Chapter Text
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul
Pablo Neruda, Sonnet Xvii
i. November
Lena Luthor knows it's going to be a bad day when she wakes up to her star chart app notifying her that Mercury is officially in retrograde. It's not that she really buys into astrology per se--Jess had installed the app for her during a late night at the office when, after one two many scotch neats staring at the sky she’d wondered aloud about her moon sign--it's just that some of it is really uncanny. The pop up is underneath a few other notifications: a missed call from a telemarketer, Words With Friends letting her know that it’s her move in her game with Jess, and four consecutive texts from Kara.
Those, she deletes immediately. It’s been a week since they talked, a full week since Lena had planted maybe the world’s least well-advised kiss on the mouth of her best friend in a wine induced delirium and gotten hit with the nicest I’m not gay speech she’d ever heard. It had taken Jess two hours to talk her down from buying tickets to move back to Metropolis, and another complete day to convince her it wasn’t a good idea to take three months off to go to Okinawa and meet with investors. She swears Jess must have some kind of notification system because every time a Kayak ad so much as pops up on her Facebook sidebar she gets a text reminding her that she shouldn’t even think about it, Ms. Luthor.
The numbers on her phone tell her that it’s exactly 5:30 am, the winter sun not yet showing through the closed blinds of her bedroom. Lena clunks the phone face down on her night stand and slithers out of bed, clicking on lights on as she pads her way to the bathroom. As her apartment begins to stutter to life little by little, she makes a conscious choice to try and shed her bad feelings, visualising every inch of insecurity and embarrassment falling away. She needs 10 minutes free of considering whether she’s being a bad friend by ghosting Kara, or berating herself for doing the stupid thing in the first place. She tries to bury it under a shower, a fresh outfit, and two strong cups of coffee. It almost works.
By the time she arrives at her office Jess has her schedule ready, a latte on her desk, and a 30-point lead in Words With Friends. “Get the head of Zynga on the line,” She says as she passes her assistant without looking up from her phone “Gherkins is an obscene word and I want it stricken from their dictionary.”
“A gherkin is simply a small pickle, ma’am.” Jess replies to her boss’s back as she strides into her office. Throws on more lights, her winter jacket hitting the arm of the sofa and her latte gingerly settling on a Frida Khalo coaster next to her laptop. The sun is just beginning to rise over the city skyline as Lena settles into her chair and savors one last moment of peace before her day takes off full-tilt.
She’s halfway through tapping out a message to Jess asking her to google how long Mercury is going to be in retrograde when the first explosion hits and knocks out her hearing. In shock, she stares down at her half formed message, ears ringing out in the sudden silence. There’s another explosion, and everything goes black.
***
She opens her eyes briefly and tries to sit up. Her equilibrium is shot, her ears are shrill, and the only thing she can hear with any clarity is the sound of her own breathing. She’s laid out in the rubble of what used to be her office, attempting to stagger up on her elbows. The chaos around her is playing out as if in a silent movie and--yes, Supergirl is here, Kara is here, face stormy as she catches sight of Lena amongst the wreckage. Lena wills her mouth to open, wills herself to shout out. There’s iron on her tongue and it won’t go away.
Kara is coming towards her and Lena extends her arms, free of shame.
Everything goes black again.
***
Lena wakes up at the DEO on a stretcher and her first instinct is to scream, but her throat is too raw and it comes out as a ragged hack. She’s still in her outfit from this morning, which has been creatively tailored by the explosion. It takes her a full moment to take stock and realize that Alex is there, offering her a bottle of water, and Maggie is there too, behind her, looking grim.
They both look grim. Lena wonders offhandedly if they know Mercury is in retrograde, if she should tell them. She takes the water in a shaky, sooty hand. Her nails look atrocious, caked in dirt. She wants her voice to come back so she can ask to go to the bathroom, to wash up.
When Alex opens her mouth and the first sentences are Lex is trying to kill you and witness protection, she drops the water bottle, foolishly. It splashes up, against her bare shins, and rolls away under the stretcher somewhere. Lena places her dirty hands in her lap, palms up, almost beseeching. She schools her expression, but she knows her face must be dirty too, and her tears must look like highlighter streaks on her cheek. She’s hit with a fresh bout of humiliation when her first instinct is to croak out, “Where’s Kara? I need to talk to Kara, where is she?”. Her body and her mouth are kinetic, urgent, foolish, betraying her with every word.
Alex and Maggie share a look, and Lena bottoms out all over again.
***
She wakes up that morning as Lena Luthor and ends the day as Ellie Kapatelis. According to her state ID she is 27 years old, a natural blonde, green-eyed, an organ donor, registered at 57 Langley street in Bangor. She squints at the picture of herself taken a few minutes before, trying to discern if there’s any distress evident on her face. Ellie stares back at her, eyes crinkled, lips slightly parted and not even a ghost of a smile playing on her mouth. Alex had told her not to try to smile, like they would say at the DMV.
“Can I at least go back to my apartment and get some clothes?” She plucks at a loose thread on her blouse. It’s been all but destroyed and her skirt has been raggedly hemmed by about three inches. There’s a few errant bleach stains on her shoulders. She feels all the grief that had exploded forward earlier morph somewhat blandly into shock.
Alex shakes her head, not looking up from the tablet that she taps on furiously. Maggie stands behind her, arms crossed and face set in a grim, straight line. “We need to convince people that you were kidnapped. There’s going to be an NCPD investigation, maybe even FBI. It’s going to be suspicious if it looks like you had time to pack before you disappeared.” Alex finally looks up, scrutinizing her for a quiet second. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be Ellie Kapatelis now, not Lena Luthor. I don’t think that two-thousand dollar Gucci skirts really scream freelance writer from Bangor, Maine. ”
Lena balks. “I like my skirts.”
“Whatever. Open up that duffel bag.”
She does, finding inside a few T-shirts, underwear, a pair of jeans and practical black Vans sneakers. There’s also a flimsy wallet with a large, cartoon print of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox. She peers up at Alex disbelievingly.
“Where did you even find this?”
“You can get anything on Etsy. Look inside.”
She shakes it open and finds what looks to be ten hundred-dollar bills and a credit card with her new name on it.
“Try not to use the credit card too often, it shouldn’t be traceable but you never know. Use the money to buy new clothes when we get to Bangor.”
Inside the duffel Lena also finds a small laptop, an iphone in a case covered in pictures of what look to be little trout, several forged personal documents including a passport, and a small plastic case full of toiletries. As Lena tangles her hands into a soft, faded T-shirt that proudly states I caught crabs in Maine she feels something in her chest simply up and boil over. It’s like a symphony is playing too loud in her head, her face is hot, and tears are slipping out and shamefully darkening the fabric of the shirt in her lap. The last time she cried like this she was four years old and had just been told she would never see her mother again, and while the feeling she has now isn’t the same intensity, it’s a similar animal. There’s something hollowed out and lost in her, something frightening, something vast. All she can think of are the texts that she still has unread on her phone from Kara, and the phone calls. What did they say? When Kara turned to her, plain faced and covered in soot and blood, what had she been thinking?
All of it, all of her foolish vulnerability, all of the lies that she had been telling herself like, I can make it work here and maybe she loves me back, they had all lead her to this point. This must be the ultimate punishment, the toll she has to pay for her tresspasses, her near-fatal grasp at happiness. Lena doesn’t realise that she’s been doubled over, head buried in her lap, until she feels the bed dip beside her and Alex’s hand on her back.
When she peers up, she sees Alex looking back at her with uncertainty and discomfort plain on her face. The older woman pats her twice in a stilted There, there kind of way. Lena straightens, flushing even deeper and wiping furiously at her eyes.
“How long?” She asks. Alex’s face pinches up further in a way that tells her she’s not going to like the answer she’s about to get.
“A few months, maybe more.”
The sound that escapes Lena’s mouth is somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“And I can’t--nobody can know?” Alex shakes her head slowly. “Not even Kara?”
“The more people who know the more the investigation is jeopardized. We’re keeping Kara in the dark.” She pauses. “Do you have a plan? For L-Corp? I can have Winn plant something on your servers if you want, for Jess to find, so she knows what to do while you’re gone. He can make it look like you wrote it a while ago in case.”
“I already have one, Jess knows how to find it.” Lena had written up a detailed plan for what to do with the company if something ever happened to her ages ago. She had a vice president, a nice boy named Andy, who would be ready to step up in the interim, and of course Jess helping him at the helm. She hopes it will be enough.
If this was it, if this was really the beginning of her new life, Lena is seized with the need to simply rip off the band-aid. She can’t spend one more minute here, in National City, knowing that Kara is out there, and Jess, and the fresh remnants of her day. The lights in her apartment would still be on, half a pot of coffee left sitting and her bed covers still mussed as if she had barely just left them. The idea of remaining this close in proximity to the comfort of her life is absolute and suffocating. “When do we leave?”
Alex looks briefly at her watch, then back at Lena, face set with resolve. “Now, if you’re ready.”
***
In Bangor, Alex helps her pick out a wardrobe that she describes as “Wilderness lesbian, but kind of chic”. Really, it’s a few men’s flannels, some jeans, more t-shirts, sweaters, a puffy vest that was more Alex’s idea than hers, winter boots, and roughly a million pairs of thick socks. A nice woman at Nordstrom’s helps her pick out a few pairs of long underwear, the kind with button-up butt flaps that make Alex actually laugh out loud, and a large winter coat that throws Lena into a rather convincing cut of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man.
She changes clothes in the bathroom of a McDonalds while Alex is ordering them burgers and cokes and coffee. It’s a four hour drive to Snake's Canyon and already close to seven in the evening, they’re going to need all the fuel they can get. Lena finds herself taking her time in the bathroom, which is surprisingly immaculate for a fast food restaurant. She sits on the toilet seat and carefully peels off her socks, jeans, and vans, replacing them with a bottom layer of long underwear, dark skinny jeans, and green woolen socks with little christmas trees on them. She had wanted to simply throw in a few Hanes packs into their cart and be done with them, but Alex had insisted on more jovial pairs. She was right, Lena thought. Having them on made her a little happier.
On top went a checkered button down and dark green sweater, and her vans were replaced with a pair of insulated burgundy snow boots that came up to her ankle, the socks just barely poking out. It occurs to Lena as she straightens her shirt-collar in the mirror that this is the final shedding of her old skin. Her blonde hair is pulled into a high, messy bun, soon to be tucked under a hat, her eyes are heavy and tired. When she returns from the bathroom Alex is looking similarly haggard but chattering almost chipperly as they make their way out to the old Toyota truck that they had picked up at the airport.
Lena isn’t sure who she would have chosen to go through this ordeal with, but in this moment, she’s filled with relief and gratitude that it’s Alex.
They take a moment before beginning the drive to scarf down part of dinner. The only noise in the cab of the truck is quiet chewing, ice shaking in cups, and sipping through straws. Alex had turned on some local talk radio show that nattered on quietly in the background. It’s not comfortable silence persay, but not quite awkward either.
Alex’s iPhone rattles in the cup holder a few times in quick succession. It grabs Lena’s attention, and her heart drops nearly all the way into her stomach when she see’s Kara’s name in the notifications.
7:32 Alex seriously where are u? Turn on your find my friends or I’m telling mom
7:32 I want to help you look for leads
7:32 I’m going stir crazy here
7:33 We have to find her. you have to let me help you find her
When she looks up, face flush, her eyes meet Alex’s. The older woman has very clearly caught her staring. Her face is plain and inscrutable, betraying absolutely nothing about how she feels or what she knows. Lena has never disclosed her crush on Kara to Alex in so many words, but Alex is an FBI agent and Lena knows she’s not exactly been subtle. Lena finds herself wondering how Alex feels about lying to her sister so brazenly and about something so deeply consequential to Kara, a woman who had lost her entire world, and who was having another precious thing now hidden from her in plain sight.
“Is she going to hate us when she finds out?”
Alex sucks on her teeth and moves her gaze straight ahead. The parking lot is dark and illuminated only by a few billboards and the light from the McDonald's, giving the moment an almost otherworldly feel. “Yeah. I mean probably. But sometimes you have to do things that are really, really hard, because they’re the right thing.” Her face crinkles up in consternation, gaze unfaltering from some unknowable focal point outside the truck. “Kara doesn’t always understand that. She struggles with it. But someday, after all of this blows over, she will understand, I know it. Kara doesn’t know how not to forgive, even when it goes against her worst nature.”
Alex doesn’t leave any room for argument and Lena couldn’t have really disagreed with her anyway. She turns up the volume knob on the radio, cranks the key in the ignition, and sighs almost silently as the car rumbles to life beneath them. They have an almost impossible amount to road to cover before they can rest.
***
The house is quiet, covered in snow, and somewhere between the woods and the main strip of Snake’s Canyon.
(“There are no canyons in Maine,” Lena wrinkles her nose. “And I hope not enough snakes to justify the name.”
Alex only shrugs noncommittally.)
When Alex drops her off, she helps her take her duffle bags into the house and then shows her on her phone how to find her contacts and reach her or Maggie, as if Lena has never used an iPhone, or something.
“This house has a secure connection,” She explains, “So we can facetime, or text, or whatever.”
When the conversation runs out, Alex gives her a gruff hug and leaves her a flier to volunteering at the local library. “Might help you pass the time,” Are her parting words, followed by, “Good luck, Ellie.”
And then, Lena is alone.
ii. december
She meets Grover Dudley her second week at the library. It’s a particularly frigid Monday, the kind that made Lena wonder why she hadn’t simply chosen to hull herself up in the safe house for the next three months instead of being active. The drive down to Faye O’Leary Hafford had been hellish, and she had spent most of the morning defrosting the truck and hammering away at the ice on her windshield like a woman possessed.
When she arrived at the library, Mrs. McKessie immediately put her on Christmas decorations duty. The last thing Lena wanted was a reminder that she was about to spend another holiday alone under an assumed identity in a strange town. Still, she put on a brave face and accepted the box of tinsel with what she hoped was a convincing smile.
An hour later, Grover comes in with an older woman and a blast of frigid air behind them heralding their entrance. Lena is standing on a stool tinseling the hell out of a bookshelf when they enter. The woman, who Lena assumes must be his mother, has him gripped by his wrist and is talking to him in a low, clipped, and fierce tone. Grover looks defiant, still bundled in his outer shell and face pinkened by the unforgiving cold outside. He’s lanky and a small 11 or 12 years old, but still gaining height on his mother who isn’t finished reaming him out for something Lena can’t decipher.
“.....you stay right here until I’m done with work and come to get you or I swear to God, Grover Dudley, there’ll be hell to pay, you hear me?”
Grover wrenches out of her grasp and stomps off without saying goodbye, throwing his hat and jacket into the wet clothes bin by the door. His mother stands at her full height and sighs, passing a hand over her face and blinking up, finally taking notice of Lena’s presence in the room. She’s young-looking enough that Lena considers for a moment that she may have read their relationship wrong. She looks more like a sister, or a cousin. Even bundled up, Lena can see that she’s pretty in a kind of plain way. Her eyes are round and doeish and she has an almost startling smatter of dark freckles across her face and forehead. Her face crinkles and reddens and her mouth opens and closes a few times before she simply turns on her heel and exits the way she came in, having decided to say nothing.
There’s about 10 minutes of silence in which Lena finishes with the tinsel and returns to the checkout desk to read the Stephen King novel she’d been fighting her way through. As soon as she’s cracked it open, the boy re-emerges from the stacks, sweater bulged and hiding what are obviously several books. He’s making a beeline for the front door and his winter gear.
Lena yells “Stop right there!” because the closest thing she has to experience with this kind of situation are old cop shows from the 70’s and really, what kid steals books from a library, which is a place where you can get books for free, anyway? It’s all very confusing and she’s only reacting in the moment.
Grover continues his hasty exit, grabbing out his jacket and hat from the wet clothes bin and trying his best to wrangle them on while still keeping his books under his sweater with limited success. Lena hops out from behind the circulation desk and reaches out, grabbing him by the scruff of his sweater. He turns to look at her, jacket hanging haphazardly off one arm, and she finally gets a good look at this face. He’s fair and almost pretty, with a slim, feminine face and a shock of curly, ocherous hair. Being grabbed seems to take him by surprise and the books come tumbling out, landing on the floor in an undignified heap.
“Lady, let me go or I’m going to call the cops.”
“What? I’m going to call the cops on you, you little shit! You’re trying to steal books! From a library!”
“You’re assaulting a minor!”
Grover shakes himself free before Lena can respond and literally books it out of the library, almost falling flat on his face in his haste to leave. His jacket is still hanging off one arm and he’s forgotten his hat on the floor. Lena, still crouched from where she’d had him, looks on in absolute shock. She glances down, touching his hat and moving her attention to the pile of books at her feet. She picks one up and studies the title-- Boy meets Boy. Her nose crinkles and she moves to the next one, Will Greyson, Will Greyson, and the last Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which has a proud silver badge signifying that it’s won the Stonewall Book Award.
This is how Lena discovers that the Faye O’Leary Hafford Library in Snake's Canyon, Maine has a rather robust LGBT reading section.
This is how she meets Grover Dudley.
***
All Lena wanted when she returned home that night was a hot shower, a glass of wine, and to crawl into bed and sleep the evening away. By the time she stepped into her house, the evening chill was seeped into her bones. This was one thing about living up north that she was sure she wouldn’t get used to. No better many layers you had on, you still somehow came out on the other side freezing to death.
Dinner was two pieces of turkey and cheese on a folded over piece of bread and two undressed leaves of kale. She had a text from Alex on her phone asking her to facetime around 10 that evening, which left her with an hour to shower and get into her comfy clothes. When she lived in National City, she used to love solitude--crave it, almost. Until Kara Danvers came blowing into her life she relished every moment she spent alone, be it quietly in her apartment reading or tinkering on some new invention, or working long hours with only Jess’s intermittent interruptions. But now--there was an undeniable loneliness to this life. Something about Kara Danvers’s friendship had touched her irrevocably, ruined her for the way she used to live. As Lena finished her sandwich and rinsed her plate, she found herself not for the first time consumed by a sense of longing. To see Kara’s name come up on her phone, for the tangible relief of her. To be able to call her, see her, hear her laugh.
And to think, she had almost thrown it all away for a stupid kiss. Kara probably wouldn’t want to speak to her when she got back, anyway.
The first knock takes her by surprise in the bathroom. She already has her joggers and thermal off and in a heap on the bathroom floor, the water running and heating up slowly. She pauses, underwear around her knees, waiting to see if the person will leave.
There’s three more knocks, in rapid succession.
Lena rucks her underwear back up, then her joggers, then her thermal. She turns the water off roughly, padding into the kitchen and swiping her taser off the table as she does. The knocking continues, louder and more aggressive as she creeps toward the front door. Lena can feel her heart thudding in her chest, face red with adrenaline, hands shaking as she pulls back her front curtains and sees--
“Hello?”
The woman from the library, bundled to the gills, waves at her through the glass. Somewhat dumbfounded, Lena loosens the chain to her front door with a quiet snick and opens it just more than a crack, allowing in a blast of frigid air.
“I’m sorry, um...is this the home of--are you Ellie Kapatelis?” The woman extends a mitten-clad hand. “It’s Nora Dudley, from the library.”
“Hi.” Lena says dumbly.
There's a beat of impenetrable silence in which Nora’s face screws up in a mask of discomfort. When nothing more from Lena seems forthcoming, she barrels on. “I’m sorry to disturb you this late at night it’s just, I left my son at the library this morning and when I came by after work to get him he--well he wasn’t there.”
“I remember your son.” Lena comments archly. “He left after I caught him trying to take some books without checking them out. He didn’t come back. At least, not while I was there. That was around...two o’ clock, if I had to guess.”
Nora’s chapped lips are set into a grim, straight line. “Grover is an idiot,” she says plainly. “But I love him, he’s my son, and he hasn’t come home.” She's becoming visibly distressed, lower lip a tremor and a little dampness gathering around her eyes. “The family therapist said that the next time he ran away I should let him come back on his own, and I’ve been trying, but I can’t stand the thought of going to bed without knowing--”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” Lena takes out her phone and briefly looks down at the time; 9:45. She really doesn't have time for this. And yet--
“There's an abandoned cabin on the town line that a lot of kids go to, the last few times he left that's where I found him.”
“Do you have a car?”
Nora shakes her head quietly, running a hand over her nose. “It's in the shop.”
And damn Lena with her stupid bleeding heart. She grabs the truck keys out of the dish and reaches for her parka “I just need to send a text to a friend, and then we can go.”
---
They find Grover in a cabin, freezing his dumb ass off in a sleeping bag on the floor with some old comic books and a candy bar that he’d stolen. For a second Nora’s face contorts with something so heavy that Lena really thinks she might haul her son up and hit him, then and there, right in front of her.
Miraculously, it passes over her like a wave and settles into something softer and sadder. Instead, she murmurs “Let's go home.”
---
She has 10 missed texts from Alex.
10:15 Lena wtf???
10:42 SOS u need to face time me NOW young lady
10:50 I’m so serious. There's something I need to tell you.
---
She drives Grover and Nora back to their house in tense silence. it's begun to snow lightly, Lena’s headlights barely cutting through the darkness and the shower ahead. She rolls down about a mile of packed road before coming up on a small but well kept double-wide motor home, lights still on and curtains drawn.
Grover wretches the door open before she's turned off the car and leaps out, stomping inside the house. Beside her, Nora heaves a great sigh. She leans the totality of her lithe body forward against the dashboard, arms folded and facedown.
“Please come inside and let me make you a drink.” She says finally, muffled by her arms. Lena shakes her head, thinking about all the ways Alex is going to make her pay for this later.
“I really can’t--”
“ Please. ” Nora looks up. “It's more for me than it is for you. You did me a real solid tonight. Just come in and have a beer so I can wipe this whole night off my conscience.”
Lena purses her lips and looks down at her phone. 15 unread messages.
---
Halfway through their second beer, Lena learns that Nora conceived Grover on her 14th birthday, has no living relatives, and makes a living working at the town’s only diner in the main strip. She learns that on his good days Grover is sensitive, bookish, and kind to animals, and on his bad days--
“Well! Now you’ve seen him on a bad day I guess.” She laughs somewhat ironically and takes another pull from her beer. “He’s a good kid, I swear. He’s just kinda mixed up.”
“Aren’t we all.”
“Amen to that, sister.”
They touch the necks of their beer bottles. In the background, there’s a bang followed by the sound of rummaging.
“Guess Grover’s still up.” Nora sighs. “What I really need is somebody to watch him regularly during winter break, but nobody in this town would touch that with a 10 foot pole.” She shakes her head. “It's a shame though, it would be really damn helpful.”
Damn Lena Luthor with her stupid bleeding heart.
“I could do it,” She offers, and when her common sense finally catches up with her motor mouth she continues, “I have a lot of time on my hands these days, since I pretty much only write at home. And...I could use some help around the house. If he wanted to come over during the day, he could.”
The look Nora is giving her is a curious mix of horror and requital. “You’re not like, a serial killer right? Like that clown from that Stephen King movie who eats kids ‘n shit?”
Lena laughs, shakes her head. “I’m just new in town and I could use the company.” It’s not until she finishes speaking that she realizes what she’s said is actually true. It might be the truest thing she’s said since she arrived in Snake’s Canyon. Nora’s eyes soften with understanding and her lips quirk at the edges.
“Listen Ellie, you can have him for keeps if you want him.”
---
She pulls into her driveway half past midnight and drags her tired body into the house. She has so many text messages on her phone she’s surprised it hasn’t given up and died out of sheer protest.
Once in the house, she shucks her clothes until she's down to a tank top and panties and trudges into her room, flopping into the mess of quilts on her bed. Lena grabs her phone and, without bothering to read the daunting stack of texts, opens up Alex’s contact page and hits the FaceTime button.
There are one or two tinny rings of the phone connecting, and then Kara’s face in front of her, full and bright.
Lena feels like she's just been kicked in the stomach. There’s a tense beat of silence, Kara sucks in a deep breath as if to say something and immediately begins to cry. Big, fat wet tears that Lena can see even through their pixelated connection.
“Kara--”
There’s a shout and Lena hears what sounds like a door hitting the wall. She sees Alex half sprinting in the background, and everything goes back. Her phone fades to Alex’s picture and Call time 00:43.