Chapter Text
The bullpen was thinning out, monitors dimming, chairs squeaking as the night shift handed itself over to silence. Kara had been typing without really seeing the words when William drifted to her desk. His hands were in his pockets, his smile practiced casual, though his eyes betrayed something a little more careful.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” he asked. “Do you want to go out sometime? With me? Dinner?”
Kara’s stomach tightened. Deep down she knew this was coming. Inviting him to game night and karaoke night left something uncertain between them. Before Kara could even process the weight of what he asked, she closed her laptop a little too quickly, as if the sound could hide her answer. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
William tilted his head, not surprised, but not untouched either. “Because of work?”
She nodded. “Work. Lex. Everything. I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t exactly untrue. But the truth sat heavy under her tongue, the truth that had nothing to do with villains or articles or the world-saving schedule she always blamed.
“You don’t need to explain.” His smile didn’t falter, though it gentled. “I get it.”
She wanted to thank him for his kindness, but the words stuck. It felt wrong to accept his understanding when she didn’t deserve it.
“See you tomorrow, Danvers,” he said, pushing off her desk.
“See you,” she managed, and then he was gone.
She sat for a moment in the emptying newsroom, the hum of the printers low, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Relief pooled in her chest, sharp and startling. It should have felt wrong to reject him, but instead it felt like setting something heavy down. The guilt would come later, but right now it was only relief.
Kara shut her laptop, gathered her bag, and chose the stairs instead of the elevator.
Outside, the night was loud. Neon buzzed, car horns bleated, footsteps hurried across crosswalks. Kara’s superhearing has been increasingly harder to control recently since the crisis. The multiverse had folded and shifted, entire histories rewritten, and sometimes it felt like her senses were still trying to reconcile which world was real. Voices overlapped, memories tangled with new ones, and the noise of the city pressed sharper than before. It was like the dial inside her had been knocked off balance, and she couldn’t quite tune it back.
The uneven rhythm of shoes on pavement, the flick of a lighter in an alley, a song blaring from a second-floor apartment, the shaky heartbeat of a man arguing into his phone. All of it pressed against her skull, restless and relentless.
It wasn’t just the city. Her whole life on Earth had sounded like this. Too much, all at once. Every relationship she had tried had felt like this too.
Kara thought of James. She had cared for him, truly, and for a little while she had let herself believe they could build something real. But even at its best, it had felt quiet in a way that wasn’t peace. It was like listening to a song turned low, sweet but never stirring. She had convinced herself that safety was enough, until it wasn’t.
Then Mon-El. He had been a storm, all bluster and noise, a frequency so loud it drowned her out. With him, there had been no room to breathe, no room to find her own clarity. She had told herself that intensity meant connection, but deep down she had always known it wasn’t resonance, it was interference.
And William… He was good. He was kind. She admired him. Kara wish she liked him like that. But there was nothing there to tune into. She tried to listen, really listen, but it was always static. A voice blurred into the city’s hum. He deserved someone whose whole chest leapt at his words. That someone wasn’t her.
She crossed the street and faltered in the middle of the crosswalk, eyes closing against the flood. For a moment it felt like drowning.
And then, through the noise, came quiet. Lena.
The sound of her voice, low and certain, always reaching Kara first no matter how crowded the room. The way she’d smiled across the table during their first brunch, laughing when Kara nervously offered to cover the bill. Game nights at Kara’s apartment, Lena’s laugh soft and surprised when she won. Long hours in the lab, when Lena explained her theories with hands moving quick, precise, and Kara found herself listening not just to the words but to the cadence of her joy. That day on the balcony when Lena looked at her and said, “You’re my hero,” voice full of wonder and belief. Even the silences between them — bent over research, sharing coffee, watching the city — had never felt empty. They had been grounding, full of quiet belonging, like standing in the centre of calm while the storm spun around her.
Kara’s chest ached, sharp and undeniable. The truth pressed hard against her ribs, refusing to stay buried. Losing Lena hadn’t only been about secrets or betrayal. It hadn’t just been about trust broken. It had been like losing the one clear signal that had ever cut through the static. Without Lena, the noise of the world had swallowed her whole, and she hadn’t been able to hear herself.
That was why William’s smile, James’s warmth, Mon-El’s passion had never been enough. They couldn’t clear through the noise. They couldn’t give her the quiet she craved.
It wasn’t that Kara was incapable of love. It was that she already loved.
She started walking again, faster, her heart pounding with every step. Her body knew where she was going before she admitted it to herself. Each block was a confession. She wasn’t broken. She wasn’t incapable of love. She just hadn’t been honest about where it had always lived.
It had always been Lena.
And then she was standing in front of the tower. The letters were bright against the night: LuthorCorp. Clean, unflinching. The glass doors mirrored her back at herself, Kara Danvers with her cardigan and glasses and secrets.
Her throat closed, but the words slipped out anyway. “It’s you,” she whispered. “It’s always been you.”
The glass doors gave way with a sigh, spilling Kara into the lobby’s hush. The scent of polish hung in the air, sharp and clean, layered with the faint bitterness of coffee long since gone cold. Soft light gleamed off marble floors and brushed against the gold trim of the reception desk. The whole place felt sterile, museum-like, as if even sound knew better than to raise its voice here.
Jarrod looked up from his crossword, pen resting between his fingers. His posture straightened when he saw her, and then he gave the kind of smile that reached his eyes, like she wasn’t an intruder at all but someone expected. “Ms. Danvers.”
Her throat tightened. She wasn’t sure she deserved his warmth. “Hi, Jarrod.” The word scraped on its way out. She adjusted her glasses, stalling for breath. “Is she…?”
He tipped his chin toward the elevators, voice low, almost conspiratorial. “Light in her office hasn’t gone off once.”
Kara nodded, but the air between them pressed heavy. She shifted her bag higher on her shoulder. “Thank you.”
Jarrod leaned forward just a little, lowering his voice. “She told me not to let you up.” His gaze softened, kind but firm. “Said you weren’t welcome right now.”
Kara’s stomach dropped, though she had expected it. She started to turn away, but his next words stopped her.
“Still,” Jarrod said gently, “I can see you need to be there. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean forever. Go on. Just… try not to make it worse, yeah?”
The kindness in his tone broke something loose in her chest. She managed a trembling smile. “I’ll do my best.”
He nodded once, like they shared a secret. “And if you can, tell her to get some rest for me.”
“I’ll try,” Kara whispered. Her hand tightened on the strap of her bag, and she stepped toward the waiting elevator, every motion weighted with gratitude and dread.
The elevator carried her up, the hum of the cables filling the quiet. In the steel reflections she caught herself fragmented: reporter, alien, hero. None of them steady. But when she thought of Lena, all of it aligned.
The doors opened onto silence. At the end of the hall, light spilled from a single office. Kara walked slowly, her heart loud in her ears. Through the strip of clear glass, Lena was bent over her desk, pen moving across a page with deliberate grace.
Kara raised her hand. She knocked.
Lena looked up sharply. Her expression flickered—soft for half a breath, then cool as glass. “Kara.”
“Hey.” Kara pushed the door open and stepped inside, shutting it gently behind her. The room smelled of ink and citrus.
Lena set her pen down with deliberate care, aligning it perfectly along the edge of her desk. Only then did she lean back in her chair, arms folding across her chest, gaze steady and unyielding. “It’s late. What are you doing here?”
Kara’s voice faltered. She had told herself a dozen excuses on the way up, but none of them seemed worth speaking now. “I needed to see you.”
The silence stretched, heavy as glass. Lena said nothing, only watched, eyes sharp and far too knowing.
“So,” Kara blurted, too quickly. “Working late? You… you always did push yourself.” She shifted her bag strap, then winced at her own words. “Not that that’s bad, of course. You, um… you get so much done. I should have brought coffee. Or—have you eaten? There’s this new place near CatCo, they have the best dumplings, you’d love—”
“Kara.” Lena’s voice cut clean through the babble. Her arms tightened where they were folded, her mouth twitching with disdain rather than amusement. “Cut the bullshit. Tell me why you’re really here.”
Kara’s throat closed. Heat rushed to her face, and she opened her mouth but nothing came out. “I… I…” Her fingers twisted in the strap of her bag until her knuckles went white. “I just— I couldn’t go home without telling you.”
Her words tumbled into silence. The steady tick of the clock on Lena’s desk filled the gap, merciless.
Lena’s laugh was low, bitter, hollow of anything soft. “You’ve told me plenty already.”
Kara winced at the sound, her pulse hammering in her ears. “Not this,” she whispered, barely holding the tremor from her voice.
“I told William no tonight,” Kara said, blurting it out before she could think better. “He asked me to dinner. I said no.”
Lena’s eyes flickered — a sharp blink, a tightening at the corner of her mouth — gone so quickly it might have been imagined. But Kara heard it in the shift of her breath, the faint quickening of her heartbeat. Distaste, sharp and fleeting, before Lena smoothed it back into ice.
“And that has what, exactly, to do with me?” she asked, voice cool and flat, clipped in a way that carried more bite than indifference.
“Everything.” The word came out rough. Kara forced herself to keep going. “I’ve spent years trying to make things work with people who are good. James. Mon-El. William. And it’s never right. It always feels like static. I thought maybe I was broken, that I couldn’t let anyone in. But tonight, walking here, I finally understood.”
She looked at Lena, her heart in her throat. Her vision blurred, chest too tight to hold the words, but she forced them out anyway. “It’s you. It’s always been you. You’re the reason it hurt so much to lose our friendship. Not just because I trusted you. Because you’ve always been the one person who made the noise fall away. With you, everything made sense. Everyone else was static, but you—” Kara’s voice cracked, a sob catching in her chest. “—you’re the one I could always hear.”
For a moment, Lena’s mask faltered. Kara heard it before she saw it: the tiny hitch in her breath, the faint stutter of her heartbeat. Her eyes glistened, a tear threatening but caught before it could fall. She blinked hard, smoothed her expression back into glass, but Kara had already seen it.
When Lena spoke, her voice was iron. “You think saying this changes anything? That wanting me makes the lies disappear?”
Kara shook her head so fast it almost hurt, tears streaking hot down her cheeks. “No. No, it doesn’t,” she choked out, her breath hitching on every word. “Nothing I say can undo what I did to you. I will carry that lie for the rest of my life, and it will eat at me every single day.” Her voice broke, ragged, her chest heaving. “But I can’t leave here tonight without telling you the truth I should’ve said years ago. I couldn’t say yes to more time with William, or James, or Mon-El, because I’ve never been able to give my heart to anyone else.” She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, as if she could rip it out and show her. “It’s already yours, Lena. It has been for so long. Even if you hate me, even if you never forgive me, even if you throw me out and never look at me again—it’s still yours. And it always will be.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and trembling, and Kara could feel her world tilt under the weight of them.
Lena froze, every line of her body taut. Her knuckles whitened around the papers in her hands until they crumpled. She blinked once, hard, as if trying to banish the burn in her eyes, but it wasn’t fast enough. Kara saw the glint of a tear catch and cling before Lena’s lashes forced it back.
“Wanting me didn’t stop you from lying,” Lena said at last. Her voice was quiet, almost breaking, but she sharpened the edges until they cut.
Kara’s sob slipped out before she could stop it. “I know,” she whispered, her shoulders shaking. “God, I know. And I am so sorry. I’ll always be sorry. But please believe me when I say you’ve been the only thing that’s ever been clear in my life. The only thing that’s ever made sense.”
Her words cracked against the silence, and her hearing filled it with all the things Lena couldn’t hide. The shallow pull of her breath, uneven now. The faintest tremor in her voice when she spoke. The rhythm of her heart, faster than she wanted it to be. Kara had known that heartbeat in every moment that mattered: steady in the cell when she defended Lena against the world, unsteady when Lena admitted on Kara’s couch she had no one else, racing when she told Kara she didn’t want to be like her family. That heartbeat was betraying her now, no matter how hard she fought to mask it.
“I know you don’t believe me,” Kara said, wiping at her face though the tears only kept coming. “But I can hear it. Even now. You still care.”
Lena’s head snapped up, her green eyes flashing. Another tear welled, clung stubbornly to her lashes, but she blinked it back before it could fall. Her lips parted as if she might answer, but she swallowed the words. “You don’t get to use your powers to interpret my feelings,” she spat. Her tone was icy, but it faltered on the edges, the control fraying. “Get out, Kara.”
“I don’t need powers for this,” Kara said, her whole body trembling. “I’ve always known. From the very beginning. The way you looked at me like I was more than a symbol. The way you saw me when I couldn’t see myself. That’s what I’ve been protecting, even when I didn’t understand it. That’s why William felt wrong. That’s why they all felt wrong. Because none of them were you.”
Lena’s breath hitched audibly, her composure cracking just enough for Kara to hear the truth she wouldn’t speak. Her lips parted again, trembling with a protest or a confession she couldn’t give voice to. The papers in her hands gave way under her grip, folding and tearing until they were nothing but ruined edges.
“You’ve always been the one,” Kara whispered, her tears falling freely now, voice raw and broken.
For a moment, the room was so still it hurt. Lena’s mask wavered, fracture lines visible now, the tear finally threatening to fall — but she turned sharply away, shoulders rigid, spine unbending.
“Go, Kara,” she said, her voice rougher than before, betraying the ache underneath.
Kara stood frozen, her chest split open, her whole body begging her to stay, to fight. But the command in Lena’s voice left her no choice. She forced her legs to move, each step heavier than the last, and slipped out the door.
The click of it shutting behind her echoed like finality.
In the hallway, the silence was deafening. Kara leaned against the wall, her whole body trembling as the sobs broke loose. Her glasses blurred with tears until she tore them off, pressing her hand to her face, choking on the sound. She had lost her, maybe for good — but in the hollow ache, clarity burned sharp.
It had always been Lena.