena’s warmth pressed into her side that it became something she’s learned to miss, Kara also understands that it’s far too late to do anything about it now. However addictive it may be, Kara will just have to deal with the withdrawal, and if last night was anything to go by, it won’t be pretty.

She’s the first one out of bed, Lena barely even stirring as Kara stretches and sneaks her way out of the room without causing any of the floorboards to creak. Her powers return to her body at a slow and languid pace, her hearing buzzing and growing more intense by the second - but still, Kara wonders if Lena is actually asleep or is simply pretending to be. Without any ability to hear her heartbeat, Kara accepts the ambiguity. Whether or not Lena is awake is not the important question, after all - it’s far more tormenting to consider the possibility that, if Lena is faking her slumber, is it because she simply wants to stay in bed for a moment longer, or is it because she wants to avoid Kara and the kitchen through any means necessary?

It’s best not to linger on a what-if like that. Kara has already had plenty of time to recreate yesterday evening in her head and walk through it moment by moment, and there is enough to decipher as is without adding the morning to the mix.

In fact, Kara decides that it’s best not to deal with this new problem at all, pulling off her glasses, sneaking her way out the window and into the early morning sky as soon as her fingers and toes begin to tingle, signaling to her that she’s able to fly again.

And thank Rao for that, because in the air, Kara can finally let off some steam.

As she soars through the streets, idly watching the gridlocked traffic below her, Kara reasons with herself that there’s nothing wrong with leaving without talking to Lena. She has things to do, after all - important things, and ones that will probably help Lena more in the long run than whatever stuttering conversation Kara would attempt to lead them through. William is expecting a call, and Kara knows that what they need to do can’t wait.

It’s nice to have something as high-priority as William’s plan to focus on, and it proves to be a welcome distraction from whatever awkward interaction will inevitably take place around Lena the moment she does leave the neutral zone that is their bedroom. Maybe it’s cowardice, but Kara takes the escape that’s been offered to her. She should stay in her apartment until Lena wakes up. She should confront her best friend about what happened once again and refuse to back down this time. Kara should do all of that and more, finally getting to the bottom of the tension that has tethered the two of them together for all of these months. Though it’s been sitting latent and undisturbed ever since Lena moved in, it reared its head last night and Kara is well aware that it’s not something she can just ignore and hope will resolve on its own.

Clearly, that is not the case with this, but Kara pushes it aside for the time being despite that. She’s got an interview to prepare for, after all.

It takes 30 seconds for her to tornado her way in through Alex’s open window, greeting her bleary-eyed sister and a very startled Kelly at the breakfast table with a rushed grin.

“I’m borrowing your phone,” she announces to her sister, plucking it out of her hands and making a hasty retreat back to the window.

“Hey!” Alex complains on instinct, before the context of Kara’s arrival catches up to her. “Wait, your powers are back?”

“Obviously! I’ll be back in a minute!” Kara calls out over her shoulder before leaping back into the sky. Even if her sister is in on Kara’s investigation, Kara has zero intention of informing her of this new wrinkle. Even with her new, determined, open-minded attitude, she knows Alex will shut this interview down before William could even start writing his questions.

Carving her way through the city, Kara reaches one of her favorite parks down by the harbor within another 30 seconds. Catching her breath, Kara unlocks her sister’s phone and wanders her way through the contact list. With a thrill of satisfaction, she find’s William’s name. Seeing as Alex tends to keep tabs on everyone in Kara’s life who may be close to her secret identity, Kara only proves her own hunch right by seeing his phone number on the screen.

When it comes to predictability, Kara hopes her sister never changes.

Straightening out her cape and sending a friendly wave to the little girl staring awe-struck at her from behind a fountain, Kara taps the contact and holds the phone up to her ear, listening intently as the ring tone drones on and on.

Right on the very last ring, William picks up. “Hello?” he asks, voice groggy and confused.

Kara checks the time on her phone and winces. Turns out it’s much earlier than she had initially thought.

“It’s me,” she says. After a long pause, Kara clarifies, lowering her voice to a more acceptable level. “Kara? Sorry, new phone.”

“Kara!” he replies, clearer now and much less reserved now that he knows who’s on the other end of the line. “Good morning. I didn’t expect you to call so soon. I figured you would have your hands full dealing with whatever happened between you and-”

“Supergirl is in,” Kara interupts, too intensely focused on the task ahead of her and not at all in the mood to get sidetracked and corralled into talking to William about whatever the hell had happened last night. “Just tell me when and where. She’ll be there.”

“That’s brilliant!” William responds, words all coming out in one long, loud breath into the phone. “I’ll start working on it right now. The sooner the better… how about tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night,” Kara says, trailing off. She knew it would be a quick turnaround, but not even in her wildest dreams had Kara anticipated having barely more than 24 hours to prepare herself for this interview and somehow get her team ready without revealing anything too quickly. “You can really be ready so soon?”

“I could be ready by this afternoon, I’m so excited, but I figure that an extra day would do all of us some good. Will that work for her? Emergencies notwithstanding, of course.”

Kara swallows. This is really going to happen. This will all finally be over - or at least, the beginning of the end will be brought on by this article. “Let’s do it,” she says, steely and sure. “I’ll let Supergirl know, and I’ll put the finishing touches on the writing and get it ready to be published. Plus… I’ll pull a favor with Lois, see if we can’t get this to circulate digitally as far as possible.”

“I still can’t believe you actually know Lois- great. I will handle everything on the broadcast side of things.” William exhales slowly, and Kara can imagine him spinning in his desk chair, still surrounded by files and having the time of his life. “We did good, Kara. This is going to change everything. I can feel it.”

“If I don’t see you before the interview happens…” Kara hesitates. The full weight of the trouble that she’s unwittingly dragged William into hits her like a wave. If she doesn’t look out for him - if she doesn’t protect him like she promised herself she would - there won’t be a Thanksgiving for William to join. His death will be absolutely and undeniably her fault, and Kara can’t endure any more blemishes on her conscience.

There are enough people she hasn’t been able to save. Kara can’t bear to add his name to her list.

“Be careful, alright?” she finishes, cradling the phone to her ear. “Don’t do anything too stupid without me around to get you out of it.”

“I won’t,” William says with a laugh. Kara can hear furious typing on his end, and knows he’s already off to the races. “Besides, Supergirl will be with me. What could go wrong?”

He hangs up, the dial tone echoing in Kara’s ear. Well, it’s nice to know that someone still has blind faith in Supergirl, Kara supposes.

She takes a little bit longer to get back to Alex’s apartment, stopping to properly say hello to the girl by the fountain and racing her to the nearest tree and back. Her mother find the two of them giggling and splashing water in the air, and as the woman gets starstruck herself, Kara just smiles and squeezes the girl’s hand.

William isn’t the only one who still believes in Supergirl, and Kara will always have these moments as proof. She wonders what these two will think, watching her appear on the TV instead of some ghastly, terrifying message from CADMUS.

Kara thinks this will bring people’s hope back, at the very least, and that’s just as important as anything she does to take down Lex or help Lena. That’s what Supergirl does, after all.

Alex and Kelly are still seated at the table when she arrives, and this time, they look more prepared for her arrival. From the expectant look on their faces, Kara isn’t convinced that that’s a good thing.

“Thank you,” she says, gifting the phone back with a rushed smile. Maybe if she acts like she has a million places to be, Alex won’t ask too many questions. “It was an emergency. Work thing.”

Maybe even that was too much information to give to her sister, as Alex’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean, an emergency?” she asks. Kelly kicks her gently under the table, and her frown deepens. “Oh! And another thing - what happened with Lena last night? Why did she show back up here looking so-”

“I’m hosting a game night tomorrow,” Kara cuts in, guns blazing. Her plans are too far along in motion now for her to get bogged down by a sisterly interrogation. Kara really can’t afford to get trapped somewhere by Alex and Kelly and expect herself to be able to keep her walls up, and so she chooses to steamroll right past them.

The strangeness of the interjection is enough to knock Alex off track. “Game night? IT’s hardly the time to kick back and relax! What are you talking about-?”

“Promise me you’ll get everyone there?” Kara asks, but it’s not a request. She crosses her arms and shoots Alex a look she hopes she’ll understand. However many favors she has to call in to make this happen, Kara is willing to. If she can get her entire team in one spot while she goes and finishes this with William, it’ll be that much easier to explain her plan. More than that, Kara would love it if she could schedule all of the time she gets yelled at by various people into one condensed time and space. The sooner she gets the anger phase over with, the more time everyone will have to brace themselves for whatever reactionary attack Lex makes next.

Kara is prepared and willing to put the ball in his court. She just needs her team to be ready for it too, no matter their feelings on how Kara decided to get them to this point.

“I- I will.” Alex stares her down, demanding more than what Kara’s willing to give her. “But what does that have to do with-”

“You’re the best!” Kara declares, swooping over to place a quick kiss on the back of Alex’s head. “I’ve gotta run, sorry! No time to explain now. Just get everyone to my place by seven at the latest!”

“Kara, wait a second!” Alex cries out, turning in her chair and trying to grab at Kara’s cape but she is much too fast for her older sister, over by the window in the blink of an eye and out of it before her sister can do anything about it.

She tries not to feel too guilty about it. After all, Kara really does have a lot to do, and placating Alex is just going to have to wait.

…

When Supergirl arrives with a quiet thud at Cat Grant’s balcony the next evening, she finds William true to his word.

Everything looks perfect. While Kara isn’t sure how he managed to pull this off in such a short span of time, he’s worked miracles to the space. Andrea’s office - formerly Lena’s and James’s, but really what will always belong to Cat in Kara’s eyes - has always been put-together, but William has transformed it completely with lighting and set dressing and two lone chairs placed in the middle of it all. With the camera positioned to capture the two of them sitting side by side in a shot that is equal parts intimate and dignified, Kara knows it will express exactly what they hope to evoke with this interview.

Having been forced to trudge to the nearest electronics store and buy the best phone she could get at a moment’s notice, Kara has been texting William for most of the day. They’ve agreed that, if this broadcast is going to capture the trust of all of National City and beyond, it can’t be detached or overly formal. William has instead fashioned the space to allow Kara to engage with the people she wants to connect to in a direct, conversational manner, as if she could reach through the camera herself and sway them in the right direction.

She can’t help but be reminded of the first time she ever had to sit in front of a camera like this and ask thousands of strangers all at once to listen to what she had to say. Just like what happened with Myriad, Kara doesn’t just need their ears - she needs their hearts and their minds. If CADMUS is going to be defeated, she needs her city to turn away from the fear and the hate that Lex and Lillian have been preaching so constantly. Their words are suffocating, burning poison, and Kara will have to offer herself as not just an antidote, but a symbol of resistance.

It could so easily turn into martyrdom. Kara isn’t so blind to reality as to be able to look past that. But she knows that someone needs to be the first one to break through the absolute power that CADMUS currently holds over the city, and who better to lead the masses in fearless defiance than Supergirl, the one person the terrorist group wants dead the most?

Kara will take whatever losses come with this, so long as it results in a victory in the long run. There’s that piece of wisdom that Alex is so fond of saying, that a few lost battles don’t guarantee a futile war. If defeating Lex and Lillian for good means that Kara will have to take the bulk of the pain, then so be it. She’s no soldier, but Kara understands necessary sacrifice more than most.

She greets William with a firm, dignified smile, ensuring that her Supergirl identity displays as much determined steel around him as with anyone else. Whether or not William is onto her little secret is another matter entirely, one that Kara simply can’t bother to worry about right now, but for now, she can at least keep up appearances.

Kara can see it in his eyes that no matter what inklings he may have about who Supergirl really is, the mysticism and the wonder are still very much present in him. Good. The more William believes in her - believes in Supergirl, with all of her radiant hope and her brave, selfless intentions - the better. She can remember Cat Grant interviewing her as Supergirl all those years ago, and knows that if she can convince the reporter in front of her to trust that she is still as powerful and worthy as she’s always been, National City will be convinced too.

Even if she knows the ins and outs of what’s about to happen like the back of her hand at this point, what with the amount of hours she spent last night out in her darkened living room talking to her partner in a hushed, animated voice, Kara lets William walk her through it as Supergirl. She looks down at his scribbled list of prepared questions as he looks away and fiddles with the camera and the lighting. Kara watches the sweat bead on his brow, and knows that however exhilarated her friend may be, he is just as nervous.

Moving her cape to one side, Kara crouches down and moves the heavy camera to its correct space with one hand and a friendlier smile this time, hoping to put William more at ease. His jaw goes slack at the casual display of strength, and childlike grin on his own face, and Kara considers her mission accomplished.

“So, are we all set?” she asks, dusting off her hands and standing back up to her full height. William, with his scribbled notes in his hand and his ruffled hair and his ink-stained shirt, gives himself a once over.

“Well, seeing as this is national television and all,” he says, absently smoothing out his shirt. “You mind giving me a few moments to clean myself up? It’s been a hectic day.”

“I understand what that’s like. Take all the time you need,” Supergirl answers with a chuckle. It’s incredible how every interaction, every beat of silence feels different while she’s wearing the cape. There is privilege that comes with wearing the sigil on her chest, and immense strength - and maybe even some intimidation. After all, she can’t blame people for seeing her as a strange visitor from a strange planet, no matter how much humanity she wields. Kara often reminds herself that in many ways, she is Krypton’s dignitary on this planet. While her planet’s leaders may not have chosen her themselves, Kara does her best to earn the mantle. If Krypton’s living legacy is solidified by the power and the kindness and the good that she and Kal-El try to offer to everyone they can, then Kara will consider this particular responsibility to be one she carries with pride.

William excuses himself with his head lowered and a bashful little wave as he leaves for the bathrooms near the elevators, and once the man is out of sight, Kara’s shoulders slump and she moves immediately for the fresh air of the balcony. Talking with William is perfectly fine. Hell, Kara isn’t even all that nervous about the interview anymore, not when she’s seen what her partner has done and knows that it’ll reach so many people.

No. The reason Kara leans against the glass banister for support and lets out a long, quiet sigh into the rush of the city below is not because she’s scared for what she’s about to do. It’s because Kara knows what’ll happen once the other shoe drops - and because she knows that eventually, she will have to show her face in her apartment tonight.

It’s best not to dwell on the wide variety of stormy, stony reactions that Kara imagines this stunt will elicit from her friends. Ideally, Kara suspects that quite a few members of her team will be happy to see Kara do this. She can easily picture Nia giving her a subtle, admiring thumbs up when no one else is looking, or Brainy running the numbers and appreciating this for what it is, which is a calculated gamble. With all this at play, it’s not like Kara will be walking into enemy territory here, not when this strategy will bring about success

In the end, Nia and Brainy and whoever else will only make so big of a dent on Kara’s resolve. It’s the reactions of a select few that are going to sting the most, and that is what Kara is really nervous about.

She takes out her new phone and reluctantly opens up her text message thread with her sister, already littered with half a dozen unanswered questions about where Kara is and what’s going on and - in a moment of much-needed levity - a request from Alex for Kara to pick up some pizzas on her way home from where she’s disappeared to.

Sorry for not responding sooner, Kara types out. Can’t talk long, busy. Is everyone there?

Alex’s response comes fast and without any pretense. Kara can’t help but smile at the mental image of her sister fuming on her couch, surrounded by their friends who don’t know any better and are probably busy tossing popcorn into their mouths and gossiping about their weeks at work. And why would they know any better, Kara reminds herself. This is going to come completely out of the blue for her team as much as it will for everyone else in the city.

We’re all here. Question is, where are you? Alex asks, and Kara is glad for the distance and the two glowing screens separating them because even just reading those short, blunt words makes Kara cringe. She’s going to owe her sister an entire mountain of pizzas when this is all said and done. Some garlic bread, wings, and beer, too, if she;s being realistic with herself. The amount of restraint that her sister is showing right now is well-deserving of a feast.

I’ll be late. Just go ahead and start without me, she answers, bunching her cape up in her fist in an anxious, habitual motion. I thought we could watch the game in the background while we get set up. TV is on, right? Can you make sure it is?

Even though it was a necessary request, Kara is well aware that it’s a bizarre one. She isn’t surprised by Alex’s blunt response, coming in what couldn’t have even been a millisecond later.

What the hell are you up to? Alex sends back, then immediately after, I know something’s going on. Don’t bullshit me - and do NOT do anything stupid.

Just promise me you’ll do it? Kara asks. She hears the sink shut off in the bathroom across the building, knowing that this is her last chance to soften the blow. You trust me, right?

Though I regret it some nights, yes. Of course I do.

Then do this for me. Pretty please? Kara bites her lip, hesitating for just a moment. I can explain everything later, but for now… just do what you can, okay?

The typing bubbles appear and disappear several times before her sister finally sends back a begrudging, long-suffering response. Fine. Whatever that means. UGH. Have I ever told you you’re impossible to work with?

Thank you. I’ll see you all soon. Love you lots, Kara texts back along with a long string of multi-colored hearts, knowing that’s the best she’s going to get from Alex.

Now it’s time for the cameras.

Though she’s done it before multiple times now, always out of the same necessity and drive to reach the people who really need it, Kara isn’t sure she’ll ever be used to being on camera as Supergirl. After all, when she was a little girl, one of the cardinal rules given to her by the Danvers was that Kara should never allow anyone to capture her using her powers, not on film, or an audio recording - and not under any circumstances.

There were no exceptions made to this rule, not even when Kara knows there were times she could have used her powers to help people. The stakes were never too high, thank Rao - Kara doubts she would have slept quite as easily had she known that she let something truly terrible happen under her watch - but she still could have made a difference. Kara was to appear to every unassuming stranger as your average girl next door, and when not even that was enough, then she was meant to be invisible. The glasses were only part of the disguise, and Kara grew completely accustomed to slipping through the cracks without so much as a second glance ever thrown her way.

Of course, all this changed once she became Supergirl.

Camera flashes came with being Supergirl as much as wearing a cape did, and while it was certainly a strange shift in her status quo, Kara grew accustomed to the paparazzi and the average citizen whipping out their phones for a blurry, excited shot of her flying through the sky. Kara didn’t mind it, expected it even - and if getting to go out and help people everyday with her powers now meant that hiding was impossible, Kara accepted it. Embraced it, as a matter of fact; Kara often wonders just how many family photo albums now included her beaming face in them, surrounded by children who flocked to her without any of the hesitation that most adults did. They didn’t care that she was alien, didn’t stop to linger on the possibility that she possessed enough power to burn the world down the way their parents might - no, those kids just wanted to touch the person who’d just whisked them out of a burning building, or had coaxed their cat down out of the tree.

It was nice. Kara took comfort in the fact that who she was was enough for those children, at the very least. She knew that if she managed to do nothing else right, her kindness and the hope she tried so hard to spread would do just that, even if only in the quiet manner of hanging on the fridges of so many strangers.

The photos of passing strangers was one thing, but being interviewed is something else altogether, and Kara knows full well that this is the root of what Jeremiah and Eliza were always so worried about. To willingly put herself up for interrogation, to be placed under a microscope and the wily, probing hands of the likes of Cat Grant and others - that’s where the danger has always lurked. The careful tightrope that she is expected to walk each time she settles down in front of the cameras and the microphones and the reporters hoping desperately to catch her out on some thoughtless inconsistency is a daunting one. Fall to one side, she is overeager, fake, too forceful in her attempts to make the people of Earth accept her and her power. Fall to the other, and she is withdrawn, mysterious, and all the more of a threat for refusing to play along and divulge what is being asked of her.

Needless to say, while Kara, as a reporter herself, believes in the importance of the truth, she is also fully aware of how many lives could be ruined if she reveals her true identity. She’s always preferred to let her actions speak the loudest - has only done something like this when it’s her only option left.

And so, here she sits, in front of a reporter that she trusts with her entire being - and nervous all the same. Some things won’t ever change, she supposes, and the butterflies in her stomach remain as stubbornly in place as her determination to do the right thing all the same.

William, despite his hazard appaearance and frantic disposition only a few moments earlier, proves himself to be capable and composed once the red LIVE button begins blinking over from the camera. He’s a perfect guide to Kara in the moment, asking her a few easy questions in greeting and addressing the audience with a few choice words before granting Kara the stage completely.

Kara looks into the unseeing, unblinking lens, swallowing down the butterflies making a last ditch effort to flutter up her throat. She doesn’t allow herself to look nervous, not while she’s Supergirl. No, as Supergirl, she is speaking to those same little children she’s saved time and time again, reaching out to their skeptical parents and the countless other doubtful, uncertain strangers who are looking for a different message on their screens than the one CADMUS has been shoving down their throats. Kara can’t force change, but she can lead by example, and that is exactly why she keeps her shoulders straight and her chin high.

Even if Kara may be, Supergirl is never afraid. She hopes to show National City that they don’t need to be either.

“People of National City and beyond, this is Supergirl,” she begins, voice clear and unclouded by emotion. She wonders if the power that has begun thrumming against her fingertips is being picked up by the camera, if her strength is something tangible for the people watching to grab ahold of. “I know it’s been awhile, but… I’m here now, and I have something important to share with each and every one of you.”

From just beyond the frame, William leans forward, all of his attention focused on her. Kara imagines that’s what her friends look like right now, enraptured and caught off guard and doing the same thing that William and millions of others are. She can hear the sudden quiet in the city, like everything has been put on pause. She hopes that it’s a good sign, and keeps talking.

“This isn’t the type of message you’ve grown accustomed to seeing on your screens. Instead, you have spent each night wondering if you, your family, your friends, your neighbors, will have to endure another assault by CADMUS, will have to listen to the lies they tell and the poison they spread.” Kara takes a breath, knowing what she says next is a gamble. But she won’t stoop down to the level of Lex and Lillian, not when it comes to winning her city back. “I won’t force any of you to hear what I have to say. If you’d like, change the channel, or turn of your television, or walk away. It’s your choice. But I hope that I’ve earned your trust enough to believe that I am doing this for a reason, and I want all of you here with me.”

Her eyes flick over to the control panel that William was playing around with earlier, her eyes roaming down to where she knows there is a number measuring the amount of screens that this broadcast is actively reaching. Kara feels her heart start to sink as the number slowly ticks downwards, but then - it stops. The number holds steady, still reaching a majority of the people they’d originally broadcasted to, and she takes comfort in knowing that regardless of what happens next, CADMUS hasn’t managed to rob her of this.

“We have all been living in a state of terror, one that, even with all of my abilities, I haven’t been able to put a stop to. CADMUS may tell you that they are in the right, that they will be the ones to bring truth and justice and righteousness back to this city, but this is just another tool of deceit that they use to cast our streets in darkness,” Kara says, stronger now than ever before. “Even as they preach about their twisted morals, and their new, perfect vision of the world, they work in the shadows, kidnapping your loved ones, hurting innocent people, and spreading fear and anger and hate. CADMUS is dangerous and powerful and they will not stop until they take care of every single person standing in the way of their own world domination. I know this, because I am their biggest target - and the last person they want .”

“I am here, speaking to you tonight because a group of reporters here at Catco have been able to do something that I have not,” Supergirl says, folding her hands on her lap. She wonders what she looks like to the people who see right through the cape and the sigil; can Alex pick out the slight shaking of her hands that she’s had to hide? Is Lena staring hard at the screen right now, trying to read the indecipherable, stoic expression on her face as one that Kara wears, not just Supergirl? “They have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that CADMUS is not just a corrupt, immoral organization, but that the identity of those behind it are as guilty of hypocrisy as much as the countless crimes they’ve committed.”

The camera pans back over to William, who delivers the facts of their investigation in a way that only he could. Kara, as Supergirl at least, would never know the ins and the outs of the case like he does. For the sake of not blowing her cover on live television - especially seeing as she must have interviewed at least a fifth of the city during her many wild goose chases when it came to Lex and Lillian - Kara simply bows her head and lets the information wash over her as if she were hearing it for the first time too.

Her phone buzzes right as William concludes on their findings, and fights a self-satisfied smile from growing on her face. That must have been the news alert that they’d hooked up. With any luck, their article, with its damning headline and all of the necessary nuts and bolts to back those accusations up, this time around, just reached every phone in the nation.

She looks up just in time to see William clearing his throat, meeting her eyes and cueing her to say something else. For a man that doesn’t know Supergirl all that much beyond face value, he really does have an incredible amount of clear, genuine belief in her. Gone is the healthy cynicism that he usually wields as a weapon while reporting; this William is one that has bought it completely to the cause, and Kara just prays it won’t get him hurt as collateral for it.

“Why you, Supergirl?” he asks her, a bated breath that lingers across the airwaves. “Why do this when the risk is so high?”

“Because it’s part of the oath I made to myself, to protect this city,” she answers honestly, addressing William but moving her eyes back up to the camera. If there was ever a time to cause real change in the hearts and the minds of the people, this is it. “Because, if you really want to know my secret, it’s that I’m no braver than the people who wrote this article, or all of you watching now. I was first taught bravery by the people on Krypton who fought to save my planet until the very end - but I am reminded of it everyday, in the people all around me on Earth. I see it in the people like you, who can’t fly, or lift a house with your bare hands, and who are very much vulnerable, but who have never let anything stop you from doing the right thing. I see it in all of you, young or old, alien or human - I see it in everyone from the kid brave enough to stand up to bullies to- to the woman who’s spent her entire life standing up to her family, who won’t be able to use her as a shield any longer.”

She glances away from the camera for a moment, knowing that if she stares into it for a second longer and imagines Lena on the other side, the whole world will know exactly how much Lena Luthor means to Supergirl. When Kara is ready, she schools her expression and keeps her voice firm. “These are the people that inspire me, day after day. These are the people that remind me that there is indeed good in this world, and as someone who has lost everything once before - it is worth fighting for. It may even be worth dying for. You’ve been told by CADMUS that hope is a dangerous thing for people like us to have, but it’s not. Hope is only dangerous for those who fear it, and it is impossible to kill. And if all this means that I am to be the first one to stand up to CADMUS and tell them that this city - that these wonderful, kind, brave people - are not theirs to take, then it is an honor to do it. I hope that all of you will stand up and fight right alongside me, because I need your help. We are stronger together, and so please, I need that bravery from all of you now, more than ever before.”

As Kara finishes with an air of finality, she wonders if she’s just sealed herself into her own coffin. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, giving her life up for something like this. And if she’s right - if the people around her are everything that she believes them to be, then Lex and Lillian may be able to kill her, but they won’t be able to snuff out the light that is now freshly rekindled in the hearts of the public. What a legacy to leave, Kara can’t help but think.

She stares, defiant and solid into the camera until the light turns off and she watches the internal gears and wires come slowing to a stop. William takes a deep, rattling breath, and meets her eyes at last.

“That was- you were- wow,” he breathes out, hand to his heart. “I watched the other interviews you’ve given, and Kara’s said so much about you, but…”

Kara gives him a warm smile, determined to show some humility to the man trying to put her on such a high pedestal. “I fear I may have stepped on your toes some,” she says. “I did most of the talking, and put the pressure on you to actually explain the most important bits.”

“I’ve spent the better part of six months working on that case,” he says with a shrug. “Believe me, that was the part of the interview that I felt most confident in.”

“You were great, Mr. Dey. Or, may I call you William?” Kara asks, and the excitement that spreads on her friend’s face is as predictable as it is endearing. “You’re sure I can’t arrange a safe house for you? Some sort of security? I’m sure you’re aware of exactly what the Luthors are capable of when it comes to the people that cross them.”

The offer, of course, is all for show - partly because Kara knows William well enough to know that he’s much too zealous and hungry of a reporter to accept being holed up anywhere - and because she’s already organized a very tight-knit, trustworthy group of DEO agents who all owe her favors and have promised her that they won’t be letting William out of their very discrete watch. William, polite as he is, pretends to re-consider, but then shakes his head.

“Thank you again, but I can’t accept. Seems I’ve got some very exciting holiday plans now, and I won’t let Witness Protection get in the way of me meeting Lois Lane.”

It takes everything in Kara’s power not to break character and start giggling, but hey, she’s a superhero. It may go down to the wire, but she manages to keep a straight face. “Ms. Lane will be very excited to meet you, I’m sure - I know for a fact that she holds a special place in her heart for reporters that pull off something as clever as what you just did.”

“You know Lois Lane-? You know what, that’s a silly question. You’re Superman’s cousin, after all, and I- I’m rambling again, aren’t I?

This time, Kara lets a sliver of a genuine grin hang loose and fond on her face. “You remind me of Kara quite a bit,” she says, and means it. On her best days, Kara holds the same energy and passion and spirit that William does, and it’s a trait she admires unabashedly. They need more people like William Dey in the world, and Kara hopes that with this interview, those same characteristics will begin to re-appear in National City again. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this, William. I hope it will make a difference.”

“Supergirl, the fact that it’s you? I promise it’ll make all the difference in the world.”

Kara thinks about that on the flight away from Catco, once she double and triple checks that William not only got home safely, but that his doors are locked and the DEO team is in position. She gives a big cheesy grin to Vasquez along with several boxes of donuts, even as her phone buzzes against her thigh consistently enough that it may as well just be one long ring. She knows that what she did is going to make a difference - but will it matter in the eyes of her family?

Hovering high above the rooftops, Kara opens her phone and taps on a random message on a whim, not even bothering to see who it is.

She nearly drops her phone when she finally reads the contact at the top of the screen and realizes it is from the one and only Cat Grant.

While I must say I am a bit miffed that you never bothered to arrange so special of an interview with Supergirl for me, it reads, I read your article, Kara. This is why I always believed you’d make a fine reporter, one day. Now, about your fashion sense, on the other hand… you still have a long way to go.

Kara holds the phone tight to her chest, taking just a moment to relish in the praise. Cat is right; this is exactly what Kara’s always wanted to do without wearing a cape. This shows her that, while she may have used Supergirl to spread it to the masses, she can help people as everyday, plain old Kara Danvers, too. She can have it all.

Well, almost anyway. Kara knows she just going to have to live with nearly enough for whatever time she has left.

Chapter Text

Kara returns to an apartment that is eerily quiet and whose inhabitants she sure hopes are not too angry to have lost their appetite, seeing as she’s balancing about fifteen pizzas in her arms.

Even though it’s her own home, it seems a foreign place to set foot on, treading on ground that she knows could become openly hostile at any minute. Ironic, seeing as her friends are the ones sitting on her couch, eating her food, and probably spreading their negative energy all over her space, but Kara can’t play at being self-righteous here, no matter how strong of an urge it is to bite back. While she didn’t exactly lie to anyone, per se, she knows that sneaking around behind her team’s back, misdirecting their questions on what she’s been up to, and misleading them at every turn is not exactly very good of her either.

She enters through her bedroom window, giving herself the ability to at least scope out the situation before having to dive headlong into it. Or at least, that was the plan.

Instead, Kara walks into her bedroom to find a strangely calm Lois Lane sitting on her bed in the dark, juggling a crying infant and a baby bottle in one hand and typing a mile a minute on her phone in the other. Kara trips over her cape at the sight, and well - there goes the element of surprise.

Lois finishes whatever text she’d been wildly sending off before looking down at Kara, still in a tangled heap on the floor, and by some miracle managing to keep the stack of pizzas intact. Balance has never been one of her superpowers - Rao, if anything, it’s one of her greatest weaknesses - and so Kara accepts her fate. It was either her spilling onto the floor or the food, and at this rate, this pizza is the only level of protection she has.

The other woman gives her a once-over, shaking her head. “You absolute jerk,” she starts, but Kara gets the sense Lois isn’t all that mad at her, not if the shine in her eyes is any indicator. “I can’t believe you.”

“W- what are you doing here?” Kara hisses, blowing her hair out of her face and managing to get back onto her knees. Lois walks over, motioning for Kara to set the pizza down. Unable to find any reason to resist, and too confused to use her own brain at the moment, Kara follows her directions. As a reward, a wriggling, whimpering baby is thrust into her arms - her nephew, to be exact. Kara stays seated on the floor, bouncing him up and down on instinct and with her mouth open wide.

“You chose some- some random reporter to help you with the story of the year instead of me? I thought we were family, Kara!”

Despite her continued confusion as to why exactly Lois was lounging about in her bedroom, Kara feels somewhat comforted by the accusation. She can live with herself having slighted Lois Lane if it means the other woman is firmly in her corner. And yeah, the fact that Lois is practically drooling at the thought of having been the one to uncover this story doesn’t give Kara much to work with in the long run - Lois is notorious for her own fair share of reckless, bold, unapologetic habits when it comes to her journalistic pursuits, and no one will take her enthusiasm all that seriously because of it - Kara will take her support with all of its thorns.

“I’ll give you our notes,” she offers, thinking fast. Lois is not an easy woman to placate, and she needs them to be on solid ground before anyone else comes bursting through the doorway. She keeps her voice low, even if Lois remains loud and indignant. “There are still connections we couldn’t quite piece together. Ties to Metropolis high society, a few allegedly charitable organizations that were helping to sweep corruption allegations under the rug - maybe even Bruno Mannheim.”

At the mention of her current white whale, Lois’s eyes go even wider. “Kid, you get your stuff to me, and I’ll take down every piece of scum Lex Luthor has so much as sneezed by.”

“And you’ll forgive me for not including you?” Kara slides in, adding a hopeful, sheepish grin to her face that she knows Lois rightly interprets as pleading.

The other woman scoffs, throwing her phone onto the bed and sitting down. Her eyes never dull, never leaving Kara’s for a moment. “I suppose I’ll think about it. This food here does help your case, but you know how much I would have loved to drag the Luthor name through the mud on national television.”

Kara swallows hard. This is the best she’s going to get, and she needs to take it. “Next time, though I sure hope there won’t need to be one,” she says, getting to her feet and placing a protective hand behind Jon’s head. He seems to have settled down, for the time being - and Kara doesn’t mind him using her cape as a drool rag if it means a moment of quiet. “Now, remind me why you’re here? Thanksgiving isn’t until the end of the week.”

“Your cousin is out in the living room,” Lois replies, and the expression on her face isn’t very promising. “He’d like a word, and I need a quote from you and your partner to get Perry White off my ass. He doesn’t seem to care if it’s my story in the first place - only that I squeeze our brand into it somehow.”

Kara rolls her eyes, ignoring that last part for the time being. There was a reason Cat Grant had left the Daily Planet - a big, irate, domineering reason, shaped a lot like Perry White. She can understand why Lois is working her over like this, but it's the ambiguity about Clark that really puts her on edge.

She lowers her voice, even though she knows in all likelihood that Kal is listening in, probably just barely resisting the urge to stride in through the doorway. They share in their brashness when it comes to family matters, and it’s not like – between her tripping through the window and scaring Jon to death, Kara can hold onto her hope of making an unnoticeable appearance.

“Is he upset?” she asks Lois, no longer talking to the professional side of the other woman, but to her family. Lois gives her a noncommittal shrug, seemingly unwilling to commit to taking any direction.

“You know Clark,” she says, as if that helps the situation in the slightest. Kara does know Clark, and that’s exactly why there are a dozen scenarios of a very angry Superman currently flashing in her mind. “He’s an easy-going guy, but he’s protective of you. I keep telling him that he doesn’t need to be, but he pays me no mind. What you just did - as spectacular as it was to watch - I’d say he’s worried more than anything else.” Lois lowers her voice too, giving Kara a look that’s a little less snappy. “We both are. You didn’t exactly tell us exactly how bad it was when you mentioned Lex Luthor being back in town.”

“It’s Lex Luthor,” Kara replies, deflecting the blame for as long as she can with a vacant shrug of her shoulders. “With everything he’s done, I didn’t think I’d need to elaborate.”

Not that Kara’s surprised, but Lois doesn’t look all that endeared by her answer; in fact, Kara thinks she’s about to get booted out of her own room and into the gaping unknowns of the living room by the looks of it. Lois stands up, crowding Kara, and, despite her diminutive stature, slowly forces her towards the looming exit through sheer willpower.

Kara gulps, and with Jon still tucked neatly in her arms, can’t do much but continue her retreat to the doorframe.

“Go on and get it over with,” Lois says, scooping up the pizza boxes. A scowl is back on her face, but even if she is ripping Kara’s oasis away from her, Kara knows that it’s not out of anger. This is simply the other woman’s dosage of tough love, and with or without Lois’s interference, it’s time to face the music. “We don’t have time for the two of you to draw this out all the way through the holidays. You want to stop them, right? You want to help Lena?”

Kara’s head whips up at the mention of her best friend, and when she meets Lois’s raised eyebrow, there is far too much weight behind her stare for that comment to have been entirely innocent. While she can’t figure out how or when Lois uncovered her latest emerging secret, Kara knows that Lois knows.

Great. Of all the people to sniff it out, she isn’t surprised in the slightest – but that doesn’t mean that Kara doesn’t wish now more than ever that one of her powers was to erase minds. For someone as ceaseless and as insightful as Lois Lane, it would have come in handy by now.

“I- of course, I do,” she says, caught entirely off guard by the insinuation and still hovering just within the safety of the bedroom. “I want to help everyone,” she adds, as if that will serve as anything other than the final nail in the coffin, proving Lois’s suspicions entirely.

Lois rolls her eyes. “You’re just as bad as Clark was,” she says flatly, taking another few steps forward. “And you really need to work on your poker face. You look like you’re hiding a smoking gun behind that smile, kiddo.”

Kara remains where she is, but she knows she’s out of time. With good intentions, Lois is marching her off the plank, and there’s nowhere to go but take the plunge and deal with the consequences of her own decisions. Still, Lois is dangling bait right in front of her, and she can’t resist taking a swipe at it. “As bad as he was when?” she asks, unbalanced.

“Sweetheart,” Lois answers, placing a gentle hand on Kara’s shoulder. When she smiles, it’s warm and poignant and nostalgic, entirely removed from the crosshairs they’re about to enter. “You’re just like he was when he fell in love. The two of you care about people in the same exact way. Try to remember that, won’t you?”

With that, Lois’s hand grips Kara’s shoulder and spins her abruptly around. With one little push, Kara is fully into the living room, still cradling Jon and trying her hardest not to act like a deer caught in headlights.

Clark’s bearing down on her before her eyes are even capable of scanning the scene.

“You should have told me,” he says without a moment’s waste, and Kara, still stumbling away from her interaction with Lois, thinks for a second that her cousin is talking about Lena as well. But as she gets a closer look at him, Kara knows that Clark is far down the rabbit hole of fear and hurt that only Lex Luthor is capable of ushering him down, and for better or for worse, her decision is bringing her right down alongside him.

“Clark,” she greets, swallowing down her nerves as her eyes continue to dart around the room – or the areas of it she can see from beyond the broad shoulders of her cousin. As she expected, everyone is clustered around the living room couch and the television, which is still on and muted. Her speech replays on the screen, the light washing over the faces of her friends and casting the room in faded blues and reds. Kara does her best to draw courage from that version of herself who’d stood so proud and unwavering only an hour or two ago. “I didn’t expect you to show up so quickly.”

“You expected me to show up, then?” Clark asks, clearly agitated. He’s upset enough that he can barely keep his feet firmly on the ground; the floorboards creak and groan under his heavy, uncontrolled weight, and Kara prays that her downstairs neighbors aren’t becoming overly curious by the amount of dust likely falling across their own apartment. Kara nods slowly, not seeing the point in stalling out a confrontation like this. Not when it comes to Lex. “If you expected me to come here, why the HELL didn’t you tell me about any of this sooner?”

Try as she might to be genuinely patient and understanding of the position she’s put Kal in, Kara can’t help a flash of her own pride from rearing its head. “I did tell you, Clark,” she points out, holding Jon a bit more securely in her arms. “ I made a promise that I would – just ask Alex, or-” Kara’s words trail off as she cranes her neck and realizes that Lena isn’t in the room. Her brain tumbles to a halt, a record knocked suddenly off of its well-worn track. The rest of the room, which has been so silent in the wake of Kara and Clark duking it out in the middle of the kitchen, seems positively barren now without Lena’s presence.

Dazed, Kara shakes her head, seeking out her sister in the group of people sitting awkwardly on the couch. “Where’s Lena?” she asks quietly, but her words are swallowed up almost entirely by her cousin.

“You told me that Lex Luthor was becoming more of a threat again. You told me that there was a resurgence of CADMUS in the criminal underworld. You told me that it was nothing to worry about for the time being and that I should stay in Metropolis while you decided your next move.”

Kara stares at the ground, knowing what’s coming next. “I was going to pull you in after this, Kal. Believe me, I was-”

“He’s been attacking you, Kara?” he cuts in. “Making you bleed? Sending you to the DEO medbay every other week, sometimes more? Alex tells me he has access to weapons that could kill you. That he’s got Kryptonite, for God’s sake! And you never thought once during all of that to reach out for some backup?”

“I have backup,” Kara answers. “I’ve got an entire team that’s been looking out for me and protecting this city while I figured out a way to take Lex and Lillian out for good.” The room shifts at her words, and Kara knows that even this rings slightly hollow with the way she’s been selectively excluding her team from knowing the full extent of her plan. She shrugs, meeting Clark’s eyes with her jaw tight and a challenging set to her mouth. As much as she regrets the fear and the panic that this has caused her cousin – and all of her friends for that matter – that doesn’t mean she regrets leaving them out of this. It was a simple choice, really, and Kara has no intention of letting any of them risk their lives unless it becomes a necessity. “I didn’t need your help, Kal, and frankly? I didn’t want it.”

“You didn’t want it?” he asks quietly, and the room tenses at the dangerous weight of his words, however softly spoken. “Are you crazy?”

Kara remains firm, her eyes narrowing. “After what he did to you, after all of these years, I wasn’t going to allow you to get caught up in Lex’s clutches again. Not on my behalf.”

“That’s ridiculous! You can’t- why would you think that-” Clark yells, the volume catching everyone off guard. Taking after Kara, Clark seems too furious to put together a string of coherent words, much less a sentence, and strangely enough, it gives the floor to the rest of the group to find their footing and get a word in.

J’onn of all people, despite his own tumultuous history with Superman, is the first to cut through the tension between them and step in. “No matter how any of us feel about this,” he says, shooting a scolding look in Kara’s general direction that’s enough to turn the tips of her ears red, “It changes nothing. Like it or not, Superman, Kara’s presented us with the type of opportunity that won’t come again. We need to go now and apprehend Lillian before it’s too late.”

“Now?” Superman asks, gesturing between J’onn and Kara with clenched fists and fiery eyes. “We have much bigger problems to deal with before we-”

“No, Kal-El,” J’onn says again, standing firm, always a man with his mind on the mission above all else. Even so, Kara doesn’t need to be a mind reader to know that, based on the depth of his frown, J’onn is as worried about her as anyone else in the room. “This is our chance. A chance brought on by choices that I certainly won’t condone, but a chance nonetheless. Everything else is irrelevant.”

Even as Kara slumps at the clear disappointment in J’onn’s voice, his words seem to be just the trick to break the pall over the rest of her friends, and Kara manages to take a half-step away from Clark’s towering figure as the others pitch in their own ideas.

Alex is the next to stand, her arms stretched taut behind her back and looking every bit as sullen and high-strung about the situation as Kara had expected her to be. But before she speaks, she gives Kara a ghostly grimace of a smile and a small nod, and Kara knows then that she has her sister in her corner for this, no matter how begrudgingly.

“J’onn’s right. We should grab our gear, and prep the vehicle to transport Lillian securely back to the DEO. Brainy, you said that there was a good chance she’ll still be in National City?”

“A 94.8 percent chance, yes, which is the best odds we’ve had in months” Brainy responds, fiddling with some trinket on the couch in one hand and eating a folded slice of pizza in the other. Kara startles at the sight of Lois leaning against the kitchen counter, just out of sight; her initial clash with Clark had been so consuming that she hadn’t seen the other woman enter the room. “I must say, Kara, I respect the number of calculations you must have had to run by yourself to pull off such a statistically-favorable gamble.” His eyes flit over to Superman and J’onn, each with a stony expression on their faces, and he sets down the gadget to run a hand nervously through his hair. “Though in the long run, it’s incredibly difficult to determine the added risk on your own life that this will cause. Lena and I will need to work harder in our efforts to improve the preventative technology we’ve been testing in the -”

“What’s important,” Alex cuts in, raising her hands to rub at her temples as Brainy’s onslaught of information touches a nerve, “is that Lillian is here, right now, and if we act quickly, we’ll be able to nail her for good this time.” She shoots a positively murderous glance at Kara, who deflates even more than before. As she keeps reminding herself, Kara is willing to absorb as many dirty looks and snide comments as needed if it keeps things moving in the right direction, but because it’s from Alex, it hurts all the same. “I promise you, Clark, after all this shit is over, we can all have a good, long discussion with your cousin about her decision-making, but that needs to come later.”

A rumble of approval ripples through the couch, and Kara swallows down a lump in her throat. This isn’t meant to be a picnic, after all, but it’s hard to keep up her strength against this.

Oddly enough, no matter how nervous she’d been about the other woman’s reaction, the fact that Lena is conspicuously absent from the apartment is unfathomably more terrible than the worst of the scenarios she’d cooked up in her head on the way over. Standing in this room now without her, even surrounded by the rest of her family and friends, makes Kara feel like her safety net’s been abruptly torn out from under her. Without Lena’s presence, all of this chaos is difficult to stay afloat amidst the debris of loaded insults, battle strategies, and opinions that are now being tossed back and forth.

One look at Kelly, whose serene and piercing gaze is out of place amidst the room full of bold personalities and even bolder ideas, and Kara knows she’s been found out. The other woman’s eyes haven’t left Kara’s forlorn form once, and she knows that Kelly isn’t blind to the way her gaze keeps wandering to the empty corners of the living room and over to the front door. Out of anyone here, Kara thinks that she fools Kelly least of all – and that she knows exactly who it is that Kara keeps wishing would walk in through the door.

The realization would normally be capable of sending Kara into a full-blown panic, but amidst everything else that’s happening around them – as well as the fact that Kelly is probably the only reason Alex hasn’t fully left the couch to start pacing circles right behind Clark – Kara knows that now isn’t the time to press the issue.

“-Lillian won’t have many places to run to,” Alex says, as Kara returns her mind forcibly back to the conversation at hand. Alex gestures towards the television, and Kara watches as a live report already shows a large group of protesters gathering outside of the LuthorCorps office. Reckless or not, it’s living, breathing proof that her plan is paying off. “We can cross off all of her usual hideouts out of the city, and with what the public thinks of her now, she’ll be a sitting duck.”

“National City won’t stand to hide someone like her in the crowd any longer,” Nia pipes up, who’s a bit lost in the sheer velocity of the conversation and starstruck by an irate Superman glaring and walking circles around her periphery. “Not after Kara doing something totally badass and- and…” Nia clears her throat, giving Kara a watered-down smile before sending a wide-eyed look at Alex and Superman, who both stilled at the comment. “I mean, really stupid and, umm… dangerous too, even if it’s the coolest reporting that I’ve ever-”

Lois raps her knuckles on the countertop and Nia jumps in the air, equal parts intimidated and enamored by the mere presence of the other woman. “Coolest? You should read the article that won me my second Pulitzer if you want a real contender for that title.”

Turning quickly towards the source of the snarky comment, Nia can do nothing but nod dutifully, powerless against the sheer juggernaut of personality that is Lois Lane. J’onn claps his hands together once, sending a boom through the room and bringing them back to the business at hand.

“We should prepare to leave now.” J’onn turns to Clark, who’s in no better shape than he was before all of this strategizing started. Her cousin looks close to tearing out his own hair, in fact, and if her downstairs neighbors had been dealing with falling dust before, Kara is worried she’ll have to pay for their cracked and damaged ceiling now at the rate that Kal’s been digging his heels into her hardwood floors. “Superman, I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but believe me, I know how you’re feeling. All the same, we could really use your help with this.”

Once more the room falls silent, waiting for Kal-El’s response. Even Kara feels her stomach tie itself into knots as she tries to read the meaning behind her cousin’s narrowed eyes or his furrowed brow. If he would just go along with this – if J’onn and Alex’s half-hearted support is enough to tide Kal over just for the time being – Kara knows that this will have been worth it. All he needs to do is to let it slide.

Clark looks up, and Kara cuts herself short before she can let any more wild thoughts of understanding or forgiveness cloud her judgment. From his eyes alone, Kara knows that Superman will live up to his steely moniker tonight. There will be no bending or breaking – and there will certainly not be any trace of lenience headed her way.

“I’ll help you, J’onn,” he says after a long while. Kara can hear the way his teeth grind together as he spits the words out, and knows that he’s only become angrier throughout all of this. “So long as Kara doesn’t get involved.”

She can barely stop herself from scoffing at the proposal. “Come on, Kal,” she says, shaking her head. There’s no way that he actually thinks that she’d get benched for this. “Don’t joke around like that.”

Still facing J’onn, Kal shoots her a glare out of the corner of his eye. It’s like he’s trying to physically block her out of the conversation, now, and Kara feels her own frustrations returning without remorse. “I’m not joking,” he says. “You’re staying out of this from now on. Out of sight, and out of danger.”

Kara stiffens, standing up straighter. This time, her cousin’s voice leaves no room for absurdity. “Kal,” she warns, her own eyes flaring, “I understand why you’re upset, but this isn’t your decision to make.”

“Maybe not, but it is one that your team can.” Superman turns away from her completely, his broad shoulders shutting her down and obscuring J’onn and Alex from view. It’s a manipulative, desperate move he’s trying to pull off, and the worst part of it all is that it might just work. “All of us are more than capable of taking down the Luthors together. Kara’s the most vulnerable one here. She can be sent off to Argo, and stay with her mother until all of this is over-”

“Absolutely not!” Kara exclaims, growing angrier by the second. The nerve of her cousin to even suggest something like that… “And if you think for one second that I would ever go along with something like this-”

“Stay out of it, Kara,” Kal barks out, holding up his hand. Kara fights every impulse in her body to not slap it away from her face, taking a step closer to the rest of the people in the room instead.

“No, you stay out of it, Kal! This isn’t your fight, and we both know that no one here can stop me from going along and helping if I want to.”

That last bit is just enough to make Clark stop and stiffen, likely remembering the fact that, as much as he may not like to admit it in a situation like this, Kara is stronger than him. Stronger than most people in this room combined, in fact, and she should not be taken lightly.

“Don’t be childish,” he dismisses her.

“Says my baby cousin stomping his feet in my living room,” she answers without skipping a beat, her petulance on full display now.

Clark gnashes his teeth together. “This is exactly why you should be off-world. You’re way too close to this and too emotional, and you’re not thinking straight.”

“Thinking straight-? Do you have any idea what it’s been like here, these last few months? How do you expect me to rest easy about something like this? I’m not going anywhere until I make sure for myself that the Luthors are taken care of and CADMUS disintegrates.” She looks around for any crumbs of support, finding nothing but blank stares and shuffling feet. Kara clears her throat, her voice becoming more pleading, this time around. “I mean, come on. You really want me to leave now when we’re so close to ending this?”

Her protests fall on deaf ears, as Alex and J’onn seem to be considering Kal’s idea without Kara’s input in the slightest.

“I don’t know about this,” Alex says, even though it’s clear that shipping Kara on a one-way ticket across the galaxy would be worth it to her if it meant keeping her sister safe and unharmed. It’s only Alex’s staunch loyalty to Kara first and foremost that’s causing any doubt at all. Alex isn’t used to taking up arms against her, and it shows. “We’re dealing with Lex and Lillian Luthor, and we don’t know what’s coming next. She’s our best fighter, after all, not to mention the leader of this team. As much as I hate to say it, shouldn’t we have all hands on deck for this?”

“Perhaps,” J’onn allows, rubbing at his chin. “But Superman is right about Kara’s vulnerability. It may be wise to avoid any open confrontation between her and Lex. If we truly value her safety above all else, perhaps she should leave the planet for the time being.”

“That choice certainly increases Supergirl’s overall odds of survival,” Brainy comments from the couch, confirming yet another friend having been swayed over to Clark. Nia, whose face has gone white and who’s watching the exchange through her fingers, won’t be any help to Kara either.

Her sister sighs, looking like she’d rather swallow knives than be forced to make this decision. But even as Kara’s heart swells at Alex’s remarkable allegiance to her side, she knows that the offer is far too tempting for Alex to pass on. “I- I don’t know. Maybe it is for the best, Kara,” she says after a beat, looking guilty and yet resigned to Kara’s incoming wrath all the same. “We- I would be putting you in danger if I let Lex take a swing at you.”

“Alex, please.” Kara tries to meet her sister’s eyes but to no avail.

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” Alex mutters, undeniably tortured about all of it. “If you’d have at least told me that you were going to do something like this… I don’t know what to do, anymore.”

Kelly clears her throat, giving her the most outwardly sympathetic look of the bunch so far. Not that her sympathy amounts to much when she says all the same, “Kara, we’re only trying to put your well-being first.”

“I’m Supergirl! This comes with the job, and everyone’s accepted that before this” Kara tries. Her words are dead on arrival, and she spins around, looking for anyone to give her a leg up. “Lois, come on. It’s my story. Don’t I get a say?” Kara tries, grasping at straws, but the other woman only gives her an ambiguous sort of shrug.

“Don’t look at me, kid. This isn’t my rodeo.”

“It’s the smart move, especially against a man as vindictive and sadistic as Lex,” Clark states, marching on as if she were only a shadow in the room. Kara, feeling more battered and bruised by every head nod or murmur of agreement, tries and fails to keep her expression from crumpling. “It’ll keep Kara safe, and let all of us rest easy while this mess is wrapped up. Alura will be overjoyed to spend that time with her daughter, and most importantly, Lex won’t be able to reach her there.”

Clark’s point appears to be the final nail in the coffin. After all, despite her bluff and bluster from before, Kara knows she isn’t capable of fighting her team just to get an opportunity to do things her way. To an extent, she gave up that kind of autonomy when she went through with this plan in the first place. To refuse now, to throw a fit and resist to the detriment of the team wouldn’t be good for anyone, and if Kara really wants to be a good leader, she needs to accept that truth.

She’s halfway towards accepting it when at long last, Lena re-enters the scene.

Lena walks in with her hair windswept and her nose pink from the cold, her long maroon coat doing nothing to shield her from the elements of November in National City. Kara finds the expression on her best friend’s face utterly impossible to read, her eyes about as accessible as staring out at the ocean at night. For a moment, Kara’s dread returns, and she thinks that this might be the moment that she loses Lena along with everyone else. Her heart crashes to the floor, and Kara averts her gaze, fighting hard to keep her tears at bay.

A miracle happens instead. Superpowers or not, Lena must sense exactly how defeated and beaten Kara is at this moment and must decide that Kara needs a friend right now. Regardless of her own feelings and to Kara’s complete shock Lena takes a deep breath and enters the fray as an ally.

“Excuse me,” Lena says, clearing her throat and straightening out her coat. All of the tension in the room seems to become suspended, with everyone breaking their staredowns with one person or another to instead focus all of their attention on the other woman. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I’m sorry, Superman, but you’re wrong.”

If Kara wasn’t so worked up right now, watching the facial reactions of everyone else in the room as their jaws dropped would have been hysterical. Kal reels back as if Lena had taken an actual swipe at him, his lip curling as his eyes refocus on a target other than Kara.

“I’m wrong?” he asks, laughing without an ounce of humor to be found. “And why is that, Ms. Luthor?”

“You seem to believe that my brother would be incapable of getting to Kara if she’s on Argo. I know for a fact that this isn’t true.”

“That’s impossible,” Clark responds, his body going rigid. “Argo is lightyears away. Lex has no weaponry that can reach that far.”

“That you know of. There’s quite a bit you don’t know,” Lena says, sliding her coat off of her shoulders with a casual grace that makes it seem like she’s simply making small talk, not going toe to toe with the most powerful man on the planet. “Such as the fact that my brother does indeed have technology capable of achieving that type of interstellar reach. He nearly used it on you and your wife a year or two ago.”

“He did what?”

Even Kara is taken aback by this information; she whirls around to meet Lena’s gaze, but the other woman is already matter-of-factly treading forward, standing just to the side of Kara. Though she keeps her eyes squarely over on Superman, the corner of her mouth quirks up and Kara sees her hand twitch as if making a reach for her elbow. It’s a barely there, ghostly type of comforting gesture, but it warms Kara to the core as if Lena had actually made contact.

“Using the Claymore Satellite, yes. I saw it with my own eyes; with that satellite, he would have been able to destroy Argo and beyond. Something that I have no doubt my brother would be willing and eager to try again if he gets wind of Kara’s arrival there.”

“That’s not-” Kal starts, but Brainy speaks up again from the couch, supporting Lena’s claim with his typical droll, analytical manner.

“Lena is correct. Conclusively so. Depending on the charge, if left unchecked, Lex Luthor would have been capable of reaching as far as the Talok system.”

Clark shakes his head, his glare deepening and growing positively nasty. “He must have been bluffing,” he decides to say at last. “We all know how much your brother enjoys his little mind games. I mean, if he really had that chance to kill me, he would have pulled the trigger.”

“Oh, I’m sure he would have,” Lena replies, her eyebrow arching. “Had it not been for Kara publishing her expose on him right before he had enough power to fire, I do believe you’d have been killed, as well as Lois and in all likelihood, all of the inhabitants of Argo as well. As… unexpected as Kara’s plan is to all of us now, it has admittedly done real good in the past. She saved you that day from certain doom.”

For just one fleeting moment, Kara imagines Lena’s words coming true. She thinks of Kal and Lois in their ship, caught unaware and without a moment to fight back, much less say their goodbyes. She thinks of her mother and the rest of the people on Argo – people who had fought tooth and nail already once before to survive some great disaster – having their second chance at life ripped from their grasp as well.

Clark is thinking of it too, she knows. She can practically see the explosion, so similar to that of Krypton, reflected in his wide and hollow eyes.

If she hadn’t feared and hated Lex with every fiber of her being before, she’s only reminded of why now. And Rao, is she thankful, not for the first time, for that first bit of frantic journalism that taught her to take down a Goliath like Lex.

“You’re- you’re sure?” Clark asks, his voice just a touch quieter. Not any softer, no – Kara doubts that he’s capable of that at the moment. His voice is hushed, now, and about as gentle as nails on a chalkboard. That’s his own fear, making itself known, and Lena’s expression turns grave as she studies him.

“Superman, that was the day that I shot my own brother. That I killed him. That was when he revealed Supergirl’s identity to me, so yes. I’ve replayed every moment of that day more times than you can count. I’m sure.”

The room turns sheepish, but Lena and Clark remain largely detached from the shifting feelings of the crowd around them. Kara isn’t even sure that she’s involved in this argument anymore, not with the way Lena has taken control so effortlessly.

Ka-El scoffs, waving away Lena’s logic in a way Kara knows she’s guilty of doing herself from time to time. Seeing as he’s facing off against someone who’s known Kara long enough to know how to combat and neutralize all of her evasive maneuvers, that spells trouble for her cousin, who cluelessly trudges onwards.

“This- this is just hypothetical and reliant on the fact that your brother has immediate access to that satellite, which he doesn’t. Kara could head off to Argo right now and by the time Lex could point any weapon her way, we’d get to him first.” Clark pounds his fist into his palm for emphasis, looking around and fishing for that same reluctant support he’d gained just before Lena’s arrival, but to Kara’s surprise, he doesn’t find it. Lena has single-handedly changed the course of the conversation, and Kara is in awe of it. “It’s still our best option.”

“If you send Kara away now, you’ll be making the worst mistake of your life,” Lena says after a long, heavy pause. There’s a chilling sincerity to her words that causes everyone to lean forwards. “I’m aware that you know my brother well, but I know him better. Believe me when I say that the safest place for her to be is around you and this team. We’re the only ones capable of protecting her now, and putting her on some spaceship would be a death sentence.”

“Lena, are you saying he does have access to that type of weaponry?” Alex speaks up, eyebrows raised. Her sister looks like she can’t quite wrap her head around Lena right now – like this hadn’t been what she’d expected when Lena had come back into the apartment.

Kara calls back to Lena’s long absence earlier, and to her startling behavior now. No matter how good of a friend she may be, Kara knows that Lena would normally treat challenging Superman as a matter of last resort. She’s always been more willing to remain in the background, rarely believing that her words held any weight in comparison to her family’s shadow in the room. What had she found out to make her approach this situation with such pressing concern?

The other woman takes a breath, nodding over to her phone on the kitchen counter. One glance and Kara can see that it’s exploding with messages and missed calls. “Honestly? I don’t know what he has. My lawyers just notified me: LCorp is mine again, with all of the safeguards that come with it. I just finished giving out instructions to my team to ban my family from the premises and to lock them out of our servers permanently.”

Despite the fact that she knows this isn’t the appropriate time, Kara can’t help but careen away from her anger for the time being, letting out a breathless, giddy laugh. “It’s yours again? That’s amazing, Lena,” she gushes, her interruption enough to knock the woman from her stream of consciousness. Lena blushes at the ground, stuttering to a temporary halt as Kara continues to beam at nothing in particular.

Lois sends her a pointed look from across the room, and Kelly purses her lips. Kara reminds herself that she should probably try to be a little less transparent when it comes to this.

“I- oh, well, thank you. It means a lot to me, Kara. What was I saying?” Looking slightly frazzled for the first time during this conversation, Lena shakes her head as if trying to rid herself of cobwebs, focusing after a second. “Right, the company files. Just because I’ve taken measures now to prevent any further breaches of data doesn’t mean that no breaches ever occurred in the first place. There are no countermeasures to protect us from all of that uninterrupted, unrestricted time that Lex had access to that information.”

“So…” Alex says, which is her most polite way of telling Lena to get on with it, already. Lena’s one step ahead of her, lacing her fingers together in front of her as she takes a breath.

“What I’m trying to say is that I simply don’t know what they’ve managed to hack their way into. Between my own personal research files and the databases from the DEO, there seems to me to be a high chance that Lex will be able to pull something of that magnitude from his sleeve, and he’ll use it on Kara first.” Her eyes flicker over in Kara’s direction as if by habit, and Kara can finally see the amount of fear that Lena’s done such a good job of concealing.

Kara wonders if she should reach out, pull Lena into a sideways embrace even if it would cause every pair of eyebrows in the room to raise. She doesn’t give a damn about what the others think so long as Lena’s heartbeat starts to calm down, but before she can move, Clark cuts back in.

“That’s exactly why you should get away from here, Kara,” Kal says, speaking directly to her for the first time in a long while. “Fine – maybe not to Argo, but somewhere far away. I mean, you can fly! Go anywhere, so long as you keep your head down and out of danger until I- I mean we take care of this.”

“You heard what Lena said,” Kara bites back, more than eager to throw her own lot back into this fight. “I’m no safer anywhere else than I would be right here. This is my fight, anyway, and I intend to be there to help finish it.”

“And be the first to wander into Lex’s crosshairs? I don’t think so!” Clark jerks over to stare down Lena, not done with her yet. “You know, after the way you reacted watching that interview, I would have thought you of all people would be on my side. That all of you would have! You’re willing to let something terrible happen just because of a few hunches?”

Kara’s eyes flit over to Lena. What Kal had said… she wonders what Lena had really thought about her interview when it had first happened – and if she feels any differently about it now.

Lena schools her expression, matching Clark’s look of barely controlled emotion with an air of impassive and measured calm. Kara doubts that her years of boardroom showdowns ever prepared her to match up with an opponent quite like this, but her icy professionalism seems to be a boon to her despite it all. Then again, Kara’s been on the other side of that look where Clark is now, and isn’t at all surprised when his eyes widen and he takes a half-step back.

“If you’re implying that I’m unbothered by all of this, Superman, I can promise you that I am just as afraid as anyone for Kara. Maybe even more so, seeing as I’ve watched Lex do this before – to you, back in Metropolis. He is as devoid of morals as he is of hesitation, and he will be happy to manipulate Kara’s unwitting noble deed however he sees fit.” Lena says through gritted teeth. “You saw it on my face. This is my worst nightmare – but because of that, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. Despite any reservations that I may still have about this particular plan… if we can’t protect her, well, who in the world can?”

“A battle doesn’t always need to be fought by everyone,” Clark tries, deflating and resorting to abstract arguments now just to keep some wind in his sails.

Lena inclines her head, her eyes sharp and determined. Without snapping once, or stooping down to the level that Kara and Clark have found themselves at all night long, she dismantles his claims with the kind of patience and resolve that Kara envies.

It could be because she sympathizes with Superman’s position now just as much as Kara’s but Lena’s face remains considerate as she meets Clark’s eyes. “Maybe not, but this is Kara’s war,” she says with a tilt of her head and a tragic sort of smile. She swallows hard, ducking her head before anyone else but Kara can see the way that smile contorts into a grimace. Not for the first time tonight, Kara wonders how much this is killing Lena, sticking up for her like this at the cost of Kara’s own safety. “It always has been, and I think she deserves to make these kinds of choices about her own life. Besides – she’s Supergirl. She’s the best of all of us, isn’t she? I believe in her more than anything, and I believe that she’ll make it through like she always does.”

The others nod their heads, and just like that, the group is back firmly on Kara’s side. As Lena finishes with a deep breath and sends another phantom of a smile Kara’s way, Kara doesn’t think she’s ever loved her more.

It’s not just the gesture that sweeps Kara off of her feet. It’s the fact that Lena, even despite all that’s gone unsaid between them these past few days, remains steadfastly by her side. Though Kara can certainly think of more pleasant circumstances, things have shifted between them once more and they’re back on the same team, working together with such ease that no one seems capable of competing. It only affirms Kara’s belief that she’s had about the two of them since the very first day that they met: a Luthor and a Super, when united and unflinching as one front, are just about the most powerful force in the universe.

Kara’s too busy hiding a bashful smile and pink cheeks to pay much mind to anyone else in the room, but it seems that while Kal knows he’s been beaten, he’s still got plenty of frustration to vent out, and Kara’s the only appropriate punching bag.

“This changes nothing about the fact that you shouldn’t have done that interview,” he says, retreading old ground. “I mean, of all the careless, impulsive things for you to do to put everything at risk, I never thought you’d do something like this.” Kara squares her feet, knowing that without any other pretense to hide behind, this is going to be personal for both of them.

“I thought it through, Kal,” Kara says sharply. This is her cousin’s last chance to back out before she steps fully into the ring, and Rao, she hopes he takes it. “Trust me, you should drop this.”

“How can I, when you’re always acting so thoughtless-”

“Kara Danvers is not negligent. Supergirl is not thoughtless,” Kara bites back, her spine straightening to its fullest. Despite the height difference and the sleeping baby between them, she manages to strike an imposing, capable competitor to Clark’s crossed arms and reigning scowl. “I can’t be. Not when everything I do has consequences for this city and those around me. Both sides of our identities require complete and deliberate control. That’s part of the gig, Kal. You should know that better than anyone.”

“I’m not talking about Supergirl, and I’m not talking about Kara Danvers, either.” Clark’s frown only deepens. “I am talking about you, Kara, as a whole person, not just some- some patchwork of identities and responsibilities! And you’ve been a raw tangle of untamed power and undisciplined emotions since the moment you reached Earth.”

Sensing that this is out of her depth, Lena takes a step back and joins Alex and Kelly on the couch. It’s a good thing, too, because Kara’s seeing red now, and she doesn’t want anyone but Kal to see this up close and personal.

Kara’s mouth snaps open, full of hot air and bluster and enough self-righteousness to take out a small army with a single sentence, but her cousin cuts her off, wiping her move from the board before she even has a chance to rear back for a good strike.”Why, you-” she starts, squashed down unceremoniously by Kal’s commanding, preaching voice.

“And I know it isn’t the case when it comes to other people. I know that you’ve spent your entire time here on this planet learning the hard way about what happens when you let yourself go. No. I’m talking about how you treat yourself. You’re reckless with your life, Kara, and I won’t stand for it!”

She can’t help the laugh that ripples out of her throat, sharp and disbelieving. “Yeah, right. Like you can talk,” Kara says, already turning away, but Kal cuts off her path and meets her gaze again with a rush of air and a small dose of superspeed. The rest of the room watches and Kara huffs, knowing that this is not a conversation that either of them has much of a leg to stand on. “I watched and I read about everything that went down between you and Lex the first time around. I know exactly what you would have been willing to do if the worst had come to pass.”

And she does remember it all – remembers the way her frosted cornflakes lost all their taste and she crushed her spoon into a tiny ball of molten metal as the emergency broadcast turned on right before she was set to leave for school in Midvale. She remembers how it took Alex, Jeremiah, and Eliza working together to talk her down and physically prevent her from running toward the general direction of Metropolis before she’d even learned to fly. She remembers the smell of Alex’s old sweater as she hid her face away from the screen, and the feeling of Streaky’s slicked-back fur as she listened to the frantic voices of the reporters on site and the screams of people running away from the smoldering crater she’d watched her cousin create.

Kal had been nothing but a limp blur of a figure on the screen, and the dust and debris and lack of visual proof had confirmed, at least in the eyes of a frightened teenage girl, that she had just watched her baby cousin murdered on live television a thousand miles from where she’d sat, shellshocked and with silent tears streaming down her face.

Of course, Kal hadn’t died. But Kara knows exactly how close he’d come, and she would never forget sitting on that couch in that state of limbo, haunted by the sickening realization that she’d failed in her mission and that she was truly the last Kryptonian.

Kara may not have been able to do anything back then, but she can now – and Rao, she swears that Lex Luthor will never hurt Kal-El ever again. But no matter how steadfastly she intends to stand by that promise, Kara’s realizing now that Kal’s made the same oath to himself as she has. In the end, they’re both doomed to exist in an endless cycle, wondering who is truly meant to bear the mantle of the protector.

As Kara shakes herself out of her memories, Kal seems to be having a difficult time tolerating anything that comes out of her mouth.

He dismisses her point about his own flaws without hesitating. “That’s because Lex is my problem,” he storms on. “He’s my past, and he’s my mistake, and if you’d have just brought me into this earlier-”

“And let him kill you without a second thought?” Kara fires right back. “Let myself stay on the sidelines again as he finishes the job this time around?”

“He won’t do that. Lex, he- he wouldn’t kill either of us right away. Not without drawing it out, making it miserable-”

“Were you listening to anything Lena said about Claymore?” Kara huffs out, tired of him dancing around the same points over and over. “That’s exactly what he would have done to you! Not to hurt your feelings, Kal, but Lex Luthor is tired of playing with you.”

Her words aren’t true; Kara knows full well that Lex will always pursue her cousin before anything else on this planet. But if she wants Kal to not put himself at the front of this fight – to really keep him safe – she needs to convince him of his irrelevance in this fight, even if that’s the one thing she knows he’s most afraid of.

The comment hits Clark like a blow to the jaw, and even as Kara wishes she would just stop talking, she presses on. If it’s going to stick, it has to hurt. “Maybe once upon a time, you showing up would have been enough to distract him, or send him down a completely separate tirade. But he just doesn’t care about watching you squirm on a hook anymore. Not when he has me, and I’ve angered him just as much as you at this point – and much more recently. You’d be nothing more than an item on his checklist to mark off, and you expect me to allow that to happen?”

“I’m the one with the most experience against him. I’m the one who had to watch him burn down half of Metropolis just to prove a point that he was as powerful as I was-”

“So did I!” Kara bursts out. “Rao, we all watched, and we’ve all lived it! Don’t patronize me or convince me that your experience is worth enough to elevate you above me now. This isn’t just your arena anymore, Clark! You no longer own the monopoly on the people that Lex Luthor has hurt or tortured or nearly killed!”

Kal lets out a long, icy breath through his nose. Despite the chill in the room and the frost that’s suddenly accumulated on her glasses, Kara doesn’t move an inch. “All I’m saying,” he growls, “Is that it’s hard not to be squeamish about you taking the lead when you make such risky and- and half-baked decisions as this.”

“And let me guess, you think you’d do a better job?” Kara gets up in his face, glaring at him with more vitriol and resentment than she has in years. This is about more than just one national interview, she knows – and about more than Lex Luthor. This is a fight that’s been simmering between them since the moment they both began wearing the cape; Rao, this has been waiting in the wings since Kara first landed on Earth, ready to teach her cousin to walk and talk and recite the stories of their ancestors – only to find a strange man staring down at her instead, as alien to her as her surroundings.

“I know I would!” he cries out, more of their trademark Kryptonian fury coming out in little bursts of power. The room rattles; one of Kara’s mugs that was hanging above the kitchen sink shatters into tiny pieces, and worst of all, Jon stirs in Kara’s arms, beginning to cry.

At long last, Lois Lane interferes.

She marches over and inserts herself directly between the two of them, snatching Jon away from Kara’s tensing arms and giving her husband the type of smoldering glare that causes him to stop fuming immediately. “Jesus, that’s enough,” she announces with enough force behind her words to send both of their jaws snapping shut. “This is getting embarrassing for the both of you now, and I can’t listen to another second of your bullshit.”

Clark swallows, audible and dry, and Lois tears into him first, all while she coaxes Jon back to sleep. “You get to be the one who stays up with your son tonight,” she tells him. “Seems like you can share pointers with him about how to throw a tantrum in public. Really, Clark? Can you get off of your high horse for once and calm the hell down? Stop standing here and acting like you would have done anything different than your cousin when we all know that you could write the fucking book on trying to charge into battle alone.”

Kal opens his mouth a few times before shutting it again, all of the sudden unable to settle on anything worth saying. He flushes at the ground as he adjusts his glasses, and Lois just shakes her head. Before Kara can bask in the satisfaction of watching her cousin be humbled for even half of a second, Lois turns towards her. With mounting dread, Kara gulps; it’s her turn to face the music now, and it’s not going to be a fun ride.

“And you,” Lois says, wagging a very authoritative finger in the air. “You know, I expected better from you, Kara. Yeah, maybe this investigative article is the key to bringing the Luthors down, but wow did you execute your little plan poorly. Do you have any idea how much you’ve been scaring the shit out of everyone in this room?” Suddenly, Lois points at Lena, who looks as startled to be roped back into this as Kara is watching it happen. “You and Clark don’t know what it’s like, for people like us. You never have. We’re supposed to be the ones that you go to during times like this, and yet over and over again, we’re left in the dark. With all of your moping around, I thought you’d have sworn off secret-keeping for good. How many times do you intend on repeating the same mistake, Kara? How many times do you want to gamble with losing the one thing you can’t stand to lose?”

To say that she’s been stunned into silence would be an understatement. Kara is absolutely gob-smacked, standing slack-jawed and paralyzed as Lois tears into her. She’d known that Lois probably had a pretty good idea of what Lena meant to her, but for her to bring her into this conversation? To insinuate that Kara’s feelings for her held as much weight as Clark’s did for Lois? True as it may be, Kara never would have imagined that Lois would have been willing to hint at it in such a loaded way – not unless she knew exactly how important it was to her, how good of a motivator it’s proven to be.

Kara can barely bring herself to look up at Lois, much less at Lena from across the room. When she does, all she can see is Lena’s hands, balled into fists in her lap to prevent them from shaking. That little glimpse is more than enough to confirm the obvious to Kara: as supportive as Lena may have been, that doesn’t mean that Kara hasn’t massively screwed this up.

As Kara spirals into guilt and embarrassment alike, Lois continues without skipping a beat. “Clark is right. You need to grow up and accept some responsibility about this – and lose the goddamn hubris, both of you!” Both caught in her trap, Kara and Kal wince at the harsh words. “If neither of you can prevent yourselves from tripping over your own massive egos and pride, you’re going to bicker and squabble right into Lex’s arms,” Lois says without remorse. “Won’t be much to hold over the other’s head if the both of you wind up dead, is there?”

“That was never my- Kara and I would never-” Clark speaks up, a measly and feeble attempt at regaining any sort of respect in this conversation, but Lois isn’t done with them yet.

“Clark, I love you, but you need to shut up right now and learn to take a hint.” Lois huffs out a breath, blowing a few stray locks of hair off her forehead. “You two have been so busy having a pissing contest about who should be in charge that you haven’t considered for a second that neither of you should be.” Lois gestures over to the others. “All night, we’ve had a better plan than you two dimwits could come up with even if you did manage to get your heads out of your asses, and yet here we are still, listening to you have a screaming match! Lillian Luthor could be in a pair of handcuffs by now if it hadn’t been for you. Do either of you have anything to say for yourselves?”

“I’m sorry,” Kara says at last, too ashamed to do much more than dart her eyes up at Lois, then at Lena, and then immediately back to the floor. As she studies the warped lines of the hardwood, Kara realizes that, despite her unforgiving bluntness, Lois isn’t wrong. They’ve both been idiots, and if they hadn’t been stopped, then everything that Kara’s been working toward would have gone down the drain.

Kal scratches the back of his neck. “We both are. You’re right, Lois. We shouldn’t have let it come to this.”

“Of course I’m right,” Lois says, glancing at her nails while Kara and Clark stand with bowed heads and slumped shoulders, properly cowed. “I’ve been dealing with this for nearly a decade by now. If either of you had bothered to really pay attention to anyone else in the room tonight, you would have figured that out a lot sooner.” Bouncing Jon to and fro in one arm, Lois reaches for a slice of pizza with the other. Kara forgets sometimes that she and Clark aren’t the only ones to have seen it all. “Now, can we please remember that we’re meant to be a family here and start working together again? Thanksgiving is just around the corner, here, and if this isn’t wrapped up by then, I will not tolerate a power struggle around who gets to cut up the fucking turkey.”

She can’t help it; the image of her and Clark facing off over the carving knife is enough to cause a snort to escape her, entirely unbidden. It’s mortifying at first, and Kara thinks that her slip will convince the others that she isn’t taking any of this seriously. But Lois cracks a grin also, even if it’s more of a self-satisfied smirk, and just like that, the room collectively steps off of the landmine that’s been lurking beneath them.

While she keeps her distance from Clark and he does the same, they both manage to keep their mouths shut as the others grab pizza as well and get to work planning their next steps. Speaking up only to murmur their approval or to confirm various tactical postions or details about Lillian’s known hideouts, Kara can’t say that she misses hearing the sound of her own voice overcrowd the room. After all, when Lois Lane gives you a piece of advice, however devoid of sympathy, you take it, and Kara is more than willing to admit that she let her ego make a mess of the evening. Better now to take a step back and let her team do what they do best than to pretend that she’s any more in control than the rest of them.

By the time Kara’s mindlessly torn through a box and a half of pizza, the plan is set, and the others begin to stand and gather their things. And look, she had been paying attention – Kara knows exactly what she’s expected to do once they arrive at the suspected hideout, could recite the mission strategy like it was drawn on the back of her hand – but standing here now, still unsure as to how angry everyone around her still is, she feels stranded.

Only one other person in the room looks as if he feels the same way, and he’s the one that does something about it.

“Can we talk? Please?” Clark asks, his voice at such a low decibel level that even Kara has trouble hearing it. The others continue bustling around, not listening, and Kara tilts her head.

Still not making eye contact with her cousin, she mulls over the offer – not that there’s any doubt in her mind over what to do. Kara hates fighting with people, her cousin more than most, and there’s been a steady ache building in her chest from the first moment that he stormed her way. While she can’t tell for sure what he’s thinking, there’s an unmistakable hint of desperation in his tone that makes her believe that maybe Clark is feeling the exact same way.

It could be a trap. It could be another excuse for them to go ten rounds, airing out all of their dirty laundry and years of past grievances while the rest of their team gets pushed to the side once again, but Kara doesn’t think that’s the case. “Okay,” she whispers just as quietly back, her lips barely moving. “But it’ll have to be quick. Central Park?”

“I’ll meet you there,” comes his reply before Clark removes his glasses and clears his throat, grabbing the attention of Lois and a few others. As he changes into his suit in a blur, Clark crosses his arms across his chest delicately – less the Man of Steel, and more so an awkward, unsure man trying very hard to not ruffle any more feathers. “I- I was going to do a few sweeps of the city while the others gather their gear together. If… that’s alright with everyone, that is,” he finishes lamely, knowing that, after their antics, the decision is no longer under his control.

Even as Lois narrows her eyes, already sniffing out some hidden intent behind her husband’s otherwise innocent request, J’onn speaks up. “Sounds like a good plan,” he rumbles, even as he gives Kara and Kal both an inscrutable look. “Work it out,” he adds, speaking quietly as they were just moments ago. Kara forgets sometimes that J’onn can read minds – and that he knows her well enough that he doesn’t have to. “El Mayarah.”

Clark nods in J’onn’s general direction before stooping down to place a kiss on his son’s forehead and zipping off, Lois rolling her eyes as her hair falls into her face. Knowing that that’s her cue, Kara steps forwards as well. “I’d like to go as well,” she says, voice just barely managing to stay steady. J’onn sends her a thumbs up, deep in conversation with Brainy about something or another, and Kara takes the chance to try and hopefully make a sneaky exit.

Apparently not as lucky as Clark today, Lois’s hand clamps down around her elbow as Kara has one leg lifted out into her fire escape. “Not very subtle,” the other woman says casually – and quietly – doing a favor by not raising too much attention to their interaction. In fact, Kara didn’t know that Lois was even capable of this level of softness in her voice, and she appreciates the attempt at privacy. Still, by the way that Alex and Lena both keep sending furtive glances in her direction, Kara knows that this attempt at subterfuge is paper thin. They’re not fooling anyone, sneaking out at the last minute like this. “You two aren’t going to need a referee this time around, will you?”

“I hope not,” Kara answers truthfully, and Lois’s expression smooths out somewhat.

“Me too,” she replies. “Look, all of the things I said about you and Clark – they were a little harsh. I’m sorry if-”

“Don’t apologize,” Kara cuts in swiftly, and means it. “We needed a reality check, and I think you were just about the only person who was capable of delivering it. Whatever you said, we deserved to hear., no matter how harsh.”

“Alright, fine. I just want you to know that it’s from a place of love, okay? I care about you, kid, and I don’t want to see you or my husband get hurt because your heads aren’t in the right place. Remember what I said earlier.”

“Remember what?” Kara asks, the evening too jumbled up for her to place what was said when.

Lois smiles, patting her on the shoulder. “That the two of you love in the same way. You fight the same, too – and with any luck, that’ll help you make up.”

Kara nods, slipping out of the other woman’s grasp. This time, she doesn’t need a push to face what’s coming. “Thanks, Lois,” she says. “We’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better,” the other woman replies, one last snide comment for the road. “If either if you gets hurt, you’re going to wish that it was Lex staring you down, not me.”

Kara can’t help but laugh as she takes off into the night sky. Leave it to Lois, a veteran in these types of fraught moments, to brings as much light and hope as the symbol on her chest. William is right; Lois Lane is someone who deserves the starstruck treatment.

Unable to help herself, Kara does an automatic sweep of the city before she lands softly near the fountain in the park. It’s well past midnight by now – golly, as she checks her phone while she scans the empty area around her, it’s actually closer to two in the morning. It’s been a long day – a long week, a long month, bordering on a long year – but Kara can feel how close she is to ending this for good and wrapping it up in a little bow. If she wants that blissfully optimistic plan to come to pass, she’s going to need her cousin back firmly on her side, and that starts now.

She finds him by the statue in the center of the rolling hills and groves of trees, and Kara can’t help but grow fond of the way he stares up at it with his hands behind his back, swaying to a fro. It’s a statue of her, to be exact – the same one that Lena had dedicated to her on the waterfront all those years ago. Following the subsequent attack on the bay and the handful of other incidents up and down that same stretch of the bay, the statue was moved (by Kara herself, seeing as she was usually at fault for it nearly crashing into the ocean every time) to this cozy corner of the park. Though it’s dwarfed by the huge trees flanking it on each side, Kara loves the statue and the space it’s created. She often eats here on her lunc breaks, just to watch the families take pictures in front of the gleaming metal and the little girls in makeshift capes run circles around the patches of sunlight the statue creates. On the best of days, it brings an easy, content smile to her face; on the worst, it reminds her exactly what she protects this city for, and the difference she continues to make.

Clark has plenty of statues littered around Metropolis, Kara knows, and countless more around the world. She wonders if he does the same thing too – if the sight of the people and the home that welcomed them both in with open arms brings him as much peace and resolve as it does her.

As she joins him, looking up at the simple features of her face made immortal before her, neither of them says anything at first. Then, at the same time, they both blurt out, “I’m sorry.”

Kara smiles, her molten-hot anger from before fading into twinges of sadness now. She doesn’t hate Clark for the things he said, nor does she blame him for any of it. For two people who constantly find themselves in impossible, gutwrenching situations, she figures that her cousin deserves a little bit of that grace she’d failed so miserably at offering him before.

“I really am, you know,” she says as Clark inclines his head. His facial expression is hidden in the moonlight, but his shoulders hold no stiffness. He looks as tired of it all as her, and Kara hopes they can reach common ground on that alone. “I’ve been an idiot.”

“No more than I have,” he says, sighing. “Hearing from your sister what you’ve been up to, watching you on that television, the way you acted afterward… it was like looking in the mirror. Lois was right – and so were you. I don’t exactly have very much ground to stand on when I probably would have done the same thing you did.”

“You would have?” Kara asks, genuine and searching. It’s a question she’s tossed over and over inside her head for weeks now. Growing up and coming into your own under someone else’s shadow – and cape – tends to come with lingering doubt and second-guessing, and Kara did often wonder what Clark would have done if the roles were reversed.

“When I was younger? Oh, yes. Like Lois said, I wasn’t a team player – not when I felt that I had to do the job myself..” Clark mulls over his own words, and Kara grants him the silence to allow it. “I wanted to be, and once people like Lois came into my life, I really did get better at it. I was lonely for so very long… still am, sometimes. I guess I just worried that the moment I let someone else in to help take some of the punches for me, I’d lose them too.”

Kara nods, knowing what he’s getting at. “You don’t want that to happen to me,” she surmises, and Clark nods too.

“Because of who we are, it’s easy to feel alone. We are, after all; no one else on this planet will ever fully understand what it feels like to have the type of power we do – or to weather the kind of loss that we have. You, more than anyone else, I wanted to keep safe. You’re the last of my blood, Kara. I couldn’t stand to lose any more family.”

“Did you mean what you said?” Kara asks into the night. “About me being reckless and undisciplined since the moment I got here?”

Clark turns to face her, his face grim and understanding. It’s a strange mix of emotions and a potent one, sending a chill down Kara’s spine even as her cousin’s kindness grants her some type of warmth. “Out of the heat of the moment, can you really tell me that you aren’t?”

Finally, without her anger and her instinctive self-righteousness to guide her hand, Kara lets herself consider the question and be truthful. “I think that, in a lot of ways, I still feel like a girl out of time and place,” she answers. “Especially when it comes to you. You weren’t supposed to grow up alone, or fend for yourself, or be the one to ever stick out your neck. That was meant to be me. I’ve been trying to play catch up since I first crashlanded in that field and found you grown up in front of my eyes, and I suppose… well, all of that grief and anger and fear that I’d failed you, failed Krypton – I don’t always know where to put it. If I’m reckless, it’s because I don’t know any other way to be.”

“I want you to know that, no matter what I said, I don’t blame you for any of it. I’ve found it’s easy to be reckless when you’re invincible,” Clark muses, his cape floating in the silent breeze. “But the world we want to help create? The good we want to bring to these people? It could come with a heavy price. Even we may have to pay with our lives for what we do someday.”

“I know that,” Kara says. “If I hadn’t made my peace with that, I never would have become Supergirl in the first place. We’re meant to protect others when no one else can – we’re meant to endure what others could never dream of-”

“And that’s simple enough to believe in when you’re only thinking of yourself,” he cuts in. ”Believe me, I know, but when you’re no longer the only one risking their lives out there… I guess I approved of you taking the same risks that I do every day in theory more than in practice. And it isn’t because I don’t think you’re capable – gee, everyone knows you’re stronger and more skilled than I am…”

“It’s because none of that matters when you imagine that person getting hurt,” Kara finishes for him. She thinks of James, and Alex, and Lena, of the fights she’s had with them in the past about getting involved, of running headfirst into the danger alongside her. She’d acted no better towards them than Clark had towards her. “I’ve felt that way, too. At least we’re on the same page about that much.”

Lois is right; they’re identical in more ways than even they’re aware of, most days, and it’s never stuck out to her more just how much similarity runs through their blood.

Clark nods, stares down at his feet. “Lex is the only person who’s managed to hurt me so deeply. The only scars on my body are from him, and I- when I found out he’d been doing the same to you, I-”

Kara raises a hand to his arm, stopping him from entering the same spiral of fear that he’d been trapped in earlier. “I understand,” she says simply. “That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner.” As Clark tilts his head, she sighs. “I saw him give you those scars, all those years ago,” she explains with a heavy heart. “And I’ve never forgotten it. So, any chance I got to prevent you from ever being in danger of gaining any more, I tried to use. I’m not saying it’s right, and I’m not saying that doing that only confirms every bit of criticism you had against me earlier… but I’m saying that that’s just how I reacted. Just once, I wanted to be the protector I never got to be for you.”

They stand in silence for a while, both looking up at the statue. Kara idly wonders as she stares at the moon’s reflection off of the statue’s chest if this is how she’ll be remembered. If she was wrong about all of this – if she’s taken all of the worst risks, has unknowingly signed her life away, is doomed to die during one last bid to protect the people around her – will this become a memorial, of sorts? On Krypton, only the greatest of heroes and scholars and leaders got tributes of this scale; how does Kara measure up against those ghosts? Where does she stand among the people of her new home?

How will she be remembered, if this is the end? As a living, breathing, flawed tangle of a person, or as an unblemished, immutable image, enduring through all of time?

“So,” Kal says at last, breathing in so deeply that the leaves that have gathered on her statue’s cape scatter back into the late autumn air. “What do we do about this now?”

“Can you ever forgive me?” Kara asks suddenly, turning towards him. Maybe it’s because the thoughts of her legacy are still fresh in her mind, or maybe it’s because Kara simply can’t stand growing apart from the people she cares about, but she needs to know now where she stands with her cousin. “For what I did, and what I said?”

When Kal replies, there is nothing but warmth in his words. “Kara,” he says with a sad sort of chuckle, “Of course, I can. I forgave you almost the moment you flew back into your apartment – I just wasn’t willing to admit it.” He pauses, staring over at her with wide eyes. Kara suspects that Clark was thinking about the same things she was a moment ago. “Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, Kal. I do,” Kara says with a wry smile. “And now that we’ve gotten that out of the way and we’ve acknowledged that both of us would prefer to not have the other die on their watch, can I make a proposal?”

Clark returns the smile, and after the evening they’ve had, Kara treats it as the miracle it is. “I’m all ears, Kara.”

“We do what we always do,” she says. “We protect the others and ourselves. We save the day and take care of the bad guys, and we do it together. I know it’s easy to feel alone during times like this, Kal. I feel that way too. But I’m sick of feeling like that when all this time, I never have been, and you haven’t either.”

“A compromise, then?” Clark asks. “If you agree to let me watch your back and not let you do anything too stupid, I’ll let you do the same for me.”

So, Kara’s not the only one who’s realized how alike they are when it comes to this. Kara laughs, real and soft. It’s a balm to her throat. “Deal,” she says with a grin, shaking her head. “As long as you let me be the one to punch Lex’s lights out, I’ll even take some constructive criticism on my fighting style.”

Clark holds his hands up, laughing as well. “Seeing as you currently hold the heavyweight belt between the two of us, it really should be the other way around,” he says, before bringing her in for an impromptu hug. “Can we promise each other that we’ll both stay safe?” he whispers, and Kara understands from the quiver in his voice how terrifying this all must have been for Kal to learn about in a single night. “It’s not worth it, getting hurt because of a man like Lex.”

Kara closes her eyes tight and returns the embrace. Though she’s grown weary of making promises she isn’t sure she’ll be able to keep, this is Kal. This is the baby she held in her arms and promised him everything would be okay as Krypton collapsed all around them. What’s this small, false promise compared to all those whispered by the people of a dead planet? What’s this one compared to the ones she’s made hundreds of times before?

“We’ll both be alright,” she says. “We have to be. Lois has already promised a fate worse than death if we’re not.”

“Oh, boy,” Clark laughs, pulling away at last. Kara misses the comfort the moment it’s gone. “If she doesn’t get to us, I’m sure your sister will. Or Lena Luthor, for that matter.” His gaze grows a bit more searching now, like even he, as oblivious as he tends to be, has picked up on something he shouldn’t have. “I never in a million years expected her to stand up for you like that.”

Kara feels bad for Kal, in that moment, understands the tragedy behind the sentiment. He and Lex had been that kind of unstoppable force once upon a time, and look where it got them. “She’s my best friend,” Kara says. It’s all she can say, anymore. “I guess she’s just looking after me.”

“I’m happy for you, Kara,” Clark says, and the sadness in his smile is undeniable now. “You chose better than I did.”

“She’s wonderful, Clark,” Kara breathes out, suddenly unable to keep the tide of emotions at bay. “Really, she is. And when all of this is over, I don’t know, maybe-”

Kal meets her eyes, expectant and encouraging. Kara’s heart twists; maybe her cousin knows more than he’s let on. “Maybe what, Kara?”

“I’ve wasted so much time worrying about what might happen,” she says softly, a lump in her throat. Stubborn, everlasting, uncaring hope has found its way into her chest yet again, and because it’s about Lena, she doesn’t have the heart to snuff it out. “All this time thinking about what could go wrong, that I’ve never- maybe this time around, just this once, I’ll let myself wonder about what could happen if things go right.”

A buzz interrupts their trance, and the two of them check their phones without delay. They know what’s coming, after all, and as the text from Alex confirms, it’s time.

With one last smile over at Kara, Clark takes off into the night sky. Kara, staying just a moment more, stares at the statue again. Then she is off into the night as well, leaving the park and all of those thoughts far behind.

…

When it comes down to it, the plan is very simple, and how it plays out follows the same logic and reasoning that it had all along.

There are plenty of places for Lillian Luthor to hide in National City, but none are suitable for a long-term stay under the floorboards, especially for someone as materialistic and as vain as Lillian is. The team sweeps through these smaller sites just in case, blowing through them like a gust of air. Finding them all empty, they proceed with the plan of attack.

After plenty of discussion and guidance from Lena, who knows her mother best, they determined that there’s really only one place that Lillian would go, and that was the one place she could use to get out of National City. It makes perfect sense, after all; why would Lillian stay in the one city where she’s now Public Enemy Number One when there are plenty of friendlier shores and more sympathetic cities more than willing to take her in?

The only problem for Lillian is that thanks to the quick work of Lena’s lawyers and the bankers running LCorp’s finances, she is now decidedly broke, something that limits her options considerably. The only logical place for her to go, as Brainy pointed out, would be to go to CADMUS’s hub of transportation in National City. An old abandoned warehouse out near the airport, they’ve known for weeks that this site was an extremely important one for Lillian’s operations. It serves not only as a prepping and loading area for all of their vehicles, aerial and ground alike, but also as a massive production area of some sort. Kara doesn’t know what they’ve been building in there, but if she had to bet, she can’t imagine it’s anything good.

Their hunch is confirmed the moment they all arrive on one of the attached tarmacs and see one of Lillian’s trademark SUVs parked haphazardly off to the side of the building. Seeing as they were likely in a massive hurry, Kara can’t really blame Lillian for the lack of a subtler vehicle or her driver for their lack of parking etiquette. All she really cares about is the fact that Lillian is still in the building, and as Alex’s DEO scanners confirm, someone definitely is. Given the private plane idling on the runway whose driver Nia has already discreetly taken out and apprehended, Kara feels pretty good about the fact that finally, they’ve caught Lillian napping. With no last-second political maneuvering or frame jobs to save her this time, Kara knows that this time, they have her on the ropes.

“Alright, no point in screwing around in there,’ Alex instructs the team outside of the main cargo doors. They’re assembled in a loose semi-circle, clearly all amped up on a risky mix of adrenaline and anxiety, and Kara knows that, speaking for herself, if her sister doesn’t let them go soon, Kara’s knee might never stop bouncing. “Someone’s inside, though we don’t know who. Let’s all assume that whoever it is is probably heavily armed and has been waiting for us all night. That means that nobody goes anywhere alone, got it?”

Everyone murmurs their assent, and Kara nods enthusiastically. She’s not about to piss off her sister any more than she needs to tonight – or for the rest of her life, ideally. No point in poking a bear that has enough stubbornness and spite to pursue her until the end of time, after all.

Alex scowls at no one in particular, already anticipating something to go wrong. Oddly enough, it’s that kind of rigid pessimism that makes her so equipped to lead these missions. Under Alex’s watchful eye, people don’t step out of line, and seeing as she’s already imagined the worst-case scenarios, she comes out of each success begrudgingly satisfied.

“There are four entrances that lead down into the basement level and eight of us. We split up now, cover every possible exit point for Lillian, and then rendezvous at the meeting point we discussed earlier. That basement is a labyrinth, so we’ll need to stay together down there as much as possible,” Alex rattles off. “Kelly, you’re with me. J’onn and Clark, you two cover the main doors. Nia and Brainy, head over to the manufacturing branch. Kara and Lena, you’re covering the West Wing.”

A strange combination of emotions washes over Kara at the knowledge that Lena will be her partner during all of this. It makes her feel better, knowing that she’ll be able to personally ensure that Lena remains safe – but Rao, Kara doesn’t know what’s going to happen as soon as they’re alone together. Lena is ever the consummate professional, is exactly the type of person to prioritize the mission above any personal feelings… but Lena is always different around Kara, isn’t she?

Oh, well. If nothing else, the privacy will give Lena a chance to vent off some steam if she absolutely needs to, and it’ll give Kara the opportunity to properly thank her for sticking up for her in front of Superman.

Suddenly knocked out of her train of thoughts by a subtle poke in the ribs and someone clearing their throat, Kara looks up to find Lena at her side and Alex looking at her expectantly. Uh oh. Kara hasn’t exactly been listening to anything that’s been said since the moment she found out she’d be with Lena.

“What’s going on- sorry, yes Alex?” she asks with a syrupy sweet smile. So much for not poking the bear.

Kara is lucky that her sister is already fully focused on the mission because the passing glare she receives is as brief and as mild as sunlight in the winter. “I was saying,” Alex continues slowly, “That I don’t want anyone engaging until we have the numbers. That means that no matter who you are, no matter how strong you are – you’re going to call in over the radio, and you’re going to stay put. Is that understood, Kara?”

She tries hard not to roll her eyes at the instructions that are explicitly about her. Kara is on her best behavior right now, after all. “Understood,” she parrots, bringing her fingers to her forehead in a mock salute. “No punching henchmen until there are other people there to watch.”

“God, that’s not the point- whatever.” Alex closes her eyes and draws in a deep breath. Kara can’t help but feel a little bit bad; it seems that she’s not really capable of behaving nicely towards her sister in times like this, and Alex looks like she’s losing hair just trying to keep it together. “Look. Safety is the top priority, okay? Even more important than Lillian. Stay alert, stay calm, and let’s go do what we’re best at.”

Everyone disperses then, and Kara is left to doggedly trail after Lena, who’s already set a blistering pace toward their assignment. Kara wonders if it’s just to get away from her, but as she catches up to the other woman, she sees that Lena is nervous, clear as day, and that she wants this to be over as soon as possible. While it likely has something to do with Kara, it’s about far more than that.

Kara’s forgotten, amidst all of the chaos and the bickering and the marathon that’s been the last 24 hours that this is Lillian, they’re talking about here – and the last time Lena’d thought she’d had the upper hand on her mother, her entire life was flipped upside down.

“Hey,” Kara says, reaching out and placing a hand over Lena’s as she’s about to yank open the doors. Finding them to be locked anyways, Kara rips the chain and the padlock in half without too much thought as she stares at Lena, trying to gauge her emotions. “Are you alright?”

Lena swallows hard, adjusting the LCorp gauntlet on her left hand in a bid to not have to meet Kara’s eyes. “Once this is over I will be,” she replies quietly.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kara asks and means it. This is Lena’s out, and she wants the other woman to know that she has one. Even if it’s her own mother that they’re after, Lena doesn’t need to get her hands dirty if she’s not ready to. “You can go back to the apartment, wait with Lois. Seeing as she’s hovering over a laptop ready to publish an article the second we arrest Lillian, I’m sure she’d appreciate a quote or two. You deserve a bit of good publicity now after how reporters treated you these past few months.”

“I want to do this. I have to. And besides – not every reporter treated me unkindly,” Lena answers after a beat, meeting Kara’s eyes. She’s shocked to find nothing but gratitude and resolve on Lena’s face – none of the anger she’d been so dreading. “One took a very big risk to see me vindicated, and I don’t know that I’ll ever find the right words to thank them for it, but doing this now with the rest of the team is as good of a start as any.”

For all Kara cares right now, they could be having brunch in a cafe instead of walking into Lillian’s lair with how light she suddenly feels. It isn’t until now that she understands exactly how much she had riding on Lena’s reaction to all of this – how very much she never wants to fight with the other woman ever again.

She blushes as she opens the door, ushering Lena inside. “Lena, I-” Kara holds up a hand, scanning the long hallways ahead of them and listening closely for any sign of activity. When she hears nothing, Kara starts to move forwards, keeping Lena on the inside of her sightline, against the wall, and protected by Kara’s broad form at every turn. “You don’t have to- you’re not angry?” she asks in a hushed tone.

There’s not much time for the other woman to answer, seeing as they’re inside the belly of the beast. Lena moves behind her like a shadow, their steps perfectly in sync. They clear every dark corner and dead end with ease, creeping around damaged machinery and abandoned assembly lines. As the dim glow of Lena’s gauntlet illuminates the walls, Kara sees massive scorch marks and tears on the floors, as if clawed at by some great hunk of metal. Her stomach drops at the CADMUS symbol looming on every square inch of this place; Lex and Lillian were building something here, and Kara gets a bad feeling that she’s going to find out what sooner rather than later.

After a long while, once they reach another system of maze-like hallways, Lena answers. “I was at first,” she says, head whipping back and forth over her shoulder and watching their backs. All Kara can see is the hint of a frown before Lena does it again. “Or, I wanted to be. What you did, sneaking around and lying behind my back again no matter the good intentions behind it… I suppose you keeping secrets will always leave a sour taste in my mouth.”

“I didn’t want to,” Kara says, even though she knows that that excuse only grows dull the hundredth time she uses it. “I was worried you’d stop me, tell me it wasn’t worth it. But it was worth it, Lena. It was the only way I knew how to help you and end this fight for good.”

“Had I found out a few months ago, I likely would have stopped you,” Lena admits. “Especially had you told me that it was, in large part, for my benefit.” She sighs, moving in closer behind Kara’s shoulder. “It’s strange, the things that can change in such a short time. Watching the broadcast, I was upset, angry, terrified – I’m sure you inferred that much from what your cousin said. I felt convinced then and there that you’d sold your life away, and for what? To get me my company back? Restore my reputation back to its shaky foundation?”

“For more than that,” Kara says, even though she knows that Lena’s getting there. She can’t help it, this need to get a word in, to defend herself against a person who’s offered her more understanding and unconditional support than she’d thought possible. Old habits die hard when it comes to the two of them, and when she glances back at Lena, she feels silly for even thinking that she needs any sort of protection against the other woman. “I couldn’t sit back and watch bad things happen any longer. To you or to anyone else.”

“I was fuming when I got the call from my lawyers,” Lena continues, her voice barely a whisper in these eerily silent halls. “So scared about what was going to happen to you that I didn’t sound all that happy to hear from them. But as they explained further what would happen next, and I realized exactly what you’d managed to accomplish with such a bold act of defiance, I knew that no matter how it had made me feel, your choice was brave, and it may end up being the reason we finally can close this chapter in our lives for good.”

“Thank you,” Kara murmurs as they round another bend. She knows they’re getting closer, knows that the battle will be upon them any moment, but she needs to get this out. “The way you stood up for me against Kal… I didn’t expect it. You have no idea how much it meant to me, knowing that I wasn’t alone in that room.”

“Even Supergirl needs a hand once in a while – and isn’t that what friends are for?” Lena says, teasing and sincere in an equal measure that makes Kara want to grin from ear to ear. “I may not be able to fly, but even I can protect you from time to time.”

Conscience mostly clear and her heart feeling fuller than it has in a long time, Kara spins around just for a moment to smile back at Lena. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she says. “And hey, now you know why I started spending so much time with-”

Suddenly, there’s a flash of movement in the corner of her eye and the increasing sound of something approaching. Kara knows that, if they don’t do something soon, they’ll be surrounded within moments by whatever is headed their way. Panicked, and with Alex’s explicit instructions not to engage fresh on her mind, she grabs Lena’s hand and bursts through the first door that she sees.

Of course, it ends up being nothing more than a shoebox of a closet.

A janitorial closet, to be exact, with very little square footage that isn’t filled to the brim with mops and brooms and various tubs of cleaning supplies and chemicals. As she hastily crams the both of them inside and shuts the door, Kara at least is glad that, at least to a degree, CADMUS was keeping their facilities up to code when it came to cleanliness.

Disoriented and unaware of the noises that Kara had heard, Lena lets a confused, indignant noise out of her mouth that Kara immediately muffles with her hand. Bracketed in on either side by Kara’s legs and arms and pressed rather tightly against Kara and the back corner of the closet, Lena can only widen her eyes and let out another noise.

“Somebody heard us,” Kara breathes out, her face so close to Lena’s that she’s whispering right into the other woman’s ear. “Someone’s coming. I need you to stay very still and very quiet, okay?” Lena nods slowly as Kara removes her hand, and she shivers despite the stifling heat in the space. Kara hopes that the adrenaline from the mission isn’t getting the best of Lena now.

As the steps from outside slowly get louder and louder, there isn’t much to do but wait. Despite the danger, despite the high stakes and the critical nature of the circumstances, Kara can’t help but panic herself – not about the possibility of being discovered by some henchman or another, but about her unbelievable bad luck getting trapped in such close proximity to the woman she’s supposed to be falling out of love with. Hard to stomp down the rising attraction in her chest and in her throat when Lena is right here, so close and so warm and even amongst the sickly sweet odor of chlorine and bleach, manages to still smell amazing. Kara knows that Lena can feel how fast her heart is beating; practically every inch of their bodies is currently smashed together to hide away from the slotted window looking in, after all. She hopes that Lena chalks it up to stress and nothing more.

Eventually, shadows loom through the window, and while Kara can’t see what’s going on behind them, Lena can. The other woman’s breath hitches, hands scrabbling for purchase against Kara’s chest, and out of instinct, Kara grabs the back of Lena’s head, bringing her forehead against her shoulder and praying that, if they are to be discovered, she’ll take the brunt of whatever weaponry is at their disposal.

Then, the familiar feeling of Kryptonite exposure starts pooling in her chest, spreading to the tips of her finger and her toes with every frantic beat of her heart, and Kara’s stomach turns to lead. This time, her grip on the wall is not to keep herself somewhat detangled from Lena, but simply to remain standing. She stumbles despite her best efforts, and Lena pulls back from her chest just enough to glimpse the faint tendrils of green running along the tendons in her neck.

Lena gasps and Kara raises a shaking finger up to her own lips. They can’t afford to blow their cover now.

There is someone – something, capable of killing her and Lena on the spot – right outside the door, that much Kara knows. But after a moment passes – seconds that feel like minutes, minutes that feel like hours – the shadows disappear and the heavy, clumsy steps continue on their way. They’re in the clear, for now, and Kara lets out a deep breath and delicately removes her fingers from where they were threaded in Lena’s hair.

“Kara,” Lena whispers, her voice strained. “That was a Metallo robot. That’s what they’ve been building down here-”

“It’ll be fine,” Kara cuts in before Lena lets any more of her mounting fear sweep both of them off their feet. “We’ll just have to be extra careful. Are you alright?” she adds, and Lena is thrown off her guard enough to scoff.

“Really?” she asks, admonishing. “Am I alright?”

“Just checking.” Unable to stop herself, Kara skims her hands up and down Lena’s sides twice, just to make sure that she’s okay. Then, stepping away and clearing her throat, she taps her ear twice, the comms crackling to life beneath her finger.

“Enemy sighted in the west quadrant, heading towards the sub-level. CADMUS has built some sort of new Metallo prototype. Permission to follow and engage?” she asks, blaming the rasp in her voice on the close call she’d just had and not the jerky after-effects of being so close to Lena

“Yep, I see them. At least two dozen, maybe more,” comes Alex’s reply. Lena lifts a hand to her own ear, face flushed and brow furrowed. “Kara and Clark – they’re not all outfitted with Kryptonite weapons, but some are. Are you sure you want to directly engage?”

Clark’s voice rings true in her ear, clear and determined and unswayed by the threat of Kryptonite. “And let you have all the fun, Alex?” he says, and Kara’s mouth drops. After the whiplash of emotions he’d been through today, she hadn’t expected any quips from her cousin.

“I’m in,” she says, her answer an afterthought to Alex. Her sister knows better than to assume Kara would bench herself after everything.

“Alright, then, but you two be careful,” Alex says. After a beat, she addresses the others. “Get down here, everyone. Let’s get this party started before Lillian slips away again.”

Kara helps Lena out of the closet, and as they both collect themselves, they stare down the stairs waiting just down the hall. “You ready?” Kara asks, giving Lena one last look over.

Lena swallows hard, trembling. The sight of Kryptonite isn’t an easy one to forget, and Kara fights down her own mounting fear long enough to send Lena an easy smile. “Just stay close to me, please,” she says, and Kara reaches out and squeezes her hand.

They walk forwards together toward the sounds of a fight that’s just begun.

However good of a plan that Alex and J’onn and all the rest concocted, it falls to pieces the moment the battle begins. It’s a little hard to strategize when you round the corner and are immediately met with a hundred evil, bloodthirsty androids. That doesn’t mean that it goes badly; despite the immediate chaos that surrounds them the moment Kara steps foot into the pitched fray, ripping apart robots is one of her fondest hobbies, and she does it with ease. While all of Alex’s careful instructions about positioning and synchronized attacks and all the rest fly out the window the moment a blast of Kryptonite is fired her way, Kara is careful.

A flash of green flies through her periphery and narrowly misses Clark, who’s holding four robots in the air with one hand and swinging for more with the other. No matter how careful they’re being, a pit carves itself out in her stomach nevertheless.

The Metallo prototypes are very much unfinished, their movements jerky and their threat levels varying widely, but they still make for an imposing swarm to pick through. Kara counts herself lucky that she only sees the unmistakable green glow of Kryptonite in about five of the bots, but she keeps her distance from those all the same. They serve as floor generals of sorts, queen bees directing the mindless hunks of sharp metal and faulty wiring every which way. A few of the robots swing makeshift blades at Kara as she wades through the masses, the soldered edges shattering harmlessly against her chest.

It’s nice, really, getting to let loose and tear something to pieces for once. There’s a reason Kara enjoys fighting artificial lifeforms like this, and that’s because for once, she doesn’t feel the need to hold herself back. The others seem to be having fun as well, or as much as anyone can have while surrounded by killer robots. Nia’s trying out some new tricks with her dream powers, Brainy is playing with physics in a way that makes Kara’s head feel like it’s screwed on backward, and even J’onn’s getting in on it, teaming up with Kelly in a combo that’s as surprising as it is effective.

Still even as the battle becomes well in hand, Kara finds herself distracted most of the fight by the fact that while she may be halfway towards enjoying herself, these robots are a legitimate threat to most of the other people in the room – including the woman who’s been glued to her side the entire time. Lena’s holding her own just fine, blowing apart the bots with a kind of grim orderliness that Kara marvels at, but she’s not unscathed. Her hair has come out of its pristine bun, there are grease marks on her cheekbone, and Kara knows that Lena’s already taken some hits that are sure to bruise by tomorrow morning.

She blames her ultra-vigilance for keeping the other woman safe for what happens next, when a blast from the back of the room finally manages to make contact.

Said blast is a particularly good shot by one of the robots, and even then, it barely grazes her, glancing off her stomach so quickly that she doesn’t register that it’s happened until she hears someone yell her name. The pain comes not long after, as she cups a hand to her side against the scorched wound, but Kara’s so caught up in the heat of the battle that any hurt that should be rushing through her system feels dull and muffled, her nerve synapses cushioned in soft and forgiving cotton.

And yeah, maybe it’ll need a stitch or two later, but Kara’s dealt with worse. She can feel Lena’s stare burning a brand into the back of her neck, and knowing that the other woman is worried, she stumbles back into the fight with as much finesse as possible, keeping one hand kept firmly against her stomach to keep the blood loss in check while she tears through the offending robot as if it was made of paper.

Over the roar of the battle and her own panting breath, it’s only thanks to her superhearing that Kara hears the sudden static in her ear. Kicking down a group of assailants, she holds her non-bloodied hand up to listen.

“Kara, retreat,” Alex yells over the comms. “We’ve nearly won. Come back here before you-”

Then, Kara sees Lillian at long last, finally revealed through the straggling, sparking robots that are left. Alex is right about this battle being over – but that doesn’t mean Kara’s going to back off now.

“I see Lillian,” she yells back, unsure if anyone can even hear her over the screeching metal. Lillian glares her way, and knowing she’s been found, begins to make a hasty exit with a handful of robotic bodyguards. “She’s trying to escape! I’m going after her.”

“That was a command, Kara!” her sister barks out, but Kara pays her no mind, turning away from where her sister and the others remained fighting across the room and moving forwards instead.

The only person who follows is Lena, in lockstep right behind her as they bolt after Lillian. The other woman flees back into another long system of filthy, cramped hallways, but Kara and Lena pay no mind to the dirt or the disrepair as they follow behind doggedly.

“Turn back, Kara,” Lena huffs out as they sprint around the corner, the end of Lillian’s coat disappearing just around the next bend. They’re getting closer, which is good; even if she’s not hurt all that badly, it is getting a bit harder for Kara to pursue when every step makes her worried she’ll tear the cut open further. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine!” Kara counters, taking the lead just to prove a point. “The sooner we catch her, the sooner I’ll go get fixed up, so let’s make this quick!”

“You’re infuriating!” Lena bites back, but neither of them slows down in the slightest. As much as Kara loathes having Lena out in the field with her, she can’t help but admit that the way they fight and banter with each other is nothing short of exhilarating.

Suddenly, they round the bend to find Lillian hunched over on the ground, clutching at her side and cowering behind the few robots that still stand between her and them. Kara doesn’t bother to hide her snarling smile as she surveys the scene and finds Lillian’s expensive, designer – and broken – stiletto on the ground in front of her. She’d always known the woman’s vanity would be her fatal flaw in the end, but she hadn’t expected it to be quite so literal.

Pushing forwards even as Lena warns her to hold off, Kara takes on all of the remaining bodyguards at once. Power surges through her body; with her adrenaline pumping, even their glowing Kryptonite seems to have no effect on her. A few more seconds – a few more dodged swings and punches landing heavy and true into the robot’s operating systems, and this will all finally be over.

Then Lillian wheels around with a gauntlet of her own, a sickly green color illuminating her face. She fires, her aim right and true at Kara’s chest, and this time, overexposed between attacks and caught off guard by Lillian having a weapon on her in the first place, Kara knows that this shot will hit her someplace where it will count.

She ducks her head and winces, but nothing happens to her. She hears a whimper of pain and opens her eyes to see her worst fears come to life. Instead of hitting Kara, Lena dives directly in front of its path with unprecedented speed. The heat hits her in the shoulder and Lena is thrown back a dozen feet in the air, slumping to the ground with fluttering eyelids.

The world screeches to a halt. “LENA!” Kara cries out, her heat vision erupting from her eyes without warning and disintegrating the last robot in her grasp.

The other woman remains motionless, smoke rising from her destroyed jacket.

“Not so impressive now, is she?” Lillian taunts, back on her feet and preparing to continue her retreat. The door must be close with how much ground they’ve covered, and Kara knows that if she doesn’t go after Lillian now, all of this will have been for nothing.

Still, she remains frozen, trapped between rushing toward Lena or away from her. She can’t just leave Lena like this, not without knowing if she’s okay, if she’s going to survive, if she just took a death blow that was never meant for her-

“Kara, go!” comes a voice from around the corner, and a moment later, her sister’s head pops into view. Alex surveys the scene, her eyes scanning quickly between Lena’s body on the ground and the horror on Kara’s face. “I’ve got her, okay?” she says, and because it’s Alex, Kara actually believes her. “She’ll be alright, now go get her!”

Wiping at her eyes harshly, trying to stop tears from rolling down her face, Kara listens to her sister for the first time in a while and begins to hunt down Lillian.

Kara finds Lillian at the end of a long maintenance hall, pipes sending steam up into the air and yet doing nothing to disguise the fact that Lillian Luthor has nowhere else to run. The hall is a dead end, and as Kara stalks forwards, the other woman turns slowly. For a woman who’s run out of time, Lillian is acting positively languid with her unhurried, relaxed movements. It sets off alarm bells in Kara’s head, and the muscles in her legs tense. She saw what that gauntlet can do to a person firsthand - and Kara has no intention of letting Lillian lay another finger on anyone she cares about.

“It’s over, Lillian,” she says, approaching forward even as her skin crawls. This is supposed to be the moment where Kara has finally regained control - where she can exact some sort of justice for what CADMUS has put this city through - and yet Kara doesn’t feel all that powerful. Not when she’s peering through the steam and meeting Lillian’s wide and proud eyes. “Drop your weapon, and come with me.”

“I suppose it is over, isn’t it? Not for you, though, Supergirl. Your fun has only just begun.” Lillian raises the gauntlet into the air in direct defiance, and Kara hits the ground, rolling forwards as the weapon begins to glow once more.

Her only hope is to get to Lillian before the other woman has a chance to pull the trigger, so Kara makes a lunge for it, slamming her shoulder into Lillian’s body and swiping at the weapon right as it discharges. The glow envelops her, and Kara closes her eyes, bracing for an impact that… never comes.

Instead, the bolt of energy deflects harmlessly off of her suit, creating nothing more than a hiss in the air and the smell of singed metal as it discharges into the pipes. Water bursts forward, but Kara is unhurt, standing in shock with the supposedly deadly weapon still in her hands, her hair and her suit getting soaked.

Kara tears apart the metal with ease, her mouth dropping open as she examines the insides. It’s impressive alien technology to be sure, but there isn’t a trace of Kryptonite to be found anywhere in the device. Instead, all Kara can see are green-tinted LEDs lining the inside of the cannon, as if it was nothing but a prop, or a ruse, or a…

Suddenly, she gets the strangest sensation that she’s the one that’s walked into a trap, not the other way around.

As Lillian collects herself from where she’d fallen to the floor, Kara’s nostrils flare, and she throws the twisted metal to the ground, squaring her shoulders and looming large. “What is this? What did you do to her?” she demands, backing Lillian into a corner.

“To Lena? Nothing fatal, I promise. I’m saving that pleasure for her brother.”

Kara reaches down and drags Lillian to her feet herself, shoving her away as the other woman continues to scuttle back toward the end of the hallway. “No more games. What was that weapon?” she asks again, and not even Kara knows what she’ll be capable of if Lillian doesn’t give her a straight answer this time. It could be Lena’s life on the line, after all, and Kara’s eyes begin to glow at the thought of anything bad happening to her.

“It was a standard extension of the Lexosuit,” Lillian answers after a beat, and Kara takes a grain of satisfaction from the fact that she’s struck some sort of sobering fear into the other woman’s heart. “Completely harmless to you - we didn’t have enough time to outfit it with anything too nasty - but we did have time to make it look as if we had.”

“It- it was a fake?” Kara stays frozen in place despite the water streaming down her face and off her shoulders. Nothing is adding up, and yet she doesn’t want to consider the possible implications of what Lillian’s just done. “Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? To see if my daughter really was foolish enough to try and save your life. Without any actual reason to, I might add.”

“You- you would do that to her? Why?” Kara grits out. The full truth of what’s just happened is slowly sneaking up on her, digging its talons down her back. “WHY?” she asks again, anger and guilt and fear mixing together in equal parts, a horrendous cocktail to try and swallow down.

It’s already Kara’s fault that Lena had taken that blast for her in the first place. Now, the thought that she’d never been in danger in the first place, that Lena had put her body on the line needlessly - it takes all of her willpower to keep her knees from buckling.

The older woman pants, spitting blood in Kara’s direction as she tries to smooth out her hair and straighten out her suit. Ever an eye for the camera, Lillian has, and Kara can’t believe that she’s preparing to preen for her mugshot even now that she’s lost everything.

“A bit ridiculous, I know, but you’ll have to forgive the reliance on special effects. A mother needs to see some things with her own eyes before she’s able to believe it,” she answers, wiping away her smearing lipstick. “Lex had told me over and over, but I’d found it impossible. I raised her myself, after all, and the mere thought of her ever-“

“What are you talking about?” Kara growls, the leftover adrenaline from the fight and the image of Lena’s body going limp as it struck the wall causing her body to feel too big, her limbs rattling and shaking, and her chest hollow. Kara does not like the expression on Lillian’s face right now, hates the self-satisfied, revelatory smirk and the fact that whatever she’s gloating about relates to Lena directly.

“We were already well aware of how you felt, of course. That much was pathetically obvious,” Lillian prattles on, and a cold hand squeezes Kara’s heart without mercy. The blood drains from Kara’s face and Lillian notices, her smile widening. At the end of her rope, Lillian still seems to be the one in control. “Oh, dear, the look on your face! You really thought we didn’t know? That none of your enemies do? How tragic.”

Kara staggers back half a step, shaking her head and trying to find a way out of this; this, perhaps her greatest fear, brought terrifyingly into fruition in this dark, echoing hallway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, sticking out her chin and trying hard to remember that this is a battle that she’s supposed to have already won. “You’re delusional, you and your son both.”

Her voice wavers on its final note, and Lillian begins to laugh.

“I’d be more worried about what just happened if I were you,” Lillian replies. “It’s always been so easy, getting to you, but until now, my daughter has been a tougher riddle to solve. She’s grown so adept at hiding her emotions away, has nearly convinced herself that she can’t get hurt in this way. But now we all know the truth. Everyone knew what you’d do for her, but now? We’ve seen exactly what she’s willing to sacrifice so thoughtlessly for you.”

“We? Lex? He hasn’t-“ Kara starts, but a blinking red light flashing from a security camera in the corner proves her wrong. So, Lex really has been watching this entire time. Her heart feels like it might just burst, now, even as she can hear the pounding footsteps of the others. Reinforcements are coming, and yet Kara has never felt so alone.

“You’ve angered him terribly, I’m afraid,” Lillian says with a tut, shaking her head and walking over with her wrists outstretched. Even if that was her intent all along, the confirmation of that fact is just another sucker punch lodged beneath Kara’s ribs. “First your stunt on television, and now arresting his own mother? I can’t wait to see what he has in store for you both.”

“You leave her out of this,” Kara snarls, forgoing Lillian’s cocky show of surrender and grabbing her by her coat instead. Kara knows fear in the other woman’s eyes when she sees it, but Lillian isn’t done. With how this has gone, Kara thinks she may just taunt them from beyond the grave, someday. “She has nothing to do with what I did.”

“Doesn’t she, though? Everything you do is for my daughter, Supergirl. If the world hasn’t learned that yet, they will soon enough.” Lillian narrows her eyes, and Kara is reminded of a snake rearing its head back for one last venomous strike. “You let her take that blow for you, just now. I thought the hero wasn’t supposed to allow that to happen.”

“I didn’t- I would never-” Kara gasps out, the walls closing in around her.

“Not that you have much time left to dwell on that. Mark my words, Kara: even if you do manage to bring our organization down, the gamble you just made will cost you your life. Will you allow it to cost my daughter hers as well?”

Kara finds herself unable to answer, fear etching itself across her face right as her team finally turns the corner. Lillian just starts to laugh, not stopping even as she’s pulled forcibly out of Kara’s grasp. “We’ve got her,” J’onn tells her, his face filled with a grim sort of victory, but Kara can’t even look him in the eye, still staring hard at Lillian.

“If you- if you so much as touch her,” she tries, but the world seems much too far away for her words to ever reach, and Kara raises a hand up to her throat, unable to project even the slightest amount of sincerity into her threat. She’s no more meaningful than a broken record, right now, everything she says falling limp and flat on its face.

Lillian knows exactly what she’s managed to impart to the hero, and that is why, even as she’s beaten, her smile remains firmly fixed in place. A captured queen, flushed with the assurance that Lex has Kara’s greatest weaknesses firmly in his sights.

“I hope you understand what you’ve done, Supergirl,” she crows over her shoulder as Clark and J’onn frogmarch her away. “Some things can’t be forgiven.”

Kara doesn’t know how long she stays there, hunched over and leaning hard against the wall. The hallway is dark now, and she can’t see much of anything through the water streaming down her face.

A pair of hands whirl her around and yanks her out of the range of the still-gushing broken pipe, and Kara blinks dimly until her sister comes into focus in front of her.

“We got her!” Alex rushes out, wild and celebratory and vicious, all of her pent-up worry and frustrations about what Lillian and Lex have been holding over their heads coming out in a lion’s roar after a much-needed hunt. “CADMUS won’t have anything after this raid, and it won’t be long until we track down… Kara, are you alright?”

Kara can’t answer, her hand now clutching her chest as every horrible thing she can conjure up comes to pass behind her eyelids. She’d always known that letting Lena in like this, admitting to herself the full depth of her feelings, and still, pulling the other woman closer despite her better judgment would have consequences. And yet even in her worst nightmares, she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on exactly how awful those consequences would be.

“Are you hurt? You… did Lillian-?” her sister tries again, any concern falling on unhearing ears and unseeing eyes.

She thought she’d been careful. When it came to Lena, she’s always tried to be so painstakingly careful, and her falling in love with the other woman had been more of the same.

And yet here she stands, knowing that no matter how cautious she’s tried to be, it changes nothing about the fact that her feelings for Lena will be used against her – at the expense of Lena’s life. All of the choices she’s made, all of the secrets, all of the risks… this will be the ultimate price she’s expected to pay.

Had it been her own life, it would have been easy. That’s been the script, after all, and Kara’s been dutifully following it with the hope that at least this way, there would be no collateral damage.

Leave it to the Luthors to change the terms of the agreement.

“Kara, you’re scaring me,” Alex says, quieter this time. Head spinning and knowing that she won’t be able to breathe until she does one thing, Kara looks up and grabs her sister’s arms hard.

“Where’s Lena?” she gasps out.

Rao, she hopes it isn’t already too late.

Chapter Text

Alex drives them home, and as their abysmal luck would have it, they get stuck in a deadly strain of National City’s notoriously awful rush hour traffic.

As Kara attempts to blink the fatigue away, it’s a little hard for her to believe that it’s morning already. These last few hours have felt like a fever dream of confusion and chaos that had no intention of ever ending; when Alex tiptoed into the medbay to open the blinds in Lena’s private room after hours of darkness, the sunlight was an assault on Kara’s frayed and burnt-out senses, not the cheery balm it normally is.

Her sister is stuck with this rather unenviable task for several reasons: first, because Kara refuses to leave Lena’s side; second, because Kara remains convinced that, despite the overwhelming amount of doctors and experienced medical staff telling her otherwise, Lena is far too injured to be flown home under any circumstances; third, because, while Lena does have her company back, getting access to every little asset, such as the company town car, does not happen overnight; and lastly, because Kara never once bothered to get her driver’s license. “I can fly to the moon in five minutes if I wanted to,” she reminds Alex often, “and besides, I’m a firm believer in public transportation.”

With no one else available to drive them, it’s Alex’s car that they all climb gingerly into, and where they are still sitting now, over an hour later.

She remains quiet in the back seat, knowing full well that no one is in the mood for small talk. Between Alex’s long-suffering silence and her aggressively changing the radio stations to Lena’s half-sedated, absent looks out of the window, any attempt on Kara’s part to crack a joke or even talk about the weather would be dead on arrival. Earlier, when she’d tried to start singing along to some song on the radio, she’d received such an evil eye from her sister in the rearview mirror that she’d clammed up ever since.

And look – it’s not Kara’s fault that the freeways of National City seem to carry a personal grudge against every commuter today. Some things are out of even Supergirl’s control, traffic being one of them, and while Kara could jump out of the car, pick it up, and fly the entire vehicle and its passengers to her apartment, but… well, Kara would feel a little guilty, surrounded as she is by every stressed out worker in National City right now, and she certainly doesn’t want to show any favoritism even if it would get her out of this car a little bit faster. Besides – Lifting up the car would possibly disrupt Lena’s shoulder – the shoulder that’s perfectly fine, actually, the bandages and the sling more for the sake of Kara’s mental state than it is for the other woman’s benefit – but the last thing that Kara wants to do is to make it worse in any shape or form.

She’d just spent all night trying very hard to stop hyperventilating long enough to give Alex and the others as neutral of a report as possible about the night’s events, and quite frankly, she’s in much too fragile of a state to do much of anything around Lena right now without her throat beginning to close up again. Better to shut up and stare out the window and try to figure out what the hell she was going to do about the mess she’s landed them in than to risk meeting the eyes of either woman in the front seat.

With everyone in varying moods – but with the common denominator being exhaustion – Kara had been foolish enough to hope that nothing would come of this elongated car ride except for hazy, unfocused silence and one-too-many advertisement jingles on the radio. Rao, as the vehicle came fully to a stop in the middle of downtown, she’d wondered if she’d maybe even get a nap out of all this.

She’d put her faith in the wrong improbable circumstance, and things come to a head eventually.

It starts with an innocent enough question from Lena – groggy, disoriented, breathtaking Lena, who Kara can barely tear her eyes from knowing just how scared she’d been in that hallway. She’s still scared now, of course, probably more scared than she’d been, but that suspended moment in the hallway had a primal nature to it that is lacking now, and Kara is still reeling from it. If she looks away for even a second, Kara thinks that Lena might transform back into the unconscious heap that she’d been.

“So, what… what happened, exactly?” Lena asks, a little uncertain amidst the heavy pain meds still in her system and the yawning, massive chasm of silence that’s swallowed up the car whole. “I know that my mother has been officially arrested, but…?”

It’s not surprising that Lena’s memories of the night are hazy at best. While her shoulder wound turned out to be nothing more than surface-level burns, she did hit her head hard — with enough force that she’s been in and out of consciousness for most of the morning. It is also not surprising that Lena would be curious about the events that she missed out on, but that does not mean that Kara wants to tell her best friend a single detail. Once she starts, it’ll snowball, and before Kara can control it or Lena can prepare for it, the entire avalanche of revelations and gut punches and turmoil that Lillian delivered to them as a parting gift will be upon them.

“What do you remember?” Alex asks, and it sounds kind and gentle on the surface but Kara knows better, knows that her sister has been waiting for this moment all night and all morning long. While Lena, as out of it as she still is, might not yet grasp the emotional toll that this has taken on Kara, Alex has. Seeing as she never got a single straight answer from Kara the entire time she sat pale and rigid in the chair next to Lena’s bed, she’s looking for any opportunity to receive one now.

Using Lena’s drug-induced loose lips and boundless curiosity as her foot in the door, Kara is worried that eventually, her sister is going to get exactly what she’s after at the expense of her own composure.

“I remember the chase. The look on my mother’s face as we caught up to her. Then a flash, and… well, not much else.” Lena’s voice is breezy and unbothered, like she isn’t recounting such a nightmarish memory. If Kara’s failure to protect her at the very least amounted to Lena being spared remembering exactly how awful it had been to find Lillian waiting and ready, her weapon drawn, then Kara will take that silver lining. “Then I woke up to a very dour-looking Supergirl half-asleep in a chair, and now here we are.”

Alex waits for the song on the radio to end before speaking again. Her eyes never once break from Kara’s waging a staring match in the mirror. With their car not going anywhere, Kara can’t even complain about the lack of safety or good driving skills. “Fill her in, Kara,” she demands from the front seat. “You saw way more than anyone else did.”

“I’m not sure- it happened so fast, you know, and what matters is that everyone is okay and safe and-” Kara stumbles out, but Lena, relaxed and still glowing in the knowledge that Lillian is out for the count and blessedly, tragically unaware of the trap she’d fallen into, doesn’t put up with Kara’s ramblings for long.

“Come now, darling, you have to tell me,” she says with a teasing, inquisitive lilt to her words. “I took a bullet of sorts for you, didn’t I? Or I meant to, anyhow.” Had Lena not been so lax and unassuming in the front seat, Kara has no doubt that she would have never said those words in the first place, but they hit her with the force of a train all the same, and Kara can’t stop herself from flinching. Alex’s eyes narrow, and Lena keeps on with her affectionate, awful jibes. “I think the doctors and the nurses were far too intimidated by you scowling in the corner to give me any of the lurid details.”

“You’ve gotta give her something,” Alex pipes up, and Kara can only imagine the kind of smug smile that she’s fighting back as she waits for Kara to finally tell her what happened. To Alex’s credit, it’s smart what she’s doing. Lena’s just about the best Trojan Horse that a person could use when it comes to breaking through Kara’s stubborn defenses, and her sister knows it. “With how many times you get knocked out every month and pester everyone else to help fill in the blanks, you owe Lena the same.”

Just like that, Kara is being grilled: rather innocuously by Lena, and very, very purposefully by her sister.

“Well, I- after you- after you got hit, I wanted to make sure that you were okay,” Kara mumbles, and it’s a miracle that she can even get through that mess of a sentence without her voice trembling or some other obvious tell betraying her emotions. Better to keep her words stilted and her sentences short, and maybe – maybe she’ll be able to recount what happened without breaking down in tears and having to confess what Lillian’s real objective was. “Your mother was getting away, and I wanted to chase after her, but- I didn’t know if you were- I couldn’t just leave you there alone.”

“I showed up not long after and told Kara to go on after your mother while I checked in on you,” Alex continues. “From the way Kara had yelled out, I expected you to be in much worse shape than you were. I patched you up as best I could and once the others reached us, Kelly helped me lug you out and back to the DEO-”

“Someone else was with Kara, I hope,” Lena cuts in, and there’s a sharp hint of soberness to her tone, like maybe Kara is right to worry that the further they go down this road, Lena’s knack for perception and general shrewdness will prove no match for Kara’s excuses no matter how many loopy side effects Lena is dealing with. She turns in her seat, fighting against the seatbelt and her sling to meet Kara’s eyes. “Tell me you didn’t go alone after my mother.”

Alex perks up in her seat, knowing that they’re getting close to whatever behemoth of a story that Kara has been so steadfastly obscuring, and Kara swallows hard.

“No, I- Kal and J’onn caught up eventually.”

“Eventually?” Lena asks, not missing a beat. Whatever advantage Kara may have had over the other woman is gone now, with Lena acting as if she’d never been given any medication in the first place. “What does eventually mean? How long were you alone with her?”

“Not long,” she replies. Long enough, her mind screams. She shakes the thought from her brain, determined to stay far away from that topic. “And once they got there, J’onn and Kal did most of the heavy lifting. They’re the ones who officially arrested your mother,” Kara gets out, knowing exactly the path that Lena’s mind is going to take her down now.

Maybe if she can manage to distract Lena enough, placate her with a few well-spun webbed lies of Lillian’s capture and Kara’s own safety, Lena won’t press her on the one issue that Kara is most determined to not bring up. “Look, before you- Lillian was getting away, and there wasn’t time to wait around for reinforcements or anything like that,” she continues. “She didn’t put up much of a fight, and I’m fine-”

“Kara, she had Kryptonite,” Lena interrupts, and Kara’s heart sinks. The inevitable has arrived, and there’s not much to do about it but try and keep a cool head about it. “With the weapon she had, don’t you realize how dangerous it was for you to go after her alone without any immediate help? What if you’d been shot again? What if you’d been killed?-”

“Hold on a second,” Alex says, derailing Lena’s trail of thought before it can careen into a full-blown panic attack. Her sister taps her fingers on the steering wheel as Lena draws in a deep breath, still staring holes into Kara’s chest. Her gaze dips lower, and it’s as if she’s the one with X-Ray vision, gazing straight through Kara’s baggy sweatshirt at her heavily-bandaged stomach. The wound twinges with a spark of guilt-tinged derision, and Kara shakes her head. Compared to the massive lump on Lena’s head and the state of her shoulder, Kara may as well have a papercut. “I didn’t know about this. What do you mean, she had Kryptonite?”

As Lena glances back and forth between the two sisters, it seems to dawn on her that she’s still missing a few major chunks of the story. “My mother was holding the same type of weaponry that she had outfitted those Metallo prototypes with,” she explains slowly. Kara leans her head against the cold, frosted-over window, knowing better than to re-enter Lena’s roving line of sight. “When Kara and I first reached her, she caught us off guard and fired off a shot. I- the entire reason that I chose to jump in front of Kara — other than instinct, I suppose — was because I knew that if Kara were to have been hit so directly, at such close range… it would have been fatal, in all likelihood.”

“I would have been fine,” Kara croaks out, unable to stop herself. Luckily, Lena is far too worked up to recognize the break in Kara’s voice for the admission that it is.

“No, you wouldn’t have. I would gladly take that blast over and over again if it means keeping you away from that type of danger!”

There’s the chasm between the two of them, Kara realizes. Lena doesn’t view her choice as a mistake — at least not yet. No, Lena sees it as something else entirely, something natural and acceptable and maybe even welcome, and it nearly makes Kara sick to her stomach knowing that Lena would gladly do it again — that she would have, had she not been knocked unconscious.

The pieces are all there for Alex to put together, and for the first time, Alex seems to understand the delicacy that this subject ought to carry. Ignoring the pained expression on Kara’s face and the fiery look in Lena’s eyes, she keeps her eyes trained on the back bumper of the car in front of her.

“Lena,” she begins, and Kara can tell by the care in her sister’s voice alone that this isn’t going to be an easy conversation to have. “There wasn’t any Kryptonite in that weapon.”

Confusion freezing on her face, Lena’s brow furrows. “What are you talking about?” she asks, and Alex’s eyes meet Kara’s in the mirror once more.

“You didn’t tell her this?” she asks, the question directed at Kara. Shifting in the backseat, Kara shakes her head, studying the safety label on the back of the driver’s seat.

Obviously, she hadn’t told Lena about that. She could hardly bear to meet Lena’s eyes in the hospital bed; how was she to explain to her best friend exactly how pointless – and damning – her actions had been? The knowledge that Lena was about to learn the truth here in this car, and it wouldn’t take her very long at all to understand the intentions behind Lillian’s choices, makes Kara want to burst out of the back window and take off into the sky in front of every bleary-eyed commuter in the city.

At Kara’s silence, Alex shoulders the burden. It’s a means to her own ends, after all, and she takes it on without hesitation. “Lena, had you been hit by Kryptonite, your shoulder would have been ripped to shreds. Human or Kryptonian physiology doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of short-term damage when it’s concentrated in a blast like that.”

Everyone in the car is well aware that, despite the heavy layering of bandaging that is currently wound up and down Lena’s arm, she is not hurt that badly. It was Kara’s firm insistence that Lena should wear a sling on top of the bandages that makes it look even half as bad as what Alex is implying. Moving her shoulder as if to confirm this, Lena frowns.

“But… that weapon. I watched it power up. It was glowing green, and I-”

“Some tinted bulbs and a couple of complicated-looking batteries. It packs a punch, to be sure, but nothing capable of serious harm,” Alex replies, answering all of Lena’s unasked questions nonchalantly. It doesn’t fool Kara, however, who knows exactly how Alex likes to glean information. “It looks like it belongs on the set of a science fiction movie, not in a CADMUS stronghold. You can take a look at it yourself once you heal up. There’s not anything remotely extraterrestrial in that thing.”

As Kara had feared, it doesn’t take long for Lena’s astute intelligence to deepen her frown. “So, it was what, a prop?” she asks, getting her confirmation somewhere in the silence of the car. Alex honks her horn once, like she’s just looking for something to do with her hands, and Lena turns in her seat to look at Kara. “When did you learn this?”

She wants to climb forward and pull Lena into her arms, hold her hand, do something, anything so long as she could touch the other woman, but she remains in the back row. It had been through her insistence that Lena had gotten to claim the passenger seat – more legroom, she’d claimed, as she opened the door for her bemused best friend. Really, it had been a desperate bid to beat down some of the guilt that had been clawing at her throat. Lena had already made a bigger sacrifice than even she was aware of for Kara; the least she could do was give up the passenger seat in return. Still, what she’s about to admit does not feel like something that should be done at a distance, and Kara has to shove her hands beneath her thighs to keep them from reaching out for something to hold onto.

Powerless to do anything else in the face of Lena’s direct question, Kara swallows. “Not until I cornered Lillian,” she says. The bet is off, and she doesn’t bother to hide the anxiety in her voice any longer. “As I was moving in, she raised it again, like she was going to pull the trigger. I- I still believed it was real, so I braced myself, tried to destroy the weapon before it fired… and, well, I tore it to shreds. Wouldn’t have been able to do that if there had actually been Kryptonite in there.”

“Are you sure she didn’t switch out weapons?” Lena asks, and Kara can tell how close to figuring out the truth she is because, under most circumstances, Lena Luthor would not ask such an illogical, pointless question. Her heart and her mind are steering her in opposing directions, and Kara knows it isn’t long before the picture becomes clear.

“Lena, aside from those Metallos, there wasn’t a trace of Kryptonite in that entire facility,” Alex answers.

“Why on Earth would she use…?” Lena’s gaze sharpens, then plummets. “She said something to you, didn’t she?”

This time, Lena’s question is undeniably a demand, but Kara knows exactly what will happen if she tells her the whole truth, so she resists with what determination she has left. “Sure, she said plenty,” she replies, waving her hand in the air. “How foolish it was to try and take CADMUS down, how angry all of this has made Lex, how I won’t live to see another day… you know, the usual.”

“Kara, I know there’s something else. There must be,” Lena says after a beat. She’s worried, Kara realizes – far too worried to have not already figured at least part of Lillian’s plan out. What she’s asking for now is confirmation of her worst suspicions, and Rao, Kara doesn’t want to be the one to give her that. “This doesn’t make any sense. My mother likes to grandstand, but she doesn’t gloat without intent. There’s a reason for the histrionics.”

“It was typical, run-of-the-mill rantings of a lunatic,” Kara replies, stubbornly avoiding the sharks circling in the water. “I honestly don’t know what else you expect me to say.” Alex clears her throat, and suddenly, Kara’s unmatched in the feeding frenzy.

“Why don’t you start by explaining which one of Lillian’s typical threats spooked you so badly,” her sister suggests to her, and man, Kara could strangle Alex right now.

“Alex,” Kara hisses. Her sister should know better than to bring this up. Sure, she may be displeased at the fact that Kara hasn’t exactly been eager to share what happened, but Alex is the one who found Kara in that hallway. She’s also the one who found Kara crying in the DEO locker room only a few hours later, a sizable dent in the lockers and the nearest bench split cleanly in two. Alex was the one who’d wordlessly brought Kara in for a tight hug, no matter how in the dark she was about what was going on. That blind sympathy is gone now, and despite Kara’s warning, her sister ignores her entirely.

Alex turns towards Lena, remorselessly pushing the envelope further. “You should have seen her face when we finally got to her and Lillian. After Clark and J’onn took your mother away, Kara could barely stand. She was pale, soaking wet, and shaking like a leaf. Something happened, and she refuses to tell me what.”

It’s probably a good thing that Alex is leaning so heavily into treating Lena as her partner here. Alex wouldn’t let very many people into a conversation as volatile as this, not when she saw Kara so vulnerable just a few hours earlier. It’s probably a very good thing, in fact, because this means that Alex trusts Lena with Kara as much as she trusts herself, and for someone like Alex, that trust goes a long way. Probably, but Kara is too busy being blindsided by the move to give it the appreciation it deserves.

“Kara, what did she do to you?” Lena asks, voice high and alarmed. Despite the heavy dosage of pain medicine still coursing through her veins, she seems more on top of this conversation than Kara and Alex combined, and what Alex has just told her is enough for her facade of calm to crack down the middle.

“Nothing,” Kara answers, distress clear in her voice even now, with those claustrophobic hallways and Lillian’s taunts in the mist far away. “She didn’t do anything to me.”

“Then who did she do something to?” Alex cuts in, catching the distinction with ease. There’s a guilty sort of satisfaction to the seriousness of her tone, like she’s sorry she had to pull out this strategy but knows exactly how well it’s working all the same. With all of the misdirection and avoidance that Kara’s been dealing out over the weeks, she can’t blame Alex for playing a little dirty, if only to force Kara to tell it to her straight for once.

“Take a look to your right!” Kara says, very nearly exploding. She’s aware that she’s fighting a losing battle, and once again, she wonders if having a secret identity is really worth the sacrifice if it means getting to escape this car. “Lena, she- you weren’t supposed to get hurt. I was the one who was meant to take that- and… somehow, she knew this would happen.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alex asks, but Lena’s eyes flash green, the memory of the night replaying from a new perspective, and Kara knows the jig is up.

“It was a trap, wasn’t it?” Lena says softly, her words wafting back towards where Kara sits stone-faced. If Lena has really put the pieces together – and Kara feels confident that she has, knowing how quickly Lena thinks in situations like this – then Kara doesn’t understand why her words don’t tremble in the slightest. This is her life hanging in the balance now, not just Kara’s; she should be just as terrified as Kara is. For the first time since this all started, Kara understands the fear that Lena and Alex and all the others have been wrestling with, and she has no idea how to swallow it down. “Not for you, but for me. Lillian wanted to see what would happen when I thought you were going to die. She wanted to know what I would do to stop it from happening.”

“I don’t understand- there’s no way,” Alex cuts in. If she wasn’t so busy inching painstakingly through the maze of traffic in front of them to glance back at her sister, the look in Kara’s eyes would have been all she needed to change her tune. “Lena, your mother is smart, I’ll give her that, but think of the variables she would have had to work around. There was no guarantee that you would have been with Kara in that hallway, no way that she would have been able to control exactly who got cut off from the rest of the group-”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Alex,” Lena says simply. She knows the truth as much as Kara does, now, and the mere thought makes Kara bury her head in her hands. “My mother didn’t need to worry about any of that. She knew that no matter what happened, I was going to be with Kara.”

“How could she possibly know-?”

“Because she knows me,” Lena answers, a muscle jumping in her jaw. As heavy as her shoulders seem to have become in a matter of minutes, Kara notices that Lena doesn’t look sorry. Not at all. “And I told myself before we went into that warehouse that I was going to follow Kara wherever I had to, no matter the risk. My mother seemingly managed to play that in her favor.”

That manages to shut Alex up. She closes her mouth and focuses back on the road, a shadow passing over her face. Finally, she seems to have realized why Kara was so keen to not bring any of this up.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Kara says, breaking her silence at last. If they’re going to talk about this now, while they’re all stuck in a confined space together with nowhere else to go, she’s not going to hold back. “Now they both know what you’d be willing to do just to protect-”

“What do you mean, they both know?” Lena asks quickly.

Kara runs her hands through her hair. After getting drenched in that hallway and flying Lena’s unconscious body back to the DEO as fast as she’d dared, it’s dried into a tangled, filthy mess, and it gives her something to do with her frustration instead of raising her voice. “Your brother was watching us the entire time,” she explains, and for a moment, the only sound in the car is the engine, roaring in protest against National City’s frigid air outside. Kara speaks again, and while she isn’t loud, her voice breaks over itself like waves. “I was the bait, and you took it. She told me that what you did was the last shred of confirmation Lex needed when it came to… I don’t know. Something about you.”

Lena stills in the passenger side mirror, and Kara watches her fingers go white gripping the armrest. “What about me?” she asks, and there’s the tremble that Kara’s been waiting for all along.

Kara screws her eyes shut in frustration, unable to separate facts from her own warped, nightmarish recollections of the night. Lillian reappears before her eyes, mouth twisted into a blood-curdling snarl as she reminds Kara that she and Lex know exactly what her feelings are for Lena, and look forward to using them to cause as much misery as possible. Compared to that solid, stabbing, uncompromising truth, everything else is blurry.

“I really don’t know. It was something about how they’d always suspected, but they needed to see you with their own eyes to really believe it.” She shrugs, unable to mistake the look on Lena’s face as anything other than poorly-concealed horror. It isn’t often, when Lex and Lillian are involved, that Lena allows herself to appear so shaken. While she may not have known what Lillian was talking about, it seems like Lena has a pretty good idea. “Your mother isn’t one to elaborate when it doesn’t suit her needs. I’m sure she was content to sit there and watch me squirm.”

Lena isn’t satisfied with that answer – not even close. If she wasn’t already sitting down and tightly strapped in, Kara is afraid that Lena might have collapsed by now. “She didn’t say anything else about me?” she asks sharply, and while Kara can’t get a good look at her face, Alex can. Whatever her sister sees is enough to give her pause, and Alex reaches across the console to place a hesitant hand on Lena’s shoulder.

Alex isn’t the tactile type when it comes to comfort. That little motion does more to alarm Kara than anything else she’s seen so far.

“Lena, it’ll be alright,” Alex says quietly, and some assortment of gears in the back of Kara’s mind begins to turn. She wonders if Alex knows more than she’s letting on – if maybe, Alex and Lena both understand what Lillian was hinting at, and that’s what’s causing them to act so out of character. “She might not know anything about-”

“God, Alex, what else could it be?” Lena fires back, and Kara leans forward, her interest piqued.

“What are you two talking about?” she asks, only to have Lena and Alex’s heads snap back to attention as if they’ve only just remembered now that Kara’s still in the vehicle with them.

“Nothing,” Alex and Lena snap at the same time, and while it does nothing to dampen Kara’s curiosity, the harsh, united front stops her from pursuing this any further.

Kara has her own secrets she’s fighting awfully hard to keep under wraps. The moment she starts to poke around in places where she might not be welcome, Alex and Lena won’t hesitate to do the same, and that’s the last thing Kara wants happening — no matter how bizarre it is to have Alex and Lena teaming up against her, not the other way around.

“Kara, what else did she say?” Lena asks her again, batting aside Alex’s attempt at reassurance with an intensity that makes Kara regret saying anything in the first place even more.

Everything you do is for my daughter, Supergirl. Lillian had spat at her, triumphantly twisting the knife hard into what is Kara’s most open wound. You let her take that shot for you. Heroes aren’t supposed to let that happen, are they?

The gamble you just made will cost you your life. Will you allow it to cost my daughter hers as well?

Kara can’t let that happen. “Like I said,” she says weakly, her words unsure and limping out of her mouth. “Just her usual spiel.”

The other two women don’t buy it for a second.

“Last time you said that,” Lena replies, any trace of patience or humor extinguished from her tone, “There were things you weren’t telling me about. Don’t try to lie now, Kara, not after all these years. I don’t intend on allowing myself to be burned twice over.”

Though Lena’s words sting, this is one truth that Kara has no intention of divulging. She thinks back on what she’d told Clark, how for the briefest of moments, she’d thought that maybe things would be different. She’d believed that a change for the better could be possible if she took that leap, but not anymore. Now, Lena is better off as far away from Kara as she can be, and Kara’s emotions on the whole matter are irrelevant.

“I’m not trying to- listen! She threatened my life. She threatened yours.” Kara shakes her head, the lack of sleep starting to get to her. The longer this goes on, the more her tolerance for all of it wanes. “You shouldn’t have jumped in front of me like that,” she repeats, knowing that this is not Lena’s fault but unable to stop the words from coming out all the same.

“What did you expect me to do?” Lena counters, caught off guard. Kara doesn’t have it in her to explain to Lena that logic is the very last thing guiding her anger right now. “I thought she had Kryptonite. Do you really think I was going to stand aside and let you get hurt?”

“You should have,” Kara says, and Lena grows even terser. “Kryptonite or not, I can withstand that type of damage, and you can’t. Think about what Alex said-”

“Don’t bring me into this,” her sister pleads, looking more displeased than ever before to be in this car with them. It’s hard for her to take her leave when they’re currently boxed in by two obscenely large semi-trucks attempting to thread their way through National City’s one-ways, and Kara doesn’t pay her much mind. She helped to start all of this in the first place, and now, she can reap what she’s sowed.

“-She said that blast would have seriously injured you just as much as me, and besides, look at you now! Fakeout or not, it’s not like you got out of there without a scratch.”

It must hurt her neck, the angle at which Lena has her head in just to send Kara a withering frown. “First of all, I look much worse off than I actually am, thanks to your urging the medical staff to triple the bandages and put me in this ridiculous sling-”

“As a precautionary measure! It’s not like you’re bubble-wrapped or anything-”

“With my current range of mobility, I may as well be,” Lena responds swiftly. Rao, they’re so close to Kara’s apartment – and the sooner she can escape, the better. At the rate this conversation is escalating, Kara doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be able to go before something in this car gets broken. “Secondly, there was never any expectation on my part that I would come out of that warehouse spotless. Everyone took their fair share of punches, and I had no delusions that I would escape unscathed.”

“Well, I did,” Kara snaps, her frustration at her own failure to protect Lena growing palpable. “That’s what was supposed to happen. That was my plan.”

“Your plan?” Lena laughs, humorless and pained. “Clearly, that plan worked out well for the both of us.” Alex swings a right onto Kara’s street, and the end is finally in sight – yet Kara doesn’t feel relieved in the slightest.

She can’t stop thinking about how all of these little choices, so instinctive in the moment, are ruining them now. If Lena had just stayed where she was in that hallway, if she’d have just let Kara take the blast, Kryptonite or not, they’d be in a very different position now. Who knows? Maybe they all would have spent what was left of the night popping open champagne and very carefully toasting to a fresh start. Instead, Lena had woken up in a hospital bed, and Kara had spent all those hours trying to figure out what the hell she should do about this mess now.

Kara’s fate has already been decided. What Lena doesn’t know is that every choice she continues to make to put Kara first is not only a futile one but one that endangers her more and more every passing day.

“I never should have let you go into that fight,” Kara says, her fear and her guilt taking the reins. Her words are uncushioned and they are undeniably angry, and Lena bristles in the front seat. Even as every ounce of Kara’s better instincts screams at her to stop, reminding her how awful it is to fight with her best friend – Kara finds herself unable to do anything other than dive further into the mud, desperate to find some line to cross, to return to some sort of familiar ground. “You’re untrained, and it scares me to death that in situations like that, you may not be able to hold your own. No – what scares me most is that you would choose to put your life at risk for me.”

“Kara, I didn’t know it was a trap,” Lena says very carefully and sharply, laying out as clear as day that this is not the direction that she wants this conversation to take. “I thought it really was Kryptonite, and it was aimed right at you. I was only trying to protect-”

“I don’t want your protection!” Kara explodes. “Maybe if you weren’t so obsessed with trying to save someone who doesn’t need saving, you’d realize how dangerous this is for someone like you. You shouldn’t be out there!”

For a moment, it’s clear that no one quite knows what to say. Kara sits like an anchor in the backseat, weighed down and wishing more than anything that she could reach out and snatch those words back out of the air. That’s the worst of her, that’s out there now, and no matter how good they’d gotten at fighting with each other over a year ago, Lena looks shaken, unprepared, and unwilling to go down that path again. That’s what they’d promised each other, after all.

The car rolls to a stop, and amidst the icy silence, it dawns on her that they’ve finally arrived back home. “I thought you were better than that,” Lena says quietly, and though her face is pointedly turned towards the door, Kara knows that she’s screwed up badly just by the tremor in Lena’s voice. “Don’t diminish my abilities or my right to be here just because you can’t handle anyone else taking risks – and stop pretending like you don’t need saving when you need it now more than ever.”

Even though she knows that it’s far too late, Kara tries to backtrack. “Lena, I didn’t mean it like that-”

The other woman is unfazed by the newfound remorse in Kara’s voice, opening the door and getting halfway out of the car before spinning back around. Even with the wind blowing her hair in her face and with a sling around her arm, Lena looks positively deadly, and far more poised than she should be. “You’re not invulnerable in this fight, and your forced, false sense of bravado isn’t fooling anyone but yourself,” she hisses. Kara sinks down further into the seat. “Don’t think that I don’t have you figured out. I know what you’re trying to do. I won’t let it get you killed, even if you resent me for it.”

Lena’s slamming the door shut and stalking towards the front entrance of the apartment complex before the words have even finished registering in Kara’s sleep-deprived head, but once they do, she feels the familiar afterburn, as potent as a physical slap across the face. She remains frozen in the backseat, cheeks burning red and grappling with a queasy mix of anger, worry, and tremendous guilt for what she’d said.

“We’re here,” Alex says weakly, clearly uncomfortable in the front seat. “In case you’re too busy pouting to realize that.”

Kara lets out a long, labored exhale, hitting her forehead against Alex’s headrest as the regret hits her in full force now. No matter how long her night had been – and no matter how much Lillian has clearly gotten under her skin – she should have never taken any of her fear and paranoia out on Lena.

“Rao, I messed up,” she groans against the faux leather. “Didn’t I?”

“Well, I’m no expert or anything,” her sister replies, dry and exasperated but with just enough care that Kara can lean into her words without bracing for impact. “But she seemed pretty upset when she left just now. I wouldn’t exactly say that you aced that conversation.”

“You don’t say,” Kara bites back, and while she is the lesser of the two sisters when it comes to sarcasm, she can wield it just as effectively as Alex when she feels like it. Her sister shrugs from the front seat and, sick and tired of not being able to meet anyone’s eyes, Kara begins to crawl rather unprofessionally and clumsily to the passenger seat.

“What the hell are you-? Jesus, Kara, you’re shaking the car all around. Come on, stop wiggling-” Alex stops complaining when Kara finally settles into the seat, the car lurching to a halt. “Really?” she asks, and Kara’s frown deepens.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” she starts, stopping immediately when she sees the sour, disapproving look on Alex’s face. See? It’s much easier to stop herself from having to put her foot in her mouth when she can actually see what the people around her are thinking. “Okay, maybe I did mean some of it – but I never wanted it to come out that way. I just- it was just such a long night, and watching her get hit like that, for me? I got so freaked and I-”

Alex holds up a hand, adjusting her sunglasses in the mirror before turning fully towards her sister. “Kara, can I give you some advice?”

Kara blinks. Usually, Alex prefers giving the unsolicited kind of guidance that, as much as it can grind Kara’s gears, does work out more times than not. Besides – out of anyone in the world right now, Alex knows and was with Kara during all of this. She was the one that carefully led her out of that hallway with an arm wrapped around her shoulders, she was the one who directed Kara to the emergency vehicle that the DEO medics had loaded Lena into, and she was the one who, once things had gotten quiet and there was nothing to do but wait, had gently pried Kara’s fingers out of their curled, shaking fists and had cleaned them. There had been blood all over her hands, that much Kara knows; whether it was hers, or Lena’s, or Lillian’s, or a combination of them all, she hadn’t been in any state to wash it off. Who would she be to turn down Alex now, after she’s been her rock all night?

“Of course,” she answers, eyes drifting down to her hands. Not so different from a few hours before, they were balled into fists again.

“You’re not the only one who has a weakness that Lex and Lillian have been trying to expose. You’re not the only one who has a dog in this fight. Try to remember that before you pass judgment on what other people are ready and willing to do.”

Kara scrunches her nose, not quite following. “I don’t understand.”

“Look, we’ve all got things or- or people that we’d cross lines for,” her sister says after a beat. “I mean, we both know that there isn’t much that you wouldn’t do for the people you really care about, right? What I’m trying to say is that… that’s how Lena feels about you. I guess that, in a way, you’re kind of like her Kryptonite.”

“Alex, don’t be ridiculous,” Kara says, pulling her feet up onto the seat. Curled up against the window, she tries to wrap her head around what her sister is talking about. “I’m Lena’s Kryptonite? Me?”

“You’ve been used as a… weapon of sorts against her before,” Alex points out, and Kara has to focus hard on the purr of the engine to avoid being swept down a lane of unpleasant memories. “Face it, Kara. Lex and Lillian have used you to hurt Lena in the past. Now, they’re just- they’re changing tactics so they can do it again.”

A ghostly sensation of that oh-so-familiar pain runs up and down her arms. Out of anything in the universe, Kryptonite is the substance that can truly knock her off of her feet. And sure, Lena doesn’t actually have a weakness so tangible and exploitable, and her sister is only using it as an example, equating one thing to another, but…

Metaphorically or not, if Kara really does pose that sort of threat to Lena’s well-being, then Alex is only fanning the flames of Kara’s distress. She straightens in her seat, voice tight and severe. “After what they did last time, I sincerely hope that’s not the case.”

Seemingly reading Kara’s mind, Alex course-corrects. “Not like that, Kara,” she says. “I don’t mean to imply that this is anything like last time. I eam, it’s not like they have any dirt on you that’s as damning as an entire secret identity, right?”

Kara says nothing, and Alex is left with no choice but to trudge uncertainly forwards.

Alex clears her throat before continuing. “It’s not coming from a negative place, or one of hurt, or trauma, or any of that – but you’re her best friend, and that’s still something that can be used against her under the right circumstances.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t want her taking that blast for me,” Kara says, realizing at long last that what Alex is saying echoes almost exactly the whispered threats that Lillian had hurled her way. All this time, Kara had believed that Lillian and Lex had been searching for ways to exploit her weaknesses; call it fear, hubris, whatever… but Kara had forgotten that Lena was just as much at risk as she was. “Wait,” she says again, circling back to an earlier strange exchange between Lena and Alex. “Does this have anything to do with what you and Lena were talking about earlier? About what Lillian might know now?”

Even through the dark shades, Kara can see Alex screw her eyes shut as she hides a wince. “That’s not my business, and it’s not your place to poke and prod after how harsh you just were,” she says, clearly regretting interfering in this at all. “Are you listening to anything that I’m saying?”

She huffs out a breath. With how much both of them want to escape this vehicle right now, direct, focused, and clear communication has not exactly been either of their fortes. “It’s hard to do much reflecting after what I just said to her,” she admits, and to her surprise, Alex scoffs, finding a new and infinitely more interesting road to turn down.

“See, that’s exactly your problem.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Everything that you just… spewed out? That was coming from a place of fear,” Alex says. “And not just the type of fear that comes from watching someone close to you get hurt. You’re terrified of fighting with Lena, of causing conflict with her in any way, and guess what? It’s only making things worse.”

Kara sputters out an astonished chuckle. “Making things worse?! What are you talking about?”

“God, you don’t know what it’s like, watching the two of you interact when there’s even a whiff of tension in the air,” Alex blurts out, taking Kara’s dumbfounded expression as permission to apparently get this off of her chest. “You two are impossible to be around, and you’re both too focused on doing your little dance of avoidance and second-guessing and swapping loaded comments back and forth to even notice. There’s a reason why I was the only person you could talk into giving you a ride-”

“People were busy! That doesn’t mean that they refused to do anything, and besides, it’s not like you didn’t have your own agenda during this ride-”

“Kara, no matter how badly I wanted to know what was going on with you, if I didn’t owe you and Lena about a dozen favors, I would have said that I was busy too.” It’s hard to protest that point when her sister has spent most of this morning unhappy and looking like she’d rather be anywhere else, but Kara finds it hard to believe that that hesitance is the fault of her and Lena and not Alex’s burnt-out social battery.

“So, what?” she asks Alex, her lack of conviction in her sister’s latest angle apparent in every syllable. “You want us to fight? To duke it out like we were barely a year ago?”

“God, not like that,” Alex argues back. “But you know, one of the many reasons why that escalated the way it did is because it’s like- like you two are allergic to disagreeing with one another! You tiptoe around it and refuse to acknowledge any existence of a fracture until the pot boils over and then, it becomes an explosion!”

“You’ve been reading too many of Kelly’s old psychology textbooks,” Kara snipes, even as she is forced to admit to herself that Lena and her fighting is nothing if not consistently loud and attention-grabbing. “Best friends aren’t supposed to fight, Alex. They’re supposed to be supportive, and kind, and-”

“None of those things need to be mutually exclusive!” At Alex’s words, Kara fights back a scoff of her own. The mere thought of ever welcoming a fight with Lena under any circumstances… well, maybe it’s because she’s spent time on that razor’s edge before, but Kara shudders at the suggestion. Alex sighs, bringing Kara back to the present and away from empty apartments and late nights and the cold floors of the Fortress. “Kara, you realize that best friends are allowed to fight sometimes, don’t you?”

“I promised myself a long time ago that I wouldn’t. Never again,” Kara replies, but she can hear the doubt creep into her voice.

“I get it. You’ve been burned before, worse than most people ever will be. I understand why you’re so afraid of it — why you both are.” Alex takes off her sunglasses to wipe them off on her shirt sleeve, and Kara can finally see exactly how serious her sister is about this. “But if you really want to be good to each other? You can’t be scared to say what you really mean. It’s not healthy to bottle things up, Kara, and if your past hasn’t taught you that lesson yet, I hope you learn it now. If you can’t tell Lena how you feel, then who can you?”

Alex has no idea that Kara’s bottling up much more than fear and anger when it comes to Lena, but the advice cuts through to her deepest secrets all the same. It’s a question Kara’s been asking herself for a long time now: she wonders how is it that she can be so unflinchingly brave, so willfully daunting when it comes to putting her life on the line time and time again, but could barely manage to look Lena in the eye just now. All of these feelings, be it her guilt, her anger, her love for Lena and all of the myriad of emotions it has brought about — why is it that she can’t fight the urge to run from those when she stands her ground for everything else?

When it comes to Lena, what is it that she’s been masquerading as courage all this time?

“I can tell you. I can always tell you anything. Alex, I’ve been meaning to-” Kara says at last, and for a moment, the truth bubbles up against her throat. Her sister deserves to know the full extent of the internal battle that’s raging on inside Kara right now — to understand that it’s falling in love, of all things, that’s pitched Kara into this freefall of conflicting decisions and sudden moves that seem to do nothing but cross each other out and cause more trouble in the long run. Despite the trouble that it’s caused everyone, Kara may even deserve to tell someone, to have Alex in her corner when it comes to this as with everything else, but she stops herself once again.

It’s not as if she’s managed to fool Alex all this time; her sister knows that there’s been something on Kara’s mind for quite a while. Kara isn’t so willingly ignorant to the increasingly heavy weight of her sister’s glances that she’d deny that. “What is it?” Alex asks, head tilted and waiting, just as Kara is, for the other shoe to drop.

Lillian makes an appearance in her subconscious once more, and Kara can practically see her shadow lingering in the rearview mirror, over Alex’s face, up the apartment stairs, and beyond. Lena isn’t the only one whose life could be hanging in the balance, entirely dependent on Kara’s decisions, and that reminder is enough to unmoor Kara from the temptation of the moment. Perhaps someday, she’ll be able to tell Alex the truth and not fear the consequences, but today is not nearly sunny or forgiving enough for that choice. She clears her throat, and the shoe remains in the air; the longer it hovers above her head, Kara grows more and more sure that it’s a sword ready to draw blood.

“It’s nothing,” she says, and normally, this wouldn’t be enough to dissuade her sister from digging her heels into the mud and prying Kara open inch by inch. Maybe it’s because they’re both running on no sleep, maybe the hidden glint of steel in Kara’s voice is finally enough to give her pause, or maybe Alex already pities Kara enough for what she’s already had to endure today; whatever the case, Alex takes the meager excuse with a chagrined sort of acceptance. “I- I suppose you have a point. A strange one, but still. I’ve let my own insecurities prevent me from telling Lena the truth when I should have before, and after what happened, that hesitancy never went away.”

“Believe it or not, people can have fights without it feeling like the world is coming to an end,” Alex says, and despite the harshness that those words and their insinuation might usually carry, her sister’s voice is far too gentle to allow for any of that ugliness to intrude. “Everyone argues, and everyone makes mistakes. You and I definitely have, and look at how far we’ve come because of it.”

“Sure has helped you to become less annoying over the years,” Kara mumbles, receiving a slap upside the head because of it. “No less violent though.”

“Shut up,” Alex says, before reaching over and unbuckling Kara’s seatbelt. “I’ve said my piece. Now it’s time for you to get out of my damn car and work it out with Lena.”

It’s as clear of a direction as Kara’s ever gotten from her sister, but she can’t help pushing back against it just a bit. While Alex may be right about the two of them having come a long ways together, forged through fire in most cases — some old habits die hard, and Kara can take some enjoyment from being a bratty little sister every so often.

“You’re not going to apologize for ambushing me earlier?” she asks, deciding to try one last time to do some investigating of her own. “I know that you and Lena have been going out to coffee a bunch, but I didn’t expect you to be harboring a full blown conspiracy against me.”

Normally, Alex would bristle at Kara’s inciting words, lean into her own stubborn streak and squabble back as surely as she breathes in air. But instead she fixes Kara with an intense, unreadable look, a hint of a smile on her face as she shakes her head.

“No matter our past, I care about Lena,” Alex says plainly. “She’s like a sister to me, and even after everything that’s been said and done… she’s family. So that means that you better go in there right now and make up, because I have no intentions of losing her — or you. You understand me?”

Kara wonders if Alex knows how fiercely her words just escaped her mouth — or if she knows exactly how touched Kara is by them. “I understand,” she says softly and opens the door. “You don’t have to worry about us, alright?”

Seeing as she can barely convince herself of that, Kara doesn’t bother to turn around long enough to find out if she’s fooled her sister.

As Kara steps fully out of the car and gathers herself, Alex sighs. She gives Kara one last staredown that only a big sister could muster up. “When it comes to you, I’m always worried,” she says, pressing down on the brake and shifting gears. Kara shuts the door and Alex rolls down the window just a crack. “Be careful!” she yells out over the squealing of her tires and just like that, she disappears into the dark morning air.

Determined not to put too much thought into it, Kara spins on her heels and begins a quick pace into her building, ready to find Lena and make her peace with this.

…

Although she is a superhero and all, Kara can admit that she spent longer than the average person loitering in front of her own apartment before working up the courage to walk inside. Consuming determination is a powerful motivator, but it’s done nothing to equip Kara for the task at hand. She has no idea what she’s going to do or say, and so who can blame her if she took a few extra minutes with her forehead pressed against the numbered decals on her heavy front door working out what to say?

That part seems pretty harmless. The fact that Kara spent all of that time frozen and enters her place still completely unsure as to what to say — well, that’s more than a little embarrassing. Despite the fact that this is not something that should be played by ear, Kara shuffles inside content to do some improvising. So long as she can find Lena and get enough of a word in to properly apologize, she’s confident that the ends will justify the means.

After following a trail that included Lena’s winter coat, a discarded sling, one of Alex’s old flannel shirts, and some bunched up bandages, Kara finds Lena in the bathroom in a tank top, poking and studying her shoulder with a look of revolted disquiet.

It’s a scene that Kara isn’t so certain she should be intruding on. It’s not like she’d kicked the door in or anything; Lena had left it ajar — likely on purpose if Kara knows her as well as she thinks she does — and Kara accepted the unspoken invitation, slipping in and sitting on the edge of the tub. Though Lena barely acknowledged her entrance, Kara knows that she interrupted a moment that was private and in all certainty, very vulnerable for the other woman. Goosebumps break up and down her spine as she takes Lena in; without the bandages and the shirt, this feels very much like the stripping of armor, and it’s an expectant intimacy that she hadn’t been prepared for.

“Hey,” she says, soft and in a tone of voice that’s exclusively reserved for her best friend. “Are you-?”

Her words fail her as much as the sentiment does, and Kara realizes that she has no idea what she’s asking of Lena. Asking her if she’s okay, or alright, or anything so surface level feels trite at this point, but it’s an impulse that Kara couldn’t resist. What she’s really asking is if Lena needs taking care of — and if she’d let the person to do that be Kara — but that’s an offer that’s far too momentous to bring forwards when she doesn’t even know yet how angry Lena is at her and when any sort of apology seems wedged solidly in Kara’s throat.

“I think you might have been right,” Lena says after a long while. She leans close to the mirror to get a better look and Kara can see the dried blood on her shoulder, the IV marks on the inside of her elbow, the pulsing, bruising blood forming a bump on the base of her skull. More than just the physical reminders of the night, Kara watches Lena’s hand tremble as she lifts it up to gently touch the broken skin of her burns, and knows that there’s far more on the other woman’s mind than the possibility of a concussion. “This shoulder probably could use wrappings of some kind. Not enough to mummify me, but some. I’d prefer to ward off any potential infections that might come from my mother’s subterfuge.”

Just as she saw the door left ajar, Kara recognizes the opening for what it is and takes it gladly. “I have some gauze and some ointment somewhere in here,” she mutters, happy to focus on searching through her medicine cabinet instead of basking in the fragile silence that’s fallen between them. “Here it is,” she says, holding up the tube to the light and squinting. She’s never had much use for a first aid kit herself, and her suspicions are confirmed when she finally finds the expiration date on the label. “Well, it’s- it’s pretty old. I could run over to the corner store and pick up some new supplies-”

“A bit of expired antibiotic won’t kill me,” the other woman replies, and opens her mouth to say something else, but just like Kara her voice seems to fail her.

Whether it’s coming from confidence or a hint of desperation or both, Kara takes the first plunge for them both. “Would you like me to-? I mean, I could-”

So, fine. Maybe it’s more of a sputtering nosedive than a clean, controlled dive, but Lena rescues her before Kara crash lands on the pavement entirely. “Would you?” she asks, and while it’s possible that they’re each talking about two entirely different topics, Kara steps forward with the bandages in hand and trusts that they’re not. They’ve always been better at wading through the unspoken than most people, and the moment that Lena ducks her head and swallows as Kara takes up her post behind her in the mirror, she knows that she guessed correctly.

“Of course, I- it’s really hard to do on yourself when you can only use one hand. Believe me, I’ve had to do it before and well… it wasn’t pretty.” Kara hesitates as she uncaps the bottle, her hands hovering just beyond Lena’s bare shoulders. Her skin radiates heat, and Kara is no longer sure that she should be doing this. “In fact, I- I’m not sure that my handiwork will improve on someone else. Maybe it would be better if we brought you to-”

Lena lifts her head and meets Kara’s nervous gaze in the mirror, soft and sure. For someone who she’d just yelled out without much reason, Kara doubts she deserves the kindness to be found there. “You can do it, Kara,” she urges. “I want you to.”

And Kara is quite simply powerless in the face of those words.

Her hands land on Lena’s back, warm and heavy, and maybe there is just a hint of something left in the other woman’s system because Lena melts into the touch in one fell swoop. In fact, had Kara not instinctively stepped closer and grounded her between the sink and her frontside, she thinks that the other woman may have sunk all the way down to the floor.

Using her legs to keep Lena upright, Kara bites her lip and gets started.

Despite how many scrapes she’s found herself in over the years, Kara has never been adept at picking up any of the tricks or techniques of the various medical professionals who have treated her wide range of injuries. While she allows her hands to dance up and down Lena’s back while she studies the problem in front of her, Kara really does consider calling Alex. But Lena sighs, looking more exhausted than Kara’s seen her in weeks, and she decides that for now, inviting another person into the mix, qualified or not, would ruin the privacy of the moment, and this is the type of trusting bubble that she had no intention of bursting. She spurs herself forwards, beginning her work without allowing herself to focus too much on the wound itself and its many implications.

She wets a washcloth and presses it ever so carefully against the angry redness of Lena’s shoulder. The other woman jolts and Kara yanks her hand away as if scalded. “I’m sorry,” she rushes out. “Did I hold it down too hard? Sometimes when I get too nervous or- or worked up, I can ”

“No, not at all,” Lena replies swiftly, and she reaches out and encircles Kara’s wrist. “The water was just cold, and it surprised me.”

Still frozen, Kara remains where she is, the soaked cloth dripping onto the linoleum floor. “Oh okay…” she says, and Lena takes pity on her uncertainty.

“You’re doing just fine,” Lena whispers, a small smile on her face as she looks at Kara. “Really, you are.”

Kara releases a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding in, and Lena squeezes her wrist, understanding the anxiety running through Kara before she could recognize it herself. Guiding Kara’s hand back to her shoulder, Lena hums, staring at the water droplets that trail down her arm as Kara presses down with a bit more confidence.

“You know, I still manage to forget sometimes,” Lena says as Kara works quietly. “It’s remarkable how good you are at hiding it even from the people who know the truth.”

Frowning, Kara’s eyes flit up from where they’d been laser-focused on applying ointment to every centimeter of Lena’s exposed shoulder. “Forget about what?” she asks, reaching around Lena’s waist for the package of gauze she’d found shoved far back into the corner of her vanity. As she opens the package with care, Lena watches her with dark, contemplative eyes.

“How much restraint you need to possess. Your consuming sense of self-control.” Lena pauses, obliging absent-mindedly as Kara lifts up her arm slightly to get a better angle. “The way you’d touch me, talk to me, even before I knew the truth… I had no idea. We were friends for years, and I was none the wiser to how much you were holding back.”

While she doesn’t quite know where this is going, Kara is content to play along. It’s easier to concentrate on the task at hand with a conversation like this versus another argument, and although she has no intention of preventing Lena from airing out her grievances, she’d prefer that it happens after she’s done wrapping up this shoulder. “I don’t think you were as clueless as you’re making yourself out to be,” she pushes. It’s a guess, but Kara’s pretty sure she’s right. She’s never been able to hide herself away from Lena. “You’ve always known me better than you think you do.”

The other woman falters, as though she’s not sure how deep she should plunge even if she is taking the lead. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I must have been susceptible given just how long I remained unaware of who you relly were,” she replies, and Kara knows this could easily turn into a sensitive subject, knows that Lena’s bordering on the same dark memories as she is, but there’s something to this conversation that she doesn’t want to let go of just yet.

“I had plenty of practice learning how to be gentle, growing up” she says, smoothing her hands out over Lena’s shoulder. “Hiding my strength, bottling up the raw power that I absorbed just from living under a yellow sun. I’m not surprised at all that you never noticed any of it — learning how to exist in this world as if I was just like any other human being was my most consuming purpose. Otherwise I never would have allowed myself to hug another person, hold their hand… any of it.” She clears her throat, bringing herself back to her original point. “But that doesn’t mean that I was perfect — especially with how easy it was to bring my guard down around you. Surely there was something that tipped you off.”

Lena contemplates the encouraging, quiescent comment, picking up the ointment and studying it for a while, waiting for the right words to come. “Your eyes would give you away,” she says after a long moment of sleepy, unhurried silence. “That was it. Every other aspect of your actions, your personality, your manner… you were consistent and unflappable in your kindness and humanity toward me. But your eyes — well, they were sad, quite often, even when it seemed as if you were perfectly happy. When you looked at me, I could tell that there were entire oceans of things left unexpressed inside of you, wanting to get out.”

Kara hadn’t expected an answer like that — and she certainly hadn’t imagined that Lena would have picked up on a tell that she’s worked so hard to bury down under cheery smiles and the glint of her glasses. She won’t tell Lena this — wouldn’t divulge this to anyone, in fact — but for Kara, making peace with her life her on this new planet always meant more than simply controlling her powers. Even moreso than getting a handle on her immense strength, her ability to fly, her enhanced senses, any of it — Kara needed desperately to learn how to confine and keep down her emotions. Her jagged anger and her howling grief had no place in a world where she was encouraged to conform to the comforts of normalcy, and so the only place to put them was somewhere deep inside of herself. Most days, Kara doesn’t dare seek them out, and on the days that she does, she’s reminded of exactly how much she’s had to suppress over the years.

On those days, Kara remembers Krypton and exactly how large the universe is, and feels as alien as she did the very first moment she stumbled out of her pod.

“Better that it stays where it is most of the time,” Kara discloses, unable to stop her eyes from taking on the exact melancholic shine that she knows has given herself away time and time again. “Without a proper outlet, it’s a dangerous thing for me to lose control, and this planet doesn’t need that from me. The last thing I want to do is hurt someone because of it.”

“Does it hurt you, having to hold it all back? It must, doesn’t it?” Lena asks, and Kara knows that there will never be words in any language to describe the unending ache of it all. Even if she wanted to tell her — and out of everyone, Lena is the only one to ask, and Kara thinks she ought to be the only one to know — it’s a somber, burdensome truth to admit to, and there’s already more than enough tragedy between them to go around.

She presses her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth and breathes out through her nose and thinks, not for the first time, about how the force of this motion alone would be enough to fell entire forests. Kara smiles, and shakes her head. “Hurt me? No. No, I get by.” She pats the last bandage down across the curve of Lena’s collarbone, and she marvels at just how light she’s trained her touch to be. Leave it to Lena to illuminate a part of her that Kara’s never given much light to. “How do you feel?” she asks, spinning Lena around to inspect her shoddy craftsmanship up close.

The other woman breathes out a laugh. “Only you would follow up with a question like that. I suspected that you wouldn’t tell me even if that was the case,” she says, and despite the acknowledgement of Kara planting another white lie between their feet, Lena doesn’t seem all that upset. Then again, maybe she’s gotten adept enough at understanding Kara’s language that she takes the fabrication for what it is — a confirmation of a very hidden and very vulnerable truth that Kara won’t ever be able to confess out loud. “Just like you won’t ever tell me what my mother said to you. But I- I wanted to ask all the same.”

Kara lets the words slide off of her shoulders, and she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. This version of her — of Kara, of Supergirl, of the blurred images of all of her together — this is what Lena’s always been able to see through, even before she knew the entire truth. With the jeopardy that it’s put Lena in already, Kara wonders if it’s such a good thing, anymore, that Lena can see into her depths so clearly. “You didn’t answer my question,” she reminds Lena, unwavering.

“I’m alright, Kara. I really am.” Lena tilts her head, lifts her shoulder up in down to test out her mobility and to prove her point. “Doesn’t hurt much at all anymore.”

Without thinking — because trust her, if there had been any reflection or decision-making involved on her part in the slightest, Kara never would have done this at all — she leans forward and presses her lips to Lena’s shoulder, placing a quick kiss against the bandages there.

As soon as it happens, she stalls in place once more, wheels spinning and mind racing. Still at eye level with Lena’s collarbones and not feeling anywhere near brave enough to glance up, Kara clears her throat. Finally, realization hits, and the embarrassment is almost refreshing compared to the intoxicating haze she’d found herself in. “Er- Eliza used to do that to Alex when we were kids,” she says, lips still so close to Lena’s skin that she can watch the minuscule, invisible hairs on her arm stand on end. “Kiss it better, she’d always say. Seemed to work on Alex, and it’s- it’s a tradition.”

Lena lifts her opposite hand up her her shoulder, fingers tracing the bandages, lingering where Kara’s lips had just been. “You’re a well of kindness, you know that?” she whispers, and Kara finds that she suddenly has so much to say, but keeps quiet. She has no intention of ruining this moment. “The more I learn, the more remarkable that becomes. Can you blame me for jumping in front when it was you I did it for?”

Whatever Kara might have wanted to say, it’s over now. She straightens up with a slow sigh; Lena knows the answer to that question just as well as she does, and the fact that she bothered to ask it at all means that Lena intends to bring them both out of this tender, peaceful lull that they’d wandered unbidden into.

“I don’t blame you for anything,” she answers deliberately; if there’s one thing that she intends to make perfectly clear, it’s that, however how stricken she is by the repercussions of Lena’s actions, she can’t condemn them when she knows it’s something that she herself would have done in a heartbeat if the roles were reversed. Her guilt on the matter is its own ocean, and it ought to remain a private one, but Kara won’t place the blame on Lena just because she’s struggling to stay afloat. “It’s my own fault what happened. I should have been paying more attention when I was-”

“You were fighting your way through an entire hallway of Metallo bodyguards,” Lena points out, and while Kara really, truly does appreciate the sentiment, it’s not helping what she’s trying to get across in the slightest.

“When you’re Supergirl, that excuse doesn’t work,” she states simply, and while it’s clear that Lena wants to object by the shadow that’s fallen over her face, Kara keeps talking before that can happen. “I was careless, and that blast was the consequence. That should have been the end of it. What I’m trying to say,” she insists, “Is that you shouldn’t feel like you need to step in and save me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m-” Kara stops suddenly before she can refer to the fact that she’s Supergirl, or that she’s invulnerable, or any of the dozen excuses that she’s used before and that Lena is practically daring her to brandish now. She tries for a slightly different approach. “Everything that you were just asking me about? Holding all of this immense strength and ability back? When I’m in danger, that power lets me do things - endure things - that no one else can. I can survive things that no one else can, and that includes you.”

“I’ve heard it before,” Lena answers, defiant and somehow still achingly caring. “Supergirl can take any punch thrown her way. Supergirl always gets back up. Supergirl survives the impossible. But at the end of the day, under the right circumstances, you’re flesh and bone, malleable and fragile, just like me.”

Fighting back a fit of recklessness and not sure what else to do with her itching hands and her urge to start pacing, Kara peels off her sweatshirt instead, then lifts up the loose tee beneath just far enough for her to gesture at her stomach. “Not just like you,” she says, jabbing a finger against her own wound she’d gotten the night before. “You’ll need bandages and time and care to get better. I’m already almost healed.”

Lena’s eyes don’t flicker, burning holes into Kara’s abdomen. “Tell that to the fresh blood on your shirt,” she replies. With a start, Kara glances down and, seeing that Lena is right, rolls her eyes and drops the fabric. As soon as the evidence is obscured, Lena meets her aggravated gaze with a curled lip. “That’ll scar, you know.”

“So what?” Kara huffs, her swelling chest and her blustering words getting the best of her. “Seeing as I can’t get stitches, sometimes that’s what happens.”

“You already have plenty of scars, Kara. You don’t need to seek more out.”

“I never do,” Kara protests, but the way Lena’s eyes narrow makes her wonder if the other woman believes her - if she ever has, when it comes to this. “Scars or not, I- I’m in a league beyond anything else on this planet. I don’t mean that as a boast — I’m telling you that, as much as I understand why you did what you did, there’s nothing that you’ll ever be able to do at the expense of your body to help mine.”

“If you understand why I did it,” Lena says after a beat, head high and her jaw tight. “Then you’ll understand why that won’t be enough to sway me. Your reasoning is very nearly airtight, Kara, and I commend you for trying — but logic falls away during moments like that. I suspect that I won’t ever be able to stop myself from trying to save you, even if I know that you don’t want that.”

Their tight, stinging conversation in the car rears its head, and Kara winces. Breaking away from where her and Lena had been standing so close against the sink, Kara turns and paces away. She sits back down on the edge of her bathtub, and Lena slides down against the closed door, facing her.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” she starts, taking the hem of her shirt in her hands and studying the rapidly drying crimson stain. She wonders if this is a conversation they’ll circle around for the rest of their lives — if it’ll always trace back to the feelings she knows now she’ll never be able to share with the other woman. “For the record, it’s not that I don’t want your protection — I just don’t want it when it comes at this cost. Rao, I mean, you’ve saved my life more times than I can count, Lena, using your wits and your technology and your ability to keep a cool head in any situation. You don’t need to sacrifice body and limb when you’ve already got plenty of skills that can protect me.”

“Then why did you let me go in there with you?” Kara hesitates, and Lena crosses her arms, feet sliding down across the linoleum. “You know me better than anyone else. You had to have known that I was just as ready and willing as any of our friends to keep you safe.”

The golden question, and one that Kara isn’t sure how to answer without giving far too much away. “Other than the fact that I wouldn’t have been able to stop you one way or another?” she jokes, stalling for time, and Lena takes enough pity on her predictable machinations to let a genuine and amused scoff fall from her lips.

“Darling, you’re Supergirl, as you’ve been so fond of reminding me lately,” Lena teases, and oh, it should be impossible that even during as emotionally-fraught and serious as this conversation is that Kara feels such warmth and sincerity ebb and flow between the two of them. “Don’t pretend like you couldn’t make me do anything you wanted me to.”

Her breath hitches, and when Kara levels her own crooked, certain smile over at Lena, the other woman’s eyes are dark and beguiling. “I’m not pretending,” Kara insists, and she can’t help but to let out just a sliver of the full truth of the power Lena has over her. “You… I don’t think you realize that I- it’s the other way around, really.”

Kara thinks back on a piece of advice that Eliza used to tell her whenever winter came. “When it’s cold, even the birds are frightened enough to abandon their feeders,” she said, Kara’s neck craned up at the sky and tracing the arrow head patterns of the wings in the sky. “The true test of love is how patient your hands remain until the fire burns long enough to warm them.”

And Kara better understands now what Eliza had been trying to explain to her. When the cold comes, as it has for all of them now, a sign of darker times, of harsher realities — of harder decisions — there is the choice to run or to stay where you are. When it comes to this, Kara sympathizes with the urge to take flight, even if she knows she’ll never succumb to it.

For her, she knows that there’s no choice at all when it comes to Lena. For Lena, she’d stay long after her hands started to burn up. Kara’s always been good at standing still and remaining true even as her world ends all around her — even if it means pushing the other woman away.

At that admission, Lena closes her mouth, and the tension hangs low and hazy over their shoulders.

“If that’s true, then why won’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?” she asks Kara, gravelly and slow, and she supposes it would be easy to cave now. All things end, even this hoax that she’s held together with increasingly unkempt desperation. Maybe both of their fates are already decided. Maybe it would be better to spend what time she has left in total honesty, taking chances and letting the one emotion she’s fought down see the light. Maybe, just maybe, Lena would even feel-

No. No, she won’t allow herself to entertain that daydream for a second longer. Kara knows what path is ahead of her now, knows that Lillian and Lex intend to keep their word. The thought of bringing Lena more fully into this mess simply in order to placate her own restless heart isn’t just selfish — it goes against everything that Kara believes in. It would kill her, even before the Luthors or any other unsavory party got their hands on her, knowing that letting Lena in now could result in her getting hurt.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this, and you’re right. It’s been bothering me for a long time now,” she says at last, eyes trained on her cheap and water-logged bathroom rug. There’s a chance, however slim, that she can twist all of this to suit her own agenda, and even if it hurts, she’s going to try it. “I think that it’s in your best interest to stay as far away from me as possible.”

It’s difficult to get out, and judging from the bewildered, unbalanced expression on Lena’s face, an even tougher pill to swallow. As Lena chuckles, completely caught off guard by the abrupt change in their conversation, Kara steels herself for what she knows is coming.

“Come now, Kara, be serious,” Lena says, smiling, but there’s a thinness to her voice, like she knew this might happen but had never in a million years expected Kara to actually say it out loud. “That’s ridiculous.”

Kara stays firm. None of the anger that she’d felt in the car is in her now, but it serves as a good reminder as to why she’s doing this, and fortifies her intent. “I am being serious,” she says, needing to impart the gravity of this decision on the other woman. “Lena, this is serious. I mean it. You’ve already gotten hurt and you’re lucky it wasn’t much worse and- and well, I think you figured it out for yourself in the car. You’d be playing right into your mother’s hands by not keeping your distance from me.”

All traces of humor are gone from Lena now, and as her nostrils flare and her eyes spark, Kara squeezes the sides of her tub, anchoring herself to the ground. “I’ll take my chances,” Lena says, right on the border between anger and exasperation. By the time that this is over, Kara knows that she’ll tip over fully into the former. “Besides, I’ve made it on of my life’s missions to defy my mother at every turn, and I’d encourage you to follow that mindset as well.”

“You’re not defying her by doing this,” Kara argues. “Don’t you get it? You’re doing exactly what she wants — just like you did with the fake Kryptonite.”

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

Kara juts out her chin, refusing to break eye contact. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re telling me that this is, what? A well-intentioned suggestion?”

“Not a suggestion,” Kara cuts in, hard and obstinate, and here comes the anger.

Lena’s expression could cut through stone. “So, you’re only concerned with my personal well-being and not because whatever my mother said to you scared you enough to try and estrange yourself from me, right?”

“I’m always concerned with your well-being,” Kara says. Her complete lack of fire or irritation seems to only alarm Lena further, and the other woman gets back to her feet, all of the softness from their time before eliminated completely. “I never said that was the only reason, but it’s always the most important one to me.”

“You’re not proving my point wrong,” Lena argues right back. She takes a step closer, and Kara concentrates on holding her ground even as she gets closed in on. “Tell me what she said to you.”

“Nothing that would have changed my mind one way or another,” Kara answers. “Like I said, this has been on my mind for awhile. What happened last night, and the fact that your mother knew the two of us well enough that she was able to count on it happening? That only makes this that much more important. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“There is nothing that my family could do to me that would justify this in my mind, Kara,” she responds, and with a sinking heart, Kara braces herself against the cracking, keening sound of the other woman’s voice. While she’d expected it to happen, nothing could prepare her for watching Lena with tears in her eyes and remaining where she was. “Don’t you understand? If you don’t want to see me hurt, then don’t say things like this.”

Reeling back, Kara blinks several times with her mouth pressed in a thin line, determined to stop feeling like she’s tearing both of their hearts out. “It’s just a little distance, Lena,” she mutters, feeling cruel and uncaring and exactly like the very people she’s trying hard to protect Lena from when the other woman looks at her like that. “Things can return to normal now. You’ve got your company back, and your life, and I- I think that it’s best that we go back to the way it was before.”

However much she tries to downplay it, they both know that Kara’s intentions are not so simplistic as she’s presenting them to be. Lena stares hard at her, and for the first time since maybe they’d had their falling out, Kara refuses to look away. When she does, she watches Lena’s lip start to tremble, and it’s very hard not to flash back to all of the times she’s let Lena down before.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Kara,” Lena gasps out, heartsick and furious in equal measure and the way she says Kara’s name feels like it might have actually drawn blood. “You think that this is the right thing to do, but this is exactly what she wants. She wants both of us to be alone when her or my brother or whoever else comes for us.”

“I don’t care what Lillian wants,” Kara says, and it takes all of her superhuman ability at this point to not move an inch in Lena’s direction, to fight against her overwhelming urge to comfort the other woman and take back everything that she just said. Robotic, she inclines her head. “This is what I want.”

“And what about what I want?” Lena asks. “Don’t I get a say in any of this? What about us being stronger together?”

Kara just shakes her head, methodically taking each nail and hammering them down one by one in her own coffin. It’s a unique sort of despair, carrying herself to her own suffering. “You don’t,” she breathes out. “And sometimes, that doesn’t matter.”

Lena doesn’t say anything for a very long time, so long that Kara, who keeps her gaze trained firmly on her hands folded neatly in her lap, wonders if the other woman has faded from the room altogether, a ghost of Kara’s own making. But then she lets out a quiet, restrained sort of sob, and when Kara’s head lifts just enough to take in the scene in front of her, she realizes that she’s lost the privilege of watching the other woman cry.

“If that’s what you really want, then fine, Kara,” Lena whispers, every word a groaning, thunderous clap in Kara’s ears. “I’ll respect your wishes — to a degree.”

Kara’s eyes widen. “Lena,” she warns, wishing that just once, they wouldn’t be so similar and so stubborn in their commitment to each other, but Lena silences her with a look that’s holding back unimaginable rage.

“To be perfectly honest, however, I really don’t care about whatever it is that my mother said to you — and make no mistake, I know exactly what it is that was said — this is one thing that won’t be taken away from me. I fought hard for what we’ve built, the two of us, and even if you really have suddenly decided to tear it down after everything that this has been leading up to, I plan on being selfish about keeping it.”

“Don’t,” Kara tries, unable to stop herself from wincing at her words. “Please, don’t put it like that.”

Lena remains where she is, lacking regret or remorse about any of it. “I certainly have no intentions of begging you about something like this,” she spits out, and while they are fighting, Kara knows that this isn’t what Alex was encouraging in the slightest. “You said it yourself. You can’t force me to do anything that I don’t want to do, and this is one choice that will remain mine.”

She turns on her heels and marches out of the bathroom, grabbing her coat that has been thrown on the table. Scrambling behind her, Kara isn’t sure what she should be feeling right now but isn’t especially fond of the strange mix of emotions all fighting for dominance in her stomach. Kara skids to a stop by the front door where Lena is slipping into a pair of heels, tears bright and unapologetic across her cheeks. She looks as if she has no intention of wiping them away, wearing them like war paint instead.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” Kara asks, out of breath and no longer in control of anything, least of all her motor functions. She braces out a hand against the wall and it falls right through the structure, the plaster turning to dust in her fist as she jerks suddenly elbow-deep into her apartment’s piping.

Lena watches the scene of abandoned control with renewed interest, eyes glimmering as she turns back to face Kara. “I’m doing what you asked: giving you space. As for where I’m going, seeing as you refuse to give me a sufficient answer, I’m paying a visit to my mother. She’s more poisonous than you ever could be, but I get the sense that she’ll at least tell me the truth if it means adding salt to the wound.”

At the mention of Lillian, Kara’s vision tunnels. She yanks her dusty, shaking arm out of her wall and attempts to block the door, but Lena brushes by her as if she was made of tissue paper. “You can’t,” she gasps, and when Lena meets her frantic gaze, Kara is shocked to find genuine sympathy behind the tears and the high-wire emotions.

“That’s where I’ll be, Kara,” she replies, and the determined kindness that Kara finds there smarts more than any of the sadness from before. “The way I see it, you’ve finally given me a way to repay you for everything that you’ve done for me over the years. Through every crisis, every spiral of doubt and darkness, every mistake I ever made — you were there, steadfast and constant. You were my hero for that, long before I knew that the cape was yours as well.”

“Lena, wait-”

“You might think that going it alone is now your best option, but I simply won’t let you.” Lena opens the door and stalks halfway down the hallway, turning to call out, “You’ll get your space, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going anywhere. This time, I’m going to be the one that gets to be there for you, not the other way around. That’s what friends are for, aren’t they?”

Lena pauses right in the middle of the hallway, and Kara watches her shoulders lift up and down as she takes in a few deep breaths. Then before Kara can blink or take in a heaving breath of her own or do much of anything to prepare or guard herself against what’s happening — Lena is back in her space, so close that Kara can count the faint freckles on her nose. She gets up on her tiptoes and wraps her hands in Kara’s bloody t-shirt and there, still halfway out in the hall and Kara’s open door, Lena presses a hard kiss to Kara’s cheek, then another one along her jaw.

And sure, Lena’s kissed her cheek before, light and breezy and usually accompanied with a friendly squeeze and a dazzling smile, but all of that is absent now. Kara’s own cheek is damp now from the other woman’s tears and Lena’s eyes are sad and beautiful and her expression seems almost pained, holding back something whose weight must be momentous. It feels different, whatever this is, and Kara wants to drop to her knees and drag Lena down and never let her go because of it.

Instead, she remains still, her hand half-raised to her face as if she could still feel Lena’s warmth if she were to press her fingers to the spot where her lips were only moments ago. Lena heaves out a breath, backing away.

“Friends,” she repeats, almost as if she’s reminding herself of that fact, and stares hard at Kara for another moment more before breaking away. “I thought maybe that- kiss it better, right?”

Then she’s gone, and Kara remains, the possibility of ever being able to get over the other woman feeling very much like a building that not even she could leap over now more than ever before.

Chapter Text

She’s seriously screwed things up.

That, at least, is the one fact Kara feels confident in by the time she flies over to the DEO, feet skidding against the gravel on the roof as she shoulders her way down the stairs and toward the main concourse. From the way that the various agents, scientists, and even a lonely janitor listening to music in his headphones scurry out of her way, Kara must look about as stormy as she feels.

For someone as brash and single-minded as she is prone to be, Kara is well aware that taking her foot out of her mouth is oftentimes easier said than done, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to try. She went about it all wrong, she knows; pleading with Lena to keep her distance was never going to be all that effective, however important Kara still thinks it will be, and it did nothing but add salt to their wounds. That all changes now. Nothing is going to stop her from getting to Lena before Lillian does, from doing something, anything — so long as she’s able to rectify the situation in some way, to make this pill an easier one for the other woman to swallow.

Nothing, except for her very angry-looking older sister, who’s already posted in front of the entrance to the containment unit and looking like she just ate an entire lemon with how puckered her face is.

“You,” Alex seethes, stopping Kara in her tracks with an indignant finger pointed in the air right as she rounds the corner. “What did you do?”

Still an entire hallway away and not really ready to muster up an answer just yet, Kara pretends like she can’t hear her, feigning confusion with a poker face that should win her a few million in a casino if she makes it out of this mess to go visit one. “What?” she asks, holding up a hand to her ear as she tries to quicken her pace again. She’s going to need as much momentum as possible to blow past Alex and her verbal assault.

“Oh, you know what,” Alex fires back across the hall with enough vitriol that Kara slows down with a sigh. Even if she were to try and blow by her sister and ignore whatever she had to say, she’s pretty sure that Alex would just jump on her back and hurl insults at her wrapped around her neck. It’s a move Alex has pulled before, though admittedly not since high school, but Kara isn’t under any delusion that she wouldn’t do it now even a decade and a half or so removed. “I literally just got back. I just parked! You two couldn’t have given me even a second to sit down and catch my breath?”

“So… Lena’s here then?” Kara asks quickly, craning her neck and not bothering to hide her brusqueness. If she comes off as far too over-eager to see Lena, then so be it. Alex moves back into her field of vision, blocking her view as Kara finally grinds to a stop in front of the doors.

“You clearly weren’t listening to me,” she comments, crossing her arms and frowning. “If I just got back, don’t you think that it’ll take some time before Lena comes marching in?”

Kara shrugs, a petulant urge rearing its head unbidden. “She’s Lena,” she explains, as if that’s really the only justification she would ever need. “Knowing her, she could probably decimate cross-town traffic with just her eyes.” As Alex gives her an unimpressed glare that Kara is sure is meant to replicate the sort of withering stare-downs that Lena is so good at, Kara takes a moment to regroup, setting her shoulders. If Lena isn’t here, she wonders how much Alex really knows about any of what went down. “How do you even know-?”

“She called me. For a woman who does her very best to be enigmatic, she sure was awfully good at telling me how she felt in so few words over the phone.”

Their staring match continues, each sister trying to feel the other one out. Kara takes a half-step closer, eyebrows knit together. Maybe if Lena hasn’t told Alex everything; if there’s just enough ambiguity that she can use to slip on by her sister and intercept her best friend before she stalks up to Lillian and hears something that Kara definitely does not want her to hear – maybe there’s still a way for Kara to twist this in her favor. “What did she say?” she asks, smoothing out her expression entirely.

Alex isn’t all that moved by her show of neutrality. “Enough,” she says, playing hard to get and rubbing whatever knowledge she has over Kara right in her face. “I know that she’s on her way now, and that you are not to be let in to see Lillian under any circumstances.”

Kara barks out a laugh, her normal sense of quiet self-assuredness coming out jagged and brash. “What? As if that’s something that either of you can make me do. I brought her in. I can talk with Lillian whenever I want to,” she scoffs, sounding more like a schoolyard bully and nothing like Supergirl.

“Stop acting like an asshole, Kara,” Alex responds without missing a beat, and it’s enough to shut Kara up entirely. Sensing the sudden change in her attitude, Alex presses in further, determined to make this stick. “You’re not some hotshot who flaunts her power around whenever it suits her interests. You’re not going in there unless Lena wants you to. I don’t know what you said to her, but I am not happy about it, and I’m siding with her on this one.”

Sobered, Kara says nothing at first, face flaming and throat scalding from a very special type of shame that comes from being lectured by her sister and Lena in quick succession. “I’m sorry. I- I know I’ve been… I’m sorry,” she admits, all of her confidence gone now. “But it’s not a good idea to let Lena in alone to talk with Lillian right now. You don’t understand, she-”

“Then help me understand! I’m still pretty confused by the fact that, despite me specifically asking you to make up with Lena, she is on her way here now sounding very upset and not at all like someone who worked things out with her best friend.”

Kara hesitates. The truth is, she doesn’t have any explanation for what happened that will placate Alex any more than it had Lena. The moment that her sister finds out what Kara had asked of Lena, of her clumsy and doomed attempt to shut the woman out… well, Kara’s going to be in deep, deep shit, to be blunt about it.

“Well, I- I took your advice,” Kara starts, already trailing off. Alex taps her foot, and Kara takes the encouragement to continue fumbling forward. “We fought.”

Alex’s foot stops mid-air. “You fought?”

“Yes, we did. Kinda.”

“What do you mean, kinda?”

Kara swallows. She wonders what time Lena will get here; the last thing she needs right now is to have her best friend around the corner. In all honesty, with what she’s about to have to divulge to Alex sooner or later, she thinks she might get jumped right here in this dark and empty passageway by the two people she loves most in this world.

She thinks she might actually deserve it this time around.

“Uh, well, it didn’t really start off as a fight,” she explains, bunching her cape in her hands and shuffling her feet. “We weren’t, like, screaming at each other for the entire time after you left.”

Alex pinches her nose, leaning against the locked double doors. “Trust me, Kara, however much time you think might have passed, I can promise you that it was not enough for my personal well-being.” Kara cringes and looks down at the giant coffee mug that Alex has a death grip on, and remembering exactly how draining that car ride was on everyone, resolves to get Alex a gift card for Noonan’s at her earliest convenience. Might not be for the foreseeable future considering the giant, looming threat of CADMUS that will be clogging up Kara’s free time from now until eternity… but Kara takes pride in the fact that she’s put it on her mental to-do list at all. “It’s good that you weren’t screaming. You don’t do well with being yelled at, and Lena doesn’t do well with enduring your insufferable pout.”

It’s a lighthearted jab, likely one meant to take some of the seriousness out of the conversation and to put Kara just a tiny bit more at ease, but she grimaces at the words instead. “I know you said that it’s okay to fight with your friends,” she says after a moment, and the start of a grin that had dusted Alex’s face disappears completely at the regret in Kara’s voice. “But I- the way I went about it, I think it only made things worse.”

“Kara,” Alex says, and while it’s not much, Kara appreciates the modicum of gentleness to be found in her sister’s voice. “I’d say that between the hangdog expression on your face and the fact that Lena sounded like she was trying very hard not to cry on the phone, it’s clear that things didn’t exactly work out the way you’d hoped.”

No, they obviously hadn’t, though not in the ways that Alex is assuming. Kara’s gloominess only intensifies, trapped somewhere between her guilt for throwing Lena to the curb the way she had and the whispering, tenacious insistence in the back of her mind that, no matter how cruel it made her out to be, it was the right choice to make.

“That’s part of the reason why Lena shouldn’t be alone when she does this,” Kara insists. “The way we- how things ended… it’s driving her to do this, and I think she’s vulnerable enough that Lillian could really hurt her.”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “More than usual, you mean?”

Kara fixes her with the most loaded, weighty stare that she can muster up. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Good thing she won’t be alone, then,” her sister replies, quick and direct. “What do you think I’m here loitering around for?”

“You’re going in with her? She asked you to do that?” Kara blurts out, and it’s hard to disguise her disbelief. It’s in Lena’s nature to coil up at the first sign of any trouble, and after what happened – and the fact that her mother is at the root of it – it’s difficult to believe that Lena would willingly drag another person into this mess, least of all Kara’s own sister.

She takes a look at the grim determination on Alex’s face, the strong set to her shoulders that is unwavering despite all of her complaints. Kara knows that, shared blood or not, Alex is eerily similar to her when it comes to helping out a friend in need. Maybe this is as close as Lena is willing to get to the real thing – or, knowing Alex, maybe Lena wasn’t given much of a choice. There’s no use in standing in the way of the Danvers-patented brand of loyalty and dedication, and Lena knows better than to try and resist by now.

With another jagged pang of her heart, it occurs to Kara that that exact same loyalty and dedication is supposed to belong to her as well. How badly had it hurt Lena when Kara had so suddenly ripped it away, good intentions or not?

“Asked me to? Not necessarily. But I’ll be there all the same,” Alex answers, confirming Kara’s suspicions. As much as it pains Kara that Lena doesn’t want her to be there – as frustrating as it is knowing that, based on previous choices, she doesn’t have much say in the matter at all – she’s glad that it will be Alex in there with her. More than anyone, Kara knows now that Alex will look after Lena in all of the ways that she can’t. “It would sure be helpful to know what I’m walking into, however.”

Feeling more than a little purposeless and having lost all of her steam from earlier, Kara drags her feet. If Lena’s choosing to block her out of this entirely, then maybe she should be the one that clues Alex in on the matter as well. Kara would really rather not stand right in the gaping maw of the beast if she doesn’t have to – especially when Lena could be here at any time to gleefully assist her sister in tearing her to shreds, both of them droning on about self-isolation and strength in numbers and working together and all of the things that Kara believes in – used to, at least, before Lex and Lillian slipped their way so far under her skin that it’s difficult to tell up from down these days.

“Lena wants the full story, and she’s convinced that the only person she’s going to get it from is her mother,” Kara says simply. Unable to stop herself from making one last bid for being there, she clears her throat. “Look, Alex, I don’t know what Lena said, but I really need to be in there with her if she’s going to confront Lillian. With what happened, I just want-”

“I get it, Kara. I’m sure you want a lot of things,” Alex interrupts, and Kara’s heart sinks. Her sister’s tone is not one that invites all that much grace or leeway, and if she had to guess, Alex is trying to find the best words to use to kick her out of this hallway right now. “But despite how you may feel about this, you don’t need to be in there with Lena. I will be right by her side, and-”

“But I-”

“But nothing!” Alex retorts. “This is what Lena wants, okay? Now you need to get out of here before she sees you and we both get chewed out.”

Kara grits her teeth, spinning in the opposite direction but then thinking better of it, rounding back on her sister in a mangled imitation of a pirouette. “Where- I can’t just leave! What if something happens and I need to get in there and-”

“If your cape is getting into such a twist about it, then just… go to one of the weight rooms! Go punch something into a pulp, and if we really need you – though I promise you, nothing is going to happen on my watch that I won’t handle myself – you can burst through the wall of Lillian’s cell like a wrecking ball and take out your pent-up feelings on her.” Alex waves a hand in front of her face, grimacing, like the very mention of all of Kara’s feelings and frustrations is making her nauseous. “What I will not allow you to do is lurk here in this hallway and moan and groan until it’s over. We have an inspector coming from the Department of Health to do an assessment this morning, and I don’t want them to think the building is haunted.”

“Jeez, it’s not that bad,” Kara gripes, feeling very much like Charlie Brown trying and failing to kick the football that her sister has so smugly ripped away. “No need to be over-dramatic.” Alex just raises an eyebrow, daring her to go further down this road of grumbling, and Kara realizes that anything further out of her mouth will just prove her sister's point. Her mouth thins. “You need to protect her in there,” she can’t resist demanding. “You know Lillian.”

“I’m sure it’ll all be very Silence of the Lambs,” Alex replies with a roll of her eyes, but her shoulders stay up and firm. There’s sincerity to her, buried deep beneath her deprecation and sarcasm and her barking commands at Kara to leave. “I can picture it now. Lillian is just snotty enough to pull off a good Lecter impersonation, too – but that’ll be it. Lena will do her typical verbal sparring with her and say whatever it is she so badly needs to say, and I’ll make sure it ends at that. No fava beans – and definitely no cannibalism.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s how that movie started, too,” Kara points out, shoulders slumping. “Then the villain escapes and leaves Jodie Foster severely emotionally scarred.”

Her sister just raises an eyebrow. “Good thing this isn’t a film set then.” Kara lets out a heavy sigh, knowing that she’s lost this argument – that she’d lost it since the moment she first came storming down the hallway. It’s hard to fight for your side of the story when that side is the one very clearly in the wrong. “Kara,” her sister says with a mystifying combination of softness and harsh candor that’s always managed to cut right through to Kara’s heart. “I don’t know what you said, but it’s clear that you don’t have any ground to stand on when it comes to this. Stay here at the DEO, and stay ready to help if that’ll really make you feel better, but respect Lena’s wishes. A little space once and a while is good, right?”

If only Alex knew how volatile of a path she was walking by making such an innocent, well-intentioned comment. Kara closes her eyes against a sudden wave of fresh regret and turns on her heels at last, trudging slowly back to where she’d come running down just a few minutes before.

“Keep her safe, okay?” she calls out, and her sister seems to recognize that it’s not much of a request at all, but an expectation. Alex nods, returning to her post leaning against the wall, and Kara makes a beeline for the nearest training room that she can find.

Blindly ducking into the room, Kara leans against the door and rubs her hands down her face with a groan. Okay, maybe Alex was right about her sounding a little bit ghoulish, but Kara really can’t help it. There are far too many disparate and clashing emotions happening inside of her right now to handle things with a straight face, and what she needs right now is a nice, quiet, abandoned room to throw around some punching bags and maybe even cry a little and…

Someone clears their throat, and Kara looks up to find that this is not the room for that scenario.

J’onn and Nia are here in the corner, frozen in the middle of what looks to be a pretty intensive hand-to-hand sparring session. Nia is winded and sweaty and a little dazed, leaning against one of the few non-Kryptonian weighted bags in the room, and J’onn – well, J’onn looks about as cool and collected as he always does, but his usual serene sternness on his face has been replaced by a faint look of surprise and, more critically for Kara, concern.

So, clearly, her little breakdown by the door did not go unnoticed, and any hopes of slipping out without any further incident are firmly squashed.

Kara attempts a clean break for it anyway. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t realize you two were already training in here,” she says with a sheepish grin, making sure any trace of her previous torment has been wiped away completely. “I was looking for an open bag, but I won’t interrupt your session.”

It still manages to surprise her how good she is at covering her emotions up under such short notice; Nia seems actually convinced, as if she hadn’t just seen Kara act like she was about to put her fist through the wall. Kara thinks back on what Lena had remarked on in the bathroom; your consuming sense of self-control, she’d called it, full of awe and care. Kara wonders if Lena resents that same self-control now that the ugly side of it has shown its face, sending Kara down a tunnel of self-inflicted selflessness and duty and detachment from all of the people she knows will get hurt if she lets them stand beside her. Consuming is exactly the right word for it, and Kara is, as always, unflinching in it.

J’onn has known her far too long, however, and he isn’t as convinced as Kara herself is of her acting skills. “There are plenty of open bags here,” he comments, the dozen unoccupied training areas like a cloud of arrows piercing what she had hoped would be a pretty solid excuse. “Besides, you won’t be interrupting anything” he adds, and Kara knows that there will be no leaving this room now just by the gravel in his voice, “Your form has come a long way since you first started as Supergirl. It would do Nia some real good seeing the techniques performed by a different person.”

“Apparently, I’m too over-reliant on my powers,” Nia admits with the kind of humbleness that Kara knows she never once had when she was Nia’s age. J’onn is a good teacher – an excellent one, in fact – but he could be the water to Kara’s arrogant and self-assured oil most days, and they butted heads more regularly than DEO shift changes back on that desert base. Nia seems to be a much more natural trainee, accepting J’onn’s stoic instruction with flexibility and enthusiasm. “I can throw a punch that’s really helped me out in some bar fights, but, uh… that’s about it. I guess my dream lasso has always been much more fun to practice with.”

Kara holds up a hand, her confusion permitting her to indulge in this for just a moment. “Hold on… when have you been in a bar fight?”

“She’s just like you were,” J’onn says with a rare nostalgic smile. It makes Kara feel more melancholyvthan it has any right to, this fond sort of remembrance of the past from someone who’s been with her through so much. Does J’onn see as much of Kara in Nia as Kara does herself? With everything that’s happened and is still yet to come, is that a comforting thought anymore? “I’ve told her that even Supergirl had to learn how to fight without her strength. Come on in and show her a few moves.”

Sensing the lack of choice presented in his suggestions and cowed by Nia’s genuine sense of bemused novice, Kara caves. “Alright,” she mumbles, shrugging her shoulders and wandering over to a bag that’s still a healthy distance away from her two friends. Nia can watch her form from behind, for all Kara cares; she’d still much prefer to have enough privacy that she doesn’t have to bother schooling her facial expressions the entire time she’s in here.

As she lines herself up and begins going through the comfortable, fluid motions, Kara lets herself slip into the blissful routine of hitting something. Shifting her weight back and forth as she sizes up the bag, Kara throws out some light jabs to start, testing the feel of the leather beneath her knuckles and the heavy give to the weight. This bag, however finely made and durable as it is, will be no match against a show of true strength, so Kara resolves to keep this bout quick and inconsequential.

If she can go through the motions now, put on just enough of a show for Nia and land a few hard blows to placate J’onn, then maybe there’s still time to go find Lena before she goes to see Lillian. Kara uppercuts, feints and swings back around with her left; letting her hearing drift beyond the boundaries of this room and into the building beyond, she can hear the click of Lena’s heels, her methodical, controlled breathing, her racing heart – she’s right there, here now, and Kara needs to go see her and tell her that…

Her next swing is jerky and far too powerful, and before Kara knows it, she’s standing red-faced and awkward as a mountain of tiny, dense Nth metal beads cascade on the floor and roll every which way.

Nia lets out a nervous half-chuckle as the beads start to pile on top of Kara’s boots. “So much for being Supergirl-proof,” she says, trailing off as the stilted silence of the room catches up with her. Kara flexes her knuckles and lets out a deep breath through her nose, slowly removing her hand from where she’s just cleanly punched through the bag. She flashes back to the very incriminating hold in her kitchen wall and cringes, praying that this damage will not be quite as dramatic.

As soon as she takes a step back, the bag falls to the floor with a booming crash. Well, shit. So much for flying under the radar – and so much for a good outlet for her emotions.

Seeming to understand exactly how delicate of a situation this has become, J’onn slowly shifts his feet, freeing them from the few traitorous beads that had bounced his way. “Nothing can ever really withstand the might of a Kryptonian,” he says, reaffirming Nia’s awkward attempt to disarm the room. “But if you noticed, Kara’s follow-through on that punch was nothing short of textbook.” His gaze focuses back on Kara, inquisitive and careful. “Let’s clean this up before your sister sees,” he instructs simply, and with her eyes still trained on the floor, Kara nods and gets to work.

She could use her superspeed and finish the task in moments, but Kara badly needs this time to collect herself before she can face J’onn and Nia, who she knows are both still sending loaded glances her way. As she stoops down and attempts to keep the beads piled together, she can’t help but scoff. Superpowers or not, this is a ridiculously infuriating task, and she knows that her window to intercept Lena is fully gone now.

Deciding it’s much better for the state of her mental health to not try and listen in on whatever Lillian and Lena are saying, Kara instead takes out all of her frustration on these tiny, misbehaving beads. Another platoon of them rolls stubbornly away, and Kara wonders if maybe it would be worth paying the bill to have the floor redone if she were to just use her laser vision to melt them all to smithereens.

Someone kneels down next to her and Kara turns to find Nia holding up a massive garbage bag with a kind smile fixed on her face. “Wax on, wax off, eh?” she jokes, and Kara musters up a watery smile in return. The image of Nia, so excitedly believing that this flimsy garbage bag will be enough to tame this mountain is enough for Kara to find a smidge of humor in the situation.

J’onn’s voice rings out behind her, and Kara can hear him start to wander around the sparring area with a broom, idly collecting the straggling debris. “We’re going to be here for some time,” he says. “It would be better for all of us if you were to speak out about what’s on your mind.”

Nia elbows her bonily in the ribs with what Kara is pretty sure is meant to be a supportive nudge, and she sighs. Knowing what Lillian said, she really shouldn’t be pulling anyone in her circle even closer to her right now, but the temptation to talk to a pair of friends who know exactly what it means to carry the burden of being a hero is too appealing to resist. Kara decides there really isn’t much harm in sharing some vague details if it means she gets even a moment of respite.

Besides – while J’onn may be choosing tact and passivity now, Kara nows her old friend better than most. J’onn will let his paternal side come out sooner rather than later if she continues to clam up, and seeing as her sister is already mad at her, Kara would much prefer to not have her pseudo-father upset as well.

“I guess I’ve never been all that great at subtlety,” Kara admits, scooping the beads into the bag as Nia holds it open. “I don’t suppose it was the demolition of training equipment that gave it away?”

“Actually, I think it was more because you looked like you were about to cry when you first came in,” Nia supplies helpfully, not quite picking up on Kara’s sarcasm. Huh – maybe she is a bit more subtle than she thought.

“You always head to the training room when you need to get something off your chest,” J’onn answers, giving the pile of beads a wide berth and stepping up to examine the twisted and mangled hook that had at one point been holding the punching bag up. “Your sister has always told me that it’s better than when you used to skip rocks on the coastline near Midvale. She’s always worried about you being responsible for killing entire schools of fish.”

Kara isn’t in quite a good enough mood to appreciate J’onn’s wry attempt at a joke, but she can recognize the rarity of it. “Alex has always been way too paranoid about that,” she mutters. It’s one thing to want to talk to J’onn and Nia about this, but taking the leap is quite another. Kara stays on-task, content to not press the subject. “And seeing as she hates seafood anyway, you’d think she’d prefer that compared to the monthly repair bills.”

Nia laughs and J’onn just shrugs. Regarding Kara’s stiff motions with a tilted head, he takes the lead amidst Kara’s forced neutrality. “This is about last night’s raid, isn’t it?” he asks, all business as usual.

J’onn was there with Clark when they first took Lillian away. Kara knows that he saw the devastation and the anger on her face – knows that there’s no point in hiding from that fact when she’s confident that Lillian only continued to spit out threats and spread her particular brand of venomous fear. She nods. “What matters is that Lillian’s been put away for good,” she insists, but her voice wavers.

Nia’s eyebrows pinch together as she tries to read Kara’s mind, their hands brushing as they both dump the beads into the bloated and structurally-compromised garbage bag. “That is good,” she offers carefully, and while Nia might still be new to the game when it comes to being a superhero, she’s a seasoned veteran when it comes to navigating situations like this. In other words, Nia is a good friend… and one that Kara really needs right now. “Really good, actually,” she continues to comfort. “I know CADMUS has their whole thing about cutting off one head, two more taking its place but… this was a super important head to chop off. Pardon the pun.”

“It was,” Kara allows, knowing that, no matter the pitfalls that will come with Lillian’s arrest, it doesn’t change the fact that Nia is exactly right. There are some things that not even CADMUS will be able to recover from, and Kara plans on cauterizing the bloody stumps with glee. If Lillian and Lex plan to drag her down, they’ll be coming with her; Kara’s going to make sure of that.

“Don’t forget how notoriously difficult it is to pin the Luthors down,” J’onn adds. With a sweep of his hands, the last of the beads are deposited into the bag, and just like that, Kara’s convenient and easy distraction is taken away from her. They all stare a little uneasily at the garbage bag that’s bulging and straining on the ground, and with a jerk of his head, J’onn and Nia round around back to the bag that Nia had been hammering away at. Reluctantly, Kara trails behind. “Capturing Lillian wasn’t an easy task in the previous reality where she was already a known criminal. The work you did alone over these past few months should not be shrugged at.”

Against all of her better judgment, Kara can’t stop herself from shrugging, uncomfortable with getting the credit for something that she knows took a toll on everyone. “It took more than just me,” she says, wandering over to the bag and leaning against it. Nia gives it an experimental kick, and the bag doesn’t move a single inch. “It’s never just one person, J’onn. You know that.”

“Perhaps. But it does tend to be one person who shoulders the burden.” J’onn sends her a look that’s expectant and about as transparent as if Kara had used her X-ray vision, and she looks away to avoid its potency.

Unable to deny the insinuation, Kara lets the room fall back into silence. Mimicking her, Nia leans against the opposite side of the bag and contorts her body so she’s still able to meet Kara’s eyes when she pipes up. “I guess… as a superhero and as a reporter? You’ve gone above and beyond. I mean, I was at Catco right alongside you, and while you were acting sorta dodgy, I never in a million years would have guessed that you were working to pull off something so massive… What I’m trying to say is that you have nothing to feel bad about because you did all that you could. Right?”

“That’s the problem, Nia,” Kara says, sighing and giving in. While Nia and J’onn make for an extremely strange pair to have a heart-to-heart with, Kara can’t say that she minds the oddity of it. They balance each other out in a sweet and rather disarming way, and now that she’s started Kara finds that she doesn’t want to stop. “I think this time, I might have actually done too much. I’m hurting people that I never intended to.”

“Nonsense. You did what only you could do. While I understand why that has upset the others, it has proven to be the right choice,” J’onn insists, and the conviction in his voice catches Kara off guard. Only a few hours ago when she’d been going toe-to-toe with Clark, Kara hadn’t really gotten the sense that J’onn approved of her actions. She turns to him, eyebrows raised.

“I thought you were one of those people,” she says honestly, and J’onn nods.

“At first, I was. This time around I believe that the ends justify the means,” he answers in his steady, deep timbre. There’s no wavering to be found in his voice, and it emboldens Kara further. “All of us made it out of there alive–” Kara can’t hide the wince that hijacks her face, and J’onn’s eyes flash– “Alive, Kara. That’s what matters. We’ve all been through much worse, and for last night to have gone as smoothly as it did, that much we should be grateful for.”

Nia chooses a more direct route, eyes wide and sympathetic. “And Lena is – we are talking about Lena, right?” Frankly, Kara thinks she should be a bit ashamed by how obvious it all must be to those around her. She nods, her grimace fading just slightly, and Nia bounces back in. “Lena is totally fine! That’s what everyone says and so really, there’s nothing to worry about. Plus, Lena is like, super badass too. I know I wouldn’t mess with her, especially not while she’s teamed up with you.”

“And what if that… partnership is the reason she got hurt in the first place?” Kara asks, the core of the issue exposed at last. “I mean, you two know as well as me that there are certain prices to pay if you want to be a hero. Danger and- and death follow us everywhere we go-”

“I don’t know, I’ve never really subscribed to that line of thinking,” Nia interrupts, casual and bold and utterly shocking for someone who is usually so eager to shadow and listen and learn. It’s enough to knock Kara off of her course completely, and she chokes on whatever words were supposed to come out next.

“What?” she asks, strangled and confused. “Nia, we’re-”

“I just think that worrying about that stuff is a recipe for disaster,” Nia continues with a shrug. Her optimism is a glaring light, exposing Kara’s rare pessimistic slump for the insecurities that it’s really made up of, and Kara squints at the other woman. “You’re the one that taught me that we can’t save everyone. We can’t do everything, and we definitely can’t blame ourselves for every little thing that goes wrong. Once you do that, it’s a pit that you keep digging yourself further into and at that point you’ll never escape or- or feel like you deserve any of the good that comes from being a hero.”

“But I- look, sometimes we- I am to blame,” Kara argues back, struggling to put to words the immense guilt she’s always felt in her bones, as natural to her as breathing. “And yeah, there are things that not even I can control, but what about the things that I can? If I could… make decisions that keep the people I care about out of harm’s way, even at the expense of my own- what if, if I let those people-”

“It’s okay, Kara. Just use her name. It’s easier that way,” Nia interjects again, slicing through Kara’s melodramatic and already disjointed line of reasoning like a knife through butter. Her eyes shine with a particularly strong dosage of her trademark sass, and it’s so surprising that even J’onn lets a snort escape from his impassive, reflective state.

Kara’s jaw drops. “For Rao’s sake… Fine! If I let Lena continue to be in lockstep with me, even if I have been warned that by doing so, she will get hurt – what kind of hero would I be? Is it so crazy to want her – to ask her – to keep her distance from me for the sake of her own safety?”

“Did you ask her to do this?” J’onn asks, and Kara falters. He was there. He saw the look in Lillian’s eyes, and he’s experienced for himself exactly the kind of pain that CADMUS is capable of inflicting on humans and superpowered beings alike. Out of all of the people that Kara feels like she can be direct with, J’onn is at the top of the list.

“Her mother explicitly threatened her life if Lena continued to play a part in this,” Kara reveals, voice low and dark. “So, yes. I told Lena that she would be much better off staying away from me until all of this was done with, one way or another.”

J’onn’s eyes narrow at the grave intimation of Kara’s last few words, but before he can get a word in, Nia is stealing the scene once more. “I’m not so sure about it being crazy, but it is pretty silly,” she remarks, and Kara and J’onn both pivot back to her. All eyes on her, Nia shifts against the bag, darting back and forth between J’onn’s expression of interest and Kara’s decidedly more flabbergasted one. “What I said before about not wanting to mess with Lena? I think that applies to you too.”

Kara lifts up her chin, trying valiantly not to get completely outmaneuvered by Nia’s upbeat, cutting logic. “Trust me, I’m not a fan of it either, but it had to be done. What’s so silly about that?”

“Because you and Lena are- wait, so is that why Lena is here to see Lillian?”

“How do you know that?” Kara demands, feeling more lost by the second.

For the first time, Nia hesitates, sending a sidelong glance to J’onn. “Oh, you know, gossip at the DEO travels fast,” she mutters, and while Kara may not be the best at making up excuses herself, Nia might just be worse. “Especially when it’s around you and Lena, because let me tell you, the people here are invested-”

“Your sister sent out a text message,” J’onn cuts in, mercifully rescuing Nia from where she’d been drowning and focusing Kara’s embarrassed ire on him. “There’s a group chat.”

“A group chat?”

J’onn nods sagely, but the amused gleam in his eye betrays his normally self-serious manner. “For planning purposes. It’s always best to be prepared and in the know about what’s going on.”

“And why aren’t Lena or I part of it?” Kara asks, though judging by the amount of theatrical and overblown arguments that the two of them have had, she thinks she has a pretty good idea of what the answer is. She supposes it’s unfair for the rest of their friends to have not shared their opinions amongst each other – especially last year when Kara was bordering on constant hysterics and Lena was musing about world domination.

J’onn – wonderful, tactful, and more sensitive than anyone gives him credit for – does not mince his words. He seems to understand that Kara doesn’t want gentleness at this moment. “Sometimes, we do like to hang out without the two of you, you know. ”

“Let’s be honest, Kara,” Nia says, droll and supporting J’onn’s honesty. “You two spend so much time together that the rest of us get bored. You think that we all sit around and twirl our thumbs while the two of you have your movie nights and your lunch dates and your evening walks in the park and your-?”

“Alright, I get it,” Kara interrupts, a flush on her cheeks and a pit in her stomach as she leans against the bag heavier, realizing that all of the things that Nia just mentioned – everything that makes her relationship with Lena so strong and so dear to them both – Kara has to figure out how to rip away from Lena if she doesn’t want Lillian making good on her promises. The chains above her start to groan in warning, and Kara, not wanting to break another expensive piece of equipment, sidesteps the bag. “So me coming in here was less of a surprise than you originally made it out to be, I take it?”

“I have no doubt that your sister has told you this before, but it’s never enjoyable to stumble upon Supergirl when she’s in a bad mood.” J’onn places a hand on her shoulder, and while he remains lighthearted, Kara knows that he’s not done breezing over what Kara had said earlier. “It seemed to Alex like you needed a friend, and Nia and I wanted to be that for you. Lucky for us, you chose this training room to tear apart.”

Kara ducks her head. “This one is closest to-”

“To the containment facility, yes.” J’onn smiles and removes his hand. “You’re predictable, you know.”

That’s one thing that Kara knows she can’t deny. Her blush fading, she manages a smile back. “Yeah, so I’ve been told. I know.”

J’onn accepts the smile, however weak, with crinkled eyes. “What I believe Nia is trying to say is that, if you are so predictable when it comes to your friendship with Lena, don’t you think it is… silly to not take a step back and reflect on your actions?”

“I’m not sure I’m following,” Kara answers, exhaustion creeping back into her voice as J’onn guides them all steadily back on track. How foolish of her to hope that this short derailment would have been enough to staunch the flow of the conversation entirely.

“Lillian Luthor is well known for her manipulative and controlling nature,” J’onn says. “In fact, other than perhaps her immense wealth and powerful social connections, her ability to play the role of the puppeteer is perhaps her deadliest weapon. Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, she could be trying to exercise this over you?”

“Kara, she’s trying to gaslight you into screwing up what you have with Lena,” Nia says, throwing more kindling onto the pyre and taking the baton from J’onn with less eloquence but endless amounts of gusto. “This is like, classic movie supervillain behavior.”

“Gaslighting? Come on. And this isn’t a movie, Nia,” Kara tries, but it lacks any real bite and mostly comes out tasting stale and sour on her tongue. She feels tired and shriveled up, unable to bear the sheer fervor and brilliancy of Nia’s passion about this matter – a matter that Kara had, until very recently, thought was private and impressively self-contained.

“You’ve made your move, and it was an effective one,” J’onn says. “You robbed them of their financial stability, arrested one of their leaders… with you exposing CADMUS for what it really is and branding Lex and Lillian as criminals, all they have left over you is essentially psychological warfare-”

“Don’t forget a whole boatload of weapons,” Kara adds. “An entire fleet’s worth, actually.”

J’onn inclines his head, acknowledging her point, but that’s as much ground as he’s willing to give her. “Yes, but that threat to your physical safety has been looming over all of us for quite some time now. You’ve never deviated from what you believe in or changed your behavior so dramatically because of it. It’s not the risk to your own life that’s ever scared you. Don’t you think the Luthors know that?”

“Yes, but – that’s not fair,” Kara objects, suddenly being backed into a corner by what she’s realizing now is an absolutely deadly duo of her friends, and she’d much rather be complaining about their secret group chat again rather than delving into this. “I- I’m accustomed to that danger. It’s part of the job that I – that all of us – accept when we take on this responsibility. For people to be threatened who never asked for any of this to happen to them in the first place… that’s a very different story.”

“I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure that Lena is used to getting death threats by now,” Nia says. “She’s told me before that she suspects that’s how her family shows their affection. She’s been there and done that, Kara, and-”

“But you can recognize why that’s not okay, can’t you?” Kara barges in, starting to get a little trigger-happy. Turning away, she starts to chart out a course around the swaying bags all around them, pacing around them in tight figure eights. “Just because Lena is in danger all the time doesn’t mean that she should be. If I can minimize that at all, if I can shift the focus back towards me, or keep her out of harm’s way… Rao, she’s had to endure this treatment by her family her entire life. I’m not going to let them hurt her now when we’re so close to putting them away.”

“Lex and Lillian are aware of that driving motivation, too.” J’onn clears his throat, his face as smooth as stone and just as unbreakable. Kara marvels at the difference between him and Alex, how effective they both are at telling her the hard truth; where Alex is all fire and passion and unrelenting intensity, J’onn is tough and gentle and steady. “They know how far you’re willing to go – how much you’d be happy to sacrifice – if it means keeping Lena or any of us safe. For two people who have been trying so hard and for so long to drive a wedge between you and her, isn’t it possible that this is their newest attempt at that?

“Kara, you and Lena have never been this inseparable,” Nia adds, starting to subtly trail Kara as she paces. With someone on her tail, it’s difficult for Kara to feel at ease about any of what’s happening, even as J’onn – and Kara can begrudgingly admit, Nia too – are starting to make an eerie amount of sense. “I know I haven’t known you two as long as J’onn has, but that much is plain to see. Both as Supergirl and as Kara Danvers, you’ve been a united front with Lena, and look at all of the good that’s come of it.”

J’onn crosses his arms, seemingly understanding what Nia’s trying to hint at. “More than that, with you being so close with Lena not just emotionally but also physically –” Kara stutters and misses a step in her harried loops, course-correcting just in time to avoid crashing into one of the treadmills in the corner of the room – “The ability for CADMUS to get to either of you while you’re alone and isolated has become a veritable impossibility.”

“Yeah, we’ve been… close.” Kara drags the scoff that almost just came punching its way out of her throat back down into her chest. If only J’onn knew exactly how intimate they’ve really become. Kara is pretty sure that sharing a bed with the other woman on such a consistent basis has permanently altered the chemistry of her brain. “What’s your point?” she asks straight up, trusting J’onn and Nia to be able to be honest without it verging on anything too bruising.

“If I were Lex right now,” J’onn starts, scratching his chin and idly following Kara with his eyes as she scoops a jump rope hanging on a rack and begins to start an anxious round of boxer-set jumps. “And I’ve just been humiliated, robbed of my resources, and watched as my own mother was arrested, I’d be looking for any chance I could to win some quick and easy battles. Nothing too risky, nothing too time or resource-consuming… but something that I know will hurt. Lex is a scorpion who stings when he knows he is trapped, Kara. Remember the last time you took him down?”

Yes, Kara does, and at this point, she would very much like everyone to stop bringing it up every 30 seconds around her and Lena. She inhales quickly. “When he told Lena the truth about my identity, he’d just been shot. He was dying. He knew he’d lost, and that was her very last card he could play. This is different.”

“Maybe so, but you must realize by now that Lex was going to tell Lena one way or another, don't you?” J’onn asks, and with a sinking heart, Kara knows he’s right. Try as she might to convince herself that if she’d only had a little bit more time to tell Lena the truth of her own accord, Kara understands that Lex would have beaten her to it no matter what world they were in. “He had all of the evidence gathered up and ready to go. All he really did was choose the moment when he knew it would wound his sister the most deeply, and he got to twist the knife as he died.”

Nia, who’s heard the story before but who’s never been able to stomach the chilling nature of it, shudders. “Good lord, that family is so messed up. If they weren’t so evil, they would have made for some incredible reality TV.”

Kara gives her a dirty look out of habit, though she knows that Nia had no intentions of including Lena in that sentiment. “They’re not all bad apples. And besides, Lena can’t stand reality TV.”

Nia sighs and lifts a hand to her forehead, ever the drama queen. “I know. One of her few flaws.”

“Kara,” J’onn says, calmly bringing them both back on track. “Lex and Lillian have spent most of the past few years trying their very best to bring harm to Lena, one way or another. But you’ve managed to thwart every attempt on her life so far because of your proximity to her and your immense care for her wellbeing. You’d be playing right into Lex’s hands by forcing yourself and Lena to keep your distance from one another. It’s much easier for a hidden poison or a lone gunman to come and finish the job when Lena Luthor doesn’t have Supergirl as her guard dog, is it not?”

“Guard dog- I mean! It’s not like I told her to cut off contact completely with me,” Kara argues back, growing exasperated. Sick of the jump rope, she dumps it to the side and grabs a medicine ball from the floor; Nia’s eyes widen slightly as Kara palms it with ease and flicks the thing back and forth between her fingers as if it were a basketball and not a 30-pound weight.

“What did you ask of her?” J’onn asks, prodding carefully and completely unbothered by Kara’s improper use of the gym equipment. He’s been with her during one of these moods before, after all, and this room is actually getting off pretty easy by all accounts.

“Well, I-” Kara hesitates. As a matter of fact, while she’d tried to pitch it to Lena in simpler, less-absolute terms than that, she knows that Lena had taken it as something much more serious. For Lena, who’s been abandoned plenty of times before and who Kara’s made a concerted effort to never abandon again, hearing Kara’s flat tone and robotic request had probably been nothing short of extreme. “I asked for some amount of distance until this whole mess got sorted out. For things to return to normal, you know?”

Nia snorts. “What exactly is the definition of normal for people like Supergirl and Lena Luthor?” she asks, and as Kara falters, J’onn leans in and takes the lead.

“I’ve never seen you happier than you have been over these past few months,” he states simply, and it’s like a sharp blow to the head to hear someone else acknowledge it out loud. “Worried, yes, maybe slightly tortured every once in a while, and taking on much more than you should ever be expected to handle… but really, truly happy. I’m not a foolish man, Kara. I know that there’s one person who’s the reason for that, and you make her just as happy.”

“Adorably, obviously, sometimes nauseatingly happy,” Nia adds, just to add salt in the wound for Kara’s worsening, guilt-ridden mood. “The only problem is that us and our other friends- well, we aren’t the only ones who’ve picked up on that fact.”

“Why do you think I’m trying to keep her at arm’s length?” Kara hisses – or, at least she tries to. Instead, it sounds like air wheezing its way out of an old balloon, and it holds absolutely no intimidation. Clearing her throat, she begins bouncing the medicine ball against the floor, the noise reverberating through the space. Maybe it’s loud enough for Lena and Alex to hear it wherever they are now. “Lillian told me as much when I first caught her. Our relationship, however- Rao, however amazing it is, can become a liability for Lena and something that can cause her to get hurt.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of reverse psychology?” Nia asks, not backing down. She bends down to pick up her own medicine ball, arms straining. When she slams her into the ground, Kara doesn’t think it has the same thunderous effect that Nia had been hoping it would.

“Here we go,” Kara mumbles, rolling her eyes, but Nia will not be dissuaded.

“Lillian told you that because she wants you to stay away from Lena, because when you two are apart, you’re sad, and grumpy, and miserable, and let’s be honest, way easier to kidnap or murder or attack because you’d probably be so busy pouting and moping around that you wouldn’t notice Kryptonite even if you tripped over it in the street, and Lena would probably just drink wine and fall asleep on her couch listening to sad classical music and boom! Some assassin sneaks in and while you’re across the city, I don’t know, tearing apart mountains with your bare hands because you’re so pissy about everything, Lena disappears off the face of the earth!”

Trying to wrap her head around that run-on sentence, Kara’s mouth hangs open. “What?!”

“What I believe Nia is trying to say is that the Luthors have always enjoyed great success by attacking Lena on two fronts,” J’onn interjects before Nia can go off on another impassioned rant. “When they don’t manage to hurt her physically, they can usually cut just as deep by turning her emotions and her relationships against her. Take your secret identity for instance, or them taking LCorp out from under her nose. Knowing that Lena is alone and cut off from her loved ones brings Lex as much satisfaction as it would going after her himself, especially when you’re the one acting as the instigating force.”

While J’onn is only reiterating Nia’s points in a more succinct and direct way, Kara doesn’t like hearing it any more than she had when the other woman had been rambling. Mostly because they’re both right.

Rao… especially because they’re both right. If Kara had regretted what she’d said before, she could cry a river about it now.

“Really what you’re telling me is that I can’t win,” she says after a beat, letting the medicine ball drop dull and heavy from her hands and sinking to the floor right next to it. “If I push Lena away, Lex and Lillian get what they want – and if I keep her close, they get the chance to use that as a weakness and hurt her right in front of me.”

“When have you ever let anything bad happen to Lena?” Nia asks, and it’s not the other girl’s fault – she doesn’t know the full story of what happened last night, doesn’t know that Lena was in fact injured on Kara’s watch – but what was meant as an encouraging comment only makes Kara’s stomach drop.

“More times than I’d like to admit,” she says. Her expression falls and she stares at the floor. “Lately, it’s felt like a losing game.”

“You’ve been struggling with this question ever since you first became Supergirl.” J’onn gives her a sad smile and sits down as well, Nia following suit. “We all have. Can we ever really have it all?”

“I don’t know. Can we?” Kara asks, and it’s as small and vulnerable as she’s felt in ages.

J’onn takes in a long, measured breath before answering. “I didn’t think so, once upon a time,” he says. “After what happened to my family on Mars and all of the tragedies that we’ve been through on this planet, it seemed to me that to live the life of a hero was to live a life that was to walk hand in hand with loss, pain, and sorrow.”

Nia bows her head, and while she is young and full of life and inexperience and boundless wonder every time she is reminded of the powers that she has and what she can do with them, she looks somber now. “What changed your mind?” she asks, and even as her heart begins to wring itself out, Kara hopes that J’onn has a good answer for them all.

“Kara did,” he answers simply, and at the mention of her name, Kara stiffens. Surprised, she looks up, locking eyes with J’onn for the first time since she’d first come storming into the room.

“I did?” she asks, caught off guard and unsure.

“Yes, you did. And Alex too. Then Winn, and James, and Lena, and my father. Brainy, and Kelly, and you too, Nia,” he adds, a twinkle in his eye. “To go through life expecting only tragedy is to see yourself and the life around you in only snapshots, black and white images. However uncertain you may be about how you fit into this world, Kara, you have never lived that way. You taught me that everything doesn’t need to be quite so absolute – that with the pain comes just as much love, light, and joy that’s worth taking a moment to bask in. For a young girl who’d lost more than even myself had to walk through life with that much unwavering hope, it was a humbling lesson to be taught. And from a girl who didn’t know how to throw a proper punch, no less,” J’onn adds, his moment of levity sparing Kara from the tears that were welling up in her eyes.

Instead of a sob, Kara chokes out a wet laugh instead. “And to think, you were so set on being the tough guy of the group for the longest time.”

“No one can ever have it all for their entire lives, Kara,” J’onn continues. “Superheroes or not, every living thing in this universe loses the things they hold dear. What’s important is to recognize when you do have it all, and to savor those moments and do what you can to not let them slip away.”

“Like I said,” Nia adds in, weak and just as watery as Kara feels. “That kind of fear is a trap. Don’t get stuck in it and keep yourself from going after what makes you so happy. Life is too short to hold yourself at an arm’s length from what you really, truly want.”

Kara studies them both, eyes red and her mouth pressed into a thin line. “And if, by going after what I want, I lose them because of it?” she asks, and it’s a dangerous question to voice out loud. Kara’s impressive walls of delusions are steadily crumbling now; she realizes that Nia and J’onn may have an inkling of the truth when it comes to Kara’s true feelings for Lena. But to say it out loud? To claim Lena as a very personal, very selfish, very desperate desire? It’s terrifying.

“Then, at the very least, you had it for a moment,” J’onn answers, and there it is, in the depths of his voice: Kara understands that he knows exactly what she’s hinting at. “All things come to an end. What’s the point of denying yourself a chance at real happiness?” His eyes darken, and when he looks over at her, Kara can practically smell the pity. J’onn’s known for much longer than perhaps even Kara has, and it seems to be making him terribly sad. “After a life of so much loneliness, what’s the point of denying Lena that same chance?”

Kara lets out a shuddering gasp and meets his gaze for just a moment more. “I- I don’t know,” she whispers, unable to look away from his soft, awful understanding. “All I know is that the thing that I’m most scared of is losing her- losing any of you.” She bites back a grimace, ashamed that, even with the opportunity laid out before her so kindly, Kara still can’t take the plunge. The urge to group Lena in with all the rest of her friends is a compulsive one, and one that makes increasingly less sense. “I’ve had my fair share of loss. I’d like to wipe my hands of it now.”

“Out of anyone in the universe, I’d say you deserve to most,” J’onn says quietly back. “And I wish the universe would be the kind of place where fairness is respected. But it isn’t, is it?”

“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s really not,” Kara jokes, pale and shaking and utterly unfunny. J’onn smiles at her anyway, moving close enough to wrap an arm around her heaving shoulders.

“No, you’re right,” he chuckles, and before Kara can return the smile Nia is crowding against her other side, placing her head against Kara’s collarbone. Kara blinks, trying to remember how angry she’d been when she’d first walked into the room – tries to reconcile that closed-off rage with the open uncertainty she’s faced with now. “But when has the universe ever catered to you, Kara Zor-El? Your very best quality has always been your resistance to those circumstances. Your hope was enough to make a believer out of someone like me. Won’t you please let it help yourself as well?”

“If anyone can have it all, it’s you, Kara,” Nia says, just as genuine and unwavering as J’onn. “You pull off the impossible on a daily basis, protecting everyone around you. Don’t push Lena away just because you’re afraid that the magic will wear off. You’re Supergirl. You’re always going to save the day.”

Kara swallows hard. She thinks of the odds she’s faced before, of all the battles she’s managed to get them all through. “I guess you’re right,” she says after a beat. So long as the reckoning falls onto me, Kara whispers to herself. Wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her suit, Kara laughs again. “I haven’t really been much of a Paragon of Hope lately, have I?” she asks, thinking back to the unfeeling, heavy gaze of the Monitor. The ambivalence of the universe personified right in front of her, and still Kara had been surprised to see his finger pointed squarely at her, branding her with such uncaring certainty. She sniffles, shaking her head. “So much for living by example. Maybe I’m not worthy of it if I’ve spent so much time being guided by my fears.”

“Faltering in your hope doesn’t make you any less deserving of it,” J’onn replies simply. “I’d say you’ve earned a dose of your own medicine after how hard this year has been on you. I’d suggest you go about it in a way that’ll foil Lex Luthor’s plans at the same time.”

With a sigh, Kara feels a bit of life return to her body. “What do I do now?”

“I’d start with apologizing to Lena,” Nia cuts in, and Kara really must have been a jerk during the majority of this conversation because Nia is readily deploying her defense before Kara can so much as open her mouth to agree with her. “I mean, while I’m sure you tried your best to be nice and noble about it, that kind of emotional whiplash can’t be all that healthy if it’s causing Lena to go off and confront her mother all willy-nilly like this.”

“I’m planning on it,” Kara says, burying her face in her hands. “Rao, if only you two could have told me all this before I said those things to her.”

“Be honest,” Nia replies. “Would it have made any difference?”

Kara makes a face, and J’onn starts to smile once more. “Seeing as I was operating off of zero sleep and was fresh off a very threatening, scary encounter with Lillian? Probably not,” she admits. “Not that I’ve slept at all since then either. Are you two just figments of my imagination, or is this real?”

J’onn hums. “Very real, I’m afraid. And as much as Nia and I care about you and respect how you process information and work through your feelings, we will absolutely be blaming you for breaking that punching bag.”

Kara barks out a laugh, and for the first time in a while, it’s a real one. “Fair enough. I’ll add it to my tab.”

“Wait, do you actually have a tab here?” Nia interjects, eyes wide, and Kara just shrugs. Clambering to her feet, she offers her hands to the two of them and lifts them up with ease. “I thought Alex was just being hyperbolic about that.”

“A few more incident reports and your sister might take away your key to the city,” J’onn comments slyly, and they’re all laughing now. Lillian and Lex and all the rest of Kara’s problems seem very far away, and she realizes that this is one of the moments that J’onn is talking about. The world doesn’t have to always feel like it’s ending – and however burdened by the future and all its what-ifs that she may be, Kara can’t allow that to ruin what she has in the present.

And if that happens to include remaining in Lena’s orbit, then Kara refuses to complain about it. She’s been thinking about it all wrong, she realizes now. Lena will always be in danger; it’s up to Kara to make sure that none of the consequences of that danger ever cause her harm.

Kara plans on having her cake and eating it too. If – when, someday, further down the road, that choice ends up killing her, then Kara can rest easy knowing that it won’t be Lena suffering – and that she’ll have left the other woman with something more than just a shell of a friendship.

“She’s going to be mad,” Kara says, mostly to herself. “But if she can bring herself to forgive me-”

Nia scoffs. “As if she could ever not forgive you, Kara.”

Though it’s something that Kara already knew, it’s nice to hear all the same and she straightens up because of it. Someone’s phone buzzes. J’onn fishes his out of his back pocket and his expression turns unreadable. “Looks like you might get that chance now,” he says, though something in his voice trails off at the end. Kara, wholly devoted to her newfound mission of winning Lena back, doesn’t pay it much mind. “Lena is heading out of the DEO and, according to your sister, they’re in a bit of a hurry.”

“They?” Kara asks, not sure why Alex is still tailing Lena around with Lillian firmly in the rearview mirror but decides that she doesn’t have enough time to question it. “Nevermind. I- I should go.”

Nia gives her two big thumbs up and a toothy grin. “You really should.”

“For lack of a kinder phrase, go get it over with,” J’onn says, pocketing his phone with a frown. “Now, before either one of you does anything else foolish.”

“Okay, okay,” Kara says, before speeding out the door. Halfway towards the main area of operations, Kara turns around and zips back into the training room, tackling J’onn and Nia into a fierce group hug. Pressing a quick kiss against J’onn’s cheek that Kara knows will produce the squinting, shining smile that she knows is J’onn’s most genuine, she heaves out a breath. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m lucky to have people like you to call my family.”

“Likewise,” J’onn murmurs back, squeezing her back just as hard.

“You’re very sweet,” Nia squeaks out, and Kara realizes that in the midst of her and J’onn’s familiar embrace, Nia is being slowly flattened between the two of them. “But shouldn’t you, like, go do what you need to do now? Save your sappiness for the holiday toasts, girl.”

“Right!” Backing up, Kara clears her throat, cheeks flushed an embarrassed shade of pink but not feeling all that sorry about her antics all the same. Lena isn’t the only one that Kara’s been isolated from, after all, and she’s not the only one that Kara knows she needs to remind of how much she cares for them. “Like ripping off a band-aid.”

This time when she zooms out of the room, she can hear a crash from behind her and J’onn and Nia laughing. Deciding to leave be whatever else she’s just broken for the time being, Kara keeps running towards the main lobby.

After using all of her speed and ability to navigate through the underground maze of the DEO, Kara is rewarded with nothing but the tail of Lena’s coat as she exits the building and Alex and Kelly scurrying after her, heads bowed together and Alex waving rather animatedly with her hands. As she skids to a stop a few feet away, Kara catches the very end of their conversation, and it’s clearly not an enjoyable one.

“I just don’t understand why this can’t wait until tomorrow.” Alex is throwing her hands in the air, and as Kara ventures forwards carefully, she sees that Kelly’s face holds a very delicate balance of concern and firmness. “One goddamn day! If not for her sanity, how about for my own?”

“You know Lena,” Kelly answers in a hushed, steadying tone. “And you know your sister. Do you really think that either of them will want want to take a moment to breathe about this-?”

“What about me?” Kara asks, catching Kelly’s eyes and it’s if she’s caught them in a lie from the way the other woman jumps. As if on cue, Alex and Kelly move to block the revolving doors where Lena had just disappeared through. Kara isn’t so blinded by her all-consuming mission to talk to Lena that she doesn’t recognize this for the obstacle that it is. Her eyes narrow. “Where’s Lena going?”

“What’s it to you?” Alex asks, clearly still abundantly cranky, just as Kelly fixes an immediate and firm smile on her face and says at the same time, “Kara, I didn’t see you there! Are you doing alright?”

As much as she appreciates and prefers Kelly’s kindness, Kara ignores her greeting almost entirely in lieu of focusing on her sister’s defensiveness; while it makes them all bristle, it reveals more about the situation than Kelly’s insistent calm ever will, and it’s the seam that Kara attacks without delay.

“I need to talk to her,” she announces simply, not really feeling the need to leave any of her intentions up for debate anymore. She needs to find Lena, apologize to her, and ideally give her a giant hug sooner rather than later – and if her sister has any plans of delaying that process, Kara won’t put up with it for much longer. “Right now.” Alex doesn’t move, and Kara pauses in her attempt to find Lena’s towncar sliding past all of the DEO’s sleek, black, nondescript government vehicles to give her sister a rather unimpressed side-eye. “It’s really pressing, in fact. I’m trying to apologize to her if that helps sway your opinion,” Kara adds, glancing between the two women to gauge their reaction.

She gets absolutely nothing from either of them, save for a twitch of Alex’s eye and Kelly making a concerted effort to not meet her gaze.

“Do you think you could get out of the way?” she continues as Alex remains stone-faced and motionless. “I’d rather not add any more damages onto your to-do list today, but I’m not picky about creating my own exit if you don’t stop blocking the door.”

Caught in the act, Alex’s face flushes, her act cracking for a moment. “Did you just say more damage?”

Though Kara really would like to get to Lena as soon as possible, she supposes that’s what her superspeed is for – especially seeing as there is quite a lot to gain from this interaction. Might as well play along with this charade long enough to learn exactly what just went down with Lillian – then Kara can zip her way into the backseat before Lena’s driver can even finish signaling out of the parking garage, fully informed and zealously apologetic. With a drawn-out sigh, she meets Alex’s stare head-on. “What happened in there?” she asks, raising her eyebrow. “And what’s this about not waiting? What’s going on?”

“You sure do have a lot of questions for someone who’s spent most of the past 48 hours refusing to answer any of my own.”

Deciding that Alex is a lost cause for the time being, Kara turns to Kelly. She is by no means an easier target, but Kara feels confident that at the very least, the other woman won’t be quite as combative to her well-meaning, totally innocent curiosity. “I didn’t know you were a part of this, Kelly,” she says, probing but not unkind. Kara will take any allies that she can get at this point, and even if the idea of getting her sister’s soon-to-be bride on her side seems a bit far-fetched, Kara is resolved to at least try. “Was she upset? Is she- is she okay? I’d really love to speak with her.”

The corner of Kelly’s mouth quirks up, good-natured and seemingly sympathetic to Kara’s plight. “So you mentioned,” she responds, and damn, Alex really knows how to pick a loyal one.

Kara isn’t one to stall on the runway, however, so she chooses a new channel to try and shove her way through. “I messed up. I’m sure that Lena at least told you that much,” she admits, crossing her arms. “But look, J’onn and Nia got your group text, alright-?”

“They told you about the group chat?” Alex asks sharply, betrayal plain to see across her pinched brows. Kara feels like they’ve strayed a bit far from the point of all this, but she entertains the interruption with a nonplussed shrug of her shoulders.

“It was a moment of much-needed levity, actually. I was pretty down, and… what’s important is that they talked me through things, okay? Basically hit me over the head with the error of my ways, but I get it now. I’ve made a mistake, and if you’d excuse me, I’d like to go make up for it now.”

“You’ll have to wait,” is all Alex says, and while it’s a new and tantalizing piece of the puzzle, her sister’s purposeful ambiguity makes Kara more than a little irate.

Kelly makes her reappearance, choosing tact and loaded stares with both of the Danvers sisters over outright aggression. “I’m afraid that Lena prefers you to give her a bit of space at the moment, Kara.”

It’s a perfectly understandable request after the way their fight had ended – Rao, Kara wouldn’t be surprised if, seeing as this was the exact thing that she’d asked of Lena in her apartment, Lena thinks that she’s doing Kara a favor here. But Kara doesn’t see any time or space between them as a victory anymore, and the acknowledgment that Lena doesn’t want to see her at the moment is a cutting piece of news to hear, however gracefully Kelly had delivered it.

“How come?” she finds herself asking, feeling scorned and suddenly out of breath.

“After her conversation with her mother, she seems to believe that it’s the best course of action,” Kelly responds after a long moment of uncertain silence. She draws in a short breath, like she’s said more than she intended to, and Kara watches Alex puff out her chest, already anticipating Kara’s response.

Kara’s eyes widen. “What did Lillian say to her?”

“Is it really any of your business?” Alex interjects, but Kara will have none of that stale argument again, even if her sister’s continued loyalty to Lena is still very heartening to watch unfold.

“I’m trying to make this right, so yes. Seeing as my screwup is the reason for all of this happening in the first place, I’d say it is my business to know the consequences of it.”

Alex sticks out her jaw so far she looks like the tinman from the Wizard of Oz, stuck in the rain and out of oil but impressively stubborn about the situation Kara’s forcing her into. “She said what she came there to say,” her sister grits out. “Lillian said her piece back, and now Lena’s off to go- well, I can tell you this – their little cycle of verbal abuse definitely wasn’t broken today. But, I do think Lena’s going to wind up getting the final word in.”

“Are you trying to be cryptic on purpose?”

“If it makes you squirm,” Alex replies with relish, “Then yes, always.”

Kara tries to imagine the scene: Lillian, with her hands clasped primly behind her back, probably cleaned up from the grime and the much of that hallway and whose prison jumpsuit likely has no dampening effect on her sense of superiority; Lena, pissed off and out of her depth and ready to hurl whatever cruel combination of words necessary to garner a reaction from her mother, to gain some sort of catharsis from the precipice Kara had left her infuriatingly hanging from. Though they’d bantered about it earlier, Kara knows that, cannibal or not, Lillian was certainly as evil and conniving as any fictional villain out there, and the shifty way her sister and Kelly are acting makes her suspect that Lillian got more than her fair share of blows to land on her daughter.

“Fine. Don’t tell me anything else,” Kara allows, her patience running thin, “But will you at least tell me where she’s going now? Seeing as I’m supposed to be giving her space and all–” Alex gives her a nasty look, clearly knowing how hypocritical that makes Kara sound, and she raises her hands in surrender– “And I’m trying to respect that!” Kara insists. “I just… I need to at least tell her I’m sorry. After that, she can do or say whatever she’d like, but I want to do it now, not later.”

Kelly looks back up from where she’d just been conducting a very thorough study of the muddy footprints left on the DEO floor, and Kara can tell that she’s partially gotten through to the other woman. She nudges Alex in the ribs, and the couple shares an uneasy look. “It’s not like she’s going to stay away,” Kelly offers, and Alex… Alex looks like she might need about a dozen more cups of coffee before she wants to continue this conversation in any way. “And she’s going to find out eventually.”

As Alex seems to weigh the pros and cons in her head with a very sour frown on her face, Kara feels her phone buzz against her thigh. Impatient with waiting on her sister’s very painstaking deliberation – and hoping against hope that maybe it’s Lena that’s texting her now – Kara sneaks her phone out of her pocket and takes a look.

And while it may not be from Lena, it’s certainly relevant to whatever is unraveling around her right now.

KARA!!! William had texted her, his next messages arriving in quick succession. What happened to your Lena Luthor exclusive? I’ve got to find out what she thinks from an emergency press conference of all places? Talk about feeling like a second-rate journalist!

Before Kara can finish digesting the texts, much less compose a response, her phone buzzes again. Just kidding. Knowing your girl, this show is going to be worthy of fireworks. Don’t hate me, but I’ve given those agents you put on my tail the slip and I’m heading to LCorp now. Want me to save you a seat?

Finally, the words click in her head, and Kara lets out a gasp. “A press conference?” she shrieks, brandishing her phone screen in her sister’s face like the Scarlet Letter it is. “Tell me William is pulling my leg.”

Her sister doesn’t seem to appreciate the accusation in her tone very much and gives a dirty look to the DEO agents who’d slowed their brisk speed to a snail’s pace the moment Kara’s voice raised. “He’s British, isn’t he? Not sure they’re known for being particularly funny.”

Under any other circumstances, Kara would take a moment to defend William, reminding her sister that her friend is actually quite hilarious and quick to a good laugh, as a matter of fact, but the revelation of Lena currently about to hold a very public, very dangerous event causes her priorities to shift.

“This isn’t funny,” Kara bites back, already imagining a million ways that Lex’s lackeys could be plotting Lena’s assassination as they speak. What better way for him to climb back on top of their ladder of sibling rivalry than to knock her off of it permanently, all while Supergirl is across the city throwing a tantrum? “Why would you ever encourage her to- and she’s going there all alone?!”

“First of all, where the hell do you think Kelly and I were heading before you so rudely spoiled our exit? Frankly, I’m offended that you would even think that I would ever allow that woman to just storm off on some solo mission-” Alex sputters, and Kelly places a hand on her arm. She doesn’t exactly look pleased by any of this, especially now that the cat is out of the proverbial bag regarding Lena’s sudden, secret plan, but Kelly does seem to be making an effort to take the high road here.

“There was no encouragement of any kind happening, Kara,” Kelly promises, and through Kara’s panicked sense of indignation, she believes her. “Lena felt that she had to go out and… make a few things abundantly clear to the rest of the world, and there was no changing her mind about it.”

“I believe her exact words were something along the lines of, ‘If Kara thinks she’s the only one around here that can go out in public and send a message to my brother, she’s got another thing coming,’” Alex supplies, obviously unimpressed by Lena’s line of reasoning, and Kara feels like banging her head against the wall.

Her article that she’d published with William and the subsequent televised address had never been intended to serve as some sort of benchmark for Lena to spitefully surpass. If it’s a spitting contest that Lena wants, Kara refuses to entertain it.

“That’s not what- she can’t just-!” Kara looks to Kelly for some sense of validation, then to her sister for a shared feeling of frustration. Finding both of those emotions on their pained and uncomfortable expressions, Kara takes a breath. At least she’s not alone in this. “She shouldn’t have to do this. Lena’s spent enough of her life throwing herself to the wolves when it comes to press conferences. I mean, am I wrong about this?”

“Personally, I agree with you on this one,” Alex says, and with a start, Kara realizes that this is the first thing they’ve seen eye to eye on in an awfully long time. Her heart soars in victory – but then her sister lets out a long-held breath. “But as Lena reminded me, I don’t have much ground to stand on after letting you pull all of the stunts that you did. Especially since she’s a grown woman and I hold absolutely zero jurisdiction or power over her, I couldn’t stop her. It’s Lena’s choice to make.”

“You’re a lot alike, you know,” Kelly adds. “There’s no stopping either of you from getting what you really want, and… well, Lena really wants to condone her mother’s crimes and tear her brother to shreds in front of every reporter in the city. After how they’ve treated her these past few months? I have no doubt it’s going to be satisfying for her.”

“We need to go and- and, well, you’re right. I won’t be able to convince her to call it off either.” Kara puts her hands on her hips, debating her next move. She knows that any attempt on her part to reach Lena now will not only be hindered by her sister and Kelly, who both seem resigned to the fact that this is probably some vaguely healthy method of processing all of this for Lena – but Kara also knows that if she tries to stop Lena now with a head full of steam, she will only make things much, much worse. She sighs, brandishing her finger in Alex’s general direction. “You two, go meet up with her. Just- just make sure she doesn’t go find Lex herself and kick him in the shins or anything, okay?”

“I’d be wildly impressed if she does manage to do that and honestly probably wouldn’t stop her, but okay,” her sister says, and while her promise is a rather slippery one, Kara takes it. Alex gives her an appraising look. “And what exactly are you planning on doing?”

There’s a good deal of accusation in Alex’s tone – not that Kara can blame her for it. An hour or so ago, before her conversation with J’onn and Nia, Kara likely would have been far too angry and upset to exercise any sort of self-control. She takes a deep breath, reminding herself that Lena is, in fact, fully capable of making her own decisions – even ones that Kara disagrees with – and she wouldn’t exactly be starting off her redemption tour with the other woman on the right foot if she swoops in and drags Lena kicking and screaming away from LCorp.

Lena just got her company back, confronted her mother in a jail cell, and is probably filled with enough righteous indignation at the moment to fly if she really put her mind to it. Put simply? Kara is outmatched by her best friend right now, and she has no choice but to bite the bullet and go along with all of this.

“I’m a reporter,” she says after a beat. “And I’ve used my press badge enough times at LCorp to have frequent flier miles at this point-”

Alex shakes her head, scoffing. “As if you haven’t already benefited from having Lena Luthor as your best friend. Who needs special benefits when you literally live with your source?”

“You know I don’t abuse that side of our relationship- ugh, whatever! That is so not important right now. I’m going to LCorp. If Lena doesn’t want me to interfere before that – fine. But I will be there as a journalist, and I will step in and protect her if things take a turn for the worse.”

She tightens her jaw as she stares down the two women, daring them to challenge her on what she thinks, in her humble opinion, is a very fair and reasonable plan. From the way Alex seems to be chewing on her tongue in her attempt to find some reason to contradict her, she must agree.

“Is that alright?” she asks. Kelly gives her an encouraging nod, and Alex – though it clearly annoys her to permit both Lena and Kara to go through with this plan that’s going to cause nothing but trouble, she begrudgingly follows suit.

“I can’t find any reason why you can’t do that,” she grumbles, and Kara grins, triumphant. Alex doesn’t appreciate her showboating, however, and her glare returns to her face. “But if I find out that you pull any sort of funny business or don’t respect Lena’s wishes, you’re going to be in big trouble. You are there as a Catco reporter and not as a pining, pouting best friend, got it?”

“Got it,” Kara chirps, narrowing her eyes right back. “Besides, so long as you keep up your side of the deal and don’t let Lena out of your sight, you’ll be able to catch me in the act if I try anything, won’t you?”

“Correct. It’s a deal.” Alex juts out her hand and with a smug little smirk, Kara reaches out and shakes it.

“Well, it’s been a pleasure watching the two of you work this out,” Kelly says, and her rare showcase of sarcasm shakes Alex and Kara both out of their sibling-rivalry-induced haze. “We’d really better get going, babe. Before Lena changes her mind about letting us tag along.”

Kara meets her eyes and gives her a genuine, grateful smile. “Look, I don’t know what happened in there,” she says, jerking her head over to the stairway that leads to the detention level, “But I’m glad you were there. That you both were,” she corrects, appealing to Alex’s softer side. “Even if it can’t be me, I’m glad that someone can be there for Lena right now.”

Alex gives her a curt nod, and Kelly smiles back. “We’ve all got each other's backs. That’s part of being a family,” she says, and just because it’s Kelly, Kara buys into the sentiment.

“I’ll see you there,” she says, and finally, Alex and Kelly allow her to part the sea and slip past them. Pushing through the doors, she blinks against the brightness that only a November sun can bring. Not that she has time to soak it in; Kara’s got some clothes to change into, and then she has a press conference to go watch.

Pulling out her phone again, she shoots off a rushed message to William. Be there in ten.

She really, really hopes that it’ll be an uneventful one for everyone’s sake.

…

“So, how’d she take it?” William asks, leaning as far back in his chair as he can manage to as a large group of journalists attempts to climb over his long legs. It’s not his fault that Lena’s picked such a cramped location for this to take place — though Kara does appreciate the security benefits that it offers. With only two ways in and out of the space, she looks only slightly paranoid as she whips her head back and forth surveying the flood of people eagerly shoving their way inside. Any more points of access for would-be assailants and Kara thinks one of her optic nerves would burst.

William’s found them excellent seats; somewhat in the back, slightly to the side, and a perfect location for Kara to sink into the sharp plastic of the fold-out chairs and keep an eye on things. If Lena had had more time, Kara has no doubt that she would have opted for a slightly more grandiose stage; while this may resemble more of a high school pep rally than a TedTalk with the rows of chairs and the hastily assembled stage, the spotless marble floors, looming columns, and all of the reporters milling about in their sharpest blazers. Kara feels a little underdressed to be honest in her typical outfit of slacks and a convenient button-down shirt, but she doesn’t mind. Where she’s at, she’s invisible in the crowd – and barring no… unfortunate incidents, she’d like to keep it that way.

“Huh?” she replies absently, glaring at a pompous man who’s just shuffled in with way too large of a briefcase for her liking. As she X-rays its contents to find an embarrassingly small stack of papers — clearly, he’s overcompensating for something with his stylistic choices — she tries to refocus on her partner sitting idly next to her, taking in the chattering rabble with a grin. William knows that he’s the cause for all of these people chomping at the bit for the next scoop — and that he’d beaten each and every one of them to the story. Kara imagines that his Pulitzer after party will be a night to remember.

“Lena,” he says, her name rolling off his tongue much too teasingly — much too intimately — for Kara’s liking right now. While he does seem to understand the confidential nature of whatever is going on between her and Lena, Kara sure wishes he’d lower his voice more around all of the hungriest tabloid writers on this side of the country. “You delivering her company back to her in a neat little bow. Please tell me she appreciated the chivalry of the gesture.”

Evasive, Kara gives William a dismissive sideways glance. She’s still yet to see her sister, Kelly, or anyone else that she knows amongst the crowds and can't decide if she’s comforted or unnerved by it. Sure, she’ll take what relative anonymity her identity will afford her right now, knows that her knack for blending into the masses suits the occasion perfectly for her reconnaissance and careful monitoring — but she would love to see even a glimpse of Alex at the front of the crowds. Just because Kara isn’t up there doesn’t mean that Lena should be alone when she takes to the stage.

“Chivalry? I didn’t know you saw things quite so fantastically,” she comments. Everyone around them stares through her and William as if they weren’t even there at all. After their high-profile actions — though admittedly, Kara was not wearing glasses when she put on her cape and disparaged the good Luthor name — she’d honestly expected a few raised eyebrows to be cast their way at the very least. William was just on national television after all – and while Kara has spent a lifetime learning how to slip through the cracks of recognition, he sticks out like a sore thumb with his relaxed energy amidst the excitable chaos all around them.

“I’m a romantic at heart,” he replies, unrepentant and seemingly unbothered by just how quickly his fifteen minutes of fame have dried up. Lena Luthor making a public appearance has a way of drawing every eye in the room, however, so maybe Kara shouldn’t be quite so shocked. “My mum was especially fond of Byron while I was growing up.”

Kara wrinkles her nose at that. “Byron?” she repeats, unable to separate her feelings for the author from her general hatred of English class during those first few years on earth, how stupid and small the teachers had made her feel for having a hard time separating romanticists from transcendentalists. Little did they know that Kara had bigger things on her plate than acing her SATs.

William chuckles. “Not a fan, I take it.” Kara just shrugs. “I can’t say he particularly enthralled me much either. I was a much bigger fan of the old myths and legends, King Arthur and the like. You make for a rather dashing knight in shining armor, you know.”

Kara tries to let what she thinks is a compliment glance off of her; she inclines her head, not sure how to express to William that she’s been acting anything but chivalrous as of late. “I’m no Lancelot,” she murmurs. A hush falls over the front of the crowd, and Kara sees the curtain move as someone prepares to make their imminent entrance onto the stage.

“Well, luckily for you then — Lena Luthor is definitely not some lady in waiting.”

That earns a genuine laugh from Kara, a rush of air through her nose as she tries to imagine Lena fitting into such a limiting box. She’s majestic, to be sure, beautiful in a very classical and undeniably romantic sense — but William’s got a point. Lena’s not the type to remain up in her tower, she’s the type to go down and kill the dragon herself if need be.

Kara realizes then that what she’s been asking of Lena — to stay out of it, stay away, to sit tight until the danger is passed — goes against everything the other woman believes in. No wonder it’s been met with such derision; no wonder Kara’s here now, watching this conference through her fingers knowing that this is a vessel for defiance, not a gambit for good optics.

“That she most certainly isn’t.” Kara sucks in a deep breath, trying to fall more in line with William’s self-assured, casual posture. William sniffs it out with ease.

“If I had to guess,” he drawls, throwing an arm around the back of her chair and leaning towards Kara just far enough to offer them a modicum of extra privacy, “You’re acting a little too much like you got dumped for the grand reveal to have gone off without a hitch.”

Kara’s frown deepens. “I did not get dumped,” she asserts. Why she’d ever caved and let William in on her love life – or lack thereof, to be specific – she can’t recall now. “Just to be clear, a person can’t get dumped if they were never with someone in the first place-”

“In all ways except literal, I’d say you got dumped.”

“Okay, did Lena–” looking around and realizing that she was about to make the same blunder as William had earlier, Kara lowers her voice. She’d really rather not be featured on the front page of any more gossip rags, especially not if the rumors are about a breakup that did not happen. “Did my very good friend take kindly to the news? I mean, she wasn’t over the moon about it. But that’s all it is. Friends disagree sometimes, you know.”

William grins, and Kara realizes that maybe she added a little too much weight to that last piece of information. “Not quite the epiphany that you seem to think it is,” he teases. “So, she wasn’t a fan of us sneaking around behind her back, or was it something else?”

“Us? Sneaking around?”

“Seemed to be a touchy subject for her.”

Kara is far out of her depths on this one, unsure how William could have ever gotten that impression. “Come on, that’s not what happened,” she says. “We weren’t exactly committing espionage or anything, William.”

“Maybe you were too busy blushing at her mere presence, but your very good friend was definitely bothered by all of it.” William gestures between the two of them, raising his eyebrows. “The two of us spending so much time together… I actually got the feeling that she might have been jealous.”

“What?!” Kara laughs nervously, too shocked by William’s admission to care about any attention that her outburst might bring. It’s so bizarre, so implausible, so downright hysterical to think that Lena would ever feel anything remotely related to jealousy about Kara and William’s journalistic team-up that Kara can’t help but to laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

An undeniably evil grin grows on his face. “Absolutely green with envy, Kara.”

Unable to wrap her head around such an impossible scenario, Kara’s face twists. “You’re way off base,” she giggles, though she can’t say that she finds much humor in this any longer. “What, you mean that one night when she walked in on us celebrating?” William nods, like the fact that Kara brought up a specific instance was only further proof of his observations being well-founded. Kara stammers; in a way, he’s right. “That was just- she’s really not a fan of new people. Wouldn’t you be too after you’ve notched a dozen or so assassination attempts on your belt?”

“I’m sure I’d feel the same.” William laughs too, but Kara doesn’t think it’s about the same thing. If anything, she suspects that she might be the butt of the joke from his perspective. “I don’t think the ever-looming specter of danger was what was causing her discomfort, but rather the two of us laughing on the couch. I do try to be objective about such things, and I can only report on what I saw.”

“Someone like Le- someone like her doesn’t get jealous,” Kara insists, gaining control of her dropping jaw at last. “I’m like 99% sure that that would be a completely foreign emotion to her.”

William doesn’t look all that swayed by her reasoning, but Kara doubles down anyway. “What’s there to be jealous about anyways?” she asks. “Lena doesn’t bother with things like that — especially when they don’t make any logical sense.”

William has the nerve to actually look offended, twisting further in his seat to bat his eyelids at her. With a roll of her eyes, Kara realizes that it’s just another round of his relentless teasing. “No logical sense-? Kara, I’m a bit hurt. You don’t think we make a believable couple?”

Kara gives him a glare. “You want me to tell your girlfriend about this personal insecurity of yours?” she challenges, and with a gracious smile, William holds his one free hand up in silent surrender. Kara’s heard plenty about this girlfriend of his, and she knows full well that William is nothing if not fully devoted to her. Still, she feels the need to clarify that on her end as well. “I care for you very deeply as a friend, William, but… well, you already know where those types of feelings lie for me.”

“Which is why it pains me so to hear that Lena- sorry, your friend,” he corrects as Kara lifts up a finger and audibly shushes him, “I may not see you as anything more than my very favorite partner in journalistic pursuits, but I’m not blind. You’re good for each other, especially with what the two of you have been through. I wish she wasn’t kicking you to the curb at a time like this.”

“There was no kicking,” Kara protests, unable to even begin to address the rest of William’s words.. A chair scrapes loudly behind them and she nearly jumps ten feet in the air. While this conversation has prevented her from becoming paranoid to the point of complete derangement, she’s still tense. So tense, in fact, that as she peels her fingers away from the death grip that she’d been giving the edge of her seat, she can see her handprint neatly against the plastic. She crosses her legs, covering up the evidence, and clears her throat. “None at all.”

“Fine. A light shove then, perhaps?”

“No! I- we- her family is a bit of a touchy subject, alright?” Kara exclaims. “Was she happy about the fact that I put myself in their crosshairs by going ahead with that article? No, absolutely not. That’s probably why she’s doing this stupid press conference to tell you the truth — she can’t help herself from drawing the fire back on her.”

“Maybe she’s the gallant one after all,” he replies, and Kara can only nod. As nice as it would be to operate in the simplistic, straightforward world of storybooks, she knows that she and Lena are too firmly entrenched in shades of gray to ever get there.

“She deserves a chance to say her piece just like us,” Kara says, not quite sure if she’s totally bought into what she’s saying herself. “I just-“ Swallowing hard, Kara gratefully accepts William's hand on her shoulder. “I just really don’t want her to get hurt because of it. Because of something I helped start.”

William hums, and as Kara cranes her neck, she can see Lena’s heels just beneath the curtain. Things are going to start at any moment now and the entire room seems to sense it, quieting down of its own accord. The anticipation is palpable, and Kara sends up a rather haphazard prayer to whichever god has custody of the universe at this particular moment to have mercy on her now.

“I’m sure Supergirl is around here somewhere,” he whispers in the sudden silence – and Kara knows that he’s genuine when he says it, knows that for everyone but her, the promise of Supergirl saving the day is as bulletproof as the superhero is herself. “What could go wrong?”

Kara thinks of Lex, escaped somewhere into the wind. She thinks of Lillian, smiling in that hallway, self-assured and expectant of something that’s still yet to come. She knows that plenty can go wrong – and that sometimes, not even Supergirl can do anything about it.

But she plays along with her friend, ducking her head to make sure that he mistakes her grimace for a smile. “You’re right,” she answers, and her voice doesn’t waver for a moment. “So long as she’s here, it’ll all turn out fine.”

The lights dim then, and Lena walks out onto the stage.

Hidden in the darkness, Kara embraces the rare chance that she has to observe her best friend without being noticed doing it. With a strange, unguarded feeling, she realizes that this Lena, the one walking poised and calmly up to the waiting podium, isn’t one that’s ever been hers. Her best friend seems possessed of a completely different personality in front of the crowd like this, like she has a different identity of her own.

Is this what everyone else sees all of the time, she wonders? A veritable fortress of a woman, dark and striking and undeniably powerful, but completely untouchable. Lena’s told her stories of the person she’s had to become to maintain control over her own life, the dangerous mix of ice and fire that she wields in her hands to remain effective and commanding; Kara’s seen glimpses of this before, but it makes her nervous, beholding the mesmerizing look in Lena’s eyes. She understands, even totally removed from her own personal feelings, why heads turn where the other woman walks, why people can’t help but avert their gaze after a moment of staring into the sun for too long.

Lena is starkly beautiful, high above the rest of the world, and unattainable in every sense of the word. As awestruck as it makes Kara, she can’t help but feel a bit sad as well. This isn’t the side of Lena that she’s had the pleasure of knowing and loving; this is the side brought out by her family, the Luthor side of it all, and while Kara knows that Lena is always ready and willing to use it, ends justifying means and all that, her heart breaks for her best friend all the same.

She thinks of what William had said earlier about kings and knights and the like. It’s lonely, climbing back up into your tower the way Lena is doing now, and Kara knows that she is at least partially to blame for it, for falling on her sword rather than shielding Lena from Lex and Lillian.

“Wow, Kara, she’s…” William, eyes wide and taking in everything, from Lena’s ridiculously high and polished stilettos to her impeccable three-piece suit that Kara knows she chose strategically for this moment. She’s already a believer, was made one years and years ago, and Kara knows what it looks like when Lena puts on her very best suit of armor – knows when the other woman has designs to take back what is rightfully hers.

“Yeah, she is,” she finishes for him, frozen in place. While it’s not the first time she’s witnessed Lena’s uncanny ability to take over a room in action, it strikes her dead every time.

“Hard to believe she’s the same woman who lives with you,” William murmurs, putting her sentiment to words with cutting truth. Their heads are practically pressed together in the vacuum of silence all around them, and Kara can do nothing but agree.

“She’s in there somewhere,” she asserts, more for her benefit than his.

Lena takes her place on the stage, and against all odds, as her gaze drifts inscrutably across the room, she locks eyes with Kara. And while it’s only for a moment, while Lena’s expression doesn’t so much as flicker from the composed mask of neutrality that she’s carefully molded, Kara feels like she might have just been shot in the heart from across the room.

It doesn’t feel possible that Lena should have been able to find her amidst the sea of blank, anonymous faces, and yet she did, and Kara couldn’t look away if she tried. Kara knows Lena doesn’t buy into fate or destiny or anything quite so magical – but she also knows that the other woman doesn’t believe in coincidences, either. The fact that they’ve managed to find each other even now, an invisible string pulled tautly, causes something to stir in Kara’s chest, and as Lena continues to stare, she manages a tiny, encouraging smile. An olive branch of sorts, and one that she hopes Lena will at least recognize.

Despite her mask, despite the act that she’s about to put on – Lena sends a small, private smile back, and for all Kara cares, they could be the only two people in the world right now.

Lena begins her address then, clearing her throat and casting her eyes somewhere towards the back of the room. “Good afternoon,” she says, smooth and sure. The last of the lingering whispers in the room disappear at once, and Kara leans forward in her seat. “I want to thank you all for making the time to be here on such short notice.”

“As I have no doubt you’re all aware of by now, it is thanks to journalists like you that I’m standing up here today, ready and willing to regain control of LCorp and all of its resources,” Lena continues. William nudges Kara in the ribs, grinning ear to ear. “I’ve said it before: the truth is not easy, and the pursuit of it, as a profession and beyond, is something that I will always have an immense respect and gratitude for – even if I’ve ended up on the wrong side of it more than my fair share of times.”

The glancing remark earns its share of guilty, nervous chuckles from across the room. Kara could stand up and point out a particular handful of reporters who have spent the last few months hounding Lena, digging into her personal life and professional turmoil, and of course – insinuating, however obliquely, that the woman deserved the accusations of corruption and hate that have been thrown her way ever since Lex and Lillian flipped the script. Needless to say, Lena is going about this with more tact and grace than Kara ever would have, her blood boiling even now thinking about all that Lena’s gone through thanks to these people sitting so politely here now.

“That’s the thing about the truth, however; if the right people are behind it, it will always be brought to light. That’s why I am here now, thanking those who stuck with my side of the story so resolutely, and why I want to set the record straight for the rest of you.” Lena clears her throat, wrapping her fingers around either side of the podium. “The allegations made against my mother and my brother – as well as their explicit ties to the leadership of the clandestine terrorist organization known as CADMUS – are all true, from their mismanagement of corporate and non-profit funds to their heinous, hateful acts of violence against the alien community of National City. I won’t go into intricacies at this moment in time, but if you’re unconvinced you’ll find that the journalists over at Catco Worldwide Media have gathered a mountain of irrefutable evidence supporting these facts. I am indebted to their hard work and their sacrifice — pushing through even when the rest of the world turned their backs on what they were fighting so hard for.”

As if she’s not able to help it, Lena’s eyes catch on Kara and then on her and William both, curled into each other in the crowd, and she falters just slightly. It throws Kara off balance. She thinks of their last exchange, the anger and the hurt serving as excellent kindle for the roaring fire between them. While that fire is gone now, faded and looming like a shadow over Lena just so, Kara doesn’t think that’s what’s caused Lena’s expression to snag.

For one, brief moment, she allows herself to entertain William’s notion of jealousy, of Lena’s care for her manifesting in such a possessive and uncharacteristic way. Kara stands by what she said before: she’s never seen Lena get jealous, not over James or Jack Spheer or any of the insignificant flings she’s had over the years. And if she’s never felt that way about James, the man that Kara suspects her best friend may have lingering feelings for (the man that Kara herself has battled with envy towards), why on earth would she ever experience it over a friendship as solid and as dedicated as theirs? Rao, Lena’s encouraged Kara to hang out with William before, at Game Nights, and in the quieter moments afterward. Jealousy has no place in Lena’s heart, not when it’s Kara who’s spent these months pining so inexhaustibly over the other woman.

No, that can’t be it either… or at least Kara thinks so. Either way, Lena’s expression smooths out immediately before Kara can attempt to delve into it any further, and she launches back into her speech with a kind of practiced calm that, with a sinking heart, Kara feels certain she must have learned the hard way from her family over the years.

“I would like to inform you that, at approximately two in the morning, a coalition of federal and local law enforcement agencies converged on my mother’s base of operations and apprehended her after a short skirmish. I was there to personally see it through in an advisory role and got the pleasure of watching Supergirl and her team protect this city from any further harm that my mother intended on causing.”

There is scattered applause from the crowd; Kara looks around and suspects that no one knows what to make of this yet. It’s difficult enough for her to remove herself from the investigative labyrinth that she’s spent the last few months trapped in — and Kara has to remind herself that these reporters, raised and groomed on a special strain of skepticism and hard-boiled cynicism, still don’t know whether or not Lena Luthor is able to be trusted, much less the type of pajamas she wears to bed or the toppings she most enjoys on her pizza. Kara knows that, and not because she’s a particularly good reporter, but because she’s been an even better friend.

Or, at least she had been until recently.

Lena accepts the strained response from the crowd, seems to have expected it. “Make no mistake — I am under no delusion that this, however necessary of a step it was in preventing any further harm from occurring, permits myself or anyone else from sweeping the crimes of my family under the rug,” she says, a somber, impossibly sincere expression on her face. “For from it, in fact; the Luthor name and all that it stands for may very well be tainted beyond recognition, and the arrest of my mother and the eventual apprehension of my brother won’t be able to undo what’s already happened. Me standing up here and denouncing their deplorable nature won’t matter in the face of the changes that must be made.”

Lena pauses to take in a breath and Kara can picture her as she was when she first came to National City so long ago. How many times Lena will have to retread the same path over and over again, reaching for redemption and absolution for what shouldn’t have fallen on her shoulders, Kara doesn’t know.

“It is my responsibility now to take action, not just make apologies,” Lena continues, strong and unflinching. “I have no intention of squandering this chance to begin to make amends. While I don’t know that I will ever be able to repair all that my family has torn apart in my own lifetime, LCorp, as an extension of my values and my legacy, will. My promise to National City and to the rest of the world is this: whether it takes twenty years, fifty, or a few centuries, this company and those granted stewardship of it will be seen as a force for good once more.” The screens around Lena flicker to life, displaying the LCorp logo, bright and stark against the dark of the room. Under the floodlight that illuminates the podium, Lena’s eyes flare. “We don’t get to choose what family we’re born into – but we can choose what to do with what burdens we inherit. I refuse to live my life defined by the sins of others, and I am committed to leading the charge toward a better, brighter future. Thank you.”

As images begin to flash quickly, a slideshow of data and testimonies and photographs of the good that LCorp – that Lena – has done, she stops her speech, reaching down to grab a glass of water. She lifts it up to her mouth, and while no one else in the room can see it, Kara watches as Lena’s hands tremble imperceptibly; it seems that, while she may have done this before, it never gets easier.

Lena’s assistant Jess, who seems to be putting her best foot forward when it comes to appearing to be warm and receptive – nevermind her narrowed eyes, or her slightly pursed lips – takes the stage, adjusting a few of the microphones in front of Lena and clearing her throat.

“Miss Luthor will now take questions from the press,” she announces primly, though there’s enough menace in her sharp, unimpressed stare down of the room that her hidden message is rather clear: whoever is brave enough to ask a question had better on their best behavior, or else Lena’s most loyal assistant will probably track them down and kill them in all sorts of creative way. “Use the bidding card that you accepted when you first showed security your press credentials, land please wait to be selected by one of the attendants in the aisles. Thank you in advance for your respect and your cooperation; we understand that all of you have plenty of questions, and Miss Luthor will make an effort to answer as many as she is able.”

Kara spins in her seat, noticing for the first time what looks to be makeshift bidding cards tucked into the pockets or sitting on top of the laps of the antsy reporters around them. Raising her eyebrow, she jostles William’s knee with her own, breaking him from his enraptured reverie. “Psst,” she whispers, nodding toward the others. “Why don’t we have one of those?”

William grins, cupping his hand to her ear and leaning close as the room slowly - and explicitly against the orders of Jess – builds into a feeding frenzy of loud and overeager journalists, climbing on top of each other in their attempt to get picked for questioning. “I figured there was no point in it,” he yells, jovial and bright in the din. “I’ve got the resident expert on Lena Luthor sitting right here next to me. Any question I have, I’ll just ask you!”

“That’s not- I’m really not- you know, never mind!” Kara replies, understanding very quickly that it is not at all worth it right now to challenge William on a topic she’ll probably lose out on. “Let’s hope they’re nice to her,” she adds, mostly to herself, but by some miracle, William hears her over the crowd.

“The glare you’re sending at the back of everyone’s head would probably be much more effective if you went up on stage and directed it at people’s eyes,” he offers, and while he’s definitely joking, Kara can sense a certain amount of sincerity as well. When she turns fully to glance at him, William is waiting, nothing short of a dopey, encouraging smile on his face. “She’s been looking over at you during this entire conference,” he says. “You’re telling me that she’s upset with you, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want you up there with-”

Before William can finish his very sweet and well-intentioned appeal to Kara’s softer side – the lights turn off abruptly, sending the cramped space into total darkness that even Kara’s eyes have trouble adjusting to. She stands up on instinct, scanning the confused and disoriented crowd for a culprit. Someone trips over the back of their chair, and another person lets out a short and panicked shriek as reporters start to blindly stumble about. While Kara can’t quite see the stage or hear anything beyond feedback from the microphones, she zeroes in on Lena’s heartbeat, strong and quick. At the very least, Lena is okay.

Just as suddenly as it happens, the lights turn back on again, revealing a room that looks much more haphazard and disheveled than before. Kara catches a glimpse of Lena, swaying at her podium and exchanging harried whispers with Jess, and as Kara cranes her head to look behind the curtain, gesturing to Alex and Kelly. Alex has her hand on her holster and looks about as on edge as Kara feels, and they’re all staring intently at the television screens flickering slowly back to life.

Squinting her eyes in confusion, Kara finally rips her gaze from Lena to see what they’re all looking at. Her heart drops like a stone in ice water. All this time she’d been so busy trying to find her best friend in the crowd that she missed Lex Luthor, snarling pale and proud and broadcast on every screen in the place.

Kara finetunes her hearing onto Lena. “-This is a closed system,” she catches the other woman hiss at Jess, the both of them typing away frantically at their touchpads. “How the hell did he-”

“Greetings,” Lex booms over the speakers, hijacking the screens and the speakers and no doubt half of the operating systems of LCorp. Kara tenses, tries to predict his next move – knows in her heart that it’s going to revolve around Lena. “My apologies for not attending this event myself, but it seems that my sister was rather dead set on scheduling it at the very last minute. While I didn’t have enough time to make an appearance in person, I figured that it was the polite thing to at least address you all from the comfort of my location now.”

Kara takes in the nondescript background behind where Lex is sitting, unable to find any clues that would reveal his location. “I must say, the nature of the allegations against me are… well, I suppose there’s no point in beating around the bush any longer. They are wholly, unequivocally true – and I have no intention of stopping,” Lex announces, and Kara struggles to maintain her poker face. Lex isn’t one to come fully out of the shadows very often — and while Kara thinks it’s probably a good thing, believes that this might be Lex acting out as a desperate sort of last resort, she doesn’t like it one bit in a situation like this, where she’s in her secret identity in the middle of a room packed full of reporters and Lena is standing alone and vulnerable in front of the cameras. “Everything that I worked for — that my dear, courageous mother worked for — has been for the good of this city and the rest of the world. Sure, CADMUS can come across as a bit trite,” he admits, a blood-chilling levity and humor to his voice that makes Kara want to retch, “But dabbling in terror is certainly effective. I’ve become a believer in the idea that, when us humans can’t do much more than throw pebbles at the filth that walks among us, it’s important to accept the usefulness in playing dirty.”

The room releases a hushed gasp all at once; despite Kara’s report and Lena’s impassioned speech, it seems like her colleagues were hesitant to accept the truth until it dangled in front of their noses like a carrot. Lex lacking any and all subtlety has frozen everyone in place, and with bated breath, Kara can only watch as he kidnaps the room completely from Lena.

“I’m afraid that the powers that be who have aligned themselves against me have left me with very few options,” he continues, and Lex has the nerve to actually appear saddened by this turn of events, the shadows long and dark over his face. Lex is many things — but Kara had never expected him to play for sympathy. Then again, narcissists like him need attention by any means, and in the state he’s in, Kara doubts that his pride and his fondness for his elite social standing serve as much of a roadblock any longer. “Coming clean to you all now, I hope that I’ve earned your attention for long enough to say a few parting words as the man you once knew me as, and to make one final request.”

“At least he can admit when he’s lost,” William says next to her, not quite having picked up on the fact that every muscle in Kara’s body is currently tensed to its physical limit. “Can’t say I feel anything remotely reminiscent of respect when it comes to that man, but I am surprised to see him waving the white flag.”

“I’m not sure that’s what he’s doing,” Kara mutters absently, too focused on the screen to so much as glance William’s way.

“You are a profession easily swayed by feelings of morality, empathy, and compassion, all of which have blinded you to the very real threat that has been allowed to exist on this planet for too long. What I ask now is for you to remember that you are human first and foremost, and that, above all, you are leeches who profit most on spectacle. And who would I be if I did not leave you with one for the ages?” Lex asks, and Kara is starting to get very nervous now. “A coup de grâce, if you will — though I will admit that the deteriorating state of my operations has caused my vision to be limited and somewhat… barbaric.”

Lex reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a pocket watch, somehow clinging to the last vestiges of his sophistication even as he exposes the full extent of his vulgar, ignorant ideology to the world. Kara glances at all of the news crews around her, their cameras blinking red. This is live; wherever they all are throughout the city, Kara hopes that the rest of her friends are seeing this too and that they’re ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

Wiping at his brow, Lex’s eyes bore holes through the screen. “Supergirl, I know you’re watching,” he says with a chill in the air. Kara, hidden as she is by the increasingly frightened throng around her, straightens to her full height. “This next bit revolves entirely around you,” Lex continues. “You thought yourself noble, making that impassioned speech of yours last night, didn’t you? You believe that it was the brave thing, the right thing, to arrest my mother, to finally take a stand against CADMUS, to try and be the hero for this city without fear or prejudice. Your oafish attempts at protecting your precious alien scum are paper-thin, and it’s high time someone exposed that to the world.”

Flipping around his watch, Lex holds the time close to the camera. “Starting the moment this broadcast cuts out, you have fifteen minutes to make your choice. Use your x-ray vision, Supergirl, and read the address hidden in my lapel. Read it, and remember that location. It’ll be very useful to you in just a little while, I think.” However reluctant, Kara follows his prompting, lowering her glasses just enough that she can pierce through the backs of everyone’s heads, through the screen, and all the way to Lex’s shirt. It’s an address that she vaguely recognizes, on the very outskirts of town — remote and out of the way and very, very isolated. Whatever the game is that Lex wants to play, Kara suspects that it is expected to be played alone.

Satisfied and presumptive, Lex looms closer until only his shoulders and head are in frame. “You have two options. I have spent much of the morning planting explosive devices at multiple locations around this city. Alien community centers, bars that aren’t picky about their patronage, customs agencies, and interplanetary resource offices. All places that are hotspots for activity from your kind — all spots that deserve to be razed to the ground.”

Backstage, Kara watched through the curtain as her sister whips out her phone, already barking out orders to whoever is on duty at the DEO crisis center and no doubt using that secret group chat of hers to order Brainy, Nia, J’onn, and the rest into action. While the effort is commendable, and it’s exactly what Kara would be doing were she not in the current situation Lex currently has her in, she recognizes its futility. However rushed this operation of his may be, Lex is a master at spinning a proper web for his trap; Kara buys into his hints immediately that, unless she is to comply with everything he is about to tell her, she and her team and anyone else will not be able to disarm those bombs in time.

She thinks of parents and their children, going about their day. Friends catching up in a bar, oblivious to the news broadcast playing on mute over their heads. People heading off to work, starting their new lives on this planet, reuniting with loved ones, or celebrating rituals that are shared by a select few. All those people and more are in danger now, and Kara knows that, with the trigger in Lex’s hands, she needs to tread her ground carefully here if she’s going to protect any of them from what he’s threatening.

“Now, I try to be a reasonable man, Supergirl, and I hate to promote such a frontier-style of justice — but from what I understand, you treated my mother rather rudely, and what’s a boy to do when you slander his name and hurt his family? Still, I do want to extend some semblance of mercy, so you have a choice ahead of you to make now,” Lex says, and in the sudden quiet, Kara can’t hear anything but him. “Either you go to that location alone and untraced and turn yourself into me, or the following will happen: my weapons will detonate, and an untold number of aliens will die screaming. I can promise that it will not be a quick end, and no one will be spared. Surrender yourself to me, or a great deal of people will die.”

As if by habit, people around her look to the windows, out to the sky. “Supergirl will handle it,” she hears a woman whisper to her coworker a few rows behind her. “Looks like Lex wants a trophy to hang up on his mantle,” someone else says, careless and morbidly fascinated by the blood that’s about to be shed. They don’t expect Supergirl to be here, of all places, squished in this marble dungeon of a room surrounded by strangers and faced with an impossible choice.

Well, not impossible. Kara knows that there’s only one viable option to take here, but she keeps herself invisible and her face unreadable anyway. However long she can cling to the reality where impending doom is not the inevitability that gapes and beckons her towards it, the better.

“You have walked through this world with complete and impregnable impunity. You have enjoyed every privilege, every exception to the rule, every ounce of freedom — all because there is no one powerful enough to equal you, no one capable of making you understand that there are consequences to your actions.” Lex lowers his voice, and Kara knows that even more than before, he is speaking to her alone now. “I think finally, I’m capable of being the one person who can bring you to your knees,” he hisses. “Surely you understand that the choices you’ve made would hold repercussions. Now, this is the only decision left. Choose, wisely, Supergirl. God only knows that you can’t stand to let anyone else get hurt on your watch.”

Kara fights back the urge to flinch, and an even bigger impulse to kneel down and let her nausea rise to the surface. Lex relishes a chance to pour salt into a wound. The screens finally shut off, and there’s a moment suspended in time where no one seems to quite know what to do next — no one except for Kara, at least. No, she knows exactly what needs to be done: the real trick is going to be figuring out how to escape to go do it, and quickly. Fifteen minutes does not grant her the privilege of dwelling on danger, much less sneaking across the city, and Kara knows that there’s no time to waste.

All at once, the floodgates break open. “Miss Luthor! Miss Luthor! Any comment on your brother’s ultimatum?” The reporters all around them begin to ask, ignoring the procedures entirely and practically clawing at each other in their attempts to get to Lena first. “Is this corporation, well-known for its alien sympathies under your leadership, in any danger of being attacked?” Another asks. “Does LCorp have any connection to how CADMUS has managed to acquire materials and build these weapons? Do you?”

From her half-sitting, half-knocked-over position in the chaos, Kara can’t see Lena – and honestly, thinks that’s for the best. Her own head is spinning with the sudden weight that’s been transferred onto her back, and she knows that if she thinks too hard about Lena or Alex or anyone else right now, she won’t be able to pull it together for long enough to do what needs to be done. While she can’t see the other woman – she can hear the rapid beat of her heart and the minuscule shake in her voice as she tries to raise her voice above the uproar.

“I- No, of course not. My brother is acting alone and is an extremely deranged and dangerous individual,” Lena tries, but Kara thinks that she might be the only person that heard her halting attempt at restoring order. “If everyone could please return to their seats- I need to find-”

Kara sees her opportunity to slip away from William and the rest of the crowd without drawing too much scrutiny from her partner, who seems rather laser-focused on this series of events and who Kara knows is not oblivious enough to not connect the dots if Kara were to abruptly leave without explanation. An excuse is what she needs, and lucky for her, there’s a pretty obvious one happening all around them.

“William,” she hisses, shaking the man from his panicked scanning of the crowds. Gone is his relaxed persona; while Kara has no doubt that her friend is very brave, there’s something about an imminent bomb threat ushered in by a psychopathic monster that can cause even the most steady of people to lose their courage, if only for a moment. “Stay here,” she orders, injecting just enough superhuman force into her tone that she knows he will listen. “I need to get to Lena, okay? She needs someone up there with her right now. It has to be me.”

“Right- yes, okay,” William responds, eyeing the rows ahead of them pushing and shoving against each other in waves. He’s probably wondering how someone as demure and unassuming as Kara intends to fight her way through the masses to get to that stage – but what he doesn’t know is that all Kara needs to do is get to the exit. And yeah, she’s going to have to pass next to the stage to leave this place as Kara Danvers, knows that blowing a hole in the ceiling is not worth it, but Kara squares her shoulders and prepares for it anyways because her time is running out. “Go, Kara,” he urges, standing up and creating a slim space for her to slip through into the aisles. “And be careful. Hurry!” he adds, and Kara wonders if a part of him does have an inkling of what’s about to happen. Is there a hint of ambiguity to the weight of his words, to the way he grips her shoulders and stares deeply into her eyes before shooing her out into the open space? Kara doesn’t know, and she doesn’t have the liberty to linger on it any longer.

“Take care of yourself, William.” Nodding, Kara prepares to make her exit, but something delays her escape. Someone, to be more specific.

“Miss Luthor,” one voice rings out over the rest, and Kara recognizes it immediately – as does William, evidenced by the way his jaw drops open. Lois Lane stands up in the front row – because of course she managed to snag a front-row seat – and her presence is enough to send the rest of the room into strained, panicked silence. Like Lena, like Kara — like Lex — Lois has a way of shutting people up with her mere presence. “Wherever she might be, if she can hear this – what would you say to Supergirl right now if you could?”

Never in her life has Kara disliked Lois as much as she does right now. Emotional warfare is what this is; Lois knows that Kara is here, and while she might not know exactly where, it’s pretty obvious that Kara is in the middle of very carefully extracting herself so she can go off and do exactly what Lex is asking. Lois knows this because it’s exactly what Clark would do, which puts Kara at a considerable disadvantage because Lois has also made the choice to deploy the only weapon that might have a chance of stopping Kara in her tracks — Lena.

It’s a mistake, and Kara knows it, but she risks a glance up at the stage, unable to resist gauging the reaction of her best friend as Lois delivers her an opportunity on a silver platter to say her piece. Lena is there, unmoving from the podium, staring directly at her. Gone is her cool, unflappable public facade; all Kara sees now is the pale face of a very frightened, shaken young woman, and her best friend is nothing short of desperate.

They engage in a staring match that is far too private in this room full of prying eyes and reporters who are nothing short of excellent at reading between the lines — and Lena’s body language is nothing short of an open book. It’s a silent push and pull between them for a beat as Lena gathers herself in front of the waiting microphones, and while Kara can’t read minds, she knows exactly what the other woman is asking of her, and Lena knows why Kara won’t give in to her unspoken plea to stay.

“Supergirl, if you can hear me,” Lena trembles, trips and pitches herself over her own words. Her mask is fallen and shattered on the ground now, and Kara wonders if, secret identity be damned, Lena is considering leaping off of the stage herself to talk to her directly, not across a room of complete strangers. “You of all people should know the importance of standing up to evil. You don’t have to give in to his demands, and you have people on your side who can help. Don’t go,” she says, repeating it again with an urgency that Kara knows will raise half of the eyebrows in the room. “Don’t go. Please, not because of this.”

All someone would have to do right now at this moment if they wanted to finally discover the grand secret of who Supergirl really was, is to follow the invisible string that’s tangled and woven across the room from Lena to Kara. It’s that obvious. Kara continues to stare, even as she watches Alex and Kelly both start to fight and pick their way through the crowds, trying to reach her before she slips out of grasp. If Lex is true to his word, if this is the last time that Kara gets to look at Lena as she is now, before everything changes…

Go, the voice in her head urges her. Before people get hurt because of your hesitation — before she does.

Kara breaks her gaze at last, regret blossoming on her face as she slowly shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she mouths, and while the sanctity of her secret hangs in the balance, she thinks for a moment that Lena might damn it all, might just scream her name into the microphone and part the sea of reporters to get to her.

Whatever choice Lena might make, it wouldn’t matter anyway; Kara is too quick and too strong and too determined for anyone — not Kelly, not her sister, and not even a teary-eyed Lena — to sway her from her path. She shoulders her way through the crowd, and the people move as if she were nothing more than a gust of wind. The exit door awaits her, and Kara bursts out into the cold and bustling street, disoriented and scared and above all, resolute in her need to get to that address as soon as possible. Hundreds of lives hang in the balance and really, what kind of trade do her friends and family really expect her to make?

She spots an abandoned alleyway half a block over, and in an instant, Kara has her glasses off and her shirt ripped open within the anonymity that the bricked walls provide. Behind her, she can hear the doors of LCorp burst open once more; dozens of reporters come flooding out of the gates, heads turned skyward. There’s a familiar, windswept heartbeat amongst them, and Kara knows that Lena is there too, searching the clouds with a secret, terrible dread that no one else around her shares.

As Kara takes flight, she regrets only one thing: there’d been time enough for her to spare one last glance back at the other woman if only she’d been brave enough to do it.

Chapter Text

To call Clark’s mid-air collision with her forceful would be putting it mildly. Kara would much rather use the descriptors of needlessly violent, just plain rude, and — seeing as she really doesn’t have the time right now to deal with any hail-mary gambits to stop her from going through with this, especially not from her cousin — very, very unfortunate.

Though he manages to nail her with impressive accuracy given just how fast she’s tearing across the city, Kal’s own velocity and strength is vastly overcalculated. With a wheeze and a disoriented string of curse words escaping her mouth, Kara finds herself upside down and off-kilter — and because of it, the ground rises to meet her much too quickly for her to brace herself.

Well, not the ground, actually. A pond — a very green, very muddy pond that they both flop spectacularly into head first, Kara swallowing a good amount of murky water that she thinks might give even a Kryptonian a gnarly stomachache.

Amidst her sudden panic that she’s going to be too late to meet Lex’s demands and her heady mix of dread and anger that Clark’s gone and wedged himself into the narrative, a bizarre streak of humor makes an appearance as she opens her eyes underwater to find a turtle fleeing the scene. This is not going to help her case when it comes to Alex’s accusations that Kara is prone to depopulating sealife. Though she’s not quite sure what could live in such an inhospitable puddle of water, Kara is slightly worried that she may have squashed a fish or two with that landing.

She swims to the surface in a rage, her cape wrapped and tangled around her hair like a towel and doing an impressive job at interfering with her strokes; Kara decides to make a concerted effort to not think about the sister she’s just abruptly abandoned. It stings to think about it even now, waterlogged and all.

Besides: there’s a perfect dummy that she can direct all of those unresolved feelings at, and Kara feels her current contempt for her cousin buoy her out of the water. Clark is there waiting, treading water, slimy, and rather out of breath.

“Clark! You little- let me go!” Kara demands, paddling water and trying to launch herself back into the skies — which is hard to do with him grabbing ahold of her ankle with a vice-like grip. Frustrated and scared out of her mind, Kara splashes a tidal wave of water at him with a growl. “There isn’t time for this!” she cries out and knows she’s right by the urgent look on his face.

“Not alone!” he answers, his trademark curl drenched, his hair plastered over his eyes. Clark spits out a mouthful of water and fixes her with a stare that still manages to come across as weighty and dignified despite their current situation. Kara spares a glance around her and sees the side profile of the Supergirl statue where they’d had their midnight heart-to-heart. There are people in the park this time around, however, their eyes wide and their phones out, recording this strange anomaly with rapt attention. It reminds Kara of all that’s at stake.

“You heard him!” she argues back, wrenching her foot from Kal’s grasp. Superman is left holding her soggy boot — and of all the terrible, grisly scenarios running through her head, all of the sadistic and creative torture methods that Lex is preparing to try out on her as they speak, Kara honestly hadn’t thought she’d have to go through it missing a boot and wearing nothing but a filthy sock with colorful cartoon dogs on it. A flash goes off near the shore just as Clark raises her boot in the air, a frog hopping out of it, and Kara can only imagine the headlines. “He said me. Only me!”

“You really think Lex is going to object to the prospect of two gift-wrapped Kryptonians showing up to his secret lair?” Clark raises an eyebrow, chucking her boot at her chest. “We’re going together — end of discussion.”

The Doomsday Clock ticks ominously in her head, but still, Kara resists. If there was any solid ground that was accessible to her, she would have put her foot down by now. “Absolutely not!”

“I know the location. I could send your sister and everyone else the coordinates at a moment’s notice.” Kal begins to hover, his feet barely grazing the rippling surface of the water. He looks down at her with a discerning, piercing frown. “Either we go now, before it’s too late, or we break every rule of the game he’s making us play and all those people get hurt. What’s your preference?”

“That’s not fair,” she spits out, and Kara hates him for holding all of the cards — hates herself even more for the secret, all-consuming feeling of relief that’s rushing through her, grateful beyond all logic for not having to do this alone. “How dare you box me into a corner like this!”

“I’m only doing what you would. We need to go, Kara.” Clark extends his hand, looking grim and determined and strangely at peace with it all. Maybe he feels the same way as she does — maybe, despite all their bickering and claims to the contrary, he wants to tackle this together as much as she does. They don’t get the chance to face impossible odds together very often, and as much as Kara despises this new reality, is already plagued with nightmarish visions of her cousin at the mercy of Lex, of her allowing it to happen, she does feel stronger. Fortified against what’s coming next — and less lonely, at the very least.

“Fine — but we need to hurry,” she heaves out, grabbing his hand. United in the knowledge that neither of them could stop the other from going through with this if they tried, they shoot off toward city limits.

Not seeing any point in proceeding with subtlety at this junction, Kara lands in the alleyway leading to the address with enough power to rattle the windows around the place for a block. Kal touches down just a half-step to her side, and they watch as a very disgruntled stray cat leaps into the air and then scurries away in pursuit of some flea-infested mice.

Clark slicks his hair back with his hand. In the course of their trip over, they’ve both managed to dry off and look a tad more respectable walking up to what might turn out to be an executioner’s block. “Nice part of town,” he observes. “Lex could make a killing in the real estate business if he wasn’t so fixated on murdering every alien he can get his hands on.”

“Don’t give that man any more ideas,” Kara bites back with a rather queasy scowl, swallowing down bile as she glances at her phone. Covering her screen with her other hand so she can’t see the obscene amount of missed calls and unanswered text messages waiting for her to stumble upon like a venomous snake in the grass, Kara breathes out a sigh of relief. “Thank Rao. We’ve still got another five minutes to spare.”

Clark shifts his weight. “The power of supersonic flight.” Her cousin watches as she turns off the screen just as another incoming call from Alex buzzes in. His brow furrows and he gives her what Kara is sure is meant to be a soft and concerned look, not pitying. “You know, there’s enough time to answer her if you want to,” he notes. “Alex is going to be awfully upset if you don’t-”

“Did you say goodbye to Lois?” Kara interrupts, acting on a hunch. Clark falters, his gaze suddenly fixed on the ground, and Kara’s heart twists. They really are exactly alike.

“No, I didn’t.”

She sets her phone down on the cracked and warped pavement and kicks it, sending it spinning to a halt underneath one of the dumpsters on the far side of the alley. No tracking — Lex was clear on that much, and Rao knows that she’s already overextending her luck by showing up with Kal-El holding onto her coat-tails — but she can at least give her sister a general location. She nods just once. “Then you’ll understand why I can’t answer my sister. Come on, we need to get moving.”

Clark stays where he is, his expression growing dark and pained. Kara begins to feel a kindred sense of shame curdling in her gut. “Lois was right. We really are all of the terrible things they said we are,” he says. “I mean, what sort of a person won’t even-?”

Kara doesn’t react outwardly, but by now her regret is powerful enough to make her keel over and dry heave against one of those dumpsters. “The sort that has to do the right thing. The moral choice. The needs of the many outweigh that of the few, right?”

He straightens up, beginning to trail behind. “Yeah, you’re- you’re right,” he says with a sigh.

“Let’s go,” she urges, her voice cracking just barely. She’d expected Clark to tell her she was right, because realistically, this is the only choice she can make. It’s for damn sure the choice he would have made had their roles been reversed; the fact that he’s here now is complete proof of that. Still, it doesn’t make her any less guilty about the detached, duty-bound way she’s chosen to go about it. “We can wallow in self-hatred later after we make sure Lex takes his finger off of that trigger.”

Unable to do anything else, Clark pads along beside her, neither of them making eye contact.

She appraises her surroundings for the first time, and her mouth twists in sour recognition. “This is where Agent Liberty used to hold all of his anti-alien rallies. Lex funded his entire operation; I wouldn’t be surprised if he owns everything in a five-mile radius of here.”

“Like I said,” Clark echoes, kicking a rock hard enough that it wedges itself into the plastered wall of the entrance they’re drawing steadily closer to. “Nice part of town.”

They both stop at the dilapidated entrance, Kara staring through the rusted and corroded metal of the door to find only an empty hallway. She listens for a heartbeat, for the thrum of energy coming from a weapon or a trap of some kind, and finds only silence. It’s eerie, disconcerting, and even as she chalks it up to Lex being far too clever to give away his exact location without thinking to dampen tell-tale sounds like that, Kara feels something cold and clammy trickle down her spine. It’s one thing to arrive here, ready to give herself up on a platter; it’s very much another thing altogether to actually walk through the door and do it.

Clark places a hand on her shoulder, and Kara can feel it subtly quake. “You okay?” he asks, and Kara looks down to realize that her own hands are trembling too.

Shaking her head, Kara doesn’t feel the need to dance around the truth. Not with her family — not with Kal-El, who is steadfast and loyal enough to walk this path with her hand in hand. “Not really,” she admits, and just by looking into his eyes, Kara knows that her cousin feels the same. “Ready?”

“Not really,” he answers, and the smile they share is a true one, no matter how sad. “But let’s go anyway.”

Kara reaches up to his shoulder and squeezes his hand. “I’m glad you’re here, Kal,” she whispers, then opens the door, submerging them both in the dank gloom of what might just end up being the place where Lex finally evens the score against them.

Creeping across the space, Kara thinks she should probably feel more trepidation, but… frankly, she’s more confused than anything else. They’ve entered into what, by all accounts, used to be a very presentable building — and there’s no trace of Lex or anything CADMUS-related in the slightest. As they round the corner, entering the main space, she catches Clark’s stare out of the corner of her eye. Just like her, he’s scanning the scene around them with rapt attention. Stumbling over some lumpy carpet squares whose designs look straight out of an 80s roller rink, Kara holds up her hand.

“Are we… are we in the right place?” she whispers. If they’d made a mistake somehow, if they’ve wasted the remnants of their allotted time kicking their way into the wrong building… Kara doesn’t want to know what the repercussions will be. She knows that Alex and J’onn and the rest are scattered throughout the city, doing what they can to locate Lex’s weaponry and evacuate the surrounding areas, but it won’t be enough. This is their only chance to save those people. “Please tell me we are.”

Kal rolls up his sleeve and Kara catches a glimpse of the address that Lex had revealed to them scrawled messily on her cousin’s wrist. “This is the place alright,” he confirms, understanding her unspoken hesitation. “It sure is… corporate looking, isn’t it? A bit boring for Lex’s tastes.”

He’s right; what they’ve marched into seems to be an abandoned, burnt-out office space — and while Kara, on principle, expects the unexpected when it comes to Lex Luthor, and understands that, in his defense, this was all scraped together last minute, she has a hard time picturing him jumping out and murdering either of them in such a quaint, unassuming place. Lex isn’t the type to deliver his evil monologue next to the water cooler that, by some miracle, looks to still be fully functioning.

“I’ll be honest, I imagined more cobwebs and giant lasers and well, some more theatrics,” Kara responds, staring at the bowl of paperclips on one of the desks inside the long-forgotten cubicles. She turns to face Clark, scared for different reasons than when they first arrived. She’d thought she’d known what she was walking into. “You know Lex better than I do. What’s going on here, Kal?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he admits, disoriented and somber. “But I don’t like it one bit.”

Clark’s foot crunches over some broken glass, and they continue to silently explore the space. Rounding the corner, Kara finds a row of private offices — and a faint, flickering glow flooding out underneath the door of the far one. “Psst!” Kara beckons her cousin over, nodding down at the dark hallway. “I’d say that’s our best lead,” she offers.

“Yeah. Not exactly a fancy executive suite, but desperate times call for desperate measures.” Kara takes a skittish step forward, and Clark’s hand darts out, capturing her elbow. “Kara — whatever happens in there… we’ve got to stay together, okay?” he says. “That’s our best shot if we- if we want to get out of this in one piece.”

Understanding the gravity of his request, Kara sends him a grim, radiant smile. “You think I’m going to miss my chance to tell your wife that you swallowed a minnow in that pond?” she jokes, and just for that, she gets a smile back. “Kaoshuh, Kal-El.”

However stilted and limited his understanding of the language is, Kal understands the sentiment. He moves his arm up, cupping her cheek, and lowers his forehead to hers. “Let’s go get this over with.”

…

Lex is waiting for them, perched between the desk that is far too large to be functional inside this broom closet of a room and a row of overflowing filing cabinets.

Well, that isn’t quite true. There is a hologram of Lex there to greet them, his virtual leg going through the desk entirely. While the real Lex Luthor is nowhere in sight, this technology must be patched into a live feed because wherever the man is, his eyes light up when Kara slowly opens the door.

“Oh, you actually showed up,” Lex announces with glee, and while the clapping of his hands sounds hollow and tinny, the disdain comes across loud and clear. Clark bursts through the doorway next, and Lex’s eyes go impossibly wider. Kara doesn’t know if she’s ever seen him this outwardly enthused. “And you brought family!”

Even separated by time and space and millions of pixels, watching Superman and Lex Luthor reunite chills Kara down to the bone. Clark’s wide, imposing frame dwarfs the tiny room and everyone in it, and yet Lex seems to loom over them all. “It’s been a very long time, Clark Kent,” Lex says, and the temperature of the room drops.

“Lex.” Clark stands rigid and tall, and despite everything she’s read about it, despite all of the accounts from James, Lena, Lois, and other people who were there to watch it happen firsthand, Kara honestly can’t imagine what it was like the last time these two men met. Metropolis got off lucky — Kara knows that much. “I should have thrown you into the Phantom Zone when I had the chance.”

“If I recall the events correctly, you were too busy spitting up blood to do any dirty work yourself.” Lex phases through the desk and stands toe to toe with Superman. Despite his absence from the room, the confrontation somehow feels tactile, imposing. Kara finds herself tensing as if in preparation for a physical strike; clicking his tongue, Lex smiles. “That particular science experiment of mine was a resounding success. All it took was turning one regular old sun red and you were exposed as the pretender you truly are.”

Clark glowers down at the man, and Kara can see the steam in his head building up. “A success only to you, Luthor,” he spits out. “No one else saw you nearly wiping Metropolis off the map in the same way.”

“My… peers tend to not understand why I do what I do. They will in time recognize my work for what it is, but for now… collateral damage is always a certainty in any paradigm shift. You think Alexander the Great would be remembered in our history books if he wasn’t as much of a brutal conqueror as he was a just, noble king?”

“You’re delusional if you think the history books will remember you as anything but a despot,” Clark bites back. “You- you haven’t changed at all! You’re even more monstrous than the day I put you away.”

“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s,” Lex answers, completely unrepentant. He leans in closer, relishing the hatred on Clark’s face. “Tell me, do you still visit the memorial for all of those people you couldn’t save?”

Clark growls, his eyes glowing red. The blast of heat shoots harmlessly through Lex’s impeccable three-piece suit, setting fire to the desk chair behind him. As Lex laughs, Clark roars. “Why, you spineless-”

“That’s enough!” Kara cuts in, stepping into their charged moment at last. Blowing out the fire, she gives her cousin what she hopes he can interpret as a calming, steadying look through his anger. She knows what it’s like to have Lex twist your emotions every which way for his personal amusement — and Clark hasn’t had to inoculate himself against that kind of poison in a very long time. “It’s not worth it,” she says, glaring over at the other man. “He uses the same tricks every time. Don’t let him get to you.”

Lex refocuses on her with renewed interest, adjusting his tie as he tilts his head her way. “Supergirl, you look very well. Righteous and blustering as always,” he greets.

Kara makes an effort to keep her expression a blank slate. “Can’t say the same for you,” she notes, eyes flickering across Lex’s shadowy stubble — the only outward indicator that the man is not as polished as he seems. “This is a downgrade for you, is it not? I can’t imagine that your namesake, Alexander the Great, ever found himself in a dive like this.”

“It’s suitable for my present needs.” Lex studies her, looking for a fleshy, vulnerable bit of her that he can poke at, no doubt. “But enough of that — catch me up! How are you? How is my darling sister? So difficult to see all of the gory details on grainy CCTV footage — will her shoulder heal up just fine?”

Refusing to take the bait, Kara recenters herself. “She’s doing fine, no thanks to you,” she replies, drawing herself up to her full height. It’s a chess match that Lex wants, Kara knows — and while she has no hope of competing with his preferred Machiavellian way of playing, Kara thinks she might be able to delay her checkmate long enough that she can figure out what Lex’s aims are. None of this is going the way that Kara expected — and the sooner she learns what his real motivation for luring her and Clark here is, the better. “Lena recovered well enough to embarrass you and the rest of CADMUS in front of everyone.”

Lex smiles, willing to play along. “Is that what you think happened?” he asks. “My sister may have gotten her fair share of verbal barbs in — and she’s quite the orator, make no mistake — but I’d say I got the last word in, wouldn’t you? You’re rubbing off on her, Supergirl. She’s become so idealistic and hopeful in achieving a better tomorrow that it’s become addictively satisfying to wipe that virtuous look off of her face.”

“Satisfying, huh?” Kara crosses her arms, content to mindlessly spar back. It’s better than falling through a trap door or dealing with whatever Lex has up his sleeve for the two of them. “It always comes back to your ego, doesn’t it Lex? You can’t stand the fact that your sister time and time again triumphs over you. She’s the only one who always manages to beat you — seeing as she’s your little sister, That must really sting.”

Clark watches the two of them face off with a stormy expression, taking in such a deep breath that Kara knows he’s going to butt in at any moment. Kara shoots him a look. The more time they have to stall, the better their odds are of getting out of this alive, of reinforcements showing up.

“Pathetic. How’d I know you’d come roaring to my sister’s defense?” Lex drawls, eyes cold. Kara’s jabs have gotten to him, and she knows they’re about to walk on volatile ground. “You’re predictable, and while it’s become rather dull, it does help me in pulling off little schemes like this without a hitch.”

“And what is this, Lex?” Clark says, and Kara purses her lips. She’s learned from Lena that the best way to deal with Lex is through patience, but her cousin never got that lesson. His tried and true approach of expecting a straight answer may work on common criminals, but not on someone as maniacal as Lex Luthor.

“A confirmation of my favorite hypothesis, my old friend,” Lex answers. “Tell me, is altruism a dominant trait within the gene pool of the House of El, or are you really both just that stupid?”

Kara chooses not to answer that particular goad. Done with dancing around the facts, she supposes she might as well take a breath and dive in. “We’re here. I followed your instructions. Now tell us what you want, and let’s be done with this.”

On the other hand, Lex doesn’t seem quite as willing to get down to business — which is strange, coming from a man who has his two greatest enemies at his relative mercy. Kara narrows her eyes as the man starts to chuckle again, trying in vain to sense something with her powers that makes this place out of the ordinary. “But you didn’t follow them completely, did you? Don’t get me wrong, it certainly is a pleasant surprise to get the chance to humiliate Superman, but I specifically told you to come here alone.”

“That wasn’t her call — it was mine,” Kal says. “You designed it so only a Kryptonian could discover where you were with your little parlor trick on television. You really didn’t expect me to show up?” Superman cracks his knuckles, injecting as much menace as he can toward a man that’s not even there. Kara wants to tell him to save his breath, but something tells her that Lex is going to do it for her. “For years I’ve lived with regret over allowing you to go down such a dark path, but I see now that it was never in my control. I’m not going to allow you to do to my cousin and her city what you did to me and Metropolis.”

“Oh shut up, Clark,” Lex snaps, the humor wiped from his face as quickly as it came. “You’re as bland and hackneyed as the day we first met — Supergirl may have her issues, but at least she’s much more entertaining to toy with. I’m glad you’re here, though; not because I’m a fan of people going against my wishes, but because it’ll make this next part much more rewarding.”

Kara walks right through him, playing at being unaffected. Sitting on the desk, she reaches for a ball of rubberbands, rolling it back and forth between her hands. Any subliminal method that she can use to ruffle Lex’s feathers and get him worked up and fixated on her — not her cousin — she will try.

“Won’t you get it over with, then? I know you must be getting antsy about the fact that no one’s asked you to deliver your evil monologue yet,” she says, droll and cocky. Clark’s eyes dart between the two of them, clearly not enjoying this dynamic between his archnemesis and his only surviving blood relative that he was until now completely unaware of. Kara is willing to get dirty when it comes to Lex — she’s willing to draw blood using any tactics necessary if it buys her more time to think. “We’re both here waiting, practically at your beck and call. Tell me why I’m here… before I call your bluff.”

Lex raises his eyebrow in a way that reminds Kara of Lena so much that it feels physically painful. It’s easy to forget that her best friend shares blood with someone like him, shares inclinations and habits and similarities that run at a genetic level. Moments like these when Kara remembers… it makes her heart drop into her stomach. “What makes you think I’m bluffing, Supergirl?” he purrs in the same self-possessed way that his sister does. With Lena, it never fails to make Kara blush; with Lex, it only makes her see red.

“Because you’re stalling. What reason does a man like you have to hesitate when you finally hold all of the power over us?” Curt and unamused, Kara gives him a once-over, the hologram glitching as he turns in place slightly, keeping her in his line of sight. “And what sort of man would Lex Luthor be if he wasn’t even there to personally kill two Krpytonians himself?”

All at once, their measured, almost playful banter ends and Lex turns cold, his eyes devoid of anything but hatred. “Clever girl,” he hisses after an agonizing stretch of silence. “Clearly, you got all of the brains in the family.”

Clark squares up, not liking the tone of Lex’s voice or the way he’s looking at Kara in the slightest. The room takes a turn for the worse. “No more taunts,” Kal says. “What’s the meaning of all this?”

Lex turns back around to regard his longtime foe, and finally, he begins to explain after a heavy sigh. “You have to understand, Superman. Your cousin has… foiled my plans far too many times for me to have not taken it personally by now, and what’s worse is that she always seems to wriggle herself out of dealing with any repercussions for her insolence. I’ve tried all of the typical maneuvers: threatening and targeting her loved ones, framing her for a myriad of federal crimes… even gave it my best shot at turning my beloved sister against her.” Kara turns the rubberbands to molten goop in her hand at the mention of Lena, and Lex sneers. “I really did hope that last one would stick, but unfortunately for me, their mushy feelings got in the way of things proceeding according to plan. Of course, I’m left in the present day with only one strategy left to equip. It’s a rather primitive one for my taste — but terrorism certainly is effective at making heads turn in the right direction.”

Lex turns back to her. “You’re right, Kara. If I’d wanted to kill you today, I would have been waiting in one of those cubicles outside — and you would have been dead already.”

“But you don’t want me dead, do you?” Kara stands up, meeting his line of reasoning head-on. “Not yet at least.”

“Why would I kill you at a time like this? After that televised anthem you put out, your city wholeheartedly adores you again. The people here, alien and human both, would do anything for you. If you die now, you only become a martyr — and a rather untouchable one at that. Not even I could come up with something to tarnish a legacy as bulletproof and pure as that.”

“You underestimate the people out there,” Kara says, voice hard as steel. “They’re more than just sheep to be guided this way and that by vain men like you.”

The man hums in acknowledgment, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “At this point in our little game, that argument is nothing more than semantics,” he says. “But what would happen if — and humor me here for a moment — Supergirl were to walk away from this dramatic encounter completely unscathed… but the people she’s sworn to protect don’t?”

Kara’s blood turns to ice. “What are you going to do?” she demands, nostrils flaring.

“Like I said before, you’re predictable. I knew that you’d come here, that you’d do everything in your power to comply with what I’d asked of you… and just to spare those masses of sniveling aliens. You made some impressive promises to the people of this city, and on national TV at that. What happens if you can’t follow through?” Lex stares her down with an expression that pierces through to her heart. Far past acting cool and collected, Kara takes a half-step back, stumbling. “Who says I have any intention of upholding my side of the bargain?”

In an instant, Kara knows what could be seconds away from happening. Explosions throughout the city. Her friends, families, and allies, desperately trying to help but getting caught in the blast despite their best efforts. All because Kara walked into this trap — and all because Lex is trying to prove a point.

“You wouldn’t- you can’t!” Clark utters behind them, but Kara knows better than to protest such a silly thing like that. This is absolutely something that Lex would do — something he’s likely incredibly looking forward to as a matter of fact. Eyes wide, she reapproaches.

“Lex, look — you have us now. You have me! Your past self would be kicking you right now; you’re truly going to pass up my head on a platter? Why not be done with all of the melodramatics and just kill me right here, right now?”

“And watch this city build you another dozen statues? Not a chance.” Lex shakes his head, revelling in the shared look of horror on Kara and Kal’s faces. “Most of the people on this planet view your compulsion towards sacrifice to be your very best and most heroic quality. They can rest easy at night knowing that Supergirl would give up life and limb before allowing anything to happen to innocent people. I wonder how they’ll see you after you arrive too late to save anyone. Will you even be able to look them in the eye?”

“No,” Kara falters, scrambling and trying to think fast. She’d crushed her comms earpiece the moment she’d left LCorp, and disposed of her phone outside — but maybe Clark hasn’t. There’s still time to warn the others, to stop this or at least lessen the blow before it’s too late. If she could just get her cousin’s attention, could manage to stall Lex for a few minutes longer…

“Then again, strangers in the street will be the least of your problems,” Lex continues. Kara grits her teeth and holds herself back from an outburst. Right now, letting him twist the knife without making a peep is her most viable option. “My mother tells me that your tendency for throwing yourself onto the closest funeral pyre you can find has caused a rift as of late amongst your loved ones. It certainly had my sister all worked up when she confronted her in the DEO today. How will you ever face your friends and family again after this?” Kara grimaces, and Lex rears back for a final blow. “I bet you didn’t even say goodbye, did you? I don’t need to kill you yet — not with how you’ve been self-destructing so fantastically.”

Kara sits back down with a shudder, burying her face in her hands. “Kal, you need to warn the others,” she breathes out at a volume that only he can hear, using her very real feelings of panic and despair as a useful cover. Perking up slightly, Kara knows Kal is listening. “If I can keep him here running his mouth, there might be enough time to-”

“If it’s any consolation, know that those people… well, they’re not people, are they?” Lex drones on. Understanding the message and not in any position to argue, Clark starts to carefully back away towards the door. Lex’s back is turned, his attention on a very shaken Supergirl, and Kara really thinks this could work — if she can only manage to hold it together for a while longer. “I think that’s one of the reasons why you’re so amusing to break. Your cousin, he’s an all-around bleeding heart, a lackluster, dimwitted sap —” Superman freezes in place as Lex gestures blindly his way. Kara’s eyes flash, and in a silent whoosh, he’s gone. She prays he won’t be too late. “But you- you’re more than that — and you’re far more alien than he could ever hope to be. You have a real stake in this, don’t you?”

Kara raises her hands up, revealing her pale face. She’s rapidly running out of options — and even a narcissist like Lex will eventually tire of gloating. “I do,” she says, her voice wavering in a way that is not faked in the slightest. “You believe that this is the only way to- to hurt me in a way that’ll count. But I- I’m begging you, Lex — take this personal vendetta out on me, no one else.”

Lex’s face sours immediately, and Kara knows that her window of opportunity is rapidly closing. “Don’t act so inane and sentimental. This is far more than a personal grudge, Supergirl, this is a practical choice. Two birds, one stone,” he spits out. “Begging isn’t a good look on you, and neither is your attempt at shrewdness.” Kara’s eyes widen just a degree, and Lex’s accompanying smile is nothing short of vile. “Oh, you think I wasn’t notified the moment Superman made his hasty exit?” Turning mocking, Lex jeers. “My apologies — should I have covered my eyes and counted to twenty?”

Keeping her head high, Kara tightens her jaw. Kal is fast, sure, and strong. While this isn’t exactly a positive outlook on the situation, she holds out hope that Superman will have managed to pull off a miracle or two. “He’ll be able to do something — save someone from your senseless violence.”

“He would have, Supergirl, and I respect the effort — however futile.” Lex tuts, bringing his hands out of his pockets to reveal the rudimentary trigger device. Tossing it into the air, he chuckles as Kara gasps, and jerks as if to catch it even though she knows it’s far out of her reach. “Stellar timing on your part; Superman is going to arrive just in time to see the worst of it.”

Her vision tunnels. Struggling to keep her breathing in check, Kara’s eyes glow red. “What are you talking about?”

Lex confirms the obvious with the cruel glint in his eyes alone.

“I pulled this trigger ten minutes ago,” he states clinically as if he were delivering the results of a science experiment, not admitting to an act of terror. “Which you would have known had you not destroyed all of your means of communication upon arriving here, but I commend your obedience. You’d make an excellent pet dog, I suspect. Bright, loyal, dumb… all of the trappings are there.”

Kara shoots up, immediately focusing her hearing across the city. She hears very little other than sirens, and no telltale signs of an explosion: no buildings groaning to support their own weight, no roaring fires, and nobody calling out for help in the rubble. Despite knowing that Lex has no reason to lie, Kara rounds back on him with a snarl.

“How do I know you’re not bluffing again?”

Because Lex seems to know her better than she knows herself at the moment, he picks up on her logic with ease. Shrugging, his smile turns expectant, like a professor waiting for their favorite student to eventually stumble upon the correct answer. “You’re expecting towering infernos, I presume. Great, big, noisy explosions, but no — I decided to go with the silent but deadly approach this time. I think you’ll enjoy the weapon I used,” he says. “I wasted precious time digging through DEO storage to find it, but the irony was simply too sweet to pass on. You remember the Medusa virus, I’m sure?”

Oh, Rao. What has he done?

The better question is what has she done? What has she just sent her cousin into? Through her inaction, her choice to turn her back on her friends and stubbornly play by Lex’s rules without even a thought that he might be playing her like a fiddle, has she allowed all of those people to die — her friends to die? J’onn, Nia, Brainy… all brave, all selfless — all alien, and very much susceptible to the monstrosity that her father created. Are they all dead now, motionless among the people they’d been trying to protect? Kara knows how efficient Medusa is, how violently it wreaks havoc on an immune system. Were they all alone and afraid when it happened, suffocating on their own breath?

Stunned, Kara doesn’t know what to say, much less what to do about it now. There’s nothing that Supergirl or Kara Danvers can do to rectify such a horrific mistake. It’s exactly what Lex wants, and he begins to laugh again at her frozen expression. “Part of me does wish I were there in person to watch all of this anguish stamp out that famous hope of yours,” he says. “But I value my life, and honestly, I’m not sure I’d survive the encounter. You Kryptonians have a nasty streak of righteous anger — and if Medusa is anything to go off of, your family has an inclination for a blanket idea of balancing the scales.”

She knows Lex is pouring salt in the wound, knows he’s trying to provoke her further — but through the fog, anger seems to be the only reasonable path forward. Kara doesn’t flinch away from the rage boiling her blood; instead, she fully leans into it, lets it sharpen her vision, and unblock her sticking vocal cords.

Allowing her heat vision to flare up and tear apart her surroundings, Kara stalks across the room, knocking the device that Lex is projecting from onto the floor. As the room sets ablaze, Kara stands over the man, his blurry and damaged image cast sideways across the ugly carpet.

“This is one choice you’re going to regret,” she whispers. There’s no need to raise her voice; they both know she means what she says, treats what she’s breathing out like an oath, and Lex finally stops laughing. The two of them size each other up, accepting the shift towards what’s just become a very personal, very mutual battle of enmity. “I’ll start with CADMUS. I’ll throw every last follower of yours into prison for the rest of their lives. I’ll destroy all of your bases of operation, your projects, your property — your wealth. I’m going to make sure that you’re alone and penniless, hated by everyone and everything, and then and only then will I come for you.”

“Is that so?” Lex responds with a bitter venom that settles in both of their bodies, and Kara knows then and there that only one of them will walk away from this promised confrontation alive.

She meets him halfway, eyes glowing once more. “You can run, hide, flee halfway across the universe if you choose to,” Kara tells him, slow and certain. For the first time in a very long while, Kara can tell that she’s finally managing to scare Lex Luthor once more. “It won’t matter. I’ll find you eventually — and you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.” Staring him down, they share a passing look of mutual understanding. “I’m a forgiving person, Lex,” she tells him, not blinking once. “You’ll find I have compassion for just about everything — but my leniency only extends so far. Unlike my cousin, there is anger in me that I have spent a very long time fighting to control. For a man as deserving of it as you, I won’t hesitate to let it out.”

Glaring up at her without any smoke and mirrors, Lex bares his teeth. Kara knows he understands — and that he doesn’t regret it. Not yet, at least. “Until next time then, Supergirl.”

She destroys his device without a second thought, and his image warps and melts away along with the room. Shoulders heaving, Kara shakes herself out of her fury, shoving it back down into her gut where it needs to remain — building and intensifying in preparation for the moment that she does find Lex. Kara goes to the window and looks out to the city. There’s work to be done out there, and she’s wasted enough time already.

Now she needs to see for herself what damage has been done.

…

She’s late to Thanksgiving dinner.

Given what she’s been doing throughout the past six days and nights, Kara expects that the matter of her punctuality does not come as a surprise to any of her friends and family. She’s barely stopped moving since landing at the first site that Medusa was dispersed at, and rest has become as strange to her as the idea of roasted turkeys and sweet potatoes.

And she understands that, in the grand scheme of things, National City had gotten off extremely lucky. Her sister and J’onn had stumbled upon one of Lex’s devices almost immediately, and recognizing it for what it was, kicked evacuations into high gear. J’onn, Nia, Brainy, and as many people as they could reach were moved well out of harm’s way and really, Kara couldn’t have done any better of a job if she’d been there herself.

But she wasn’t there — and that’s the killing blow.

An airborne version of Medusa was still released inside a dozen locations scattered across the city, and without Supergirl or Superman’s speed and immunity to help them, people died. Even more are hospitalized; every hospital, clinic, and lab in the city is overflowing with very sick, rapidly deteriorating aliens — and Kara knows that even more have been turned away. She’s watched it herself, rushing around the city and setting up medical stations right there in the street if needed. Kara watched the pain on those nurses' faces as they closed the doors on a coughing, feverish family of five, knowing that it was her fault that that nurse just had to go against everything she believed in.

Once again, it could have been worse. That’s what everyone keeps reminding her, after all: the patients in the hospital are more cheerful and hopeful than Ksra’s felt in a long time. LCorp owns the majority of the hospitals in the surrounding area — and under Lena’s careful watch, National City is one of the most advanced, expansive, and well-funded areas for practicing medicine in the world. There’s a cure for Medusa, sure, and the DEO neutralized the dispersal agent almost as soon as it was released, but the damage is done. More than a dozen people take their last rattling breath, swallowing down a hostile virus, and Kara, unaffected and clear-eyed, watches it happen.

To say that she feels shame is an understatement. Kara grieves for these people — for the loved ones they’d so abruptly left behind, for their hopes and dreams that had been so cruelly stolen from them. Each and every one of them had come to Earth for a new chance at a peaceful, prosperous life, and Kara wasn’t able to ensure that they got that. Not only did a Kryptonian fail in her oath to protect them, but it was a Kryptonian virus that was the source of so much suffering. Clark feels the same way, she knows, but even with him straining right alongside her to shoulder the guilt, it’s a weight that Kara simply can’t lift and has her pinned down completely. And yet, compared to all of these good, innocent people around her, fighting and clinging to life in sterile beds and under cold hospital lights, Kara recognizes that whatever she’s feeling — shame, guilt, fear, anger, all of it — means absolutely nothing. Her pain offers her no credentials of any kind here.

She’s been selfish, blind, and far too eager to play with the hand that Lex gave her. Not only has it allowed Lex to play with her and her friends' and family’s feelings to his heart’s content, but it’s also created a disaster zone in the middle of her city.

It’s one thing to make her peace with the fact that she can’t save everyone. However hard of a pill that is to swallow, Kara acknowledges that truth and wears it around her shoulders alongside her cape. It’s another ask completely to expect her to accept that she could have saved these people — should have saved some of them, any of them — had she not done exactly what Lex expected her to do. The fact that she can’t meet any of her friend’s concerned, sympathetic faces, the knowledge that, to Lex, this is causing far more lasting pain than anything he could have done to her physically — Kara’s lost this one, and she lost very badly.

The worst part is that no one is treating her in the way Kara knows she ought to be. When she’d stumbled to a stop in front of Al’s dive bar, eyes falling on the long line of stretchers waiting outside and the pinched and drawn faces of the DEO agents rushing in and out of the front door, Alex was there, swimming in her vision immediately.

“Thank God,” her sister had breathed out, engulfing her in a hug and planting several teary kisses on Kara’s cheeks the moment they had a moment of privacy away from other people. The human civilians of National City have turned out in droves to help in any way that they can, able to stand as strong as Supergirl, the virus passing through their lungs without incident. Kara tries to take heart in it, tries to draw her own strength from the universal output of goodwill, this spit in the face to Lex’s aims of dividing the people. Everyone is looking to her as an example right now — but Kara feels too frail and too guilt-ridden to be the beacon of hope she’s supposed to be. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, you hear me?” Alex demanded, angry for only a moment before pulling Kara back in tight.

It was all she could do at that moment to weakly rub Alex’s back, not feeling all that worthy of the kind and all-consuming comfort that her sister was offering. They’d been in plenty of scrapes just like this before, Kara knows — but never have the consequences felt so plainly to be her responsibility. To Alex and all of her other friends who’d roped her in for long embraces and whispered words of gentle, forgiving support, this isn’t anything more than an unpreventable tragedy, an act of violence controlled by a madman. To Kara, it feels like she pulled down on the trigger herself.

The day after the attack, once all of the bodies and the sick had been carried out of the buildings — once there was nothing else that Kara could do with her hands, no more excuses that she could give Alex as to why she was still tearing her way through hospitals and bars and apartment buildings — they’d had a team meeting.

It had been brief and to the point. Looking around the table inside one of the DEO’s briefing rooms, Kara knew that there wasn’t a person there that had gotten any more sleep than she had in the past 48 hours. Unable to do much more than stare holes at the pallid look of her face in the reflection of the table, Kara let Clark explain their side of the events. He walked the others, Lois and a babbling, blessedly-oblivious little Jon included, through what they’d encountered in the building. Slowly unfurling his fist that Kara thinks might have still been clenched from his encounter with Lex, Clark dropped his comms device onto the table, and that had been when Kara learned that there was an audio recording of exactly what went down.

She’d folded her hands under the table, accepting her fate. There was nothing there that was worth hiding from anyways, and if this was what finally brought some wrath onto her expectant frame, then Kara was ready for it — hoping for it, even.

The room remained silent throughout the playing of the recording. When the audio cut out, coinciding with the moment Clark had burst out of the nearest window, Kara raised her eyes up just slightly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. To her surprise, no one had so much as glanced over at her — appearing lost in their own heads instead.

“It seems that Lex Luthor was, and continues to be, multiple steps ahead of us,” Brainy said after a beat, likely ruminating on his own history with the man. “Even by taking the only feasible route offered to us under the pressurized circumstances, we were deceived. To say he is a dishonorable man seems… insufficient.”

It had been very nice of Brainy to refer to them as a collective, as if it wasn’t squarely Kara’s fault that any of this happened. It wasn’t a team decision for her to go flying right into Lex’s open and waiting trap, and yet no one had bothered to make that distinction. Her wonderful, loving, understanding team had instead been content to shoulder a share of the burden themselves. Lex had been wrong about them turning their backs on her — but honestly, Kara wished he’d been right. She’s not deserving of forgiveness now, not with everything so fresh and bloody and bare.

Someone had taken in a shuddering breath from across the table, and for a second, she’d thought that the blame she’d been waiting for would finally come. But it was Lena, who had spoken up next; Lena, who Kara hadn’t exchanged more than a lingering look with since the press conference. Lena, who hadn’t pushed and bullied her way into Kara’s arms as many of the others had. Lena, who had simply drunk in Kara’s presence just long enough to confirm that she was alive and well, and who had then thrown herself back into addressing the crisis in what ways she could.

The woman had been about as busy as Kara had been, but Kara knows that isn’t the reason why they haven’t had a moment alone together yet.

“I confirmed it last night with my Science Division. Isotope 454 — the only dispersal agent that my brother could have used to make that virus airborne… LCorp is still the only location in the world where it’s housed.” Lena had lowered her gaze, guilt-ridden and anguished in her own way. “I’m sorry, everyone,” she’d said at last, voice small and frail, and Kara understood then that she wasn’t the only person expecting to receive condemnation in the room. “It was my responsibility to ensure that my brother didn’t get his hands on that isotope. I should have done a thorough check of company files right away — that way, had I been more aware of what physical materials had been depleted from our stock rooms, I could have stopped-”

“I’ll have none of that,” Alex interrupted, swooping in and shutting down Lena before her self-reproach could kick into its highest gear. Kara had been glad it was Alex who had done it — had she done so as she’d instinctually itched to, Lena might have taken it the wrong way. “Lena, you’d had control over your company back for barely half of a day when Lex did this. There was no way that you could have done anything in time to impede on his plans which were obviously pretty far in motion.” Staring around the table, Alex had given everyone a look that Kara knows was mostly meant for her. “What happened is a tragedy, and none of us will forget it — but it’s not our fault, okay? We did what we could, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do for the foreseeable future. That’s all we can do.”

While Kara really does appreciate the sentiment that Alex had tried to impart upon her so fiercely, it’s not enough to make her peace over it. There’s only one path for Kara to take moving forward, and that is to move heaven and earth to make good on her promised threats to Lex.

It’s funny to think back on her quiet moment with Lena in the bathroom, them whispering back and forth about control, and restraint. Kara has no such restraint reserved for CADMUS any longer. After she can’t sit around waiting in ICU bays any longer, Kara… Kara goes on what most of the reporters in the city are calling a city-wide rampage.

Lex pushed her too far this time, William texts her a few nights into things. Kara’s been using the research that she compiled with him as a double-edged sword for her own benefit; after all those months of careful observation and disciplined research, she knows every location, every cell, and every leading figure in the organization. More importantly, Supergirl’s newfound intensity hasn’t only turned the heads of the Fourth Estate; CADMUS knows she’s coming for them, and there is nothing that any of them can do to stop her. Rather than fighting back through any organized means, they seem to have been frightened into paralysis. I wouldn’t want to be him right now. Good riddance.

Kara leaves him on read, unable and unwilling to explain why Kara Danvers has suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Later that night, she texts him her address, an unspoken reminder that even with everything going on, he’s still invited for the holidays, and leaves it at that.

It’s not violent, what she does. Other than demolishing every bit of anti-alien tech she can get her hands on into smithereens, Kara remains as held back as she always is when fighting her way through leagues of CADMUS lackeys and scientists, refusing to allow someone as despicable as Lex to be the catalyst to her turning against her own morals. She knows that it’s her change in demeanor that’s the cause for all of the tabloid stories and whispers on the street, can see it written plainly and fear-drenched across the faces of the people she’s taking down. Nevermind Kara Danvers: now it is Supergirl herself that seems to have dueling identities, caught on camera and passing through crowds; the one who is somber and gentle at every midnight vigil, every funeral service, there to hold the hand and smile at whoever is in need of a stranger with a kind face — and the Supergirl who is singlehandedly responsible for the National City Police Department breaking their quarterly arrest record in the span of a single week.

While she’s somewhat vacantly aware of what’s being said about her, about the rumors that Supergirl’s lost her brightness, lost her joy, Kara’s not in any place long enough to sit down and reflect on it. National City has other beacons of light that it can turn to in times like this — Dreamer, Lena, even Superman — but she remains unceasing in her crusade. Her leadership right now is through example — through action, and besides, Kara doesn’t care all that much about keeping up appearances at the moment. She knows it’ll pay off, what she’s doing. What good will a break do when she can feel CADMUS grow closer and closer to collapsing in on itself with every hideout she smashes her way through, every bank account that she texts Alex to have the DEO freeze and drain, every hidden cache of weapons obliterated?

Clark helps her the most — face tight and silent as he and Kara prove to be a nearly unstoppable duo. It’s risky, what they’re doing, and Kara knows that they get lucky on more than a few occasions to escape no worse for wear. Yet, even as she can recognize the inherent danger that comes with deciding to take down a terrorist organization overnight, there’s a kind of gravitas to what they’re doing that makes Kara feel more invincible than ever before. Let CADMUS try and stop her. Let Lex. She knows what needs to be done — knows that if she’d only done it sooner, then perhaps all of this needless bloodshed could have been avoided — and there is nothing that’s going to stop her now. It’s a reckless attitude to have, but as her successes begin to pile up, the support of her team grows with it.

J’onn pitches in when he can, as do the others — albeit with varying degrees of concern for her personal well-being. Nia and Brainy try to placate her with stories of recovery that they’ve heard, lure her into sitting with them for a cup of coffee, and share a good joke or two. Kara easily deflects their offers with polite excuses. J’onn and Kelly are characteristically quieter about it, sending Kara pointed looks when her eyes begin to droop and leaving her to go off on her nightly patrol with bags and bags full of greasy, much-needed food. They tread lightly enough around her that it’s easy for Kara to pretend like she doesn’t notice them at all.

Alex, needless to say, is the trickiest of them all. Kara needs her help — as Director of the DEO, her cooperation is absolutely paramount seeing as Kara has been dropping off boatloads of goons and dangerous weapons every day, and Alex’s signature on the dotted line and general good graces is the only thing that grants Kara jurisdiction in the building. In the interest of public safety and not letting anything get in the way of her cause, that means that Kara has to endure certain… efforts by her sister to get her to do the exact opposite.

Her sister is not as kind as Nia or Brainy, nor is she anywhere near achieving the same tact as Kelly and J’onn. No, Alex wields brute force as her weapon of choice, and that means Kara has to brace herself every time they get within a hundred yards of each other.

“Mom’s coming into town tomorrow. Seeing as you haven’t been in your apartment long enough to justify paying rent for the month, I offered up your couch,” Alex says to her as they’re both packed into her cramped office, Kara nursing some bruised knuckles and very begrudgingly walking her sister through the pile of paperwork she’s trudging through. As the prime witness for all of these arrests, Kara has no other choice than to take time off of her afternoon patrol for this. “Since Thanksgiving is at your place anyway, I figure someone needs to clean up in there, make it look like people actually live there.”

“That’s fine,” Kara replies robotically, studying the faint blues and violets adorning her hand. She’s found over the last few days that acting as agreeable and passive towards Alex as possible is her best line of defense. She’ll nod along to anything she has to say — and when needed, Kara will put her foot down. A fleeting thought flutters to the surface of her sleep-deprived brain, and Kara frowns. “So long as you let Lena know. She lives there too, you know, and I don’t want Eliza to come in and surprise her.”

At least, I think she does, Kara thinks to herself. To be honest, she hasn’t seen or spoken with Lena since the debrief in the DEO, and for all she knows, her best friend could have bought back her penthouse by now and up and moved out of Kara’s life completely.

Kara would understand. With the kind of friend she’s been to that woman of late, she can’t say that she can blame Lena in the slightest for kicking her to the curb in whatever way she deems most satisfying.

Alex laughs. It comes out sharp and displeased. “You think Lena’s spent any more time in that place than you have lately?” she asks, and while it doesn’t answer any of Kara’s unanswered questions, it confirms her suspicion that Lena’s turned to her workaholic coping strategies as much as Kara’s become dependent on being Supergirl. Clearing her throat, Alex tries a different approach. “You know, you could always drop by her office and tell her yourself. When’s the last time you’ve had an actual conversation with her? When’s the last time you’ve done anything not tangentially related to taking down CADMUS?”

Not looking to antagonize, Kara aims for a lackluster sort of neutrality. “We’ve both been busy,” she says, words clipped. “There’s time for that after-”

“What there’s time for is sleep, Kara. Some hydration, maybe? I know Kryptonians can get by with a lot less than we humans need, but even you have a limit. No offense, but you look terrible.” Alex squints her eyes at her over the file she’s reading. “Unless you plan on looking like shit in all of our upcoming family photos that you know Mom is going to force us to take, I’d suggest some serious R&R. How about on that couch in Lena’s office that you love so much? I know you’ve taken naps on that before, and I’m sure Lena would love the company-”

“I’ll sleep when I solar flare,” she says, toeing the line in the sand and saying something that she knows will make Alex’s blood boil. “Until then, if I have any of my powers at all, I need to use them to-”

“From the state of your fist, I’d say you’re going to lose them awfully soon, Kara.” Alex’s eyes narrow, not at all enamored by Kara’s line of reasoning. “If you don’t want to end up taking a dirt nap, I recommend you take a break before you flare out in the middle of a CADMUS safehouse.”

Kara lets out a short breath through her nose. “Alex,” she starts, nice and slow. “We have CADMUS on their heels because of how fast we’ve moved against them. If we lose any momentum, if we let up on them in the slightest, they might slither away. I’m keeping my foot on the gas until I run out.”

“Please spare me the spiel. Lord knows I’ve heard it enough already. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, okay?” Miraculously, her sister seems about as interested in arguing as she does; call it a holiday miracle, but when they stare each other down, there seems to be an uneasy understanding shared between them. “I just- I need you to know that I’m worried about you. You shouldn’t feel like this is solely your responsibility. What happened with Lex isn’t your fault-”

Alarm bells go off in Kara’s head; this is one conversation that she has zero intention of having. “I’m keeping a partner with me as promised,” she leaps in, cutting Alex off before she can veer into anything remotely resembling sympathy. “We’re close, Alex. Really close. Tell Mom to- to have some champagne bottles on hand tomorrow night. I truly believe that I can end this sooner rather than later.”

Alex lets out a sigh, and as Kara stands up in a hurry, she looks sad. It’s almost enough to give Kara pause. Almost. “And what happens when this is over?” she asks, questioning Kara about a future that she has no answer for. “When CADMUS is gone, where will all of your guilt go? Will you even allow yourself to have any peace?”

For a moment, her expression crumples, and Kara knows that Alex sees it. In her relentless effort to keep moving forward, Kara hasn’t let herself wonder about what comes next. Truth be told, she has no idea what she’s going to do next. Forgiving others comes easily for her, but forgiving herself? It’s a concept that Kara has absolutely no grasp of. “Champagne bottles,” she rattles off again in lieu of an actual response, and before her sister can stand up to wrestle her into a hug, Kara is gone.

…

So, yeah. Showing up late to Thanksgiving is somehow completely out of her control… and entirely her fault.

Truly, it was never her intention to skip out on the festivities. While Kara may be resistant of late to take some time for herself, she’s not a complete glutton for punishment, and she’s not going to deprive herself, her mother, or the rest of her family of having a safe, warm, happy night together — not after how this year has treated them. All of them are deserving of some holiday joy, Kara included, and while she has no delusions that she’ll be able to act like anything close to the big grinning ball of joy that she usually is this time of year, for Eliza, she can try.

She’d made an effort to wrap up early that day. Got done visiting with hospital patients and their families around noon, stopped in at Central Park to show her support at a demonstration for human and alien solidarity, even put on a headband with a turkey on it and took some pictures with some overjoyed preschoolers on her way back across town. If her smile looked a little spread thin, or her eyes lacked their usual shine… well, Kara knows that those people will blame it on the flash photography on their phones, not on her.

No, no one ever seems to blame her these days.

What happens is this; just at about a quarter to seven, right as Kara has changed into her civilian clothes long enough to wander down some grocery aisles, and stare at herself long enough in the store’s single-stall restroom that she confirms to herself that she definitely needs to take a shower before she can host a party at her place, she gets an alert from the DEO.

It’s an automated one — Kara suspects that her sister has made it abundantly clear to their team and to the rest of the DEO that Supergirl is taking the goddamn night off, please and thank you, and Alex would have called in a strike team on anyone who was foolish enough to message Kara themselves. It blinks incessantly on her phone; ducking into the frozen ice cream aisle, Kara lowers her glasses and taps on the screen and feels a rush of energy that seems to only come with CADMUS-related news these days.

Not only has the only remaining leader of CADMUS (other than Lex, of course), just shown his face, but he’s apparently in the middle of a classic television hijacking — in the middle of the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, no doubt.

Grabbing a few things from the store and then I’ll be right over, she texts her sister. She’ll feel much better about indulging in the night’s festivities if she knew that this was taken care of first.

We are eating at 7:30 with or without you! Alex chirps back. Need me to text you your address, or do you still remember it?

Ignoring her sister’s barbed threats, Kara checks her other messages quickly. There’s a few from Brainy, confirming that his tie isn’t going to clash with anyone else’s at the table; a short one from Clark, letting her know that he and Lois were on their way over nearly an hour ago… and then a few dozen from William — which, if Kara is right in assuming that he’d showed up to her apartment alone and not at all prepared to be ambushed by the famous reporter that he idolizes, are all likely SOS messages of varying degrees of intensity.

She reads the last few in passing and is delighted to discover that her newest friend seems to have charmed his way into the heart of Lois Lane.

I think she might actually… find me interesting? And funny? Maybe it’s just the wine talking, but if Lois Lane asked me right now to defect over to the Planet, I would, Kara reads, a small, stubborn smile growing unbidden on her face. Serves you right for abandoning your PARTNER in his time of greatest need.

I’m only kidding, Kara, William had texted again a few minutes later. Lois wants me to sit next to her at the table… please tell me you’re on your way? Also, your mother is a very nice lady.

It takes all of her willpower and a harsh reminder that there is an entire cell of CADMUS just waiting to be captured to keep Kara from collapsing into a fit of exhausted giggles right here in front of these frantic, last-minute shoppers. I’m sure you’re doing great. Be there soon, she texts back and reminded of Eliza, opens her unread message from her on a lighthearted whim — only for her heart to sink right back to its more accustomed spot of late, heavy against her stomach.

I’m excited to see you, sweetheart, Eliza had messaged her sometime in the early afternoon. Kara hadn’t even heard her phone buzz — or if she did, had ignored it entirely. Get here as soon as you can, alright? It’s been absolutely wonderful chatting with Lena… but she seems lonely, dear. I think she misses you more than she’s letting on… it’s the holidays, after all!

Had Lena really taken the entire day off? Had she been the one exchanging genial small talk with her mother over cups of apple cider, not Kara? And has she really spent all of this time in that apartment waiting for Kara to show up? Not sure how to respond to her mother, Kara pockets her phone and refocuses on the task at hand instead.

Kara takes her time flying to his location, not particularly concerned about whatever vitriolic ravings he’s spreading through that anonymous figurehead. As Kara has bled them dry of all of their other resources, CADMUS has turned to this method of propaganda more often than not, their broadcasts growing increasingly nonsensical, brief, and amusing as Kara bursts in on them time and time again. National City actively tunes into them now, she knows — not because they’re particularly frightened or interested in what these people have to say, but because it’s quite an entertaining show to watch Supergirl stomp all over them in real-time.

Sauntering into the cramped garage where the man is hiding out, Kara wears a mask that doesn’t look funny in the slightest. Of course, he has guards — and of course, Kara disposes them without breaking a sweat. Knocking politely on the closed door where the weasel is hiding, she relishes the look on his face as he turns around in the middle of a very ludicrous run-on sentence to see Supergirl standing where his minions used to be.

Kara recognizes the man, and has seen him at some of Lena’s galas and high society events over the years. He’s very elite and comes from very old money, that much Kara knows, and he deserves every last bit of the justice that’s awaiting him.

Stepping into the frame, Kara looms over the old, stuttering man, knocking his ridiculous disguise from his face with a snarl. “Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain,” she growls, grabbing him by the back of his finely-tailored suit and throwing him to the side. Sitting down where he was, Kara fiddles with the camera, putting her coat of arms into focus and not her face. “Happy Holidays, everyone,” she says with a smile that is genuine if not a little melancholy. “Enjoy your time with your loved ones if you have them,” she says and continues after an awkward, earnest pause. “I- I want to say I’m sorry to the people I wasn’t able to be there for. From now on, I swear… I’m always around if you need me. Until that time comes, be kind to one another.”

Reaching up, she clicks the camera off with a long sigh. Alex’s question weighs heavy on her conscience once more; where is she going to put all of this guilt once it’s all said and done? Supergirl or not, misery is simply not a sustainable environment for her to live in.

Perhaps, just for tonight, she can listen to her sister and let herself fully enjoy the night. Kara can put the ghosts to rest for a few hours, can’t she?

The man grunts behind her, kicking out wildly, and Kara turns around just in time to see that with one feeble, uncoordinated strike, this entire makeshift stage is about to collapse all around them. Something metal and very heavy comes crashing down, and Kara leaps into action, wrestling the man out of the way and using her strength to protect him from this extremely shoddy equipment.

As it turns out, that one move is the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back. Stepping out of the wreckage, Kara feels immensely more exhausted than she did before, Looking down at her hands, she gets the confirmation she was looking for. “Now look what you did,” she huffs, grumpy and unpleasant as the man shakes and curses in the corner. She displays her fingers in the dim lighting. “I broke a nail saving your sorry butt.”

Needless to say, it’s a much more time-consuming process for Supergirl to arrest one very indignant, privileged elite and his four unconscious, beefy bodyguards without her powers. Huffing and puffing, she wrangles all of them outside onto the curb, eyeing the pavement and seriously considering taking a power nap herself. It’s been almost a week since she’s allowed herself some sleep, and once again, Kara regrets admitting that her sister is right about even her having a limit — especially without the buffer of her superpowers to keep her body thrumming with strength and adrenaline. With the muscle out cold, surely that old man couldn’t get that far away before Kara was to wake up again…

Luckily for Kara’s weakening self-control, Vasquez shows up within five minutes, seemingly content to burn the midnight oil on what Kara knows she finds to be a terrible holiday. While Kara doesn’t disagree with the woman’s disdain for the story and the messaging behind Thanksgiving, she would be lying if she wasn’t absolutely foaming at the mouth thinking about Eliza’s pumpkin pie right now. No matter — Kara knows that she can trust Vasquez to handle things from here.

Unluckily for Kara, a young man who looks like he’s only just finished throwing his college graduation cap comes pouring out of the back of the DEO SUV, and Kara already knows that he’s going to be absolutely starstruck meeting Supergirl.

The boy sucks in a great monstrosity of a breath, staring up at her with wide eyes and a puffed-out chest. Vasquez slings an arm across her shoulders, looking vaguely apologetic. “Meyers. Our newest recruit,” she explains in greeting. As she gestures over towards him, Meyers sways on his feet, seemingly unable to comprehend the casual relationship that his new supervising officer has with the Girl of Steel. Vasquez grows more conspiratory, lowering her voice. “None of the newbies were willing to work the holiday but him… and I may have promised him the chance to have a short meet and greet with you. Sorry about that,” she adds as an afterthought, shoulders going rigid. “And please don’t tell your sister about this. She already called me earlier asking if I knew where you were.”

Kara lets out a long breath through her nose, sending an easy smile over at the young man. “Our little secret,” she replies through her teeth before walking over and extending her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Meyers,” she says with a wink. “Thanks for picking up this shift. Now, do you want to help me lug these bad guys into the back of the van?”

…

Kara genuinely enjoys her time working with Vasquez and Meyers as they load the CADMUS members into the vehicle and finish clearing the building. If Supergirl looks a bit more sluggish than usual, Vasquez doesn’t comment on it — and Meyers is clearly much too happy to be here to say anything that might pop this wonderful bubble he’s found himself in. She waves jovially at them as they leave; Vasquez had offered her a ride, apparently having caught on to Kara’s current powerless situation at some point, but Kara had graciously declined. The DEO was in the exact opposite direction of her apartment, and Kara was better off calling an Uber.

She checks her watch: 7:25 on the dot. While she’s going to be a tiny bit late, Kara’s sure that the spirit of the holiday will thaw Alex out enough for Kara to make her arrival as innocent as possible. After all, by car, her apartment is just a skip and a hop away, and especially if she shows up with some more ice for the drinks, Kara has no doubt that she’ll be greeted very warmly by everyone — and she’s going to try her hardest to embrace it without feeling like a fraud.

That’s the plan. At least, it is until Kara whips out her phone and discovers that it died, and is about as useful to her in her present situation as a plastic brick would be. The streets are basically empty, and Kara’s never been all that good at hailing a cab anyways — so she’s left with only one option.

This isn’t great — but Kara grits her teeth and starts walking. She knows these streets like the back of her hand, and humans get into misadventures like this all the time. Surely her apartment isn’t that far away on foot — and hey, when did a brisk walk ever kill anyone?

By the time she trudges up to the front door of her apartment complex with numb ears and unfeeling fingers, Kara is not only a full hour late to Thanksgiving dinner — but she’s also pretty sure that she’s caught every illness possible in such a short stretch of time.

Hypothermia definitely appears to be an acute possibility. When she’d stumbled into the corner store a block down from her apartment, the clerk there had looked like he was debating calling an ambulance for her. When she glanced up at the clock and asked for two 20-pound bags of ice, sneezing as if in punctuation, he was definitely dubious, staring down at her gloveless hands and her frozen face and probably wondering if a girl of her size could even lug around something that heavy. Kara’s severely underestimated how cold humans can get… especially in late November when the wind seems to carry with it a personal vendetta.

Still, he hands over the bags with a gruff, kindly reminder for her to stay warm, and Kara doesn’t delay. Not trusting the tactility in her hands at the moment, she slaps a twenty dollar bill on the counter and tells him to keep the change; tossing the bags over her suddenly very small and very sore shoulders, she pushes her way back out into the elements and blessedly arrives at her familiar, welcoming apartment door without further incident.

Going through the door proves to be a daunting challenge of its own. Showing up fashionably late may be socially acceptable, but Kara knows that she left that in the dust about thirty minutes ago. Steeling herself — and accepting that there is absolutely no way to predict or prepare for whatever reactions await her inside, Kara plasters a dazed, dragging smile on her face and heads inside.

All at once, every head in the room turns to her, and Kara swears that she hears a record scratch somewhere, even if it’s only in her imagination.

Alex is on her immediately, looking very drunk and like she was a split second away from calling out the bloodhounds on her. “Kara!” she cries out through the fakest, scariest smile Kara’s ever seen on her sister’s face, and while her voice is pleasant for the sake of their mother and everyone else in the room, Kara knows that Alex has murder on her mind. “Where have you been?” she hisses, shrill and so determined to sound pleasant that it comes across as aggressive instead. “Your… thing ended a long time ago. We were getting worried!”

For a moment, Kara wonders why her sister doesn’t drop the act completely and dig into her even with Eliza watching. She has no doubt that they all saw the CADMUS broadcast, and probably listened to her faltering attempt at spreading cheer and goodwill while they were first uncorking the bottles of wine. But as she glances around the room, her gaze falls on William in the corner, cheeks very ruddy and with a few peanut shells stuck in his wiry hair. Kara’s almost forgotten that there are people in this room that still don’t know the full truth; it reminds her of what that must have been like for Lena, all of those years. As if on cue, her brain drags her eyes across the room automatically to find the other woman — only to see Lena settled on the arm of one of the couches… with James’ arm slung comfortably behind her back.

Gaping at the sight, Kara struggles to get her bearings and not look like a complete dope in front of this very curious, very expectant audience. “Oh, I- well, it’s silly, really. I was at Catco, you know, grabbing that… file for Nia!” she says, fishing for an excuse and pointing to the one woman who she knows is always game for some on-the-spot theatrics. Nia nods enthusiastically, tipped very far back against the counter — is everyone in the apartment drunk out of their minds right now except for Kara? — and emboldened by her willingness to play along, Kara keeps going. “And it went well, really — no issues on that front! But, uh, I stopped at a store to grab the ice and- and my phone died. No Uber for me! So, I- I walked here?”

How she’s ever managed to pull off a successful lie before, Kara will never know. Alex’s eyes narrow, not quite understanding. She takes the bags from Kara, taking the chance to drop the smile once she was out of eyesight of the others and shoot daggers at her little sister. Turning around, her terrifying mask of civility that Kara doesn’t think is fooling anyone here is back up.

“An… Uber?” Alex laughs, loud and forced and as if she’s waiting for a sitcom laugh track to back her up any minute now. “But Kara, I thought you hated Ubers?”

Kara gets the hint. Shoulders slumping, she knows that she’s going to have to tell her sister at some point that she blew out her powers. “I do!” she answers, stalling for time… and then she sneezes. That’s as tell-tale of a sign as any, and she thinks she hears someone gasp in the background. Her nose bright red, she gives her sister a sheepish look. “Think I might be coming down with something. Any chance there’s some warm pie left?”

“Why, you little piece of-” Alex whispers, getting ready to tear into her in as polite of a way as she could figure out how to do, but thankfully for Kara, their mother steps in.

“Welcome home, dear.” Engulfing her into the type of welcoming hug that only a mother could give, Eliza pulls back, giving her a proper once-over. Tutting, she frowns and begins to launch into full nurse mode, soothing and assessing the damage with a firm, gentle touch. “No wonder you’re sneezing all over the place — it’s terribly chilly out. Did you not wear a coat? Alex, get a plate together for your sister — you look absolutely starved, Kara! Have you been eating?”

“Hi, Mom,” Kara greets, staring down at her toes. Grimacing, she shrugs her shoulders. “I didn’t bring a coat. Again, I- I was expecting on using a different type of transportation to get here. Sorry I’m late, really. It’s my fault.”

“Not your fault, sweetheart. And my, this is a lot of ice that you’ve brought!” Eliza says, pressing her hand to Kara’s cheek and guiding her over to the table where Clark, Kelly, and Brainy still sit. Everyone else seems to have been congregated in the living room or in the kitchen before Kara showed up — probably perching next to the liquor cabinet and waiting for her to eventually show her face, in the case of her sister.

The thought of even glancing over to the living room now, where Lena and James are cozied up, makes Kara nauseous. Swallowing hard, she gives Eliza a glazed-over smile and blindly accepts the heaping plate of food that Alex had brought her.

William stands up, walking over and resting his elbows on the back of her chair. Kara doesn’t think she’s ever seen the man this drunk before — and his giddy, carefree expression is enough for her to lighten up just slightly. “Should have called Supergirl!” he suggests, bright and brash. Clark shifts in his seat, fixing his tie, and Kara only realizes now to her horror that he and Brainy are wearing practically identical ones. Lois scoffs from the kitchen counter, draining her wine glass, and William takes it as all the encouragement he needs to keep going. Leaning over her, he sends a goofy, upside-down smile her way. “She was in the same general neighborhood as you were, I’d reckon. Don’t suppose you caught the broadcast, did you?”

Kara shovels turkey into her mouth, her hands tied. “Don’t think so,” she replies weakly, knowing she has no choice but to play this one out with her partner.

“Oh, it was just brilliant! Supergirl hijacked the CADMUS television hijack if you can believe it. Beat up some guys while still managing to remain perfectly in frame — and delivered a short little holiday speech in passing. Lois thought it was a little bit overdone.”

Lois chokes on her wine, her eyes wide and betrayed. “I did not-”

“Right, that wasn’t the word… you used schmaltzy, didn’t you?”

Focusing back on her wine, Lois cringes and pinches her fingers together. “Just a little,” she mumbles into her glass. “Sorry, kiddo.”

“I didn’t think it was like that at all, though.” Sitting down in the chair right next to Kara’s, William fixes her with an inquisitive stare. “You know her pretty well, Kara. Would you say that Supergirl comes across as really quite… sad? I dunno — sure seems like something’s on her mind of late, don’t you think?”

The apartment grows quiet once more. Kara’s mouth opens and then shuts again; she knows that she’s in no state to answer him with any poise or believability right now, not when she suddenly can’t look a single person in the eye. Drunk or not, William has struck true down to the very heart of her persistent ache… and Kara doesn’t have it in her to smile her way out of this one.

She doesn’t need to; her personal knight in shining armor, J’onn stands up and claps his hands, the booming sounds powerful enough to draw William’s attention away from her fully. Shuddering out a breath, Kara drops her fork onto her plate with trembling hands. “What do you say, Will?” J’onn asks, going for a buddy-buddy approach that’s working on William wholeheartedly. “About that game of charades you promised? I’m in need of a good, strong partner; I know you’re new here, but you should know that Lena and James here make a very formidable team.”

“Ex-partners typically are, surprisingly enough - especially if strong mutual affection remains after the breakup occurs-” Brainy cuts in, and Kara almost debates walking back outside and braving the elements on her own. William is the one to interrupt this time, leaning in and whispering sloppily to Kara as Brainy continues to wax statistics about Lena’s relationship prospects with James.

Probably for the best that Kara’s lost her superhearing so she doesn’t have to listen to that.

“And another thing — you never told me that Lena Luthor and James Olsen used to date. How am I supposed to let you confide in me if I don’t know all of the details?”

Completely out of her depth on this conversation and all of the ones that preceded it, Kara musters up a very emphatic shrug. “Buy me dinner, and I’ll tell you all about it,” she answers, louder than she intended, and she can feel the way that Lena’s eyes suddenly drag across the interaction; squeezing her forearm, William gives her a devilish wink and is off to the living room.

“Anything for you, Kara,” he shouts, and Kara eyes her mashed potatoes, considering the benefits of smashing her head face-first into them now, falling asleep, and having this night be over and done with.

“He really is a very nice man, sweetheart,” Eliza says, taking William’s spot before Kara can so much as blink. Is this why so many humans find the holidays to be so draining? This constant merry-go-round of her friends and family, however cheering, is sucking Kara dry of her remaining energy reserves as if she were an old battery. Her mother watches her carefully; just like everyone else in the room, she heard William’s blase comments about Supergirl and doesn’t seem keen on glossing over it. “He was… a bit more subtle before your sister opened up the scotch, but all the same, he seems to think the world of you. His concern for Supergirl’s wellbeing certainly is thoughtful.”

“I’m glad he decided to come. After the work he did on our article, it’s an open invitation for him to share my byline on any project he chooses.” Kara gives her a tired smile, eyeing her own glass of wine that someone — she thinks it might have been Kelly, seeing as she appears to be the current chaperone of the alcohol at the moment — has given her. Her powers are gone, so screw it. Maybe Kara should go ahead and get drunk too.

Then again, with the amount that she’s been suppressing of late, consuming anything that loosens her lips and lowers her inhibitions is a recipe for disaster. She loves James, respects and admires him — but the ugly, jealous side of her is not one that she trusts to be a hospitable host to the unexpected guest.

Nia walks over, placing down her own glass with a distinct lack of finesse. Kara reaches for her wine — one or two glasses certainly won’t be the end of the world. “Speaking of that, I have a bone to pick with you,” she says, and for a moment Kara thinks that Nia is going to turn into a full-on armchair therapist on her. Blanching, Kara finishes her glass in one giant, ill-advised gulp. “I get that William is a good writer and all, but… I was right there, you know. I also would have made for a great choice as a partner — and I sure would like to have a Pulitzer to wave around like you and Lois do.”

Lois raises her glass in a toast. “Mine have given me job security for the past fifteen years,” she says with a smirk. “I think Perry White sees my army of trophies in his nightmares, and golly, poor Clark over there can barely keep his desk by the skin of his teeth.”

“I helped with plenty of those investigations, Lois,” Clark grumbles with a frown, bouncing Jon on his lap and trying not to look overly embarrassed. “Not to mention that I was your primary source for at least half of them,” he adds, quieter.

“A third,” his wife challenges, unimpressed.

“Gee, Lois, you- you wouldn’t share the byline — at least give me some of the credit at our family dinner!”

Kara looks up, noticing that Clark probably only added that last part for her benefit seeing as she’s the only one left eating. Chewing methodically, she swallows down the delicious food that turns tasteless in her mouth every time she looks over at the living room to see Lena share a private smile with James, Lena, with her hair falling down soft and loose against James’ sweater, Lena, her hand brushing with his every time they reach for a new card-

“I’m hungry for glory, babe,” Lois trills, unrepentant. “If you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have put a ring on it.”

“I do like it. I love it,” Clark answers swiftly and without hesitation, and yeah… Kara really thinks that one more display of romantic affection while she has Lena in her peripheral vision might just make her sick.

“Kara,” Nia says, snapping her back into the conversation. “Come on. You never thought to ask me before Mr. Fantastic over there?”

With a sigh, Kara rises to her own defense. “I would have, Nia, I really would — but as you know, what I was doing required a certain amount of secrecy, and you…”

“I can keep a secret,” the girl protests, pouting. “I’m very good at it, and you know it, seeing as I kept my mouth shut about you being-”

Holding up her hands in surrender, Kara takes control back before Nia can inadvertently spill the beans to the man who is apparently an awful charades player behind them both. “I know you are!” she placates. “You- you’re one of the best. But all of your best friends are my best friends, and what do you think the odds are of the two of us coming up with excuses time and time again to work on that article without anyone getting suspicious?”

Nia smirks, meeting Alex’s gaze from where she’s still lurking in the kitchen, probably waiting for Kara to come up and get some dessert so she can pounce on her again. “I don’t know, Kara. You and Lena seem to have no trouble providing reasons for why you’re always alone together in the strangest of situations. How hard can it be?”

“I take it back,” Kara says, face red. She doesn’t think she can look anywhere near the living room right now without spontaneously combusting. “I was going to say that you’ve got dibs on the next Pulitzer with me, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’ve also forgotten that you’re an incurable, devious gossip.”

The table laughs, delighted at Kara’s willingness to fight back and relieved that she’s not sinking any further into the black hole that’s threatening to consume her — not for the time being, at the very least. Nia grins, accepting her defeat. “Fair enough. I guess I’ll just have to… dream about it.”

As she looks around for thunderous applause, Alex groans. “What did I tell you, Nia? You ran out of your allocated amount of puns for the week two days ago,” she warns. “I don’t want to hear another peep about-”

“What about?” A voice asks behind Kara’s right ear, and by the time she registers that it’s Lena, the shock is enough for her to nearly fall out of her chair.

“Director Danvers over there appears to have grown tired of Nia’s incessant fondness for wordplay,” Brainy supplies helpfully. Lena hovers just to the side of Kara’s chair. It’s absolutely maddening. “As such, she’s instituted a weekly tax. Similar to a… swear jar, if I’m not mistaken.”

Without looking, Kara knows exactly the type of witty, warm smile that Lena has on her face as she tilts her head to talk to Brainy. “You know my mother, of all people, threatened to create one of those jars for me after I got expelled from boarding school,” she says. “It’s a hard image to sell, I realize: Lillian Luthor playing the upright, principled parental figure. Really, I suspect that she just got tired of hearing from all of the scandalized parents about what I got up to while I was away.”

Lois leans in, totally fascinated by this change in topics. “Oh, please tell me what you did to get kicked out of a school your family probably partially owned,” she begs. “Off the record, of course.”

“Nothing too wild I’m afraid. Getting drunk out in the stables, stealing a professor’s car for an impromptu trip around the Swiss mountains… kissing a few people that were evidently off-limits for a corrupting influence like me.”

Kara sinks very far down against the table, and Lois hoots. “Lena Luthor,” she crows. “Don’t tell me that you had a bad girl phase in high school.”

Swallowing hard, Kara braves a glance over at her best friend just in time for her to raise her eyebrow — a brutally effective finishing move by all accounts, at least when it came to Kara. “Compared to the woman my family expected me to become, who’s to say I’m not still in it now?” she asks, and Kara really thinks she’s died somewhere along the way because there is no way that this is the conversation that she arrived just in time to bear witness to.

Still pouting, Nia glares over at Alex, who holds up a scoop of ice cream as a warning. “Whatever. Lena, why have you left your dashing charades partner alone and unsupervised in the living room?” the girl asks.

To Kara’s dread and absolute shock, Lena takes a step forward and places her own drink on the table, sliding into the seat directly next to her. Making a valiant effort to keep a straight face, Kara feels her insides turn to goo. Where was Kelly with the liquid courage when she really needed her?

“To be honest, it’s not a very fair contest — and I have far too much sympathy towards being the newcomer amongst this group to humiliate William publicly like that any longer,” she says as she settles in. Her feet slide against Kara’s on the floor, and Kara really, really can’t tell if it was intentional or not. Whatever is going on is certainly premeditated on Lena’s part; Rao, they haven’t so much as seen each other in nearly a week, and Kara knows full well that this isn’t the casual foray into the conversation that the others think it is. This is Lena walking right up to the unspoken line that had been drawn between them, and now it seems like she’s calculating her next move.

Nonchalant and completely willful, Lena meets Kara’s eyes at last, placing a toe on the line. “Happy Thanksgiving, darling,” she murmurs, crossing it without a second thought. Kara’s brain short-circuits, and Kelly stands up with a smile.

“Looks like my brother is in need of a new participant,” she says. “Anyone willing to come over there and make this game more of a challenge?”

Her eyes flit back and forth between Lena and Kara, and Lois grins, sly as a Cheshire Cat. “Come on, Clark,” she says scooping Jon out of her husband's arms and waiting expectantly. “Seems like Jimmy Olsen is getting a little too big for his britches over there. Care to help me knock him down a peg?”

“Well, I-” Clark hesitates, staring sideways over at his cousin. Kara realizes that the reason Kal has been so quiet tonight is that he’s been nervously awaiting a chance to talk to her — no doubt to try and dig further into the can of worms that William had opened. Lois kicks the back of his chair, and the man finally understands the hint. “I suppose I could play a round or two.”

“Having an encyclopedic knowledge of the English language myself, I feel confident that it will be myself and Nia who will be wiping the floor with you,” Brainy announces, standing up with a start. Unlike Lois, he seems to have no ulterior motive behind heading to the living room; no, Brainy seems to just really want to play Charades. “With my mastery of language and your impressive understanding of pop culture vernacular, I see no way in which we can lose,” he says to Nia, who rolls her eyes and giggles.

“I can think of several ways we can crash and burn terribly, but who cares! I want to watch you try and act out Titanic.” While Brainy’s face pales just slightly, realizing what he’s gotten himself into, Nia pulls him away before he can change his mind.

Suddenly it’s just Eliza, Alex, and Lena alone with Kara, and as she lunges for the bottle of wine that Kelly had astutely left within her reach, she feels like she’s just been frogmarched into a trap.

“You don’t want to play, Kara?” Eliza asks kindly, and Rao, she’s never loved her mother more.

Her eyes widen, recognizing the innocent offer for the golden opportunity that it is. If she can get over to that couch before anyone — her sister, to be precise — can get her talons into her newly vulnerable body, Kara will be safe, content to watch her family and friends drunkenly bicker about game night etiquette until she very subtly and understandably falls asleep on the nearest shoulder that is available. Kara’s really not picky at this point — she’d even gladly take William’s despite the way she’s watched him wildly gesticulate over on the couch for the past fifteen minutes.

Summoning up a look of enthusiastic interest, Kara begins to slowly, painstakingly rise from her seat. “Actually, Mom, that sounds like a whole lot of fun-”

A plate that is absolutely heaped with a bizarrely humongous piece of pie is slammed down in front of her without any diplomacy, and Kara can feel her sister’s firm hands on her shoulders, very gently shoving her back down into her seat. “Oh no, you don’t,” Alex slurs, taking Brainy’s spot and bringing the entire decanter of whiskey with her. Lena silently requests a refill, and without breaking eye contact once with her sister, Alex obliges. “You wanted pie, remember? Apartment rules! Gotta eat your pie before you can play any games.”

The giant scoop of ice cream on top is an insult to injury at this point, and Kara squints her eyes at Alex, barely managing to disguise her contempt. How dare Alex use one of Kara’s very real, very essential holiday rules against her. Kara was not about to clean whipped cream out of her rug again! How was she to know that, years down the line, her sister would be twisting that to suit her own interrogative purposes?

“Fine.” Stabbing her fork into the soggy, delicious mess in front of her, Kara plays coy. “You sure you don’t want any of this, Mom? Alex gave me a much larger piece than I was expecting-” Kara offers, sugary sweet and batting her eyelids over at Eliza.

Alex cuts her off. “That’s your piece, Kara. If Mom wants one, I’ll be happy to go get her another plate.” Realizing that she’s being a bit too combative for the current state of their conversation, Alex tries to cover her tracks by looking over at Lena. “I’d be happy to grab a slice for anyone at the table. Do you want a piece, Lena?”

Traitorous and very interested in what’s happening around her, Lena shakes her head. “The whiskey will suit me just fine by this time of the night,” she answers with a smile that seems innocuous enough that Eliza puts her guard back down.

“I’m okay, Alexandra,” Eliza says, and Kara is too miserable to even take an ounce of enjoyment in watching their mother wield Alex’s full name around so openly. She’s got a human body now, for the most part — which means a human digestive system, and human speeds of consuming food. Even if she were to cram this down her throat right now — which Kara can confidently say she still could do — she’d have far too massive of a stomachache to be able to ward off any of her sister’s attacks. Better to sit here and steadily eat the dessert with a mostly clear head than to give Alex any more advantages.

“I know it’s a… actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of pie that big,” her mother tells her after a beat. Kara looks over to the kitchen to see that Alex has completely butchered what used to be a gorgeous-looking pumpkin pie, cutting Kara the biggest triangle that was mathematically possible and leaving scraps for whoever else might have been hungry. “But you do look like you could really use a pick-me-up, and we all know that sweets are the best way to your heart.”

“I’ll never say no to a slice of your famous pumpkin pie,” Kara replies, laying on the charm and hoping that she can get her mother to serve as her back-up if she butters her up enough. She would much rather field Eliza’s maternal, sweeping questions about how she’s doing than sit here and let Alex rip into her. “You know, you should be selling this at wayside stops all across the galaxy.”

“Oh, I- well, you flatter me, sweetheart-” Eliza is blushing and reaching out a doting hand to pat at Kara’s bicep, and Alex is having none of it, caught on to what Kara’s up to.

Clearing her throat, Alex folds her hands neatly in front of her and scoots her chair even closer to Kara. Boxed in and having no other method of distraction, Kara pours herself another glass of wine; does alcohol always start to taste better after you’ve had more and more of it? “Would have been better right out of the oven, but I get it, Kara. You had better things to do, isn’t that right?”

Kara swallows down a massive bite, so uncomfortable that she can feel it slide down her throat slowly. “Not better,” she says softly, groggy and at her wit’s end and unable to inject any sort of force into her tone. “Important? Absolutely.” Lowering her voice, Kara ducks her head, careful not to bring any unwanted attention over to the table — specifically from William, who seems to be in the middle of a very spirited bout of pretend jousting with a flustered Brainy. “That man was the last of the ringleaders still actively operating, and I got to spread my own… unique version of holiday cheer by bringing him down. It was a piece of cake, really, and I’m glad I stopped him when I did.”

“A piece of cake that caused you to blow out your powers, Kara. What’s up with that?”

“Come on, that was a long time coming and you know it-”

“I did know it, and that’s exactly why I told you to stop going out there and-”

It’s wonderful how easy it is to interupt her sister when Kara is too tired to care about overstepping her bounds. “I wasn’t reckless about it, okay? He was working out of the shabbiest set up I’ve ever seen in my life. An open, easily accessible location, only a handful of untrained guards, and not a single weapon in the place that could have done a thing to me.” Kara frowns, grumbling at the memory. All of this could have been avoided had that man not decided to make a last-ditch escape account. “The guy caused the stupid stage to collapse on top of us, alright? I- I overexerted myself getting him and the rest of the men out of harm’s way. I still had my powers up until then, and would have them still if that hadn’t happened. It was a fluke, and it means nothing. I had DEO agents as my backup anyways-”

“I knew Vasquez was up to something the moment she started acting evasive on the phone-”

“Don’t rip Vasquez a new one for doing her job,” Kara argues back. “Hey, I even made myself a new friend out of one of her recruits! It was a good night. Best I’ve had in a while.”

Alex’s ears are turning red, and Kara waits, half-expecting steam to come pouring out any second now. “And then you proceeded to walk home?”

“My phone died, remember? I really was going to call an Uber.”

“What if you’d been hurt? What if you- you got mugged on the way over?”

Unable to help herself, Kara lets a heady, unimpressed scoff escape her lips. “Who would be dumb enough to try and rob Supergirl?”

“You’re wearing a fucking cardigan, Kara!”

Eliza cuts in, frowning. “Language, Alexandra! It is a holiday, after all.”

Kara can tell that Alex is embarrassed, which seems to also just be making her angrier. She leans in even closer across the table, hissing over at her. “All anyone would have seen is a young woman with fogged up glasses wandering across the city alone at night. God, I bet you didn’t even use any of the main roads, did you? Did you stay in well-lit areas?”

Really not understanding what the big deal is, Kara furrows her brow, confused. “That would have taken so much more time. I was already late enough — what’s wrong with me taking a few shortcuts?”

“Watch a single episode of Dateline and ask me that question again, Kara!”

“Alright, that’s enough!” Eliza says, holding up her hands and physically forcing both of her daughters to get out of the other’s face and settle back down in their seats. Exasperated, she shakes her head at both of them. “Goodness, it’s Thanksgiving. You girls are supposed to be nice to one another, grateful to be in each other’s lives!”

“We are,” Kara says weakly, unable to face the beast that is her mother’s disappointment without immediately caving. “Sorry.”

“Whatever. She started it,” her sister says in response.

Alex folds her arms and scowls. They could be teenagers again, glowering over at each other — and as always, Eliza has a talent for shaming them into silence. Frowning at the two of them, Eliza finally looks over at Lena, who’s been calmly observing the entire exchange without so much as a ripple of emotion coming across her face.

“I’m sorry for these two,” Eliza says, excluding them from the exchange entirely as she smiles weakly at Lena. “They can really get into it, sometimes, forget that the rest of the world exists. Cats and dogs, I tell you!”

Lena smiles back, taking a slow, smooth sip of her drink. “It’s nothing to apologize for,” she replies. “It’s not like I haven’t seen an infamous Danvers Sisters shouting match before. Better this than any of the ways that my brother prefers to show me that he cares.”

“Well, I… I suppose you’re right,” Eliza responds, clearly unaccustomed to Lena’s propensity for poking fun at her own horrible family dynamic. Setting down her glass, Lena rescues the table from the sudden wave of awkwardness at once.

“Not that there’s any need to bring him up on a night like this,” she adds quickly, diplomatic as always. “I can never say it enough, but I certainly know what I’m thankful for year after year, and that’s getting to be a part of this group of people… even if I do have to put up with some bickering every so often.”

Kara shifts in her seat, her guilt suddenly at an all-time high.

Eliza beams. “That’s so lovely to hear, dear,” she tells Lena, and the term of affection is enough to cause Lena’s cheeks to become faintly brushed with pink as well. “Just between us, but I personally think you’re the best person that Kara could have ever roped into this mess. You’re good for each other, and don’t you forget it!”

“I try not to,” Lena replies, and she’s so heartfelt, so uncharacteristically and openly sentimental, that Kara could start crying right here at the table, ruining her favorite tablecloth decorated with dancing turkeys and the like. “Believe me, it’s not something I take for granted.”

Eliza looks over at the two of them — Lena, warm and hesitant, and Kara, picking at the tablecloth and probably looking completely miserable — and then at Alex, still wearing a faintly sour expression on her face. Seemingly coming to a decision about something, their mother folds her napkin neatly on the table and then stands up, beckoning Alex to do the same. “Alex, I hate to do this, but I’m afraid that I’m putting you in timeout until you cool off,” she says. “You’re coming with me, and you’re going to teach me how to play Charades.” Kara’s eyes go wide and Alex’s jaw drops.

“What? You know how to play Charades,” Alex asks, gobsmacked.

“Refresh my memory, then.” Eliza clears her throat, and finally, Kara understands her mother’s intentions, the realization coming slow and murky through the alcohol and her overwhelming exhaustion: Eliza, fancying herself a matchmaker all of the sudden, is trying to get her and Lena alone together. The thought of that — of actually getting a chance to talk to the woman she’s been so steadfastly and ashamedly ignoring, both because of outside circumstances and her own fear — runs her over with the power of a freight train, leaving Kara choking in the dust.

Kara needs to apologize; she wants to apologize, has been desperately pacing around it for the entire week, but the rest of National City had come first. To be honest, Kara had put all of her other problems ahead because if she can’t even look at her own reflection in the mirror these days, how is she supposed to keep it together long enough to make it up to her best friend in a way that actually counts? Lena deserves a genuine, collected attempt on Kara’s part to express exactly how much she regrets what she’s said and what she’s done — not the blubbering, clumsy mess that Kara knows she’s going to devolve into the second she meets Lena’s eyes.

Seems like her event horizon is quickly coming up whether she likes it or not, thanks to Eliza — and Kara just hopes that she can muster up something meaningful when the time comes.

Alex isn’t having it, however, and Kara wonders if the opportunity will even be presented to her at all. Her sister gestures over to where Kara is still slowly eating her dessert, trying to silently explain to their mother the importance of her staying at this very table, where she has Kara exactly where she wants her. “Mom, I can’t-”

“Yes you can,” their mother answers, unknowing or — perhaps even better yet — uncaring as to how her interference is about to ruin the best trap that Alex has caught Kara in maybe in their entire lives. “Let your sister finish her pie in peace. We have family photos to take later, and I don’t want you two looking homicidal in any of my Christmas Cards this year. Not again.”

Lena leans back in her chair, swirling her whiskey around in her glass and doing a masterful job of hiding the amusement that’s cropping up in her twinkling eyes and dimples. Does she realize what Eliza is doing, Kara wonders? Does Lena understand that in a few passing moments, Kara’s going to do her very best to make up for what’s happened? That they’re going to be alone together for the first time in what feels like forever? The knowledge feels secret, electrified; it’s a shot of adrenaline right into Kara’s chest, and she pushes her plate away from her and straightens up in her chair.

Alex tries one last time to wriggle out of it. “I’m sure J’onn would let you in on his team. Sounds like his partner is dead weight-”

“Now, Alexandra,” Eliza says, sweet and innocent as the pie Kara’s still yet to finish, and Alex finally seems to understand that she has absolutely no choice in the matter.

“Fine. Enjoy your dessert, Kara.” Getting up from the table with a snapping of her jaw, her sister sends Kara one last disapproving look before following after Eliza with her tail between her legs.

Alone at last, the two of them sit side by side, nursing their drinks and watching as Alex is essentially dragged over to join in the festivities by the scruff of her neck. She melts the moment Kelly leans over to press a fleeting kiss against her check, and the group roars with laughter as Clark bumbles his way through acting out something that appears to be incredibly inappropriate due to his poor acting skills; he makes jerky movements with his hands, scarlet-faced, and Lois nearly falls off the couch in her glee.

“No- no, Lois. Good grief, it’s not that!” he protests amongst the noise. Kara feels a potent, true joy, watching her family gather together like this — and just as suddenly, a great deal of grief hits like a riptide, yanking her away from her home and its joy. She thinks of the people still in the hospital, bed-ridden and dependent on breathing tubes to live through the night — and of the families spending their holiday in a cemetery, gathered around a grave.

Who is she, to have escaped an attack that was devastating for so many without a scratch? She looks at herself, reflected in the dark, red color of her wine. William is right; Supergirl does come across as rather sad, these days, and no matter how many pep talks she’s given herself, Kara clearly wasn’t ready to carry the weight of this with a convincing enough smile.

Lena watches her discreetly — not that it’s escaped Kara’s notice. She’s been watching her this whole time, and out of everyone, Kara knows she fools this woman the least.

“We could join in, you know,” Lena says quietly and without an ounce of expectation, already knowing just from studying her best friend that Kara doesn’t have the strength to fake her way into the living room with what’s on her mind — but offering the choice anyway. Kara fixates on the wording of the sentence. We, Lena had said; for a woman who Kara believes should definitely hate her guts at the moment, Lena seems to not have any intention of ignoring her or separating herself from Kara in the slightest. “We do hold the high score for this particular game, if I remember correctly.”

“I- I should stay over here,” she answers, her words brittle and paper-thin, a tower of cards just waiting to be toppled at the slightest disturbance. Not breaking eye contact with her wine, she musters up a smile that doesn’t last more than a half-second. “Got my food to finish, after all. But hey- I mean, you don’t have to- you ought to go over there, if you want. Beats sitting next to boring old me while I eat my pie.”

Lena smiles over at her, lips pursed and eyes searching. Without a moment of hesitation, she cuts her way through Kara’s excuses, sidles in before Kara can remember to put her guard back up. “You’re my partner,” she replies, sure and gentle. “Why would I ever go without you?”

Completely incapable of responding to that question packed with so much underlying meaning without her voice cracking, Kara stays silent and drinks instead.

The other woman doesn’t force her into anything, like a well-intentioned but perpetually impatient Alex would — but Lena doesn’t avoid the tension altogether either. “I meant what I said to your mother,” she continues, even quieter than before. Kara finds herself leaning in instinctually, hanging onto every word. “I’m grateful to you for giving me this.” She nods her head over at the others, a fond smile firmly on her face. “You are the reason and the continued cause of my happiness and my wonderful life here in this city, and it means the world to me.”

The compliment is crushingly genuine and much too large for Kara to swallow, and she stops draining her cup to gaze over at the other woman. “Lena, I- I don’t deserve that-” she starts, needing to communicate to her best friend exactly how unworthy she is of her kindness at a time like this. What Lena’s just said strikes at the very heart of Kara’s mistreatment of her and their friendship. It’s supposed to be a give and a take, between the two of them — but really, what has she had to offer Lena over these past few weeks but selfishness and general idiocy?

“Yes, you do,” Lena says right back, gesturing to the rest of their friends. “You did this. No one else. You brought us all together, and you’re the reason why we continue to-”

“And what about what else I’ve done?” Kara clenches her jaw. “I’m not perfect by any means, and I-”

“Did I ever say you were?” Far too charmed by this argument for either of their benefit, Lena stares over at her, eyes kind. “None of us are. That doesn’t mean that you’re permanently exempt from feeling content with the good that you’ve done.”

Kara scratches her neck, finding it increasingly difficult to get her words out. Her throat is already starting to close traitorously and call it exhaustion, frustration, sorrow, whatever — but she knows that tears are rapidly becoming an inevitability. “That’s not what I- I know that, but…” Kara trails off, trying to decide how to tactfully explain to Lena that whatever good she’s done has done very little to assuage her regret and her torment about all of the bad. When Kara slips up, people tend to die — and that’s a difficult shadow to walk away from. “My mistakes outweigh everything else, right now, so please, don’t- don’t waste your kindness on me. Rao, how I’ve treated you, for starters. Can’t we talk about that?”

Lena doesn’t waver, raising an eyebrow as if to ask Kara if this is something she truly wants to do right now. “We don’t have to,” she says simply, neutral, and Kara can’t tell what avenue Lena prefers them to go down herself. “Some things can wait until after-”

“No- absolutely not. I don’t want to wait.” Emboldened all of the sudden, Kara slides her wine off to the side, her full, slightly wobbly attention on Lena. “I’ve been trying to work up the courage to show my face after everything… look, if you’ll let me — I’d really like to apologize to you.”

“Ah- okay,” Lena answers, caught off guard for the first time that night. She appears… surprised that Kara wants to do this — and really, what does that say about her behavior if her best friend looks blindsided by her efforts to make amends? Glancing around, Lena shifts in her seat. Charades is a raucous affair, but that doesn’t mean that this is a place that offers them any kind of privacy. “...right here?”

“Yes- well, no,” Kara stutters, and then abruptly clambers to her feet. Holding out her hand, she bites her lip. “Could we maybe go in our bedroom for a moment? It’ll be quieter in there, and… uh, I don’t really want any of the others to see me cry.”

It’s practically a Freudian slip, the way she referred to her room as belonging to both of them; it was so natural to say that Kara doesn’t realize what she’s done until it’s too late to stutter her way into a detour. If Lena notices or is even remotely interested in the distinction, Kara can’t tell. Mostly, her best friend seems the most touched and concerned by Kara’s admission that she may well burst into tears the second they get somewhere secluded.

Reaching up, she takes Kara’s outstretched hand and holds onto it a moment longer than she needs to as she stands up herself. However fleeting, the extra touch grounds Kara to the spot. “Of course,” she says, then adds, eyes wide and worried, “Kara, please don’t feel like-”

“Let’s go,” Kara cuts in, because seriously, if she stands in this kitchen for a millisecond longer with Lena looking at her like that, the waterworks are going to start without warning.

The one minor, hopefully insignificant hitch in her plan is the fact that, in order for them to reach the bedroom, they’re going to have to sneak right through the living room. With Lena trailing silently behind, Kara leads the way; maybe if she just gathers up enough speed and plasters an expression on her face that clearly signals for the others to not bother her, they’ll be able to walk right on by…

“Where are you two going?” Lois asks, her cheeks still rosy from the laughing fit that she’d had at her husband’s expense. It’s a casual question; to the other woman’s credit, Kara doesn’t sense any sort of suggestion other than a friendly sort of curiosity. But it’s enough to draw the attention of the room squarely onto their retreating backs, and with a sigh, Kara turns around and begins the frantic process of coming up with a decent enough excuse to convince an award-winning reporter to stop sniffing down this particular trail.

Before she can so much as turn around, Lena is there, saving the day with her collected veneer that hasn’t cracked once around Lois Lane. “Our bedroom,” she replies casually, still with her whiskey swirling lightly around in her hand. “Kara’s just admitted to me that she slept in these clothes, and I’ve got a quick call to make to my accountant. You’re all wonderful Charades players, but I’d much rather finish up this business deal without Brainy shouting out the wrong answer in the background.”

The teasing jab seals the deal and Kara thanks Brainy for serving as their unwitting Trojan Horse. “My ratio of correct to incorrect guesses is vastly superior to the majority of people in this room,” he whines, pouting even if the numbers are on his side, and just like that, their exit is brushed aside as if it’s no big deal in the slightest.

That is, until Kara is pulling Lena into the cool darkness of the room and she hears Lois pipe up, intrigued and sounding distinctly as if her interest has indeed been piqued. “Hold on… did she just say that that was their bedroom?” she asks no one in particular, and Kara is closing the curtains to separate her lousy bedroom from any prying eyes.

Okay, so it’s not exactly a secure location, but that’s what you get in a rent-controlled studio apartment — and it’s better than anything that could have happened out there.

Striding over to turn on her lamp, she looks over at Lena, so amazed by the woman’s quick thinking that she momentarily forgets why they’re in here in the first place. “How in Rao’s name did you come up with that?” she asks.

Lena seems less certain in this new environment, though her even voice doesn’t betray her at all. “You really do need to change your clothes,” she says, wrinkling her nose and hovering by the foot of the bed. “Probably wouldn’t hurt to put on a pair of glasses around William, either. They fooled me all those years, and they don’t hurt your chances now.”

“Oh, no.” Blindly reaching up to pat her face, Kara realizes with horror that Lena is right; her glasses have been tucked into the pocket of her shirt this entire time, and were she not looking visibly worn down and hadn’t thrown her hair up into a messy bun, it’s quite possible that her Thanksgiving would have been kicked off by her revealing her secret identity to William. Too embarrassed to talk about it any further, Kara crams the fake frames onto her face and clears her throat. “And the phone call?”

Lena takes her cell out of her pocket and holds it up in the dim lighting. As it turns out, her accountant actually is calling her. “I’ve been fielding voicemails all night,” she says with a shrug. “Thanks to you, I’ve adopted a strict no-work policy during holiday dinners… but I am newly reinstated at the head of a Fortune 500 company. Just because I’m not answering doesn’t mean people won’t call.”

“Right. Makes sense,” Kara responds blankly. Now that she’s here in this room and alone with Lena, talking has become the most daunting and challenging task she’s ever taken on. “And how’s that been going? Has the transition back been okay?”

Lena gives her a fondly exasperated look, and Kara is reminded that her best friend knows every single one of her tricks — and definitely can recognize her attempts at stalling now. “It’s a bumpy road by nature,” she says, indulging Kara for a second, and then flipping the script. “A lonely office that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to me any longer, and long hours. No longer than the shifts you’ve been pulling.” A pointed look, and as Lena sits down gingerly on the bed, an unspoken request for Kara to do the same. “Alex has been keeping me updated. It’s a miracle your powers held out for you as long as they did.”

Instead, Kara turns away and starts digging through her closet, throwing clothes this way and that. It’s occurring to her now that, if she’s going to apologize to Lena, she’s going have to talk about all of it. Once she sits down next to her best friend, there won’t be anywhere to escape. “Well, there’s been plenty to do,” she says, holding up a shirt to the light and discovering a coffee stain on the sleeve. “And more left unfinished. So long as I get them back soon, it won’t be too big of a deal.”

“For the city, maybe.” Lena looks down at her hands. “It would be… beneficial for you to slow down until then, I think. What’s left of CADMUS won’t be able to miraculously regrow in a day, and even Supergirl needs to recharge.”

Kara knows that’s true, has seen to it with her own two hands. But the prospect that Alex and now Lena have presented to her, the idea of no longer being so busy, of not having anything to beat back her feelings about the sheer scale of her failure — it’s scary. Kara doesn’t know what to do with her hands when this is over, and that’s why she can’t stop.

She’d made a promise to Lex; up until that moment when she has him in her grasp, she must keep going — otherwise, the burning, raging fire that’s been spurring her forward will burn out. What will she be left with when that happens?

“Choose the maroon one,” Lena speaks up, and Kara realizes that she’s been holding two shirts in the air for far too long. “It’s a nice color on you.”

Well, when Lena puts it that way, how is Kara supposed to say no to that?

Throwing Lena’s pick on the bed, Kara turns around at last. “Lena, I- I wish I was better at this,” she admits, biting her lip. All of the steam she’d built up in the kitchen has dissipated now — and what she’s left with is hesitation and a whole lot of vulnerability.

“Better at what?” Lena smooths out the sheets, still so patiently waiting for Kara to take the plunge. It’s easy, being vulnerable around her best friend, being open and honest, and even weak. It’s something that the two of them have worked at, all these years, and that’s not what’s holding Kara back. No, it’s the fact that Kara’s been putting up a front for so long now and has leaned so heavily this week on her reputation for never bending and certainly never breaking, all so she could walk through this city with her head high. No matter how badly she wants to sink into the bed right now and give in, that stiff, dutiful side won’t let her.

Being the Girl of Steel is the only reason Kara’s made it to this room intact. Dropping that firm fortitude now in exchange for actual courage feels like she’s losing her favorite crutch.

With a wry, bittersweet smile, Kara shrugs, still lingering by the closet. “Better at admitting when I’m wrong,” she replies, crossing her arms and feeling small, no more bluster to help her. “Better at, when I am wrong, changing my ways.”

“Sounds almost… human of you,” Lena teases, soft and uncertain and completely beguiling. If Kara can’t do this for herself, then she can for Lena, at the very least.

She heaves out a breath. “I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I said those things to you,” she starts, feeling strapped into a rollercoaster where she can’t see the plunge ahead. “And I’m sure that’s hard to believe, seeing as I’ve continued to act like a conceited idiot by not making an effort to come and talk to you, but I did want to apologize to you the second you walked out the door. I actually went after you-”

“I know you did,” Lena cuts in gently. “Alex told me.”

Knocked off course, Kara falters. She hadn’t expected this part of her explanation to suddenly feel so expedited. “She did?” she asks, finding it hard to believe that her sister went to bat for her when Alex has been so frustrated by all of this herself.

“She made it very clear how determined you were to come and find me before the press conference,” Lena says. “Tried to get me to cancel the damn thing because of it. Of course, with what happened after… I understand why you didn’t stick around.” Averting her gaze, Lena continues. “I was avoiding you myself, to be honest. What you did, running away like that — what Lex did after… I wasn’t ready to deal with what happened, so I returned to my comfort zone at LCorp. I was terribly angry.”

“Your anger is completely justified.” Swallowing hard, Kara sits down next to the other woman at last. “First off, what I said to you and tried to make you do all in the name of some- some panicked and half-baked idea that we’d all be better off if I kept away from you — it was horrible, and thoughtless, and cruel… and you were right. It was exactly what Lillian and Lex wanted from me. I’m so, so sorry for the way I tried to cut you off and ignore your autonomy after everything we’ve been through-”

“Kara,” Lena says, holding up her hand, but Kara has finally started to get on a roll here, has finally begun to say everything that she’s been so scared to, and nothing is going to derail her now.

“Lena, I totally understand why you don’t want to hear any of this but please let me finish,’ she surges on, starting again and not daring to look over to gauge Lena’s annoyance. “Not to mention the fact that I was so blinded by my fear that I went against everything I believe in, and even then, I still went after your brother. I still played myself right into his hands, and… people lost their lives because of it. Because of me. Of course, you’re angry with me — everyone should be. I- I don’t think I’ve been the best person, lately, and look at all of the hurt that’s come because of it.”

“Can I please make one distinction before you keep going?” Lena asks, stronger than before, and Kara is forced to stop rambling. Kara nods, and Lena moves closer, close enough to grab her hand from where it’s twisted in the blankets and not let go. “I’m not angry at you anymore, and no one else is either.”

“Why not?” Now that the truth is out there, Kara finds herself firmly trapped by her swirling negative feelings. What Lena is saying sounds like the light at the end of a tunnel that shouldn’t be there.

“Because I forgive you,” Lena says, stating it as if it should be obvious. “You just apologized, and even if you hadn’t… I’ve never been very good at staying upset with you, have I?”

Kara remains silent, and Lena shifts closer once more, now able to reach out and tilt Kara’s chin up, meeting her eyes at last. “If I were to blame every last person who’s ever been manipulated and tricked by my family into making bad choices, how do you think I’d ever be able to move on with my own conscience? My mother has made me doubt myself and my intentions more times than I can count. My brother did a good enough job at getting under my skin and warping my sense of morality that I nearly mind-controlled the world and allied myself with him, as I’m sure you remember. What about every terrible thing I’ve done under their influence that you forgave me for anyway?”

“Half of that happened because of what I did to you,” Kara reminds her, trying in vain to make Lena understand the difference. Lena’s eyes tell a completely different story. “I have no excuse for any of what I’ve done-”

“And you don’t need one,” Lena says. “That’s not a requirement for forgiveness, Kara. The truth is that I don’t blame you for what you did. From your perspective, I can even understand why you believed, at the time, that trying to distance yourself was the prudent choice-”

“What about you?” Kara interrupts because if Lena knows all of her tendencies, Kara also knows all of hers. The last thing she wants is for the other woman’s own sense of contrition to give her a reason to sweep what she’s feeling under the rug. Kara gets it: Lena has probably been dealing with just as a persistent feeling of guilt as Kara has. Lena always does when it comes to her family. “Screw my perspective… screw my forgiveness! What about your feelings?”

Lena chews on the question for a while, and Kara watches her eyelashes as she stares down at the bed and blinks. “The anger and the sadness that I did feel, even if it’s faded now, was very real, Kara,” she says at last, and finally — it feels as though they’re approaching this on even footing. “I won’t pretend like what you said didn’t hurt me, or that a part of me hadn’t been waiting for you to show up at my office this week and say all of this then.”

Kara squeezes Lena’s hand, holding onto it like a lifeline. “I know,” she says. “I should have.”

“Timing is tricky, especially with what you took on for the sake of this city in the wake of my brother’s attacks.” Lena stares over at her. “What you took on for your own sake, I suspect. You really believe this is entirely your fault, don’t you?”

“I did exactly what he wanted. Lex Luthor’s faithful, reckless little puppet.” Kara’s voice strains against the barriers of her throat, against the quiet of this room. If she could howl and scream, she would. “That was my ultimatum. My choice, so yeah. It is my fault, Lena. Why do you think I haven’t been able to sleep at night? Why I haven’t been able to come home?”

It’s a dangerous, wildly unguarded thing to admit — something that only Lena is able of drawing out of her unbidden. “That was no choice,” Lena says, and her fierceness envelops Kara in warmth as if they’d both just slipped under the covers, continuing this whispered confession of a conversation as if they were little girls at a sleepover. “That was an inevitability. Please understand that, Kara. He’s my brother. He was going to kill those people no matter what. Lex put you in that spot because he knows that this is the kind of remorse that someone as good and as caring as you will take to your grave, and I… I can’t imagine what it’s like. I’m not Supergirl — but I know what it means to feel like you have blood on your hands. It’s a lonely, lonely path to tread, and you are most certainly not alone. It’s not your fault, okay?”

Kara reaches up, absently wiping at her cheek only to discover that it’s wet. She looks down at the bed, at her long legs tucked neatly beneath her, and sees spots of salty wetness gathered in splotches. “I’m crying,” she says, marveling at it. “When- when did I start crying?”

A small, scratchy laugh escapes Lena’s throat, and Kara looks up in time to see that her best friend has been crying as well. “Quite a while ago,” she says with a wet chuckle. “And you know me — I can’t bear it when you cry.”

“So you’re saying that this- this is all my fault,” Kara says with a strangled smile, gesturing at their mirrored tear tracks.

“You- you’re incorrigible,” Lena laughs, real and true and a vision in the dark, swimming across Kara’s tear-streaked eyes. “Come here, Kara.”

It’s a strange shift, making a joke at a time like this, and it feels special. It makes the way Lena closes the gap between them and wraps an arm around her shoulders at long last seem exceptionally rare. Who else could ever bring this out of Kara? How did Kara think for even a moment that she could survive on her own without Lena’s singular way of loving her? What she’s got is without equal; it’s a miracle, and who is Kara to turn away from it?

“I really am sorry, Lena,” she whispers again, her head on Lena’s shoulder, her mouth pressed tightly against her collarbone. There’s a part of her that reminds her even still, that this is not a burden that someone like Lena should have to share with her. Just because Kara can’t bear to be alone doesn’t mean that it’s fair to let Lena walk this path with her, to break her back right alongside her. “I shouldn’t have treated you like that, no matter what I believed.”

But that side has ruled her conscience for long enough, and when Lena shudders out a breath and pulls Kara in closer, whatever heaviness that Kara might carry doesn’t seem too terrible of a price to pay if it means feeling like this. “Did you mean it, what you said?” the other woman murmurs out her question, pressing her cheek against Kara’s hair as if that would disguise her trembling voice.

Kara tries to imagine what it would be like for them to return to the way things were. She tries to picture what it will be like to one day wake up in a bed that doesn’t have Lena in it, to not spend every morning, afternoon, and evening laughing and cooking and cleaning and spending every minute of every day with her best friend. And while that understanding — that knowledge that eventually, whether Kara likes it or not, they will settle back into something far more suitable for two best friends to share — breaks her heart… it doesn’t have to happen just yet.

“That I want my distance from you?” she asks, breaking away from Lena’s arms to look her best friend in the eyes. Lena nods, and while she may no longer be angry about it, it’s clear that Kara’s words struck a nerve and uncovered an insecurity that the other woman has been struggling to keep at bay. “No. Not in the slightest. Maybe it doesn’t seem like it right now, but these past few months have been the happiest of my entire time here on earth,” Kara tells her, leaning into Lena’s shoulder. “That’s been because of you. You already said what you’re grateful for… but I’m thankful for you as well, Lena. Not just for your forgiveness, your patience, your kindness — but for this. What we’ve created out of second chances and honesty and compassion is something that I should have never taken for granted. I want to be in your life in whatever way you want me to be — not the way other people do.”

“I want that too. Even if everything changes… I don’t want to lose you, Kara. Not ever.” Lena sniffles, wiping daintily at her eyes in an attempt to not ruin her mascara, and Kara can’t take it anymore.

This time, she’s the one who initiates the hug — a tackle of an embrace, really. Throwing her body weight on top of a surprised and unprepared Lena, Kara presses them both into the bed and screws her eyes shut. “Rao, I missed you,” she breathes out, her arms tight and firm as she hugs her best friend in a consuming way that is only available when she has no superstrength to worry about. “So much.”

Lena chokes out a laugh, her breath knocked from her lungs and her gorgeous dress probably horribly wrinkled by Kara’s antics — not that she seems to care. “Don’t do that again,” she warns, only composed enough to make her words sound half-serious. Kara feels her hand stretched out across her back, warm and steady. “And I hate to say it, but you’re going to have to get off of me now and change your clothes. You really do stink.”

Right on cue, Kara hears her mother’s voice lilt its way through the curtains. “Time for pictures!” she calls out, loud and sweeping for Kara and Lena’s benefit only. Kara would bet money on the fact that the suddenly suspiciously muted living room has been doing its very best to listen in on what was most certainly not a business call.

“Coming!” Kara yells back, and her voice is strong, and content. While this isn’t the end of her battle with her inner demons and the guilt that still stains all of her actions, it’s a start. Having Lena back in her corner is more than just a start — it’s a revelation. Pushing herself up on her forearms, Kara looks down at Lena beneath her. Lena stares right back — eyes twinling and inviting, her hair in a halo beneath her head — and Kara adds this moment right here to her private catalog of all of the times that she’s desperately wanted to kiss her best friend.

Instead, she reaches out with her hand and carefully wipes away at the one spot where the other woman’s makeup did manage to smear. Lena’s breath hitches, and Kara smiles down at her. “You ready?”

The spell is broken when her sweater is flung across her face; by the time Kara flails around and manages to escape from its wool confines, Lena is sitting up and looking beautiful, getting the upper hand once more. “So long as there’s a spot next to you on the couch? Always,” she answers, and Kara’s smile grows.

For tonight, it’s more than enough to just have this back.

Chapter Text

The rest of the night isn’t all that bad.

Sure, Kara spends the remainder of the evening largely catatonic on the couch, mustering up a glazed smile and a heavy arm around Alex’s shoulders for family photos and then promptly curling herself up into a very comfortable ball while the others bicker over what game to play next. The moment they come to a consensus on trivia, Kara’s eyes begin to droop. As much as she loves rubbing it in her sister’s face about how much better she, an alien, is at earthly pop culture trivia, nothing is going to keep her awake at this point.

Nothing, except for the fact that she is suddenly and without warning sandwiched between Lena, who hasn’t left her immediate reach since the bedroom, and a doting, affectionate James.

Kara is so tired and so content after reconciling with Lena that she doesn’t even realize who exactly it is that’s plopped down next to her until she’s suddenly enveloped in a bear hug, the kind that could only ever come from one person. “Get over here!” James crows, pulling her halfway out of her seat with a smile that’s a mile wide and much too bright for Kara’s squinting eyes. Squeezing tight, his smile only grows bigger, and despite her being on sleep’s doorway only a second before, Kara finds his jolliness invigorating. “God, I’ve missed you so much. How are you? How have you been?”

It’s the type of well-meaning questioning that probably would have caused a pent-up outburst of tears from Kara had James managed to track her down earlier in the night, but not now. Sure, Kara won’t lie to herself or act like she’s about to become the life of the party, but it feels like there’s no longer a knife pressed firmly against her throat. There’s just enough weight off her back that when Kara smiles over at her friend, she means it.

As weird and disjointed as these feelings of jealousy are towards James, they don’t detract from the fact that it is very good to see him – and that Kara melts into his assured warmth as easily as she had the first day she’d met him. “I missed you too,” she says, voice only slightly muffled by his armpit. Delicately untangling herself from his embrace, Kara pats his shoulder, giving him a good once-over. He looks as strong and bright and happy as ever, and for a moment, it feels like it was only yesterday that she first put on the cape. “I- I’m okay. How are things with you?”

“Oh, you know me,” he replies with a shrug, shifting closer as the rest of their friends begin to bicker and reclaim their seats. As wonderful as Kara’s living room is for hosting nights like these, it gets to be a crowded table – and Kara is pretty sure that Alex is still drunk and pissed off enough that she might just start a new world war if Brainy takes her favorite spot by the windows. “The paper is doing well, and it’s been great getting back into stories with a camera in my hand.” Reaching behind Kara’s shoulders, he teasingly pokes at Lena’s side. “But, I was telling this one earlier that there’s plenty about this city that I miss. The coffee shops and the people in particular.”

Kara’s smile dims a few watts as Lena laughs and looks across Kara’s body and over to James with an expression that’s absolutely dripping with endeared affection; Lois would call it positively sappy, and her heart sinks because of it. “I already told you,” Lena replies, never breaking eye contact with the man once. “I’m sure I could pull a few strings and convince the owner of Noonan’s to open up a location closer to you. As for the people… I suppose you’ll just have to move back home, now won’t you?”

“So you’ve been telling me over the phone for the last few months,” James answers with an easy, conspiratorial grin, and Kara suddenly feels like she’s on the outside peeping in on a moment that feels much too affectionate for her to butt in on. “Kara,” James says, bringing her right back into the fold even as Kara has begun brainstorming ways to politely bow out, “Don’t ever plan on moving away from National City unless you want this woman hounding your voicemail begging you to come back every night.”

Before Kara can come up with anything even remotely clever to say back, anything at all to disguise the plain truth that she would never leave this city behind or hide the fact that James’s disclosure about how badly Lena’s missed him has just hit squarely between Kara’s eyes, Lena speaks for her. “Oh, you’re getting off easy,” she tells James, face glowing. Her eyes land solidly back on Kara’s again, and she feels jolted back to life by the current of electricity that passes between them. “Kara won’t be able to go anywhere without me finding some way to follow.”

Underneath the pile of bodies that have accrued on the couch cushions, Lena’s hand finds hers and squeezes. Kara, swept off her feet by such a simple gesture, smiles softly and squeezes right back. “Why would I ever even try?” she responds, and for a moment, it could just be the two of them alone in the room.

Then Alex gets unsteadily to her feet and raises her fingers to her mouth, releasing a loud, piercing whistle that’s enough to stir them from the haze. “Alright, are we playing or not?” she asks the chattering, rosy-cheeked group around her and is met with giggles and a few drunken cheers.

Kara barely makes it through the first question read by a brilliantly monotone Brainy before she’s passed out, head rolling to the side and falling heavily on Lena’s shoulder. Through her half-asleep daze, Kara vaguely recognizes that the other woman shifts to meet her, creating a more comfortable spot to rest her head on, but Kara is too out of it to feel grateful toward the gesture for longer than a heartbeat. All she knows is that she’s full, and just a little bit drunk, and so, so warm and comfortable here on this couch, and… well, Lena and Alex were right. She really needs to sleep, and there’s nothing keeping her from it now.

She dozes on and off throughout the rest of the games, trivia questions about the solar system and the World Series and King Tut washing in and out of her consciousness like waves on the beach. Vaguely, she registers when people get up to get more wine or help themselves to dessert, but Lena doesn’t move in the slightest, and so Kara doesn’t either. Someone – Kara suspects Alex, seeing as Lois began to sarcastically coo over in the direction of her sister immediately after – wraps Kara’s favorite blanket around her slumped form. It’s soft and cozy and even as Kara still fights her guilt, still resists the urge to wander back out into the streets with her cape on in an attempt to be there for someone – her soul settles right here in this spot and Rao – Kara needed this time with her family, even if she’s asleep through most of it.

And okay, yeah, it’s embarrassing when she wakes up with a start after an explosion of laughter from her friends to find some dried drool on her cheek and probably all over the shoulder of Lena’s pristine and likely very expensive dress, but even then, it’s worth it to be with her like this. Not even the specter of Lillian or Lex is enough this time around to persuade Kara to keep her distance.

Eventually, she’s awoken from her wonderfully uneventful dreams smelling distinctly like Lena’s jasmine perfume when something moves beneath her, robbing her of what had been a very comfortable pillow.

Groggy, she sits up and squints her eyes against the bright lamp glow that illuminates the room, only to find that the living room is less crowded now. Before she can sit up any further, a hand circles around her bicep, slowing her jerking, confused movements. “Sorry, darling,” Lena whispers in her ear, and the quiet sound alone is enough to make Kara question whether or not she’s still dreaming. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“No- no, you didn’t,” Kara mumbles in an attempt to seem more alert, sitting up and feeling for the first time the full extent of fatigue in her sore muscles and aching, throbbing head. Craning her neck, she watches as the others clean up the leftover food and tidy up the kitchen, washing dishes and sweeping the floor in unhurried, relaxed movements. “What time is it?”

“Late. Everyone is getting ready to start saying their goodbyes, and I’m going to get up and see them out.” Lena watches her as she yawns and rubs at her eyes, trying to bring the room back into focus. “Why don’t you just lay down and go back to sleep? You looked so comfortable – I’d hate to disturb that now.”

“It’s my apartment. I’d really better help clean up.” She struggles to keep her eyes open, knowing that if she were to sit here for a few moments longer with Lena’s hand on her lower back, she’ll be out for the count for the rest of the night. With a grunt, she clambers to her feet, slaying only slightly in place.

Lena looks amused and entirely unconvinced, hiding her smile behind a well-timed cough. “Kara, you’ve done plenty over the last few days,” she admonishes. “We can handle a few dirty dishes without Supergirl’s help.”

Holding up her hands in surrender, Kara allows Lena to win that point. Still, she doesn’t sit back down, instead opting to hold out a hand, hoisting Lena up right alongside her. “I can at least get the door for everyone on the way out,” she says, and Lena just shakes her head, smiling in a way that shimmers in the midnight light – or maybe that’s just Kara’s groggy vision. Either way, it’s pure magic. She holds out her hands, gesturing for Lena to lead the way. “I was late to dinner. I’ve got to be a halfway decent host or no one will want to come over for Christmas,” Kara tells her. “Besides, what kind of daughter would I be if I didn’t say goodnight to my mom?”

“One who would be forgiven for taking some time for herself, I’ve no doubt,” Lena points out, but her argument ends there, content to have Kara accompany her to the door.

It feels right, playing the anchor to Lena’s soaring, graceful sails, to allow herself to be fully tethered against the other woman’s magnetic field. They stand at the door, close enough that Kara could drape an arm around the other woman’s waist if she ever had the nerve to, and it’s wonderful to simply watch Lena work her magic on everyone around them. It feels like only yesterday when it was Lena showing up so hesitantly at her door, taking the leap and spending the holidays with people she’d never met. The years stretch out before Kara’s eyes as she leans against the doorframe, content to just bask in Lena’s light, and she marvels at how much can change in such a short amount of time. What the future holds, Kara has only the murkiest of suspicions, but this night is enough to assure her that no matter what happens, these people are tethered to one another through more than just circumstance.

Nia and Brainy slip away into the night without much incident, just a passing, sleep-related joke from the younger woman about Kara’s unexpected nap that draws a groan from where Alex is marooned washing dishes. It’s a narrow one, but Nia makes her escape successfully with Brainy in hand, ducking masterfully under the towel that Alex launched her way with a smirk and a twirling wave.

Then William stumbles up to the door, and it’s clear from the start that this won't be as smooth an exit as his coworker just managed. Pitching forward, he launches himself into Kara’s arms. Were it not for the fact that she was already leaning most of her own weight on the doorframe, Kara knows that there’s no way that she would have been strong enough to keep them both upright. Lena steps just out of Kara’s reach, clearing her throat and continuing to chat with J’onn, and Kara feels her absence like taking off a worn, warm coat.

“Everyone here is so nice,” he hiccups into her ear, and Kara, unsure whether or not the man is drunk enough to start blubbering, pats him on the back, trying to soothe and steady him at the same time. With how loud their group has been all night, she really doesn’t need any noisy theatrics when her door is propped open. “You know, I would have been all alone if you hadn’t… I’m so glad you invited me.”

Kara understands what it’s like to feel unsure about where you belong. “I’m so glad you came,” she answers, gripping his shoulders just a bit tighter. If she can offer William a place to go in this big, strange, unfamiliar city, she will happily, no matter what social discomfort she may have to sidestep every once in a while. “You’ll be around for Christmas, right? Sounds like Lois wants to chat with you some more.”

“If I manage to survive whatever hangover is waiting for me tomorrow, I’ll be there,” William replies, breaking out of the clumsy embrace and giving her the kind of scheming smile that makes Kara regret letting him have so much unstructured and unsupervised time with Alex and Nia. “I’m thinking of bringing a mistletoe. If I can figure out how to lure you and-”

“Okay, well! Your cab is probably downstairs by now,” Kara says with a strained voice, acutely aware of the way Lena’s ears practically perked up at William’s suggestive remarks and his booming, theatrical voice. The last thing she needs is to deal with any mistletoe in her immediate future. Slipping an arm securely around his back, she takes a breath and prepares to drag this happy lug of a man all the way out to her front steps if need be. “Time for us to get going, I think-”

“You’re taking me home?” William interjects, clearly enjoying this last chance to embarrass his newfound friend before Kara kicks him out of her apartment for good. “I”m flattered, but don't you think we should slow things down just a bit? You know what they say about impulsive decisions over the holidays-”

Kara smacks his arm, picking up the pace as she tries in vain to pull him away from other people’s earshots before he can say anything truly incriminating. “Why, you little-” she hisses, wondering if she’s going to live to regret making her invitation to William an open one for all future game nights, holidays, and weekend get-togethers.

Then again, the offer is not a legally binding one — and if William continues to torment her, the invite may just be rescinded.

Before she can decide one way or another, J’onn swoops in and rescues her. “I’ve got him from here,” he tells her, pulling her into a one-armed hug before taking over for her, guiding William down the hallway like he was a sack of flour. “You get inside and rest up.”

Unperturbed, William waves a lazy, drooping hand at her as he begins to sway down to the elevators of his own accord. Kara winces as he bumps into one of the light fixtures mounted to the walls, and looks over at J’onn carefully. “Are you sure? You really don’t need to,” she says, reminded of the fact that this is not the first time that J’onn has rescued her from a William-related disaster tonight. She loves the guy, but he’s a reporter at heart, and William is content to say whatever he has to to get the biggest reaction from her — and learn the most information from the ensuing chaos. “You already had him as your game partner all night long-”

“And he improved every time we played,” J’onn replies, characteristically patient. Even so, Kara suspects that it’s because of her that he’s being so charitable to a complete stranger. “We’ve got plans to sweep the next round, don’t we, William?” he calls out. William sends a barely-recognizable version of a thumbs up over his shoulder, and J’onn smiles over at her, shrugging. “He’s really no trouble at all,” he says, quiet and sincere. “Believe it or not, he’s grown on me. I’ll make sure he gets home in one piece. You have someone waiting for you.”

Following his line of sight, Kara catches a glimpse of Lena lingering just behind the open door. Their gazes meet for one fleeting moment, and when Kara turns back to J’onn, she greets his waiting smile with a blush. “What you told me at the DEO… I took your advice,” she says, lowering her voice. “I apologized, and- well, I hope things will be better. She deserves it.”

“You both do, Kara.” They listen to the sounds of the laughter and the faint music wafting over, and J’onn leans over and kisses the top of her head. Kara thinks of her own father back on Krypton doing the same thing right before he put her in that pod, Jeremiah with the same shine in his eyes when he would look down at her over his reading glasses at night. Despite their flaws, despite her impossible odds, Kara can’t believe she managed to find someone as good and as steadfast as J’onn to follow in their footsteps. “Don’t you forget what I said about you being the happiest I’ve seen you in a very long time. No matter what the road has been like to get here, remember to be grateful for what you have right now — and don’t deny yourself it.”

J’onn says it as if he’s not the least bit surprised that they’re back on solid footing — as if he, and everyone else in the room, had known that Kara and Lena would come crashing back together with as much certainty as the next tide coming in. Kara supposes that after watching it happen over and over again, she shouldn’t doubt it either. However secret of a language they may share, it isn’t one that goes unnoticed — even if it’s only shared between the two of them.

“Thank you. Goodnight,” she says, shooting one last worried look over at a very dizzy William for good measure. “If he gives you any trouble at all, I’m always-”

“You’re always around, I know. We’ll be fine,” he assures her, already turning around to try and catch up with William, who has hit the elevator button and could cause unforeseen damage to its facilities on the short trip to the ground level. “Take the morning off. That’s an order,” he adds, and while J’onn has been away from the DEO for two years at this point, he still has a mastery over making his voice imposing and imperious; Kara forgets for a split second that J’onn is no longer the Director of the DEO and has no more power over her decisions than any of their friends do.

Not that she’s planning on resisting his commands. Not for tonight, at least.

Giving him a silent salute, Kara sighs heavily as the doors to the elevator shut at last. She takes in the insular, muffled feeling of being in this hallway without being able to hear everything that her neighbors are doing and saying. She can picture herself as a normal human so easily here and now, watches as some alternate version of herself spends every holiday feeling this drunk and fatigued and warmly vulnerable. Casting her eyes back up to her door, Kara finds Lena with her back turned, laughing about something with James.

“With the year that we’ve all had, it would mean a great deal if you were to do that. It would mean a great deal to me,” Lena is finishing saying to James, who’s leaning over her and dwarfing her smaller form in the doorway in an absolutely charming way that makes Kara quicken her pace back inside for no good reason at all.

Wedging herself right back into the frame, Kara re-enters the conversation with a hastily-assembled smile and a blush that’s still fading from wrangling William away from where he could cause the most damage. “What were we talking about?” she chirps, despite not having been a part of this exchange in the slightest, and Lena and James share a sidelong glance. It’s quick, discreet, and decidedly endeared — and it has no business making Kara’s vision tinge green with envy in the way that it does.

But Lena soothes the sudden burn of jealousy in Kara’s stomach with a smile that she knows is reserved only for her. And not to make this into a competition, because it very obviously is not — but then again, Kara has always been way too competitive for her own good, and she likes to take victories where she can find them right now — but this look that they share now? The one that makes Kara feel like Lena might actually believe that she hung the stars herself, makes Supergirl want to go fly out into the sky and bring back the moon for her best friend just like they do in all of the old movies? Well, no offense to James, but Kara wouldn’t trade this for the world.

“Oh, Kara, you’ll love this,” Lena says, gesturing to James. “Guess who’s going to be taking an extended vacation here over the holidays?”

It speaks to just how excited Lena is about the prospect that the question lacks any and all mystery or intrigue. Lena’s beaming smile says it all; that, and the fact that James is blushing just a bit, reaching up and rubbing at his neck to hide the flush that’s spread there, tells Kara all she needs to know.

Once upon a time, the news that James would be back in the city would have filled her with the same immense joy as Lena. Now, Kara struggles to reconcile her fondness for James with the fact that the thought of him back in the city – back around Lena – has taken the form of a speeding locomotive and she is currently trapped under its tracks, barrelled over and gut-punched.

“Really?” she asks, turning to James – partially to try and determine if his blush is a product of Lena’s presence, but mostly to avoid having to look at the sheer amount of happiness on her best friend’s face. And she’s biased, she knows, but Kara, as bleary-eyed and as unsure about where she is, can’t for the life of her remember if Lena has ever looked at her like that. It’s a selfish, irrational, insecure thought, and Kara banishes it the moment “I thought you said things were going well with the paper?”

“They are. I’ve got a fantastic staff behind me, and that’s why I feel comfortable leaving them for a few weeks,” James replies. “They’re more than capable of holding down the fort, and to be honest, with everything that’s happened here lately-” Clearing his throat, James suddenly can’t meet Kara’s eyes. She supposes that she wouldn’t be able to either, had their roles been reversed and James had been the one who’d stumbled into a Lex Luthor trap that had killed dozens of people. “Being in National City is my priority for the time being.”

“I understand,” she says, voice faint. Kara finds herself not very interested in searching out his gaze either – has an exhausted suspicion that she’d find only a hesitant sort of compassion, and Lena has already offered her more than enough sympathy for one night. “With what happened – with what I did-”

Picking up on something strained in her voice, James corrects his course. “Not because of that, Kara,” he says softly and in a tone that only James Olsen has ever used on her, like he’s trying to hold falling sand in his hands. It’s a search for what yesterday was like, before Kara had made any terrible mistakes, before Lex; James was there for her from the start, after all, and he remembers as well as she does what it was like to watch Supergirl fly for the first time, and Kara is pretty sure that James still sees her that way, all new and shining and free of any stains. “None of what happened is on you. I just mean that it’s times like this when you want to be close to the people you care about.”

Lena’s hand is suddenly pressed against the small of Kara’s back, bringing her in closer and rooting her to the spot at the same time. “I certainly won’t object to keeping you in our lives through New Year’s,” she teases, and while Kara knows what this really is – a concerted, calculated effort on Lena’s part to keep Kara firmly away from falling into any self-deprecating thoughts for the rest of the night – she’s much too fragile at the moment to resist it, to argue back and convince James that those deaths are very much on her. From the steadiness of her hand alone, Lena means business. Better to give herself over to Lena’s placating ministrations, at least for the night. “You’re always a welcome sight at any black tie event, and I’d be glad to have another friendly face at my end-of-year gala.”

Kara’s head perks up, turning to face the other woman. Lena doesn’t remove her hand, and Kara can’t ignore how close they are to each other now, curled into one another. Don’t stare, she reminds herself valiantly, despite how easy it would be to soak in every inch of the other woman right now. Much as she would love to linger on the beautiful little details of Lena’s dress, or the way her hair falls and curls and frames her face perfectly, or how her mouth is hooked up in one of her teasing, utterly enchanting half-smiles… Rao – best friends don’t do that quite so unabashedly. Do. Not. Stare.

“You’re throwing a gala?” she says instead, and she’s proud to say that her voice is only barely verging on panic. However crippled CADMUS is at the moment, however ghost-like Lena’s brother has become over the last few days – that does not change the fact that Lena throwing a gala is causing an absolute boulder of nerves to drop hard and heavy down Kara’s gut. Lex-related or not, Lena’s luck has never been great when it comes to hosting public events. “What about-?”

“What better way to spit in my brother’s face one last time than to host a party reveling in the fact that the good side of humanity beat him out?” Lena responds. There’s a smooth sort of firmness to her words; Lena has always been awfully self-aware, always cognizant of consequences and risk and reward about everything from her company’s financial decisions to how she takes her coffee in the mornings. It means Lena’s thought this through, and has likely been tossing it around in her head for nights on end – and if she’s bringing it up now, she must be sure. “By the time the new year rolls around, I have no doubt you will have reduced CADMUS to a pile of dust and a few privileged, conceited old men. I want to celebrate that and the perseverance of this city.”

Kara understands where Lena’s confidence in her is coming from, a powerful combination of the logical evidence of how quickly Kara has torn through CADMUS already in a week alone and the fact that, as her best friend, Lena has never once wavered or doubted Kara’s ability to save the day. That doesn’t stop Kara from wavering, swaying in place as it all sinks in. “Yeah, sure,” she mutters blankly, unable to argue but also incapable of injecting her typical dose of enthusiasm into her voice.

James speaks up while the gears in Kara’s head are still visibly turning. “I think that’s fantastic, Lena,” he says. “You all deserve a pick-me-up, and I’m always in favor of infuriating your brother.”

Lena’s eyes sparkle. “One of my favorite hobbies,” she replies, refocusing on Kara. Her eyes slide back up to where Kara is fidgeting with the hem of her sweater, and the attention is enough to cause a strange mix of nervousness and attraction to flare up in Kara’s chest. Lena should really know better than to look at her like that, she can’t help but think to herself. “Actually, I was hoping…”

She trails off, still with that infuriatingly gorgeous smile on her face and Kara follows along hook, line, and sinker. “You were hoping for…?” she prompts, and Lena’s eyes move up from her waistline to meet hers.

There’s a certain sort of boldness, brought on by the alcohol and their reconciliation no doubt, to the way Lena bites her lip and stares her down, like she knows she’s got Kara fully entrapped and complacent and is enjoying drawing it out. “Well, it’s actually a job for Supergirl. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find her, do you?”

Kara’s tipsy herself, but even she can recognize that this teasing is verging on something that could be interpreted as blatant flirtation. And Lena’s always been a bit of a flirt with everyone – Kara’s not so distracted by her realization of her own feelings to be blind to that fact – but with Kara, she seems to take a special relish in it. She expects Alex to come barging in at any moment, looking nauseous and unimpressed, and telling the two of them to knock it off.

But her sister is still over by the sink being corralled by Eliza into finishing off the rest of the dirty dishes, and there’s no one to stop this from happening other than James – and maybe it’s her jealousy making itself known, maybe it’s because too many walls have been knocked down in one night between them for Kara to stop it now, or maybe it’s just because Kara’s existing in a moment of weakness that’s been extended into an entire night’s worth of emotional decision-making – but Kara gives the man a sideways glance and leans into it. James may be the one that Lena truly has feelings for, but at least right now, Kara has this.

“She’s only a call away,” she says, shocked at just how conspiratorial her voice has become. Lena’s smile grows somehow more alluring, a brilliant flash of gold in the pan; Lena knows what she’s doing, and she’s absolutely gleeful that Kara’s playing along. “And she’s always willing to do a favor for you. Word on the street is that she thinks quite highly of you — allegedly.”

Lena leans in closer, just a smidge. Kara could count every eyelash that frames her eyes if she were so inclined. “Allegedly? So noncommittal. Sounds like I haven’t been quite charming enough.”

James chuckles, eyes darting between them. The vindictive side of Kara wonders if the man is having any sudden bouts of envy himself. “You two are ridiculous. Anyone ever told you that?”

He definitely has a point; Kara and Lena’s banter has always had a habit of swinging wildly back and forth between cheesy and hypnotically intense, but it doesn’t seem to sober up Lena in the slightest. “I’ve heard that once or twice, yes,” she muses. “But, back to Supergirl. What would she say to being the guest of honor at my gala? Get a few rounds of applause, take some photos, and escort me inside – the usual song and dance. What do you think – would she be free?”

Kara, as is usually the case, is the first to break, her cheeks turning red and a bundle of fidgety energy causing her to lift up a hand and rub hard at the back of her neck. Flustered, she clears her throat, struggling to keep it quite as smooth and unashamed as Lena’s. “Guest of honor?” she asks, her imagination firing up without warning. She can picture the two of them arriving together, Lena in some sleek, expensive, and utterly breathtaking dress, and Supergirl standing tall and proud, her cape skimming over the red carpet. It’s an enticing, intoxicating image, and an extremely powerful, daring message to send to Lex. “I didn’t think- you don’t usually have guests of honor, do you?”

The only problem is that the idea of appearing as strong and self-assured as the Supergirl of her imagination seems like a Herculean task for Kara right now, not with what’s still hanging over her head, sharp and unforgiving as it is.

“Well, no. You caught me.” Lena’s fingers twist into the soft wool of her sweater, and Kara realizes belatedly that the other woman had never dropped her hand from the small of her back. “Listen, I-” She stops herself, staring over at Kara with warm, clear eyes. When she speaks up again, her teasing tone is all but gone, replaced by sincerity. “I wanted to do something for you, Kara. And it’s not very substantial – not to mention terribly gauche and a bit of a drag, but… you deserve as much of a chance as I do to prove to Lex that he hasn’t gotten the better of us or of National City.”

“Someone just wants to have Supergirl on their arm when they walk in front of the paps,” a voice cuts in, and Kara glances away from Lena to find her sister, finally joining in on their long goodbye with James with exactly the kind of exasperated expression Kara had expected her to have. “Isn’t that right, Lena?”

For a question that’s phrased oddly enough to almost sound like a threat, Lena takes it in stride, shrugging and seeming unashamed if her sly grin is any indication. “You do make for a rather dashing figure for me to show off with,” she says, ignoring Alex entirely in a move designed to make Kara’s sister even more irritated – and one that works, seeing as Alex huffs and rolls her eyes. “But… if you’re uncomfortable with any of it-”

“No- no, of course not,” Kara cuts in quickly. Appearances be damned, she'll be at that gala regardless. Better to have Supergirl at the event no matter how brave or intimidating she may look to ensure that no bad guys try to pull anything. Kara’s found that oftentimes, the cape and the symbol on her chest are more than enough to convince criminals to behave themselves, and, well – she intends on keeping Lena safe. “I can handle a few photographers,” she says, slower, more controlled. “I’d love to go.”

Despite her suave attitude, Lena looks eager and maybe even a bit nervous when she smiles over at her. “Really? You would?”

“No problem too small,” Kara answers swiftly, smiling back. If there’s any Supergirl in her tonight, she hopes it comes through now. She wants Lena to feel good about this. Kara wants to feel good about this, and sometimes, pretending she’s got it all under control is the first and most important step in getting to that place of confidence. “I’d gladly be your escort any time and any place you want.”

Alex snorts, but Kara is too content with the beaming grin on Lena’s face to take offense to her sister at the moment. “You’d be able to go as Kara Danvers as well, of course,” Lena says in one big exhale, and it seems she was more anxious about this than Kara would have originally guessed. “Make your big entrance as Supergirl, slip on your glasses, and enjoy the rest of the night without dealing with every eye on the room being glued on you.”

Kara’s reply is an easy one, and she says it without considering or caring about the consequences.

“Have you seen the way you look at those parties? So long as you’re there, I’d say those eyes will be plenty occupied.”

“Oh my God,” Alex groans, and okay, maybe that was a tad bit of a cliche — and absolutely not very platonic-sounding, not with the way Kara’s lips are feeling loose and numb and very affectionate from the wine — but it might just be worth it, stepping over this particular line in the sand. Lena’s cheeks turn a particularly pretty shade of pink, and Kara bites down a secretive grin, knowing that she was the one that put it there. Her sister snaps in front of her face, breaking her stare with Lena. “If the two of you could take this shit seriously for one goddamn second- hey! Hey, earth to Kara!”

“What is it?” she asks, warm and comfortable and reluctant to come back to the ground completely, not with the pleasant daze that’s currently supporting her frame.

“Yeah, so Mom is going to stay with me and Kelly tonight, alright?” Alex reaches in between where Lena and Kara are still pressed together and goes for the coat rack. By the time she’s extracted her coat, Eliza’s parka, and Kelly’s gloves and boots, Lena takes a step back, giving Alex room to work. Kara is pretty sure that this was a tactic simply aimed to force them apart, and she misses the warmth against her spine immediately. “That means you are to go and sleep in peace, understand? No super-heroics, no stalling…” Alex gives Lena a sideways stare that Kara hopes her sister doesn’t think is subtle. “And no distractions.”

“I can do that,” Kara agrees without putting up a fight. The room is starting to spin very slowly, either because of the drinks or her body just generally giving up on her, and Kara isn’t about to resist the pull of sleep. Not tonight — and certainly not when she knows who’s going to slide in under the covers right next to her. Noticing James still lingering by the door, smiling to himself about something he must find immensely amusing, she kicks herself, realizing she has no idea what his plans are for the night. “James, do you have someplace to-?”

“Oh, yes. Lena’s hooked me up with a very swanky hotel room,” he answers, and Kara wishes that her brain would stop conjuring up so many unhelpful imagined scenarios of Lena and James and hotels all into one messy tangle. “I love you very much, Kara, but I won’t be sleeping on your lumpy couch anytime soon.”

“Right. Okay, well, I just wanted to make sure you had somewhere to go,” she manages, and James nods, grabbing his own coat and burying his hands in his pockets.

Before she knows it, everyone is gathered by the door and she’s enveloped in her mother’s embrace. Eliza smells like apple pie and vanilla ice cream, and when she squeezes Kara in closer, it really does feel like she could be twelve years old again, caught up in the wonderful safety net that the Danvers family had been for her from the start.

Eliza pulls away, reaches up, and cups Kara’s face in her hands, giving her a once-over. “To be clear, I’m not choosing favorites, but you listen to your sister, okay?” she says, not removing her hands. Kara nods silently, accepting her entrapment, and she can see Alex pump her fist in her periphery. “The rest of the world can wait while you go and get some rest.”

It would be counterproductive and foolish to argue back to Eliza that in fact, the world cannot and does not wait for Kara’s own well-being to keep pace; when no one around her can hear the cries for help that Kara can at nearly every minute of the day if she tuned in, the point, however personally resonant and motivating, becomes completely moot.

“There are leftovers, right?” she asks instead, knowing that tomorrow morning her stomach is going to pose a serious threat to her health unless she gets some calories in her right away. Kara isn’t built for being able to skate by on just a slice of pie, however massive it was, and she plans on raiding her fridge first thing in the morning.

“I cooked an extra turkey just for you, dear.” Her mother sighs and grabs Kara’s glasses, rubbing at a smudge near the edge of the frame. Kara straightens up her spine automatically, squaring her shoulders without thinking, and when Eliza hands them back, she’s got a knowing, somewhat bittersweet smile on her face, recognizing the very long shadow that Supergirl always casts over Kara’s every move. “The world can wait, Kara,” she repeats. “Do you promise you’ll be careful?”

Kara shrugs in agreement, bashful even around the people that know her best. “I always am, Mom.”

Alex opens her mouth, surely about to say something disagreeable, but Kelly whisks her away before she can start anything. “Alex and I will run and fetch the car. We’ll be out front in just a moment.” Looping her arm through Alex’s elbow, Kelly trots them both forward. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she says, bringing Kara in for a one-armed hug. “Alex, say goodbye to your sister. We’d better go warm up the car for your mother.”

As stubborn and as bold as she is, even Alex is bound by the laws of the universe when it comes to respecting and doing favors for her mother and her soon-to-be wife. In this case, Kelly knows it, and she’s used it to her full advantage – something that Kara is immensely grateful for. Unable and unwilling to protest, Alex just sends a half-hearted scowl in Kara’s general direction and gives her a hug as well. “We’re getting coffee tomorrow morning,” she orders, darting out and ruffling Kara’s hair in a move designed simply to exorcize her more juvenile impulses. “I’ll text you when I’m here. Don’t be late.”

Kara blows a few messy strands of hair out of her face with a huff. “I thought you wanted me to sleep in?” she asks with a cheeky air of innocence. “Which is it?”

“Fine. Lunch it is, then.” Despite staring her down, Alex’s face softens just long enough for her to lean back in and press a kiss to Kara’s cheek. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she mutters, and then she’s out the door with Kelly, James suddenly yanked off-stage by his sister as well.

“Oh-! I’ll see you both soon!” he calls out over his shoulder, a promise for all of this to be continued very soon. Kara wonders how many more times she’ll be able to endure his dynamic with Lena before she blows up and does something truly stupid.

At last, everyone is out the door and heading home but Eliza, who lingers just a moment longer. As she idly double-checks to make sure she isn’t forgetting anything, Kara watches as Eliza scrutinizes the two of them, rummaging blindly through her purse as an excuse to gather her thoughts. She’s going to say something, and Kara can only pray that it won’t be too revealing.

“He’s a nice boy,” she comments, and something shifts and slides into place behind Kara’s ribs. So, Eliza is going to go this way, then. “I can see why you had such a crush on him once upon a time, Kara. And Lena, I can understand why even now you-” Lena’s eyebrows crease just slightly, a picture-perfect image of polite confusion, and Eliza stops after she studies her face, seemingly deciding to spare them all the awkwardness of forcing Lena to reiterate her feelings about the man. “Well, never mind that now. I suppose my car is waiting outside, isn’t it?”

While Kara’s x-ray vision may currently be out of commission, her giant windows in the living room serve their purpose just as well in this instance. Going up on her toes, Kara sees that Eliza’s guess is correct. She smiles, reaching out and squeezing her mom’s hand. “I’d better not make Alex any crankier by stalling you up here.”

“She’ll get over it by tomorrow, just you wait,” Eliza answers, moving toward the door. “Though you really shouldn’t walk through those dark alleyways without your powers. It would be rather difficult to explain your way out of a bind like that if some poor, unsuspecting fellow decides to go and kidnap you, wouldn’t it?”

“I’d pity anyone who tries it,” Lena comments as Kara looks down and blushes, understanding her mother’s point. “Knowing Kara, she wouldn’t need powers to charm her way out of a hostage situation.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.” Beaming, Eliza pulls them both in for a group hug this time, and while Kara’s glasses nearly fall off and poke her eye as she’s squashed in the middle, Lena’s arm wrapping itself firmly back around her waist makes it all worth it. “You’re both wonderful, and I’m very grateful to have you in my life,” Eliza continues, and while it’s sappy as all get out, it works on Lena. Kara hears her breath hitch, and she knows that this is praise and love that the other woman never got growing up. “And you’re good for each other, you hear? Stick together, and things will turn out just fine.”

Kara honestly doesn’t know if Eliza’s hinting at anything specific; it could be a myriad of things, after all, from Kara’s unresolved feelings to the way the threat of Lex has caused everything to become distended and out of joint. Or maybe it’s just a general sentiment, a reminder to them both that they’ve been through much worse than this together. Regardless, there’s something about hearing her mother say it that makes Kara believe in it just a little bit more.

Kara smiles, looping her arm around Lena as well. Mutually assured support is what it is, and Kara knows full well that she won’t last long without it. “I know,” she answers Eliza, smiling over at Lena. “That’s the plan.”

With another round of goodbyes and well-wishes, Eliza walks out into the hallway and closes the door behind her. With a solid click, Kara and Lena are alone again at long last, and thanks to their conversation in the bedroom, that thought doesn’t seem so unbearably gut-wrenching anymore.

They flit their way around each other in comfortable silence, cleaning up a few straggling items and going through their nightly routines on autopilot. Or, at least Lena does; Kara gets about as far as wrangling herself out of her giant sweater, pulling on some leggings, and brushing her teeth before she gives up. Flossing and her pajama t-shirt are just going to have to wait until morning because that bed is calling her name and Kara has zero intentions of ignoring it.

Kara props herself up on the pillows after burrowing herself inside the covers, surveying the scene with already bleary eyes. She finds Lena’s dress in a silky pool by the door, her heels set neatly next to her discarded clothing. The other woman is still in the bathroom combing her hair and washing her face, and the song she’s humming echoes faintly across the floorboards and is softly familiar enough to lull Kara into a state of near-sleep. She holds out though, even as her spot under the covers becomes warm and impossibly comfortable, shifting in place and rolling to her side, wanting to know that the other woman is next to her before falling asleep.

When Lena does finally join her, smelling like lavender and peppermint toothpaste, Kara hears and feels more than sees her slip quietly beneath the sheets; sleep had won the battle when it came to her keeping her eyes open, but there’s no mistaking the warmth and the simple, wonderful sensation of Lena moving in close, Lena letting out one last soft hum as if she’s exhaling – Lena positioning herself on her side, head in the crook of her elbow, gazing over at Kara.

Eyes still shut tight, syrupy and weighed down by an immense gravity that’s only felt on the verge of sleep, Kara blindly reaches out an arm and wraps it around Lena’s waist. It’s more forward than she typically allows herself to be. As far as she’s concerned, it’s enough of a gift to just fall asleep next to Lena night after night, and Kara does her best to respect some of the more obvious boundaries that would be difficult to explain her way out of – if the two of them ever decide to get around to talking about whatever is going on here, that is. Most nights, that small, platonic bit of space left between them is the last shred of stubborn resolve she has to keep things exactly the way they are. Kara is not a fan of bursting bubbles, after all – and if, for whatever reason, the two of them happen to move towards each other in their sleep and wake up pressed close, then so be it.

That’s a harmless, consistent little accident that Kara is willing to endure night after night.

But Kara can’t resist the allure of ignoring this unspoken rule between them tonight, lines in the sand be damned. And Lena allows it, the gentle weight of Kara’s arm hanging loose across her hip bone, might actually even be pleasantly surprised by the development if the hitch in her breathing and the way she gravitates closer is any indication. Kara’s biased, obviously, knows that absolutely no one and nothing should depend on her perception of what this is that she has with Lena now, but she does understand that — regardless of stolen glances and leading smiles and all of the thousand, million things that Lena does to make her heart skip a beat or two – Kara understands that it’s all very delicate.

She’s willing to live with delicate. Kara’s had a lifetime of practice in learning how to handle things carefully enough so they don’t break and shatter in her hands, and Lena will not become the exception to that diligence.

There’s a hitch again of Lena’s breath, then another, and Kara realizes that something else might be going on. Suddenly wide awake, her eyes shoot open and she jerks up in bed to find Lena quietly crying.

“What’s wrong?” Propping herself up on her elbow, Kara shifts closer, scanning the other woman for any visible signs of injury or distress. Until now she’d been ambivalent about blowing out her powers, but she curses herself for not having any of her enhanced senses now. Lena could be having a heart attack and Kara would be none the wiser. “Lena, what is it? Are you hurt?”

The other woman lets out a wet, embarrassed laugh. “No, no. I’m okay. I’m sorry, Kara – you can go back to sleep. It’s nothing.”

Even as she sways in place from where she’s balanced herself over Lena, Kara remains firm. “I wasn’t asleep,” she insists. “And I’m awake now. I want to- how can I help?”

“Really, I’m fine.” Wiping discreetly at her eyes, Lena laughs again, a wobbly smile fixed on her face, and Kara realizes that maybe the other woman isn’t bluffing. “Better than fine, actually. Believe it or not, these are happy tears.”

Kara can’t help but to have some doubt. Happy tears are decidedly not Lena’s usual style, are as out of the ordinary as if Lena were to wake up tomorrow and decide to wear sneakers to her next board meeting. “Um… they are?”she asks, and her dubiousness is not lost on the other woman and in fact just seems to make her laugh – and cry, to Kara’s concerned confusion – even more.

“I know. Not exactly likely, but when pigs fly, I suppose…” Lena trails off when Kara, acting on an impulse that she couldn’t repress if she tried, wipes one last straggling tear from Lena’s cheek herself. Lena sighs, shaking her head and staring disbelievingly up at the ceiling like she can’t quite understand how she ended up here. “Well, it may be bittersweet, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.”

Kara’s expression softens. “What were you thinking about?”

“Oh, a little of everything.” Lena gestures with her hand in a wave, but the two of them are pressed so close together that it mostly just results in the other woman having nowhere to go but rest her palm against Kara’s cheek. Kara really wishes she’d been better prepared for this to happen; Rao, she’d been too out of it to even put on a lousy shirt, and now Lena can feel exactly how hot and red her cheeks are burning as she blushes. “The holidays. My family. What your mother said. Kara, I-”

Bashful all of a sudden, Lena stops talking, looks away from Kara’s searching eyes and back up at the ceiling as if it’s for her own good. Kara imagines the scene as if it was an old, familiar bar, and the bartender is cutting Lena off. Moments like these are as addicting as they are intoxicating, and Kara can understand why the other woman might not want to indulge in that kind of vulnerability right now. Still, she wants to know more – always, always wants to understand what Lena’s thinking and how she’s feeling – and so Kara pushes carefully forward.

“What about what she said?” she asks, and her grip on Lena’s waist curls in just a bit tighter. She wants Lena to know that this is a safe, secure, comfortable space for her to say anything she wants – that Kara is right here beside her and isn’t going anywhere.

Lena takes a breath. “It’s- I- She’s wonderful. Year after year, it’s always so wonderful,” she says at last. “I mean, it's certainly not considered a normal way to spend the holiday, all things considered, seeing as the majority of our friends and family moonlight as superheroes, but… everything is warm, full of love and compassion, and it’s everything that I never thought I’d have.”

“That’s what family is meant to be like,” Kara says gently. “And that’s what makes the holidays so special, you know?”

“Now I do,” she responds. “But you know what it was like for me growing up. I had so much programmed antipathy and aversion towards social gatherings and familial togetherness that I’m still surprised to this day that I took you up on your offer to celebrate the festivities with your family way back when we first met.”

That’s a sentiment that Kara shares – one that she thanks her lucky stars for, that Lena, for whatever reason, decided to take that particular risk. “I was surprised too,” she admits. “Actually, the more I learn about exactly how allergic the Luthors made you to fun and joy and the holidays in general, the more shocked I become. I must have been pretty convincing, huh?”

Lena responds to her sly grin with an eye roll that could probably snuff out a roaring fire with its potency. “You were very charming in your own stumbling, dorkish way, I’ll give you that. It was probably the fact that you were so damn persistent and unflappable in your spirit and your attempts to get me to tag along that did it. Jess used to call you the Blight of Christmas Present, you know, with your great big scarves and your incessant singing of holiday music. She could never figure out how you always managed to slip by her desk and into my office without her putting a stop to it in time.”

Reaching up to scratch her chin, Kara’s confidence only grows. “A good thing you gave me unrestricted access to your office only… what was it, a few weeks into knowing each other? That must have given Jess quite the shock – it’s awfully unprecedented for a cynic like you to let that happen.”

“She was worried that blackmail or perhaps a more sinister form of brainwashing was involved,” Lena says, tilting her chin up probably so Kara would have a harder time seeing the slight blush on her cheeks – but Kara sees it anyways, taking it for the reveal that it is. “Really, you’re lucky Jess came around to you. That’s quite the hole to dig yourself out of when it comes to her.”

Lena is right about Jess being a very forceful, very unpleasant enemy to have; in the months following their slow and fractured attempts at reconciliation, Kara opted to speed by Lena’s assistant’s desk altogether rather than risk facing the sheer grudgeful ire in the eyes of Jess. Rao only knows how much the woman knows about the two of them and Kara’s identity and what really went down, but Kara can’t find it in her to resent Jess for any of it. That sort of fierce, staunch loyalty is exactly the sort of thing that Lena has always needed in her life, and seeing as even Kara wavered in it, Jess is truly one of the true exceptions to Lena’s long-held rule.

“It took half of my annual salary to buy her coffee and donuts and scones every day, but I’d say it was worth it.”

Lena hums, shaking her head and sniffling, her tears long since dried. “The moral of the story is that it’s really all your fault,” she says after a beat, gesturing up to her watery eyes. “You’ve done this to me.”

“Me? What did I do?” Kara replies, still slightly concerned that, even though Lena is insisting that this is not coming from a negative place, she still might have wronged her in some way. Happy, sad, angry, whatever – Kara’s made it a policy to whenever possible not be the reason that her best friend is crying, and it’s a difficult mindset to break.

Lena laughs and reaches under the covers so she can poke at Kara’s side. “Jess and probably everyone else who knew me before coming to National City can attest. Look at how you’ve corrupted me,” she says, shaking her head and curling her lip as if in mock disapproval. “I used to be quite a big deal, you know. I was untouchable, unreadable, downright intimidating.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard this one before,” Kara interrupts, too entertained by this teasing to just roll right over. “The frigid, wicked witch of Wall Street. Flowers would wilt in your path when you were on your way to fire your entire misogynistic, corrupt board, yuppies would cross the street when they saw you walking, you humiliated a chess Grandmaster by the time you were eight, yadda yadda.”

“Excuse you – I was seven.” Trying hard to hold on to her fake sense of sternness, Lena purses her lips, does her best to return to the haughty, rich bitch persona that she used to inhabit – and the one that fell to pieces the moment Kara first met her and continues to crumble now. “And you try wrestling control of an entire company away from a family like mine and be even remotely well-adjusted at the same time. I was busy – had a million things to do each and every day and even then it felt like I scooping handfuls of water from a sinking ship. I was content to spend every holiday alone in my office eating leftovers from the night before-”

“Resigned to it, maybe, but sure,” Kara cuts in, the easy banter coming as naturally as breathing. Lena smiles. These wounds and scars of the past aren’t painful at all in a time like this; instead, Lena cares enough about Kara to turn them into light smiles and endeared remarks. “And I know you’re a faithful convert when it comes to my mom’s cooking.”

Her smile growing in size, Lena pretends like she doesn’t hear a word of what Kara’s saying. “I had a reputation to keep, mind you. A workaholic lifestyle, a dedication above all else to my office space and my email inbox – a mother and brother to infuriate professionally day in and day out. How was I to predict you sauntering into my very acceptable, very regimented life and completely disrupting it?”

“I think it’s well-established by now that I’m impossible to predict. And acceptable is a very optimistic way of looking at things,” Kara teases. “I’d call it something closer to boring.”

“Boring?” Lena laughs, and the only tears that might escape her now will be because of the quiet fit of giggles that’s overtaken them both. Kara is grinning so hard she thinks it might just be permanently etched on her face. She’s not human, doubts she’ll ever have to deal with wrinkles – but Lena makes her smile so hard that Kara would be honored to someday find smile lines by her eyes in the mirror because of the sheer joy she’s brought into her life. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me that. Our first meeting was in a crashing helicopter if you recall. My pilot had been knocked unconscious and there were heat-seeking missiles in the mix as well, I believe.”

“Played out, then. It sounds like I saved you from living out a bit of a cliche,” Kara replies, feeling cocky.

Despite the fact that Kara’s response has only caused Lena to become even less serious, she won’t go down without a fight. “Absolutely not.”

“Come on. Admit that I’ve made your life at least a little bit more interesting over the years.” Lena just arches an eyebrow, pretty and intimidating even with slightly red and puffy eyes, but Kara won’t be so easily cowed. “Less corporate and- and restrained, at least?”

The words don’t come out quite as smoothly as she’d hoped, and okay – so maybe Lena’s hooded eyes and raised eyebrow got to her after all.

“Yes, Kara, you’ve done wonders for my habit of repression,” Lena snorts, seemingly in on a joke with herself that goes right over Kara’s head. Her fingers slide down Kara’s jawline to rest against her collarbone, idly tapping a rhythm there. “No, I’d say that being with you, taking those kinds of risks, putting myself out there – it’s always felt like dancing with the devil.” Kara opens her mouth, ready to protest, but Lena laughs again. “Not a bad devil, mind you – a very enticing, virtuous one, in fact. But with how I was raised, with what values that the Luthors tried tirelessly to instill in me? I’m sure you can understand why being around someone like you felt like I was turning my back on the so-called way of the righteous.”

“Their lack of self-awareness is really something, seeing as they’ve got a handful of evil lairs and dozens of minions,” Kara muses, pleasantly sated by the flow of the conversation and by the casual way Lena is touching her.

“Knowing my brother, Lex would find the descriptor of evil to be rather distasteful when it comes to the styling choices of his various hideouts – and if he had his way, he wouldn’t have to work with anyone at all.” Her fingers come to an abrupt halt against Kara’s skin as if waiting for a conductor to spur them into motion once more. Lena draws in a careful sigh of a breath. “The only people he’s ever been interested in enough to try and collaborate with have been my mother and me, and even then, it’s not as if he considers either of us to be his equal.”

Kara understands the hesitancy. There are some insecurities that can’t be glossed over, some fears that will never quite go away. “But you’re not like him, Lena. You never have been,” she reminds her. Lena lets out a soft puff of air that lingers between them, warm and still smelling distinctly like her toothpaste. “That’s the one thing Lex will never be able to figure out.”

“Yes, well. And it’s what’s always made this feel as dangerous and exhilarating as it is wonderful.”

Kara thinks back to those first few moments they’d shared when Lena had first moved to National City, their alluring, careful verbal sparring making every exchange, every word, every quirk of Lena’s eyebrow and upturn of her mouth feel like a personal victory. Choosing Lena, pursuing a friendship with her despite the initial misgivings and mistrust of the people around her, was like diving into the deep end, a pool of water that not even Kara could see through to the bottom of. Even now it feels like they’re still floating together in the depths – and while she maybe should be wondering how much longer it’ll be before the air in her lungs runs out, Kara is content with her fate.

Her toothy grin grows just a little more reckless, a little more true and sharp. “What’s wrong with a little bit of danger?”

Even as she says it with a kind of roguish, devil-may-care attitude, they both know that for Kara, this is not a topic that is usually so easy to talk about, much less joke around with. There’s plenty wrong with the particular kind of danger that Kara brings into a person’s life. She’s well aware of that fact — has been wrestling with it when it comes to Lena for a very long time now, fighting between letting the other woman make her own independent decisions and the knowledge that Supergirl’s mere presence around another person, regardless of what they say or do, can be enough to put their life at risk. It’s been enough for people to die around her, has happened far too often for her guilty conscience to ever forget, and Kara is very much not in the habit of letting that tendency go unchecked or tolerated.

Lena’s eyes darken, and not for the first time, Kara wonders what would happen if she were to ever explore what’s always hiding in the depths of those widening pupils, what secret language could be translated if she were to ever allow herself to fully read into Lena’s small, private smiles and the rapidity of her heartbeat. What is this unidentifiable charge that always crackles between only them? If their lives were different — if Kara and the doomed role that she holds in this particular production were different — what would change?

As maddening and as tantalizing as moments like these are — moments where even Kara, as content as she is to remain set in her ways, wonders if there isn’t something more to the way Lena gazes over at her — they serve as excellent examples of the potency of the danger that’s always buzzing around Kara’s path. Maybe something is there between them, or maybe there isn’t; it’s the reminder of the enormity of what she might lose if she were to ever allow herself to do anything more than wonder that keeps Kara firmly and perpetually suspended in amber.

Whatever she is to Lena now, whatever they could mean to each other if there was nothing quite so complicated or life-threatening planted in the way, Kara won’t dwell on it. For her own sake, there are some possibilities that ought to remain impossible even for Supergirl. Lena is right. The sense of risk and danger that permeates through their intertwining relationship has always made it exhilarating. But while Kara can lean into the pleasant, heady adrenaline rush in isolated moments of safety like this, it’s also the reason why she’ll never allow herself to go any further than veiled longing, harmless flirtation, and lingering thoughts about what could have been. Kara won’t let it go any further than devoted half measures — not with what going any further might ruin and who it would inevitably harm.

Besides, just because she won’t allow herself to take that leap doesn’t mean that she wants Lena to remain trapped and stagnant right alongside her. A semblance of a plan that had started forming earlier that night comes back to her now, giving purpose to all of this wanting and waiting and holding back and more. There is someone out there for Lena — someone solid and sure and kind, and perhaps most importantly, someone permanent, far more than Kara knows she’ll ever be able to promise she could be.

If she had her suspicions before, tonight all but cemented her determination on the matter; when it comes to Lena and James, something could start anew between the two of them. Lena could have that in her future if one of them were only to take that first step and begin rekindling that dormant spark of affection into a proper flame.

Kara is more than happy to accept the consolation prize if it means that Lena, who has fought for so long to find a home and a family like this, gets to remain safe — and with an ounce or two of meddling, might even get a second chance at love with the one that got away. However it will hurt her, Kara knows that it’s what’s best in the long-term, and Lena deserves something with unbreakable, steadfast foundations, not Kara’s increasingly paper-thin house of cards.

Lena deserves the best. She deserves all that she wants and more, and if that means James, Kara won’t stand in the way of it. In fact, she’s willing to bear this cross and speed the process along if necessary. Based on their muted and polite though fond interactions from tonight, Lena and James may just shudder to a stop if Kara doesn’t grit her teeth and act as a catalyst.

The other woman clears her throat and squeezes Kara’s wrist, bringing her out of her thoughts and back to the bed, where Kara fully appreciates their closeness. Despite her reputation and proven track record of ignoring the obvious, Kara knows; she knows, however unique their circumstances have always been, that what they’ve had between them isn’t normal nor is it considerably platonic. That’s what’s always made it so much more remarkable. She relishes in their enthusiasm in toeing lines that ought not to be crossed, grinning coyly at the ground as the distance, despite their best efforts, grows shorter and boundaries become increasingly obsolete.

She’d told Lena once that, for a friend like her, there were no boundaries. And while she is older now, more self-aware, and perhaps even a little bit wiser, those words still ring true. Kara can no longer wave aside the fallacy that any of her actions, past or present, have ever been one of only a friend, and so there it is, cut and dry, plain and simple; there is nothing she would not do for Lena. There is no line in the sand she would not willingly walk on both sides of, no amount of pretense and pretext that she would not hide and suffer behind if it means having the other woman like this while also preparing for the inevitable future where she will not.

As is often the case with the truth and expressing what matters most, Lena puts it to words better than Kara could ever stammer out. “What I’m trying to say is thank you, Kara,” she tells her, quiet and sure. “Against all odds and, at times, my very best efforts, you’ve made a hopelessly sentimental fool out of me. Somehow, I’ve become an unbearable sap, and it might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I love you, Kara wants to respond. I’m so, so in love with you that it’s swallowed me whole, that it’s all I am anymore. But she can’t say that, not when a confession like that carries with it a promise of assurance, an vow of long-lasting dependability that Kara just doesn’t know that she can pledge her life to anymore. Without that oath, she has to keep it a secret. “I think you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she blurts out instead. There are many ways to tell someone that you love them, and that’s as close to the razor’s edge of the whole, unbearable truth that Kara can go. “I mean- I… you’re the best friend I could have ever asked for.”

Even as Kara curses herself for her practically Pavlovian urge at this point to forcefully shove the words best friend into every vulnerable moment between the two of them, she knows that it’s necessary for her own sanity. The more she allows herself to wonder and linger and conjecture herself into a dizzy haze of blurred lines and imaginary what-ifs, the worse this is all going to feel when it all ends.

Not that the knowledge of the certainty that this will end dissuades Kara in the slightest from pursuing it until its last breath. She’d do it all over again, just for moments like this.

“Well… the feeling is mutual, darling.” Lena’s smile seems to grow inwards, and she glances away like maybe, she knows exactly what it is that Kara’s trying to say, and lets it slip away just like every other unspoken thing that’s ever passed between them.

Kara just smiles back and shifts back to her proper and appropriate place on the bed. Perhaps someday, she’ll be able to sit back and sift through what exactly they’re both trying to say to each other if they’d ever let the words come out, but not tonight. Tonight, Kara is tired, and she’d very much like to shut off her brain and not worry about the future holds until morning. They drift off together, floating away to sleep on all that’s been left unexpressed.

…

With equal parts trepidation and optimism, life does in fact go on, and Kara does her very best to be better, all things considered.

As unfortunate and frustratingly inconvenient as it often is, blowing her powers out over Thanksgiving does serve as an excellent opportunity for a reset. And while the jury is still out as to whether or not Kara had any choice in the matter at all with the myriad of ways that her friends and family chose to clobber her over the head with it, in this case, the ends justify the means. Kara needed to be brought back into the light and away from her guilt-laden tendency to spiral.

The rest of November and much of December passes in the blink of an eye, but that’s not to say that Kara is the ghost of a person that she was directly following the attacks. She’s just as busy, just as intent on hunting down the remainders of CADMUS that are running on fumes at this point – but she also makes a point of showing up as Kara Danvers again. Not just at Catco, or weekly game nights, but in morning walks around the city with a rosy-cheeked Kelly and a groggy Alex, afternoon lunches spent huddled in some diner with an assortment of her friends, sipping on rich, steaming hot soup and pretending to feel the cold of winter in her bones just like everyone else around her. Then, of course, there’s Lena. Though they’re both wrapped up in the hectic, time-consuming demands of their jobs, if they have nothing else, they have their nights together. While lunch dates and impromptu coffee breaks and movie nights still remain uncommon due to their schedules, when the night comes and it’s finally time to sleep, Kara waits up for Lena, and Lena waits up for Kara. Without fail, they make it their new tradition to at the very least have those fleeting moments together, however drowsy and simple they may be.

These are the things that ground her, that remind her to be present and tangible again across all aspects of her life – not just the benefit of her loved ones, but for herself too. Kara is not so caught up in the triumphant haze of her recent string of victories that she’s forgotten for one moment what – or who, in this case – is waiting for her at the end of the road. As Lex bides his time, Kara cherishes hers, soaking in every little moment and holding them close.

Sure, it might have taken someone like Alex stopping just short of smacking her upside the head to realize it, but Kara knows now that however much regret and grief she may still feel about the lives she failed to protect, not even Supergirl can outrun it. There’s no point in it beyond useless misery for all involved, and so Kara listens. Her work isn’t done, and it never will be – but Kara knows better than to race towards a finish line that will always be just out of reach, and she does what she can to stop leaving everyone around her in the rearview mirror as a result.

Her friends approve of the change as much as Kara is willing to begrudgingly admit, and during that early winter spell of first snows and clear, starry nights, time seems to stand still.

She knows she’s not the only one who feels this way. Falling back on familiar habits and faces is something that’s awfully easy to do when there are so many unknowns on the horizon, and while Kara was by far the worst offender, after Thanksgiving everyone seems to come to the same conclusion as she did; for all its cliches, the past can’t be changed and the present is a gift, and all of them make an effort to spend as much time together as possible.

Even as just about everything has changed for Kara, it’s easy to feel like she’s living in some moment completely removed from the whims of time and space and circumstances. The days blend together in a pleasant mix of humdrum superhero antics and quality time with her friends, who smile and laugh at her and retell the same stories they’ve been telling for years. While the pages of the calendar fly by as if taken up by a tornado of wind, Kara finds herself to be surprisingly and remarkably stationary, moving towards a future that she knows she won’t see coming until it’s right upon her. Especially now that James is back and fully reinserted into their little family, it feels as if it could be years and years ago, when Kara was first starting out on her own and everyone was still together. He fits into a puzzle that Kara hadn’t fully realized was missing a piece, and as Christmas rolls steadily closer, everything feels as if it just… clicks into place.

Of course, James also brings with him Kara’s newfound, impossibly masochistic hobby that she’s picked up during the holiday season, and that is to observe Lena and James reconnecting as much as is (super)humanly possible and, when necessary, to poke and prod them along the way back together.

She reasons with herself that this latest fixation is coming from a good and even arguably noble place. Kara wants Lena to be happy. All of their friends want Lena to be happy. Perhaps most relevant, Lena wants to be happy, has been, and can continue to remain so long into the future if the right pieces are in place. Those pieces being, based on what Kara considers to be her own legitimate and knowledgeable opinion, shaped a lot like the broad shoulders and smiling face of James Olsen.

It’s funny how every stray interaction between Lena and James seems colored by a completely different meaning, now that Kara knows how Lena feels about him. Where before, she lived in utter disbelief that the two of them had ever shared a shred of chemistry together, for Lena’s sake, she tries hard to read between the lines.

And Kara gets it, the appeal of a man like James. He was an absolute oasis of a human being, a safe and structurally sound refuge from the worst of the world that even Kara, despite her own Kryptonian inclinations for stubbornness and solitary strength, had sunk into. James was good, and kind, and unafraid to stand shoulder to shoulder with another person against the powers that be. More importantly, he wasn’t scared of changing or learning from past mistakes; one didn’t need to look further than his 180 degree turn of his opinion on Lena to understand that he was not the type of man to let his own hubris or bias stand in the way of seeing someone in the way they needed.

In the case of Lena, James was just about the perfect candidate for a partner, and Kara was determined to make all of these puzzle pieces fit together because theoretically, they should.

They should go together, should make a perfectly wonderful pair, and if Kara is the only one with the vision to see it and the obtuse, stubborn willingness to make it happen, then so be it. And look, Kara is all about independence. She is totally, absolutely a fan of people being responsible for their own actions and their own lives, will defend Lena’s ability to choose her own path forward until her last breath. It just also so happens that Kara tends to be a bit impatient when it comes to those choices, and well… even if Lena and James don’t quite seem to have caught on just yet, Kara has the strength to drag all of them towards the finish line together, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth against the truth the whole way there.

All they need is an assist, really. Some selfless, subtle facilitation from a source that is going to try and remain impartial and as unbiased on the matter as possible. Kara already has it all mapped out in her head, has plotted out the steps as she punches out Lex’s goons and flies around the city. She will make it work for them if it kills her, will chip away at both of their hesitations with leading questions and batting eyelashes and will walk herself off the plank into the shark-infested waters of her own miserable devotion if it means promoting her best friend’s welfare. Kara will set them up so that every move they make will feel like a home run, will plant flowers every step of the way toward their reconciliation and rekindling of old flames, will wring the platonic energy out of Lena and James using whatever harebrained schemes that are needed. She will do this because she loves them both, and wants what’s best for all involved, and Rao, she promises herself that at least then, with whatever comes after, at least she’s set them up for some modicum of success and lifelong happiness.

If that’s the result, her own crushed infatuation or her sanity is a small price to pay, really Kara’s on the verge of taking down CADMUS, after all; surely, biting the bullet and playing matchmaker to two of her favorite people in the world isn’t such a hard task for Supergirl to follow through with.

Her antics don’t exactly go unnoticed.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nia whispers over to her one weekend while they’re all out for brunch at a brand new place downtown whose outdoor seating is made shockingly comfortable by a good amount of heat lamps and electric fire pits. Even Alex, who is a notorious wimp when it comes to the cold but who will cut off the fingers of anyone who calls her out on it, seems to find it tolerable, opting for a coat that would be more optimally suited to spending a night unsheltered in the Arctic Circle, but otherwise seeming unbothered.

Here’s what had happened. Unlike Alex or really anyone else in the group, Lena had shown up to their outdoor food adventure rather… underdressed – meaning that she’d sauntered out to their rooftop table in a thin, revealing business blouse and a pencil skirt and not much else save for her sheer black tights and her stiletto heels. Kara had tried her very best to not let her jaw visibly drop down and land with a splash into her mimosa. Lena had been finishing up a deal with a group of new investors, she knew – and how anyone was expected to say no to the other woman when Lena was looking like that, Kara had no clue – and, as she was prone to do, did not bring a coat into the office. However many times Kara tried to remind her, however bitterly cold National City could get at the end of the year, Lena was stuck in her old habits, and old habits die hard when you have a personal, heated company car and a driver to take you anywhere you’d like without having to brave the elements for very long yourself.

Besides, Kara could tell just by the size of her pupils and the smile that Lena had leveled over at her that fell just barely on the wrong side of lascivious; a celebratory toast or two must have been in order that morning at LCorp, because Lena had already been drunk when she’d arrived, and Kara knows what alcohol can do to a human and their perception of temperature.

No one else had given it more than a second glance, shuffling around to grant Lena her accustomed spot next to Kara. But Kara, mostly out of concern and not because Lena was glancing at her out of the corner of her eyes with enough heat that Kara knows she would have wilted had she been caught in it head-on, was the first to notice when Lena, despite how packed in their group had been and the four heat lamps blasting at them in all directions, had started to shiver.

And, okay, okay – it’s not Kara’s fault that her first instinct had been to wrap an arm around Lena in a protective, friendly way in order to transfer some heat over to the other woman. After all, what’s the point of basically being a walking, talking furnace if you couldn’t lend some warmth to your friends every once in a while? And listen, Kara has never been one to shy away from taking the blame, but she cannot and should not be reproached for the way that Lena leans into it, is utterly blameless with how the other woman hums and stretches and relishes in their closeness. It really, truly is nothing but a selfless act on Kara’s part, playing the Good Samaritan and simply doing what she can to ensure that National City’s most powerful and successful woman doesn’t collapse of hypothermia out on this poorly insulated roof.

As they had launched right back into their lively conversation about what sort of activities Alex and Kelly should have at their joint Bachelorette Party coming up in a month or so, Kara remained… tense. Rigid, an unmoving pillar even as Lena sunk loose and languid against her front like syrup. Alex had given them a once-over, likely searching for a new topic to steer the group away from her own personal life, and Kara remained acutely aware of how very un-platonic all of this was. For that, it was her fault; she’d always been a tactile, touchy person, and her habits had rubbed off impressively well onto Lena. But if Kara was really going to start extracting herself out of this absolute blissful mess of what she’s taught Lena what a friendship is meant to be like, some walls do have to go up – or in this case, certain people – ought to take over this role for Kara.

James had been on the other side of Lena with a relaxed grin and looking perfectly welcoming in his own right, and Kara had known right then and there that this was the perfect opportunity to do a little bit of meddling. All she needed was an entry point, and Kara would make certain that this was turned into a romantic encounter even if it killed her.

Lena had unwittingly offered up the perfect chance on a tee not too long after arriving. “I should have thought through my wardrobe more,” she’d murmured to Kara during a bout of laughter amongst their friends, the two of them starting a private conversation in the meantime. “Bundling up hadn’t been a consideration of mine when meeting with Morgan Edge’s new competition in town, but I must say that I regret this blouse now.”

Kara had inclined her head down, her jaw grazing carefully against Lena’s hairline. It was to hear the other woman better, she had reasoned – and nevermind the fact that she could hear Lena from miles away if she wanted. “Well you, uh- you look really good in it,” she replied, completely unable to help herself. No, Kara, she chided herself in her head. Bad Kara!

The haughty, playful sort of smirk that Kara saw only out of the corner of her eye on Lena’s face was enough to raise her internal body temperature by a few degrees. “Do I?” Lena asked in a tone that had been very unfair towards Kara crumbling inhibitions, but even still, she’d remained steady.

“Of course you do,” she answered without lingering on the question, clearing her throat and correcting her course with what she thought was some degree of skill. “Still, I wish you’d brought something warmer to change into at least. Are you freezing?”

“Only slightly, thanks to you.” Running her hands up and down Kara’s long, thick coat sleeves, Lena had raised an eyebrow and Kara had known exactly what she was going to say next. “I hate to ask, seeing as it doesn’t quite work with my outfit, but exactly how attached are you to your jacket right now?”

“My jacket?” Kara repeated, and when she looked up, she noticed that their conversation had caught the attention of the others. Not even she was so willingly daft about these sorts of things to not predict the type of stares and weighty comments she would get from the likes of her sister and Nia if she were to wrap her coat around Lena’s shoulders like some high school kid on the varsity team. “Umm, what about it?” she asked, stalling for time and really looking for a solution to this problem that could not be interpreted as anything other than strictly friendly.

It had been ridiculous, making Lena ask again, but the other woman had remained unfazed. “Could I borrow it? As much as I enjoy this, I will have to move away from you once our food arrives, and I’d rather my lips don’t turn blue in the middle of brunch.”

Kara continued to look around, desperately seeking out a solution. “Actually, I… I’m cold,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets and pretending like Lena didn’t know how fat of a lie that was based on the body heat she’d been soaking up this entire time.

“You’re… cold?” Alex had piped in, sounding concerned. “You didn’t blow out your powers again, did you-?”

“No, no, I- I mean, I gotta keep up appearances, you know?” she replied, very aware of the fact that her hare-brained logic was only making her less credible by the second. “I’m only wearing a t-shirt underneath, and that would be pretty weird if I-”

“You don’t have to give me it, Kara,” Lena had cut in, and alarm bells went off in Kara’s head when she picked up on the slightly confused, slightly hurt tone of her voice. To the others, Lena probably sounded perfectly neutral; to Kara, she knew what it sounded like when the other woman felt she’d overstepped or didn’t quite know where she stood. “Forget I said anything. I’ll just tough it out-”

“Wait, I mean- there are other coats!” she’d blurted out, desperately trying to rectify the situation while also veering away from the invisible boundaries that she normally barrelled across without a second thought. Her eyes had landed on James looking on with amused naivety, and an idea finally started rattling around in that empty head of hers. Well, shoot. Here goes nothing. “James has a coat, for instance.”

Lena’s brow furrows, and as she bit her lip to hide her smile, Kara had been relieved to find her timidness gone for the moment. “Why, yes he does,” the other woman had teased. “Strange how I hadn’t noticed until just now.”

It’s a shame that she always approached these situations with the tact of a jackhammer, but Kara took the chance with zeal. Gesturing to the thick sweater he was wearing underneath, she swung for the fences. “James, you’d give up your parka for a little while, wouldn’t you?” she asked through gritted teeth. “I mean, your cheeks are looking pretty rosy and you’re standing right next to the heat lamp and-”

“Um, sure?” he’d replied, clearly not understanding what a golden opportunity this was for him to show off some of his renowned chivalry. The words landed like a bit of a dud, but Kara kept a firm smile fixed on her face as she stared down James until he started squirming, shrugging his coat from his shoulders.

“That’s wonderful, thank you!” Kara said, snatching the piece of clothing from the air like it was made of radioactive material and trying not to feel like she might throw up at this gesture which was entirely her idea. Rather than wrapping it carefully around the other woman’s shoulders like she might normally do, Kara had panicked, and, not knowing the best way to go about it without injecting any sort of hidden feelings into things, had simply turned back to Lena and tossed the jacket her way.

Well, not so much tossed. Misjudging her own strength, Kara instead accidentally chucked the coat right at Lena’s face, and her best friend’s reflexes were simply no match. “Oops, sorry,” she forced out with a strained laugh as it wrapped itself around Lena’s head like a vice, continuing to chuckle and grin and generally act like some sort of clown on the verge of a nervous breakdown until the other woman untangled herself and slid the coat on. “James, that was very sweet of you,” Kara had said, informing more than commenting on the exchange and wondering if the strange looks on their friends' faces were real or just a part of her paranoid imagination. “Takes you back to old times, doesn’t it, Lena?”

“God, what is up with her?” Alex had whispered to Kelly, and Kara kicked her shin under the table as a reminder of the virtues of keeping your mouth shut.

“Right. Old times,” Lena replied after an awkward silence. She’d glanced over at Kara, seemingly bemused by whatever was going on but placated enough to tolerate it without interrogation. “Thank you, James. I always did love this coat more than my own.”

“It’s no problem. Kara’s right – it’s actually really toasty by this heater.” James smiles and shifts to the side, creating an open spot. “Why don’t you cram in next to me here and you’ll warm up even faster.”

“That’s a great idea!” Kara chirped, but Lena hesitated, still leaning against Kara even with the jacket on like she couldn’t bear to leave. “Come on, Lena,” she urged, telling herself that this was for both of their goods and for the sake of Lena’s physical health. “I don’t want your teeth to start chattering.”

With one last lingering moment spent pressed against Kara’s side, Lena acquiesced, moving over to James with a wordless smile and a strange expression on her face. As everyone continued to glance over at Kara with their own strange looks and piercing stares, Kara had never been so happy in her life to see her food, rescued from judgment by their heaping plates delivered to them by a pair of chatty waiters.

“You two make an adorable couple,” one of them said to Lena and James, gesturing over to them as they huddled together in front of the heater.

Before James or Lena could say anything in reply, the two staff were whisked away to another table, and Kara wasn’t sure whether she should pump her fist or burst into tears at the confirmation that, at least to the outside world, her little intervention had planted that seed of romance once more. “That’s funny, isn’t it?” James had commented with a wry sort of grin before diving into his steak and eggs, and that had been the end of it.

Or Kara had hoped it would be until Nia sidled over to her and started hissing in her ear, and that’s where she finds herself now, working very hard on her new and improved poker face and hoping that none of her tells are showing already.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nia whispers, containing just enough secrecy in her voice that no one else glanced over save for Alex, who was still rubbing her shin and acting like a rather large baby, in Kara’s opinion.

Pretending to not have any idea what she’s talking about, Kara swallows a gigantic bite of her omelet and furrows her brow in a perfect recreation of oblivious innocence. That, at least, is a role that she’s had plenty of time to perfect.

“Eating?” she supplies, not all that inclined to help nudge this conversation along when her food is delicious and it’s an excellent distraction from anything related to Lena or James or the two of them still standing so close together. “What’s the matter with that?”

“You’re acting weird.”

“No I’m not- in what way?” Kara asks, fighting the urge to immediately deny. Nia adjusts her scarf and moves in, persistent.

“Like, weird.” Under the table, she pokes Kara’s side and then points discreetly at the two people across the table that Kara is doing her very best not to look at. “Why’d you do that with Lena and James?”

“Do what?” At Nia’s unimpressed silence, Kara frowns in an exaggerated show of stupefaction. “What, make sure she doesn’t freeze to death? What’s weird about that?”

“What happened to that being what friends are for?” Nia counters, cutting through Kara’s act, proving that she’s onto her despite Kara’s attempts to distract and redirect. “Does she have cooties or something? Why’d you go and send her away and make James give up his coat instead of you?”

Kara finds the mention of cooties to be frankly childish, but she bites her tongue. No point in stirring the pot that she is currently trying desperately to escape from. “Like I said, I’ve got a secret identity to protect, and I can’t just walk around outside here with nothing but a-”

“That hasn’t stopped you before,” Nia interrupts, and they both know she’s right. It’s comical at this point to think about just how many times Kara has openly gambled with her identity if it meant relieving Lena of even the slightest inconvenience. Still, despite that glaring plot hole of sorts in the middle of her act of denial, Kara continues to play it straight.

“I’m just trying to be more careful,” she says after a beat, stabbing at her meal with more gusto than is needed. “Besides, nothing wrong with a little… friendly reconciliation and coat-sharing between Lena and James, right?”

Kara’s glad for the way she phrased it, because when Nia pauses, she knows she’s caught the younger woman in a trap of sorts. Not a very good one, all things considered, but it’s the best Kara could have done under the circumstances. “Nothing wrong with that at all,” Nia says slowly, her eyes narrowed. “They’re good friends, I suppose.”

Even though it kills her, Kara leans in close and forces her voice to take on a conspiratorial, giddy sort of tone. “Sure. Friends,” she whispers, and belatedly realizes that she sounds the same way as her friends do when talking about her and Lena together, a loaded expectation dripping from every syllable. “That’s not what the waitress thought.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What, you mean like, Lena and- and James? Getting back together?” Nia’s lip curls and Kara sympathizes with the open display of confused derision. It’s a feeling that she shares – but not one that she’ll let herself indulge in any longer. “Come on.”

“I don’t know… I’ve got a good feeling about it,” she responds with a shrug, keeping a secretive smile slapped on her mouth, however small it’s turning out to be. “And I think it might just be a good thing, you know? Maybe even the best thing, when it comes to Lena.”

Nia stares over at her like she’s grown a second head, and Kara can’t say she blames her one bit. “Do you want to know what I think?”

Seeing as Kara thinks she already knows exactly what Nia is thinking, the truth is that she doesn’t particularly need the knife to be twisted. But she keeps smiling over at Lena and James, keeps grinning like some idiot who isn’t willingly and knowingly self-imploding her own feelings, and leans in closer to Nia. “Always,” she says, and Nia rears back, shaking her head and not looking the least bit satisfied by Kara’s facade.

“I think you’re starting to go just a little crazy,” she says, and, well…

Kara thinks she might just be right.

Craziness aside, Kara continues to approach her duties as Supergirl with as clear a mind as she’s ever had. There’s something about the end of CADMUS being so real and so tantalizingly close that spurs her forward with a motor that simply drives itself.

That's not to say that what she does is thoughtless, mindless work. This is certainly not the sort of thing that can be accomplished on auto-pilot, especially with Kara being as keen as she is to avoid any further casualties or general destruction. If she could, she’d take on the entirety of the dregs of CADMUS all by herself if she could, so long as it were to take place in an isolated location away from the rest of the world. But life doesn’t work like that; instead, Kara extracts their poison from the water supply with the care of a surgeon… or more realistically, the icy caution of someone defusing a very large, very temperamental bomb. No matter what, Kara won’t let any more errant explosions rip through the lives of innocent people on her watch.

Her team is markedly more supportive of her efforts than before Thanksgiving. Kara supposes that it does help that she is once again a tactile and consistent presence in their lives, that it’s much easier to rally behind an actually solid presence than the ghost she’d been immediately following Lex’s attack. She’s back to being Kara: back to helping Nia play practical jokes on Brainy and wedding wine tastings with Alex and Kelly and experimenting with pizza toppings with J’onn. Her determination to finish this is contagious, and with their personal concern about Kara dampened at least for the time being, her friends and family get in line with the same sort of focus that she leads with.

As much as she is still very much a part of the team, Lena is the only one who takes a step back from actively taking down her brother and his organization. Kara doesn’t blame her: she doesn’t think she can remember a time where Lena has ever been this busy, her schedule a solid, unforgiving block of meetings piled on top of even more meetings. She supposes that stealing back control of a colossal company from your corrupt family will result in minimal downtime – but all the same, Kara can’t help but worry that the other woman is pressing her nose to the grindstone just a bit too relentlessly.

Whatever comprises the weight that’s settled back on Lena’s shoulders, Kara can tell that it’s heavy. Though it’s not her choice, Lena’s days grow longer, her lunch breaks are shorter, and her free evenings turn into a figment of both of their imaginations. To Kara’s muted, dismal satisfaction, Lena still does her very best to be around more people than only her; more importantly, Lena has been spending a fair amount of it with James. Kara will fly by to do a quick check in and find the two of them sharing a meal, speaking in hushed tones that she absolutely refuses to listen in on, both because it’s an intrusion of privacy and because Kara is certain that whatever honeyed affection that’s flowing from Lena’s lips would be devastating enough to send her hurtling out of the air.

No one else sees it as anything more than two old friends catching up on a yearlong absence so hectic that Lena and James may as well be regaling each other with enough stories to cover a decade of the average person’s life. Kara doesn’t push it, won’t do anything more than make suggestive comments and funny faces whenever the subject naturally comes up in conversation. She doesn’t dare to do anything more than that, frankly; Nia had cut close enough to the bone as is over a stupid winter jacket of all things, and Kara knows that she can’t afford to put her foot too heavily on the gas – lest she wants to wake up the sleeping dragon that is her sister.

All the same, Kara sees it for what it is, molds and wrangles it into the appropriate box and does her best to stop watering the ivy that’s grown all across her heart, across her apartment, across National City – always, always reaching towards Lena. This is how it ought to be, she reminds herself, tells herself over and over again that really it’s all for the best, settling back into the ways of the past. Kara stops spending every single spare second of her time with her best friend and pretends like it’s not killing her, and Lena – Lena follows suit, leads the charge in some ways, with a look in her eye that Kara cannot for the life of her read. She can’t help but think of the moment they shared after Thanksgiving, of the acute weight in the air, and wonders what she’s supposed to do with it now that they’re back to the old status quo.

Is this what it looks like to watch Lena fall in love? If it is, why does it look like it’s killing Lena just a bit on the inside as well every time they glance over at each other?

Suddenly, it’s like they’re back to how they started – Lena, with James and her board meetings and her endless amount of work that keeps her away from their (Their? Kara’s? She’s honestly not sure anymore) apartment, and Kara, with her cape and her well-meaning smile and the feeling that they’re both hiding from one another in their own ways.

Something shifts after Thanksgiving, that much she knows. It isn’t until Christmas is just around the corner that she learns why.

She gets back from Metropolis earlier than expected, and for whatever reason – be it homesickness, excitement, or perhaps simply the constant, steady pull of her bones to one person and one person only – but Kara decides to pay Lena a visit on the way home.

And really, she can’t help it. Kara’s just finished the job. As impossible as it seemed only a few months ago, she’s actually taken down CADMUS, conclusively stamped down and wrapped in a bow the terrorist organization that has been the bane of her existence going on four or five years now. That’s something that deserves to be celebrated, and who better to share in the satisfaction of the Luthor's fall from grace than the black sheep of the family herself?

The entire way home, Kara had imagined the look on Lena’s face when she delivered the news. Fresh off the buzz of a successful mission and goaded on further into energetic jubilation by the gleam in her cousin’s eyes as he’d waved her home to National City, she can’t help but picture it all in the best light imaginable. Lena would probably be at her desk studying some genius new design, and Kara can already see the immediate relief in the other woman’s smile when Supergirl touches down on her balcony, the warmth housed behind the twinkle in her eye and her small grin. They’d fall into each other like they always did, and together, they would share in the triumph of a future without CADMUS casting a shadow over everything.

As she swings one last left turn around the financial district and begins her slow descent down towards the looming tower of LCorp, Kara finds Lena alone out on her balcony, a drink in one hand and the other keeping her jaw upright as she leans over the balcony and studies the city below.

So – not quite the comforting, warm and rosy image Kara had imagined – but a familiar one nonetheless, and it does nothing to mute her exuberant, joyous mood. Kara feels like she’s floating on air, literally and figuratively speaking, and her grin softens at the sight of Lena.

Still obscured by night, Kara can’t help but watch Lena a while longer. As she comes closer, Lena doesn’t notice even as her hair hanging loose and wavy over her shoulders starts to sway. Whatever world Lena is in, it’s one entirely of her own making, and she and her drink seem to be its only inhabitants. Kara remains enraptured by this private, breathtaking glimpse of her best friend, so lost in thought out here on her balcony all alone.

A silly, foolish musing drifts through her mind, quiet and bold. Maybe Lena’s thinking about her, Kara wonders, and a secret rush of affection fills her at the possibility. She lets the thrill of that thought spur her forward into the night. She’s missed Lena, these past few days, and can’t help but make an entrance now.

“You know, you really shouldn’t lean so far over that railing, Miss Luthor,” Kara teases, a fond grin fixed onto her face as if by glue. “Especially after drinking too much scotch.”

Startled, the other woman jumps and drops her glass. Had Kara not been there, slowly rising to meet Lena on the other side of the balcony, the drink likely would have been lost to gravity. Instead, Kara reaches out to catch it smoothly, not spilling a drop.

Settling in on the other side of the spotless glass railing, Kara leans against it herself, her body still floating idly over the dozens and dozens of stories below them. She sniffs the amber liquid before setting it down on the top of the partition, wrinkling her nose. “I would hate to see you fall,” she adds, still smiling. How Lena and Alex and her other friends enjoy such a sickly taste so often, Kara doesn’t know.

“Supergirl,” Lena says at last, barely-recovered enough from the surprise that her voice is smooth and confident. She purses her lips, tilting her head as if to drink Kara in. “I tend not to worry about that particular risk. After all, you’re always there to catch me.”

While Lena is in on the joke and indulges Kara’s goofy antics with a soft upturn of her lips, she seems reserved and genuinely caught off guard — like Kara’s had shaken her out of something pressing. Kara dangles her feet, lazily resisting the pull of gravity below her. “Sorry if I scared you,” she says. “I just got back, and I wanted to see you.”

Lena shakes her head. “No, it’s quite alright, Kara,” she replies, breaking free from the game, eyes raking up and down Kara’s suspended form. “You’re always a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting you to be back so soon is all.”

Kara’s smile grows softer, more inquisitive, and Lena takes another long sip from her glass. Content for now with just being back around the other woman, Kara uses the moment to take in the scene around them. For someone who has an infamous propensity for working late hours, Kara is surprised to find the lights in the office to be dimmed and her desktop powered all the way down. While the new imagined scene of Lena sitting alone in this darkened room and drinking is enough to trigger some alarm bells somewhere in Kara’s subconscious, she reasons it away. Lena has told her how lonely it can be in Kara’s apartment when she isn’t there, so much so that she tends to avoid it as much as possible; better that Lena is spending her time here not working if the other woman truly feels the need to stay out so late.

The television across from Lena’s desk is on and muted, with some after-hours news commentary show on. Lex’s face flashes across the screen, as does her own, and Kara can only imagine what they’re talking about. Given her recent shining, damning victory over the man, Kara doesn’t doubt that it’s the same narrative that’s been following them for weeks now: where Lex might be, what options he has left — what he could still be capable of. All valid and reasonable concerns for people across the country to bring up, even if Kara grows increasingly assured that there isn’t much left that Lex would be able to do to hurt any more innocents. No, if Lex is going to make one last gasping play, Kara knows it will be against her. That, at least, is something she can prepare for. Footage of her from just a day ago in Metropolis plays, her calmly navigating a hostage crisis that those last members of CADMUS had been desperate enough to try and pull off. No one had been hurt, luckily, not even anyone from CADMUS, and Kara is glad for it. There’s no such thing as washing her hands of this, she knows, but she’d rather avoid the crimson and the heaviness that comes from needless bloodshed.

Most curious of all is the sheer amount of… gifts in Lena’s office, which Kara knows for a fact that the other woman likes to be as clean and free of clutter as humanly possible. Flowers, chocolates, and even a handful of rather tacky-looking helium balloons are stacked and shoved away in every corner available, giving the appearance of a ceaseless wave of offerings that not even Lena could keep at bay.

She glances over at Lena only to find the other woman’s gaze back on the city lights below them, dragged back down into whatever internal musings have demanded her focus all night. More than a little thrown off by Lena’s cordial but distant demeanor, Kara clears her throat, waving over at one particularly massive bouquet and speaking up at last.

“I thought you were the only person in National City rich enough to go around filling up offices with flowers,” she says. Lena jolts again, as if she’d forgotten Kara was there, and turns her body around so that her back is against the railing, peeking over at where Kara is pointing.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, those. An unfortunate side-effect of being back in the good graces of society. They’re from just about every major company and wealthy man who fancies himself a rising star in this city,” Lena explains, her lip curling up in disgust.

Kara’s eyes narrow, not quite connecting the dots. “I know I haven’t missed your birthday,” she says. “What excuse could they possibly have for showing up uninvited with gifts?”

“Each spectacularly-wrapped goodie bag is either a thinly veiled attempt at apologizing for turning their backs on me or their way of groveling for a chance at filling one of the many new vacancies on my board. Either way, I find it rather distasteful — and poor Jess has had herself quite the time trying to stop them from flooding in.”

“They’re being checked by your security team, right?” Kara asks, x-raying a few of the more strangely shaped packages herself only to find teddy bears and some shamelessly branded company merchandise. If LCorp was run by a six-year-old child, then maybe this strategy would work, but it’s obvious that none of these people know Lena well at all if this is their best attempt at entering her inner circle. “Nothing from your brother could have slipped in amongst the rest?”

A strange, caustic laugh erupts from the other woman, out of place after such a simple question. “Don’t worry, Kara,” she says. “Lex isn’t trying to get to me through a vase of poorly-watered tulips. They’re not even in season — frankly, he’d find the insinuation insulting.”

Not quite sure how to respond to any of that — or the restless, slurred tension on Lena’s lips, Kara changes gears. She leans closer, closing her hands around the railing as she gazes over at Lena’s profile with a frown. “I’m sorry this is how everyone is going about it,” she says, tracing the shadow along the other woman’s jawline with her eyes, falling down her exposed, elegant neck. “And I’m sorry that the world took so long to come to its senses about you in the first place.”

Lena catches her in the act; but while Kara blushes and glances away, embarrassed, Lena’s features remain completely neutral, without even a shadow of a teasing smirk anywhere to be found. She breathes out, long and slow, through her nose. “Don’t be sorry. In a way, I’m glad. This serves as an excellent reminder of where my priorities should remain.”

Kara nods, playing along and pretending that she’s caught up with the choppy undercurrents of their conversation. “I can understand that,” she says after a beat, not understanding at all. When she chances a glance back up at the other woman, she sees the carefully-concealed bags under her eyes, the tension in her set jaw and her clenched teeth. Truthfully, Kara’s been lost from the very moment this interaction began.

The other woman humors her. “I realized a long time ago that, in the end, it doesn’t much matter to me what the world thinks,” Lena says, looking over at her with a capricious sort of affection, like it’s liable to slip from her face as easily as the passing shadows that Kara’s been studying. “What does it matter if they see me as good or capable or worthy? That’s not what I needed. Not ever, even if I tricked myself into believing it once upon a time.”

Kara can’t stop some amount of confusion from making an entrance on her furrowed brows and thinning lips. “And what did you need?”

“For just one person to see that,” Lena replies. “Just one person to recognize that I’d always tried to do my absolute best, and to believe in me in that way.” Knowing where this is going just by the expression on her face, Kara grows flush and looks away once more, unable to handle the sharp, wary sort of intensity radiating from Lena right now. “You did that for me. You saw me for what I truly was, what I could be — and somehow, you managed to drag the rest of the world right alongside you.”

Too modest to accept the compliment, Kara keeps her eyes fixed on the way LCorp seems to fall out beneath her feet, tracing the windows all the way down. She always gets like this around Lena; Alex calls it her blushing schoolgirl look. And really, Kara knows what it is. She’s so used to receiving praise as Supergirl, absorbing gratitude and public admiration with a wave and a smile even if there are more days than not where she feels it’s all terribly undeserved because that’s just part of the job of a superhero. Supergirl is the one that poses for the pictures in the papers and shakes hands with mayors, governors, and world leaders — and keeps on doing good with or without recognition for it. Lena, though — Lena compliments Kara, as imperfect as anyone else on this planet — and that’s not something she thinks she’s ever going to get used to.

“Gee, I- everyone else, they just needed a reminder of how good you are,” she says, her feet swinging in the breeze. “I’m happy to be that nudge if that’s what it takes. You deserve the world, no matter how it’s treated you.”

“I deserve the world,” Lena echoes, contemplative and a little wonderstruck. “You are the only person who could convince me to believe in such an outlandish sentiment.”

They return to a comfortable, uncomplicated silence, both of them staring up at the night sky. Kara is content to sit here like this — and most nights, she’d leave it at that — but she can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else on Lena’s mind besides tasteless gifts and pompous businessmen.

Lena’s heard the updates, obviously, but Kara can’t stop herself from bringing it up anyways, needing a thread to start gently tugging at if she’s going to unravel the heart of Lena’s all-consuming introspection. “Hey, uh- well, I think it’s over,” she gushes, feeling hopeful and self-assured and like she can breathe again. While she does wonder if they’re out of the woods, if they ever will be if Lex lurks somewhere in the distant, unfocused background, Kara leans into the soaring feeling. It’s the reason why she’s yet to set foot in Lena’s office yet, her good mood enough to make her float. “I don’t know if you’ve been updated, but I think I got them all. Finally. I mean, that was it. I know that CADMUS has a knack for rising up from the dead, but not this time. Isn’t that great?”

“I’ve kept up with the news,” Lena replies, eyes flitting over to a particularly chilling photo of Lex on the TV, looming dark and tall over her own press conference. Though she’s not in the shot, Kara can picture herself as she was in the moment, frozen in between two identities, two dueling senses of duty. While they’ve never discussed it, she remembers the look on Lena’s face when she’d chosen to leave; though she was damned either way, Kara’s choice isn’t one that’s easily forgotten. It hangs over them even now, its echoes flickering across the screen and maybe even in the inscrutable nature of Lena now, as she suddenly heaves out a sigh and looks a good deal older than she did only moments before when they were talking about gift baskets and goodness and believing in one another. “Quite an accomplishment. But your crusade isn’t over just yet, now is it?”

“Well, I- I suppose that’s true.” Kara pauses, choosing her words with care. It’s no secret that Lex’s absence from the pile of goons she’s dropped off at the DEO is a glaring one, an omission that Supergirl will inevitably be expected to rectify. He’s at the top of every most wanted list in the country at this point, if not internationally, and he’s undoubtedly a problem that only a select few are meant to deal with. Even so, Kara doesn’t get the feeling that Lena is particularly enthusiastic about that particular showdown — especially seeing as the other woman isn’t aware of just how keen Lex and Kara are about keeping this personal. “No such thing as a day off for Supergirl, and there are always more bad guys to catch. But, I mean, hey — this is a pretty great step in the right direction, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” Lena traces a thumb along the lip of her glass, seemingly uninterested in meeting Kara’s wide, excited eyes or matching the wideness of her smile. “And as for my brother, I suppose that’s a quest for the future.”

“When Lex comes out of the shadows, we’ll be ready for him,” Kara says, her customary bravado feeling right coming off of her tongue for the first time in forever. “For the time being? I don’t consider him a threat against this city, not with what he’s got left to work with. So long as no one else is in danger, yes — he can be left for another day.”

Lena scoffs. “Well, at least the city is safe,” she mutters into her drink, tipping it in Kara’s direction. “I feel obliged to raise a glass to that.”

Kara is undeniably out of her depth now, Lena’s curt and sarcastic toast a red flag, signaling something she’s yet to uncover. Slowly hovering herself up and over the edge of the railing, Kara settles her feet down on the solid ground at last, facing the other woman fully. She takes a stab. Whatever is going on, she figures she plays into it somehow, and there’s no way to fix it until she understands.

“Lena, if- we’re going to catch him, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she tries, her full attention on the other woman, attempting to read her reaction.

Lena’s expression doesn’t so much as ripple, her head held high and her jaw tight. “The certainty of us crossing paths once more with my brother is the least of my concerns,” she says, tossing her hair over one shoulder. Mesmerized, Kara breaks eye contact to follow the smooth motion. “Lex is far too prideful to stay away permanently, as much as that thought pleases me. But what about when he does decide to show his face? What happens then?”

Kara treads carefully, trying to give Lena the answers she thinks she wants. “Well, it’s like I said before. He doesn’t have the capacity or the ability to do what he did before Thanksgiving. The mistake that I made, going after him, choosing wrong… it won’t happen again.”

Now it’s Lena’s turn to watch her, green eyes flashing in the dim light. “But you will make that mistake again,” she says, something dark and troubled crossing her face that Kara feels certain only the alcohol is letting slip out. “It just won’t be at the expense of other people’s lives this time, which will only embolden you further.”

Finally, they seem to be getting somewhere, though that’s not to say that Kara likes where this is leading them. They’re not likely to strike gold in a rabbit hole this treacherous — and as Lena stares her down, Kara wonders if this is the long-awaited confrontation that she’d originally expected on Thanksgiving. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she says, crossing her arms across her chest, brow furrowed. At the move, Lena’s expression darkens, and she paces toward the balcony doors, then thinks better of it, spinning back around.

“Don’t let me get in the way, Kara. I’m sure you’re very eager to find some pointy end of a sword to charge into.”

Uh oh. “What- where is this coming from?” Despite the sudden and spitting fire coming from her best friend, Kara remains totally unguarded, pursuing the subject with an openness that she knows she wouldn’t offer anyone but Lena. Let her say her piece — let her try and draw blood if need be. Far be it for Kara to put up any walls between them after everything. “I thought you’d be excited about this,” she continues, honest and not bothering to disguise her confusion. “I mean, think about how close we are to catching-”

“Believe me, I’ve been thinking about it,” Lena interrupts. “I’ve tossed and turned at night about this exact eventuality, so pardon my lack of enthusiasm on the matter.” Kara’s cape billows around her in the breeze, and Lena uses the gust of wind to take in a deep breath, continuing on before Kara can get a word in edgewise. “Call me high-strung, but it’s difficult for me to turn myself into a cheerleader when-”

“You’re not the cheerleading type,” Kara cuts in, finding it impossible to not lob in some amount of levity into a conversation that has quickly become dire, hoping that it’ll at least break up some of the tension that’s gathering around them like great blocks of ice.

Lena shoots her a look that expresses clearly to Kara how little she appreciates her effort at humor. “I know my brother, and perhaps more importantly in this case, I know you. When it comes to ending this maddening grudge match, I understand the price that’s going to be asked. I know exactly what you’re going to do.”

Kara’s eyes cloud over. So, it seems as though they’re going to rip off this bandage after all. “Hold on a second-”

“What did you say to my brother after Superman left?”

Her expression freezes on her face. “What? Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Lena presses, persistent. “I find that hard to believe. Nothing transpired following the end of the recording?”

It’s an innocent enough question, but something about the way Lena asks it makes Kara think she knows far more than she’s letting on. She’d counted it as a blessing all those weeks ago that Kal had fled the scene with his comms piece still firmly intact; it had given her the chance to make promises to Lex that weren’t meant to ever see the light of day. They were dangerous promises, a vow of mutually assured destruction, and while she had come to some sort of unspoken understanding with Lex, Kara had never intended on letting that particular side of the story slip out.

“I’m telling you, I- I really don’t remember,” Kara replies, shrugging her shoulders and leaning hard against the railing. The cool edge juts harsh and unforgiving into her upset stomach, but she doesn’t shift her weight. “I’m sure it was all fairly straightforward. I threaten him, he threatens me, et cetera.”

Safe to say, Lena doesn’t buy it for a second. “At this point, let’s not fool ourselves,” she barrels on. “I’ve spent years of my life being subjected to my brother’s every passing cruel whim — years watching you always do what you believe is right, even before I knew the truth. Do you really think I can’t recognize when you decide to try and play God?”

Though not an unfamiliar accusation, Kara reels back all the same at its full-throttle intensity. The last time Lena had pinned this on her, there was plenty of baggage between the two of them, from the tattered secret identity Kara was still valiantly waving around, the shadow that Reign had cast over all of National City, and the Kryptonite Lena had been making in secret. To call it a touchy subject even still is a massive understatement, and one that causes all of those walls that Kara had been keeping down to come roaring back sky-high. “Woah. That is not what’s happening here. Not at all.”

“You’re telling me that the decisions you make don’t have a profound and enormous impact on the lives of millions of people?” Lena argues back. “That weight of the world on your shoulders? That isn’t one that’s shared by anyone else on this planet, not even your cousin.”

“That doesn’t make me some omnipotent, all-powerful being,” Kara tries. “That’s uncalled for. I’m not exactly pulling any strings here-”

“You aren’t?” Lena asks. She takes a deep, composed breath, continuing on before Kara can linger for too long on old fights and bitter, barely-patched up arguments. “Look. I don’t mean it in some literal or even narcissistic sense, Kara. This isn’t about Kryptonite or anything close to that. This is about your- your insatiable need to make this a personal, solitary struggle – this is about you elevating yourself far above where anyone else can help or try and protect you. You can’t bear to play with the lives of others, so you’ve chosen to toy with your own instead.”

However unfair Kara views Lena’s argument as, she doesn’t hold her ground over it. Playing the part of high and mighty certainly won’t do anything for her now, especially when Lena’s words are just the surface level dressing for what Kara suspects is a much deeper fear.

That doesn’t mean that Kara has any intention of backing down, however. “Do you think I have any clue about what’s going to happen?” she asks. Maybe if she can play a verbal form of keepaway with the other woman for long enough, Lena will drop it. It’s a foolish hope, seeing as Kara knows exactly how Lena arguably becomes more laser-focused while drunk, but she goes for it despite that. “I don’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, or tomorrow, or a year from now. I mean, I- I don’t know what I’m doing-!”

“I think you know exactly what you’re doing,” Lena snaps, tired of the bullshit and cutting through it more quickly than Kara would have liked. “But I think you might not be sure of what those actions actually represent-”

“Come on, now what’s that supposed to mean?” Kara cuts in, accidentally sharp. Guilty, she grimaces, clearing her throat. Her frustration and annoyance at the enigma of this conversation will do absolutely nothing to defuse the quietly ticking bomb that Lena seems to have clutched behind her back tonight. “I mean,” she says again, purposefully calm, “I guess I just don’t quite see the difference-”

“It drives me mad, listening to you try and talk your way out of this!” Lena answers, and her sharpness is slow and intentional, a dagger pressed sure and unyielding against Kara’s throat, drops of blood beading against its steel. “Why don’t you stop padding your words and treating me like I’m made of glass? I’m not an idiot, Kara — and I am certainly not breakable.”

“I’m not doing that! It’s just- we’ve had this conversation before,” Kara points out, her words sounding much more like a frustrated complaint than a valid criticism. Sure, there’s plenty of frustration all around at the moment, but it’s certainly not constructive and only serves on raising the tension up by a notch or two.

Lena’s glare intensifies. “Yes, we have.”

Grinding her teeth, she grasps her hands tightly together behind her back. “Glad we’re on the same page,” she mutters, detesting the puerile sarcasm and yet completely unable to stop it. “It’s all a bit redundant, isn’t it? A waste of our time and- and our emotional resources! When are we going to close the door on this topic? How many times do we need to rehash it? I mean, do you really want to circle back to this over and over again?”

“I’m not quite sure. It all depends on you, really. When are you planning on gaining any sort of self-awareness?”

“What?” Kara scoffs audibly, loud and completely disbelieving, and it’s the equivalent of showing up to this bonfire with several gallons of gasoline. Unintentional as it may be, she can tell just by the sparking flames in Lena’s eyes that she’s just turned this into a full-on forest fire. “Rao, Lena, you’ve got to be kidding.”

“You lack self-awareness, Kara,” Lena pronounces somberly, simply, rattles it off like a terminal diagnosis. “It’s either that or the alternative, which is that you are completely cognizant of what’s happening around you and are continuing to walk that path — and that is so much worse.”

“Okay, I- geez, I know I can be a little oblivious sometimes, but that doesn’t- I don’t have some sort of hidden agenda happening here, Lena.”

“You’re very brave, Kara. No one can fault you for your lack of courage.” Lena draws in a breath and as Kara stares hard at her, feels her heart swell in her ribcage despite the rising tension simply because she can’t ignore how beautiful Lena looks right now — and wishes she could tell the other woman that she’s not quite as brave as she might think. “You’re brave in all ways except for the fact that you’re too much of a coward to be honest with me about this.”

If only Lena knew how true those words were. Honesty has always been a bit of a trigger word between the two of them, and Lena bringing it to the table so brazenly causes a weight to sink in her stomach. Finally, Kara settles hard and heavy on the ground, making peace at last with the fact that there is no escaping – and there is no preventing this from devolving into a full-out argument. She’s much too tired, Lena is too drunk, and they’re both far too vulnerable for things to not turn sharp and blisteringly honest.

“I still don’t even know where any of this is coming from! I think you’re acting awfully accusatory about something that I might not have any knowledge of,” she protests, hot and angry and worried when Lena seems to lean into it, rises to the occasion with relish.

“Don’t you dare,” she responds, and the current crackling between them makes Kara unsure as to whether she should take several steps back or move closer, box Lena in against the rail and let the energy continue to build and thrum. “Don’t pretend to be blind about this. What, are you going to stand there and deny the truth of what’s going to happen? Lie to me about what you’re going to let him do to you so long as the day is saved along with it? Act like you haven’t been sitting idle and waiting for the other shoe to drop this entire time?”

Kara feels a muscle in her jaw jump, and she tries and fails to stop grinding her teeth together. “I haven’t. I’m simply doing what I can under the circumstances to keep everyone safe. What, that’s off-limits now?”

“Tell me the truth.” Lena juts out her chin, glaring holes down at the crest on Kara’s chest. “Is that why you’ve been so eager to take down CADMUS lately? What, you’re just sick and tired of waiting for him to deliver the death blow and so now you’re expediting the process?”

“Absolutely not!” she thunders, and although Lena is wrong about this, she’s close enough to getting it right that it’s scaring Kara. There are many, many things that she would do for Lena, but admitting the truth about this is not one of them. “That’s- I mean, how can you even think that? You know, I’ve been trying, Lena,” she answers instead, knowing it’ll only make things worse. “It’s complicated, and- and it hasn’t exactly been easy! How can you accuse me of- of dishonesty when you’ve been by my side for all of it? I have not been lying to you.”

“No? Maybe not, but here’s your chance to double down now.” Lena bridges the gap, setting her empty glass on the ground and crossing her arms. “Then look at me and tell me that it’s not true.”

Traitorous, Kara’s eyes cast themselves immediately over the surrounding skyline, and stay there as Lena sighs. It’s for the best; Kara doesn’t think she could stand the look of disappointment on the other woman’s face right now. “Tell you what isn’t true?” she asks weakly, but it’s far too late. She failed the test, and Lena has no intention of offering her any grace now.

The other woman laughs, pained and caustic. “You know, my expectations were low, but this is something else entirely.”

“If you’d just let me explain- if I could just have a second to understand what’s really wrong-”

“You certainly have a way of making these things as unbearable as possible, don’t you? Tell me, do you take some sort of morbid enjoyment out of it? Is it some bizarre form of coping, or can you simply not live without some secret to hide away until it’s too late?”

Kara winces, uncomfortably aware that this is not something that even she can defend herself from. “Lena, come on,” she says, and she hates how pleading it sounds, how unintentionally cruel. Lena is right: Kara’s always been a coward when it comes to facing the truth, and that’s no different this time around. “I never- I would never do something like that to you. Not again. Besides, everything’s going to turn out alright. I can fix all of this. You just need to trust that-”

The other woman’s eyes flash and spark, nearly turning gold in her cresting fury. “And of course — out of every godforsaken person across the universe, it had to be my brother, didn’t it? It has to be Lex who gets to lord it over my head like this. There’s twisting the knife, and then there’s his preferred way of playing with his food.”

Lena’s ranting is very dangerously close to becoming hysterical; Kara can practically taste the salt in the air, knows that the other woman is holding back tears. She bites back the worst of her own anger. “What do you mean?” she asks very delicately, sniffing out a hint of something that’s yet to be uncovered. Drunk or not, Lena Luthor is not the type of woman to willingly dive into as fraught of a conversation as this without a nudge — or, in this case, Kara suspects, a cruel shove from someone in her rotting family tree.

She’d expected slightly more resistance; Lena is as adept at avoiding the truth as Kara herself is, and Kara’s given a bit too much of herself over to the other woman to ever really know for certain when she’s lying. But instead of denial or distraction or any other sort of deception, Lena waves over to her desk. Strangely enough, it’s missing its usual desktop setup, prototypes, and financial reports. In fact, it’s just about the only spotless surface in the entire gift-plagued office — save for a handful of papers, held down in the breeze by Lena’s mostly-empty decanter.

“Have a look, why won’t you,” the other woman dares Kara, her words slurred and vulnerable. Her hands are practically held up high in the air like she’s waiting to finally be caught in the act of something, oddly removed from her anger and her cutting words from earlier. “Go see where I’m getting all of these glad tidings from. ‘Tis the season, is it not?”

Kara listens. With one last solemn glance over at the other woman, she sighs and walks silently through the open balcony doors.

The stacks of paper, as it turns out, are letters – and Kara doesn’t have to scan her way to the bottom to realize who they’re from. She recognizes the handwriting – and even if she didn’t, only one person is bold and demented enough to write the words she sees on the paper. And honestly, it’s not like Kara had expected Lex to stay quiet for long. A man like him was going to find an outlet for his abusive and cruel tendencies one way or another, and while Kara had deprived him of the ability to make anymore national headlines or particularly loud announcements to the rest of the world, not even she could prevent his access to a box of stamps and the postal service.

They’re horrible. Each and every letter is filled with lurid and disturbing content, as eloquent as it is disgusting. Great rambling, lingering passages of pain and suffering and death in a myriad of drawn-out methods. In another life, Lex would have made an excellent horror writer, Kara can’t help but think.

More importantly than his wordsmith tendencies is the fact that in all of these letters, Lex is writing about Kara, writing a thousand different promised scenarios of her death, and finally, the pieces click into place. No wonder Kara’s had the feeling that Lena knows more than she’s letting on; thanks to Lex, his sister not only knows precisely what he intends to make happen at the end of Kara’s crusade, but that Kara is aware of it as well – and has been all this time.

She’s been caught in the act by Lex once more, and just as he did with her secret identity, he’s made sure to torture Lena with it for as long as possible.

Kara can feel Lena’s eyes on her stiff shoulders, her suddenly aching back. She tries to imagine what it must have felt like, reading these letters alone in this office for Rao knows how long, all while Kara had been out in the world doing exactly what Lex had predicted she would. Reading these sort of grisly, shockingly intricate threats about anyone would have been difficult; reading them knowing that they were about your closest friend and realizing that there was no way of telling what was true and what wasn’t… at long last, Kara understands Lena’s anger all at once. She gets why the other woman assumed Kara was knowingly going along with Lex’s predictions – and she realizes now how terrifying her haste to take down CADMUS looks through this dark, twisted tease of what’s still to come.

“I hate him, you know,” Lena says, her silken anger a crushing counterweight to Kara’s frozen silence. There’s no need to reread the letters. No need to ask Lena any more meaningless questions about where and how Lex even managed to get them to her in the first place. No need for much of anything well-meaning or accidentally dismissive to come out of her mouth right now when she knows that this is Lena’s battle, and Kara’s been too busy tying up loose ends to realize that she’s been fighting it alone. “So much that, if given the chance, I’d kill him a dozen times over. Not for the necessity of it — for the satisfaction alone. I am sick and tired of his torment, and just this once, I think I’d like to be the one to exact some punishment.”

Too shocked to even begin to unpack the vitriol that Lena just spat out, Kara tries to focus on the details, tries to figure out if there’s anything about this that she’ll be able to fix. She turns back toward the balcony where Lena has come to stand in the doorway. “How long?” Kara says at last, her eyes wide and her voice bereft of the self-assuredness it had carried with it for the majority of this conversation. “How many of these letters are there?”

“Difficult to say. It’s gone on for several months now, from what I can tell,” Lena says breezily, as if the realization that she’s been dealing with this type of poison for so long on her own doesn’t currently have Kara’s throat in a chokehold. “I didn’t see them for myself until I was back in the office, but I knew there was something Jess wasn’t telling me when she would drop off my mail to your apartment. He always sent them here.”

Kara glances over at the pile of papers, knowing that somewhere in this room there must be an entire mountain more. She can imagine Jess studying Lex’s scrawled, looping handwriting, and knows that the woman is far too good of an assistant and a friend of Lena’s to not recognize it as his and to try and hide them away from her. “Well-intentioned on her part of course,” Lena continues, “But that just means that when I did eventually find them, I got to read my way through an entire novel worth of threats against you. It’s made for engrossing material in between meetings and on nights like these. I never considered Lex to be particularly good with prose, but the richness of detail and sheer variety of methods that he would like to use to kill you is almost impressive here.”

“Lena, I-” Kara sucks in a breath. Her voice is high-pitched and plainly appalled, and she sounds so much like she did in the Fortress when she’d first learned that Lex had spoiled her secret identity that she recoils, almost expecting the sharp and unexpected sting of Kryptonite to flood her senses as it had that day. “Why didn’t you- you could have told me. You didn’t need to read all of these alone. Please, I could have explained, even tried to help-”

“And you could have done the same. I think you understand why I chose not to. Besides – this was the only real window I had into what was really going on. I wasn’t going to- I needed to know, Kara. If you weren’t going to tell me the entire truth… well, Lex has never had the same qualms about that as you.”

She doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how much of the past is talking through Lena right now and how much of it is a fresh wound. Kara wishes she did; anything to neutralize the heavy, loaded silence that’s fallen over both of them. Anything to try and soothe the strangely defiant shine of dread in Lena’s eyes as she crosses her arms and looks on, studying Kara’s wary, impassive features as she glances back toward the desk and methodically flips through the last of the pages on the desk.

If it wasn’t already well-established, this little stunt by Lex proves that he is above all else dedicated – and morbidly creative. Alongside the letters, there are photos here of Kara that, even with her enhanced senses and uncanny ability to spot would-be photographers hounding her across the city – she had no idea existed. Quiet, private moments – vulnerable moments, however brief, where Kara had dared to take a breath and let her defenses down. Even for Supergirl, it’s proven difficult to wear a suit of armor constantly without a reprieve, and yet it’s these minuscule, indulgent respites where Lex has shown that he’s not only watching, but waiting.

With every photograph comes a sinister caption, a detailed description by Lex of how he could have killed Kara in each instance if he’d wanted to. There she is getting brunch with Alex just after Thanksgiving – Kryptonite poisoning from her coffee is how Lex says he would have done it. Or another photo of her as Supergirl downtown, returning a lost dog to its family and crouching down to comfort the pair of children who’d thought their pet was gone forever; wouldn’t it have been memorable, Lex had written, to have that family watch as Supergirl was shot in the back by a sniper’s emerald bullet, die at their feet? To have those children go home and scrub the dried blood of a so-called god off of their poor, tearful faces?

There’s even one of her alone in her apartment, slumped and visibly exhausted on her couch. Kara doesn’t know when it was taken, as blurry and far away as it is through the tall windows of her living room, but the fatigue and the uncertainty on her face is easy to see regardless of the quality of the image. This is the side of her she’s fought tooth and nail to ensure that no one – especially not Lena – ever sees, and here is Lex tormenting her with it.

I found another specimen of the Black Mercy, Lex had scribbled on the back side of the photo, and it’s so easy to hear him whisper the words in her ear, taunting and cold. Look at her, tired and lonely. Imagine coming home to her only to find that thing wrapped around her chest. This time, I doubt that even you could convince her to wake back up.

Her breath leaves her lungs in one sharp, uncontrollable exhale. Lex may be bluffing. Knowing him, he probably is – but the suggestion, the rarest chance that he has another Black Mercy is a possibility that not even Kara during all of her sleepless nights had thought to come up with. His sadistic imagination is perhaps his greatest weapon of all, and Kara can only imagine the toll it's taken on Lena.

Sliding that photo under the rest, Kara startles at Lena’s voice, who catches her in the act, trying to hide the evidence. “You’ve never told me about what happened to you with the Black Mercy.”

“That’s because I don’t like to talk about it,” Kara responds, struggling to keep her shoulders up and strong. It still feels like there’s a vacuum in her lungs where oxygen should be, and she can feel her mask slipping as she searches for a full breath. It’s no surprise to her that Lena, despite her adeptness for investigation and learning, is in the dark here. “I’m sure the case file is out there, but… Alex blotted out what details she could from the official record. She wanted to protect me from something like that ever happening again – and spare me from the pain of the debrief interview.”

Lena just stares, still lingering by the balcony door. She shivers despite the mildness of the night, and unable to stop herself, Kara does too. “I don’t know what’s fact or fiction,” she says. “If he has one-”

“He’s out of resources,” Kara tries, despite knowing that there’s no use. Lex wields all of the power here precisely because of the uncertainty around his next steps. Plainly and simply acknowledged, Kara doesn’t know what he’s capable of; no one does, and that’s why these words, as unhinged and as empty as they very well may be, pack such a potent punch. “Lex is a cornered rat. It’s just not realistic or healthy to assume the worst-”

“Shame on you for counting him out over such a flimsy excuse,” Lena scolds, voice taut.

Kara’s brow furrows, doing her best to stop a very pained, very nasty glare from escaping. “It’s not flimsy. That’s a legitimate fact.”

“How can you underestimate him after everything he’s done?” Lena argues right back, undaunted by the increasing frustration in Kara’s voice. “Think about everything he managed to accomplish while in prison – God, think about what he did from beyond the grave! He very nearly tore us apart for good, and you honestly believe that running out of money is what’s going to incapacitate him?”

“That’s not what I- I’m not assuming anything,” Kara insists. “I know better than to believe that he isn’t still capable of any number of awful things with whatever weapons he may or may not have…” Hesitating, Kara decides to bite the bullet and let her brutal form of pragmatism shine through, however furious she knows it will make the other woman. “But without resources – without resources, at the very least – a grand majority of good, innocent people will be safe.”

“And you’re refusing to count yourself as one of those innocents?”

Kara’s heart twists. She has many good, noble traits, but for Lena to try and sell the idea that she is innocent or blameless after the entirety of this long war she’s been waging with Lex is simply implausible. “Let’s be honest with ourselves here,” she starts, but Lena is having none of it.

“If I have to hear one word out of your mouth that hints at some sort of- of deserved punishment-”

“It’s not personal,” Kara cuts in. “Stop trying to- it’s just simple facts! I thought you, out of all people, would have the ability to look at this from a different perspective. You’re a scientist. You should understand that objectivity is-”

“You want me to treat this objectively? Fine.” Lena’s gripping onto the handle of the balcony door so tightly that, if she were the one with superpowers, Kara is certain that the entire metal frame would have been ripped off of its hinges and flung into space by now. “Let me give you an objective read on my brother. You do realize that this is entirely personal now, don’t you? He lacks the funds or the ability to see any of his grandiose anti-alien schemes through. You’ve ensured that Lex only has one dog left in this fight, and that’s spite. Even if it ruins him — even if it already has ruined him — my brother is going to make sure you get what’s coming to you.”

Kara throws her arms in the air, slamming a fist down into this abysmal stack of papers that’s sent the both of them spinning out over nightmarish hypotheticals and uncertain futures. Nothing’s even happened yet, but Kara can feel the dread pool in her stomach as strongly as it would be if Lex would barge into the office now. “Then let him come!” she cries out, her voice trembling just slightly. “Let him try and do his worst. I’d be happy to let him if the ends justify the means.”

“Kara,” Lena’s voice is so icy that she nearly shivers, feeling that, even with her tendency to resist the cold, the room has plummeted into Arctic levels of biting, stormy weather. “Is that savior complex of yours plugging up your ears, or do you even realize what the hell you’re saying? No end could ever justify the means if somewhere along the way you give up your life.”

“If it keeps all of you safe, then I would be happy to do whatever it takes to-”

“But you wouldn’t,” the other woman says, slicing through all of Kara’s bluster. Oh, what the tabloids would say if they were ever to witness exactly how easy it is for Lena Luthor to silence the great and mighty Supergirl with only a few words. “There’s a distinction to make here. You’d be happy to die for any of us, but living for us, with us – no, that would be a different matter altogether, now wouldn’t it? Not what you signed up for when you decided to be everyone else’s shield.”

Kara scoffs, refusing to claim or acknowledge that accusation in the slightest. “Maybe we shouldn’t- it’s very hard to talk to you when you’re refusing to see the good side of all of this. Can’t you try a little bit of optimism, for once?”

“I think you really mean blind faith, and that’s always been a difficult ideal to devote myself to.”

“Then let’s just- just change the subject.” Kara can feel her stomach dropping even still — by now, it must be far below somewhere, crashing through the LCorp lobby and deep underground. “We should approach this on more even footing-”

“Yeah? Well, too late to turn back now.” Lena stares hard at her and Kara – Kara has to stand there and act like fighting with the other woman like this isn’t her own personal hell. No matter what Alex or Kelly or anyone else had told her, no matter the fact that Kara knows that fighting is normal, is inevitable when things get as hard and as tense as they are now – reassurances do nothing now to calm her nerves or her crashing anger. “Own up to it, Kara, and perhaps we really can approach this on even footing for once.”

This is an impasse that Kara knows they’ll never pass through together, so she doesn’t bother to even try. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she says after a long, cringing silence. “It’s not like I want that to happen-”

“If he has a Black Mercy, you expect me to believe that-”

“He probably doesn’t,” Kara interjects, hating that Lena has chosen to circle back to this and alarmingly close to letting her heat vision flare up and disintegrate these letters into ashes and dust.

“But if he does.” Lena takes a step to the side, circling the desk and facing Kara on the opposite side of it. “If he does, what exactly does that mean?”

Shrugging, Kara keeps her head down, content to watch Lena out of the corner of her eyes and let her profile shield the flurry of emotions showing on her face. “It means that it’s no different than anything else he may or may not hypothetically have,” she answers, unwilling to budge when, if she gives another inch, her entire facade will shatter. “Poison, bullets, bombs, gas, parasites… it doesn’t matter. There are plenty of ways to kill me, as it turns out.”

Her words come out more direct than she’d originally intended, and she sees their impact register on the other woman’s wild expression. “I’ve never seen a bomb threat make you flinch,” Lena points out, searing and uncompromising. Kara understands that this is her new chance to tell the truth, to step out of the dark on her own terms before Lex drags her there himself. “What is it about this that’s scaring you so badly?”

“It’s nothing. I just…” It isn’t that Kara doesn’t want to tell Lena the full story of the Black Mercy. That’s exactly the kind of vulnerable memory that Kara feels safest entrusting to her. But not now – not when the grisly details will only make things worse. “It plays tricks on your mind, alright?” Kara allows, tensing at even that vague explanation of the agony that the Black Mercy caused her. “And on top of that, that’s when- my aunt died that night.”

The pain of the memory comes back as fresh as if Kara’s just carelessly peeled away a scab, and she fights to keep her expression from crumbling completely. Lena lets out a small puff of air, and it suspends itself in the silence between them.

“Kara, I… I’m sorry. For all of it. I don’t want this to come across like an inquisition.” Her sharpness cowed for the first time that night, Lena places her hands on the desk, leaning forwards and quietly urging Kara to lift up her head and meet her eyes. Kara can’t quite manage to do that. Not when Lena’s voice is just the right sort of concerned that Kara just knows will split her in two. “There’s a reason why you and Alex and anyone else who was there doesn’t talk about it, and I get that. I don’t want to overstep, but I… I’ve heard the rumors, and I know that something awful must have happened.”

Kara sighs, closing her hands into white-knuckled fists just for something to hold onto, knowing that Lena’s desk would not survive if she were to follow suit and copy Lena’s stance. Lex certainly knows how to play the two of them off of each other. At this point, her refusal to tell Lena the truth has once again caused more harm than good – and despite suspecting that the full story won’t exactly improve matters, Kara also realizes that this ambiguity is nothing but a blank canvas for Lena to splash her worst fears across.

“No, it’s- Rao, you deserve to know more than anyone if he really does have one,” she stutters out, focusing on pragmatism and realism and not the fact that she’s already anticipating the look of horror and pity on Lena’s face, not concentrating on the fear that this story, piled high on top of all of the rest, will finally be the straw that breaks Lena’s back when it comes to supporting Kara through thick and thin. The way Kara figures it, it’s difficult to remain steadfast to someone who might just wind up an empty shell of a living thing, who nearly has before. “With his personal style of revenge, he’d probably plan it so you really were the one who finds me.”

Just like Kara, Lena makes a valiant effort to remain steady. The jury is still out as to whether or not she manages to pull it off. “What sort of tricks?”

One last deep, shuddering breath, and Kara lets the truth escape.

“Well, it’s a parasite, which I’m sure- I mean, you probably know that much. Black Mercies like to keep its host… complacent while it sucks the life out of it. I’m sorry, I- I don’t know the scientific details of how any of it works. I tried pretty hard to avoid the subject altogether after I-” Kara allows herself to reach up and pinch at her nose, still staring holes into the papers. “It’s a fantasy. Shows you what you want most and then it gives it to you and more. It keeps you blissfully, deliriously content, and intoxicated by the perfection of it all while it- while it finishes its work.”

Already knowing what Lena is going to ask next, Kara plows forward with a roughness to her voice, unable to bear the thought of having to watch and listen as Lena actively puts the pieces together. Better to spit it out now all at once and have some time to compose herself before the sympathy comes.

“And um, it’s hard to imagine what someone like me could have possibly wanted when I have all of these gifts, but I- I saw Krypton,” she says, clipped and honest. “It hadn’t been destroyed. No one died – not a single person. My parents were there, and my aunts and uncles, and Kal-El. He was still a young boy, and he looked up to me like I was everything to him. I got to watch him grow up. And it was cruel, you know? Because no one had gotten hurt, and everyone was as good and as just as they had been in my childhood memories. I hadn’t lost anything, hadn’t been sent off into unknown space – had only a vague idea that Earth even existed. It was nonsensical and paper-thin but eventually, I didn’t care in the slightest. I’d gotten my world back, and I was more than happy to ignore the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about it. So long as I had my family and my world, I would be okay.”

“I’m lucky that my powers gave me an extra bit of durability,” she continues, her back straight and rigid, her eyes unblinking. It’s the only way she knows how to face off against a memory like this, a story that reminds her exactly how easily she was fooled, how weak she was for being seduced by such an impossible, unattainable dream. “Alex told me that- that a human being would have died within an hour or two, but my body fought it all night long, and no one found me until morning. I don’t know if it was my physiology or the amount of energy in my cells, but I guess it wanted to savor me as its meal for as long as it could.”

“You were alone with that thing for an entire night?” Lena breathes out, and despite the fact that it’s the first time she’s spoken since Kara began, it feels much too soon. Her voice is as trembling and gentle as Kara had feared, and despite its warmth, it feels like needles against her suddenly sore and itching skin.

Kara feels older than she has in a very long time, looking back on the past like this. She fights the urge to pull away, to turn and back away just enough so Lena can’t see her force her face back into something more optimistic and hopeful – something more like Supergirl. But this is Lena – and she’s already in over her head with this woman as is, so Kara stays where she is and finally meets Lena’s eyes.

“There’s only one way to extract it from its victim,” she says, mostly ignoring her question with a shaking voice and not much more than sheer momentum and blind faith in Lena allowing her words to escape her closing throat. “Sheer force doesn’t work. Alex tried, and she- it almost killed me. There were apparently some violent convulsions, brain damage, and I briefly flatlined, and…” Kara pauses, hearing Lena’s knuckles groan in protest as she grips the surface of her desk so tight that it almost certainly hurts. Realizing that there are some details that may be too intense to share during an already charged moment, Kara clears her throat. “I’ll stop there. For as long as it had me in its grasp, I try not to dwell on what it took from me and what it, uh… nearly accomplished.”

She remembers what it had felt like, to wake up from the illusion. To this day, Kara doesn’t think she’s ever felt as out of place and as wrong as she did then. It was as if the Black Mercy had slowly unspooled and uncoiled everything – every thought, every hope, every secret dream – and then, in their attempt to save her, everyone else had kicked, forced, and shoved it all back inside. There hadn’t been time to fold all of those jagged and shattered desires neatly back into place, not when the price for those wishes was literally killing her. She’d lived with the tangle and the broken shards ever since, and while those knots have been slowly coaxed out over time, something tightens in her again now.

“You have to reject the fantasy that it creates for you. And I don’t know what that’s like for anyone else who’s dealt with a Black Mercy before – Rao, I don’t even know that there are any other survivors of it – but for me, that meant accepting that the little voice in the back of my head telling me that it was all too good to be true for someone like me was right. I had to come to the understanding that Krypton was gone, and it’s not ever coming back, and I had to leave it willingly.”

“Alex got involved, didn’t she? The file is extremely redacted, practically unreadable, but I do remember something about an unnamed DEO agent making contact,” Lena asks, and Kara thanks the stars that it’s an almost clinical question, one that steers clear of all of the emotion and the many, many little secrets that Kara just revealed by admitting what beating the Black Mercy had cost her. Lena probably understands better than most why Kara can’t bear to grapple with the choice that she made – why even now, a small, nearly invisible part of her wonders if she made the right decision after all.

Far too many choices in her life have felt doomed no matter what she decides to do, and Kara can’t handle many more no-win scenarios. She refuses to believe in them.

But Alex – Alex, and what she did to save Kara – is something she can talk about. “Don’t ask me how she did it, but she entered my mind,” she confirms, nodding once before moving away from the desk and staring out the windows. She can see Lena in the reflection, caught between hesitancy and concern and trapped in a half-measure. Kara can see it in the way Lena runs her hands up and down her own arms; she knows that Lena wants to go to her and reach out in some way, but she doesn’t. What does that say about the entire evening and this particular story that it’s alienating enough to stop Lena in her tracks? “It had become so real, by then. All of my doubts and better instincts had been soothed by the hallucinations. The Black Mercy had known exactly what to say to me, exactly what to show me. The strange, jarring inconsistencies I’d originally protested against had become nothing more than little bumps in the road. By the time Alex came in, I didn’t remember what it felt like to fly. I didn’t even remember her.”

The guilt comes then, as sudden and as consuming as it had been when Kara had been removed from the Black Mercy the first time around. She’d been so, so eager for her deepest desires to all come true that she’d forsaken the family that she’d found on Earth. She’d cast Alex aside without a second glance and fell willingly into the arms of a lie and even now, that haunts her.

“She pleaded with me to remember her, begged me to come back to the life I had on Earth, but I… it was a difficult decision, giving up that sort of peace.” Kara chuckles, the sound coming out hollow and humorless and feeling like it’s still partially stuck in her throat. “But you know Alex. She kept trying, and eventually, the cracks started to show.”

“You rejected the fantasy,” Lena says, and although it’s a foregone conclusion, Lena isn’t stupid and neither is Kara. She understands what it is that Lena is really trying to say, and can hear the unspoken recognition in her voice even if it doesn’t show up in her words. Finally, Lena understands the real root of this story, the reason why it tortures Kara even now; Lena understands exactly how inconceivable and gut-wrenching it was for someone who’s lost as much as Kara has to willingly give it up all over again.

“It wasn’t real. No matter how terribly I wanted it to be, I knew the truth in my heart. All I needed was one last push to go hurtling back off that cliff,” she says. “I wrenched myself back to the real world, and only a few hours later I held my Aunt as she died in my arms. Inside the dream, she’d promised me that we would have been together forever if I would only stay.” Sniffling, Kara can feel the tears burning in her eyes but doesn’t let them fall. She’s already mourned Astra, already mourned losing everything all over again, and tonight isn’t time for that to resurface. “And who knows, you know? Maybe she was right. Maybe I would have been at peace if I’d just decided to-”

She stops herself there, before she can finish letting the awful, terrible truth slip all the way out into the night. Lena doesn’t need to hear something like that, not when she’s worried enough as is. Kara isn’t so cruel as to tell her that this time around, if the Black Mercy were to get to her again, she honestly doesn’t know if she’d be able to reject it for the second time.

“I don’t know, Lena,” she admits at last. “I’ve never known how to explain it to anyone. How it was somehow the best and the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. How it might have permanently broken something- something very fragile inside of me. And even still, I don’t know what to do with the guilt that I still have for abandoning Alex — and for abandoning Krypton again. Someone got hurt no matter what, you know?”

“I didn’t know you back then,” Lena says after a beat, and Kara can hear it in her voice. Left unsaid or not, Lena knows what it is that Kara can’t admit and seems determined to speak to it. “I know it wasn’t easy or simple. And I don’t honestly know what would have happened if you hadn’t had the strength to return to the real world. I suppose that none of us ever will. I can’t say for sure that the choice you made was the merciful one… but I am glad that you made it anyway.”

Wobbly at first, Lena’s voice grows in equal parts determination and vulnerability, continuing to speak with a level of conviction that not even Kara can punch a hole through. “I am so relieved that you’re still here now, still alive and full of kindness for everyone around you. I’m so glad that parasite didn’t get to keep you because I never would have met you otherwise — and I needed you in my life. I still do. I think I always will.”

Eyes welling up, Kara turns around and drinks Lena in, knowing that she’s right — knowing that the sentiment is fully and unconditionally reciprocated. Sure, maybe the Black Mercy would have provided a painless and merciful death, perhaps the kindest one she’s ever been offered. Maybe it’s more than she deserved, getting a chance at that sort of uncomplicated peace. But whatever pain and doubt and selfish regret it’s caused her, Kara knows it was worth it, surviving over and over again until she met Lena.

Not for the first time, Kara wonders what it is she would see now if the Black Mercy were to ambush her again. She wonders who it is she would see if the fantasy is supposed to reveal her deepest and most unattainable desires. If she were to see someone like Lena in her perfect life, if they were to mean something more to each other than they do in the real world, would Kara be able to deny that for herself?

Honestly, she doesn’t know. All she’s certain of now is that tonight, it’s better to dwell on what it is that she does have, to remind herself of exactly why she reached out for Alex’s hand and chose to live.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Kara asks suddenly, wiping at her eyes quickly as she sends a faltering smile Lena’s way. She wonders if the other woman knows exactly how much those words mean to her, how badly Kara needed to be reminded of what matters after revisiting something like that. “Could we, maybe?”

Lena remains by her desk, carefully studying Kara and trying to determine exactly where this is headed. “You want to… go? Go where?”

“Out over the city.” Seeing Lena’s hesitance, Kara decides to tell the whole, unguarded truth, a beating pipeline straight to her heart. It’s a start, she supposes; after all this time spent leaving things unsaid around the other woman, she wants to prove to Lena now that she’d never intended to lie. “Listen, I… after that- it’s on nights like these that I like to remind myself of what it feels like to fly. We can talk more. This conversation doesn’t need to be over, it’s just… I don’t ever want to forget something like that ever again.”

“Well, I- It’s cold out,” Lena replies, but her heart isn’t in the excuse. Her shoulders are slumped and her expression is soft, and while Kara knows that she’s probably unsure, probably doesn’t know what will happen when she leaves this office and the safe structure of the conversation that she’d planned to have with Kara in this space, Lena wants to go. She wants to help, and more than that, she wants to be with her through this. “I’m drunk. I don’t have a proper coat with me, and I-”

“I’ll keep you warm. Don’t worry about that.” Kara steps toward the open balcony, never breaking eye contact. Does Lena see her differently, now that she knows the truth? Now that she knows that it might very well always be Krypton that she’s pining for and not anything on this planet? “You don’t- you can say no, Lena.”

“No, I… okay,” the other woman breathes out. “Let’s go.”

When they reconvene on the balcony, it feels like a completely different scene to step into. Gone is Kara’s oblivious excitement – and gone is Lena’s guarded, distraught anger. As Lena moves close, looking to Kara for what comes next, she wonders if an actual bolt of lightning will pass from her fingers to Lena’s skin the first time she reaches out.

Watching Lena’s face carefully for any nonverbal cues, Kara lowers her head and speaks in a low tone. “Is this okay?” she asks, her hands suspended between them. After all that’s been said tonight, all of the pent-up emotions that have been let out, she doesn’t want to overstep now. “Can I-?”

Lena takes control, lightly grabbing Kara’s wrists. As she steps even closer, she moves Kara’s hands herself, resting them carefully on her hips. Tilting her face up, she studies Kara, not missing the stuttering breath that comes rattling out of her throat and through her nose. “I’m not used to taking off from the ground,” she says. “Usually when we fly, it’s because you’re saving my life mid-air.”

“It’s not so different,” Kara answers, swallowing around a thick lump in her throat that she knows won’t be going away anytime soon. “Just a different intent behind it. Step up on my feet.” Slipping out of her heels, Lena listens. She tightens her grip around Lena’s waist, making sure that her hold is secure. The other woman follows suit, snaking her arms up and over Kara’s shoulders to encircle her neck, and now they’re close enough that Kara can feel as well as hear exactly how fast her heart is beating. “All I have to do is stop obeying gravity, and then…” Lena lets out a small, soft gasp as their feet leave the ground without a sound, and Kara can’t help but smile. “It’s as easy as breathing, after that.”

They don’t talk for awhile after that, just holding onto each other as Kara slowly floats them up over the balcony and into the open air all around them. With one glance down at the rushing cars and the countless stories below, Lena tightens her grip instinctively, choosing to gaze up at Kara rather than at the distance below. Keeping her expression smooth and serene, Kara stares right back.

“I didn’t realize… I fly all the time,” Lena whispers as they continue to drift upwards. The way they hold each other makes the flight feel like it could be some sort of dance between them, spinning and flitting in the air with the rooftops growing increasingly small far below them.

Kara’s cape envelops them both like a cocoon. She understands what Lena is trying to say. “Not like this,” she answers, quiet and reminded of exactly the sort of magic she can conjure up with the gifts the yellow sun has given her. .

“It’s so quiet,” Lena marvels, breaking their eye contact to take in the stars all around them. They’ve broken through the low layer of clouds, leaving the night sky in its full glory to hang suspended above them. “Is it always like this for you?”

“Quiet? No.” Kara admires the reflection of the moon in Lena’s eyes, and knows that this is not a sight that anyone should ever get used to. Even in some imaginary future where Kara indulges herself and allows her mind to picture the two of them flying together like this all the time – even then, however common it could become, she thinks it would always take her breath away. “This place is never quiet for me.” She looks down at the city below, hearing its usual murmuring buzz that follows her around, a million and more stories that she’s spent her entire time as Supergirl listening to and helping where she can. “I hear everything. That’s why I- I always try my best. What’s the point of being able to do the things that I can if I choose to turn a deaf ear to the world? And if I were to- when I fail, I can’t block any of it out. It’s always going to be there.”

“I think it frightens me,” Lena says, whispering it in her ear as if her words alone are enough to drown out everything below them. Miracle or not, for a moment, it’s true: Kara can’t see or hear or feel anything but the woman in her arms. “Try as I might, I simply can’t understand it. You see yourself so differently than I do. You’re so willing to do anything if it means-”

“Can I say something?” Kara interjects, but it’s gentle, less presumptuous than before. Lena lets the interruption happen without complaint, simply nods her head and allows Kara to throw her a rope. “You’ve learned throughout your life to roll with the punches, right? Like it or not, you’ve accepted that, just like anyone else on this planet, sometimes things won’t go your way. Sometimes, you’re going to lose, and that’s not the end of the world, but just part of life.”

“Growing up with the Luthors, I’d say that my understanding of success has always been slightly more warped than the average person’s, but yes, I see your point.”

Swallowing down an instinctual smile at Lena’s wry attempt at levity, Kara remains focused on the task at hand. “I can’t afford to lose, Lena,” she murmurs, unable to bear raising her voice any higher than a low but unwavering rumble. The sound of it makes Lena’s fingers jolt and flex tighter against her back, and Kara knows then that her words will land the way they should. “It’s all so much bigger than just me, you know? You, Alex, the rest of our family, the world — when I lose, everyone does. That’s just part of this immense, great gift that is getting to be Supergirl, getting to stand for what I do. Sacrifice is the ultimatum that’s always hung over my head. So long as I win, no matter the personal cost, we all do.”

Lena seems to think on that for a long time. “Call it selfish, but must it always be you who has to be the hero?” she asks, and while there is begrudging understanding at Kara’s point, Kara knows that Lena’s heart is not in the slightest swayed. “Must you always go down these roads alone?”

Kara keeps them suspended where they are, entangled in the wispy clouds. “Probably not,” she admits, moving one of her arms so it’s wrapped fully around Lena’s back, instantly warming the cool skin there. “I have an incredible team around me, and there are plenty of people – people like you – who help just as much as I do. But when it comes down to it, no one else sees or hears what I do. I’m alone in this world, in that sense, and that makes it my responsibility. It’s always been me in the end. I’ve always been the last one standing my entire life. Just me. That’s not a lesson that’s easily forgotten.”

Taking a deep breath, Lena forges quietly back into the raging waters of their fight from earlier, seeming much more reluctant to rise to anger this time around. “You tell me that you welcome Lex’s attempts to cause you misery if it means catching him for good, and yet… you’re terrified of it, of things like Black Mercies and whatever else he may have up his sleeve. You don’t need to climb up on that pedestal if it means-”

“I’m already up there, Lena,” Kara answers, and with anyone else in the world, she’d be worried that her words come across as overly arrogant. But Lena understands better than most what it’s like to be in a position of such immense responsibility, to go through life with a crippling sense of duty to do good. She knows what it’s like to exist in an untouchable ivory tower – knows that Kara’s always been the only one capable of meeting her up there, of whisking her away from it all. “And I love it, you know? I want to help. I want to fight, and protect people, and change this world for the better. That doesn’t make the fear or worry or sadness go away, but it makes me feel like what I do is even more important.”

“I know. I know, but I…” Lena sighs, trailing off despite both of them knowing that there is so much more she’d like to say. It’s hard to say much of anything in a moment as delicate as this, but Kara tries her best to unearth all of the unspoken fears that Lena is keeping buried. Better to do it now, scorched earth around them already, than to allow pretense to drape itself back over them.

“It’s contradictory most of the time,” she admits. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I understand why it might drive you a little bit mad-”

“Artfully understated,” Lena cuts in, with a glimmer of begrudging humor that Karea latches onto like the first snow in winter.

She smiles and while it flickers, it’s not so hesitant anymore. “Okay, so maybe more than a little bit. But it’s something that I have to balance if I want to continue to be Supergirl, same as my secret identity… and I love being Supergirl. I’ve made my peace with it, I suppose, and it’s something that I hope that everyone around me will be able to do as well.”

Lena’s quiet for a long time after that, staring down at their buoyant, weightless feet and the city below. Despite the height, her heartbeat has slowed into a lilting, rhythmic pace, and Kara realizes that up here with her, the other woman isn’t scared in the slightest. Up here, they’re untouchable. It’s what waits below and ahead that’s the cause of all this strife.

“I… I don’t know that I can do that, Kara,” she says at last, and it’s an answer that Kara had expected. All the same, it cuts to the bone. “I’ve been led by blind faith before, and it’s burned me each and every time-”

“No, I- I get it,” Kara interrupts, not needing Lena to elaborate on the last time she’d been hurt by Kara. “I completely understand if-”

“But,” Lena says, stealing all of the breath from Kara’s lungs with a single word. “But, for you, I’d do it again.”

“Really?”

“In a heartbeat.” Lena loosens her grip enough to get a better look at the bittersweet hope on Kara’s face. “If you can make your own peace knowing that I will do everything in my power to make sure that what my brother has planned doesn’t come to pass? Yes, I think we could get away with it.”

Seeing as most battles choose Kara and not the other way around, she knows better than to try and poke holes in this. It’s a compromise, plain and simple, and neither woman expects anything different. “I can do that,” she says softly, knowing that when it comes down to it, it was always going to be like this. Kara is always going to put Lena first – and Lena will always do the same with her.

“I suspect we’re better off facing any threat together than we would be on our own,” Lena affirms with a nod, and that’s all the reassurance Kara needs. So long as she’ll be able to get the other woman out of harm’s way when the time comes, she can live with them walking down this rocky road side by side.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole truth,” she whispers, and now it’s her heart that pounds loud and thunderous between them. If Lena notices, she doesn’t make a comment, just lowers her head and offers Kara a moment away from her piercing gaze to get her words out. “Really, I am. Just because I do what I can to keep you safe doesn’t mean that you’re undeserving of knowing exactly what’s going on. It’s a mistake I should have learned my lesson from years ago, and I’m sorry I let it happen again.”

“I forgive you, Kara. It’s not like I haven’t been keeping some secrets of my own. I’m sorry for the way all of this… exploded out of me.” Like a physical manifestation of her forgiveness, Lena tucks her head neatly against Kara’s neck and oh – if this is how Lena chooses to treat her even after Kara’s been ripped apart and all of her gleaming, unflinching authenticities laid bare – she’d do it all over again. “Sometimes, I… I worry I’m much too good at fighting with you. I know all of the best ways to draw blood, and it feels almost thoughtless, the sort of cruelty I pull out without any hesitation. It’s like I’m possessed by the worst parts of myself, like I’m making my family proud by the ways I’m able to-”

“You’re the only person in the world that I know would do good by it,” she interjects quickly, sincerely. Lena scoffs and Kara doubles down. “Seriously, I mean that,” she says. “Someone needs to be willing to keep me in check. Who better than you?”

A nervous, dismissive chuckle slips out of the other woman’s mouth. “Kara, there’s no need to placate me now after the night we’ve had-”

“Lena,” Kara replies, warm and insistent. Shifting her shoulder, she makes sure that the other woman is looking up at her when she smiles. “I think there’s a real chance that no one knows me quite as well as you do. You understand the ugly parts of me just as much as all of the good – more than any of our friends, more than Clark, more than even Alex. You know when to call me out and where to draw the line, and I listen, when you do. Sure, you have the ability to hurt me because of it, but I trust that you won’t.”

“And when I do?” Lena asks.

“Other than the fact that it’s usually for a pretty good reason?” Feeling the wind start to pick back up, Kara knows that it’s time to break the spell and head back inside. “When you do, even then, I don’t mind,” Kara says. “It’s a privilege to be hurt by someone who cares so much.”

“I promise I won’t take it for granted.”

“I know you won’t. You never have.” When Lena smiles back, Kara knows that she understands that she is talking about far more than just tonight. “Let’s go home,” she whispers, tightens her grip on Lena and starts her descent.

Even as Lena hums her assent and lowers her head back against her shoulder, Kara knows that the troubled waters they’ve found themselves in are nowhere close to subsiding. This is not the end of this, but merely a truce — and personal squabbles aside, Lex’s letters are burned into her brain as if branded against the back of her eyelids. Whatever victories she’s been able to claim these past few weeks, they seem small and pale now, lack the solid, weighty confidence they’d originally bestowed on her shoulders.

Kara can see something looming and massive rising up in the distance, indistinct but unmistakably dark. In all honesty, Kara simply doesn’t know how far that darkness extends, how capable it is of consuming. What she does know now is that the time for patience and half measures is over. No more room for her to stall and wander and put off getting her affairs in order. When the time comes for her to go and meet whatever’s coming, she hopes she is ready — hopes they all are, for her sake.

Chapter Text

For the first time maybe ever during her time on Earth, Christmas goes off without a hitch.

It’s a wonderful, warm, downright jolly blur of sparkling lights, poured rosé, and giddy, dizzying toasts. Kara sits by the tree and opens presents and throws bits of wrapping paper back and forth at Alex. She has nowhere to zip off to, no crisis to apologetically slink away to resolve other than a rather daring rescue of the cheesy potatoes that she had admittedly forgotten were still in the oven — until Brainy had very politely pointed out the smell of smoke in the air. No, Kara has nothing she needs to do but be here, soaking in the moment, and that’s exactly what she does, smiling, laughing and watching everyone enjoy themselves.

Brainy and Nia show off their new matching pajamas to anyone within eyeshot; Alex and Kelly tug at the wishbone, Kelly smugly waving the larger piece in the air as J’onn teases and ribs Alex about her defeat; Eliza flits around with plates of heaping cookies in both hands, shoving a new treat into any open and unoccupied hand that she spots; William follows her mother around like a dog after a bone, clearly aiming to sample every single dessert offered; Lena and James, crammed in on the couch with Clark and Lois and a babbling Jon, sharing old stories about Metropolis that have them all giggling like children. Kara lingers on her best friend, leaning into James and clinking her glass against his with a casual flair that makes Kara feel like she’s been bled dry even as she smiles. She stays where she is, nestled among the ornaments and the tree branches, and feels a sort of finality, a content and humble spectator to the merriment. This is as fine an example as any that there’s a point to all of this, what she’s been doing.

Why in Rao’s name would Kara not fight for something like this? Who wouldn’t do just about anything to ensure that the future is as happy and as carefree as tonight?

Why, Kara can’t help but wonder, would anyone be willing to leave this all behind?

She flashes back to her conversation with Lena and envisions the mountain of letters Lex left. As for that particular choice, it’s rather firmly out of her hands, she supposes.

“Kara,” a voice says, forging through the fog. Kara looks up, a genuine, sentimental smile still on her face, and sees her sister standing over her. “Hey, you okay?”

Alex is still carrying her end of the broken wishbone, and it’s a pathetic enough trophy that Kara’s smile widens. “I’m good,” she answers, meaning it.

“You sure?” Alex asks, not quite settled as she lowers her gaze, watching Kara fiddle with her glasses, folding and unfolding them in her lap. “I know how you get around this time of year.”

It’s true; while Kara isn’t one to get cold, the icy darkness of the winter gets to her more than she’d like to readily admit. Even surrounded by family at the holidays, her loneliness tends to rear its head as it pokes and needles at her memories. But Kara is adamant not to let it this time around, determined to relish the lightness of the season. “It’s nothing. Really,” she promises. “Sorry you won’t get your wish granted.” Kara nods over at Alex’s hands, gazing up with a giggle already spilling out from her lips.

Crouching down, Alex leans against her, and Kara rests her head against her sister’s shoulder. They make for a funny pair, Kara and Alex. They always have, from the moment she crashed on this planet – but Kara suspects that’s exactly what makes her sister so dear to her. Alex, as dutiful and dedicated and cutthroat as she can be, must feel the same. Kara knows she does, knows that Alex wouldn’t do this with anyone else – would climb halfway into the Christmas tree and get tinsel in her hair just to have a quiet moment with no one but her.

“Between you and me, my wish has already been granted,” Alex says, lowering her voice and glancing over at Kelly, and Kara’s heart swells. It took some time to find the right one for her, but Kara gets the feeling that for Kelly, Alex would do just about anything.

“Yeah?” Looking around, it’s easy to share the sentiment. Kara could easily tease her sister now for her secretive, bashful voice and the pink tinging of her cheeks; instead, she leans into those same emotions, allows them both to get sappy at the same time. “We did alright for ourselves, didn’t we?”

Alex nods, wrapping an arm around Kara’s shoulders and squeezing tight. “I’d say so. It’s a crowded table, and sometimes a loud and annoying one, but-”

“It’s all I ever wanted,” she cuts in, whispering. Kara’s decided to blame the brightness of the twinkling lights for the way there are sudden tears in her eyes, or maybe even some latent evergreen allergy that’s finally decided to make its debut and is causing her throat to close up.

Call it mercy, or holiday spirit, or maybe because her sister is feeling just as sappy as she is in the moment, but Alex makes no comment on the strain in Kara’s voice, just presses a kiss to her hairline and smiles. “I know,” is all she says, and with the softness in Alex’s voice, it conveys all it could ever need to. “All that’s left is to make sure we don’t lose any of this, okay?”

And Kara knows what it is Alex is really asking, knows that, in her sister’s mind, it’s a request for Kara to not do anything stupid. It’s a personal plea, a command directed solely at her – and all it does is reaffirm her determination to ensure that none of this gets ruined a hundred times over.

Bringing her knees to her chest, Kara makes sure her eyes are cast across the room at the others and not anywhere where Alex can read into their depths when she answers. “Let’s just make it through December first,” she replies. “One step at a time. Whatever it takes.”

Last Christmas comes on over the speakers that are blaring in the kitchen, and before Alex can dig any further into what Kara might mean by that, she’s unceremoniously knocked backward into the remains of the wrapping paper and bows that had piled up next to the tree by Nia, who has leapt to her feet and is making a beeline for her bag. “This is my FAVORITE song!” she squeals, shoving her hand in her purse and waving her boyfriend over with a mischievous look in her eyes that set off alarm bells in Kara’s ears. “Brainy, come help me with this,” she hisses, her smile not fading a single watt.

Alex manages to just barely escape from the mountain of tape, ripped open boxes, and paper scraps, a dusting of glitter on her forehead and a scowl on her face. “Remember what I said about annoying?” she grumbles, arriving at the same conclusion as Kara that Nia has reached her trouble-making phase of the festivities. “What the hell is she up to?”

“No clue,” Kara whispers, a sidelong grin on her face growing as she watches her sister try to reach a ribbon that’s stuck to the small of her back. “But I think it’s going to be pretty entertaining.”

“Everyone- hey- William, shut up!” Having gained everyone’s attention – and regaining her own composure, Nia flips her hair out of her eyes and holds something up in the air triumphantly. From her spot on the ground, Kara can’t get a good glimpse of it. It looks like a big tangle of green something, maybe some leaves of some sort… oh, no.

That’s not what Kara thinks it is, is it?

“We brought mistletoe!” Nia announces with glee, confirming Kara’s worst fears in one shrill swoop.

And listen – Kara is cool with PDA. She really doesn’t mind it, couldn’t care less about it when it comes to strangers on the street and is usually a very willing accomplice when it comes to mistletoe and other similar stunts around her friends and family. In her own humble opinion, Kara thinks a person has the right to kiss whoever they like, whenever they like if they’re willing to put up with some occasional teasing along with it – but tonight, the mistletoe clutched tightly in Nia’s hand might as well have turned into a big old chunk of Kryptonite.

On this particular night, there are two people sitting awfully close to one another on the couch that, however hard Kara has been trying to get them to rekindle their flame, if they kiss in real life and in front of her… well, it might just actually kill her.

That’s being dramatic. What Kara really means is that she’d rather go another round with Reign or Bizarro or anyone than have to watch Lena and James kiss with her own two eyes.

Speaking of one of Kara’s personal devils, James tilts his head back in a peal of distinctly un-sinister laughter. “Nice try,” he says, shaking his head, and some of the others join in as Nia and Brainy (and Kara, admittedly) stand over by the table, confused.

“What- what do you mean, nice try?” Nia demands, her grin frozen and rapidly slipping from her face.

James shrugs. “Well, it’s not exactly legitimate, doing it this way.”

“It’s a genuine specimen of the plant if that’s what you’re disputing,” Brainy disputes.

“Usually, the tradition of mistletoe is a little more… secretive, wouldn’t you say?” Lena adds, and Kara finally understands the laughter.

“Being caught under the mistletoe is the exact phrase,” J’onn rumbles, shaking his head with a grin.

Faltering, Nia’s brow furrows, likely scrambling to figure out how to best salvage this prank from being squashed before it’s gotten off the ground. “Well, I- it doesn’t- that’s not a requirement or anything.”

“What, you expected us to just line up and let you dangle the mistletoe over all of our heads, one at a time?” Lois cuts in, relishing the opportunity to verbally spar with Nia, who Kara suspects Lois sees quite a bit of herself in. “Where’s the challenge in that?”

There’s no clever retort to be found from Nia or Brainy, who are speaking to each other in hushed tones, obviously trying to regroup. Kara thinks she’s in the clear, thinks maybe they’re going to make it through the night without someone dunking buckets of salt into the wounds Kara’s been licking and doing her darndest to keep secret.

At least, Kara believes all of that until she hears her sister clear her throat next to her, and she knows just from the dramatic pause that follows that she’s nowhere close to escaping this unscathed.

“Nia and Brainy might be too drunk to pull it off, but I was very sober when I hung up my mistletoe,” Alex reveals, sly and already grinning, flush with the satisfaction of an assured win. She sits back and watches the room freeze in place and then slowly, one by one, everyone glances up.

Kara does too, hoping and praying and silently begging her sister on some cosmic level that she did not place the mistletoe anywhere near that couch. She’d do anything – Rao, Kara would kiss anyone herself – to prevent that from happening.

She spies the green leaves and the ruby red berries pinned against the ceiling at last and her heart sinks. Well, her holiday luck had to run out at some point.

Everyone else accepts the damning, dangling mistletoe over their heads with a mix of humor and the type of melodramatics that only comes out around good friends and even better alcohol. Clark, clearly unprepared and already rosy-cheeked from being stuffed in the middle of that raucous couch for so long already, blushes harder and buries his face in his hands as Lois hoots and hollers and looks ready to jump him right then and there. She does exactly that, as a matter of fact – hands Jon off to a bemused J’onn, throws her arms around her husband’s neck and pulls him in for a kiss that Kara thinks rivals the one at their wedding. Clark melts into it, of course, because he’s never not been putty in the palm of Lois’s hand, and it’s a mixture of endearing sweetness and theatrics that’s almost enough to soothe and distract from the other pair on the couch.

Almost, but Kara simply can’t tear her eyes from Lena and James no matter how desperately she wants to.

Lena and James seem to be engaged in a friendly sort of staring contest, each of them feeling the other out. James clears his throat and scratches at the back of his neck, eyes darting up once more to the mistletoe, and Lena raises an eyebrow.

“I- It is bad luck to spite the mistletoe, I believe,” she says, and Kara wonders if anyone else picks up on the way Lena’s voice is just barely muted, almost forced in its attempt to remain neutral and cordial. As if she can feel Kara’s gaze on her, heavy and utterly transparent, her eyes drag across the room and settle for the briefest of moments on the tree, on Kara’s face.

There’s something unspoken and searching that hangs unbidden from Lena’s lips, something far too revealing about how quickly she looks away the moment her eyes connect with Kara’s, like they’ve both been scalded, caught in the act. Lena is rescued by James and his unassuming, bright laughter, his willingness to go with the flow and never expecting anything more. There’s no outreached hand for Kara; instead, she thinks about how it almost felt like Lena was looking for her blessing somewhere in those ocean-green eyes and drowns in the waves.

“Why not!” James answers, playfully and totally innocent, and Kara truly doesn’t think he understands the freight train he is currently representing, barreling and completely crushing the fragile, shiny veil that was always cast over Lena and Kara. Leaning in, he presses a quick, chaste kiss to Lena’s mouth, and another one right near her tightened jaw. It’s remarkably inconsequential, sweet, sentimental; Lena kisses him back with a grin and it makes Kara want to sneak off to the bathroom and bawl her eyes out. “Merry Christmas, everyone,” he says, smiling over at a very still and blushing Lena, and Kara realizes that no matter how hard she tries, this is not something she’ll be able to overcome.

Because Kara can see it in Lena’s eyes. She can see something strong and overwhelming fighting hard to make itself known, and while Kara may not know exactly what it is or what it’s trying to express, she knows this: Lena will never allow it to escape. It’s just like she told Kara all those months ago when the confession about her hidden feelings first came up. Lena firmly, adamantly believes the ship has sailed between her and James, and no matter the personal heartbreak it’ll cause her, whatever feelings are there won’t ever see the light of day.

Not without some direct intervention, that is.

“Bravo,” William calls out as he claps, though Kara sure wishes he would stop casting nervous, fidgety glances over in her general direction as everyone joins in on the applause, the people on the couch waving them off. “Way to steal Nia’s thunder, Alex.”

He has his scarf and boots already on, and Kara belatedly remembers that William was planning on heading into the office early tomorrow morning to work on some new article that’s lit a fire in him. As he makes his rounds, saying goodbyes and receiving his fair share of hugs from a beaming Eliza and a still sulking Nia, Kara tries to peer through the tangle of people moving back and forth across the room to the couch, where Lena has caused a scratch that she can’t quite manage to itch.

“Well, I mean- someone else was supposed to be-” Alex starts, cutting herself off when Kara leans in closer, trying to catch what her sister is muttering about and why, exactly, the smug, self-congratulatory smirk on her face doesn’t seem all that genuine. Kara is foiled by William’s looming frame as he tugs her up into a twirling hug; laughing at the silliness of it, Kara misses whatever else it was that her sister was going to say. 

“You’ll get under the mistletoe eventually,” he tells her with a wink, his voice low and conspiratorial. Even still, Kara’s stomach drops; a drunk William is never as inconspicuous as he would be led to believe, and Lena’s eyes haven’t left Kara’s general direction for a second. Still teasing, William stoops down and gives her a kiss on the cheek. “For good luck,” is all he says, whispering for maybe the first time ever in his life. A master of volume control William is not. “Keep trying, and that might just be you and her someday.”

Kara stares up at him, astounded at the fact that this tall, endearing, oaf of a man has suddenly become the sole keeper of her last remaining secret — and her most devoted cheerleader. “Thanks…?” she replies, touching her cheek and trailing off. He grins and punches her shoulder, the brother that Kara never had and had never even thought to want.

As William sets her back down beneath the tree and heads for the door, J’onn follows. Huh. Maybe the two of them really did hit it off over Thanksgiving. Alex watches them go with a frown, still looking disappointed about the result of her prank. “Ugh, never mind. At this point, it would take a goddamn miracle for-” Eliza shoots her a look from across the room, and Alex’s sour look is wiped away without delay. “I mean, Merry Christmas, everyone! What’s a little merriment amongst friends, right?”

“I shudder to think what you might have planned for New Year’s,” Lena says, but her words are rushed, not her usual syrupy-slow sense of teasing. It’s her way of asking for the topic of conversation to be changed, and while Kara picks up on it right away, raising her eyebrow in confusion as she tries to decipher why, Alex also seems to have learned to read Lena’s mind and saves them all from the tension that’s suddenly fallen over the room.

“I’ll leave that to you,” Alex says, beginning to pick tinsel off the tree and delicately balance it on top of Kara’s head, who is much too mystified by the whole Lena and James Mistletoe debacle to tell her sister to knock it off. “I’m sure the gala you’re throwing will have its share of memorable moments.”

“Usually not by design, but I’ve no doubt it will be a celebration that will grace the front page,” Lena responds, and just like that, the ghostly expression of whatever had been bothering her is gone, wiped away by the twinkle in her eye and the smirking pout of her lips. Kara, who had been trying hard from across the room to pull on whatever loose thread Lena had left exposed with just her eyes, knows there’s no point in it now; this is the Lena Luthor who can control the room with just the lilt of her voice, and the sliver of something that had been there is long gone. “And I expect to see you all there, of course. No gala of mine can turn into the sort of debacle that would properly infuriate my mother without your sordid influence on me.”

“Sordid? Oh, please tell me I can use that as a quote from you someday,” Lois snipes from the couch. Jonathan has wriggled out of reach and is now crawling over to Kara, who Alex has steadily been turning into a living, breathing Christmas tree with the number of decorations in her hair. Though she gives Alex a dirty look when she carefully hangs an ornament from her ear, Jon seems to like it, cooing and tumbling into her arms in pursuit of the sparkly object. She can’t be all that mad at her sister with a happy baby in her lap, after all. Distracted by him, Kara only catches the tail end of the look Lois gives Clark before the other woman clears her throat, shifting forward on the couch. “As much as it pains me to not be there to watch you spite your family, Lena, Clark and I won’t be able to make it.”

“Don’t tell me you two are going on another Honeymoon,” James says, reaching across the couch to poke at Clark’s side. “I get that you save on airfare and all, but most people settle for just the one. How does Perry tolerate the amount of PTO you take?”

Clark straightens up, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’d imagine that Mr. White has enough respect for the two of us to allow us to-”

“Can it, Jimmy. Perry knows better than to complain, and so should you,” Lois swipes back amicably.

Content with letting the others tease each other into oblivion, Kara absentmindedly begins to hover, taking Jon with her. He holds onto her pinky finger and begins to smile and giggle in earnest when Kara makes small puffs of frost in the air with her breath. She feels Lena’s eyes on her and looks up. They share a small smile, and despite whatever weird tension is still in the room, Kara could swear that she’s lighter than air at that moment.

Clark grows flushed, scratching at the back of his neck. “Lois, be nice. No, no, we- well, actually…”

“Are you going undercover?” Nia asks. “You know, those were always my favorite articles of yours, Lois. The way you’d get yourself in and out of trouble before Superman could get there… God, it made them all so much more enjoyable when I found out who you were actually married to.”

“If she would just hold her horses every once in a while,” Clark mutters, cut off by a sharp elbow in the ribs from his doting wife. “What?” he protests, indignant. “Honey, you know how much I worry when you wander off and somehow end up in some awful, dangerous-”

“Honey, you’ve got no ground to stand on when it comes to leaping into danger,” Lois reminds him, and though her tone is light and even sweet underneath her many layers of characteristic snark, Kara is brought back so forcefully to the conversation she’d had with Lena on the balcony about this very subject that her heart drops a little in her chest.

Lena’s gaze flickers down toward the couch cushions, and Kara wonders if she’s the only one to pick up on the uncanny similarity.

“Lois, I-” Clark says, foolishly trying to get the last word in over Lois Lane, of all people, and Kara can tell he’s going to pay for it when his wife holds up her hands in the air.

“If you want to talk about awful, dangerous situations when it comes to Superman’s public image, why don’t we tell everyone here about what happened to those Boy Scout underoos of yours when you faced off against that Toyman copycat?”

Lois doesn’t elaborate and frankly, there’s no need to; the unique hue of pink that’s splotched across Clark’s face tells the story better than even a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter ever could. He fiddles with his glasses and listens to his wife, softening only when she takes his hand in hers and leans over to press a kiss to his cheek.

“What are your plans for New Year’s?” Kelly asks as the laughter quiets down, bringing them all gently back on track.

“We’re heading back to Argo City,” Clark starts. After another shared glance between him and Lois, they both begin to grin. It’s a nervous, giddy, overwhelming sort of smile, the breathless sort that can only come with the sort of news that is as scary as it is wonderful. It’s the kind of smile Clark had given Kara before he’d told her that he was going to be a father. Meeting Kara’s confused gaze, he says, “As it turns out, well… Jon has powers too, and we have no idea what to do about it.”

“He has what, now?!” Alex pitches forwards with a gasp.

“Jon has powers,” Clark repeats, eyes darting around the room.

It takes a while for the words to register in Kara’s head. She remains dumbfounded as the rest of the room erupts in a wave of congratulations, squeals, and boisterous shock. “Powers…?” Kara mumbles to herself, still not quite catching on. She knows this baby. Jon has spit up on her, and broken one of her favorite mugs, and fallen asleep in her arms. Surely Kara would know if the kid had powers. She stares up at Jon, trying to figure out what the hell her cousin is talking about.

Then Kara notices that Jon is floating of his own accord, still laughing to himself and chasing after the frost from her breath still suspended in the air. There he is, soaring around the room completely by himself, and Kara – Kara is so shocked that she falls from where she’d been absently floating herself and flattens the remains of the gift boxes below her with a loud crash.

Jon follows her down, settling down on her stomach with the lightness of a feather, and Kara’s jaw drops. Eyes wide, she turns back towards her beaming cousin. “Powers?” she repeats, not that she needs to. Sitting in her lap is all the proof she could ever need that not only Krypton will live on through Jon, but what it means to be Superman and Supergirl as well. This wonderful, gentle, unassuming miracle of a baby is a bright, shining beacon of her entire family’s legacy.

It might just be the best Christmas gift she’s ever received.

“Hard to ignore the signs when he nearly sliced our marble countertop in half with his heat vision.” Despite the joke, Kara can tell from the way Lois has her hands pressed over her heart that this development is as meaningful to her as it is for Clark and Kara. More than most humans, Lois Lane understands the vastness of the universe – and she’s seen enough of how little remains of Krypton amongst the stars to understand why this matters. “I’d like to avoid any further damage to our apartment – and make sure no secret government task force tries to steal my child from me.”

Alex and J’onn, who’s arrived back from walking William to his cab just in time to hear the news, exchange a weary look. They know exactly what the government and agencies like the DEO can be capable of if put into the wrong hands – can remember from Kara’s own journey towards becoming Supergirl that even those with good intentions can make life difficult for those with hidden identities. “We’ll, uh… we’ll help however we can,” Alex says. “Protection, transportation off-planet, sealing his records… whatever you need.”

“It helps that half of said government officials are basically our in-laws,” Lois responds with a flash of a grin, “But even still. Argo is the best place for us to take Jon until we can learn exactly how to raise a superpowered child in the middle of Metropolis.”

“The scientists there would know better than anyone how to proceed.” J’onn nods in agreement, no doubt feeling his own share of what Kara is as she cradles Jon against her chest. It’s not often that those who come from lost worlds get to plant the seeds of the future and live long enough to watch it begin to sprout. While J’onn is still one of the last Green Martians, the knowledge that this might one day be possible for him as well must be exhilarating. “Kara’s mother, I’m sure, would also be an excellent starting point for you, and I’ve no doubt she’ll be happy to help him grow.”

Clark wraps an arm around Lois’s shoulders and squeezes. “Alura will be the first person we’ll seek out.”

“And will- I- you’ll be back soon, right?” Kara finds herself asking, her voice shaking with the momentous weight of the news. If she closes her eyes, it would be so easy to imagine holding a baby Clark in her arms instead, so simple to recall the exact oath she’d made to her mother and father and aunt and uncle that she would protect him at all costs – that, no matter the personal expense, she would be there to raise him, to ensure that Krypton would live on through a baby, not a traumatized and grief-stricken young girl. She’d broken her promise, back then, but Kara is coming to the realization that perhaps this could be her second chance. Suddenly shy, she casts her gaze away from Clark and back down at Jon. “I mean, I might not be all that good at it, but I- I could help too. With him. I could help show him the way.”

Maybe it’s just her imagination, but Kara swears that the beat of silence that envelops the room is longer than normal. When she looks up, everyone is staring over at her with expressions that indicate exactly how transparent she’s being. All of the people in this room, family and friends who oftentimes know her better than she knows herself – realize that Kara is asking for much more than the chance to babysit from time to time.

And this isn’t something that Kara has ever enjoyed talking about. She’s kept it a secret – at times, even from herself – exactly how much it had hurt to lose out on her time with Kal El, to fail in her duty to properly pass on the history and traditions of Krypton to him. To have the entirety of a dead planet on just one set of shoulders is heavy; while another pair doesn’t lessen the load all that much, it would have been nice to teach her baby cousin how to carry it with grace.

Kal went ahead and learned all on his own, and Kara couldn’t be prouder, but that instinct was not extinguished, just buried, and Jon makes that secret turn in its grave and reveal itself fully.

She’d thought it would be excruciating, showing that still-bruised and vulnerable part of her to the light – and yet…

Everybody knows, and it’s not unbearable in the slightest. To Kara’s surprise, she’s never felt so loved as she feels now, never felt as hopeful as she does when her cousin smiles over at her, compassion and wonder and flashes of that baby she played with on Krypton still in his eyes.

“We’ll be back before you know it,” Clark says, eyes shining. It’s not until her eyes begin to sting that Kara realizes that hers mirror his unshed tears of joy. “And while I know it’s not the greatest timing in the world…”

“Is it ever good when it comes to us?”

Clark lowers his head, ceding that point to her. “Whatever the case… of course you can help, Kara. You’re the only person I’d ever want to teach Jon about where he came from and what he can become.”

She could cry after hearing something like that, but it’s Christmas, and Kara’s shed enough tears about Krypton to last a lifetime. Instead, she holds Jon up in the air and starts zipping around the room, both her and the baby laughing and laughing. When Jon begins to float again, mimicking Kara’s buoyancy and matching her megawatt grin with a toothless one of his own, something that Kara hadn’t even realized was broken inside of her heart is mended.

“You have POWERS!” she coos at Jon, following him around the room and giggling madly as she catches him back in her arms. “Clark, Lois… this is amazing. It’s incredible! It’s- it’s…”

Lois raises an eyebrow, holding a hand over her mouth to hide the utterly sappy grin plastered across her face. “Super?” she supplies, and just like that, the whole room joins in on the laughter, Kara included.

Pressing a kiss to the crown of Jon’s head, Kara makes a brand-new vow to this little one. “I’m going to get it right with you,” she whispers, knowing that none of the others can hear her over the noise and the calls for more wine to be opened. “This time around, I’ll be here to protect you.”

Despite the chaos, the baby actually manages to fall asleep in her arms – not that Kara minds. The promise she’d made isn’t one that needs to be known by anyone but her. As long as she follows through, Jon will come to learn exactly what Kara meant to do with his father all those years ago.

As she turns back to the living room, Kara feels Lena’s eyes on her again, feels like maybe they’d never left – feels like maybe Lena might just understand the truth of what this moment means to Kara. Passing back over to the couch, Kara hands Jon over to Lois, cheeks warm, and even then, Lena’s gaze remains. It’s not expectant, or heavy, or loaded with any sort of hidden emotion or motive; it simply lingers, soaking Kara in, as if Lena wants to capture exactly how Kara looked and felt right now, knowing what she does now about Jon.

It’s an instinct Kara is very familiar with herself. When it comes to watching Lena experience anything, be it joy, grief, curiosity, courage – Kara is usually guilty of the same thing.

Rao only knows why Lena does it, but when it comes to herself, Kara understands. She supposes that being in love with your best friend oftentimes means that looking in on all the wonderful things that make up Lena’s life is the most she’ll ever be able to ask for.

And gee – so long as it’s a happy life, Kara thinks she can live with only watching as it passes her by.

Kara blinks, and suddenly, people are gathering their gifts and their coats and heading home.

She does her due diligence as a host, this time around – speeding around and collecting scraps of wrapping paper and empty dishes and cleaning her apartment in the time it takes Alex to finish lacing up her winter boots. With that out of the way, Kara can linger by the door as she always does, can pull each and every one of her friends and family into full-bodied hugs that smell like peppermint and pine, and brush off the cookie crumbs that have accumulated on Brainy’s shirt. She gathers Lois, Clark and Jon into one last group hug, whispering words of well-wishes and excitement once again, and stoops down to blow one last puff of frost at Jon. These are the moments that are easy and as natural for her as breathing. Trading sleepy and sentimental jabs back and forth with her sister and J’onn, promising their mother that they’ll both visit her in Midvale soon, making the beginnings of plans with Nia and Kelly for the New Year’s Gala.

It’s uneventful, oddly enough, totally and completely familiar. But that doesn’t make it any less remarkable.

Then, as everyone stands clustered together right outside her doorway, looking more like a bunch of carolers than anything, Nia clears her throat and points up with the sort of expectant smile that ought to get her arrested on the grounds of suspicion alone. Kara realizes that the night isn’t quite over yet when her eyes follow Nia’s silent instruction only to find a Mistletoe hanging over her head.

If only William was here to see how right he was.

Maybe she should be proud; after all, she’d taught Nia the importance of determination and never giving up. Kara hadn’t thought that particular bit of mentorship would ever come back to bite her in the ass, but she’s wrong, because she glances to her side to find that the person standing under the mistletoe alongside her is Lena.

Lena, who’s definitely seen the mistletoe. Lena, whose eyes have followed the same path as Kara’s and has most certainly come to the same conclusion as Kara has. Lena, who, despite her inability to look away from Kara all night long, is now suddenly very interested in looking at anything but her scarlet, utterly transparent face.

Oh, Rao. How am I supposed to get out of this one?

No one laughs, this time around. Everyone instead seems caught in a gleeful moment of suspended anticipation, leaning forwards and all with the same stupid smile on their face, as if they’d all been caught in the act by Captain Cold. And Kara does not appreciate the looks on their faces, thank you very much, not when she’s pretty sure that Lena does not want to be caught under the mistletoe with Kara any more than Kara is confident that this is the sort of trap that might kill her. Supergirl is going to be found dead under something green and with a Luthor right by her side, and every media outlet in the world is going to have a field day about it.

Kara follows her instincts and naturally begins to panic.

While she’s far too flustered to do anything besides stare holes at that damn plant and begin to stammer, she swears she hears someone high fiving, someone else muttering something that’s equally amused and praising in Nia’s ear. Kara can’t do anything right now but follow suit and freeze in place.

“That’s uh- real funny, Nia. Good job. Really, when did you have time to sneak over and-? I mean, it’s- it sure is up there,” Kara begins, and honestly, rambling should be one of her powers because if anything can save her in this moment, it might just be the possibility that everyone gets bored of her tripping over her words or maybe even pitying her enough to put her out of her misery. “Though I don’t know if there are- you know, there are probably some rules about the time of day or if someone has already done it once… and besides, all of you passed under it so technically speaking, we’re all supposed to do some sort of group thing maybe…?”

“Someone’s stalling,” Nia cuts in with a sing-song voice and the sort of steel in her eyes that she normally reserves for missions. Who does Nia think she is, using these battle tactics on the person who taught them to her? Kara gulps. Not even her world-class way with words is going to get her out of this. “You know, you can admit it if you’re afraid or don’t want to kiss-”

“No! No, of course not! I’m not afraid,” Kara responds, rearing back and scowling even though she is so nervous that it does feel like her knees are going to give out on her at any moment. “Why would anyone be afraid to kiss someone like Lena? And I- okay, hold on… it’s not that I don’t not want to kiss…” Realizing that she’s digging herself a hole here, she finally whirls around to face Lena, intent on explaining to her best friend in as many words as it takes that she has absolutely no idea what’s happening right now. “Wait. That’s not what I meant. You’re very kissable! I would absolutely kiss you, but I would also totally not kiss you if that’s what- I respect boundaries! I would never do anything without knowing that you would also 100 percent willingly want to…”

Lena finally meets her eyes, and it’s enough for Kara to stop talking completely – which is good, because she’d run out of things to say about four and a half broken sentences ago. She studies Kara like she’s a puzzle that she can’t quite manage to crack, and whatever conclusion Lena’s arrived at, Kara will be as surprised by it as anyone else.

“Don’t hurt yourself, darling,” Lena says, the hint of a smirk on her face, and Kara reaches out towards the door frame to support herself and has to try extra hard to not break it into a million pieces. Sparing another unbearable second of smoldering, unpredictable eye contact, Lena tilts her head and turns back to face the others, a plotting smile of her own on her face. “It’s quite alright. I understand what you’re trying to say.”

“You do?” Kara and Alex say at the same time, both equally dumbfounded. Lena shrugs, an ambiguous answer, and focuses her energy on the culprit of this entire prank.

“Well-played,” is all Lena says, practically purrs it as she stares Nia down.

The younger girl’s eyes widen, realizing that the ball is now on Lena’s side of the court and just like Kara, she has no idea what Lena has planned. Still, she’s not one to give up without a fight; putting her hands on her hips and raising her chin, Nia tries to match Lena’s powerful gaze. “Don’t chicken out now, Luthor,” she says, and something unspoken passes between them.

“Me? Never.”

Suddenly there are arms wrapped around Kara, one hand carefully placed against the nape of her neck, the other lazily threading through her hair. And Kara doesn’t even remember how to breathe, the smell of cinnamon and bergamot invading her senses; did she ever know how, or had she simply unlearned it from the very moment she first laid eyes on Lena Luthor? Her mouth drops and flaps open like a slashed sail in the breeze, because Lena has stepped very purposefully into her space and is biting down a grin and looking down at Kara’s lips and is leaning in and… oh Rao, Kara thinks that maybe she’s actually about to kiss her.

(It doesn’t click until much later, too late really, that the realization of her best friend leaning in for a kiss doesn’t actually come as that much of a revelation.)

But then Lena sticks out her leg and hooks her foot around the corner of the door and before Kara can reckon with anything that’s happened or might yet still happen, the other woman slams the door shut on the shocked, enthralled faces of all their friends.

It’s done so gracefully, so sneakily, that no one can stop it from happening. The door swings closed and the lock clicks, audible even amongst the gasps and the beginnings of complaints coming from the hallway. “That’s not fair!” Nia actually cries out, her voice muffled through the heavy wood, and Lena throws back her head and laughs.

“That’s what you get for trying to outsmart a Luthor,” she calls out, still very much in Kara’s arms and still very, very close to her. Kara can’t help the way her eyes are still glued to the other woman’s lips and the delicate skin of her neck and her long, thick eyelashes, and – can Lena hear how hard her heart is pounding? Does she know exactly how good of an act she just pulled, how much she convinced Kara that maybe just maybe, she was really going to kiss her? “But hey, better luck next year. Merry Christmas!”

“A curse on you and your family!” Nia retorts, and while there’s a humorous theatricality to her words, Kara wonders if part of Nia means it. Lena has thrown a wrench into her grand, evil plan after all.

Lena just rolls her eyes and Kara thinks she might be having a stroke. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel: disappointed? Relieved? Completely shaken to her core? Whatever the case, Lena is doing a far better job at keeping her eyes unreadable than Kara is right now. The other woman smirks over at the doorway. “You’ll have to get in line for that one to take effect.”

The crowd still jumbled right outside doesn’t seem to appreciate the inherent snark hidden behind Lena’s well wishes. “It’s bad luck to cheat the mistletoe,” Alex reminds them through the thick wood of the door, the traitorous, pot-stirring sister that she is, but Lena is ready for it.

“I’ve no intention of cheating anything,” she says, and for the first time since she pulled one over on all of them, Lena’s eyes meet Kara’s. Still smiling and without breaking eye contact, she continues, “But I value my privacy. I’ve learned there’s value in keeping some things out of sight. You’ll simply have to use your imagination.”

As Lena’s eyes twinkle, triumphant and amused, Kara’s heart drops hot and heavy into her stomach at the insinuation. She’s not out of the woods quite yet.

“You two are the worst,” Alex responds, with a clamor of groans and jeers from the others to support her. Kara doesn’t have to use her X-Ray vision to picture the exact curl of her sister’s mouth as she turns away in disgust. Kara stares holes through the door and wonders why, exactly, her sister seems truly frustrated at being deprived of this. “The worst! Fine. We’re leaving. You win this round, Lena.”

“Don’t I always?” she replies, and the wordless grumbles and loud thumping of boots is as much of a confirmation as Lena must need. She presses her mouth against Kara’s shoulder to hide her laughter until they both hear the elevator doors close, and then Lena begins to laugh fully, shaking her head.

Because Kara doesn’t know what to do, she stays exactly where she is, only now realizing that she’d automatically looped her arms around her best friend’s waist and has been keeping her this close the entire time, in front of their audience and everything. Arms tensing, she forces out a chuckle of her own, hoping that Lena will chalk up the stiffness to Kara’s natural awkwardness and goofy, offbeat nature.

“That was- you’re a genius,” she tells her with genuine awe, wishing it were easier to drop her arms and let her best friend leave this very… cozy embrace they’re still tangled up in. “Thank you. I didn’t know what-”

“You looked like you needed a rescue, Supergirl.” Lena’s lips quirk upwards and she remains perfectly still. Kara realizes that the other woman, trapped or not, has no intention of leaving. “Not used to being a damsel in distress, are you?”

Swallowing hard, Kara gulps out a reply. “Not really, no. Is it that obvious?”

“Take it from me. It requires a rather unlucky amount of practice.”

“You’re no damsel,” Kara replies, and while she may be out of her depth, talking like this with Lena is as easy as a slow morning in bed. “Not a traditional one at least.”

“Damsels are survivors. I consider it a badge of honor, especially when you make quite a wonderful white knight.” The other woman laughs low and sweet, swooping in once more before Kara can stumble through a shaky reply. “But that doesn’t mean the roles can’t be reversed. I’m happy to help.”

“Can you believe they-” Kara clears her throat, very, very aware of the fact that Lena has not moved away even an inch and is in fact still very, very close to her face. So close, actually, that Kara would only have to stoop down just slightly if she wanted to-

She banishes that thought from her head. If she doesn’t get her mutinying heart under control soon, Kara worries that she might just do something she’ll regret. That doesn’t stop her voice from trembling or her throat from feeling like it’s been filled with honey as she tries to speak again. “That sure was something.”

“Yes, it was,” the other woman agrees, the particular timbre of her voice doing nothing but causing more devastation to Kara’s internal organs.

Suppressed actions or not, Kara can do nothing to stop her imagination from bubbling to the surface, painting a crystal-clear picture of all the things she could do if she weren’t so petrified and completely unsure of what was going on here. Her brain conjures up the scenarios easily, like it’s a pop quiz and it’s one her subconscious has been studying up on for a very long time.

A beat passes, and Kara is very forcefully made aware of the fact that they are still in the same position they started in. For just a moment, the floodgates open and her imagination reigns supreme.

As if it were happening in another life right in front of her eyes, Kara can see herself tightening her grip around Lena’s waist. She can see the flicker of surprise in Lena’s eyes, her usually composed features slackening as Kara leans down, smooth and certain for once. She imagines kissing Lena like she means it, imagines putting everything she’s never said into the way she presses her lips to Lena’s, and Kara imagines that maybe Lena would kiss her back. And in her imagination, once their intentions finally register, she can picture the way they would smile, breathless and elated and bold. She pictures herself tightening her arms around Lena’s waist, spinning her back towards the living room and walking her over to the couch, pressing her into the cushions and Lena responding just as eagerly, just as impatiently-

“You know,” the real Lena says, slow and soft and sounding so much like something out of a dream that it takes a moment for Kara to shake herself out of her own head, eyes refocusing on where Lena stands, none the wiser to where her mind has wandered. “They are right. It’s in poor taste to reject the mistletoe.”

Kara’s whole world comes screeching to a halt, her wheels spinning uselessly as she gapes down at Lena. All sorts of ideas pop into her head, all sorts of lines and excuses, but all that ends up tumbling from her mouth is, “Uhhh?”

It’s stilted and unsure, but Lena takes it and walks with it as if it were a bridge made of steel. “Exactly right,” she continues, and while Kara is too petrified to glance down at her lips, she can tell from her eyes that Lena is smiling, wide and amused. “We need as much luck as we can get nowadays, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I- well- yes,” Kara says, not about to spit in the face of good fortune but stuttering all the same. She’s stalling on the runway, motionless and heavy, propelled by inaction. It’s useless; Kara knows that no matter how her imagination might paint this scene, she’ll never have faith to act, never have the guts to-

Lena goes up on her toes and presses a kiss against the corner of Kara’s mouth. It lasts a second, maybe two, no longer than her earlier one with James, but it’s different, being the one who’s kissed; it’s the softest thing Kara’s ever felt. She knows for a fact that her face has turned bright pink, that her expression must tell Lena everything she could ever want to know, but the other woman doesn’t linger, doesn’t even meet her eyes. Her own cheeks are dusted in a fine blush, and she takes a slow breath before speaking, as if she were drawing the seconds out to their fullest extent.

“Merry Christmas, Kara,” she says at last, eyes still crinkled in a gentle smile. She settles back down to the ground, unfurls her arms around Kara’s neck, and then just like that, they separate.

The moment passes, and Lena is already turned, starting to clean up the last of the discarded bottles from the night. The moment is over, gone – but Kara can’t help it. She’s as spineless as she is in love. She’s too late to respond in time, too late to muster up the courage to question anything about what was just shared between them, but she wants it to last just a bit longer – wants Lena to know that, even if she has her reasons for staying silent about the whole truth, this means something to her.

And so, she shakes herself out of her daze and tracks Lena down where she stands in the kitchen, idly wiping off the countertops one last time for the night and she wraps the other woman up in a tight hug. It’s all she can do – all she dares to do – but she hopes it resonates all the same, hopes it conveys how much Lena means to her.

“Merry Christmas,” she says back in the stillness of the apartment. Lena turns, something touched on her face, like she’s surprised every time Kara does this. The only lights left on are the glittering tree lights, casting reflections from the ornaments all across the space. “Thank you for being here. For staying.”

Please stay, Kara prays. No matter what happens.

Even as they break apart with matching smiles and go to bed with the sort of tired contentment that makes Kara wish every Christmas was like this one, a decision is made in Kara’s head. She stares up at the ceiling late into the night, long after Lena’s breathing has evened out and she’s curled against Kara’s side in search of some extra warmth. After the night she’s had, sleep is hard to come by.

Kara thinks of Clark and Lois, of Jon floating with her all around the living room, of all the potential he holds to grow up and become the best of them. Everyone else, comfortable and excited as they plan for the future with birthday parties and bridal showers and weddings, lean into the strong and certain feeling that they’re not running out of time. She thinks of Lena and James sharing that kiss, of how safe and welcoming James is for Lena, how much more he could be if he only knew.

And Lena – well, Kara knows what it’s like to feel like some feelings should never be confessed. She understands exactly what sort of doubt and second-guessing has kept Lena silent for so long, knows that Lena feels buried by the same weight of circumstance that Kara does. They’re so alike in this way, Kara and Lena, and because of this, Kara also knows that Lena will do what she feels is the honorable thing to do and never take that leap with James. She’ll never take that risk; she’ll never imperil the relationship she does have with James now for the chance it could become something more.

This is where Kara can step in. This is where she can help, can make a tangible, positive difference to set Lena on the path that she’s too blinded by the past to go down. If Kara can do this, she might finally be able to make her peace with all this. She can set up the dominoes in such a way that, no matter what happens down the road to her or anyone else, they will fall in a way that will benefit Lena, not hurt her. Sure, it’ll take some interference on her part, some necessary insertion into events that normally she would want no part of, but the opportunity is right in front of her, and a plan is already beginning to form.

This, Kara believes, she might just be able to pull off.

When she slips back out of bed, it’s early in the morning on Christmas Day and she hasn’t slept a wink. Whether they celebrate Christmas or not, it’s a weekend, and the rest of National City certainly seems reluctant to leave the warmth of their blankets, unhurried to get an early start on the day. So, as she zips across the city, she has no company save for a few birds too stubborn to go south for the winter and some taxi cabs, likely bringing people home at the last minute for the holidays. Not that the city is all that quiet; it never really is, not to Kara, and she prefers it that way. She heads slowly toward her destination and takes the time to listen to the sound of coffee being made, of children running to their parents’ beds to begin unwrapping presents, to the giddy, groggy greetings of couples who may be spending Christmas morning together for the very first time.

It paints a wonderful picture of what is otherwise a terribly cold and windy day and offers Kara an extra bump of determination to see her little errand through. Gliding into an alleyway, she checks and doublechecks her phone to make sure she has the address right before walking into the hotel lobby, already warm and bright and full of people waiting for the concierge to glance their way. Fiddling with her glasses, Kara sidesteps the hubbub of the front desk and heads straight for the elevators, hitting the button for the 22nd floor and settling against the railing, watching the numbers tick by.

The door number that James has been staying at is at the end of the hallway in the direction of National City’s riverfront, a feature that Kara knows Lena considered when she booked this hotel for James after learning he would be sticking around through the holidays. As Kara knocks on the door hard and fast, she listens to James slowly stir from inside and wonders if Lena had ever stopped by herself. Kara takes a breath, forces herself to stop bending the frame of her glasses before they break, and stuffs her hands in her pockets. She’s waited this long; Kara can wait a while longer as James stumbles to the door and peers through the peephole.

When he swings the door open, it’s clear that James is too tired and too disoriented to be even remotely prepared for the sort of frantic willpower that Kara is about to impose. “Kara...?” he mumbles, stifling a yawn and glancing back to the bedside table to check the time. “It’s like five in the morning-?”

Kara strides inside before he can utter another word. “Six,” she corrects. “I know it’s early, but I couldn’t wait any longer. We don’t have much time to plan,” she says, all adrenaline and intensity and forced excitement. This will work. It needs to work, or Kara is worried that all of them are going to lose their chance to make things right.

“Okay, maybe I’m just extremely hungover, but... sorry, am I supposed to have any idea of what you’re talking about or why you’re here?” James scratches behind his ear, and now that he mentions it, he is looking pretty green around the gills. Taking pity on one of her oldest friends, Kara takes a breath and lowers her voice.

“No, you’re not. Not yet at least.” Staring him down, Kara swallows hard and takes the plunge. “Look, James... I need a favor. I need you to do something without asking any questions. Can you do that for me?”

While he gives her a funny look, Kara knows simply from the familiar glint in his eyes that James is in for whatever she asks. He smiles, trusting and agreeable, and shrugs his shoulders. “Of course, Kara. Anything for you.”

“Great.” She shuts the door behind her with a sense of finality. “Now listen very carefully.”

…

Lena is only just starting to stir when Kara sneaks back through the living room window she’d left ajar. It’s good she wasn’t gone for any longer than she was; snow is starting to fall in earnest now, big, thick, solid flakes, and Kara would have slipped in a melted puddle had she allowed it to gather.

She loves this type of snow. It muffles everything around, even for her, and seems to insulate the two of them inside a world of their own. It reminds her of a snow globe that Jeremiah had given to her for Christmas once, the sort of magical weather that seems straight out of an old movie. Kara pictures Jimmy Stewart, hands stuffed deep in his pockets and wandering through the snow with a guardian angel at his side and wonders what an angel would show her, if she were to be visited by one. With the sort of life she’s had, Kara is almost surprised that something like that hasn’t happened to her yet.

Then again, stranger things have happened. Mxy is definitely more impish than angelic, but Kara supposes that not every omnipotent being comes in the form of a Hollywood character.

It’s falling so heavily around her that she can barely see through the window. Not wanting to delay, Kara escapes from the white flurries and tiptoes silently to the kitchen.

She isn’t there for long before her solitude is interrupted.

“Hey, you,” Lena’s voice comes from around the corner. Kara turns and finds the other woman wrapped in a robe and leaning against the door frame, shivering. Maybe leaving the window cracked open wasn’t the best choice after all. “Where have you been off to?”

Her voice is slow and foggy; it’s clear that Lena hasn’t been awake for very long, and Kara can’t help but smile at the way she tries to blink the drowsiness from her eyes. “Sorry, you must be cold,” she replies. “I didn’t think I’d be gone all that wrong.”

It’s a sidestep of the question, but Lena seems to find nothing all that intriguing about it. Yawning, she matches Kara’s smile with one of her own and tilts her head. “Out saving the day, I suppose,” she says.

Kara’s heart twists. “Something like that.” It’s an easy lie, a necessary one, and its blow is softened by the fond expression on Lena’s face. Turning around, Kara grabs the brown bag of pastries and the coffee from Noonan’s that she’d bought on the way home. “I thought about making cinnamon rolls, but I didn’t want to push my luck with the smoke alarms this early in the morning. You hungry?”

“Starved.” Lena’s eyes give her a once-over, and Kara can’t help but look away, heat rising in her cheeks. No doubt she looks like a bit of a mess, hair tangled and damp from the snow and the ice. “Any chance we could close the window before digging in, or is there another fire somewhere to go put out?”

Glancing back at the window, Kara finds that it is still open and all that snow she’d escaped is indeed starting to gather on the floor. “Oh, shoot,” she mutters, speeding over to the living room to take care of it. That explains the goosebumps that had broken out all along Lena’s neck – not that she’d been staring, of course. No more staring for Kara, not with her new plan. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly again, despite knowing that Lena isn’t the least bit capable of holding a grudge against her about something so small. Still, Kara was gone longer than she wanted to be, and doesn’t want to gift Lena with a bad case of hypothermia on Christmas morning.

Grimacing, she heads in Lena’s direction, rubbing her own hands up and down the other woman’s arms in an attempt to generate some warmth. Probably still half-asleep, Lena leans into it, closing her eyes and humming. “I’ve got an even better idea. How about breakfast in bed?” Kara proposes, partially motivated by ensuring that Lena does not turn blue – and, admittedly, equally motivated by the need to spend a quiet moment with her before everything gets crazy once again.

She can feel it coming, the same way the surfers she grew up watching in Midvale always knew exactly when the next big wave was going to hit. The water is still and calm now, but Kara knows the peace won’t last. All she can do now is sit on her board and soak in the sun, waiting for the moment the water begins to swirl beneath her fingers. Whether she’ll sink or swim, Kara doesn’t quite know yet, but she’s determined to ride it out for as long as she can.

Lena may not be able to sense the coming change like Kara can, but that doesn’t mean she appreciates these moments any less. She smiles, so beautiful that for a moment, Kara forgets about everything but how Lena’s eyes in the morning sunlight look as glittering as the green ornaments on the tree. “Sounds lovely. Let give you my gift before we get too comfortable, or you have to run out again.”

Kara nods, glancing at her own wrapped present for Lena that’s nestled under the tree. She’d nearly forgotten about the gifts. She also forgets that there are certain things that she should stop doing with her best friend, and although she knows the warm coffee cups will do the job just as well, Kara can’t help but grab Lena’s cold hands in her own, lending her warmth. Lena’s eyes meet hers, and before the silence gets too charged, Kara drops her hands, taking off her glasses for something to do instead.

“Grab mine too, would you?” she asks, aware that not so long ago, the thought of ever giving Lena a Christmas gift again seemed impossible. Not so long ago, she never would have dared to stand in front of Lena without a disguise, without pretense.

Lena opens hers first, a sweater that Kara had knit herself and tickets for two for a new science exhibit opening downtown in the spring. It’s nothing extravagant, not with the paycheck Kara receives twice a month, but the other woman treats it as if it were priceless. Never mind that Lena could buy herself a couple dozen clothing companies and museums and have plenty of funds left over – she grins as if Kara had pulled off a miracle.

Suddenly shy, Kara scratches at the back of her neck and clears her throat. “There, uh- there should be one more thing in the bag,” she mumbles, always left bashful when Lena is beaming like that at her. She’s proud of the fact that she knows Lena well enough to make her smile in this way, but that doesn’t prevent her nerves from flaring up. After all this time, Kara still wants to impress the woman in front of her.

Lena reaches her hand back in, her expression changing to puzzlement the moment her fingers wrap around the object. Pulling it out of the bag, she gasps, studying what she’s holding. “Is this-?”

“It’s lunar rock,” Kara answers, ears flaming. She’s acutely aware, suddenly, of how unimpressive it is, giving Lena something she could have gotten several tons of on her own. “The last time I was up there, I- well, this piece sort of looked like it had your initials on it, see?” Extending a shaking hand, she delicately traces along the ridges of where she’d used her laser vision to separate the rock from the moon’s surface. “Anyways, um, I thought it could be a fun paperweight or something, to redecorate your office now that you’ve got it back.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Kara imagines that Lena is doing her best to act flattered and to come up with a nice excuse or two to flatter Kara into appeasement. When she speaks, however, there’s no trace of fake niceties or anything close. “You went out and got the moon for me?” she asks, soft and genuine and Kara is once again brought back to the scene of an old movie.

“Well, I didn’t go and lasso the whole thing, but... I, uh, did what I could,” she replies, so weak-kneed that had Lena not wrapped her up in a hug, Kara thinks she would have needed to sit down.

“Only you would think of something so perfect,” Lena whispers in her ear, squeezing tight and undeniably touched by the gesture. It makes Kara want to fly out and bring back the rest of the moon with her if it meant seeing a smile like that one more time. “Thank you. Really, this is wonderful.”

“You make it easy, being such a huge nerd about space and all.”

Lena’s eyes twinkle as she releases Kara, turning away just in time so Kara can hold onto the doorway for support without being completely transparent about how far gone she is for this woman. “There’s nothing easy about what you did, Kara.”

Her hand loosens, sliding down the frame to wrap around the back of her neck. She shrugs, content with accepting the praise without sidestepping it. “This is just a small chunk. One day, I’ll take you up there myself,” Kara says. “I promise. You’d love it up there.”

“Your sister would be worried sick about the two of us galivanting around the Milky Way.”

Smiling, Kara leans in. She can picture Lena with stardust in her air, with the constellations reflecting in her eyes, walking around Argo arm in arm with Kara’s mother, laughing at something Kara’s done. It’s not just the galaxy that Kara can imagine through Lena’s eyes; it’s an entirely imagined future for the two of them. Fake or not, it’s enthralling. “Seeing the look on your face would be worth it.”

Lena blushes and reaches over, a small box held in her hands. It’s Kara’s turn to open her gift, and there’s a nervousness to Lena’s features that makes her suspect that Lena is just as anxious about what Kara will think about this as she was watching Lena with hers. As Kara takes the package, weighing it and playing with the bow, Lena bites her lip. “You’ll have to excuse the shoddy craftsmanship of the wrapping. This was... delivered rather recently, and lead-lined paper is hard to work with in a time crunch.”

Kara snorts. So, that’s what the weird texture of the paper is from. “You thought I would peek?’

“Darling, I knew you would. You’re one of the least patient people I’ve ever met when it comes to presents.”

Lena is right and Kara knows better than to argue, so she just grins and gets to work on unwrapping. A wooden box with shining hinges is what she’s left with, and at Lena’s silent approval, she opens it slowly.

There’s a key inside, though for what, Kara has no clue.

When she raises her eyebrows and looks back up at Lena, Kara is surprised to find a certain sort of bittersweetness in the other woman’s face, a sort of melancholy in her smile. “It’s a spare key,” Lena says, slow and halting. “I spoke to my realtor three days ago, and my penthouse is all mine again. I... I finally have the cash flow to be able to move out and get out of your hair.”

“Oh,” Kara says, suddenly understanding why Lena is treating this conversation with a trigger finger. She understands the hesitation, and the conflicted expression on Lena’s face, and why it feels like there’s a lead weight dropped down her throat, landing on her heart with a thud. This means Lena is moving out. It means she wants to move out, wants to move on, more specifically – and it means that this bizarre, wonderful, and at times torturous period of spending nearly every waking moment together is soon to be over. “You’re moving out,” she repeats, just to ensure that her brain is on the same page as her heart.

Lena scans her face, no doubt trying to read what’s going on past Kara’s murky expression. “Kara, I- I need you to know exactly what these past several months have meant to me. I’ve been the luckiest, safest – happiest – I've ever been in my entire life, even with the circumstances. And that was because of you and the kindness you’ve shown me by letting me stay here and spend so much of my time with my best friend.”

“You know it was my pleasure to have you here,” Kara repeats the reassurance she’s told Lena so many times before, aware that she’s already referring to this in the past tense, aware that this is already slipping through her fingers. “You know that I’m the lucky one, don’t you?”

“Still. This has been a dream come true.” Lena takes a breath, and it seems like neither of them can decide if they’re meant to be overjoyed by this news or sad. Either way, they’re not good at hiding it. “You don’t realize how much this means to me. I will always want to- the important thing is,” she interrupts herself, course-correcting, “I know it’s been a sacrifice, giving up your personal space for me. This way, you can have that back, have William or whoever you’d like over here without needing to worry about me-”

“What does William have to do with-?”

“You don’t have to sneak around is all I’m saying,” Lena rushes out, surprisingly off-balance for the person who made the decision in the first place. “About winning your next Pulitzer or... about anything else. It’s your space, and I want to give you that back, Kara. I want that to go back to how it was before.”

Kara swallows, understanding exactly what Lena’s trying to say. It’s time for things to go back to normal, is what Lena is trying to explain. No more blurred lines between them, no more closeness that might go a little beyond platonic, no more reasons for Kara to keep holding on and pining anymore. Forget what Lena is saying about Kara and William or whatever that means – Lena deserves her own space to pursue her own wants, her own feelings, without Kara constantly in the background. How is she supposed to go off and live her own life and take a chance on James if Kara is constantly hanging around like a fly on the wall? That wouldn’t be productive for anyone, least of all her.

It’s been a long time coming, this step, and while it may have been blissfully overdue, it still hurts to know it’s happening all the same. Kara swallows down the worst of it and gives Lena a smile.

“I knew there was a reason why my gut told me not to buy you that ‘World’s Best Roommate Mug’,” she jokes, and while Lena laughs, she won’t stop staring at Kara’s eyes. She hopes to Rao that they’ve stayed dry. “Not to say that you weren’t incredible, but...”

“But the key,” Lena continues, clearing her throat and bringing Kara back to the bit of metal in her hand. “Despite my biometric fingerprint scan and layers upon layers of security, I do still technically have a traditional lock. I know it’s slightly ludicrous, giving you a key when you could just as easily fly in through the private terrace, but...” Another beat of silence, and then Lena grabs her hand. It’s her eyes that are watery when she speaks again. “I don’t want all of it to go back to the way it was before, you know? I mean it. This is the happiest I’ve ever been, and I just don’t want to lose- I couldn’t bear to-”

Kara steps in before Lena’s words turn to bonafide tears. “You won’t,” she whispers. It’s her turn to pull Lena into a hug and she makes it count, pulling the other woman in as close as she dares. “Thank you. I know what this means for you to give me this.”

And she does. Even before the identity reveal and the fallout – even when they were still incredibly close friends, albeit with Kara’s lies hanging over their heads – Lena had never given Kara a spare key. It wasn’t that it was a forbidden place to visit, by any means, but while Kara had opened up her apartment for the other woman early on, Lena had kept her place significantly less accessible.

Kara had her myriad theories as to why; maybe it was because Lena had never seemed very fond of her own place, keeping it largely cold and bare of decorations and personal touches for most of the years she lived in it; maybe it was Lena’s way of protecting vulnerable, clueless Kara Danvers from walking into a potentially dangerous situation from an assassin or kidnapper or aggrieved former follower of Lex; maybe it was because Lena had always known, deep down, that there were some things that she still didn’t know about Kara no matter how hard she tried, and kept some physical walls up of her own in response.

So, Kara understands that this is not some superficial, half-baked gesture. It’s Lena breaking new ground even as she pulls away. It’s a window left cracked open, one that Kara can sneak in through any time she needs it.

“Of course, Kara. And I want you to use it. Barge through my door for the rest of our lives, alright?”

“So long as you let me bring takeout every time, I’m going to hold you to that,” she replies, determined to stick to that promise. It’s Christmas Day, there’s snow falling outside, and she and her best friend in the world are about to spend the day under blankets and hiding from the rest of the world. For now, the only future that matters is the next five minutes and which sugary baked good Kara will choose from the waiting bag. “Now, come on, our coffee is getting cold.”

Lena smiles and lets Kara lead the way back into the bedroom, caffeine and sweets in tow.

Sure, this is the beginning of the end. Sure, this morning may be one of the last that Kara gets to have Lena like this, sleepy and soft and with nowhere to go and no one else she wants to see. But this time isn’t over quite yet. No matter what – Kara is determined to ride this wave out for as long as she can, and that includes these moments with Lena. James will follow through with his side of the plan, she has no doubt, and very soon this will all be over. Very soon, Lena will move out and will no longer have any reason to spend lazy, leisurely mornings with her best friend. Mornings in bed, staring intimacy right in the face and neither shying away from it – even if it remains unnamed.

The charade will be over, they’ll return to their old lives, and that’ll be that. They’ll be so, so close – Kara never intends to change that – but there will never again be a reason to be like this, to toe this line so flagrantly and be able to get away with it.

Soon enough, Kara imagines, Lena will have another person she’ll want to come home to. Soon – but not just yet.

“Merry Christmas,” she says once they’ve both crawled back into her room, Lena resting her head on Kara’s shoulder and enjoying her latte. Kara watches the snow continue to fall outside, relishing the last few grains of sand in this hourglass – and knowing that the real gift for Lena is yet to come.

…

It’s clear from the get-go that Alex doesn’t buy one word of what Kara’s trying to sell her.

Somehow, it’s already seven in the evening on New Year’s Eve – and all of them are expected to be at Lena’s much-anticipated gala in half an hour, despite everyone in the room being in various stages of undress and panicking over minute details.

The afternoon quickly regressed from the planned, casual get-together before the party started to a frantic, drunken scramble to finish getting ready in time. Kara doesn’t quite understand the reason to freak out seeing as she could get changed at supersonic speeds, but the others did not share in her attitude. As Nia had so glibly put earlier as she wrestled herself into a very sequined dress, “We’re superheroes. We may get photographed on the regular, but action shots never flatter my good side. It’s not every day that Nia Nal gets to walk down an actual red carpet.”

“I just don’t see any reason for hysteria,” Kara mutters, already in her supersuit and an unwitting accomplice in trying to help Alex use a variety of hairspray, gel, and curse words to get her hair to stay in place. “Alex, why don’t you give it a rest already? My arms are getting tired from holding this section in the air and I really don’t think there’s any more ways you can threaten it to behave.”

She receives a slap to the bicep for that comment, her sister swinging a hairbrush her way without a hint of remorse. “Not everyone’s hair defies physics as nicely as yours does,” she hisses, then, seeing as Kara is actively holding her hair, seems to think better of being mean. “Besides, I know you’re more nervous than anyone else.’

Rolling her eyes, Kara drops Alex’s hair very delicately into place and walks to the kitchen, pouring herself another glass of Alderaban Rum. It’s very rare that she allows herself to get anywhere past tipsy, but Alex is right; Kara is nervous about tonight for multiple reasons, and she’s hoping a little liquid courage can help get her through.

“Supergirl does plenty of public appearances,” she says, dismissive.

“None like this one, though,” Nia pipes up from where she’s crowding Kara’s bathroom mirror, looking like she’s in the middle of an eye operation using her lash curler and her mascara. “You’re the guest of honor. Lena’s guest of honor. You’re walking her into the venue like some tall, strong, golden haired, knight in shining-”

“Nia, don’t poke your eye out,” Alex interupts, lip curling in a way that Kara can’t quite tell what she’s disgusted at – the state of her own hair and makeup, or Nia laying it on thick. Kara tightens her jaw and tries to play it off. “And for someone who isn’t bothered by the flashing lights, you sure seem a little antsy, Kara.”

“I’ve done similar things before,” she repeats. “I'll be just fine, so long as we don’t forget my change of clothes. I’d rather not have a crowd following me around for the entire evening.”

“I’d be prepared for eyes to be on you no matter what outfit you’re wearing,” Kelly warns gently from the couch. She’s the only other one besides Kara who managed to get ready in a punctual manner, and is now calmly sipping champagne and watching the chaos unfold from Kara’s couch. “Anyone within an arm’s length of Lena is going to be the talk of the town, and I’d imagine you’ll be filling that role for the majority of the night.”

Kara blames the alien rum for loosening her lips enough for the next comment to slip out unobstructed. “Actually, I would hope that your brother is ready for that, in that case.”

Kelly sets her glass down, the only one unharried enough to catch Kara’s drift and chase after it. “What do you mean? James told me he plans to take pictures for most of the night.”

“Oh, well,” Kara gulps, seeing her sister’s tousling of her hair slowing and then stopping completely, clearly listening in. “I could be wrong. Maybe his plans have changed.”

They better not have, she thinks to herself. If they did, he better have a hiding place that not even Supergirl can find.

While Kelly senses Kara’s unspoken request to change the subject, Alex certainly does not. Or, more accurately, she senses it – and bulldozes right through it. “What plans, Kara?”

“Plans? Oh, I don’t know. That’s a- uh, an aggresive word for it. I just had a funny feeling that maybe James would be hanging around Lena tonight.”

“What gave you that sense?” Alex replies, and great – now Nia is poking her head out of the bathroom, finally clued in. Kara wishes she’d headed over to J’onn’s to see how the boys were getting along like she’d threatened Alex she would an hour or so ago. “A funny feeling. Don’t tell me you’ve developed the power of the sixth sense.”

“Nothing like that,” she mumbles, now regretting her speedy prep time and needing something to do with her hands. Stealing the brush from Alex’s pinching fingers, Kara idly runs it through her wavy hair.

“Then what’s up? What’s got you so… flighty?”

“This is called excitement. I’m excited for tonight,” Kara insists, choking down the bile that’s been burning her throat since the morning. “And, you know, I’m anxious for Lena and want it to go well, but that’s all. Things will turn out alright by midnight.”

“Kara, did my brother pull you into some scheme of his?” Kelly asks, not satisfied with any of Kara’s non-answers about James. “Does he want some extra Supergirl photo ops or something? Because if he does, you can tell him no, take the night to yourself.”

“No, no — James is, well, he’ll be helping me out, in a way. As a favor,” Kara responds without thinking, so busy trying to make sure no suspicion is cast on James that she sticks herself firmly in the limelight instead. Not that she hasn’t been sloppy before, but Kara is seriously starting to think that somebody laced that rum with some truth serum.

The room goes silent; even the pop song Nia was playing from the bathroom seems to fade out just in time for Kara’s comment to land like a bellyflop off the diving board. She may as well be holding a smoking gun — and Kara knows exactly how much Alex and her friends love to solve a good mystery.

“Okay, weirdo,” Alex says. “What have you gotten James into?”

“First of all, I don’t appreciate the pessimistic connotation,” Kara deadpans. At this point, she’s resigned to her fate. Besides, this is supposed to be a good thing — a great thing, the sort that Alex and the others should eagerly support. She should tell them, in fact. That would be what any best friend would do, and then everyone could be as over the moon as she is now. She takes another long sip of the rum. “You’re making it sound like- like something idiotic, and I haven’t even told you yet.”

Alex is too crunched for time to even relish in the fact that Kara is admitting defeat, trying to get straight to the point. “Kara, either you come back over here and go through with that freeze breath idea I had for my hair-”

“-Alex, you’re a doctor! You know that would not be good for your brain-”

“Either you let me live a little... or you tell us what you’re up to.”

Kara sees no point in lying about it. It would likely reveal more about how she really felt about this thing if she continued to insist there was nothing going on.

So, she tells them.

Not all of it – nowhere even close to the full truth of how Kara got this particular idea in her head – but enough for them to know exactly what was going to happen tonight.

And of course, as she says repeatedly, exactly how happy she is about it.

By the time she finishes with her recap, there isn’t much time left before Lena’s hired limosines roll around the block to pick them up, and Kara’s story has completely derailed everyone else’s efforts to finish getting ready. Nia dropped her eyeshadow palette to the ground about five minutes ago, and Alex is going to have to be content with a slight cowlick in the back of her hairdo because from the way she is staring open-mouthed at Kara, no more energy will be spared for hairspray.

“Kara,” is all Alex says, trying to gear up for something but appearing to be immensely conflicted over which course she wants to take. Kara doesn’t know if she’s ever seen her sister attempt to choose her words to carefully, and it must stump her because Alex takes a long breath and does not continue her sentence.

Making sure that there is a giddy smile still plastered on her face, Kara bounces on the balls of her feet. “Yes?” She’s trying to be open. Excited. She’s just so, so eager to talk about her brilliant plan to get Lena and James back together at long last that if no one asks her about it she might just burst into tears. And, as Lena’s proud and supportive best friend, that is not a prospect that she should ever be crying over.

Kelly tries to step in for her speechless partner. As James’ sister, Kara belatedly realizes that she probably should have clued Kelly in on this a lot sooner. “That’s, uh... that’s- I think what your sister is trying to say...” To Kara’s disbelief, Kelly too gives up on whatever sentence she was trying to craft, looking to Nia for support.

And Nia, as always, does not disappoint.

“Why would you ever do that?!” she shrieks, looking bothered and devastated and not at all like the supportive friend that Kara had hoped to rally to her cause.

As blunt as she is, it seems to do the trick of unglueing Alex and Kelly’s tongues from the roof of their mouths, and before Kara has time to brace for impact, she’s hit by an onslaught of identical sentiments.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea-?” asks Kelly, the only one possessing any sort of hesitancy. She’s quickly outpaced by Nia and Alex.

“What the hell were you thinking?” cries out her sister.

“James is actually going to-?” Nia has the nerve to look disgusted, which spits in the face of Kara’s plan and sure does crack her resolve at seeing it through. “Is that why you were acting so crazy at brunch?!”

Cracked, but not broken. Kara sticks her chin out and determinededly continues to look like James and Lena’s biggest relationship cheerleader.

“This is happening TONIGHT?!”

“But what about you and-?”

Nia is silenced by a look from Alex, who has now decided to take point. “Okay. Okay,” she says, trying to regain control. “So... can you explain why this is happening, please?”

“I already told you,” Kara answers, checking her own hair and makeup in the mirror. Supergirl or not, she wants to look relatively pristine when she meets Lena at the entrance to the gala. “And you know exactly why I did it.”

“No, I really don’t,” Alex says, looking exasperated and a little bit tortured about something. It’s not often that Kara sees her normally blunt and pragmatic sister struggle with self-control – but clearly, Alex is trying to approach this with some amount of delicacy, and she’s failing. After a moment of Kara staring back, Alex’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she says, “You’re doing all of this because of that?”

“Because of...?” Nia asks.

“Kara, you didn’t,” Alex says, ignoring Nia entirely, and now Kelly’s invested as well.

“What is it?” she asks, reaching out to touch Alex’s elbow. It’s enough to drag her sister’s eyes away for a slight moment, as Alex pauses, looking like she’s trying to choose her words carefully. Kara’s sister has never been one for tact, and after a beat, it seems that all that effort is thrown to the side, the task too herculean.

When she turns back to meet Kara’s frozen, plasticky smile and her deer-in-the-headlights expression, it’s clear Alex has chosen the bulldozing option as usual. “Kara is so keen on seeing this through because according to her, Lena is still in love with your brother.”

“With who, now?” Nia squawks, looking legitimately appalled, and Kara feels the need to step up to the plate on the behalf of Lena and James.

Kelly beats her to it, though it’s not nearly as self-assured as Kara would have expected. “Hey, now,” she says from the couch, noting Nia’s continued expression of disbelief. “As his sister, I have to say... It’s not like it’s implausible that- well, I... that could be what’s happening?” Turning to her fiance for some guidance, Kelly shoots Alex a helpless look.

“Nothing against your brother,” Nia interjects before Alex can get started again. “But Lena? In love with James? Him specifically? I, uh- it’s just that... that- well, I think we all know what I’m trying to get at here-”

“It’s the truth,” Kara says, still fussing with her hair. Frustrated by the turn of the night and the fact that she can’t outwardly show any negative emotions on her face, she grabs a comb, yanking it through non-existent snarls.

“In what world?!”

“She told me herself,” Kara insists to Nia, the only other person in the room who seems to possess the ability to speak – and it’s not making Kara’s night any easier having to fight this uphill battle. It would be so easy to crumble, to drop the act and tell these women, some of her closest friends in the world, the full story. But midnight is going to be here before any of them know it, and Kara won’t deny Lena this shot at happiness. The stars don’t align like this all that often, after all.

“I can tell you what I can see with my own two eyes, and James is definitely not the one that Lena-”

“Nia, enough-!” Alex cuts in, eyes darting back to Kara with a visible amount of trepidation. If Lena were here – and man, despite the subject matter, Kara sure does miss her steadying presence – she'd label Alex’s behavior as a statistically significant amount of nervousness.

In other words, it means something – just nothing that Kara can decipher right now.

“All I’m saying is it’s not exactly subtle-”

“But she told me, Nia,” Kara explains again.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true-”

“Why wouldn’t it be true if it’s directly from her? I mean, what reason would she even have to- to lie about something like this?” Kara interupts, unable to prevent a streak of defensiveness from appearing. She can’t understand why everyone is still stuck on this point – and why, exactly, they seem so intent on poking holes in its foundation. Kara had never in a million years thought to wonder whether or not Lena was misleading about her feelings. Why would she? It’s fairly cut and dry to her, something undeniable that she’s had to make her peace with.

Sure, she’d expected some general hesitancy, maybe even some blowback on how she’s inserted herself into this and is forcing it to happen at such a quick pace. Kara can handle that, knows that most of it would be warranted. But about James’ role in all this? Kara has no idea how to proceed with questions about that.

“And what do you mean, not subtle?” she adds impulsively, wanting to dig into Nia, clearly the boldest one in this group, a little further.

“Nothing,” Alex chimes in, a steel trap that’s enforcing her ability to keep her mouth shut for the entire room. Her voice is a very delicate mix of firm and frantic. “Nia is pregaming a little too hard.”

“Don’t question my tolerance level like that!” the other girl complains, but is silenced by the high heel that Alex calmly flings her way. Kelly watches it all unfold from the couch, head shaking. Kara wonders if she’s starting to regret her enthusiasm into marrying into this family. Nia’s head resurfaces from behind Kara’s bathroom door. “Or my professionalism,” she adds. “I would never show up wasted to a red carpet event.”

No one really believes that last claim given Nia’s propensity for wild nightly escapades of the recent past, but Kara doesn’t doubt that Nia could drink most of them under the table. Why Alex is so determined to destroy Nia’s reliability, Kara doesn’t know. Frankly, she doesn’t have the energy to care, not when she still needs to rally them all over to her side.

“I’d thought... well, I didn’t expect any of you to react like this,” she says, her excitement slipping and a frown appearing. It wasn’t like she thought they would follow her into tonight’s gala with pom-poms and glitter and synchronized cheers, but... this reaction is the equivalent of attaching a dropping anchor to her lifeboat of positivity. “You’re not even slightly interested? At all?”

“I’m very interested!” Nia responds without delay. Somehow, it’s not the reinforcement Kara’s been needing.

If she listens close, she can hear the pathetic whine as her lifeboat starts to deflate. So much for a rescue.

“You know what I mean,” she needles, voice high. “The hairbrush is moving through her hair at supersonic speeds now, speeding up in tandem with her anxiety. “Like, excited about this possibility. Rooting for them to figure it out. Pumped up. Happy!”

“It’s an... intriguing idea, Kara,” Kelly tries, but not even her years of practice at being a good listener with an even better poker face can help distract from her lack of enthusiasm.

“Is that what we’re supposed to feel?” Alex adds. Her question is big and blunt and lands awkwardly in the middle of the room – and Kara realizes she doesn’t know what she wants her answer to be.

Deep down, Kara revels at this reaction. It means that maybe, she’s not the only one who looks at Lena and James and struggles to see the apparent spark that should be there, even if it is hidden. Maybe, her friends have the same reservations about Lena moving on with James that Kara’s had to beat down in her own heart.

Maybe, they’re as attached to other possibilities of who Lena could be with as Kara is, no matter how hard she tries.

On the surface, though, Kara maintains her story. “Two of your best friends in the world have another shot at being together,” she says as if it’s a genuine miracle. The hairbrush cracks, its bristles warped beyond repair. Kara grips it tighter and reattaches a grin to her face. “How rare is it to have a chance to find your way back to, to- the one that got away! I’d say some passion would be good. I mean, I know I’m excited!”

Kelly and Alex share a lingering glance.

“Are you really?” Kelly asks, her voice gentle. “Kara, you know it’s alright if you’re not, don’t you?”

It’s the last straw for her poor brush. Splintering it into pieces, Kara hides the evidence behind her back, her smile glitching.

“Why on earth wouldn’t I be?”

There’s an undeniable significance to the bittersweetness of Kelly’s smile, the sudden way Nia won’t meet her eyes, the heavy weight behind Alex’s sigh. Kara knows there is; it’s an incontrovertible truth that her friends have a reason for doubting her on this – and she needs to face the possibility that it’s because she hasn’t been as good of a pretender as she should have been.

Call it what you want – being too obvious, brazen, translucent, hopeless, whatever; Kara gets the sudden moment of clarity that she’s underestimated these three women who know so much about her. Maybe, they can see right through her and have been able to all this time.

Unspoken as it is, Kara thinks everyone in this room knows exactly what’s going on – and have known for maybe as long as she has herself.

Nia’s phone buzzes on the coffee table, breaking through the loaded silence that’s fallen over them.Visibly relieved by the distraction, the girl picks up her phone and reads through the waiting texts. “The, er, car is here,” she says. A beat passes. No one moves. “Brainy says there’s enough room for all of us if we’re willing to squeeze in.”

“Amazing!” Throwing the remains of her brush into her bedroom, Kara claps her hands together, acutely aware of the tension. “Well, none of us want to be late. We’d better get going before the car leaves without us.”

“Nia, you and Kelly go ahead with them,” Alex says, shifting her feet as she stares out the living room windows into the street below. “Kara can give me a lift over.”

Uh oh. Kara blanches, knowing exactly where this is headed.

The subterfuge doesn’t work on anyone else either. Nia pauses, looking like she wants to be a part of whatever conversation Alex has planned. “Uh, okay. Are you sure?”

“It’s freezing out, babe,” Kelly adds, though one look at Alex and she seems to make her peace with it, knowing that its time for the Danvers Sisters to have a reckoning, and neither of them are going to get out of it. “Just make sure you dress for the windchill.”

“I’ll be fine. Now, go. Lena will be worried if we don’t show on time, and Kara and I will be right behind you.”

That’s an order from Alex that even Nia knows to accept without a word of complaint. “See you there,” she says to Kara, stowing an extra shade of lipgloss in her purse and meeting Kelly at the door. “Don’t forget, we’re all going to take a big picture together for my yearly scrapbook.”

It’s such a Nia thing to say, so typical of the girl to have a yearly scrapbook chronicling their group of friends, that Kara can’t help but smile. Despite the exasperation and miscommunication and everything else that leads to spinning wheels and confusion, Kara knows that Nia cares. She knows they all do – which makes her treacherous heart all the more hopeful knowing that they feel the same way as she does, deep down.

That doesn’t change anything about what’s going to happen tonight. Kara knows that, and knows she’ll need to convince her sister of it as well before they leave this apartment.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she tells Nia, silently accepting Alex’s terms with a glance over at her sister. “We’ll be right there. You can scout out a good table for our group to claim inside.”

There’s not much wind in anyone’s sails after that, and with a brief round of hugs and goodbyes, Nia and Kelly trail out the door. Kara sits on the windowsill and waits for her sister to come to her.

She doesn’t feel the need to keep her mask on quite as securely. After all, this is Alex. She can see through Kara anyways, and now – now Kara isn’t so sure she wants to keep this secret for very much longer.

“So...” Alex trails off, her hands stuffed in her pockets and her head tilting as she takes in the scene. “That was a lot.”

As wonderful of a sister as Alex is and has always been, she gets no points for creativity with that entrance. Still, Kara doesn’t roll her eyes or scoff, just lets Alex join her on the windowsill.

“This plan of yours...” her sister pauses again. “Can you understand why we reacted in the way that we did?”

“Sure. I sprung it on you. But just because it’s last-minute doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.”

“And what if that’s not the reason I think it’s a bad idea?” Alex tilts her head. Kara doesn’t answer. “Kara,” she continues, quiet and uncharacteristically cautious. Kara’s got a hunch that the two of them both know exactly what needs to be said – but that doesn’t make it any easier to start. “You... you know we just want what’s best for you, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” Letting her shoulders go slack, Kara leans against the cold glass of the window and looks back at her sister. Kelly had switched off the main lights of the apartment on the way out, leaving them only the tree lights, the city outside, and Kara’s favorite reading lamp to study eachother’s faces. “It’s just that... this isn’t about me.”

“It’s always been about you.” Despite the bluntness of the words, Alex doesn’t deliver them with anything short of gracefulness. “Are you going to make me say it?”

She smiles, attempts to laugh it off. “Come on, Alex,” she says, the words inconsequential and pale. Kara knows that there’s nothing she can do to hide this from her sister any longer.

Normally during difficult conversations, her sister fidgets – swipes at her hair, taps her fingers, scowls at the floor. Kara picked up many of those nervous mannerisms from her, which is what makes Alex’s stillness and her unwavering, open gaze all the more surprising.

“Do you honestly think that I don’t know, Kara?” she asks, and Kara’s smile shatters. “You really believe that I’m not able to see that something’s changed?”

“Nothing’s changed,” she tries, one last gambit at bending the truth to her advantage. Nothing has changed; Kara thinks that a part of her may have always felt this way. The realization is the hardest part, Kelly’s words rattle around in her head. Until now, Kara hadn’t wondered if there might be a more difficult step – telling her sister the truth.

“Denial isn’t a good look on you,” is Alex’s reply, and there’s some of that familiar banter that Kara hopes to lean into, to distract and egg her sister on until it’s far too late to face the music.

“I’m not denying anything,” comes her reply, as easy as breathing. For a moment, Kara really does think she’ll be able to run in circles around this – but then Alex’s hand darts out, entrapping her wrist, and Kara recognizes it for the chess move it is.

“I know, Kara.” Alex repeats, voice so soft and careful that it’s undeniable for Kara to pretend for even a moment longer that she’s managed to fool her sister about any of it. “I’m your sister. Please, I just- this would all be so much easier if you’d just admit it-”

She understands what Alex wants. Not revelation, not clarity – but acknowledgement. She’s asking for even footing, for Kara to stop stubbornly casting the room in obscurity where they’re swinging in the dark; for truth, plain and clearly stated.

Except Kara can’t say it.

Once she says it out loud, there’ll be no taking it back. Kara has been trying very hard to walk away from what she suspects is her own tragic story. Admitting this to Alex now would be turning back around and baring her neck.

“All I’m trying to do,” she says, understanding that her words are conveying something very different that the strain in her voice is, “Is do something decent for two people who I care for very much. That’s all.”

“You’re trying to take your choice out of it,” Alex argues. “Trying to step out of the way and put someone else in your place just so you have solid justification for being noble.”

Kara turns away, her throat tight. “You don’t- you don’t understand anything. That’s not at all what I’m doing,” she says, mouth pinched. “Now come on. We need to get over there.”

They both know it’s time to go; they both understand that there’s no changing Kara’s mind on this, no stopping the pendulum that’s already been set in razor-sharp motion. So when Alex clears her throat and leans closer, her eyes hold more restrained empathy than anything else. “I understand how hard you fight to keep things from changing,” she says. “I know that you’re dealing with enough unknowns right now to make anyone else want to cower away somewhere far away. I know that you’ve been trying your hardest to wrap everything up in a nice bow just in case-”

“Alex-” Kara interupts. She doesn’t want to face that particular truth right now.

“-Just in case it doesn’t go your way, someday. And I know that you’re an incredible, brave woman, capable of facing down just about anything but yourself. You give everyone a chance – but yourself.” Her sister reaches out, prodding Kara’s cheek until at last, their eyes meet. Alex smiles, small and sure. “I love you, Kara, and I know just about everything about you” she says after a beat, and her smile grows just a little bit teasing. Not enough to lose its kindness, but to remind Kara of exactly how deep this relationship goes. Whatever happens, Alex will have her back. “More importantly, I’m a human being with common sense and working eyes. I know what it looks like when my little sister falls in love.”

Well, not much to do about it now.

She really doesn’t see the point in denying it now that it’s out in the open. No point in shaking her head and glancing away and changing the subject until her dying breath, and especially no point in robbing herself of her sister when she needs her most.

Kara allows herself one selfish, private oasis – grants herself the unconditional care that her sister has always given her.

One last deep, rattling breath, and she’s all in.

“I- I think I was finally close to having it all,” she starts slowly, painfuly, her mouth feeling too small for the enormity of what she’s finally releasing. Just because she’s ready to and wants to doesn’t make it any easier to say out loud. “I wanted that my entire life. Wanted the balancing act to finally work out, all the pieces to fall into place, and it was nearly here. But... when it was almost mine... it didn’t feel right. And for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why.”

“Oh, I remember,” Alex interjects, but it’s not forceful. It helps keep Kara on track, helps lead her forward. “All those little innocent questions, all those days where your brow was so furrowed I thought even your Kryptonian genes wouldn’t prevent worry-lines.”

Her sister gets a slap on the knee for that, but Kara isn’t surprised by the remark. It’s not like her internal crisis about this was ever subtle.

“But then one day, it all finally... clicked,” she continues. “It was a normal day, just the two of us, and I- I realized that I didn’t ever want it to change – but that maybe, I wanted more.”

To simplify that night with Lena where Kara had been nothing short of run over several times with the shock of her realization into a... normal day is hilarious in hindsight. But then again, it was a normal day. Lena and Kara had been gravitating around eachother with the same quiet intensity they always did – Kara had just finally realized that maybe their friendship and the way she felt and acted around Lena wasn’t the normal part.

“You wanted...?” Alex prompts, leaning in close but never making Kara feel crowded.

There have been plenty of times where her sister has lured and trapped her into a confrontation with the truth, but this isn’t one of those. What Kara had assumed was uncharacteristic softness was in fact not a ruse meant to trick her, but genuine care. Alex already knows the answers to all of the questions she’s been asking – now, she’s giving Kara the space to answer them for herself.

“I wanted something... more,” she says. “I wanted something more with her. It turned into something so much bigger, and I realized that- that... well, I realized that maybe it had always been something huge and life-changing and special. At least for me,” she finishes in a low, trembling voice.

“Kara, it’s not just-” Alex tries to cut in, but she’s not interested in any well-meaning reasoning or excuses.

“And it felt way too late to do anything about it,” she bulldozes ahead, already predicting the protest Alex will level her way at that before her sister can even open her mouth, frowning. “Not because- well, because of everything, really. I was trying to take on CADMUS all by myself and she’d lost her company and-”

“You thought she was in love with James based on what she told you.” Alex’s words are perfectly neutral, but that doesn’t mean Kara doesn’t sense the doubt that’s absolutely bursting at the seams to reveal itself. “You didn’t want to screw anything up by telling her something you weren’t so sure she wanted to hear.”

Kara refuses to engage with what Alex is implying. “Lena is interested in James,” she reasserts, eyes flashing. “Besides, even if she wasn’t... it was just too... charged. I refused to do anything out of desperation, and there was no way I was going to spring something like that on Lena out of the blue. I mean... we just got eachother back, Alex.” Kara swallows against the lump in her throat. “Ruining that with something so... so small in the grand scheme of things would be the worst mistake of my life.”

Though Alex’s eyebrows furrow at Kara’s word choice, she’s either wise enough to know when to stay silent or still busy debating a response. Either way, Kara takes the silence to try and gather herself.

She isn’t afraid to cry in front of her sister – not in the slightest. But she doesn’t want to cry right now. Somehow, she needs to frame what’s going to happen as being the right, kind choice for all involved, and she suspects her sister will be less openminded to that proposition if Kara is a blubbering, brokenhearted mess.

“So, yeah,” she finishes with a watery shrug. “I’m in love with Lena. For, like, a really long time. Seems like you and our friends might have known that longer than I have.”

Even if she’d been expecting it, Kara is still overwhelmed by the fierceness of Alex’s hug. Only her sister hugs her this way, completely unbothered by the fact that Kara may as well be a brick wall when it comes to her ability to fully reciprocate the strength of the embrace. Alex has never cared one bit that Kara is too scared of her own strength to fully hug back – she holds on tight enough for the both of them.

“I’m proud of you,” Alex says into her shoulder, pressing a kiss to where Kara’s cape is clasped. “You know that? So, so proud of you no matter what harebrained schemes you cook up or how long it takes you to figure out you’re in love with your best friend.”

Alex pulls away, her eyes twinkling. Kara, despite her dread, despite her melancholy, can’t help but smile. “I thought you’d be angry,” she admits. Alex just raises her eyebrow, looking dismayed. “Not because of who I’d fallen in love with, but because I didn’t tell you. I could barely admit it to myself, Alex. Telling you... I don’t know. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle the look in your eye.”

“To be clear, I am not angry with you at all, Kara. Even if I... suspected something was going on, I was never going to be upset at you for figuring it out on your own first. You were there for me when I first came out to you. I promised myself that whatever you needed, I was going to do the same.” As Alex looks over at her, Kara glances away, tugging at her supersuit for something to do. She’d been telling the truth when she said she wasn’t sure how she’d look her sister in the eyes. “Everyone’s different when it comes to love. I could never fault you for coming to terms with it in your own way. And it’s not small, you understand? No matter how you frame it. This matters.”

“How long did you...” Clearing her throat, Kara continues to study the floor. “How long have you known?”

Alex shrugs, sighing with the long-suffering tone she always adopts when teasing her. “Would you beat me up if I told you that I had a hunch since Sam was in town?”

“Come on,” Kara sputters. While she’s applied her own hindsight to realize that falling in love with Lena has been more of a marathon than a sprint for her, she can’t believe Alex was observant enough to throw a guess out for that long ago. “That long? Seriously?”

“You don’t understand what it was like to stand in a room with the two of you when all that shit went down with Reign,” Alex counters, voice light but honest. “You’ve always told me that was when the rift first started between the two of you about your secret identity. While you never seemed to be able to describe why it ate at you so much, I couldn’t help but wonder if... if maybe there was something deeper going on.” She pauses for a beat, gathering her words. “I was nearly convinced the night you got your Pulitzer... and I knew for certain after finding you in the Fortress and her on Mount Norquay.”

“Oh,” Kara says, near a whisper. She’s spent plenty of nights herself this year cursing herself for not figuring it out sooner, for not doing something about it before everything had gone wrong. Maybe if Kara had addressed her own feelings earlier, maybe if she gained the courage to face the truth – maybe Lena would never have gotten so hurt in the first place. “Friends don’t really fight like that, do they.”

“No, not in my experience.” Letting out a breath through her nose, Alex tries to meet her gaze. “In your defense, there’s more on your plate than the average person. I don’t think anyone could fault you for not having the proper time or space to dive into some introspection, considering the rate you save the world at. And,” she continues, “I don’t blame you for not trusting me over the course of the year with that sort of truth. Not with the way I’ve treated Lena at times.”

Her eyes dart up to meet her sister’s at last, and Kara doesn’t like the guilt she finds in them one bit. “That wasn’t why- Alex, that is not at all why I didn’t share this with you. You made mistakes. So did I – and so did Lena. We’ve forgiven each other – and the friend you’ve been for Lena more than overshadows any slip-ups along the way. Can’t we all agree to stop believing that everyone else holds a grudge toward us about them?”

“I- okay,” Alex says, a bit dazed by the force behind Kara’s words. However, the guilt in her eyes is gone, turned bashful and relieved. “I can agree to that.”

“Good. Good," Kara says, head full of steam now and sensing a window of opportunity to sway Alex over to her side. “Because I’m going to need you tonight. And before you say anything, there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to convince me to change my mind about James and-”

“I have no intention of bossing you around about that.”

Kara stops fiddling with the sleeve of her supersuit, not expecting this approach from Alex in the slightest. “What?”

As Kara tries to school her expression, her sister smiles again. While it doesn’t quite reach her eyes and has a certain kind of grimness, it is genuine. “I won’t tell you what to do. I mean, you seem to take real delight in doing the opposite of what my advice is most times anyways.”

“As- as Supergirl,” Kara concedes, not sure why she’s pushing back against this at all. The news that Alex is not planning on forcing her hand should have been a massive relief. Instead, it’s causing more unease to settle against her heart. “And that’s because if you had your way, I wouldn’t so much as rescue a cat from a tree without backup.”

Alex snorts again at that, not bothering to protest. Both Danvers Sisters have their rogue tendencies when it comes to saving the day. J’onn always seemed to think it ran in the family.

“You’re right. You’ve always been good at separating the super side of yourself from the rest of you. At least, as good as anyone could be expected to,” Alex says. “I think maybe... that’s been a detriment. It’s been one for longer than either of us would admit.”

There was no humor to be found in Alex’s voice anymore. “Keeping Kara Danvers and Supergirl separate is important,” Kara says cautiously, venturing out into the unknown. It isn’t like her sister to cast doubt over that, and it leaves Kara unsure as to what point she’s trying to make.

“It is.” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Alex manages to keep them both piled together on the narrow windowsill – all without mussing up her own hairdo or wrinkling Kara’s cape. “I’ve always loved your secret identity. It’s kept all of us safe for quite a long time now, and as your sister – it helps me sleep at night.”

For all of Kara’s own long, conflicted history of feelings towards the duality she projects to the world, she does understand the simple, uncomplicated peace it gives Alex and the rest of their friends. It’s a heavy, sturdy, bulletproof shield that Kara keeps propped up for all of their happiness... so it throws her off guard when Alex lets out a guilty sounding sigh and continues.

“But... it’s different for the person expected to keep those lines drawn. And I know it hasn’t always been easy, and I- I'm sorry for the part I played in keeping you so constantly vigilant about it.”

Kara falters, not sure how to proceed. “I- you don’t need to be sorry, Alex,” she says. “Like I said, it’s important. It’s kept us safe, and-”

“And it’s also hurt you badly,” Alex cuts in. “It’s hurt other people who deserved to be close to you. We’ve learned the hard way what happens to a person kept on the outside of those lines.”

Her shoulders slump as she lets out a breath. Memories of a colder, darker, infinitely bitter winter flash through her mind. “No one but me is to blame for what I did to Lena,” Kara says slowly, needing to chase those memories far away.

“All of us played a role,” Alex replies. “Each and every one of us, knowingly or not, reinforced the idea that you needed to guard your secrets with your life. And I think that now, even after what you went through with Lena back then – I think there’s a part of you that is far too comfortable with keeping a part of yourself secret for the rest of your life. It’s that same part of you that’s okay with minimizing your feelings and labeling it as small for the sake of not feeling the need to tell Lena the truth, bones and all. All it really amounts to is one secret for another.”

“That’s not- this is different.”

“I’m not convinced it is,” her sister says. Calmly. Carefully. Maybe even a little sadly, like she’s worried this is one prognosis that Kara won’t be able to overcome. “Escpecially when it comes to Lena. Now you know why it felt so awful the first time around. It wasn’t just two friends falling apart – it was heartbreak, plain and simple. I understand that fear of rejection, of wondering if they- they've ever thought of you in that way at all. Maybe there’s a part of you that is too afraid to tell another secret to her. Maybe, you’re worried that if something goes wrong again, you won’t be able to recover. You’re afraid that it’ll be permanent, this time around.”

Kara can feel her face grow pale, can feel the blood pound and pool in her shaking fingers, her flushed neck. Rao, Kara isn’t even sure who’s right and who’s wrong anymore. All this time, she’s told herself that this is not the same as whipping off her glasses and ripping open her shirt, but... if anything, isn’t it so much more vulnerable? Is Alex right? Does Kara even know how to exist without hiding some part of herself away?

“Of course it’ll go wrong again,” she whispers at last, eyes wet. “She doesn’t feel the same.”

They’re late. They should have been there by now, Kara knows – but that doesn’t stop Alex from sitting in silence for an agonizing amount of time before meeting her eyes.

Her sister reaches up and wipes away a tear that Kara hadn’t realized had fallen. Alex, who has always been there to dry her tears and bandage her wounds, real or imagined, has an expression on her face that Kara’s never seen before. Something proud and fierce, momentous and sad, soft and glowing. It captures a feeling that Kara had imagined she’d feel watching her sister walk down the aisle, take her first steps into a new phase of her life.

“Have you ever considered the possibility that she does?” Alex asks, practically begging, and Kara’s chest feels like it’s caving in. The look in Alex’s eyes... it’s like she knows something she doesn’t, but won’t reveal it all the same. “That maybe, Lena wasn’t talking about James that night? You haven’t wondered even once this year if there really is something there between you two that’s worth exploring?”

There's only one answer that Kara can give.

“No,” she says. It’s the truth. No matter what secrets Alex or Lena or whoever else may still be holding close to their chests, Kara knows that it’ll be the hope that’ll kill her when it comes to this. Hope, for the first time in her life, is the most dangerous thing in the world for her to have. “I won’t let myself.”

Right before Alex breaks their stare, Kara could swear she sees disappointment on her sister’s face. “I won’t stop you or your plan tonight. If you really, truly believe this is the right thing to do for everyone involved, I’ll keep my mouth shut. But...” Alex threads their hands together, squeezing tight. “I know what it’s like to keep that part of yourself hidden. Not even you’re strong enough to do it without consequences. And I know you would never allow anyone else to get hurt because of it, but I don’t want you to be miserable either. You can’t hold your breath and the world on your shoulders forever.”

Somewhere far away, Kara can hear the wheels of limousines come squeaking to a halt, of a well-dressed, tipsy crowd begin to gather around a ballroom, of cameras being turned on and lenses being snapped into place around the red carpet. She knows she’s out of time.

“I’m going to love you either way,” her sister continues, rushing out her words like she knows Kara is preparing to bolt, like she’s trying to impart some last words of comfort and resolve before she loses her chance. “I’m going to love you if you let James sweep Lena off her feet tonight or if you take his place. I’m going to love you no matter what you do, or how Lena feels, or if you wake up tomorrow and tell me this was all some crazy fever dream. All I ask is you give it some thought,” she says, squeezing her hand again for emphasis. “And I know what I said. This isn’t advice. It’s me asking you to just once consider the what-ifs that you haven’t allowed yourself to think about. Just once.”

Unsure how to respond, Kara just nods once, her voice stuck in her throat. “I- um, we need to go,” she mutters. It’s weak and watery; the only thing working in Kara’s favor is that it’s also true.

“Yeah, we do,” Alex agrees, standing up first. Kara realizes it’s so her sister can give her a few once overs as she stumbles to her feet – and so she can send one last piercing look Kara’s way as she waits to get scooped away into the open air. As Kara obliges, already kicking open the window with her boot, her sister whispers one more thing that’s nearly lost in the roar of the wind.

“Promise me you’ll try? Your happiness matters too, Kara. You’re just as important.”

Kara doesn’t answer until they touch down outside the venue. Alex’s ears are a bright shade of red and her nose is rapidly following suit, but despite her choice of transportation over, Kara is proud of the fact that she still looks red-carpet ready.

She casts her eyes over to the front door, where their clump of friends are eagerly waiting to go inside. Kara needs to go – needs to take a lap and meet up with Lena at their predetermined location to make the grand entrance for the night, but she can’t quite convince her feet to leave the ground yet.

Despite her heart to heart with Alex, she doesn’t feel all that better, and there’s only one way to ease that. She reaches out and grabs Alex’s wrist, stopping her before she can stride over to the others. “If I promise that,” she says, “I need you to promise me that you won’t just look after me tonight. Promise you’ll take care of Lena, no matter what happens?”

“What do you mean?” Alex asks, catching the taut undertone to Kara’s request. “Is- are you worried something’s going to happen?”

Honestly, not even Kara is quite sure what she means by that vague demand. All she knows is that it feels like she’s running out of time, the New Year just around the corner, and there’s an unease running through her bones that she’s going to have to figure out how to stamp out before Lena catches on.

“Sure I am. If my plan works out, everything is going to be different, won’t it?” Kara says with a crooked smile, shaking off the dregs of her fear and forcing a joke. She can’t walk into tonight like she’s heading to her own funeral. It won’t do her any good – and it’s not going to make things any easier with Lena. “What I mean is that... I know you’re always going to be there for me, Alex. Would you extend that same sort of care for her too?”

“Lena is family. No matter what shape that takes, that’s never going to change. I’ll treat her the way I would my own sister.” At those words, Kara’s heart settles just a bit; she knows exactly how sincere her sister is about that. Alex’s eyes flash, and she pulls Kara into one last overwhelming hug. “However tonight goes, it won’t be the end of the world, okay?” she whispers as Kara squeezes back. “I have a feeling that the two of you won’t ever leave each other’s sides again. No one’s going anywhere, whether you tell her or not.”

Kara heaves in a breath, letting herself squeeze just a little bit tighter than normal. “I’ll catch you later,” she says. “Gotta smile through a round with the paparazzi first.”

“Go get her.” Alex’s eyes are still shining. She’s proud, even after all of Kara’s antics – even if she wishes things were different. “Just don’t get caught staring, okay? A picture of Supergirl and Lena Luthor on the red carpet is priceless enough as is.”

Alex walks away before Kara can come up with a cleverer retort than scoffing and rolling her eyes. Her sister is going to tease her about this until the end of time – but even with that knowledge, Kara feels a million tons lighter. Somebody knows – Alex knows – and she’s right: the world hasn’t ended. No one’s turned their back on her, no one’s backed her into a corner... really, Kara realizes as she takes to the skies, her biggest opponent may just be herself.

She can’t help but linger on what Alex had asked her to consider. Is it possible that the alternate realities she’s banished from her mind aren’t as far-fetched as she’d assumed?

…

Lena is waiting for her just inside the back entrance to the National City Orchestra Hall, the building she’d selected to host tonight’s event. Not that anyone needs to lift a finger to help with anything, not when Kara can recognize many faces from Lena’s usual crew flitting about the space and commandeering the eager building staff as needed. All the same, it’s a beautiful, historical building, one of the city’s oldest – and finest – establishments. The marble floors combined with the telltale signature of Lena’s own personal taste transform the space into something almost cinematic.

Lena couldn’t have asked for a better spot to publicly reclaim her seat at the table, and Kara is here to ensure that it all goes off without a hitch… and that maybe, Lena leaves tonight with a more private, infinitely more special gift.

As she touches down on the ground, she makes sure to keep her face neutral; pleasant, sure, with a twinkle in her eye as always, but this is a public event, and Kara remains determined to keep up a good front. It’s excellent practice, she reasons, seeing as she’s going to need to maintain a different sort of poker face all the way through when the clock strikes midnight.

Straightening her cape and making sure there’s no slush or mud left on her boots, Kara doesn’t look up until she’s inside and rounding the corner. When she finally does, it’s a genuine effort not to put her foot through the floor.

Well… Kara is going to have to do a much better job at keeping up appearances if Lena’s going to look like that tonight.

Simply put, she is beautiful. And she always is, to Kara, whether it’s in her office or at game night or brushing her hair at night, but this – this is something else entirely. It’s a sort of beauty that could pierce through Kara’s own skin, could stop a thousand people in their tracks, should have caused the entire world to stop spinning by now if only to have an extra moment to gaze over at Lena.

She’s never been more gorgeous, more radiant, more devastatingly striking – and Kara has never been more in love.

That does not bode well for how this night needs to go.

Luckily for Kara, she’s been stunned completely into silence. The only giveaway to her internal short-circuiting is the dazed look on her face, which Lena studies and seems to find endearing.

Her eyes, lined impossibly dark, are the color of sage, until they land on Kara’s slack jaw. Then they twinkle as bright as emeralds, Lena’s perfect scarlet lips curling into a satisfied, private smirk. Clearing her throat, she inclines her head. One of them, at least, remembers that they are currently being watched – and will be seen by half the city, in a few moments.

“Supergirl,” she greets, and Rao – from the coy confidence lacing her voice, Kara knows that Lena knows exactly how breathtaking she looks as well. Like Lena had gotten ready tonight aware of how she would be able to knock out a crowd with a single look – like she stands here now, pleased that it seems to work on even Supergirl. “Thank you for making the time to be here.”

It's time to fully commit to the game they’ll be expected to play tonight, and Kara closes her mouth, a muscle in her jaw still twitching. Still, she can do this – two can dance this tango, and Kara is just adept at navigating the bright lights and the watchful eyes as Lena.

“Miss Luthor,” she says, crossing her arms and showcasing the crest on her chest. Squaring her shoulders, she adopts a similar smile to the other woman’s, turning hers slightly brighter, a flash of teeth. “It’s my pleasure.”

At least they still have this between the two of them. This balancing act, the tug between their private and public identities. Before, this had been one of Kara’s greatest anxieties, always wondering when she’d slip up, which inconsequential white lie or reckless subterfuge would be the domino that toppled the tower. But now that Lena knows – now that she knows, the tension is downright exhilarating, and it’s one of the last spheres that Kara allows herself to take risks in.

Soon, Kara Danvers will need to keep up a permanent mask around Lena and James. Tonight, as Supergirl at least, she wants to relish this natural chemistry between them.

“I should warn you,” Lena says, folding her hands neatly behind her back. At the movement, her hair falls away from her shoulders, exposing the skin there. Kara’s eyes can’t help but flicker across her jaw and down to her collarbone, where a necklace proudly rests. Her heart skips a beat. She had gifted Lena that very necklace a few winters ago. “There is a good deal of… curious onlookers out there,” she continues, her eyebrow raising as she tracks the moment Kara recognizes the jewelry. It’s almost intentional, Kara can’t help but think. “I suppose it’s not every day that Supergirl herself escorts someone into a party like this.”

Fighting down a blush from being caught out, Kara fights to remain focused. It’s rather difficult to do when Lena is looking like that and is standing so close. “You’re the real talk of the town, these days,” she answers, hoping it comes across smoothly. “I have a feeling I’ll be of little need tonight beyond serving as a good accessory.”

A caterer stumbles as they stride past the two of them with a armful of silverware, no doubt hearing the playfulness of Kara’s tone. Lena smirks, delighted. She enjoys this dynamic as much as Kara does – and from the way she runs her hands down the non-existent wrinkles on her gown, it’s likely doing wonders to keep her nerves down.

Despite the frequency that she’s expected to host them, these parties have never been Lena’s favorite thing. Kara hopes to change that tonight.

“Well, then, Supergirl. Seems like you need one final touch before you and I are camera ready.” Kara falters, then glances down at herself. Did she forget to clean the suit? Is there toothpaste still on the corner of her mouth?

Glancing down at Lena, Kara drops her mask for just a moment, a quick, unspoken question to make sure she didn’t forget something. Lena’s hand darts out just for a moment, wrapping around Kara’s wrist and calming her momentary panic with a brilliant smile. “Here,” she says, pulling out what she’s been hiding behind her back this whole time. “This will work well with the colors of your suit – and it will bring out your eyes.”

Kara recognizes the flower that Lena holds up from the gardens Eliza used to take her as a child. A red tulip, wrapped delicately in a baby-blue colored ribbon. “It’s lovely,” she answers as Supergirl, voice steady, but the look she gives Lena is not meant for anyone but the other woman. “I’m flattered.”

“It’ll need to be pinned to your chest,” Lena adds, already raising her eyebrow in a silent offer. “I can find you a mirror, or-”

“Would you do it for me?” Kara asks, deciding that it’s time to take some control back in this conversation – and knowing that this gesture is the best way to even the playing field. “No worries about poking me. It’ll take more than a needle for that.”

“All the same, I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re in safe hands, Supergirl.”

Stepping forwards, Lena purses her lips, placing the flower center-left on Kara’s chest. She fights the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl, a sudden bout of happiness bubbling out of her as she tries her best to remain steady. They could be going to a dance, the two of them, and in another lifetime, maybe this is what they do for every gala and public appearance. Maybe Kara is the only person in that other life that ever gets to see Lena like this, the tip of her tongue poking through her teeth as she pokes through the fabric of the suit, pinning it in place.

She can’t help but seize the moment, the one time in a while that Lena will be this close. Low enough to make sure that no onlookers can hear, Kara rumbles out, “You look incredible, Lena.”

As soon as she says it, she can picture James making his way over to the other woman later in the evening, no doubt dressed in his finest suit and making a dashing equal to the striking figure that Lena will make in the crowd. It’s going to be… perfect – and Kara’s throat closes around that certainty.

The other woman is blushing as she pulls away, brushing a bit of imaginary lint from Kara’s cape as she gives her one last once-over. “I’d say the same thing about you,” she says, some of Kara’s previous giddiness echoing in her bright eyes. “Shall we?”

The rest of the world awaits right down that hall and around the corner. While Kara still dreads the end of the night, knows that it’ll be one of the more difficult things in her life to get through and get over, she can do this. For Lena, this part she can do with ease.

She extends her elbow, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “Right this way, Miss Luthor.”

Lena gives her a positively divine smile and threads her arm through the crook of her arm, squeezing Kara’s bicep in the process. The rush of confidence and adrenaline that Kara gets from something as simple as a passing touch should be illegal.

Yeah. For Lena, there isn’t anything that Kara wouldn’t do.

…

Once the flashes from the cameras and the clamor of the crowd fades from Kara’s head, she finds that the evening goes by much too quickly for her liking.

The red carpet moves by in a flash, Lena not letting go of her tight grip on her arm until the last wolf whistle subsides and Kara scares off a particularly leering paparazzo with just a flash of her glowing red eyes. Even if she’s annoyed by it, Kara isn’t surprised by the reaction of the onlookers. Lena is truly dressed to kill with hair and makeup to match, and if she wasn’t so busy trying not to trip over her cape, Kara thinks that even Supergirl would have had a dopey look staring down at her.

Once Lena is safely deposited inside to meet the rest of her welcoming committee, Kara excuses herself with one last lingering look at the other woman, where she could have sworn she could see Jess roll her eyes out of the corner of her eye.

It takes half a second to change into her own dress for the evening and jog back around the corner to meet her friends, holding her hands up and laughing as if they hadn’t just watched her make the first grand entrance of the night. Nia gets her promised group photo at the foot of the stairs, J’onn ruffles her hair and congratulates her on giving the press something new to talk about, and Alex wraps an arm around her shoulder immediately, already sensing that eventually, she will have to comfort Kara tonight.

“Good?” her sister asks as they wander over to their table. James and Brainy are already there, and James gives Kara a nervous sort of stare and a little wave, reminding her forcibly of the plan that she’s supposed to be actively ensuring goes off without a hitch.

“Fine,” she mutters to Alex, still glancing over at James.

Jerking her head to the side, Kara shoots him what she hopes is an encouraging look. “Ready?” she mouths, and he stoops down, picking up the very pretty bouquet he’d placed on the ground and holding it up for inspection.

Everyone else at the table gives James a look that ranges from innocent confusion to something downright sour, in Nia’s case – and Kara realizes that Alex must not have revealed anything to the others.

“You didn’t- um, who exactly did you-?” she starts, and luckily, her sister knows exactly what she’s talking about.

She scoots her chair closer to Kara’s so there’s no need to whisper so obviously. “I haven’t said a word.” She throws her arm around the back of Kara’s chair, shielding her from the rest of the partygoers. “Though, you should know – Kelly figured it out a long time ago, and Nia’s basically on the same page, even if she doesn’t know the full story. Same with Brainy, I’d imagine. J’onn as well.”

“So… pretty much everybody, then,” she breathes out, adjusting her glasses.

“No one but us, Kelly, and Nia know about what James is going to do tonight,” Alex says. “I thought that would be for the best. No need to make you answer questions you’re sick of hearing.”

Not for the first time, Kara wonders where she would be without a sister like Alex at her side. “Thank you.”

“I want you to have a good time tonight, okay? No matter what happens. We all love each other, and it’s not often that we get to celebrate like this. Have some fun, please, for me?”

It’s hard to say no to a request like that, and so Kara throws on her most convincing smile she’s got available now. “Get some food in me and I’m going to show this table the time of its life,” she promises.

And so the night carries on, flashing by through bites of delicious food and glasses of wine and song after song played by the energetic orchestra. Kara laughs and laughs, pulls her sister out to the dance floor and then Nia and Brainy, all of them working together to get the rest of the table out of their seats as well. It certainly isn’t hard to have fun during a night as magical as this, after all. They dance off to the side of the main group of bigwigs and senators, Nia taking a million pictures and James scooping his sister up into a spinning waltz.

Between jokes and conversation changes and rounds of applause for the wonderful, lively music, Kara lets her eyes wander, allows herself to search the crowd for the person missing from their group. She’s already made a promise to herself to not seek Lena out until after the fact, to stay away from the impending moment between Lena and James, ready with a smile and a bottle of champagne when the news is delivered to her eventually. But there’s nothing wrong with looking, at least not right now, and so even as they all sit back down for another round of drinks, even as Nia tries and fails to sing along to some Sinatra instrumental that’s playing in her ear, Kara searches for Lena.

When she finds her, surrounded by nervous execs and suave socialites, Kara realizes that it might just be impossible not to fall in love with someone like Lena. Not just for her beauty, but because of the way she commands a room, can bring it to its feet with a sly bit of humor or down to its knees with one quirk of her lips. Even across the room, Kara smiles as Lena’s grin widens, as she laughs politely at something that some brave man got the guts to whisper in her ear. The only thing different about Lena now is her eyes. They’re missing their usual spark, the fire that keeps everyone on their toes, has the whole world holding their breath, waiting for her next move. Now they’re glazed and slightly dulled, pretty but controlled.

Will James be able to bring that proper spark out in her? It could be the delusion talking, but they’re always brighter when she’s around Kara.

She’s losing it, just a bit. She needs to get a handle on her blatant, lovesick puppy eyes before this all comes crashing down around her.

That’s hard to do when Kara’s trapped inside the wrong side of an hourglass. It feels a bit too much like counting down the ticks of the clock that she has left for Kara’s liking, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for James to stand up from their table at last and weave his way into the mingling crowd, off to find Lena and sweep her off her feet.

So, when James does slip away from their group, Kara follows him, needing one last moment of control over all of this.

Reaching up, she fixes his tie for him as James fiddles with the thick paper around the flowers. Roses, probably overly expensive, a little cliched – and exactly the sort of romantic gesture that Lena deserves.

“Kara,” James says softly, quiet and contemplative as Kara makes sure his suit is spotless. “Are you- are you sure this is what she wants? What everyone wants? What you want?”

“Is it what you want?” she asks back, fighting fire with fire. The last thing she needs right now is for James to bring her and her feelings into this.

“Well, sure- like I told you, I’m happy to give this another shot. I care for Lena, and if she’d like to, I-”

“That’s what matters, then,” she assures him, stepping back with a firm smile. It might have taken more of herself than she wants to admit, but she can guarantee it’s a genuine smile, even an encouraging one. “Everyone deserves a shot at something like this, James. If you’re both happy, then all of us are. Besides, you’re not going to chicken out on my plan now, are you? Don’t endanger my matchmaking abilities now.”

James hums out a chuckle, Kara’s humor curing him of whatever doubts he still had. “You’re the boss,” he says, and something settles in her chest. If she can just keep reminding herself that this is her plan, and it’s what Lena wants, what she told her, Kara will be fine. She’ll be good and behaved and will be as happy as anyone else for this to go right. “Well, wish me luck!”

Plan or no plan, Kara’s stomach twists into something terrible and wounded. “You won’t need it,” she manages to get out, clapping him on the shoulder and spinning him around.

With one last grin, James strides off to go change everything forever, and Kara lets him go.

Not even Alex has a good enough poker face to hide her disappointment when Kara returns to the table without James.

Disappointment or pity or whatever the case, her conflicted feelings on the matter don’t stop Alex from reaching out and holding Kara’s hand under the table, however.

That’s how they spend the next few songs, Alex making enough small talk for the both of them while Kara sits cold and clammy in her seat. Nia and Kelly are staring at each other and at her in equal parts, and at some point along the way, J’onn has placed a steadying hand on her shoulder after sensing the waves of tension wafting off her.

It’s not enough. The support from her friends and family, physical or otherwise, is nowhere near enough to prevent Kara’s heart from beating through her chest. She wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to fly off to another continent until it’s all said and done, but Kara doesn’t do any of that. Instead, she waits.

She sits there with a sickly smile pasted on her face, Kara counts the beats of her panicked heart and waits -- waits for Brainy to make another joke, waits for the violins to start on their next melody, waits for James to return to the table with a self-satisfied, beaming smile and confirmation of Kara’s permanent heart break, waits for the world to end despite what Alex might have promised her, waits—

Someone clears their throat behind her, and as Kara spins in her seat, she finds something unexpected – something she hadn’t thought to wait for.

Lena is here. Lena is here alone, with James nowhere in sight and away from her gaggle of assistants and admirers that had followed her around all night. Lena is here, and she looks… well, Kara can’t really read what’s dancing across the other woman’s face, but she knows for a fact that it’s not the expression she expected to find on the face of a person who should have just revealed and reciprocated a confession of love.

Kara had expected a beaming, spectacular vision. Instead, Lena just looks downright lost.

Whatever appearances that the rest of the table have tried to keep up tonight are extinguished immediately, leaving their friends completely silent and downright captivated by whatever interaction is about to happen. Kara should have known better than to assume that any of them would continue to play dumb, not when they’re all essentially in on her dirty little secret and seem horrifically invested in the outcome.

Trying to act like she hasn’t just seen a ghost, Kara swallows hard, struggles to treat water. “Lena, wha- what- er, I mean, how-”

Alex rescues her, her grip on Kara’s hand tightening in a silent command. Take a breath, she says with a flash of her eyes before leveling an easy, fond grin in Lena’s direction.

“There you are,” her sister banters. “I was beginning to worry that some investor was trying to wine and dine you into signing over the company you just got back.”

It’s not a good sign that Lena’s eyes don’t leave Kara’s face for one second. It’s an even worse one that she doesn’t even bother to return Alex’s greeting. “Kara, I-”

Kind and perceptive as she is, it’s Kelly’s turn to try and intervene. “Lena, come sit down, she offers, pulling out the empty chair left by James. Where in Rao’s name is he?! Kara asks herself, needing to know what happened to make Lena look like this, as gorgeous as confusion does look on her. “I’d imagine you’ve had an eventful night. Take a minute and have a drink with us.”

If alarm bells weren’t going off before, it’s hurricane season now in Kara’s ears when Lena brushes off Kelly’s gesture as well, still boring holes into Kara’s wide eyes. “I need to speak with you,” Lena tells her, not bothering to address anyone at the table but her.

Despite the noise coming from all around the ballroom, a pin could drop here and shatter all their eardrums.

“Me?” Kara asks, jamming her finger into her own sternum and wanting to throw up.

“Yes, you.”

“Right now?”

“Ideally. This can’t wait.”

There’s time enough for one last blisteringly stupid question, and Kara tackles the challenge with ease.

‘Uh, okay. You want-? Um, alone?”

“Please,” Lena rushes out, and dread or not, nothing is stopping Kara from helping the other woman who looks a little bit desperate, now.

Giving Alex’s hand one last squeeze, Kara stands up silently, turning one last time to the group. She looks at the time, realizes how excruciatingly close to midnight they are. Lena is supposed to be having this moment with James, right now. Not her.

“I- if I don’t see you before the clock chimes… save me a verse of Auld Lang Syne,” she says, not knowing what to do beyond that. Lena’s already grabbed her wrist, and Kara is powerless against her current.

“We’ll save your spots. Both of you,” Alex says, staring Kara down. Her disappointment from before is gone, replaced by something that looks suspiciously like hope. Kara thinks of what her sister asked her to do earlier, her heart skipping at the thought. Give it a try, Alex seems to say as she hides a smile behind her glass of champagne. You matter too, Kara. I love you.

Without another word, Kara allows Lena to lead her away from their friends and out the door into the adjacent hallway.

While formerly crawling with cooks and waitstaff and cleaning crew, the hallway is deserted now, the only sound being the echoes of the music from the main space. Walking them to the middle, Lena stops and turns, leaning against a huge marble column and giving Kara a piercing stare.

Remember your role, Kara reminds herself. This is her night. Her moment. Her story.

Fixing a gentle, curious smile on her face, she takes the plunge, knowing there’s no power of flight to save her from this fall. “Hey, you,” she says softly. “What’s going on?”

“James was at my table just now,” Lena starts, then stops, seemingly unsure of how to begin. “With flowers.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kara asks, fiddling with her glasses. “Interesting.”

As she forces what she hopes comes across as a barely hidden, gleeful smirk on her face, Lena shakes her head. “Yes, it- it was interesting, in fact.”

“And… did he have a reason for the roses?” Kara prods.

“He, well- he pulled me aside to tell me that-” Lena stops, head on a swivel. “Hold on. How did you know they were roses?”

Caught in a trap, Kara stalls for time. “Well, roses are a pretty… common flower, I guess? That’s what I’d expect him to get if he intended to ask you to-”

This time, it’s Kara stopping herself, knowing she’s just revealed way too much in her attempt to play at this hypothetical. Lena catches on immediately, grabbing Kara’s arm and yanking her closer to the column.

“How did you know that he-?” Letting out a breath, Lena continues. “Kara, what on earth is going on?”

Knowing that she’s beat, Kara lets it happen, tries to find the positives in this. At least now she can play the role of the guilty, meddling best friend, caught trying to pry into Lena’s love life, but nothing worse than that. This one little secret can be released back into the pond if it means she gets to hold tight to her bigger catches.

“Well, I… I may have given James some… instructions, of sorts.”

“So, you’re telling me that you’re the reason why a very confused James Olsen escorted me to my table tonight with flowers?”

“Well, it was supposed to be a surprise… but yes!” Kara says, gritting out the excited, cheerful sentiment with a dry mouth and a sick feeling deep in her stomach. Lena doesn’t know how much it killed Kara to ask James to do this, and she can’t ever know. Not when she has a chance to regain something good with James – the one she’s in love with, Kara keeps reminding herself. Not her. It’s never been her. “I visited him before the gala and talked him into asking you out to dinner, for old time’s sake. You did say yes, didn’t you?”

Lena pauses, her eyes narrowing and a muscle in her jaw bouncing, just for a moment. She looks almost frustrated, like she’s on the verge of solving a problem that’s been consuming her, scratching a long-awaited itch. Even through the haze of her own self-enforced happiness Kara gets the sense that Lena might not like the breakthrough she’s trying to make.

“I- yes, I did. James is a close friend, after all, and I wasn’t about to turn him away when he seemed so… determined about it.” Kara leans forward despite wanting to die just a little bit, and Lena stops again. They listen to the faint notes of the music wafting in from the door left ajar leading back to the party, and Lena’s brow is so furrowed that Kara is concerned that she’ll give herself a migraine. “But what-” Huffing out a breath, Lena’s frown deepens. “Why do I get the feeling that I don’t have the full picture here?”

“What do you mean?” Kara asks, playing dumb with every fiber of her being. She almost wishes the orchestra in the back would play louder, just so Lena couldn’t take the intimacy the silence afforded her to scrutinize the way Kara’s voice is rising and falling so rapidly.

Lena is much too close for comfort right now, and Kara is too weak and maybe even a little too foolish to bring herself to move away, no matter the emotional cover it would buy her. She can’t be too mad at herself though, not when Lena is still wearing that sleek, elegant dress and her eyeliner makes her eyes brilliantly emerald green and she’s still wearing that jasmine perfume that Kara had bought her for her birthday.

“You- the way you’re acting-” Lena stops, and takes another deep, methodical breath in. A steadying action, like maybe Lena is as jagged as Kara feels. “You’re acting terribly strange. No, worse than that. I- Kara, I’ve never seen you like this.”

Despite her attempt to regain control of the situation, Lena still waves her hand in a sweeping, frantic gesture in Kara’s general direction, who isn’t so obtuse as to ignore the fact that she is acting strange. Not that she’ll admit to it of course. She needs Lena to believe that nothing is wrong; she needs her to believe wholeheartedly that Kara is over the moon for her best friend getting back with her ex, and that the only strangeness is the fact that Kara just can’t wait to hear all about how happy Lena is to have him back.

Anything otherwise would be far too painful for them both.

“Well, you know what they say about aliens and their oddities!” When Kara laughs, it’s high-pitched and strained and admittedly hysterical, and Lena doesn’t miss any of its nuances. “But I don’t know what you mean! I’m just so excited to hear about where and when the big date is going to be!”

“Hold on a second,” Lena says, holding up a hand. Her eyes go wide and Kara reels back this time, because Lena looks paler than she usually does, and she’s worried the other woman might stumble forwards in shock. “Date?”

Now it’s Kara’s turn to falter, Lena’s shocked tone enough to make her stomach drop down further than it already has. “Oh no,” she mutters, horrified. “James did tell you it’s a date, didn’t he? I told him specifically to make it clear that his intentions were romantic-”

“That was supposed to be… Kara, why on earth would you ever plan out a date between James and I?”

“Why wouldn’t I? That’s what friends are for!” Kara expels, and it’s the most forceful she’s ever said those words. Lena practically coils up, blinking rapidly and looking as lost Kara’s ever seen her.

“What, you needed a double date partner for you and William?” Lena asks with a shaking voice, the words sounding almost like an accusation, and despite Kara’s frenzy everything grinds to a halt. What gives way in the brutal silence is pure, almost blissful confusion. In a funny way, Kara misses being clueless about the affairs of her heart. “Because trust me, you’ll want to find better company to share than with me and whoever I-”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait… what are you talking about?” Kara says, the limelight now directed firmly back on Lena.

The other woman blinks. “What?”

“You think I’m with William?”

“You’re… not with…?”

Though her voice seems to crumble midway through the sentence, her insinuation is clear. Kara’s mouth gapes open. “William? Absolutely not. I would never- he is a friend and nothing more. No offense to him, of course, but- but oh, Rao, not in a million years… he’s my coworker! My story partner! My- my proofreader! I mean he’s not even here tonight! Seriously, why would you think that-?”

Lena sputters, her expression an alien one against her normally composed composition. “Because you- that one night you said- you made it seem like- God! You were talking about what it was like to fall in love, and you’ve been acting so differently lately, spending so much time with him with the article and the holidays and everything else and after what Nia said I- I just assumed… but Kara, if it wasn’t about William, then who were you talking about?”

Her eyes dart back up to meet Kara’s, who feels her cheeks burn red. She knows now full well who she was thinking of when she started asking everyone those leading questions, but Lena doesn’t. Lena can’t know. Kara won’t allow it, not when she could be so happy with James. Not when Kara can’t shake the feeling that she’s on borrowed time.

At the very least, Lena shouldn’t be alone.

She looks away, unable to handle the searching blaze of Lena’s eyes, nowhere near done asking questions. “Oh. Well, I can see why you thought that, but no. That- that wasn’t about him. I can’t… please. This isn’t about me! Come on, I want to hear about how things went with James.”

Kara trails off, suddenly realizing how close she is towards hurtling off the edge and right into the truth. It seems like they’re both skirting around something huge dawning on them, but while Lena seems to be reaching out into the dark to find it, Kara fights to keep herself pressed up to the edge.

Lena takes a moment just to study Kara, both breathing heavily. Kara hadn’t noticed how strained they were until now, when she continues to avoid Lena’s eyes and instead traces the tendons pressing hard against the delicate skin of the other woman’s neck. Lena, despite everything, is still trying hard to meet her eyes, and it makes Kara want to burst into tears. It’s getting harder and harder to pretend like this isn’t cutting her all the way down to the bone.

When she gathers herself up to speak, Lena’s voice is quiet, but held together by a deadly sort of precision over her pronunciation. Despite leading the charge, Lena seems to be fighting her own instincts as if by habit.

“You asked him to do this. Do you really believe that there’s something between James and I that’s still worth pursuing?”

It’s a loaded question and Kara knows it, her heart squeezing hard around the empty space where Lena is leaving things unsaid as always.

“I just want you to be happy, Lena,” she croaks out, hating that the mere thought of that happiness coming from someone like James and not someone like her brings tears to her eyes. Lena notices, eyes wide and concerned, and Kara shuts her eyes tight. “After that night when you were talking about missing your chance… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how awful that is. I know what you told me, but it isn’t too late to tell him how you feel. It’s never too late. Anyone would be a fool to let someone like you slip away from them again.”

As she dares it and opens her eyes again, she sees that Lena’s are dark and her lips are slightly parted, her breath halting. The look on her face alone is nearly enough to make Kara sink down to the cold marble floor.

“Tell him what, Kara?” she asks, searching, and Kara glances away once again, her throat tight. She won’t let Lena see her cry. Not about this.

It’s her own fault she realized too late. Her fault that she didn’t act sooner, and her fault that she’s still too cowardly to take the leap even now. It’s her own grave that she’s dug, and Kara has no intention of tossing any more dirt aside to make space for Lena.

“Tell him that he’s the old friend you told me about. Tell him that you’ve always been in love with him, and that you still are. You are, aren’t you?”

Lena’s lips open wider, and in that moment, Kara sees something finally click. Whether its days or weeks or years in the making, she watches as Lena’s face smooths out completely, and she draws in a deep breath and closes her eyes just for a moment. When she opens them, there’s an uninhibited intensity that Kara has only seen flickers of before.

“You’re wrong,” she whispers, and her eyes are like an unkempt fire now. Her gaze locks with Kara, and this time, she can’t bring herself to look away. “I’m not in love with him. Not with James.”

This is one of the tensions always shared so fleetingly between them. The look that always carries with it its own kind of pull, a center of gravity that exists just long enough to send Kara leaning in before it breaks. Normally, she’s left stumbling, but it goes nowhere this time, and it’s like the ground comes up too quickly for her to course correct. The flame in Lena’s eyes does not get snuffed out, and Kara doesn’t bite down hard on her tongue. And she’s terrified – of what this means, of where this is headed, of the way Lena looks ready to burn it all down, of why she herself no longer feels compelled to look away either – but maybe that’s the whole point. Call it blind faith, or idiocy, or something else entirely, but for the first time ever, the fever doesn’t break. Kara refuses to allow it to.

Lena seems to feel the same way about the spell being shared between them. Her lips are still parted, her eyes wild and bright and so, so green, and Lena drops the flowers James had given her on the floor as if they’re an afterthought. Whatever event horizon they are drawing near to, Kara knows in her heart they are both willing passengers. That understanding between them sends another bolt of electricity down her spine.

“If it isn’t James, then…” she heaves in a breath, finding herself physically unable to look away from the woman making her way slowly over to where she’s braced herself against the column. “Lena, I don’t understand. You told me you were in love with someone.”

“That’s right,” Lena whispers. “I am.”

“And you said that- you said it was an old friend.” Kara rattles out a breath. Lena is close enough now that Kara watches the disturbed air move through the wisps of Lena’s hair that have escaped her delicate updo. “Someone dear to you.”

“Yes, they are. More than anything else in the world.”

“It’s just, I-” Kara finds herself unable to say another syllable until Lena stops looking at her like that – and for the first time, she thinks she understands what it means. It should be impossible – it certainly feels that way – what Kara is allowing herself to entertain. The thought that Lena… that maybe, just maybe, she feels… could she? Could she actually-? “You- you never told me who it was.”

“Until a few moments ago, I’d hoped I’d never have to. But I’ve learned some things tonight, too. I think I finally understand things clearly, and it doesn’t seem so devastating now, the thought of telling the truth.”

“It doesn’t?” Kara asks, but she thinks she knows the feeling.

“Not at all,” Lena admits, and for the first time, Kara glances down and sees the way she wrings her hands together. “Though that doesn’t make it any less frightening.”

Kara, despite the churning in her stomach and the hammering in her ribcage, tries to meet Lena halfway. “I’m in love with someone too,” she gasps out, and Lena shudders. Goosebumps break out up and down Kara’s spine. Somewhere far away, in another time and place for all Kara cares, the violins build to a crescendo. Rao, she hadn’t thought it would feel like this. “It took me way too long to realize, but I do, and I don’t think I can hide from it any longer. And- and when you feel the way I feel, you need to tell the truth. You need to say the things you should have said all along.”

The music stops, cresting high right on the peak of something massive, and Kara can focus on nothing but their shared breaths and the way her hands are shaking, and Lena’s chest is heaving. She never thought her life could narrow down to one moment – to one person – like this, but it’s undeniable. For all she knows, all Kara will ever be for the rest of her life is this person ready to fall at the feet of this beautiful woman. It wouldn’t be such a terrible fate, she thinks, for this moment to never end.

“Kara,” Lena says, and it’s impossible to quantify the amount of emotion that Kara feels just from the soft and trembling and heated way Lena says her name. “If you have anything to tell me, it had better be tonight. If you’re ever going to, do it now. I can’t stand it any longer, all of this wondering. Please.”

And this — this is something that Kara realizes she’s finally ready to do. For Lena, she can.

Kara opens her mouth, smiles, and for a moment, the words weightless and free on her tongue, and it really does feel like she’s flying. But her brain belatedly registers a flash of light, a rush of heat, and a terrible, roaring bang, and before she can react, the room explodes around them.

Chapter Text

When she comes to, her ears are ringing. The room is eerily quiet and as if in a vacuum, with enough destruction that Kara can no longer tell up from down. Feeling groggy and slow and disoriented, Kara lifts a sluggish hand up to her temple and inspects it. Her heart drops dully in her chest when, through blurry vision, she sees the smear of crimson red across her knuckles, feeling more of it trickle down her cheek. There’s a haze of green in the air, an emerald glow casting her agonizing movements across the rubble like a macabre frieze. As if through a trance being slowly lifted, more and more of the pain begins to sink into her bones, and as her brain sends frenzied, panicked signals ricocheting up and down her nervous system, Kara gradually concludes that this isn’t good. Not at all.

As her own dire situation sinks in and Kara takes in a wheezing breath, trying to remember what happened, her heart stops. Her own pain forgotten, Kara can only focus on one, terrifying question.

Where’s Lena?

As she tries to dig herself out of the rubble, Kara curses herself for many things. For not reacting quick enough, for not stopping whatever just happened before it even occurred, for not thinking of Lena sooner. She’d wasted valuable time wandering back to full consciousness. Rao only knows how long she’d been out: seconds, minutes, hours? She has lost all sense of time and space around her, and the fact that Lena is nowhere to be seen through the dust and the grime is only making matters worse.

“Lena?” she cries out, fingers still digging desperately into the rock collapsed across her legs, trying to find a solid hold. Her muscles are straining, and sweat has begun pooling down her back and though Kara can’t see through the obstruction, the pain pulsing up and down her legs tells her that whatever she finds will not improve her mood. Her powers are flickering out, slowly but surely, and Kara finds herself in a situation she’s completely unfamiliar with. “Lena? Where are you?”

“Lena!” she pants out once more, her voice sounding foreign to her ears. It’s feeble and scrambling, and the image of a rat caught in a trap is conjured up in her mind. She needs to find her, and fast. Gritting her teeth together, she prepares herself for one huge heave. With a yell, she lifts as hard as she can, muscles screaming in protest and her vision getting fuzzy.

The rubble barely moves an inch.

Kara has never been so helpless, and she stares down at her crumpled, trapped body with tears of disbelief in her eyes, completely dumbfounded. If she can’t even get herself out from under these stupid rocks, how is she supposed to help Lena? How is she supposed to go find the rest of her friends and family who were scattered across the building? She forces her mind away from thoughts of Alex, or Kelly, or anyone else caught in the blast; any allowance causes panic to scratch inside her chest. This was supposed to be a night of peace. Of celebration. For a moment, Kara thinks it could have turned into one of the most important nights of her life. Her confession had been right there on her lips, and she knows that if she had said it, that would have been it. She would have been Lena’s forever, and that seed that had been so steadily growing would have blossomed fully. Whether or not Lena would have decided to root it out was irrelevant; in that moment, Kara had never felt so brave.

She doesn’t feel that way now.

Tears begin to trickle down her face fully now, and Kara resents herself for the fact that she can barely wipe them away. Some prize she’ll be for whoever inevitably comes to find her. Kara knows in her heart who did this; the dream and the darkness that she’s spent the last few months pushing desperately out of her mind returns now in full force, a broken, shattered dam of her resistance. They’ll be here soon. Whether she sees faceless CADMUS goons, the ones she’d let slip through the cracks, come trotting down the hallway in full tactical gear or the sneering face of Lex himself, Kara knows she doesn’t have much time. And however bad this is right now, however grim, no matter how pained she feels, Kara also knows that this will likely be her last moment of respite before things truly begin.

“Lena!” she tries again, her voice falling out from under her.

No. It can’t end like this. Kara squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. She digs her hands into the marble again, fingers white and tendons stretched cruelly across the smooth surface trying to find places to hold onto that simply aren’t there; Kara doesn’t care about the damage to her body so long as she can get a better grip. She’s rasping for air now, feeling adrenaline ramp up in her muscles again. If not for herself, then Kara needs to get out for the others. For her sister, and for the woman that, for all she knows, could be dead and twisted somewhere beneath her. The thought alone causes her heart to wrench, and she seizes the moment of absolute fear and throws her entire weight against the rubble.

By some miracle, this time, it moves.

She can’t lift it; Rao knows she’s barely strong enough to simply slide it off her legs. Kara grits her teeth and groans as it moves inch by painstaking inch, leaving a deep, bloody gash in its path. She can feel its rough edges tearing into her skin, can feel every millisecond that goes by, but she continues onwards towards the end even as her eyes roll back into her head. Then, she makes a mistake. Call it impatience, or fear, or a lack of restraint brought on by mind-numbing pain, but she’s careless as she shoves it towards the ground. The weight of the marble shifts, falling with full force onto her defenseless feet, and she screams. There’s a terrible sound as she scrambles to get it off her ankles, and as white-hot pain shoots sparks up her left leg, Kara blacks out.

When she returns to consciousness, Kara thinks she’s dreaming. There’s a face coming into blurred focus in front of her, and disembodied hands that swim and dive in and out of frame, shoveling what’s left of the debris off her as if it were made of sand. Her breathing quickens as a piece is rolled haphazardly from her chest; the sudden return of air to her lungs is too much and her heads lolls back to where it had been.

But the hands are there instead of the cold, unforgiving rubble, and they firmly grab the base of Kara’s neck, preventing her from crawling back to the bleak comfort of the blackness. She blinks hard amidst the dust, and the figure finally comes fully into view, hovering over her prone form and never once letting her go.

Oh, thank Rao, Kara thinks to herself, letting out a gasping breath. Her shoulders drop, and for a moment, things don’t seem quite so dire. Lena.

Lena is saying something – speaking a mile a minute, from the looks of it – but it all falls onto deaf, ringing, ears. Unable to hear, or move, or even think much past the unbearable pain in her legs, Kara just stares. Her hands grope clumsily in the darkness and finally find holds against the other woman’s cheeks, her only anchor to the real world.

There are wet tear streaks racing each other down the planes of Lena’s face all the way to her collarbone, carving clean divots against the filth and the dirt. There’s a gash across her forearm that Kara knows Lena will need stitches for as soon as possible. Her dress is torn, and her bun is nothing more than a pile of tangles and plaster, but as Kara’s eyes continue to roam up and down, she doesn’t see anything else that causes alarm. By some miracle, Lena escaped the blast unscathed, for the most part, and Kara can hardly believe her luck.

Had she found Lena somewhere else in the wreckage, dead and motionless – well, Kara isn’t sure she would have found the strength to keep going. No, there by Lena’s body she would have remained, welcoming whatever fate would have come with it.

But Lena is here, and she’s alive, and she’s intact, for the most part. For now, that’s all Kara needs to know.

“Lena,” she whispers, her eyes drifting shut again.

Once again, firm hands shake her back to consciousness. As the ringing starts to slowly fade out and usher in a deep soreness, Kara swallows hard. The pressure in her ears shifts, easing just a bit, and finally Lena’s voice reaches her as if through water.

“-Need to stay awake, Kara. Can you do that for me?” Lena asks, the sound taking hold of all her senses, and Kara nods her head numbly. She can feel the cool tendrils of shock coax their way around her limbs, sneaking headily into her arteries and veins. To remain blunt about the state she’s in, Kara knows it isn’t often she gets injured like this – knows that because of her invulnerability that she normally uses as a crutch, she is neither physically nor psychologically prepared to ward off any of the coming aftereffects of her wounds. To give into the shock now seems as easy and as tempting as taking in a deep breath of fresh air, and she fights hard against giving into the urge.

“I’ll try,” she says, her voice slurred and syrupy in her mouth. It tastes like blood and it’s so sweet, and yet Kara wonders why her tongue feels like it’s made of cotton. Suddenly repulsed, she coughs, the blood spurting out of her mouth and catching on her lips and chin.

Lena grows even paler than before as the reality of the situation seems to finally sink in.

“Oh, God, Kara,” she cries out, all her fear and her pain and her horror condensed into three powerful words. They land on Kara’s body like blows, and she flinches away from them. Lena turns her head, peering desperately into the empty mausoleum of the hallway. “Help! Please, help us!” she screams to no one in particular.

As if observing from a distance, Kara understands that she is the reason Lena looks so gaunt and close to fainting. That this isn’t a scene that any person is prepared to stumble upon, least of all Lena, who is so used to seeing Kara tall and sure and solid, not weak and broken with blood coating the gaps of her bright white teeth. It must be ghastly, looking at her like this, and Kara feels shame bubble up in her throat before she can control it.

“I’m sorry,” she babbles, feeling pathetic as soon as the words leave her mouth. What she has to apologize for, Kara doesn’t know. There are many things to atone for when it comes to Lena, and Kara doesn’t have it in her to say anything else.

Lena lets out a gasping, wheezing laugh, lowering her forehead to Kara’s, and wiping the corner of Kara’s mouth. “How did I know you were going to say something stupid like that?” she asks. The blood remains as an aftertaste, and Lena remains as a ghost, one that Kara can’t believe is in front of her.

Still, she can feel the coolness of Lena’s face pressed against her own even through her rising fever, and the touch of her hand lingers like a bruise against her lips. Ghosts can’t touch, that much Kara knows, which must make Lena a miracle.

“I thought you were dead,” she confesses into the eerie stillness of the hall. “I couldn’t find you, couldn’t hear your heartbeat-” Kara’s voice breaks at the end, but she wills herself to keep going, needing assurance that the other woman isn’t a dream. “You were gone.”

Lena’s eyes close, a look of melancholy realization on her face. “You don’t remember, do you?” she asks, and at Kara’s wordless plea, she sighs. “You saved me, Kara. Like always.”

Kara squints in the grime, the blankness of her memory infuriating and terrifying. “What are you talking about?” she asks. “Look at me. I didn’t save anyone.”

Her voice breaks again, and Lena just shakes her head, tears in her eyes.

“You pushed me out of the way, darling. I don’t know how you did it, but you did, all the way down the hall.”

The hall is a massive space, and Kara does the math in her head. To get Lena out of the way that quickly and that far… She pitches forward, stopped easily in her tracks by the other woman. “I hurt you?” she asks, voice keening.

“Kara.” Lena lets out another disbelieving scoff. “You saved me, do you understand? I was standing where you- you took my place. I would be dead if it weren’t for you.”

For the first time since the explosion, Kara allows her muscles to relax, just a bit. Lena is alive, and safe, and unhurt. That’s more than she’d dared to hope for, but the evidence is right before her eyes and carefully threading her hands through Kara’s hair.

“I- I’m glad, then,” she murmurs, eyes closing once more. And just as she’d done before, Lena is there again, seizing ahold of Kara’s head and refusing to let her drop it back down to the rubble.

“Kara- Kara, stop,” Lena tries, but it’s no use. Now that she knows the other woman is alright, Kara is well on her way to peaceful oblivion – until they hear the gunfire.

It’s a distant roar, but it’s unmistakable, and Kara shoots back upwards, senses enhanced by a new surge of fear-soaked adrenaline and whatever is left of her powers. If she listens close, she thinks she can hear faint screams, the gala long since devolving into chaos and bloodshed.

Her head turns back towards Lena, who heard it as well. She’s holding Kara’s hand so tightly her knuckles are turning white, and she can’t stop looking at the bloody and mangled mess of Kara’s body. “Where’s Alex?” Kara asks, voice sharp. Lena exhales sharply and meets her eyes.

“I- I don’t know. I’m so sorry,” she says, and Kara doesn’t like what her trembling voice is hinting at. Not at all. “The blast hit in the middle of the ballroom and here. I didn’t check to see if… I had to find you first. Make sure you were- that you were okay. But… Kara, I don’t think you’re okay.”

Lena begins to cry now, silent, clearly trying to remain strong, and Kara’s heart breaks for her. She never meant Lena to see anything like this. Kara had always thought, when this day came, that she would at least be able to face it away from the eyes of her loved ones.

Strange as it sounds, Kara had always hoped that, if she were to ever get this hurt – if she were ever killed by one of her enemies – that she would do it alone. She remembers watching Krypton explode. She imagined the way her parents’ bodies ripped apart for over a decade. Kara wanted to spare her own family the agony of witnessing anything even remotely similar.

She wonders if Lena even recognizes her from beneath all the grime and the gore. If she remembers the moment they’d shared before everything went to hell.

If nothing else, Kara prays that Lena will remember her as she was in that moment, not in this one. This one belongs to a ghost story, and that’s not what she wants to leave her with.

Even as her super-hearing slowly gives way to the incessant roar in her ears, Kara can still hear the boots slamming hard against the floor somewhere in the distance, getting closer and closer to their target. She thinks of the muffled gunfire they heard, heavy enough to disturb what was left of the glittering chandeliers still hanging from the ceiling of the hallway, and worse than that, the screams. She knows Lena won’t be spared if she tries to interfere. This isn’t a game anymore; Lex is done sulking from the shadows, waiting for them to make a move, and she knows with absolute certainty that these men, the blunt, merciless instruments that they are, care very little about incidental damage. They won’t think twice about whose body it is thrown in front of Kara’s in protection. And the thought of that happening – of Lena, cut down without remorse, of her body slumping unmoving to the floor, eyes unseeing and her strings torn off like a puppet’s – it is far too much for Kara to bear.

She looks down at her torn dress, her bloodied and battered body, and then her gaze meets Lena. The other woman is staring at the same thing with a trembling bottom lip and shaking, writhing hands. Lena ghosts them up and down Kara’s body, mind racing, but eventually, she must come to the same conclusion Kara has a long time ago: that this isn’t something anyone can fix, and that the worst is yet to come.

Lena lets out a nearly imperceptible whimper of horror, and Kara closes her eyes. Her decision is final. She won’t let Lena die senselessly for her, nor will she allow the other woman to watch what’s about to happen.

Reaching up with unsteady hands of her own, Kara carefully wraps her fingers around her shattered glasses, tugging them off with a sense of finality. They both watch as what’s left of Kara Danvers fades away and her suit materializes, shielding the worst of her injuries from prying eyes. But it doesn’t fool Lena; pallid, she watches as the blood spreads across the dark navy fabric, not caring which disguise Kara has thrown on.

Kara almost laughs at how different this moment is to the first time she ever changed in front of the other woman. That first time was a transformation in every sense of the word, and no matter what hurt Lena had been concealing, there was true wonder in her eyes.

This time around, Kara can’t help but feel she’s putting on her best for her funeral pyre.

“What are you doing?” Lena asks, hands suddenly frozen in place. “They’re- they’re looking for you. For Supergirl. We need to hide you, move you somewhere safe, or else-”

“Lena,” Kara says, and even she is surprised by its smoothness. It stops Lena in her tracks, transfixing her and slowing her down for just a moment. She wonders if Lena can also hear the resignation laced in her words. “I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you, and I need you to promise me that you’ll do what I ask.”

“Kara,” the other woman protests weakly, eyes on the suit’s proud and bright sigil. It damns her now as much as any mark of Judas ever could. “They’re coming.”

“Do you promise?” Kara demands, in a tone that she never uses on Lena. It’s urgent and it’s steeled and it’s more than a little frightening, the voice she reserves for when she needs to appear her most powerful. She’s never had to talk to Lena like this, and it’s impossible to maintain. Her voice strains and cracks on the next syllable. “Please, you need to promise me you’ll do what I say.”

Lena stares at her, face blank and eyes disbelieving. Kara suspects she’s going into shock. But she nods after what feels like an eternity, hands firmly back at her sides. “I promise,” she says, eyes still on the blood.

“You’re going to leave me now,” Kara says very carefully and with all the time she can spare. Lena’s gaze darts up to meet hers, aghast. “You’re going to stand up and you’re going to walk through those doors. You’re going to be careful, and remain hidden, and you’re not going to look back until you find help. Find Alex, or J’onn, or anyone who isn’t hurt themselves, and tell them what happened.”

“Kara,” Lena says lowly, already shaking her head. “I-”

“Tell them they need to find me, wherever I am, and they need to bring me home. Tell them I won’t last long,” she forces out, knowing that her honesty is only scaring Lena further. “You’re going to tell them that they need to stop Lex no matter the cost. You’ll need to work together, okay? I won’t be able to help you anymore.”

“No,” Lena says immediately, growing stiff as what Kara is implying sinks in fully. “You’re not going to- I won’t leave you then. I can protect you now. We can hide, we can try to-”

“You promised me,” Kara needles, voice cutting. “You need to go. They will kill you if they find you, do you understand that?”

“They’ll kill you!” Lena bites back, and even through fading vision Kara can see the tears in her eyes. “I won’t let that happen. I can’t let you…”

“Not right away,” Kara reasons, voice terse. “You know your brother. He’ll play with his food before he eats it. That’s more time than you’ll get if you stay and try to get in the way of these men. You are not bulletproof, okay? You can’t afford to do anything stupid.”

Lena’s eyes flare, and she juts her chin out. “I don’t care,” she says, irrational and stubborn and so, so determined to stay that she’s gone against her nature completely. “You’ll die before you ever even reach Lex. You’ve protected me all this time. I can save you, for once. Just this once, Kara. I have to.”

“No, you have to let me go,” Kara whispers, shoulders sagging. She struggles to get up, wanting to reach out, grab Lena’s hand, touch her face, anything, but instead she leans onto her side, a wave of dizziness threatening to derail everything. “I don’t want you to go either, okay? But it’s our best shot of making it out of here. It’s our only shot.”

“Kara,” Lena says again, halting. This time she’s the one who reaches out, hands gently holding Kara’s cheeks. She moves her thumb to wipe at something, and Kara realizes that she’s been crying too. “What if I go and- what if I never see you again?”

She wishes she had more time with her, to reach out and fall fully into Lena’s embrace, but she can’t. Kara can hear the men getting closer, picking leisurely through the destroyed hallways, and knows there’ll never be enough time like this with Lena.

“This is the only way,” Kara says insistently, but leaning into the touch all the same. Lena’s eyes screw tight, tears threatening to bowl her over. She’s trying to be strong, and Kara feels a fierce wave of emotion threatening to overtake her as well. “And who knows? Go now, and maybe you’ll be able to find someone in time. We can stop them here, and now. All we need is some backup, right?”

It’s a lie, a terrible, tragic lie, and Kara thanks Rao that Lena seems to accept it for what it is. She swallows hard and nods, and there’s a shift in her gaze. She’s going to do what Kara’s asking of her.

Selfishly, Kara feels her stomach drop at the realization. She doesn’t want to be alone.

“Okay,” Lena whispers, gathering the courage to rip herself away. Kara bites down on her tongue hard, refusing to let herself cry now. “Okay, I’ll go. But I’ll be right back, understand? Just… stay there— and promise me you’ll be alright. You’re going to be just fine, you hear me? We’re going to go home, together, and you and I can sit on the couch and watch movies for the rest of the night. Just… don’t go where I can’t follow.”

“I promise,” Kara chokes out. One last lie won’t hurt Lena any more than the others. “Sounds wonderful. Now go. Please, get out of here.”

“Alright,” Lena says, but she doesn’t move. She just stares at Kara like a shipwrecked sailor stares at seawater – grasping desperately for something that she can’t have.

Kara smiles amidst the tears and the dust. “Lena…” she prods gently, and the other woman shakes herself out of her reverie.

“Okay, I’m going,” she says, even softer. But there are more screams to be heard, closer this time, and this time when Lena clears her throat, she stands up. Kara keeps ahold of her hand for as long as she can, and she watches the other woman shudder as she draws back. Kara’s hand thuds motionlessly back onto the rubble. “You’ll be alright, Kara,” Lena says, swears it, and Kara’s heart clenches around the empty words. “I’ll make sure of it.”

She staggers away, weaving through the ruins with the hesitancy of someone unsure what they may find around the next corner. As she reaches the large double doors, hiding unseen carnage, Lena stops, and she turns around one last time to gaze at Kara, trapped beneath it all. Kara closes her eyes against its vulnerability, and thinks back to Lena just a few days ago, bags packed and lingering at her open front door, sending Kara a smile that was just as sad and uncertain as the one she gives her now. She’d left her favorite sweatshirt draped over the arm of the couch; does she know it’s there, Kara wonders? After all this ends, after she… Kara wonders if Lena will think to come back for it.

For a moment, she thinks back on the lighter moments of the evening, and the moment they had shared. Kara wonders if Lena had left it on purpose. She thinks of all the hours they had shared together, tucked away from it all, and how now, it feels like it could never be enough. How she’ll spend the rest of her life reaching and waiting, if she must, if only for a few moments more.

Kara hopes it had been on purpose.

With that, Lena is gone, disappeared into the smoke and the sound of the sirens somewhere outside. Kara is left with her wounds and her gaping mind, and once she is sure she is alone, she allows her breath to hitch, and then break down entirely.

It’s funny, how time works.

It’s funny how everything works now that Kara’s alone, glaring at her own impending doom in the face. And in the strangest confession of all, Kara can feel some weight slide off her shoulders, can feel her lungs loosen up and the familiar chords of adrenaline start to thrum in her bones. It’s a relief, she can’t help but think, giving into the destruction of her body and life she’d been fighting for so long to hold off. To fully accept what is about to happen, to grin at it with bloodied teeth, to feel more alive than ever even if that life will be ripped from her throat without ceremony.

For now, it is enough to be alive. It is enough to breathe in and out of broken ribs and feel sweat roll down her scarred skin. Kara is a tribute to survival, her impossible existence and her exodus from Krypton her holiest covenant. She embraces her odds, however slim, because who would she be if she didn’t? Why not lean into the certainty of death? Why not refuse to give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing a Supergirl who is ill-prepared for her own end? No. Kara has been waiting for this moment for a very long time, and now that it’s here, she has no plans to allow it to overtake her.

And so, as the seconds crawl by and her blood continues to pool around her body at a leisurely, gluttonous pace, Kara fights. Ignoring Lena’s pleas for her to stay still, to slow the blood loss, Kara hoists herself up from her makeshift grave and drags her body away towards a surviving section of wall. She knows she’ll leave a trail that will be easy to track, knows she’s no less of a sitting duck now than she would have been pinned in the middle of the hallway, but here at least she has the cover of shadow. Here, she’ll be able to see her assailants before they see her, and here – here, Kara knows she’ll have a better shot at fighting her way through them.

Her fortunes have changed drastically over the course of one night, and so Kara’s plans do as well. These men are going to have to crawl through the rubble and find her themselves, and if they do, they will have to drag her away kicking and screaming. She will do whatever she needs to if it buys herself even a sliver of extra time; it doesn’t matter who’ll she hurt, or how she does it, but those men should know that just because she has been knocked off her feet does not guarantee peace.

And if they do manage to find her and beat her back into submission, if they do manage to drag her out of here alive and with any of her wits about her— if they do end up bringing her to Lex, then Kara welcomes it, eagerly awaits it even. Because if Lex is to be the one to end her life, then Kara’s moral qualms go out the window.

If Lex really wants to know what it was like to have her as an enemy – as a true and committed one, with nothing left to lose and any miserable sense of mercy left in that rubble alongside her chances of survival – then that’s what he’ll get. He’d best prepare for something truly out of this world because Kara doesn’t plan on bringing many traces of humanity with her to this fight.

If Lex kills her, Kara vows to kill him first. Whatever she must do, no matter the consequences, she won’t allow him to remain with the rest of the world in his sights.

She won’t force the hand of someone else to carry the burden of what it means to take a life. Even if it casts her out of Rao’s light forever, Kara vows to herself that she will be the one to make the sacrifices in this play, no one else.

The boots are finally here, bulldozing their way through the hall. Kara waits. One of the men sees her at long last, his mouth dropping open in what Kara thinks may be wonder. She supposes it is not often that a man like him sees the spectacle of someone with the powers of a god brought crashing to the earth.

She grins, a terrible snarling clash of blood and bone. The man’s face twists into one of horror. Kara lunges before he can make a sound.

She doesn’t know how many of the men she takes down, time passing in flashes of their glinting, scared eyes and grunts of pain and useless gunfire. Kara thinks she’s too fast for the bullets, believes for a moment that she’s even faster than death, and delivers her punishment without hesitation. The men fly across the room, their skulls cracking against the marble. Kara suspects they’ll live all the same.

Even as they slowly begin to close in on her, even as she finally feels stray bullets make contact in her shoulder and legs and the electric crackle of their batons surging up and down her spine, Kara keeps the smile on her face. Let this be a lesson to these men who think themselves worthy enough to take her down. Let her friends eventually burst into this hall, far too late to save her but brave and willing to try all the same and see the final path of carnage that she left. Let them and everyone else in this city know that Supergirl did not go quietly – and that if she is to be killed, that it was not without an effort that shook the very foundations of the city.

As she is pinned to the ground and as she is slowly dragged down the hall, Kara prays that just this once, her cousin will arrive too late to perform any miracles. Kara prays that she will be able to do it first. No pomp and no circumstance, and no other lives ruined. Just her and Lex, going down together in their horrendous entanglement.

The fatigue is settling back in, as is the pain. Her head obscured in a heavy black hood, Kara lets herself go limp, allows the handful of men who aren’t still in agony on the floor carry her dead weight towards the exit. She needs to preserve as much of her strength as she can for what comes next. Kara can leave this warzone in peace, knowing that there is nothing else to be done.

But then, just as they reach the cool air of the open doors and the sound of an idling engine, Kara hears the screams.

They aren’t like the ones she heard earlier. These aren’t the pitched voices of the faceless masses she’d failed to protect in the ballroom. These are voices that she knows intimately well, voices she’s laughed and cried and fought side by side with. These belong to her friends and her family, and it’s a noise Kara had hoped she wouldn’t have to hear.

No mercy for her either, Kara supposes.

“NO!” comes Alex’s voice, as clear as if she were standing right next to her. There’s shuffling around Kara, and before she can brace herself, the gunfire starts again, her ears in agony. More shouting from the other side of the hall – Kara can hear Nia and Brainy, maybe even James – and they return fire. Kara listens to the familiar thrum of Nia’s powers and now there are blows being exchanged, more grunts and groans from the men left standing.

For a moment, Kara wonders if she should hope. From the sound of things, Alex and the others might even be winning. Surely Lex didn’t bring an entire army of men; with all of the work Kara had put into decimating CADMUS, he shouldn’t have a large pool to draw from in the first place. Maybe her friends really did make it on time to save her – maybe Lena had done it. Kara can’t help it; her heart skips and beat and she raises her head, blindly searching out the sounds of victory she wants desperately to hear.

She could get out of here. And sure, maybe she’d have to stay in the med-bay for like a month, or maybe she’d never be able to walk without a limp ever again – or maybe, she’d lose her powers for good. Kara wouldn’t care if it meant getting to go home and see her sister again. Going to her wedding, and Brainy’s birthday party, helping out J’onn with his PI business. She’d pay for every taxi Nia took home from her apartment for the rest of her life if it meant getting to her family now. She’d do whatever was asked of her, so long as she got to spend another midnight with Lena on the couch and do it right this time around, to kiss her until neither of them could breathe and finally say the words she’s been living with for so long-

An unforgiving barrel of a gun is suddenly thrust up underneath her jaw, and all of Kara’s delusions come grinding to a halt with a sense of finality. How foolish of her to think this would end any other way than the one she’s already made her peace with.

All at once, the fighting stops. Kara can imagine the scene, her friends frozen in place with outstretched hands and the blood draining from their faces. She can practically see Alex, always the negotiator, in the back of her eyelids, stepping forward to bargain with a deceptive calm and carefully disguised fear.

“Not another step!” the man holding the gun barks, and in Kara’s head, Alex stops dead in her tracks, grim and determined. “I’ll kill her now if any of you move any closer. I don’t care what he told us. I’ll do it!”

“Don’t be rash,” Alex says, and Kara’s heart leaps at the fact that she sounds okay. Tense, sure, and as scared and as angry as she’ll allow to bleed into her voice, but unharmed. Kara can’t hear any hitching breath or heavy words that disguise an injury. Her sister is safe. “We can talk about this. Let her go, and we can be civilized.”

“Are you kidding?” the man responds, voice rasping. Kara takes some satisfaction in the fact that she must have injured him gravely if he’s struggling with his words this much. “Civilized? Look at what she did! She’ll rip us to shreds if I lower my gun!”

Kara wishes now that she could see the full scope of what she’d brought upon these men. A moment of regret crawls through her conscience, a worm in an apple; these men, however complicit, were not Lex Luthor. They didn’t deserve to receive her full fury.

Then she remembers the gash on Lena’s arm and the rattled, hollow look in her eyes. They’re bringing her to her death, and killed Rao knows how many innocent people to accomplish it. She doesn’t feel so bad anymore.

“Can’t you see she’s hurt?” Alex pleads, playing a risky card. “She poses no risk to you like this.”

“Lex Luthor wants her brought to him on her knees,” he responds, tightening the grip on Kara’s neck. She clenches her fists, glaring holes into the fabric and hoping the woozy feeling spreading down her legs won’t force her to lose consciousness at such a crucial time. “He wants the world to watch what he’s going to do to her, and he’s promised to reward us richly. We won’t be leaving without our bounty.”

Alex takes a breath, struggling to keep her composure. “With what money? Haven’t you heard? CADMUS is gone! Look, whatever he’s paying you, we can give you more. We can double it. Money, criminal pardon, safety, whatever you want. Just give us Supergirl, and we’ll meet your full demands completely and promptly.”

Kara waits with bated breath as the man pauses, seemingly weighing his options. She can’t help but feel like a trapped and caged animal, caught halfway between being released back to her own devices and the slim odds of survival or being trussed up and hung up on some distant trophy wall. Kara imagines her cape displayed right in the center of one of Lex’s decadent mansions, and she fights back a shudder. Despite being many miles away from the scene, he still manages to leave a large and looming shadow.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he answers at last. “Once you enter a deal with a man like him, you deliver your side of the bargain, or else. You can’t buy me, and you sure as hell won’t be able to protect me. Besides,” he adds, yanking Kara’s head back and baring her throat. He draws the hammer back on his gun, and Kara can practically taste the sizzling gunpowder. “It’s going to give me great pleasure being the one who helped Lex Luthor kill Supergirl.”

Alex, probably seeing red, shifts her feet into a fighting stance. “Fine. You had your chance. I’m not asking anymore, you bastard,” she seethes. “Let her go now or I’ll kill you before he does. Trust me, I will make sure it’s much more painful.”

“I don’t think so,” the man answers, voice loud and growing in confidence. Kara stays still, listening as her last chance of survival slips through her fingers. “She’s dying as we speak. But if you don’t put your guns on the ground and allow us to leave, I’ll put an end to her misery right here. Back away, or the only thing you’ll be leaving with is her corpse.”

Kara holds her breath and waits. Not even she knows what Alex is fully capable of when it’s her that’s in danger. Knowing her sister, she could at any moment try something reckless and crazy and get herself killed in the process. Kara feels sick at the thought. If the last thing she had to live with was knowing she got her sister killed… well, she can think of no crueler punishment.

She considers doing something wild of her own, if only to draw the line of fire back on her. But Kara knows that would only make things worse, would probably get them all killed, and if she’s being practical, she also knows that she isn’t capable of much more than crawling right now. Taking out any of these men without her strength and without her sight – Kara despises the thought, but it’s simply improbable.

Kara is defeated, at least for the time being, and there’s nothing to do but bite her tongue and pray that her sister doesn’t let herself get taken down alongside her.

After what feels like hours of excruciating tension, Kara hears the clatter of metal on the floor, listens as Alex slides her gun across the divide to where Kara stands. “Okay. Okay,” her she says at last, voice shaking. “Just don’t hurt her.” The weapon scrapes against the floor and lands dully at her feet, and it finally sinks in.

Kara won’t be going home with her sister after all.

If this is goodbye, Kara prays it’ll be a quick one. She can’t even stand, can barely endure being held up by these men any longer, and she knows she’s going to pass out any minute, but her pride forbids her from doing it in the presence of her family. She straightens up as best she can. If this is the last time Alex and everyone else ever gets to see her, Kara wants it to be in as good a light as possible.

But there’s a voice slicing through the thickness now, and Kara curses any and all gods that she can possibly think of because Lena’s is the last voice she wanted interrupting right now. Not when there are guns being pointed every which way. Not when everyone is so vulnerable – and when Kara is so afraid of whatever the other woman is going to try.

“Take me too,” Lena says, and all Kara can do is listen to the clicking of her heels echo through the tall ceilings. Better to focus on the absurdity of the fact that the other woman kept her shoes on this whole time than on the sudden coursing fear rushing through her veins.

Of all the stupid, foolish, self-sacrificing ideas Lena could have had, Kara thinks this may just be the worst. It’s straight out of her nightmares, and her whole body goes rigid as the words land.

“Absolutely not-” Alex cuts in, fierce, but Lena must ignore her because her stride does not slow in the slightest. She stops somewhere in the middle of the no man’s land created between them and takes a breath, a tantalizing mystery in the center of the battlefield.

“Believe me,” Lena says coolly, completely disregarding the shouts and protests coming from the others. “You’ll fetch an even better price if you show up with the both of us.”

The man laughs, disbelieving, and Kara imagines he squints at the disheveled and filthy woman in front of him, trying to connect the dots. “And am I supposed to know who you are?” he asks, and ever the icily proud woman, Kara can perfectly picture the smirk that forms on Lena’s face as she waits for the right moment to illuminate him. She wants to cry at the image.

“Oh, I doubt a man of your intelligence would,” she replies. “But your employer certainly will. It’s not every day his sister pops in for a surprise visit.”

“Lena Luthor?” he says, and this time, his laugh is genuine, as if he can’t believe his luck. “Why, you’ve saved me a trip. After your brother butchered Supergirl, you were meant to be next.”

Kara’s heart drops. Lena takes another step forward, bold, and idiotic and utterly willing to do whatever it takes to reach Kara, step by step and sacrifice after sacrifice. “What are we waiting for, then?” Lena asks, and Kara can’t take it any longer.

“No. Lena, no,” she cries out, words muffled almost entirely by the gag the men had placed in her mouth.

“Shut up!” the man barks, ripping her head back even further. Kara pays the pain no mind.

“No!” she tries again, and this time, she struggles against the stiff arms of the men around her. They leap into action immediately, cursing and yelling and trying their best to restrain her once more, but Kara is a woman possessed. She lashes out blindly, catching the man who’d been speaking squarely in the nose. The contact is fleshy and satisfying, and with his blood smeared on her knuckles, she rams into the man on her left, yelling the entire time.

“No- no- run! Lena, get away! Alex! Stop her!” she screams over and over, even as the men recover from the surprise and get out their weapons once more. They can beat her into the ground all over again, can hit and shock and suffocate her until she stops moving, but they’ll have to kill her before she lets them take Lena.

In the struggle, her hood flies off, and Kara catches one last blurry and bloody glimpse of her friends. Alex is in the middle with Lena, their faces tight and talking to each other in between heaving breaths as her sister does everything in her power to not throw herself into the fray. Kara groans as a particularly nasty hit lands on her collarbone, confused by the scene. But then she watches as Alex squeezes Lena’s shoulder tight and wipes away tears, and it hits Kara that her sister is about to allow Lena to go through with it.

“You promised me!” Through the sweat and the blood, she meets Alex’s tear-streaked eyes, her own wide and betrayed. Her sister can do nothing but stare back, ashamed but defiant all the same, and Kara should have known this would happen. That Alex would do anything – put anyone into play as a pawn – to have even a sliver of a shot at getting Kara back. It’s what she’s always done, ever the ruthless and loyal pragmatist, and Kara lowers her gaze, unable to find it in herself to get mad over something she saw coming miles away. “Alex,” she yells into the chaos one last time. “I love you-”

There’s a sudden and stinging crack at the base of her skull, and Kara finds herself unable to say anything more. “I told you to shut up!” the man says, clutching his nose with one hand while the other brandishes his gun.

Kara feels the world spinning around her, the voices and the scrambling fading away to a distant buzz. She keeps her gaze on her sister for as long as she can, drinking her in. But the darkness wins, and Kara lets herself rest. Lowering her forehead to the cold floor, the last thing she sees before it all fades away is a pair of stiletto heels and the torn edges of what used to be the most beautiful dress she’d ever seen in her life.

Lena is coming with like a lamb walking willingly to slaughter, and Kara gives into the darkness that’s been straining at the edges.

…

Kara awakens to the cold.

She’s outside somewhere, far north of National City being her first guess based on the drop in temperature, and her suspicions are confirmed when she feels snow land on her lips and her flickering eyelids. Too weak to open them for long, she allows herself a quick glance. The tarmac of an airport is the looks of it, though not one that she recognizes. Two men are carrying her to an idling plane somewhere in the distance, high-spirited and joking amongst themselves. A momentous occasion for men like them, she supposes, getting to humiliate Supergirl so completely and getting paid to do it.

Limp as a rag doll but heavier and denser than five humans combined, it takes a joint effort to sling her in the air and continue the journey. As her head hangs in the air, she catches an upside-down glimpse of what’s behind her and her heart catches crooked in her chest all over again. There’s Lena, walking in a spare pair of boots that are several sizes too large for her and wrapped in a ragged blanket, head down and eyes closed tight against the biting wind, but here all the same, no more than a few yards away.

Kara had hoped it hadn’t been real.

For a moment, Kara had convinced herself that that part at the end had all been a bad dream. But here is Lena, on her way to the gallows just as Kara is, and the reality of it is infinitely worse. Kara screws her eyes shut tight, and this time she welcomes the darkness. Anything is better than looking at Lena surrounded by those men for a moment longer.

When she wakes again, Kara realizes that she should at least be thankful that she’s being protected from the elements, even if they did throw her in the cargo hold.

As she turns on her side and lets out a groan, there are warm hands on her shoulder almost immediately. Kara doesn’t have to guess who it is.

“Take it easy, now,” Lena soothes, her face practically glowing in the darkness compared to the barren compartment they’ve been tossed inside. She’s kneeling next to Kara’s side, long shadows across her body. “It’s alright.”

Kara wipes some of the dirt away from her eyes, startled to find her hands mostly clean save for a few stubborn streaks of blood remaining near her fingernails and knuckles. “Where- what’s going on-?” she asks, shaking her head to rid herself of the pleasant fogginess that lethargy had brought. It’s a forgiving state of being compared to the sharp pain that Kara knows is waiting at bay, but she needs her wits about her if she’s to figure out a way to get Lena off this plane and to safety.

Lena notices her staring dumbstruck at her hands and holds up her purse as an explanation. Kara’s eyebrows raise, and the other woman just shrugs. “They’re even less smart than they look,” she says a little absently, eyes struggling to focus down on Kara’s. Lena seems to be fighting the same effects of shock as Kara is. “They rooted through it for anything that looked like a weapon, but they left everything else alone. Should have considered the fact that a woman’s purse always has more in it than anyone would expect.” She holds up a pile of bloodied gauze and a good-sized vial of antiseptic. “I don’t have much, but…”

“That explains the sting, then,” Kara replies, voice dull and eyes dark. Anger is rising unbidden in her throat and it’s leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. She can’t believe Lena would do something so foolish, and Kara wants to shake some sense into her for throwing her safety away so carelessly. “Well, doc, how am I looking?” she asks, already knowing the answer but needing Lena to accept the reality of it all the same.

Kara doesn’t miss the sudden tremble of Lena’s bottom lip, or the way she studiously avoids looking down at Kara’s busted leg. Instead, she stares Kara down, her face as close to a mask of determination and composure as it can possibly be. It probably would have fooled most people into believing. But Kara isn’t most people, not when it comes to Lena, and she sees it for what it is: Lena is scared, more than she’s ever seen her, and no forced sense of calm will make that go away.

“I’m fixing it,” she says, already reaching for another fresh pad of gauze. Lena presses it against a raised gash on Kara’s cheekbone, and the burn is enough for her to let out a hiss. The other woman’s lips press together, her jaw set tight. “I can make all this right. You just need to rest, now, and stay still. I’ll take care of you.”

Kara all but ignores her, sitting up straight and immediately regretting the way the sudden action seems to have displaced every single one of her ribs. As she grimaces, Lena shoots her a tense look, an unspoken plea to listen. It falls on deaf ears, and Kara cranes her head around, looking for anything that might give them an advantage.

“Where are we? Where are they taking us?” she asks.

There’s a beat of silence that rattles around the emptiness. Lena stares down at her torn dress. “To the Fortress of Solitude, I believe,” she answers at last, and Kara’s heart begins to hammer in her throat. All those weapons, all that expansive collection of technology and knowledge… if Lex has managed to crack everything open, Kara worries that not even Kal will be able to put a stop to him.

Kara doesn’t question how he got in. Lex is far too clever for her to doubt his abilities any longer. But she asks a different question, hoping against hope that maybe she’s wrong about her suspicions. “Do you think he’s found a way into the Kal-Ex system?”

Lena just focuses on her work, rifling around for something in her purse and keeping her features impassive. She may as well be the insurmountable side of a mountainside, for all the insight she’s granting Kara into what’s going on in her head. “I suspect so, yes. He’s had plenty of time and motivation, being forced to hide away like he has, and I’m sure he’s thought up countless ways to keep himself out of danger. My brother would need a safety net to protect against your cousin and anyone else before he would dare to take you there. If he did the same thing I did, turning the Luthor protocol against its creators, Superman won’t be able to land within a five-mile radius. I’ve got a few ideas to try and reverse some of those-”

“What about our team? Any chance of them catching up to us before we arrive?” Kara asks, feeling the need to get caught up despite knowing that if there was a glimmer of hope that was that tangible, Lena would have told her by now.

“At this speed, only J’onn could, and he caught a nasty blow from the explosion. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt he could recuperate in time to intercept our path.”

Rattling off like she’s sharing the schematics of a battle plan, Lena is all sharp edges and cold logic, and Kara doesn’t like it one bit. If they’re going to be in this together – if Kara has any chance of getting through to the other woman before it’s too late – she needs to get back to the side of Lena who’s not preparing to go to war against her brother. They both know it’s a suicide mission, where they’re headed – but that doesn’t mean Kara wants Lena to take that to heart.

“No backup, then,” Kara replies to the news, trying to meet Lena’s eyes. “Look,” she tries, but the other woman cuts her off by pressing her gently back down to where she’d been slumped. She holds a large pair of tweezers in her hand, and for a flash of a second, Lena looks nervous. Kara knows that whatever the other woman has planned, this will be Kara’s only chance of reaching her.

“I’m going to need to remove your suit for the time being,” Lena announces, voice even but color rising on her cheeks.

“And do what, exactly?” Kara asks. She isn’t so sure she wants Lena to see the full scale of the damage that’s been done. It could shutter off the other woman for good.

“Your torso is peppered with shrapnel,” Lena explains, waving the tweezers in a white-knuckled grip. “There are shards of Kryptonite inside of you that, if I don’t remove them now, will be fatal. I don’t know if you’ve noticed in between your long line of questioning, but you’re dying as we speak. Your body is going to shut down if you don’t shut up and let me work.”

“You didn’t like my questions?” Kara asks, her fear and even the burning pain swallowed up for a moment by a streak of stubborn snark, one that causes Lena’s eyebrows to narrow. “Just trying to make conversation.”

“Remember what I said about shutting up?” Lena’s eyes spark in defiance and deft fingers pull away at the hidden clasp that holds what remains of Kara’s suit together. “I swear, Kara, there are times that I really can’t stand-”

The suit falls away completely, baring what Kara was hiding for the world to see. The light in Lena’s eyes extinguishes just as quickly as it was lit. “Kara,” she breathes out, and even though she doesn’t want to, Kara looks down and tries not to throw up.

Her first thought is that Lena is going to need a bigger pair of tweezers and probably some liquid courage to get through this.

“Don’t- Lena, you don’t have to,” Kara tries, reaching down and weakly tugging the suit up, bunching it around her chest to rid Lena’s eyes of their glassiness. “Really, it’ll be fine. I’m tough, remember? I’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this.”

Lena watches Kara’s chest rise and fall, shallow and slow. She listens to the wheeze of Kara’s exhales, and stares hard at the green tendons tearing their way out of Kara’s taut neck. “You’re a terrible liar,” she says, honest and flinching, and it takes Kara by surprise. Lena’s façade cracks open, and she meets Kara’s eyes, beseeching and wild. “Please let me help you.”

Each languid beat of her heart feels like it’s getting closer and closer to stopping altogether, and Kara grits her teeth. Lena is right. “Do what you can,” she says, swallowing and growing silent. Lena takes it for the blessing it is, and after one last moment of hesitation, she goes for one of the smaller pieces. Her hands are still shaking.

When at long last the first bit of Kryptonite falls with a clink to the floor, Kara feels like she might just bite through her own tongue in her attempt not to scream.

Falling fully back against the welded, plated wall of the hold, Kara tries her best to listen. She grunts and whimpers against the unyielding press of the tweezers and the way the long shards of Kryptonite make her stomach fold in on itself each time one is removed. But her anger hasn’t gone anywhere, and after Lena works for a few minutes in uneasy silence, Kara can’t hold her tongue any longer.

The plan is for her to remain collected; that’s the only way she’ll be able to both scold Lena for getting caught up in this and convince her to escape to safety at the soonest opportunity. Yelling at Lena while her hands are very nearly buried in her insides maybe isn’t the wisest, but honestly anything is better than sitting in silence and feeling the agony that Lena inflicting on her body, however reluctantly.

Of course, Kara overestimated her ability to handle the pain and to hold a civil conversation at the same time, and when her voice does come back, her throat is already sore, and her words come out heavy and dripping with barely restrained grief.

“Why did you come with me, Lena?” she asks. All the blood seems to have been drawn from her face, and her forehead is sweaty and clammy. Lena can barely look up, let alone meet Kara’s fiery glare. “Why would you do that?”

“You really believed that I wouldn’t?” Lena shoots back, focused entirely on Kara’s midsection. Her hands are warm as they skim over Kara’s tight and bruised skin, enough for goosebumps to break across her abdomen. Kara shivers and chalks up her heightened sensitivity to the fever she probably has. “I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

“So, you didn’t think it through at all, then?” Kara cuts in. “It’s just your pure instinct to be ridiculously short-sighted and foolish and-”

“Just taking a page out of a book I think you know by heart. You might have written it, in fact-”

“This is not a joke!” Kara thunders, sharp enough to cause Lena’s hands to still for a moment. But her eyes still won’t meet Kara’s, and as soon as she blinks, another piece of Kryptonite is thrown as far away from them as possible. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen. Why do you think I sent you away after that bomb went off? I didn’t want you anywhere near these men or this plane or your brother. And then you had to go and insert yourself right back into the middle of the danger!”

“You told me to get help,” Lena snaps. “And what, you think I didn’t recognize what you were doing? You think I didn’t see right through your flimsy plan for the self-sacrificing ploy that it was?

“That’s not what it was,” Kara protests weakly, but her words are hollow and thin. Lena just scoffs.

“I knew you were sending me off somewhere where I wouldn’t have to watch them take you away. But guess what? I did what you asked, and even still, that’s exactly what happened!” Lena flings a shard away with gusto, and Kara watches it shatter into a thousand pieces against the far wall. She glances down at Lena’s hands, soaked with blood. Kara’s blood. “What happened to keeping this a team game, huh? What happened to all of those promises you made about not going off on your own and staying together as a group and working as a team-?”

“You think I wanted this to happen?” Kara asks. “This was not my plan. There wasn’t enough time for anyone else to help me, Lena, and I was forced to make a call. I didn’t want you or anyone else to become collateral damage on a- on a lost cause!”

Lena pays no mind, but her eyes flash, clearly not appreciating that last sentiment. “In my head, as soon as that brute jammed his gun to your head, I thought that would be it. That that moment would be the last time I ever saw you, and I couldn’t even do anything about it.” Lena chokes something down, and Kara sees her shoulders shake. “Then an opportunity presented itself to me. A chance to get back to you. How was I supposed to walk away?”

“You could have been safe! At least then I could have gone to your brother without being so afraid!” Kara grits out, trying to hide her own wavering words behind a gruff voice and a fierce glare. Not that it’s landing much of anywhere when she can’t even see Lena’s face. “You were supposed to be the one that made it out okay. Now we’re both going to die-!”

“You are not dying on me, Kara!” Lena yells, and she finally meets Kara’s eyes with a glare that is even more powerful than her own. If Lena had powers, Kara would be certain that there would be a pair of laser holes driven straight through her forehead. Not that it’s all that angry. No, Lena is looking at Kara with the type of uncontrollable fire that only comes when you’re terrified of losing something you love. “I simply won’t allow it. And if you dare think otherwise, well, you’re even more of a dense, empty-headed idiot than I thought!”

“I can’t believe you,” Kara says, trying not to feel like she’d just lost that argument undeniably. Her words come out sounding more like a grumble than a valid counterpoint, though, and if she could move her arms without her shoulders protesting decisively, she’d cross them across her chest. “I can’t believe Alex!” she adds, new spite on her tongue. The image of her sister practically sending Lena on her way to certain death is still branded hot and fresh in her mind. Alex, who was supposed to protect Lena no matter what, instead did the exact opposite. “What did you say to her?”

“That sounds like an accusation.”

“It is,” Kara says flatly, and Lena’s eyes flare up. “She broke the one promise I asked of her, and that isn’t something she would have done lightly.”

Lena just shakes her head. “You and your promises. What did you make her do? Surely nothing as cruel as forcing me to leave you alone in the rubble.”

The awfulness of Lena’s voice hits like a slap to the face, and Kara lowers her eyes. She looks down at herself, at the oozing, bleeding wounds left in the wake of the shrapnel Lena’s picked through. “I made her promise to look after you, when this day came,” she says, words drawn out and painful. Kara hadn’t wanted to tell Lena that bit of truth. “She was meant to keep you safe and out of harm’s way and after, when- if anything happened to me, she was supposed to keep doing that for as long as you needed it.”

“You never believed we were going to beat him, did you?” Lena asks after a long silence. Her voice, once loud and roaring, has slowed to a trickle. Kara sees just how tired the other woman is. “Even after you turned yourself into a one-woman army, even after you all but took down CADMUS by yourself. All this time, you’ve waited for this to happen.”

Kara’s shoulders seem too heavy, suddenly. “I knew we’d beat him. I knew you would. You and Alex and everyone else with all of our long hours and drive to make it happen. But I… I didn’t expect it to come without loss. I decided I’d rather it be me, if it came down to it, than you or anyone else.”

“What a reckless way to live,” Lena says, exhausted and shaking her head. “Granting people your love on borrowed time. You’re not a ghost.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Kara says, accepting the sting of her words as a side-effect of their truth. “It is reckless. It’s unfair. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for the role it played in- in dictating my decision-making lately. But it’s all said and done now, for me-”

“I won’t tolerate the kind of talk, Kara-”

“But not for you. This isn’t the end.” She lowers her head, forces Lena to meet her gaze. “It’s not too late to change your mind. It’s not too late for you to get away from all of this before I- Lena, you can go. You can live. Don’t you want that?”

“If I hadn’t wanted to be here, I wouldn’t have gotten on this old, rickety, poorly designed plane,” Lena says, waving her resolve with pride. Kara wonders if the men in the cockpit can make out the sound of her blood boiling over the squeal of rusty, spinning rotors.

“Okay. Okay. You- you’re… don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want you on this plane!”

“Well, that’s too bad, now isn’t it, Kara? If you get to throw your life down at my brother’s feet, I can do whatever I damn well please with my own!” Lena huffs, furiously working away underneath Kara’s ribcage and causing her to let out a trail of curse words and a moan of pain. Lena’s whole body softens, just for a moment, and she darts her eyes up to assess the damage. Not wanting to scare Lena any more than she already has, Kara twists her mouth into something resembling a frown rather than a grimace and uses the opportunity to press in harder.

“Haven’t you heard the phrase about not jumping off a bridge just because your friends are?”

“Glass fucking houses, Kara!”

“Nice try,” Kara says, raising her voice above the roar of the engine. “But this isn’t about my decision making! You have no good reason for being here that will excuse the fact that you got on this plane and that is going to get you hurt.”

“You’re right, Kara, this isn’t about your decisions, but I certainly think it should be. If you hadn’t made me go find the others, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”

“That is so not true!” If she didn’t have bigger fish to fry, Kara would cringe at the high reediness of her voice that is making her every argument sound like that of a pouting child. It doesn’t help that she is currently bleeding out, nor that Lena is a certifiable genius, but Kara resents the fact that she’s being tossed around in this verbal battle like a sack of flour. Even more frustrating is the fact that even when she does raise good points, like how Lena would have undoubtedly been killed at the gala if she’d stayed by Kara’s side, the other woman simply ignores them as if Kara had never said anything in the first place. “That’s ridiculous. This is ridiculous.”

“You’re the one that’s ridiculous.” Lena draws in a breath. “And for the record,” she spits out, “I have a far better reason for being on this plane than your own frustrating lack of self-preservation instincts.”

“I didn’t know you counted chewing me out as an excellent use of your talents.”

“There!” Lena announces, pulling a nasty and jagged piece of Kryptonite from above Kara’s navel. “That’s the last one, thank God. Now if I can find those patches…”

“What are you talking about? Kara asks, fighting down her nausea. The world finally does feel like it’s stopped burning and she can draw in a full breath again now that the Kryptonite is out of her system but it’s at the expense of her losing blood, and a lot of it. Lena’s saved her from dying a slow and painful death during this flight, Kara can admit that, but she is miles away from being out from underneath Death’s door.

“Here,” Lena says, sighing in relief and holding something triumphantly in her hands. It looks like a Band-Aid, and not a very large one at that, and Kara quirks her brow.

“I- I think I’m going to need more than one of those,” she says, gesturing at the absolute carnage of her chest. Kara doesn’t even want to think about how her legs are doing, as lame and as unmoving as they are right now. “Got any more in that purse?”

“I’ve already applied to other two to exposed skin on your lower body,” Lena retorts. Her tongue darts out and wets her lips as she slowly peels the adhesive apart. She emerges with a translucent patch about a few inches in radius, pale yellow and looking rather unimpressive. “How else do you think you’ve barely managed to hold an intelligent conversation with me for this long?”

Despite the lack of intrigue in the design, Kara sees the look of concentration and determined optimism on Lena’s face. It’s not the devastated, despairing look of someone who can do nothing more to help Kara than to hold her hand while she bleeds out; this is Lena with actual hope in her eyes, and it’s enough for Kara to sit back up, vision briefly whiting out.

“Why are you moving? Jesus, Kara, how many times do I have to-”

“What is that?” she asks, holding still as Lena applies it carefully against her sternum. Slowly but surely, she feels another pleasant wave of fatigue run through her body. She’d chalked it up to going in and out of consciousness, but maybe there was more to the story.

“I- they… they’re experimental at best,” Lena admits, biting her lips as her fingers carefully smooth the patch out over Kara’s sticky, heaving chest. “A localized, portable means of delivering yellow sun radiation directly into your bloodstream. As much as I love those giant yellow sun grenades the DEO has in their stockpile, I talked to Brainy, and we decided to develop something a tiny bit more… classy.”

“Yellow sun radiation?” Kara asks in wonder, reaching up and taking Lena’s hand in her own, spreading it out over her chest. Lena looks up at her, eyes wide and face flushed. The warmth of her skin is as soothing of a balm as the newfound energy slowly making its way around Kara’s aching, destroyed body. “How powerful is it?”

“Not strong enough for my liking.” Lena stays perfectly still against Kara’s chest, her fingers flexing soft and malleable against the skin. “Like I said, it’s experimental. It’s still in its early phases of development, but as soon as we had working prototypes, I started carrying a handful with me, just in case.” She looks down, frowning at the bruises and gashes that still adorn Kara’s body. “It won’t be able to give you your powers back. Hell, it won’t be enough to even help some of your bruises to fade or lower your pain. But it’ll keep you from bleeding out in my lap, and provided you avoid sustaining any additional physical trauma, you’ll be relatively stable until someone comes to get us out of this mess.”

“Lena,” Kara breathes out, the fight gone from her body. “Is this why Alex let you go?”

The other woman looks down, avoiding the question. “I’m sorry there’s nothing more that I can do,” she mutters, still lingering against Kara’s chest. “If I’d been able to get to my purse earlier, right after the blast hit…you have internal bleeding, and I think you have a dangerous fever, but I don’t have any more usable prototypes-”

“Is that why you offered yourself up?”

Lena meets her eyes after a moment of hesitation, and it’s all the confirmation Kara could ever need. “Like I said. You’re not dying on me, Kara. And you’re not going where I can’t follow.”

Oh, Rao.

Kara sits back against the wall, the turbulence jostling her head, but she pays it no mind. What does it matter when the woman staring back at her has just declared her devotion in all but words? And Kara may be susceptible to bouts of obliviousness, but not now. Things are clear, now, as strong and as vivid as Lena’s overindulgent touch against her skin.

“I don’t know what to say,” she rushes out, a burst of hot air. “You- you’re brilliant, and a genius, and- Rao, Lena, I just wish it didn’t have to come with this high of a price.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lena says back, a steadfast curve to her lips. “It’s no price at all that I’m paying to be here with you. It would have been a far worse punishment to walk away knowing that I could have helped, that I could have saved you. If our places were reversed, if it had been me in the wreckage, can you honestly tell me that you would have done anything differently?”

Tears begin to build in Kara’s eyes. For what reason, she isn’t sure. Perhaps it’s simply Lena’s presence tipping her over the edge. “I would do what I had to in order to keep you safe,” she answers simply, and Lena nods her head, gentle and patient and an absolute vision in the cold.

It’s totally impractical and definitely not the time, but Kara adds this little moment to her increasingly long list of all the times she’s wanted to kiss Lena Luthor like she was dying of thirst and Lena was an endless pool of water.

Swallowing down the urge, Kara studies Lena, and she studies her right back. After a beat, Lena speaks up again.

“That’s all I tried to do, Kara. Just this once, I got to save you. And if that means facing my brother, staring him down – even if it means dying, then so be it. I’m not afraid of that. What I am afraid of is having to lose you. And I don’t feel bad about it, and I won’t say sorry, because I know you feel the exact same way.”

“Lena,” Kara says, tears falling without any means to stop them now. “You’ve saved me. Who knows? I might have a real shot at finishing this and getting out in one piece. Now go, please. I’ll create a diversion. I- I’ll find a way, whatever it takes. You can still escape what’s coming. There’s no shame in that!”

“Shame, no. But it would pain me beyond all logic to allow you to go there alone. Don’t you understand why I can’t do that?” Lena asks. “Don’t you understand why I’m still here, after all these years? Why not even our worst moments could tear me away from you completely?”

“No,” Kara insists, and it’s the truth. Try as she might, she’s never understood why Lena decided to come back to her after all their mistakes. The only conclusion she’s ever come to on the matter is that Lena being in her life remained a genuine miracle, and to watch Lena twist that on its head now pains her more than anything. “It’s never made any sense.”

“I’m all in on you, Kara,” Lena says, and when she leans in it feels like Kara might be melting away, exposing her frayed seams and her weary bones and her straining, pulsing heart. “I have been from the moment we met. Don’t you see that now?”

“I’m asking you to do it. I’m begging you to.”

Lena smiles, firm and sad. “I’m sorry, darling, but I won’t. You must know why.”

And deep down, Kara thinks she does. “Lena, I-”

But before she can force another heated denial out from her lips, they hit a monstrous patch of turbulence and her boneless body hurtles toward the wall of the plane. Her head bangs against something cold and rigid and distinctly iron-like, and before she can figure out what exactly Lena means by that and why she’s still looking at her like she hung the moon, Kara is knocked out cold once again.

…

When she wakes up, they’re still in the air – and Lena is hard at work playing surgeon.

Slowly gathering her wits about her, Kara takes her time, letting her eyes focus back in on the other woman at a leisurely pace. It’s hypnotic, watching Lena get into a rhythm, plunking out extra shards of Kryptonite that she’d missed in her first round, going back over certain areas with more wipes and a gentle touch. Turns out they’re good for more than just wiping away mascara at the end of a long night – not that Kara has a ton of confidence in their ability to work miracles beyond that.

Lena, though – Kara believes Lena could do just about anything she set her mind to, knows Lena believes that herself – which makes this problem extra difficult to diagnose as terminal.

She can see it in the set to her jaw, the particular glimmer in her eyes; Kara understands that Lena is still determined to fix this, to repair and resolve something that would need nothing short of a time machine to accomplish – and that’s one thing she’s certain Lena does not have in her purse full of oddities.

But Lena isn’t about to be swayed from her task in the slightest, despite Kara’s best efforts. She’s been babbling mindlessly to herself about everything but their current situation as she continues to work, continues to move to disguise the tremble in her hands.

Though it breaks her heart, Kara lets her.

“You know, you behave much better when you’re unconscious,” Lena says, noticing Kara’s open, watchful eyes, her fingers only halting for half a second. “I don’t fault your sister’s bedside manner if this is how obedient of a patient you are when you’re lucid. Tell me you haven’t been awake for too long.”

“Oh, a long time now,” she lies. “I’m keeping an eye out for trouble, you know” Kara insists, knowing her response will only bring ire. It’s really just an excuse to soak in what’s left of her peace while she can. If she can capture Lena in a moment like this – quiet and still and with only a small degree of impending doom, based on the circumstances – it’ll make facing Lex simpler. Not easier. No, Kara knows that what comes next will be the hardest moments of her life. But having a memory of Lena before it’s all ripped away will be the only source of comfort she’ll have. A secret weapon of sorts, a reason to keep her head high until the end.

No matter what he does, Lex will never have his sister on his side ever again. Kara can find a victory in that – one that’s bigger than anything Lex will manage to accomplish no matter how badly he tortures her.

“The only trouble you need to worry about is what Jess will do to you the next time she sees you.”

Kara lacks the mental willpower to correct Lena’s insistence on using the future tense for this conversation. Entertaining the hypothetical, she gives Lena her most valiant look of amusement, scrunching her eyebrows and tilting her head with a sort of lightness that should be incompatible for their situation, but she forces any way. “Jess?’

“She spent months planning that gala, Kara. Months.” Lena scoffs, and Kara fights the urge to ask her to wipe some of the blood off her arms. In the moonlight, the crimson evidence of exactly how badly this night has gone makes everything they’re saying incredibly jarring. “She barely tolerates you for constantly breezing into my office without knocking.”

“You’re the one who gave me unrestricted access!” she protests. Those late fall nights where they first got to know each other feel long ago now, but Kara can still remember the careful way they circled – and how surprising it was to be let in.

Lena has always had a reputation for being closed off and difficult to reach, but not around Kara. Never around her.

“Even still,” Lena replies. “As for Supergirl… well, I think you’re first on her hitlist for how often you’ve managed to disturb one of her meticulously scripted evenings.”

Speaking of one of those evenings... Kara grimaces as a sudden flash of Jess in the chaos of tonight hits her. For all her careful planning and her attachment to her clipboard and a good spreadsheet, there was no preparing for what Lex did – and no way for someone like Jess to protect herself if she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Is she- she’s alright, isn’t she?” she asks, knowing that the subject change will not jive well with Lena’s current strategy of ignoring everything that’s happened and yet needing reassurance all the same. Jess has been an unerring if stoic presence in their lives for years now, and the thought of her somewhere in the ruins of that building has Kara’s heart clenching weakly.

Lena is not a fan of the line of questioning based on how a muscle jumps in her jaw, but she answers anyway. “I… I didn’t see her when I was moving through the crowds. It was difficult to make out faces as I pushed through, but- I’m sure she’s just fine, Kara. Likely waiting to jump you in some dark corner of my office next chance she gets.”

The journey that Lena had made to find their friends couldn’t have been an easy one. Images that Kara hadn’t wanted to conjure appear now in her mind. Partygoers covered in the same white dust of plaster and decimated marble as what’s stuck in Lena’s hair. Screams of the injured that Kara hadn’t been able to hear. Maybe even bodies, unmoving figures that had been standing in the radius of a blast severe enough to mortally wound even Supergirl.

“I’m sorry,” Kara tells her. For the uncertainty of Jess’s fate or for what she’d put the other woman through to get help, she isn’t sure. Maybe Kara’s apologizing deep down for the things they never got around to saying to each other when it mattered.

“I think, for tonight, we should stop saying that to each other,” is all Lena says in response, turning her eyes away before Kara can peer too deeply into them. “Might as well use our time as efficiently as possible, don’t you think?”

“Deal,” Kara says, her tone light enough that she’s rewarded with Lena meeting her gaze again. For all she regrets, Kara has learned the lesson that it’s never too late to do the right thing. This could be her last chance now to finally make good on that. Swallowing hard, she puts her best foot forward. “Which, speaking of – look- Lena, about earlier tonight…”

“How are you feeling?” the other woman cuts in, sending her message loud and clear and unspoken through the silence. Lena’s avoiding revisiting their moment in the hallway and seems adamant about it.

“How am I… feeling?” It’s a silly question given the circumstances, and Kara can’t help but reflect that in her reply.

“The Solar Patches. They really are highly experimental, you know.” Rubbing some grime from her nose, Lena studies the rise and fall of her chest. “I’d rather not have given you some bastardized new ailment too soon because we cut corners on the trial phase of the product.”

“Oh. No, Lena, they’re great. Slightly warm and a little bit… I don’t know, tingly, but they’re swell. Really.” Raising her arms up to look at the exposed skin, Kara can appreciate the fact that, despite where this night is trending, she no longer actively looks like a corpse waiting to be buried. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have made it this far if you hadn’t-”

“Any other sensations of note?” the other woman forges ahead, eyes skittering away. It’s like she won’t accept Kara’s attempts at sincerity or gratitude just yet – maybe not until she considers the job finished. Kara doesn’t know what else to do but sidestep and try and meet her pace. “Any increasing levels of pain or discomfort?”

“Uh… I guess I’m a little bit stiff,” she says, as if she’s dealing with nothing more than a kink in her neck. The urge to veer off on a different path of conversation proves too tempting for her to resist as well, and she can feel some of Alex’s favorite style of humor bleed through into her grin. “I think I prefer falling asleep with you on my couch.”

Lena indulges her wisecracking, her grip tightening around Kara’s waist as she checks on the patches that are visible through the tears in the Supergirl suit. “Better yet, a bed,” she murmurs, her expression neutral. While it’s clear that Lena doesn’t like what she’s seeing when scanning the damage that’s already been done to Kara’s body, there must not be anything that suggests immediate impending doom; after a beat, she settles back against the metal frame of the plane, placated for now. “Now’s as good a time as any to let you know that your mattress is atrocious. I simply never had the heart to tell you.”

“A reporter’s salary doesn’t leave me with very many options.” Kara smiles, a surreal bemusement taking over. This may just be the last moment of quiet she ever gets. She’s going to milk it for all it’s worth; if it helps her face what’s coming next with even an ounce more peace and resolve, she’ll gladly take the bittersweet feeling that accompanies. “And how bad could it really be? You’ve sure slept awfully well in it for the past few months.”

“That’s a testament to the person I’ve been sharing the bed with, not the abysmal quality of the mattress springs.” Lena leans her head against Kara’s, smiling too. A half-hearted one, sure, but Kara doesn’t mind. “There’s an exclusive for you. Bring that to CatCo and it might just get you a big enough bonus to purchase an upgrade.”

She chuckles, trying her hardest to ignore the fact that laughing makes it feel like there are nails being hammered into her lungs. “Tell you what. If I get out of this, mattress shopping will go to the top of my to-do list.”

A long stretch of silence passes. When Lena speaks again, the smoothness of her voice is nowhere to be found. “When we get out of this, I’ll buy you one myself.”

Kara’s smile feels sticky and a little too sweet now, and she lets it fade. “Somehow over the years you’ve turned into quite the optimist, haven’t you?”

“I think I’ve always wanted to be one. It took meeting the right person to give me the courage to embrace it.”

It’s as close to sentiment as they’ve reached in a long while, and she knows exactly what she needs to do.

“Hey…” Kara says as their words both trail off, reaching up to scratch at a spot of dried grime behind her ear. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Her hesitance is obvious in her voice, and Kara doesn’t see a reason to bother disguising it. She was nervous earlier tonight. Rao, she might be even worse off now, seeing as where they’re headed. She’s already spilled her guts tonight in a more literal way than she’d ever intended. Making herself vulnerable emotionally as well as physically likely isn’t the wisest choice considering who awaits their arrival. Giving Lex another glaringly obvious thread to tug on isn’t exactly the most appealing prospect in the world, but she feels she owes it to Lena to try.

As best she can, she needs her to know that their change of circumstance hasn’t altered what she was going to say to her – or how she feels in the slightest. If anything, her love for Lena is amplified now, as unmistakable and thick as the blood spilled on both of their hands. She’s surprised Lena couldn’t tell just from pressing her hands against her aching ribcage, her pounding heart doing a better job of conveying her emotions than she ever could.

Even if it hurts, Kara knows they ought to have this chance before it’s ripped away from them once more. If Lena wants to seize it, it’s hers.

Lena’s shoulders stiffen. “Do I want to talk about it?” Her face is neutral, her eyes vacant.

Faltering, Kara renews her interest in rubbing out this dirt, the whole right side of her head twinging in protest. “Well, yeah. I feel like I- it’s due, don’t you think? Long overdue, really.”

Her hand is swatted away by Lena, who attacks her ear with an aggression that was not there before. Pulling away the wipe, Lena studies the blood, then checks again. “Goddamnit,” she swears, reaching for her tweezers. “How the hell did you get a piece of Kryptonite lodged in your fucking ear?”

Oh. So that’s why it felt so itchy. Wincing as Lena dives in without preamble, Kara tries again.

“You’re changing the subject,” she notes.

“I’m remarking on your rotten luck,” Lena replies. “It’s observational commentary.”

“It’s a distraction.”

Lena scoffs. “A distraction from what? How surreal and utterly stupid this all is?”

“No. No, I’d say that’s pretty hard to ignore,” Kara admits, holding still. There is no way she’s giving Lena another reason to gripe at her for not following directions. “All I’m saying is that- we- we can talk about it if you want.”

Choosing to blame her lack of smooth articulation on the shock that’s surely ravaged her nervous system by now, Kara shuts up and studies Lena’s face as she mulls over the offer.

“That’s a conversation for the future, wouldn’t you agree?” she says at last, such stubborn denial in her tone that it’s difficult for Kara to breathe, to approach this rationally when Lena is so content not to.

And sure – obviously, Kara would much prefer to not bring this up while flying on a plane towards her certain demise. If there was a future to be had, she would be happy to let this simmer for a while longer – but there’s not.

“Any future that there is for me is approaching a pretty hard and fast deadline,” Kara replies, knowing she’d receive a harsh reaction -- but that’s better than pure avoidance.

Lena’s eyes flash. “In order to have that conversation, Kara, I would need you to be something tangible. A real, tenable option. In the future – in my future.”

“But if that’s not the case,” Kara counters, raising her voice before Lena can steamroll over it. “If, not when. I’m not saying anything more about what I think will happen. But if you wanted some- some closure, that’s something we can-”

“When did I say I wanted that?” Lena interjects, voice tight.

“You… you didn’t. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be valuable-”

“There’s no point in closure, Kara. None. You’re not some- some figure in the rearview mirror. I’ll get my damn closure on my own time and only when I want it – not because my brother wants to see me squirm on his hook.”

The mention of Lex sucks what remaining air there was out of the cargo hold. Kara closes her eyes, shaking her head. “Lena, that’s not why-”

“I won’t let his actions be the reason I’m propelled into doing anything,” the other woman insists. “Not now – not yet. God knows I’m about to do whatever is necessary to keep him entertained the second we land, but… I’d like to keep my free will while I have it.”

It’s difficult to argue with that, and it all but shreds Kara’s sails to pieces. “I get it. I just want you to know that I’m here if- if you change your mind,” she finishes a little lamely.

There’s a long stretch of silence before the other woman speaks again. “Do you want to talk about it, Kara?”

There it is; the question that, however willing she was to ask it of Lena, Kara knows she isn’t anywhere near prepared to answer. For Lena, she’d do anything, including have this conversation. As for herself... well, that’s another thing altogether.

“Not really, no,” she admits.

The other woman nods. “I understand.” And she does, Kara is sure; they likely share similar reasoning for why they both refuse to properly wade into this dark, deep pool of conversation that’s been long overdue. “Things have changed. Not the time or the place.”

“It’s not that.” Feeling a sudden urge to make amends for something she’s not sure she’s even done wrong, Kara surges past her discomfort, sticking tightly to the vague way they’re flitting around this. “I just don’t want you to feel like there’s anything left… incomplete after tonight-”

“Well, you never finished what you were going to tell me,” Lena comments, and it’s a devastating, winning blow despite how smoothly she delivers it. Kara reels back, her heart right back to where it was all those hours ago when the world felt like a completely different place and Kara felt like she could finally be anyone she wanted to be. That world is gone now, present only in the reflection of Lena’s eyes. “Did you change your mind? Is it different, now?”

“Of course not. It’s just that I…”

Kara stops herself before she trips into more serious territory. There are times when words seem like an afterthought, unnecessary embellishments to moments too fragile and sacred to muck up with stumbling syllables and hesitant breath. There are also times when words are simply too dangerous to put into the world. They make people do foolhardy, destructive things without a moment of protest, and looking at Lena now. Kara knows just how deadly her words could become.

If she finally told Lena the truth, if she finally let it slip past her tongue, that would be as absolute as a kiss of death. If she tells Lena that she loves her, here in this plane as weak and as scared as she’s ever been, she knows Lena would follow her to the ends of the earth. How she knows it, Kara can’t say. But the truth is unspoken, and it is laid plainly out in front of her, and it is growing impossible to resist.

Kara fights against the temptation, against her heavy heart, against the melancholy expression on Lena’s face, against the pain and the darkness that is threatening to pull her back under before she can act on anything at all. “I- I can’t,” she says at last, shaking her head. ‘Sometimes, it’s really, truly better not to know. That way I won’t make you any promises I’m not sure I can keep.”

Lena’s hand moves up to brush hair off her face. There’s no judgement to be found in the other woman’s expression. No resentment. No disgust at Kara’s admittance of cowardice. Only a serene sort of sadness shines through her eyes. “Why not?” she asks. “I know you, Kara. There’s more to you than that.”

As usual, Lena is right.

“I’m scared,” Kara confesses, the truth pushing and shoving against the backs of her teeth. “Not about this, but what’ll come after. I won’t. It’ll ruin… everything.” Her breath comes out in puffs of frosty air, and as those traitorous teeth begin to quiver and shake, Kara wonders how she didn’t feel the ice earlier.

Lena’s face caves in and her hands shake, and Kara finds that the other woman is trembling just as hard as she is. All their mindless bickering and their veiled questions give way to the real heart of the matter; the two of them will soon be facing the end together and even now Kara can’t allow the words to come out. How can she when dread is weighing everything down inside her throat, a rock tied to her lifeless body?

The truth is that Kara knows that whether she tells Lena how she feels now is entirely irrelevant. Lena will follow her to the end anyway. What’s stopping her words is the fact that this is the one thing Kara hasn’t figured out how to be brave about, and it’s a horribly unjust realization when Lena is looking at her like that.

“It’s awfully cold in here,” she chokes out, already regretting the cowardice in the subject change but committing to it because she can’t bear the silence any longer.

As Kara swallows down her tears and stares remorsefully up at the ceiling, Lena crawls into her arms. She nestles herself against Kara as best she can, leaning and wrapping her arms over her and not leaning her full body weight on top of Kara.

Almost in defiance of the weather and of her current lot, Lena’s eyes burn and burn on, blazing right through the frost. Still, Kara doesn’t miss the way her body shakes against her own. “I’m cold too,” she says, biting her lip to keep it from shivering.

That, at least, is something Kara can fix.

Reaching up, she unclasps her cape. “Here,” she murmurs, holding it out, a silent offer of peace, a wilting olive branch.

“No, I- you need it more than I do, darling.”

“You’re trembling,” Kara points out -- though she’s not convinced it’s entirely due to the cold.

“And you’ve sustained multiple life-threatening injuries.” Lena’s eyebrow forms that perfect, classic arch, and were it not for the heaviness that still sits between them, it would be easy to pretend like this was just another normal day for the two of them.

“My suit is insulated from the temperatures, thanks to the person who helped design it.” A hint of humor returns to her voice, but Lena’s eyes remain downcast. But if there’s one thing that’s always worked like a charm on the other woman, it’s Kara’s capacity for earnest sincerity, and she leans into it now. “Please take it,” she requests. “I want you to have something to hold onto.”

The shiver that moves through Lena’s body now is undeniably not because of the chill in the air, and after a moment’s hesitation, she wordlessly reaches out and accepts the offering, wrapping it snugly around her shoulders.

Kara fastens the clasps together herself. The cape is large enough around the other woman’s frame that it resembles a cloak, and she’s confident that whatever happens, it will hold fast. Even if Kara can’t, this will keep Lena warm. It’ll keep her safe.

“Beautiful,” she whispers, not just talking about the fit of the heavy fabric. Eyes drooping, she watches Lena wrap it tighter around her chest, moving closer.

Lena studies her right back. “You must be very tired, darling.” She takes a deep breath, looking over at Kara from amidst the fire and the ice and moving closer. “It won’t be long until we land. Please, rest now. It’ll be alright.”

“I shouldn’t,” Kara says, not able to explain why. She doesn’t want to lose this time, even if unconsciousness is beckoning. She can’t- Kara doesn’t know what’s going to happen next with her, Lena or anyone else, but she knows it will hurt.

Somehow, Lena understands. “Sleep while you can,” she soothes, pressing her lips to Kara’s collarbone. It scalds its way down her throat like a steaming cup of coffee. “I know.”

What it is Lena knows, Kara doesn’t get the chance to ask, because as soon as the words leave her mouth, sleep comes heavy and slow and wraps Kara up in its embrace.

-------------------------------

The plane lands with a jolt that’s abrupt enough to stir Kara out of her mostly catatonic state. The sun patches seem to thrum against her skin, sending liquid gold pulses of something faint and warm up and down her body, and despite the shaking ground beneath them and the roaring engine sputtering to a stop, Kara wants to close her eyes again. Lena is wrapped tight around her back, and Kara feels cradled by her hips and idle hands tracing patterns on Kara’s forearms. They dip lower, Lena’s fingers splayed surely across the surface of her stomach to pull her closer, and Kara knows that under different circumstances Lena would have never been this bold, so recklessly tender.

But there’s no more time for restraint. No further point in following any sort of reason or resolve because there isn’t a future to reckon with, now. The world is ending, at least for the two of them, and Kara keeps asking herself why she hadn’t allowed herself to be this brave before.

As they taxi across whatever makeshift runway that Lex came up with, Lena’s body tenses behind her. The inevitable has finally arrived – and as valiant as her efforts were earlier to ignore or redirect or bicker away from the truth, the other woman’s bravado is gone now. For one last moment, as Kara fully drags herself back to consciousness, she doesn’t mistake Lena’s tightening grip and the way she buries her face against Kara’s neck for anything other than despair, fully felt.

All at once, they come to a stop. Lena’s breaths come out more as gasps now. Kara fights against her mind, against her heavy, drowsy body that wants nothing more than to go back to sleep – to wake up. This is it, and she’d like to at least get one last good look at Lena’s eyes. The engine turns over and then falls silent. As she forces her eyes to remain open, Kara can hear the movements of the men as they begin to pile out onto the snow, their crowing, lilting laughter making this homecoming seem much more pleasant than it is.

They’ve invaded the only piece of Kara’s home world on this earth, and now they’ve brought her here to die on its soil. It’s enough to make what blood Kara has left pumping in her lungs boil, and that fire provides the spark she needed to ward off the darkness.

Twisting herself partially upright, Kara meets Lena’s wide, panicked gaze. Unsurprisingly, her eyes are red and puffy, the shock and dread of what’s coming fully set in.

Because of the man who is waiting for them only a few hundred steps away, Kara knows that this won’t do. If Lena is going to survive the night, she’s going to need to put on the tightest, most impenetrable mask she’s worn in years – and this moment right here is the last time she’ll be able to go without it.

Reaching up, Kara wipes at the other woman’s eyes. Every breath of air feels taut, feels stolen. There’s no telling when those doors will open, when they’ll be ripped away from each other’s grasp. It’s nearly over – and Rao, Kara hopes that the intensity of the moment will make Lena listen to her instructions at last.

“Keep your head high in there,” she says carefully, moving her hands down to grip both sides of Lena’s jaw once her tears have dried. It’s to make sure Lena can’t look away from her gaze – and so Kara can feel how warm and how soft her future might have been. “You know better than anyone how he is, what he wants. He’s going to rub it in. No matter what happens – don’t give him a single inch.”

She wants to tell Lena to run, to hide, to stamp down hard on the foot of the guard stupid enough to grab at her and to not look back, not even once. A deeper, more desperate part of her wants to ask Lena to beg for her life, to stroke her brother’s ego in the hopes that he may be delighted enough by her groveling that he lets Lena live. Kara is prepared to do all that and more if it means securing Lena an escape from this hellish night.

But she won’t ask the other woman to do that. She can’t. It would be like asking her to betray her innermost convictions, her years of work to distance herself from her family and cast off her brother’s chains and wean herself off his poison – it would be like watching Lena sacrifice who she is at her core.

As much as it pains her to know that Lena may choose to maintain her self-respect at the cost of her life, Kara knows that, to Lena, anything is better than crawling back to Lex. “He’s not going to beat us,” she adds. “He won’t win. He doesn’t understand what’s most important in the end.”

“Which is what?” Lena asks, her voice quick and quiet. They both hear the doors being wrenched open now, the gust of arctic, frozen wind nearly stealing the breath from Kara’s lungs. She gasps in a mouthful of it, appreciates it for what it is: cold clarity. She only has so many breaths left – only so many more seconds left on this earth.

“Remaining kind, and hopeful, and good no matter how impossible it is to keep going,” she says. “Knowing that even if things won’t turn out alright in the end, you still need to do more than just survive. You need to live. You keep living not just in the face of what’s in store, but in defiance of it. You live, and you care, and you love someone despite the cost. Because of the cost.”

“Loving someone?” Lena asks, and Kara knows that this is it. This is her last chance. Now or never. They’ll never be like this again. “That’s how we’ll win?”

Spurred on by her quiet comprehension that this is the end, Kara opens her mouth and finds that the words are already right there, waiting for her to get back around to them.

“That’s how we’ve always won. Nothing else matters. And I’ve never loved anyone more-”

Rao, fate must be set on ensuring that this is a proper tragedy because before Kara can finish, phantom hands emerge from the pitch black around them and rips her away.

“Time to go get this over with,” the same man from earlier says, gruff and overeager. It’s a brave front he’s putting up for someone Kara managed to nearly take down even while incapacitated, but the circumstances give it legitimate weight, and his elbow locking around her throat stops her voice in its tracks.

“Ka- Supergirl,” the other woman chokes out, frozen in place. The cape was a good move, Kara thinks, taking strength from the fact that the men swarming them seem hesitant to touch it – as if it alone is enough to hurt them. Let it serve as a shield for Lena even if she can’t. “I- just stay alive, okay?”

It’s as much of a command as it is a plea, and Kara knows that Lena will hold her to it, impossible or not.

Eyes wide, Lena can’t do anything but watch as Kara is dragged further away, already in the hands of her own assigned henchmen. Kara tries to remain calm, assessing their surroundings despite her hazy vision and the fact that she’s all but hurled out of the cargo hold and onto the snow. Looming upside down in her vision like some great stalactite, the Fortress awaits them.

Kara’s never once been intimidated by the sight of it; after all, it’s a genuine replica of so many familiar buildings on Krypton, a lovingly sculpted tribute to her home world. But now, knowing what’s inside – she's afraid. Very, very afraid of what’s going to happen on her native soil, under the watchful, statuesque gaze of her ancestors.

Saving her strength, Kara swallows hard and lets the men who immediately surround her do all the hard work of wrangling her into a standing position, dragging her feet behind her as they begin a slow, steady trek inside the open doors.

She keeps her chin up, keeps staring deadly holes into the skittish faces of the few goons in front of her, keeps up the facade that it’s Supergirl they’re attempting to bury – and that doesn’t bode well for anyone involved. It’s an endurable, easy part to play until she spares a glance behind her and sees Lena still shivering out by the plane, someone stooped in front of her with duct tape and rope.

Kara’s stomach lurches at the increasing distance between them – twists even more as she watches Lena receive a harsh backhanded slap for not playing nicely. “Where are you taking her?” she growls, voice too sharp and revealing, struggling a bit more against her own bonds. At the very least, she’d thought she’d have eyes on the other woman through it all. Now if she can’t even see where Lena is or what’s happening to her — how in Rao’s name is she supposed to look after her?

“You’ll see,” comes a disembodied answer from behind her shoulder, and it’s not nearly satisfying enough to mollify Kara in the slightest.

Muscles clenching, Kara digs her heels into the ground, willing to use up any amount of what’s left of her energy until she gets a proper response. “Don’t you dare touch her again,” she says, voice alien even to her own ears. “Or I swear I will kill every single one of you – even if it’s the very last thing I do.”

“She’ll be on her knees beside you soon enough,” the leader answers, expressionless. Perhaps his bruises from last time have made him less interested in rising to her bait. “Lena Luthor showing up will be a very nice surprise for the boss later on.”

Despite his cold words, Kara hears him mutter something to the men behind him, relaying a message that seems to bend towards Kara’s will. It’s a good thing to note, knowing now that she still holds a slight amount of power over these faceless men that Lex has in his employ — but their plans for Lena don’t help matters in the slightest.

Just one more unknown variable for Kara to reckon with, though she tries to find the silver lining in their separation. Perhaps Lex will be done with the worst of what he’s got in store for her before they decide to treat him to Lena’s late entrance.

Not bothering with a reply, Kara straightens her shoulders and looks ahead. Best not to dwell on what that scene might look like before it happens.

The first thing she notices when they finally wrestle her into the central, cavernous room of the Fortress is not Lex, but rather the lights and the cameras all around him, a red, blinking light on every screen. It doesn’t take long to realize what for; these cameras are live – which means that Lex intends to execute her in front of an audience.

Gritting her teeth against that nauseating piece of information, Kara at last finds Lex in the middle of it all, dressed in a pristine suit and long coat and looking like the opposite of what Kara would have imagined a wanted criminal who is penniless and on the run to look.

Their eyes meet. Lex’s face curdles and morphs into something repugnant as he takes in the full extent of the damage that he’s done to her so far. Even still, Kara doesn’t blink. Her dignity is just about the last thing she has available to wield against him, and she’s determined to create some cracks in his armor when it’s all said and done.

He won’t break her that easily – and if she can goad him into taking his time with his torture, she may even buy enough extra moments for her team to show up. Killing someone on live TV is perfectly fitting for as theatrical of a man as Lex is – but it’s also making him unnecessarily vulnerable to discovery and a counterattack. Kara can use his tendency to peacock to her benefit.

“I was worried, for a moment, that you wouldn’t show. I thought maybe you’d keeled over somewhere en route,” he greets her, cool and calm and exactly as menacing as Kara had imagined he would be, lurking around this sacred ground.

For the time being, Kara is still out of view from the cameras. She braces herself for the moment that she’s deposited into this icy stage that Lex has set, banishes all thoughts of her sister or her friends seeing her like this on their screens before her imagination turns too nightmarish.

Things always look worse on TV, she reminds herself.

She widens her stance as she’s hauled at last to the center of the cavern, swaying only slightly. “Lex,” Kara says, her voice miraculously strong and clear despite her rapid heart and shallow breathing. Already the room is beginning to spin. Already her vision is starting to tunnel. Whatever spiel he has planned – and however many barbs she can squeeze in between – will need to be quick. “Somehow, you look even smaller than usual standing inside the Fortress.”

His smile is wiped away. If she wasn’t too weak to pull it off, Kara would laugh at how easy it is to get under the skin of a man so haughty and grandiose. “And you look nothing short of pathetic,” he says, turning and striding out of frame for a moment, looking for something behind a bank of snow. When he stands back up to his full height, prize in his hands, Kara can already feel its effects from across the room. Leave it to Lex to stick to such barbaric and obvious symbolism.

“A housewarming gift for you,” he continues, walking back over to her. In the artificial light, she can get a better look at what he’s brought her: a ridged, massive chunk of Kryptonite, hanging lopsided from a crude chain that he’s attached to its center. “I considered a noose, but I thought you’d take some sentimental comfort in wearing this as a reminder of where you came from.”

Without further preamble, he loops it around her head like a necklace, stepping back to admire its shine and the way its weight seems to multiply in Kara’s presence. It was agony, feeling it from further away. Now that it’s hung around her shoulders like an anchor, it feels like maybe she’s died already and just doesn’t know it.

Stifling a groan, she stumbles, the men around her scattering and offering her nothing to grasp onto for support. Lex watches her struggle to stay up, studying their reflection in one of the monitors. Judging from the smile that’s back on his face, he must like what he sees.

“Stay standing if you’d like,” he goads. “But I’d wager it’s less of a strain for you to kneel for what comes next.” She sways, and at last, her knees crunch hard and heavy into the ground. Her bag leg feels nothing short of wooden now. As she fumes at the control over her own body that’s been wrenched from her, Lex draws in a breath and makes an assessment of his own. “There’s no shame in it, Supergirl. Perfectly righteous to admit when you’ve lost to a superior opponent.”

She knows she doesn’t have it in her to respond with any amount of strategy, not with the way Lex’s gift has already wreaked havoc on her body, but Kara refuses to back down so early. If this is meant to be her complete humiliation, Lex will have to try harder than this.

“You’re the one that’s lost,” she groans, unable and unwilling to disguise the pain in her voice. Pretending to be unaffected will only cause Lex to twist the knife harder, and Kara knows that this public display of vulnerability on her part is exactly what he wants. For now, so long as it keeps him relatively stable, she’ll grant it to him. “CADMUS is gone. Your mother is in jail, and no matter what happens tonight, you’ll join her sooner than later. You’ve gained nothing but a moment of hollow satisfaction.”

“Oh, I’ve gained much more than that, I can assure you,” he says, her little push snowballing into an incoming storm. “Admittedly, you accomplished more than I thought you would with your remarkable commitment to self-isolation. Credit where credit is due for taking out CADMUS — that certainly delayed machinations on my end longer than I expected.”

A small, fleeting moment of relief passes through Kara’s chest and out through her nose in a quick sigh. At least CADMUS is well and truly gone. That’s one less mess for the others to clean up after this is over.

“Wiping my resources off the board was one of the smarter moves I’ve seen you make,” he continues, eyes darting between her and the cameras. It’s a compulsion, like he can’t help but make certain that he’s being captured in the correct light. If there’s a way to undermine that obsession with control, to disrupt his image — that might be the only way she can really get to him in the state she’s in.

“You were killing people,” she lashes back, head heavy. Nothing makes the effects of the Kryptonite lessen — but despite the crippling waves of pain, she keeps her eyes open. It would be a mistake to let a snake like Lex move around unseen in the grass. “Innocent people. It wasn’t a chess move — it was putting a stop to your reign of terror before more people got hurt.”

“Yes, well you’ve always taken things on such a personal level. It’s so difficult for you to take a step back and look at it from a more… nuanced perspective,” he says, almost chiding. Kara knows she’s never been the cunning, ruthless opponent Lex has always craved, has always tried to turn her into — and that’s exactly why he’s so bothered by her. “Even still, your bleeding-heart heroics resorted me to begging at the table of anyone I could find in the criminal underworld. It was a tired act — one that nearly got me killed a few times — but my one selling point happened to be an irresistible one: the very painful, very public killing of Supergirl.”

“Having a target on my back is nothing new to me,” Kara grits out. “Awfully unoriginal for a genius like you.”

“Oh, it’s been a remarkably historic unifier. I’ve never seen this sort of collaboration before — and all for your head on a spike. The cameras were a required stipulation, of course. Nothing like watching your idol knocked from the pedestal and smashed into little bits to make you doubt everything they ever stood for. Before I was guaranteed the funds and the firepower, I had to promise to make it hurt. I told them I was the perfect man for the job.”

It’s a chilling insinuation, the thought of that underbelly working as a united front. Under Lex’s watchful eye, it could easily escalate back up to the levels of CADMUS in a matter of months. 

Kara can’t dwell on that for long, however, focusing on another passing detail.

So, the cameras are for a larger purpose than Lex’s own vanity — though Kara suspects that, at his core, Lex is doing things this way for his own self-serving motives, not to appease any shadowy crime lords. Lex has never been the type to care much about stepping on the toes of other people to make sure he stays the center of attention.

He hates answering to anyone other than himself — and that’s something she can use.

“Must have been a sight to watch the great Lex Luthor grovel for a new pack of lackeys to boss around,” she comments, knowing exactly how dangerous it is to chop away at his pride.

“A person in your position is usually better at holding their tongue,” he lashes back. “Someone’s in a hurry to get this over with.” Pausing, he stops to really look her over, a glimmer of cold curiosity in his eyes. “And really, that begs the question: how the hell did you even manage to survive up until now? They tell me you took that blast directly. That should have killed you. Why hasn’t it yet?”

Kara’s heart races. Under no circumstances can Lex discover the solar patches that are just barely keeping her from crossing over into actively dying. Lena’s little discreet miracle workers are doing what they can to keep her going — but she knows that nothing will be enough to bring her back if they’re removed. 

“You’ve always underestimated me,” she responds, barely able to get the words out without gagging. There’s an entire sickly tide of bile stuck in her throat now, and the longer she kneels here, the more likely it is that it will come up. “One of these days, that’s going to come around and bite you in the-”

She can’t finish her sentence, her rebelling stomach winning the battle. Crashing forward, she empties her stomach out onto the smooth ice, the stark white of the floor making the blood found in the contents stick out like a sore thumb. Shuddering, she heaves herself back up onto shaking arms, her protesting biceps only adding to the cacophony of screams that her body is making.

Lex studies the scene with a mixture of disgust and unbridled excitement, like Kara turning her stomach inside out is just the newest exciting development in a science experiment he’s been waiting ages to conduct. On the bright side, it seems it’s distracted him from further questions.

“One of these days, perhaps,” he says, sticking out a foot and pushing Kara back to the floor, her face narrowly missing the blood. “But I don’t think it’ll be today. Today, I think I’m going to be able to exact whatever sort of punishment I see fit for you — and no one will be able to lift a finger to stop it. Seems like I’ve already gotten started.”

Kara gets back up, face white and lips pinched. Her time for goading Lex into talking has passed. Now it’s time to put on a brave face and endure whatever else he’s got planned.

“Do your worst,” she dares him, eyes blazing — knowing that a man like Lex will take that challenge to heart.

It’s something she’s ready to take on if it means buying a sliver more of time. Not for her survival. That ship has sailed, Kara feels certain of just by the murderous look in Lex’s eyes. But if this act of torture keeps him distracted and relatively exposed and in one place — that’s something that the others can work with. If Kara can keep breathing long enough, she may even live to see the moment they storm in and finish him off.

That would be a worthy final glimpse of the world for spite alone, she thinks.

But then there’s movement off to the side of the room, and the one open-ended factor of the night is brought kicking and screaming into view. Lena is here, and suddenly Kara wishes Lex had killed her a few minutes earlier.

Nothing is worth what she knows Lex is about to put his little sister through, not even a chance to catch the ultimate bad guy.

Lex looks up, put out by the intrusion momentarily before his back straightens, his canines practically sharpening the moment he can make out who the newcomer is through the shadows.

“We found her sneaking around near Supergirl,” the leader of the crew supplies as he ushers Lena to step forward. “I figured, two birds one stone, you know? Easier to take care of them at the same time.”

Lex doesn’t respond, eyes big and his smile as wide as if he had just walked into his own surprise party. Voice low enough so only Kara can hear, he says, “So... that’s where the cape went. You’ve handled yourself with a shocking amount of restraint up until now. I was wondering when you were going to do something saccharine.”

Jamming the butt of his gun against Lena’s side, the man urges her forward. “Go on and say hello,” he says, his broken nose from before making his smile look swollen and stiff.

Meeting Kara’s fiery eyes, he sticks the weapon further into Lena’s gut. Her words of promised repercussions from before mean nothing to him now that he sees the state she’s in. Not liking his disregard one bit, Kara clambers back to her feet, clutching her stomach and resisting the urge to keel back over. Now that Lena’s here, she needs to be more alert than ever – and to take up as much space as possible. No one in here believes her capable of protecting the other woman, much less herself – but that doesn’t mean Kara won’t try. She can, at least, act like just enough of a threat to prevent any weapons being lazily pointed Lena’s way.

Lex ignores her entirely, far too enamored by the sight of Lena taking in the scene to bother with forcing her back down to her knees.

“You’ve just guaranteed yourself a hefty bonus for this extra present,” he calls out. “This is so much better than imagining her expression while watching through a television,” he mutters again, only for Kara’s ears. “I bet they didn’t find her. Lena is much too clever to get caught in a mousetrap like that. No… she volunteered to come with you, didn’t she?”

“It’s me you want,” she tries. “Leave her out of this.”

“Walking to the slaughter of her own free will like some misguided little lamb, and all for you! Oh, how that must have broken your heart.”

Kara fights to lift her head up, to impart any sort of force into her voice. “Don’t. Please,” she adds, already willing to start begging if it means Lena doesn’t take a step further into this spiderweb. Although her voice is no more than a rattling whisper, Kara wonders if the cameras can pick up her desperate, panicked words. “You can do whatever you want with me, just don’t”

“Shut up,” Lex interrupts, and Kara knows then and there that there is nothing she can say to stop this from happening, not when Lex sounds so pleased. “Let me enjoy the look on her face in peace.”

Lena has yet to say anything, her eyes scouring the room Kara knows what she’s doing – looking for traps, points of exploitation, potential escapes – same as she’s been doing this entire time. Kara wonders if Lena has come to the same conclusion as she has – and if that’s the reason for the growing unease on the other woman’s face as they at last land squarely on her brother.

“Come on, enough snooping around. You were so insistent a moment ago. Go ahead and join her,” someone says. Lena stops in place, her face quickly morphing back into something resembling aloofness. Kara wonders how exactly the other woman plans to play this – and what, exactly, she’d been up to before these men decided to dump her headfirst into the main event.

The other woman doesn’t dignify the men with a response, nor does she bother to meet her brother’s clenched hands and held breath and expectant smile with any sort of acknowledgement. No, Lena just keeps her eyes adrift as she’s drawn into the eye of the hurricane, her gaze swiveling and studying as if she’d never been here before, as if this hasn’t been the scene of so many of their darkest moments.

Maybe even more so than a hit against her Kryptonian pride, Kara thinks Lex chose this spot to remind her of those past failings – of all of the opportunities and moments she squandered along the way.