Chapter Text
Despite the various rumors fluttering around the office, Lena is not a robot.
She just has a particular way of doing things and wanting things done. She isn’t heartless, nor is she purposely malicious. She just expects the same level of excellence from others as she expects from herself. Naturally, this hasn’t won her many friends.
According to the rumors Lena has no sense of joy or pleasure, but the truth is her happiness comes from solitude. Her greatest pleasure in fact is the forty five minute block she gets every single day for lunch, and like clockwork she finds herself on her favorite bench in her favorite part of the park, eating her favorite lunch (a tomato sandwich - no crust - a small salad, and a bag of grapes). This is her one time each day to spend in silence and solitude away from the annoyed whispers and glares, and Lena treasures this space.
This makes the day the mime appeared especially heinous.
All at once her quiet patch of park is filled with excited crowds of tourists all gawking at some face painted buffoon battling invisible enemies. Like clockwork she is there, this stupid fool, building invisible walls and walking against powerful gusts of wind, boxing in delighted children and adults alike. And while that in itself is insufferable enough, for whatever reason the mime always tries to (quite literally) lasso Lena into her acts. There have been at least a dozen invisible lassos, fishing lines, and even baseballs thrown Lena’s way in bids for her attention, but all are steadfastly ignored and rejected. Fools will not be humored. Still, the mime persists.
Today though will perhaps be a day of peace, as storm clouds have threatened since early morning and all around the air is filled with a sense of gloom. Surely the fool will opt to stay in her little mime home rather than venture out. Lunch bag in hand and a smile on her face, Lena nearly skips her way into the mostly empty park back towards her beloved corner.
But of course, life never does go in her favor. She stops short when she sees the fool there alone, miming out scenes all by herself. Truly Lena’s life will never know peace, and all the resentment that has been building over the weeks of this torture come bubbling out as she snaps,
“You look like an idiot.”
The mime jumps back in exaggerated surprise, painted on eyebrows high and expressive. Lena feels her eye twitch at the sight. She truly hates this clown.
“Every day you’re here, and it’s stupid. You’re stupid. And ridiculous. Also, I hope you know no one likes you.”
The fool clutches tightly at her chest as if Lena’s words are daggers burying deep in her heart. She staggers, clutching at the invisible handle of Lena’s knife, nearly stumbling to her knees. It only makes Lena angrier, and she moves to storm past only for the fool to grab her arm, touching her for the first time. The mime waves her hand in a negative manner, trying to pull Lena away from her bench. Lena rips her hand free.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she snaps again, and tries to step around only for the fool again to step in her way. She’s pulled her hands together now in a submissive plea, her eyes begging Lena to stop, but with a huff Lena blows past her and sits down with an angry thump.
Lena knows her mistake almost immediately, the damp cold sinking through her clothes before she even notices the WET PAINT sign. Without thinking Lena jumps up with angry cry, her back now striped with lines of brown and her lunch bag tumbled to the ground. The mime cringes, her body made small as she gestures down, and Lena realizes that the fool is pointing towards the rather muddy puddle her lunch has fallen into. Lena presses her hands over her face then, lets out a long angry huff of air as she feels her will to live slither out of her down to the mud below, and after a moment she looks up to see the mime shuffling awkwardly back and forth with a worried look in her eyes. Like everything the fool does, it’s infuriating.
“Really?” Lena drawls, “You couldn’t just say ‘hey, the paint is wet.’ You had to try and mime it to me?”
The fool shrugs haplessly, gives her a surprisingly pretty smile for someone whose face is covered in white and black makeup, then holds up her finger as if to say wait a moment. Lena considers just going home and never returning to this job as the mime goes and fumbles through the backpack she always leaves resting against the nearby oak tree. After a moment she returns with a pack of wet wipes and what looks to be a sandwich wrapped in tin foil.
She holds them out as an offering to Lena with a bright, goofy smile. Hesitantly, Lena accepts the wet wipes but eyes the sandwich wearily. The mime seems confused at this, but then lights up as if realizing something great and once again fumbles around her backpack before pulling out a knife. Lena watches as the fool sits cross-legged on the floor with the sandwich balanced on her lap and carefully unwraps the foil to reveal what looks to be a tomato sandwich.
Slowly, the fool cuts the crust away.
She dusts her hands dramatically and carefully gathers the crust to discard, then offers the sandwich again. She seems so earnest in this moment that before Lena’s brain can catch up her hands are already reaching out to accept the offering. The mime gives her a smile of pure joy at that, and Lena is pleasantly surprised to peek in and see it is in fact a tomato sandwich prepared just the way she likes it. She’s not sure if she should feel flattered or terrified.
Suddenly a techno beat chirps from the mime’s back pocket, and she watches as she pulls the phone out and answers a call. Lena is prepared to fight her right then but, surprisingly, the mime doesn’t say a word. She just listens and hums occasionally before hanging up. She gestures towards herself, then points away. Lena nods. She pulls a few wet wipes out and tries to hand the pack back, but the fool dramatically gestures for her to keep it. With a flourish she slings her backpack over her shoulder and takes a bow, then much to Lena’s irritation presses a kiss to her own palm, clenches her fist as if she held it there, then with a big wind up throws it at Lena.
Lena just glares at her, mentally picturing the kiss bouncing off her and landing in the grass. The fool mimes a deep belly laugh and shoots her a wink before skipping away.
Lena ends up settled in the grass with her suit jacket laid before her, scrubbing at it with wipes while munching on the sandwich. Her eyes keep flitting to the spot where she’d pictured the kiss rebounding, and it’s so stupid of her to even think about it but it continues to pull her. Her phone alarm beeps her five minute warning, and she pulls her still faintly painted jacket back on her shoulders. As she begins to push herself up, she pauses again over the spot in the grass.
With a quick glance around, she reaches hesitantly out and grabs at the air over the spot, holds her hand in a fist as if something secret were hidden within her grip. Hesitantly, she slides her hand into her pocket, opens it as if to let go. As if she is saving the kiss for later.
She can feel her face go red at her foolishness and she jumps up with a huff, all but sprinting her way back to work.
Such a fool.
It’s a week before she sees the idiot again, though if she had her way it would be a lifetime. Her mother has decided to focus her attention on their division, which is code for ‘make sure Lena isn’t fucking it up’. Ever since she took over here she has made no “right” choices.
Their production is too low, her management style too lenient. They should have invested here instead of there - how could she mess that up? Lex would never have messed that up.
She can feel herself collapsing inward, compressing from all sides. It feels as if her body hopes to shrink and shrink until it disappears from view. At least that would be a good choice by her mother’s standards.
Even worse, every call she ignores results in a call to an underling, who panics at the anger of their CEO. Please answer the phone, they ask Lena, she says she’ll fire the whole division if you don’t. Lena sighs; her mother always was so good at emotional blackmail. She usually takes the call.
But it’s already two at this point and she’s spoken to her mother eleven times and she swears if she has to hear Lillian’s voice one more time she’ll lose it. So she grabs her bagged lunch and marches to the park before another call can rope her in, and of course the fool is there again.
The fool is there, at her spot in her park, and Lena’s phone is ringing and ringing and even here she can’t find peace. She tosses it on the bench with more force than necessary and refuses to acknowledge the concern in the fool’s eyes.
“I’m not answering it,” she says decisively, as if the mime needed to know. “I’m not in the mood to get yelled at.”
The idiot’s brow creases at that, it’s concern emphasized by the depth of her stupid paint, but the look seems to flash for only a moment across her otherwise paint-hidden face before the mime jumps into her next routine: she mimes answering a flip phone, pressing it to her ear. All at once it’s like she’s somehow blasted backwards by it, arm fully extended holding it away from herself and head lulling back as if battling supersonic wind. She struggles against the invisible force, trying with her free wavering hand to reach towards the invisible phone before finally, finally reaching it and slamming it shut so dramatically Lena almost hears the clasp of plastic. The mime tosses the phone over her shoulder and wipes at her brow with a flourish. It’s so ridiculous, so physically exaggerated, that it takes a minute for Lena to realize she’s laughing. Genuinely, unintentionally laughing, and more annoyingly the mime has realized as well. More effort than she cares to admit is needed for her to clamp down on that bubbling laugh. She hates the self-satisfied smirk the fool is giving her.
“You’re not funny,” Lena says with a confidence she doesn’t feel. The mime just winks at her.
Idiot.
It’s not a ritual - because Lena would never build any part of her life around a stupid park clown - but it does begin happening on a daily basis.
She walks to the park, she eats her lunch, she argues with the mime despite being the only one speaking every time. She wins most of the fights, maybe, although the fool does seem a little too confident by the end of her break every day. Either way, it becomes painfully apparent that the mime is becoming a regular figure in her life and as pathetic as that makes her feel there is also a comfort to it. Lena likes consistency, even when it’s her obnoxious park enemy. If she were to consider it more deeply, she might even say having someone to speak to regularly about herself is therapeutic. She refuses to consider it more deeply.
A pattern has certainly emerged, though: the mime is there every weekday for at least Lena’s lunch hour, who knows if longer. She always attracts some degree of a crowd, although Lena notes the majority are tourists. She might be the idiot’s only consistent audience. How embarrassing.
Regardless, there is a level of comfort in routine, and Lena finds herself growing used to the clown’s presence. As sad as it may be, the mime is always happy to see her. That alone is a comfort.
Which is why Lena can’t stop the words from escaping when the mime plops down beside her: “Today’s my birthday, you know.”
The mime’s entire face lights up as she flings her arms in the air, spirit fingers flying in joy. Lena smiles as well; it’s been years since someone reacted with that much joy to her. The fool holds up a finger telling her to wait, then riffles through her bag for an obnoxious amount of time before pulling out a handful of crumbled papers. She looks down at them with disappointment before straightening them out and offering them to Lena.
They’re two coupons for free cookies at the local bakery and a five dollar bill.
Lena can’t help but laugh, shaking her head.
“No, keep that! You’ll like cookies more than I will. Thank you but I’m quite alright.”
The mime frowns deeply at that but retracts her offering. After a moment she opts for a different approach: she jumps up and begins to mime what Lena can only assume is her riding either a giraffe or some sort of dinosaur.
Either way, it’s the best birthday lunch Lena’s had in years.
The Monday after she comes to the park to find a wrapped present on her bench.
“What is this supposed to be?” she asks, incredulous. The mime just shrugs, an innocent pout painted on her lips. She gestures for Lena to open it to find out.
Terrified and hesitant, Lena unwraps it to find a book.
Specifically, it’s the next book in the series she has been reading this past month in the park. It had only just come out and Lena hadn’t had the chance to buy it yet.
Without meaning to she holds it close to her, jaw clenched.
“Thank you,” she says softly, and the mime just winks at her.
Such a fool.
Another invader arrives, one even worse than her idiot fool.
Some sort of street dancer shows up during their lunch one day and now Lena is stuck watching some man bop and weave and noodle his way across her sidewalk, his boombox’s bass nearly shaking her book in her hand.
This is an invasion of the highest offense (at least the stupid idiot mime is quiet) and Lena looks to the mime for a shared sense of disdain, but of course she overestimated the fool’s competence. Not only is the mime not equally annoyed by the dancer’s presence, she’s even begun to bob along to the head splitting beat. Seemingly unaffected by Lena’s look of betrayal, the idiot pulses her way over to the dancer who has now taken notice of the striped Judas.
With a laugh he begins to dance at and around her, challenging and enticing all in one. Much to Lena’s absolute horror, the idiot meets the challenge.
And she’s really, really good at it.
Fuck.
It makes sense if you put some thought into it (which Lena has not, obviously, put any thought into her park buffoon) - of course someone who expresses themselves entirely through movement would be a decent dancer. Lena ignores the fact that decent is a dramatic undersell, that the mime’s body rolls and pulsates with a level of precision Lena could never achieve.
The street dancer does a series of intricate moves and the mime matches them, he does a body roll and she follows suit. Lena shifts uncomfortably. A crowd has formed to watch the strangest dance battle in history go down and Lena has to elbow her way to the front just to keep her idiot in view.
The dancer twists his hips to the beat with a grin, lets his hand trail up his side and pull his shirt up enough to show his abs. The mime laughs - out loud! - and goes into a spin, then follows his movements. Slowly, almost seductively she lets her hands trail her body as well, pulls her stupid striped shirt up to show defined abs that rival her opponent. Everyone in the crowd is going wild, hooping and hollering, but Lena finds all sounds have left her in a gasping breath.
Eventually, thankfully, the song ends.
The dancer lets out a laughing “holy shit!” and pulls the mime into a hug, which of course the idiot returns with equal enthusiasm. He spins her around, earning another giggle (a giggle! she’s giggling for him! She’s never giggled for Lena), and says,
“Dude, your dancing is amazing! Do you do events?”
The mime shrugs, looks thoughtful.
“I’m doing a community charity event in a couple weeks and we need more performers. Would you maybe do a set?”
The mime lights up again - this man is getting an annoying amount of joy out of the mime today - and nods. He asks if they can exchange business cards and the mime whips one out of her pocket without any hesitation.
“You have business cards?” Lena asks in horror before she can stop herself. The idiot startles a bit like she’d forgotten Lena was there before handing her one as well.
It’s got black and white stripes in the background and two simple lines of text:
The Mime of Metropolis
[email protected]
Lena has never hated her more than in this moment.
Since childhood Lena rarely sleeps dreamlessly, and rarer still are the dreams particularly pleasant. She’d gotten in the habit of showering in the morning every day despite showering the night before as waking up from constant nightmares is sweaty business.
That night Lena dreams of something else.
She dreams of stripes and quiet amusement.
White gloves and bare skin.
Fingers pressing to her cheek - pressing into her mouth.
Painted lips sucking at her thigh, white and black smeared on the sheets.
Lena’s shower is cold that morning.
On a whim, Lena comes to the park on Saturday.
Surely some sunshine is better than staying in her apartment for the entire weekend, and the park near the office does have a beautiful tree that’s just gotten its spring colors. Is the park thirty minutes further than the park right next to her apartment? Sure. But it’s not like she’s here on the off chance her buffoon of a mime might be as well. That would be ridiculous, and wrong.
Lena ignores the little skip in her heart when she approaches her bench and sees her mime there. The mime, she means. Not her mime obviously.
Even under the makeup it’s clear to see how the idiot lights up when she sees Lena approach, and much to her embarrassment stops mid-routine to wave dramatically at her, causing the small crowd of onlookers to turn and watch her approach. Red-faced and looking down, Lena goes to where the mime’s things are and sits down.
Lena spends her day dozing, reading the two novels she brought with her, and watching the mime out of the corner of her eye. There are more people today than the weekday crowd, and the mime has laid out her stupid little bowler hat to accept donations. Surprisingly, it’s getting full.
By the fourth hour of her nonstop miming the hat is nearly to overflow. If Lena had no pride she’d tell her how impressive her longevity and skills clearly are - luckily, pride is something with which she overflows.
That’s when she notices him. He’s slouched a bit towards the edge of the crowd, eyes not on the mime but on her hat. Lena sits up at the sight of him, the hairs on her arms prickle. He is setting off all of her mental alarms. She tries to send psychic messages to the mime but the stupid idiot is in the process of swimming through an imaginary ocean for the amusement of some small child. The buffoon has no idea what’s coming when the man darts forward and swoops up the money-filled hat - but Lena does.
She’s on her feet chasing before he’s even fully stumbled away from the crowd.
“Hey!” she shouts, catching the attention of the group, “Come back here, fucker!”
She sees the mime cover the little child’s ears with her gloved hands, like an idiot, but it doesn’t matter. If the mime won’t fight for her earnings Lena will have to.
Despite her generally reserved life, Lena is fit and she’s able to gain ground on the thief relatively fast. He ducks behind a corner and she skids behind him only to gets knocked across the face - hard. It goes a bit black at that.
She doesn’t realize she’s on the ground until she feels hands grabbing her, and for one horrible moment she thinks it’s the thief. The black in her eyes begins to clear, however, and she can see the terrified face of the mime.
“Oh my god,” the mime says. “Are you okay?”
“You can talk?” Lena says in response, and then blacks out.
Lena wakes in a hospital bed.
She’s in a hospital bed, her head feels like it’s about to explode, and there’s a small teddy bear on the table beside her wearing a striped shirt. She stares at it for much longer than she intended, not looking away until a knock at her door.
“Miss Luthor?” the woman who looks to be her doctor says. “I’m glad you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got punched in the face,” she croaks, her voice hoarse. The doctor smiles sympathetically.
“You got hit pretty hard. We were a bit worried about you there for a minute.We’d like to keep you over night for observation, if that’s alright.”
Lena nods, but then regrets it immediately as hot pain hits.
“Where’s the moron?” she says.
The doctor looks confused, so she clarifies: “The mime.”
The doctor snorts, shakes her head.
“The mime had to go to class, but she left me with very strict instructions to take care of you.”
“The mime is in class?” Her head is spacey and the dots of this just don’t connect, “Is it…. is there mime school here?”
The doctor laughs again, shakes her head.
“She’s right, you are funny.”
“You know her?” Lena asks, surprised. The doctor smiles like she’s in on a secret.
“You could say that.”
“Can you explain to me why she’s a fucking mime, then?”
“That is a story I think she should tell.”
Lena scoffs.
“That’s all well and good but you’re assuming she’ll actually talk to me.”
“I think she already is talking to you,” the doctor insists, “You’re just not hearing it. Sometimes you just have to meet people at their level.”
It’s so earnest that Lena hardly realizes how absurd the entire conversation is. After another moment of sincere eye contact, the doctor smiles.
“Well, I’ll let you rest. If you need me, just have the nurse page for Dr. Danvers.”
The mime appears to be piloting some sort of jet plane when Lena arrives for lunch.
Squatted down, hands gripped tight to the invisible controls, the mime flies across the sidewalk, skidding and droning around the amused group of children watching her perform. With such a focused energy Lena half expects her to lift off, just fold her legs up like retracting wheels and disappear into the sky.
It all comes skidding to a halt when her fool spots her, of course, her plane crashing to a sudden smiling halt. She recovers quickly, though, falling to the ground in a mimicked explosion. As if she intended to crash at the very sight of Lena.
The children cheer while Lena rolls her eyes and plops down on the mime’s blanket, laying back. She’s smiling at Lena, her eyes a pretty green against the white-black paint, and she skips over to sit beside her. She reaches out a tentative hand to brush some hair from Lena’s face, fingers gentle on the still purpling bruise to her temple.
“I’m okay,” Lena says in response, “thank you so much for taking me to the hospital.”
The mime’s hand flips, the back of her gloved knuckles now dragging gently down the side of Lena’s face. The black arrows painted beneath her eyes emphasize the genuine affection in her look. It’s all a bit much, really.
“You know,” Lena says, needing a distraction, “I seem to remember a certain someone saying a few words before I passed out.”
All at once the mime sits up straight with a forced pout of nonchalance on her lips.
“Oh, it wasn’t you?” Lena asks in a disbelieving tone. The mime shakes her head, holds her hands up in confusion. She mimes getting knocked upside the head, flops over a bit in the process, tongue out eyes crossed, then rotates her pointer finger towards her head as if to say her brains are scrambled.
Lena shoves her in faux annoyance, trying not to grin when the mime dramatically flops over at the force of it.
“You’ll have to talk to me one of these days, you know.”
The mime throws her arm around her in affection.
Lena wakes in a cold sweat at 2:30 am to the realization that she didn’t have her laptop bag with her when she returned from lunch yesterday.
Digging through her purse she finds the crumbled business card.
It is such a stretch, but God. She cannot lose that laptop.
Lena pulls out her phone and types the email:
Subject line:
URGENT: Please Respond
Email body:
Dear Miss Mime,
This is Lena, the woman whose lunch you ruin on a daily basis
she pauses, remembers she’s asking a favor, and rewrites:
This is Lena, your park lunch companion.
There. Much more diplomatic.
After our lunch this afternoon I misplaced my laptop bag. Did you see it? And if so, could you bring it to the park tomorrow morning before 9 and hide it behind the trash receptacle? The one those squirrels had sex on the other day.
Specificity is always a virtue, she thinks.
It’s safe return will be rewarded monetarily. Thank you for your quick response,
Lena Luthor
District Manager
Luthor Corp
Good enough, she thinks, hitting send.
Lord help her - she needs her mime.
It’s rainy, and the bag isn’t there.
Lena had woken to an email reply from the fool that she assumed meant she would help her (the body of it was just the clown emoji and the thumbs up emoji), but she’s here now and neither the bag nor the fool are.
Once again, she was the fool.
Lena tries to go into work with her head held high despite knowing the shit storm coming her way. That laptop had her notes for the 2:30 meeting that she would be leading, and in her rush to get to the park at her usual time she had failed to back them up on the cloud. This is devastating, to say the least.
It’s as she is sitting contemplating her future unemployment that her coworker Sam appears, a mischievous smirk on her face.
“Your friend is here,” she whispers to Lena like a secret. “She’s waiting for you up front.”
White hot tendrils of dread creep through her body instantly, because Lena doesn’t have friends. She has an idiot, and she has employees. That is the extent of her peer group and all her employees are already here.
With a gulp of resignation, she stands and walks towards the lobby. She tries to hold her head up with some level of pride (she is a Luthor, after all), but she should have known from the start that this fool would be her downfall. Her heart jumps at the sight of the fool’s striped shirt. She’s actually here, in her office, where all her employees can see her. They are going to destroy her.
Someone points at Lena and the fool turns around, her face lighting up at the sight of Lena.
Two thoughts hit her at once:
1.) she’s never seen the girl standing before her now in her life, and
2.) this girl is so attractive she actually feels her heart stutter a bit.
Like an idiot she freezes mid-step, eyes wide and mouth fumbling, but luckily she’s saved from whatever nonsense was about to come out of her mouth by the girl’s pure joy at seeing her.
“Lena!” the girl nearly shouts, “I’m sorry I’m late. Traffic is insane.”
There’s a very noticeable thickness to the girl’s accent; definitely Eastern European. Definitely adding to the confusion.
“That’s alright,” she says diplomatically. The girl pulls her bag into view, thank God, and hands it to her.
“Also I can’t make it to lunch today so I brought you these so you don’t miss me too much!”
It’s a bag of cookies.
“Err, thank you.”
She feels deeply uncomfortable and it must show based on the endeared smile the girl gives her.
“You are so cute, Lena,” she says before pressing a sudden kiss to Lena's cheek. “Ah shit, I’m gonna be late. See ya!”
And then she’s gone.
What the hell just happened, Lena thinks, her fingers pressing to where the girl had just kissed her.
She pulls her hand away to see just the faintest hint of black.