Chapter Text
The first thought that rockets through her mind like a bazooka, hitting each and every panicked neurotransmitter as it goes, is that she can’t breathe.
The second is that she’s probably already dead, and this prompts a cool wave of something that feels, worryingly, not dissimilar to relief to break over her like a tide.
But the third thought is that Lena would thus also be dead – unacceptable – and the solace recedes as quickly as it had appeared, leaving her gasping. Her hands scrabble desperately at her face, her throat, her chest as she chokes. Suddenly the intense pressure around her lungs eases entirely and she rolls onto her side, wheezing.
She sucks in ragged lungfuls of air, inhaling smoke and the acrid residue of burning plastic, the astringent tang of fresh blood. But buried in and amongst these is another scent, softer and cleaner, and Kara reels at the sudden inexplicable whiff of fabric softener.
It smells warm and assuaging and revitalising and— oh God it smells like her daughter, like lilac-painted bedrooms and afternoons at the park and daisy-patterned hair ties and Kara is going to vomit.
Her eyes water even as she clenches them shut, even as she forces down the— memories? Hallucinations? Dreams? Wrestles them back into the darkest corner of her traitorous psyche from which they never should have emerged. Curses herself for her weakness, her indulgence. For allowing her subconscious to harbour these untenable hopes where they could be so cruelly, so precisely and decisively used to bring her to her knees yet again.
A feminine-sounding throat is cleared at her back, and Kara tenses.
Only then does she realise her body is on fire, intense agony radiating out from her chest in waves. It takes an embarrassingly long moment for her trembling muscles to follow her brain’s command to roll over. Her disorientated, treacherous mind uses that time to attach a face to the sound she’d heard, assigns it dark hair and blue robes and a kind smile and names it: Alura.
But it’s not her mother, of course it isn’t, by the time Kara’s eyes finally land on the figure across the room. Because her mother is gone. Her mother is dead, again; Kara has lost her, again.
They rise up in her peripheral vision then, the ghosts of her memory, holding ethereal council at the very corner of her eye. For a moment she fancies she can really see them; her parents, Kal’s sons, her own daughter. These flesh-and-blood assurances that she is not the last of her bloodline, that across the aching expanse of the entire insensate universe she is not alone.
But she blinks hard against the gathering tears and then they’re gone, and Kara is left with nothing more than the phantom after-image of those who no longer exist, of those who’d never existed at all.
Her eyes at last focus on the figure standing calmly over Kara’s prone form, the woman that is not her mother, Kara can see now, but Lillian Luthor.
And behind her, looming over her shoulder like the spectre from Kara’s blackest nightmares, is Lex.
Each individual cell of Kara’s body is at once engulfed in a chill of fear so profound it throbs concomitantly with her stuttering heart. She tries to push herself up to sitting but her muscles feel weak, every point of contact between her body and the ground beneath her like a billion needles pressing into her flesh.
A glance down at her own hands confirms what Kara has suspected with increasing dread ever since she’d first woken up. Sickly green threads through the raised veins beneath her skin and she fights the urge to vomit for the second time in as many minutes. Kryptonite.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Lex greets cheerily, his voice assaulting Kara’s ears like nails down a chalkboard. “How are we feeling?”
Kara glares at him weakly, managing with every shred of strength to push herself upright only to slump against the wall at her back. “Where am I?” she asks, voice hoarse. “What have you done to me?”
“You did most of it yourself,” Lex says serenely. “With a little help, of course.” He nudges the toe of one patent leather Oxford against a dull shrivelled mass lying a few feet from her body.
With a shiver she realises she’s looking at the withered remains of the Black Mercy, and Kara bites down hard on her tongue in the hope that the move will prevent her stomach from deciding to divest itself of its contents entirely.
“So that was your grand plan?” she croaks, surreptitiously shuffling her aching body a little further from the decaying parasite. “Hit me with a Black Mercy so you could, what? Kidnap me?” She manages to raise an eyebrow, inject a little scorn into her tone despite the exhaustion. “Psychological warfare is a bit of a step down from world domination, Lex. Don’t tell me you’re losing your touch. Why haven’t you killed me already?”
The only sign that her words have found their mark is a slight narrowing of dark eyes. “Because you still have your uses. But first you needed to be contained.”
At his side, Lillian smirks. “Green’s really not your colour, dear.”
Following the woman’s line of sight Kara glances down, eyes falling horrified upon a round device filled with glowing green liquid. It’s welded to the bare skin of her upper chest, to the spot from which the worst of the pain is radiating.
“This is like the Kryptonite drip Lena used to subdue Reign,” she whispers, reaching up with trembling fingers to give an experimental tug on the plastic disk. Agony rips through her ribcage and Kara hisses in pain, letting go instantly. The device doesn’t budge.
Lex smirks. “Now you’re getting it. I needed you weakened enough to be able to fit you with that,” he says calmly, raising his eyebrows at the Kryptonite-filled device affixed to Kara’s chest. “The fact that the Black Mercy provided a light spot of emotional torment in the meantime was just an added bonus.”
“What’s your play here?” Kara gasps, fighting hard to stay upright even as her skin feels like it’s being seared from her bones. “What do you want from me?”
Lex crouches down in front of her so they’re eye to eye, resting his elbows on his knees. “You, Supergirl, are going to help me take my rightful place as humanity’s saviour.”
Kara manages a weak scoff. “Over my dead body.”
Lex sighs, straightening. “I had an inkling you might say that. But it’s not just your life on the line if you refuse me, luckily for you. Or unluckily, I suppose, depending on your perspective.” He reaches out one leather-gloved hand, a finger sliding beneath Kara’s chin to bring her lolling head closer to his. She’s too weak to even resist, let alone pull away.
Lex’s gaze locks with her own and Kara has to suppress an involuntary shiver at the coldness in his expression. The utter lack of empathy.
Lex narrows his eyes, enunciates each word with devastating precision. “You see, Supergirl, if you don’t do exactly as I ask, Lena dies.”
The Kryptonite has already sapped so much of her strength that even though she’s alone in a small windowless room with Lex and Lillian Luthor, neither of whom appear to be armed, she wouldn’t stand even a snowball’s chance in hell of overpowering them right now.
In fact, she can barely move at all. She wonders idly how long the drip has been on her, how much damage has already been done, as her body begins to tremble uncontrollably.
“You, you can’t kill Lena,” she stammers. “She’s safe. You can’t reach her.”
Lex clicks his tongue in disdain. “Please. Of course I can. I know exactly where she is, in her lab at Luthor Corp. That’s the only place with the facilities to piece together the VR tech she would have needed to follow you into the Black Mercy.”
Kara’s teeth are almost chattering with how hard her body is shaking. “H—how do you know she followed me in there?”
“Because I blew up the DEO to keep your sister occupied, and because dear Lena is a sentimental soul at her core. It’s always been her biggest weakness,” Lex says with obvious distaste. He reaches inside his pea coat and pulls out a tablet, swiping over the screen before turning it towards Kara. “And mainly, because I watched her do it.”
The screen is showing a live CCTV feed, a bird’s eye view of Lena’s lab. Kara’s heart clenches at the sight of Lena’s dishevelled, oblivious form typing furiously away at her monitor, a VR headset lying cracked and discarded at her side.
“How would you kill her?” she whispers, dreading the answer with every fibre of her being.
Lex smiles, slow and predatory. “You forget whose building that lab is built in, Supergirl. It’s always prudent to have an insurance policy. I had canisters of sarin gas installed in the ceiling vents before my dear sister even moved in.” The evident pride in his voice is nauseating. “They can be activated remotely to flood the room at a moment’s notice.”
He holds up a hand, ticking off fingers as he goes. “Lena would begin convulsing in seconds. She’d be paralysed in under a minute, dead from respiratory failure in two.” He levels a cold, calculating stare on her. “Do not make me prove its efficacy.”
Ice water seeps through Kara’s veins at the certainty in Lex’s tone. “You’d really do that?” she asks, a dull kind of terror clutching at her heart. “You really want your own sister dead?”
Lex clicks his tongue again, bored. “I don’t want her dead, Supergirl. But I will let her die, if that’s what it takes. Whereas – and do correct me if I’m wrong – something tells me you won’t.”
He’s got her by the balls and they both know it. Lex’s grin is triumphant. Kara feels sick.
Everything she’d done to try and protect Lena, all the pain her lies had caused them both, had been intended to prevent this very situation. To not allow Kara’s own – how would Lex phrase this – her weakness for Lena to put the other woman in danger.
And yet, here they are anyway. Here they are, again.
Kara’s eyes swivel to Lillian, looming silently in the background. The Luthor matriarch’s face is impassive. Kara gets the feeling she’s not going to find any support in that corner.
She sighs and it sounds like resignation. “What do you even want me to do.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you asked,” Lex preens, faux sincerity dripping from every syllable. “I had a feeling you might start to see things my way. It’s nothing major, I assure you. I’ve already done all the hard work.”
He holds out an impatient hand to Lillian, who produces a glowing object from Rao only knows where. Through Kara’s swimming, green-tinged vision it takes a moment to make out the shape, but when she does—
“No. Lex, no.”
“Oh, but yes,” Lex grins, his face eerily shadowed by the golden light emanating from the glass bottle in his hands. “Leviathan. All those gods and all their power, shrunken and bottled for my convenience by your little friend the Coluan.”
Kara’s heart, which had taken up permanent residence in the pit of her stomach upon her return to consciousness, sinks down into her feet. This is what they’d been tracking Lex to find. This is what he’d almost killed Brainy, and the entire Obsidian North VR userbase, to obtain.
“You cannot open that. The sheer force of it would—”
“Blow the world apart. Yes, I’m aware,” Lex says disinterestedly, inspecting his fingernails with a critical eye. “No Earth technology would be able to release the contents of this bottle without doing something irritating like punching a hole through the fabric of space.” His expression turns cat-like, rapacious. “But Earth’s isn’t the only technology around. Is it, Supergirl?”
What he’s asking of her isn’t actually that major.
All Lex wants her to do is take him to the Fortress of Solitude so that he can use the polyphasic quantum processor to open the bottled gods safely, funnelling their power into his modified Lexosuit to make himself the omnipotent, element-bending master of humanity.
So, her part is actually pretty small. But the consequences? They could certainly be classified as major.
With the combined power of Leviathan at his fingertips Lex would be unstoppable. He would be able to decimate a full-strength Kryptonian with a flick of his wrist. Kara will be long dead by then, but— but Kal. Kal.
And Earth would be defenceless. Her friends, her family would be defenceless. No one could stand against him. A Luthor armed with the united might of all five leaders of Jarhanpur— Kara shudders. It’s worse than apocalyptic.
But to refuse means condemning Lena to death.
Rao. And she’d thought the choice between the real world and the Black Mercy’s fantasy had been a doozy.
But— but she might still have one play left.
“If you promise not to hurt Lena, I’ll—” It’s a struggle to even say the words. “I’ll tell you where the Fortress is. You can portal directly inside. You don’t need me.”
Lex raises a sardonic eyebrow. “And leave you unsupervised so you can run right back to your little friends? I don’t think so.”
Kara’s heart is thudding hard in her throat. “You’re already poisoning me. You know I’m too weak to escape.” She swallows hard around the indisputable truth of the words. “You can lock me in here. Kill me, I don’t care. But swear you won’t hurt Lena and I’ll give you what you want.”
Lex straightens, thumb and forefinger rubbing thoughtfully over his chin. He seems to be considering her proposition and hope flares, fragile and dangerous, in Kara’s chest.
“You’ll give me the Fortress’ location. You’ll just… let me loose in there.”
Kara swallows, nods. Prays he doesn’t sense her eagerness. “If that’s what it takes to keep Lena safe.”
There’s another long, aching moment of pensive silence. And then Lex’s eyes narrow.
“Nice try, Supergirl. I already know the Fortress’ location. In fact, I’ve been there before.”
Kara’s heart sinks faster than a stone as Lex quirks one disapproving brow. Kara notes idly that the Luthor gene pool certainly seems to provide unparalleled eyebrow control.
Lex sneers. “I also know that you reinstated the L-Protocol three weeks ago. If I portalled directly inside the Fortress its defences would detect Luthor DNA and kill me.”
Lex slips a small device out of his pocket. It looks like some sort of remote control; there’s a dial and a large, ominous red button. Why are doomsday buttons always red, Kara wonders. What would be so wrong with a baby pink, a light coral? It might not lessen the destruction any, but it’d sure be easier on the eyes.
“You see this?” he asks, holding it up for inspection. “This controls the Kryptonite drip on your chest. It regulates how much of the poison enters your bloodstream. I can turn it down—” he twists the dial, and the screaming in Kara’s body lessens a degree, “—or I can turn it up.” His fingers twitch, and a fresh wave of agony leaves her breathless.
Lex takes a step closer; Kara resists the urge to cower away. He fiddles again with the remote control and the pain in Kara’s chest ratchets up to previously unparalleled levels. Her entire body is on fire; the pain is so bad that her vision momentarily whites out.
Over the pounding of blood in her ears and her own agonised cries she doesn’t miss Lex’s heated hiss. “Try and trick me again, and how you’re feeling right now will be a pleasant memory in comparison.”
Kara thinks she might be screaming. Maybe a minute later, maybe an eon, the pain dulls again, thrumming through her body at a tempered hum. Compared to the incandescent blaze of the past few minutes it feels almost welcome. Kara sags against the wall, gasping.
“Now that we’re both on the same page,” Lex says smoothly, turning the device over in his hands. “You have until our preparations are completed to make your decision, Supergirl. I would ask you to consider your options carefully.”
Kara can’t formulate a response. Can barely even suck in breath after shuddering breath.
“And just in case you start feeling cocky again, remember: I can also press this little button right here,” he says, voice silky as his thumb circles the remote. “And your system will be flooded with the entire payload of Kryptonite. You’ll be dead in minutes. So do be sure to think through your answer very carefully before I return.”
“What’s the point?” Kara gasps at Lex’s retreating form. He and Lillian pause at the door as she sucks in a stuttering breath. “You’re not going to let me get out of this alive. Why should I prolong the inevitable?”
Lex glances back at her over his shoulder. “Well, yes. You’re dead either way,” he says lightly. “Whether I kill you before or after we visit the Fortress is the only variable left in your story. What I need you to consider, Supergirl, is whether you’ll be taking Lena down with you.”
Now alone and free from any audience, Kara drops all pretence of being even remotely okay. She finally gives into the desire to drop her searing body back down to the ground, curling into a ball and trying in vain to regulate her faltering breathing.
With her temple pressed to the cool concrete beneath her she takes in her bare, windowless prison cell with a growing sense of dread.
Besides the heavy steel door there’s absolutely nothing to break up the monotony of drab industrial grey. There’s nothing in the box-like room that she can use, nothing that might save her.
Her gaze lands on the shrivelled husk of the Black Mercy, still lying close by.
Not once but twice now, one of these parasitic demons had wormed its way into her mind and used her own memories, her own loves and hopes and dreams against her without her consent. The Black Mercy had rendered her – her, the Girl of Steel, the protector of Earth – an ignorant fool, drunk on a sham of happiness and blind to the bitterness of reality.
Over and over and over again, every force at work in Kara’s life had conspired to rob her of her agency. She’d been forced to outlive her own world, forced to assimilate to another to survive. Forced to forsake protecting her cousin, her very purpose on Earth. She hadn’t had a choice then, and she didn’t have one now.
She’d been granted by the Black Mercy the briefest glimpses of her family, of the life she could have had, then been forced to relinquish them yet again. And worst of all, this time, Lena had been there to see it. Lena had borne witness to the most secret, the most selfish desires of Kara’s heart. What she’d seen, what she now knew, could never be taken back.
And none of it had been Kara’s choice. Gone now were the possibilities she’d so often cycled through, the montage of ways she might have confessed her feelings for Lena with flowers and candlelit dinners, with gentle words and gentler hands, with promises written in the stars.
The decision of when and where and how to tell Lena the truth had been taken from her, just as it had when Lena had learned her identity. And both times, the same man had ripped that choice from Kara’s grasping fingers.
Lex.
If she had the energy in this moment, Kara thinks she would probably be vibrating with rage. Her eyes would be set aglow, fists clenched tight enough to pulverize iron. Her world would blissfully narrow, tunnel vision funnelling her past every distraction until she reached her target, the recipient of her fury, and then that target would be destroyed. Non, Lex— the specifics are unimportant compared to the vengeful wrath overflowing in her heart.
She can feel it even now, burning, scalding. The desire to right this wrong, to crack the bones of the one who has cracked her heart, is almost overwhelming and yet— and yet she can barely even lift a hand to tug at the Kryptonite drip on her skin.
The toll this poison is taking on her body settles upon her like a leaden blanket, dousing the thrust of her anger with a damp, insidious chill. Every thought and sensation is blunted, numbed; at least, all but the agony radiating from her chest.
Maybe, in the most twisted way, the Kryptonite is a blessing. She can’t be sure – it’s increasingly difficult to be sure of anything, what with the way her vision pulses green at the edges – but she thinks that if Lex Luthor were here right now and she were strong enough, she would kill him. She would look at his sly eyes and his smug mouth and she would break her own rules and she would rip him limb from limb. And what’s more, Kara’s fairly certain that she would enjoy it.
What was it Lena had said once? I think when I feel things again, I’m going to be very very afraid of the person I might be.
The difference between them, she ruminates even as her eyes slide closed and her body succumbs to irrepressible tremors, is that Kara is already afraid.
In the end, it’s barely a choice at all.
The option of taking Lex to the Fortress, with all its incumbent bought time and opportunities to think of a new plan, weighed against the option of watching Lena’s immediate death by toxic nerve agent right there on a tablet in Lex Luthor’s hands, is really no contest.
Perhaps Kara should be worried about quite how quickly she agrees to potentially endanger the entire blessed planet in return for the tenuous protection of one single individual. She’ll give it some serious thought, she will. Once she has Lena whole and alive and breathing and back in her arms, she will.
But agree she does, when the door to her cell swings open again some indeterminate interval later. Without windows or a watch, the passage of time is now bounded for Kara not by minutes and hours but by waves of constant unflinching pain and the simple fact of not having died yet.
She’s weaker than ever by the time Lex reappears, unable even to push up from her foetal position on the ground. The elder Luthor looks far too unsurprised by her agreement for Kara’s taste. She’d have liked to at least keep up the veneer that it was a tricky decision to make.
Lex taps at his watch a few times – adjustments to the Lexosuit, presumably – and motions absentmindedly for Kara to stand as Lillian materialises behind him, dressed to kill in a faun trench coat and utterly-unsuited-to-ice heels. Kara’s not in the mood to give her a heads up.
It takes Lex a solid ninety seconds to notice that Kara has not complied with his request because she’s physically incapable of doing so, still curled in a trembling ball on the concrete floor. With an exasperated sigh he fishes in his pocket to retrieve the Kryptonite remote. Fiddles with the dial for a moment, the pain lessening by degrees until Kara feels like sucking in an entire lungful of air may actually be a genuine possibility at some point in the near future.
Clutching at the wall for support, she makes it at last to standing. With an approving nod Lex presses another button on his watch and the lurid purple glow of a portal opens up in the corner of the room.
“Alright then,” Lex says cheerily, taking his mother’s arm and pinching the shoulder of Kara’s suit distastefully between thumb and forefinger, the way one might hold a dirty diaper at arm’s length. “Let’s go make me king of the world.”
The portal does not do fun things to Kara’s already delicate physiology.
The second they emerge just outside the entrance to the Fortress she’s on her knees and retching, wiping her mouth with the back of one trembling hand.
Lex stares down at her, apathetic and a little bored. “If you’re quite finished—?”
Kara sends a quick apology to Rao for grossing up such a sacred place and sits back on her haunches, panting. Lex looks like he’s enjoying the visual of a Kryptonian brought to her knees before him just a little too much, and Kara’s eyes narrow. “So how do you want to do this?”
Lex clicks his tongue. “Your job is very simple, Supergirl. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already? Superior Kryptonian intellect indeed.” His voice takes on a high, mocking tone. “Go inside and disable the L-Protocol. Do you think you can manage that?”
Kara ignores his barbs. “And you’re going to stay out here?”
Lex sighs. “I will. But fear not, you’re not going in alone.” He reaches again into his pea coat, pulling out the remote control for the Kryptonite drip and handing it to Lillian. “Mother will accompany you to make sure you don’t try anything clever. After all,” he smirks. “She’s only a Luthor in name.”
“A fact you never fail to reiterate, dear,” Lillian says with a smile that sends a bolt of ice down Kara’s spine. “Come along, Supergirl.”
Those are not words she’d ever hoped to hear Lillian Luthor say. Even less had she hoped to ever have to obey them. But Kara refuses to crawl on her knees in front of these people, no matter the agony coursing through every square inch of her body. She uses a reserve of energy she’s fairly sure is scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point to force herself to her feet, and follows Lillian inside.
It’s times like these, gasping and powerless as she tries to keep up with Lillian’s giant giraffe strides, that Kara wishes she were taller.
“How can you go along with this?” she pants. Lillian’s heels echo across the icy cavern like gunshots as she powers ahead, leaving Kara to struggle behind. “Lena’s your daughter. She, she trusted you.”
Lillian waves a dismissive hand over her shoulder. “No, she trusted you. And you showed her exactly how foolish that was. She’s been in no hurry to trust anyone else since.”
Sorrow and regret hook into Kara’s chest, taking root behind her sternum. She beats them down.
“But to trust Lex after everything he’s done? In the last world he tried to have you killed. More than once! How can you just— how can you turn against Lena to back him?” Sure, it would be nice to be able to make this salient point with more eloquence than the breathless wheeze she ends up managing, but Kryptonite-laced beggars can’t be choosers.
Lillian sounds utterly unaffected by Kara’s impassioned panting. “I back the winning horse, Supergirl. I always have. Lex’s plan means Luthor supremacy, just as we’ve always dreamed.”
“But you’re using Lena as— as a hostage! You know Lex wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. You’re offering your own daughter up as a sacrificial lamb—”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Lillian snaps. “Lena’s continued wellbeing is merely an incentive. Some gentle encouragement to nudge you toward the right decision.”
Kara gapes at the nonchalance in Lillian’s tone. It’s as if they’re discussing a gym membership rather than a human being’s survival. “But— but what if I hadn’t agreed? Were you really willing to let her—”
Lillian whirls on her then, cool and assured. “Tell me, Supergirl. What did you dream of in the Black Mercy? What made up your perfect world? Or rather, who?”
Kara’s mouth snaps shut. Lillian presses her advantage.
“And what made you decide to give it up, hmm? Or, again, who?”
Kara clenches her jaw, a muscle in her cheek flickering. She won’t answer, won’t give Lillian the satisfaction of saying it aloud but really, she doesn’t have to. The knowing smirk on the Luthor matriarch’s face tells her Lillian already has all the confirmation she needs.
“I thought so. So you see, I’m not worried about my daughter. If she is a sacrificial lamb, it’s your altar she’s lying upon. And I think we both know you’re not strong enough to raise the knife.”
Lillian tsks briskly, turning on her heel to stride into the Fortress’ antechamber. “Your sentimentality will be your downfall, just as it was Lena’s. Love is a weakness, Supergirl. I hope it’s one you’re willing to die for.”
Disabling the L-Protocol takes seconds.
Kara ignores the four different warning messages the processing system sends her asking her if she really is sure she wants to do that. Tries to quell the sick feeling that’s taken up residence in her gut like a lead weight.
“If you’ve tried anything clever,” Lillian warns as she signals Lex to enter, the fingers of her left hand tracing lazily over the obnoxious red button on the Kryptonite remote. She doesn’t need to finish the threat.
Lex appears moments later, tentative at first and then, once assured that he’s not about to be blown up, with an air of pontifical swagger that makes Kara want to punch him.
But that’s feeling increasingly difficult; she’s pretty sure he’s cranked the Kryptonite dial back up now that she’s fulfilled his demands. Her body is leaden and aching, vitality utterly stripped by the poison steadily filtering into her bloodstream.
She sinks to her knees as Lex slots the glowing bottle containing Leviathan’s combined might into the waiting processor and begins typing away with alarming alacrity. He’s whistling slightly off-key, a tune that sounds suspiciously like I Did It My Way, and the urge to punch him grows tenfold.
Huddled against one of the many haphazard blocks of ice that constitute the Fortress’ décor, Kara wracks her foggy brain for a way to get both herself and the rest of the planet out of this unscathed.
In her weakened state she thinks she might, possibly, at quite a stretch, be able to take Lillian; maybe hold her hostage to convince Lex to backtrack on his most recent world domination schtick. But if his blasé attitude toward Lena is anything to go by, a threat to his mother is likely not going to be enough to deter him either.
Kara watches the red bar indicating the percentage of power transferred to the Lexosuit creep steadily higher. The Kryptonite gnawing at her sinew has sparked tears in the corners of her eyes and she finds she doesn’t even have the strength now to blink them away. That fact makes her most recent idea, of shooting a blast of laser vision through the roof in the hope that a nice sizeable block of ice will crash down on Lex’s head, seem even more implausible than it had five seconds ago.
“Transfer complete,” comes the automated voice of the processor, and Kara’s heart sinks. This is it, then. She’s out of time.
With a triumphant grin Lex taps the face of his watch, the green grey Lexosuit materialising onto his body in seconds. “Finally,” he crows as his helmet slots into place. “The power of the old gods in the hands of the new. And what better way to begin my dominion than by ridding humanity of its latest false idol?”
Lex turns toward her, one gauntlet raised and glowing sickly green. “Lights out, Supergirl.”
Kara’s eyes slip closed, bracing for the inevitable. There’s a sharp crack, a flash bright enough to illuminate the starburst of veins behind her eyelids. A scream.
But it’s not Kara who screams.
She wonders briefly if the Kryptonite already circulating in her system is causing her so much pain that she simply hasn’t noticed she’s been shot by whatever souped up canon Lex’s suit is now sporting. But then there’s a loud crash, the sound of splintering ice, a winded groan, and—
“The religious imagery was a little much,” comes a familiar voice, and Kara’s eyes fly open. “There’s only one role fit for you to play in the biblical story, and we both know it’s not the Messiah.”
“Lena,” Kara and Lex gasp in perfect unison. She pushes shakily to her knees as Lex tries rather ungracefully to clamber out of the hole in the ice he’s just been blasted into.
Kara can hardly believe her own eyes. There Lena stands, face flushed and dirty above her Lexosuit-clad body. The suit is identical to her brother’s except that, where Lex’s glows a dull orange, Lena’s is radiating a bright ethereal gold. Her lips are chapped, her hair sweat-sticky and wild where it clings to her temples and something jolts free in Kara’s chest, leaving her unmoored.
It’s so all-consuming, the sight of Lena real and breathing and right there, that it takes far longer than it should for Kara to notice that she hasn’t arrived alone. Brainy and Nia flank Lena on either side, Alex and J’onn already moving to restrain Lillian. She doesn’t even fight, just sighs, tutting as J’onn fastens cuffs around her wrists. Kara gets the distinct impression she’s more worried about getting dirt on her suede coat than she is about being arrested.
“Kara!” her sister yells the second Lillian is contained. She jerks forward as if she’s about to break into a sprint but J’onn catches her at the elbow, holding her back.
Because Kara’s over on the other side of the cavernous space, facing them all, far out of reach. And Lex has extracted himself from the crater Lena had blasted him into and is standing between her and them, practically vibrating with rage.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses and Kara’s glad for the helmet covering his face because that question sounded spit-filled and wet.
Lena beams beatifically at her brother. “Well. There I was, minding my own business, scanning the Fortress’ database for methods of tracking down kidnapped Kryptonians—” Green eyes cut to Kara over Lex’s shoulder and she feels something bright flood her veins for a moment, stronger even than the Kryptonite.
Lena arches one brow delicately. “So you can imagine my surprise when I saw somebody disabling the L-Protocol and programming an extraction code right in front of my eyes. Didn’t take a genius to figure out what was happening here, so we thought we’d pop by and say hi.”
“It’s too late to stop me,” Lex snarls. “The transfer is complete. Leviathan’s power is mine.” He raises his gauntlet again and a flash of green energy is hurtling straight at Lena’s unprotected head before Kara can even fill her lungs to shout a warning.
But Lena reaches out and casually, almost lazily, catches the bolt of light in one suit-covered hand and tosses it back at her brother. The beam hits Lex in the ankles and he flips like a ragdoll, his body arcing a graceful 270 degrees and slamming winded onto the ground.
“Their power was transferred,” Lena says agreeably, watching Lex struggle to catch his breath like a turtle on its back, upended and flailing. Despite the circumstances, Kara can see that she’s enjoying this, just a little. Kara can’t say that she blames her.
Lena smiles as she delivers the final blow. “But not to you. I altered the code to patch the transfer into my suit instead.”
At her side, Nia grins. “No superpowers for you.”
Lex growls, animalistic and primal. He retracts his helmet as he clambers to his feet, face puce and sweating. For a moment Kara thinks he’s going to attack Lena again but he seems to think better of it, squaring his shoulders and narrowing his eyes as he sucks in a deep, calming breath.
“So, despite the unconventional execution, my objective has still been achieved,” he says, composure regained. “Leviathan’s might is in the hands of the Luthors. I don’t mind sharing, sis. We can save humanity together.”
“Did you hit your head on the ice that hard?” Lena sneers. “I will never work with you.”
“I might urge you to reconsider that position,” Lex volleys calmly. “I believe I have a little— incentive that might interest you.”
“I’m not playing any more of your twisted games, Lex,” Lena says hotly. “You won’t blackmail or manipulate me into committing any more atrocities. There’s nothing you could say, nothing you could do, that would bring me over to your side.”
With the 5% of her brain not absorbed by the burn of the Kryptonite through her body, Kara feels a warm flush of pride. Lena is so good. She’s so, so good.
Lex doesn’t appear to share her sentiment. His eyes narrow.
“Well, in that case—” he mutters, retracting one gauntlet to fumble with something in his hand and Kara picks up on his intention a split second too late to do anything about it.
Several things happen simultaneously.
Lena’s eyes lock with Kara’s and she watches in real time as the dark-haired woman realises what’s coming, watches her face contort in horror. Alex draws her gun with a shout as Nia readies a ball of dream energy between her palms. And Lex Luthor glances over at Kara, presses the red button on the Kryptonite remote in his hand, and winks.
Everything is a blur of light and noise and pain.
Kara screams. Across the cavern, a sound so desolate and raw rips itself from Lena’s throat that Kara feels every hair on her body stand on end. Or maybe that’s just the Kryptonite payload flooding her system, overriding every vital process with incandescent agony.
She sees a sudden bolt of golden light, angled up, and half the ceiling collapses on Lex’s head.
Ice cracks, or perhaps it’s Kara’s ribs. The roof is collapsing. Her body is collapsing.
She’s slumped, chin to her chest, unable to move. Light and shadow flash before her eyes. There’s shouting— Alex, Nia. She wants to reply but the Kryptonite is cascading through her muscles, her airways. Deadening.
Is that the pounding of footsteps or the dogged beat of Kara’s heart? Either way, it’s slowing. Every inhale cracks her body down the centre, each exhale buries shards of glass inside the gaping wound.
Sounds are muffled now, the world dulled down like the inside of a snow globe. Underwater, time passes sluggishly to where she lies, drifting, encased in glass. But someone is fighting the current, resisting the pull. Hands grasp her shoulders, burning where they touch. Through the rolling fog comes Lena’s face, blurring out in black and grey and gold and sickly green.
Kara wants to push her away, keep her separate from the venomous substance welded to her chest, keep her untainted. But Lena’s hands are dancing there-away along her cheeks, her jaw, Kara’s own name sounding from her lips over and over, a siren song, calling her home. It’s raining now, wet spots peppering her brow, or maybe the sun is crying.
“Kara, Kara,” Lena is saying. It sounds like her heartbeat and she cannot bear for it to stop.
“Lena,” she manages, a whisper, a prayer.
Her face flashes within Kara’s line of sight for one perfect moment, and is she green-tinged or is it Kara’s failing vision? “I’m going to get it out of you,” Lena says, tremulous and thick. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m going to make it stop.”
Then a sudden pressure at her ribs, a sharp sting and release that feels like salvation and damnation all at once. Kara’s vision whites out, her hearing narrowed to encompass nothing more than her own panicked gasps. The whole world seems to pause for a moment, holding its breath, and then—
An agony that far outstrips anything she’s felt so far explodes through her chest like a firecracker. Kara wonders if her entire heart is being carved still beating from her ribcage. Wonders if maybe that would hurt less than this.
Everything is silent and sharp and screaming, and then everything is black.
She comes to almost without realising it.
One minute she’s surrounded by darkness hearing the echo of Lena’s screams, and the next she’s surrounded by darkness hearing the steady thump of Lena’s heart.
That’s something, she supposes.
So what if Kara can’t blink open her eyelids, can’t move at all, can’t see anything beyond the endless infinity of black she’s drowning in. So what if she’s either paralysed or dead, untethered from her body and floating somewhere above and beyond it. Lena is alive. That’s something.
Awareness filters back in around that persistent beat. Warmth, the very specific hum of manufactured sunlight on her battered cells. Sun lamps. Which means: they’re in the Tower.
They’d gotten out of there, then. Amidst the panic and the pain and the Fortress collapsing in around them they’d somehow gotten out. But, Kara wonders, had everyone? Had Lex?
She’s too weak to move, to weak to even open her eyes, but she slowly becomes aware of her own body, takes up residence inside it once again. She’s alive. Lena’s alive. And there’s another heartbeat too, so familiar— Alex.
Kara hears a quiet beeping, the faint press of buttons, and the sunlight enveloping her body ratchets up a notch. From somewhere close by, Alex sighs.
“If you hadn’t gotten that Kryptonite drip off her when you did, she would have died. You saved her life, Lena. Again.”
Lena’s voice then, scratchy and hoarse and so, so beautiful. “Yeah, well. It was my fault Lex hit that button in the first place. If I hadn’t refused, if I’d gone along with him—”
“Hey, hey. None of that,” Alex says. “We wouldn’t even have found her if it wasn’t for you. Or gotten her back from the Black Mercy.” There’s a pause before Alex continues, her tone brokering no argument. “Lena, you don’t have to bear the weight of your family’s sins.”
Lena huffs out a humourless chuckle. “No. I’ve got more than enough of my own.”
Kara floats in and out of consciousness with little regard for either.
Listens to people come and go, listens to updates and plans and whispered fears and heated disagreements. Dreams of mind parasites and Kryptonite drips and a house with a fruit bowl and a four car driveway.
Her body is aching and warm, leaden and numb. She still can’t move. People come and go at her bedside, strong hands clasping hers as heartfelt entreaties to just wake up are whispered in her ear.
Kara wishes she could. But the pain is still too much, the damage too great. It’s all she can do to lie there and listen and not die. Anything more is unthinkable.
Alex and Lena are with her the most. She listens to their heartbeats, both so unique, so vital. Lets the comforting sounds wash over her like a tonic even stronger than the concentrated sunlight beaming down on her skin. Like a remedy. Like a cure.
Their voices are soothing, too. Kara listens to Lena bat Alex away when she tries to treat her injuries, listens to her acquiesce at last with a stroppy little huff that makes Kara’s very soul smile.
She listens to them discuss Lex, what he did to Kara while she was his captive, what he did to them at the DEO. Listens to the fury in Alex’s voice and the pain in Lena’s and wants more than anything to reach out, to hold.
The room falls silent for a long time and Kara drifts into happier dreams untainted by the elder Luthor’s poison.
“So,” Alex says conversationally sometime later, her voice a life raft for Kara to cling to in this vast ocean of never-ending dark. “Krypton, huh? Bit of a trip.”
Across the room, Lena sucks in a sharp breath. “What?”
Kara’s chest tightens in nervous anticipation. She knows with sudden clarity exactly where this conversation is going. Where it will end up.
“The Black Mercy world. Y’know, I was quite enjoying being the only human to have ever visited a planet that doesn’t exist anymore, even if it was just in VR,” Alex says over the quiet clinking of glass against metal, the rustle of plastic. “And there you had to go and steal my thunder.”
“Oh,” Lena says haltingly after a moment. “Oh, I didn’t—”
“I think it was seeing different planets in the sky that was weirdest.” Alex forges on in that oblivious way she sometimes has, wrapped in her own memories. “Different moon, different sun. That, or the light. That orange glow. Made me realise how much I loved the colour blue when I got back.” She inhales heavily and her voice loses its dreamy quality. “What was weirdest for you?”
“Alex, I didn’t—” Lena starts quietly, and Kara braces herself for the inevitable. “I didn’t go to Krypton.”
“What?”
“She didn’t— she wasn’t dreaming of Krypton. We were still on Earth.”
“She, she dreamt of Earth?” Alex asks haltingly, her voice the choked kind of thick indicative of the tears that are now surely gathering in her eyes. “She wanted to be here?”
From the short gasp her sister sucks in Kara can only guess that Lena has nodded. “Oh my God,” Alex says, voice a tremulous half octave too high. “Oh my God. I never thought— it never even occurred to me that her perfect world would be—”
Lena lets out a low chuckle. “Me neither.”
It’s silent for a long moment, and then—
“Was I there?” Alex asks in a voice so small and uncertain that Kara feels the sound burrow its way inside her heart, a tiny fissure that widens and widens with each thudding beat, with each of her sister’s nervous breaths. “I mean, did she dream— would she want me—”
“Yes,” Lena breathes without hesitation. “You were there. Of course you were there. I don’t think there’s any way that Kara’s perfect world wouldn’t include you.”
“It didn’t used to,” Alex whispers, small and vulnerable, and Kara’s battered heart is a hair’s breadth away from shattering completely. “But I’m glad,” her sister says, firmer now, calmer. “That’s— thank you.”
Silence again, or as close to it as Kara ever comes on this incessant planet.
“Were you there?’ Alex asks eventually, barely a whisper.
“I— yes,” Lena answers after too long a pause, her voice a little hoarse. “That was quite the surprise.”
Alex snorts quietly, the gentle sounds of elbows nudging together blanketing the noise. “Oh, Luthor. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of genius? It’s not surprising at all.”
The next time she wakes, she wakes.
At last she has the strength to open her eyes, to lift a hand to her forehead. She feels tender and bruised but the crippling frailty is gone. Her muscles flex with power, begging to be used.
“Kara—” from across the room and a sharp gasp, the sound of something metal clattering to the ground and then Lena is there in the circle of Kara’s vision, dirty and tear-stained and radiant.
She latches on to Kara’s hands, twisting their fingers together tight tight tight as she calls Alex’s name amidst a litany of oh my god and Jesus Christ and her eyes are filled with tears that drip hot onto their entwined hands and oh, Kara loves her.
Her sister appears, checking vital signs and examining wounds and trying to contain the face-splitting smile that belies the adrenaline-spiked thudding of her heart.
“That was one of your closer calls,” her sister deadpans, helping Kara to sit up before wrapping her arms around her. Alex’s voice is carefully calm but her fingers dig tight into Kara’s shoulders, her worry unconcealable. “Don’t feel like you need to pull any more stunts like that in a hurry.”
Kara envelops her sister in her arms and holds her tight, one of her hands still twisted around Lena’s. “’M not planning on it.”
She endures the requisite health checks and dressing down by Alex and J’onn with a smile. Wraps them both in another bear hug just because.
Nia and Brainy and Kelly come to see what all the fuss is about and Kara engulfs them all too, squeezing tight. If pressed she’ll blame the lingering effects of Kryptonite exposure for her sentimentality, but in this moment the life she’d imagined while in the Black Mercy’s grasp feels like a second-rate imitation of these real solid beautiful people here in her arms.
They fill her in on everything she’s missed.
The way Lex had timed bombs to go off in the DEO just moments before he hit Kara with the Black Mercy, so that the rest of the team would be distracted while he kidnapped her. The desperate race to piece together the VR tech that would allow Lena to follow Kara into the dreamscape. The struggle to locate Kara, and Lena’s brainwave to hack the Fortress’ database to try and find some technology to track her down.
Kara absorbs it all silently, one hand wrapped around Alex’s and the other around Lena’s. When they finish she returns the favour, tells them about waking up as Lex’s captive, the Kryptonite drip, his ultimatum.
“He told me if I didn’t take him to the Fortress and disable the L-Protocol, he’d kill—” She cuts herself off suddenly, wary of the sheer amount of attention currently focused on her. Wary of exactly how much the rest of her sentence will reveal.
Kara’s already been stripped of her privacy, her innermost secrets, in front of one person today. She’s a little hesitant about repeating the exercise in front of the group.
“He’d kill you?” Alex supplies, her voice low and furious. “That bastard.”
Kara pauses for a moment, wavering. Unbidden, the image of Lena’s oblivious form on Lex’s CCTV feed flashes before her eyes. She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders. Some things are more important than pride.
“No. I mean, yes, he did, but— he also said he’d kill Lena. So I agreed.” Kara stares hard at a point on the wall over Brainy’s left shoulder, studiously ignoring the pointed looks being exchanged all around her.
Lena’s fingers tighten almost imperceptibly around her own and Kara swivels to face her, ignoring the flush burning high on her cheeks. “You need to have your security team sweep your lab. Or better yet, I’ll do it. Lex installed canisters of sarin gas in your air vents.”
A muscle in Lena’s jaw flickers but she doesn’t respond beyond a tight nod. Kara squeezes her fingers reassuringly and goes on with her story.
“Well,” Alex exhales heavily once Kara’s laid out the whole sorry tale. “We’ve got Lex and Lillian in holding now. I guess the question is, what should we do with them?”
“Alone, Lillian Luthor poses only a minimal threat that could be easily contained,” Brainy says, fingers steepled together in front of his chest. “The real danger is Lex.”
Kara glances at Lena out of the corner of her eye but the young woman’s face is carefully blank, apparently unaffected by the current topic of conversation. She’s given away only by the way her heartrate ticks up, her pulse erratic and anxious.
“Lex has allies everywhere,” Kelly says with a sympathetic glance in Lena’s direction. “Banks, corporations, government officials. He might be the most connected person in National City.”
“He should stand trial for what he’s done, but I’m pretty sure half the city’s cops are on his payroll. Not to mention the judges,” Nia says grimly. “And we all know what he did to his last jury.”
“And in this world, this timeline, the Luthor resources are boundless,” Alex adds. “He’s got sway everywhere and a hero’s reputation to fall back on. There’s nothing he couldn’t wriggle out of.”
J’onn clicks his tongue. “Well, short of keeping him in a DEO cell forever, I don’t see a viable alternative—”
“Do it,” Lena mutters. “Throw away the key.” Every pair of eyes in the room snaps to her face.
Lena’s face is boardroom impassive, a mask of practiced composure. “I’m serious. You know my position on the DEO’s extrajudicial incarceration policies,” she says with a pointed quirk of her brow in the direction of J’onn and Alex. Her sister has the good grace to look suitably chastised as J’onn shuffles his feet uncomfortably.
Lena shrugs as she continues. “But in this one specific instance I say let him rot in the deepest, darkest, most unconstitutional hole you’ve got. We all know the world will never be safe with him loose in it.” She sighs so heavily that Kara can’t fight the urge to sweep a comforting thumb over her knuckles where their hands are still joined together. “But I just can’t face killing him again.”
It feels like an eon before she can snatch a moment alone with Lena.
Eventually, after innumerable health checks and repeated reassurances that she won’t suddenly up and die while Alex is gone, her sister finally agrees to go back with the others to the DEO. The damage Lex’s bombing inflicted on the building is yet to be fully contained and, as Lena notes with a pointed glance in Alex’s direction, it’s going to need a new director now that the previous one is facing life imprisonment.
But Alex refuses to leave until she’s prodded Kara back under the sun lamps with strict instructions to fully recover before shooting off for any heroic activities. Kara’s just opening her mouth to loudly protest when Lena murmurs that she’ll stay and keep her company, tucking her unruly hair shyly behind both ears.
Kara finds her jaw snapping shut again without a single word of complaint.
The second the room empties Kara pushes herself up from the cot her sister had wrestled her onto, swivelling to face Lena where she’s perched on the edge of J’onn’s desk.
The quiet of the room seems to grow more loaded with every second that passes. Lena is just staring, watching her with wide, worried eyes. Her brow is furrowed, arms folded across her chest, fingers wrapped tight around her own elbows.
Kara takes in her wild curls, her dirt-streaked face, the bruise beginning to bloom along her cheekbone.
“Are you okay?” she blurts into the silence between them. “I mean, they hurt you. In the Black Mercy.” Guilt crawls up the back of her throat, bitter and caustic. It was her imaginary relatives that had attacked Lena, after all. Her mind that had made any of it possible. “Are you alright? Your head—”
“I’m fine,” Lena replies instantly. “It’s you we need to worry about, anyhow.”
Kara’s brow furrows in consternation. “Lena—”
“Kara, I’m fine,” Lena says again, softer this time. “I mean, my head aches, but I’m not injured. Not really. There’s nothing physically wrong with me now. It’s just— phantom pain, I suppose.”
Kara almost wants to laugh. Phantom pain. That does seem apt. Pain with no discernible source, no culprit outside of their own treacherous minds. Pain whose very culprits are phantoms themselves.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Kara whispers, fighting hard not to let her voice tremble. “I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.”
“It’s not your fault,” Lena says quietly. “And anyway, you got us out of there.”
“Not quick enough,” she mutters, shaking her head. “Not before they hurt you.”
“They didn’t, not really,” Lena entreats. “None of it was real.”
Memories claw their way to the forefront of Kara’s mind. Lena’s tears, her screams, the sickening crunch of bone against bone. She shudders. “Felt real enough to me.”
“Kara, don’t do this to yourself. It wasn’t real. Nothing that happened in there counts. And if anyone should be apologising here, it’s me.”
Kara’s brow furrows. In this game of blame hot potato they’ve apparently begun playing, she’s in no hurry to pass back the buck. “Lena, you saved me. Twice. What could you possibly need to—”
Lena holds up a hand, eyes sad. “Please let me say this. I am so sorry, Kara. I was so hurt for so long and I couldn’t understand— I couldn’t see your side. But seeing you in the Black Mercy, how happy you could be… I want to tell you that I get it now. I get why you don’t want to be around me.” She lets out a chuckle, a small, self-deprecating sound. “Can’t say I blame you.”
Kara blinks. Whatever she’d been expecting Lena to say after the shitshow of the Black Mercy, this wasn’t it. “Don’t want to be around— what are you talking about? Of course I—”
“No, you don’t. We’ve been fighting for months. And I thought that maybe with time, I could fix it – me, us – but, I see now. You’re better off without me.”
Kara feels her throat tighten. “Why would you—”
Lena levels her with a firm stare, incredulous and resigned. “You almost died today. In the past 24 hours you’ve been psychologically tortured, poisoned, almost killed, all at the hands of my family.”
Kara’s mouth opens and closes. “But, but that was Lex, that wasn’t—”
Lena smiles sadly. “We’re all Luthors.”
“But you’re not—”
Lena huffs, frustration beginning to bleed into her tone. “Kara, my family is the biggest threat to you on this planet. And this isn’t the first time they’ve used me to get to you. They— I put you in so much danger.”
Kara blinks, a little blindsided. “No, that is not true—”
“It is. And even apart from my mother, my brother, I hurt you. I’ve lied to you, manipulated you, trapped you— just today I dug a knife into your chest to cut out the Kryptonite drip.” Her hands motion in agitation toward the fading pink scar below Kara’s collarbone, the tender new skin Kara hadn’t even noticed. Lena’s face contorts in anguish. “And I— I ripped your perfect world away from you just to bring you back to this.”
A frantic kind of fear blooms in Kara’s chest, like the knowledge that something precious is disintegrating before her very eyes and even her best efforts won’t stop it. She takes a stuttering breath, making sure to enunciate each word carefully, to ram their truth home. “You saved me.”
Lena’s eyes are distant, her voice pensive and soft. “In your dream world you were so full of joy, Kara. I haven’t seen you that happy in months. Maybe years.” She swallows hard, throat working. “Recently you’ve been so miserable. I’ve made you miserable.”
“Lena—”
But the young woman isn’t finished yet. “I just want you to know that I get it. And I don’t blame you. Why would you want to be around someone who only brings you pain?”
The room falls into a heavy silence. Kara ignores the anxious churning of her gut, the faint taste of bile in her throat. “Can I say something now?”
Lena nods, her shoulders slumping.
Kara squares her shoulders. “Lena, I would be dead many times over if it weren’t for you. Not just today, but throughout all the time we’ve known each other. And I know, I know things have been hard between us recently—”
She barely manages not to flinch at her own unintended repetition, the memory of those same words tripping off Lena’s tongue in the Black Mercy dreamscape striking her like a physical blow. From the way Lena sinks her teeth hard into her bottom lip it seems the parallel has not escaped her notice either.
Kara takes a deep breath and forges on. “But that’s just as much my fault as it is yours, if not more. And no matter what, I’m— I’m always going to want you in my life. You know that.”
Lena’s fingers clench into fists at her sides, knuckles turning white. “No, Kara, I don’t know that.”
Kara stares at her, equal parts bewildered and frustrated. After the day they’ve had, how can Lena still not understand?
“Lena, after everything we’ve just— my perfect world was literally built around you,” Kara mutters, cheeks flushing. She reaches up a hand to tug self-consciously at her ear. “How can you not know how much I— how important you are to me?”
Lena’s eyes flash fire-bright all of a sudden, her voice ringing out harsh and high. “Because you’ve never told me!”
Kara is stunned into silence for a long moment, mouth dropping open. “What?”
“I brought pot stickers!” Alex’s sing-song voice cuts through the room like a shatter pattern through tempered glass. “I know medicinally they might not have much merit, but in terms of healing your soul— oh.”
Her sister cuts herself off, seeming to register the tension thickening the air for the first time as she skids to a halt in the doorway, arms overflowing with polystyrene containers. She glances rapidly back and forth between Kara and Lena, both frozen wide-eyed, and cringes.
“Yikes. Am I interrupting?”
Lena won’t even look at her.
Alex and J’onn and the others file in, piling their plates high with takeout and skirting the palpable tension between the two of them as though it’s a grenade with the pin pulled.
Kara wants to tug Lena aside, to find a quiet corner and finish whatever it was they’d just started, but Lena is evading her like she’s suddenly become radioactive. She throws herself into conversation with Nia and Brainy, surreptitiously inching around the table to always keep several other people between them, and flatly refuses to meet Kara’s pointed gaze.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Alex asks around an overflowing mouthful of lo mein, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them like she’s watching a tennis match. “You’re acting so weird. Like, even by your recent standards.”
Kara fights the flush she can feel creeping up the back of her neck, gaze focused intently on the six pot stickers she’s preparing to inhale in one go. “Nothing’s wrong,” she mutters. “Everything’s fine.”
Alex’s eyes narrow. “Is this about the Black Mercy? What happened in there? What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Kara snaps at the exact moment Lena mutters, “I didn’t see anything.”
Alex quirks one disbelieving brow. “Uh-huh. Sure. And I’m straight as an arrow.”
“I sure hope not,” Kelly smiles, leaning in to press a kiss to her cheek. “Leave them, babe,” she murmurs in Alex’s ear when her sister opens her mouth for another attempt, too quiet to be overheard by all but Kryptonian superhearing.
Kara thinks she could happily kiss Kelly in this moment, grateful beyond measure for the other woman’s perceptiveness. Whatever’s going on with Lena feels delicate enough that Kara’s afraid her own big mouth will manage to accidentally shatter it beyond repair. Adding her bull-headed sister to the mix would surely only lead to disaster.
The chatter is comfortable as they all eat their fill, even if Lena still won’t look her in the eye. Kara distracts herself by sticking close to her sister, wrapping an arm around her and pressing thanks and a whispered I missed you against her hair. She graciously ignores the tears that sparkle in the corners of Alex’s eyes, lets herself be squeezed back with a smile.
Once all the food is gone and the containers have been all but licked clean – courtesy of Kara – Alex and J’onn peel off back to the DEO to begin Lex and Lillian’s interrogations.
Brainy, with Lena’s permission, sets himself up at J’onn’s desk to begin analysing the Leviathan-infused Lexosuit as the others busy themselves cleaning up.
Kara is just beginning to debate the relative merits of tossing Lena over her shoulder and taking her somewhere private so they can finally talk when Lena drops the stack of paper plates in her hands into the trash and steps out onto the balcony alone.
Barely managing to restrain herself from yelling finally at her retreating form, Kara mutters a quick prayer to Rao that she won’t unintentionally fuck this up and follows Lena out the door.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She approaches slowly, trying hard not to startle the other woman.
Lena is gazing out over the city, forearms braced on the railing. She won’t meet Kara’s eyes. “You just did.”
Kara takes a deep breath. “You’re avoiding me.”
“That’s not a question.”
Kara presses her lips together hard. “Why are you avoiding me?”
Lena still won’t look at her. “I’m not.”
Kara sighs. Tugs a rough hand through her curls. “Lena, I don’t understand what’s going on. Why won’t you talk to me?”
“We’re talking right now.”
Kara grinds her teeth together so hard she’s pretty sure the creak of her jaw is audible in space. “Look, whatever this is, I want to fix it. But you’ve got to— How can I know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, if you won’t tell me?”
Lena’s head whips round at that, eyes hot and tongue sharp. “Exactly, Kara. Exactly. How are you supposed to know what’s really going on if no one ever tells you?”
Kara shakes her head, as if that will make this situation any clearer. Worth a try, she supposes. “What is going on here, Lena? What is this about?”
Lena pushes off the balcony to face her suddenly, stepping into Kara’s space in a way that makes her stomach do a triple backflip. She’s glad now that she’d closed the balcony doors behind her.
“This is about—” Lena almost hisses, an accusing finger hovering millimetres from Kara’s chest, “—your hypocrisy. This is about you demanding openness and honesty for yourself, when you’ve been about as two-faced with me as it’s possible to get.”
“Two-faced?” Indignation rises in Kara to match. “How have I—”
“Ever since Non Nocere I have been doing everything I can to get back into your good graces, Kara. Everything. And for months now you’ve been distant, acting like you’re not sure you can ever forgive me. Like you’re trying to convince yourself that you don’t hate me. Yet all of a sudden you’re acting like I’m someone you—”
Lena huffs, her jaw tightening. “You’re telling me you’re always going to want me around. You’re taking idiotic risks with the safety of the entire goddamn world, for me. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
Kara feels cornered suddenly. Trapped and defensive. “I— I was only being truthful—”
“When?” Lena asks incredulously. “Which time? Which side of you is the truthful one?” She shakes her head bitterly. “You’ve barely been able to hold a civilised conversation with me in months, yet today I see that in your perfect dream world we’re—"
“I didn’t ask you to follow me in there,” Kara snaps, frustrated and embarrassed and totally, utterly out of her depth. “You weren’t— you were never supposed to see that.”
“Oh, I’ll be sure to wait for an invitation the next time I’m saving your life,” Lena snaps back.
They’re both breathing hard, mere inches apart. Without her usual heels Lena has to tilt her chin up to meet Kara’s eyes, burning bright and defiant. She sucks in a deep, steadying breath.
“I thought we promised each other no more lies. This is just like before— it’s like you’re two different people. I can’t, I cannot go through this deception again, Kara. I need you to be honest.”
Kara feels like she’s freefalling. “I, I have been honest—”
Lena scoffs. “Right. You’ve been acting like you might never trust me again and all the while that’s what’s inside your head. So which is it?” Lena crosses her arms over her chest, hard gaze unflinching. “Are you the person that calls me a villain and tells me she can’t give me absolution, or are you the person who’s already picked out the linens for our master suite? Which is true, Kara? Which is real?”
They’re toe to toe now. Lena’s face is flushed, her fingers digging tight into her own folded arms. Her eyes are tear-glazed and accusing and beautiful.
Real, Kara thinks. Lena wants something real. So she closes the distance between them and kisses her.
In her defence, it’s not really a conscious decision. It isn’t premeditated. Lena has long felt like the sun at the centre of her universe, with Kara an unwitting comet pulled ineludibly from its course to orbit her instead. This just feels like the next step, the inevitable progression. The only viable option left.
What she does next, though— the way she tugs Lena closer, slides a hand up into her hair to scratch her fingertips over her scalp, teases her teeth over Lena’s bottom lip until her mouth opens hot and wet and delicious with a tiny gasp— well. Those are a little more deliberate.
All higher brain function ceases, then. She’s running on pure instinct, finally giving into the inexorable pull that was always going to lead them here. That was always going to come down to this.
She lifts Lena easily, walks them backwards until the younger woman’s back hits the shingled wall of the Tower and Kara can pin her – gently, carefully – against it. She slides a thigh between Lena’s, pressing upwards hot and insistent. A breathy whine rises in Lena’s throat as Kara sucks on her tongue, pressing and pressing until Lena’s hips cant up into her own.
It's Kara who groans then, helpless, into Lena’s open panting mouth. She tears their mouths apart so she can scrape lips and teeth along the regal cut of Lena’s jaw, slicks her tongue hot into the shell of her ear, sucking and biting at her earlobe.
The hand not digging insistently into Lena’s hip comes up to snag her chin and Kara barely notices that she’s pressing the pad of her thumb over Lena’s swollen bottom lip just to indulge in the supple heat of it, just to feel Lena’s heaving breaths stutter out of her with every graze of Kara’s teeth against her throat.
She barely notices, until Lena jolts suddenly as Kara’s lips find a particularly sensitive spot behind her ear and that same digit slips on slick heat, and suddenly Kara’s thumb is in Lena’s mouth and Lena is sucking—
The sound that rips from her throat then is nothing short of a desperate moan, one she feels echoed in Lena’s own chest. The sound reverberates down to her very core and she drags herself away from Lena’s pulse point to slot their mouths back together urgently.
It’s heated and insistent and almost frantic, the way they come together, and with the shocking clarity of a bucket of ice water to the head Kara suddenly realises how fast they’re going. Not that Lena doesn’t seem receptive to their fervid pace, quite the contrary, but— but this is not how Kara had ever imagined this moment would go.
And she had imagined it, more times than she cares in this moment to disclose. The fire and the passion and the intensity of the past hours that are fuelling such wanton ardour within her are by no means inauthentic, but Lena deserves more than just Kara’s primal need for her.
She deserves so much more than that, she is so much more than that. She’s— she’s everything. And now that the last vestiges of Kara’s attempts to cloak her heart’s desires are in tatters at their feet, the least she can do is show Lena the truth of what she feels for her.
She slows their desperate kisses, lingering longer against Lena’s lips each time they meet. Keeps them pressed close but this time with gentle arms looping the curve of her waist, reverent fingers tracking paths of worship up and down her sides until Lena’s shivering against her.
Each kiss Kara lays upon Lena’s lips is softer, more tender, and concluded more reluctantly than the one before. When the dark-haired woman eventually pulls back a little, gasping for air, Kara’s mouth only transitions smoothly from her lips to lay a trail of light kisses along her cheekbone, across her brow and over her closed eyelids.
With all of existence still blissfully narrowed to encompass exactly nothing outside of their joined bodies Kara nudges Lena’s nose with her own, their lips meeting one last delicate, rapturous time.
This is what she wants Lena to know, what she needs her to believe. This is real.
Like emerging from deep underwater, peripheral sounds and sensations begin to filter back in once their mouths at last break apart. Kara rests her forehead against Lena’s with a shaky sigh, her heart pounding a timorous crescendo in her chest.
“Oh,” Lena breathes, her eyes still closed.
Oh, Kara thinks as the reality of what she’s just done, of the line in the sand she’s just pole-vaulted across without a backwards glance, comes slamming in. Oh God, she thinks, even as her fingertips continue to stroke through Lena’s hair, even as they trace the soft skin behind her ear and across her throat, even as they caress the delicate hinge of her jaw.
Oh jeez. Oh Rao. Oh, fuck.
It takes an inordinate amount of time for Lena’s eyes to slide open again.
Kara’s brain helpfully uses the pause to spiral into full-blown panic. Any second now Lena will shove her away. She’ll slap her, ask her what the fuck she’s doing. She’ll tell her she doesn’t feel the same way. She’ll tell her she never wants to see Kara again.
By the time green eyes finally do lock back onto hers, Kara’s heart is thudding in her throat like a bass drum and she’s a split second away from throwing herself over the balcony and shooting off into the sunset, never to be heard from again.
But Lena’s eyes are soft and wide, hesitant and a little afraid. “Oh,” she whispers again. “Well. If I’m choosing to only believe one side of you, I think I’d like it to be that one.”
Kara can’t help the laughter that bubbles up in her throat at that, breathy and relieved. Lena hasn’t run. She hasn’t pushed her away. In fact, her hands are still resting lightly below Kara’s collarbone, one thumb extended to stroke lightly over the almost-healed scar there.
She looks at Lena then, really looks at her. Her face, bare of makeup, is pale and tired. A deep purple bruise blooms along her cheekbone. Fine wisps of dark hair are sticking to her forehead, pink lips chapped and kiss-swollen. There’s a guarded kind of happiness in her eyes, the light in them threaded through with an undercurrent of deep insecurity, of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This is not the woman Kara had conjured into existence in her enthralled mind. Her wildest dreams couldn’t compare to this.
Real, Kara thinks. Lena wants something real. She decides to put her mouth to another use this time, and use her words.
“I never meant to seem dishonest, to make you feel that I was lying again,” she starts, clearing her throat as her cheeks pinken. “I’ve known how I feel about your for— for years, and it didn’t change when we fought. I’ve never hated you, and I’ve always trusted you.”
Kara’s thumbs trace gentle arcs over Lena’s sides where her arms have looped back around her waist. She uses the contact to ground herself, find her centre. “I suppose I was trying to protect myself by, by keeping you at a distance. Because I was – am – scared. Scared of how much I feel for you.”
She takes a deep breath. “I’m scared of how much I can love you and still manage to hurt you.” Lena’s sharp inhale is deafening in her ears but Kara pushes on. If she stops now she might never work up the nerve to start again. “I’m scared of how much I love you because of how much it means you could hurt me.”
Lena is watching her with a quiet kind of awe, eyes wide and glittering with unshed tears. She doesn’t interrupt, so Kara sucks in a shuddering breath and soldiers on.
“But I’m not scared of loving you, Lena. It’s the most right that anything’s ever felt.”
A single tear breaks loose, tracking a diamond path down Lena’s dirt-streaked cheek. Kara catches it with her thumb, wipes it away. “I know I don’t have the best record of honesty and trust, but— but the world you saw in the Black Mercy wasn’t anything I consciously decided on. My subconscious mind created the life I dream of. And— well. You saw it.”
Kara sucks in a breath, braces herself for what has to come next. Watches Lena do the same.
“Krypton isn’t home.” The rush of guilt that accompanies the words is as expected as it is painful. Kara swallows hard. Forges on regardless. “Not— not anymore. It will always be in my heart, but it’s not—”
She sighs, shaking her head.
“During the crisis, when I was trapped for months with the other Paragons and everything, everything was gone—” She winces at the way her own voice cracks. “It wasn’t Krypton I was dreaming of. It wasn’t Krypton that I would have ripped the multiverse apart to get back.”
She takes another deep breath. Confesses aloud for the first time the truth she’d barely been able to admit to herself since she’d woken up on Earth Prime. “It was here. My life, this life, with J’onn, Brainy, Nia. Alex.” She meets Lena’s eyes at last. “You.”
The word hangs suspended in the air between them, heavy and unavoidable.
Kara’s said her piece; Lena knows everything now. She’s finally received the honesty she should have been trusted with from the start. What she chooses to do with it is out of Kara’s hands.
“You kissed me,” Lena breathes at last into the silence that’s fallen between them. Her eyes are wide, her tone uncertain, almost as if she’s fact-checking her statement. Like she can’t quite believe it. Like she needs confirmation.
Kara swallows. “I did.”
“You love me,” Lena continues, hesitant and questioning.
Kara takes a deep breath. “I do.”
A blush blooms high on Lena’s cheeks, spreads down her throat and disappears beneath the high collar of her fatigue jacket. Kara thinks about how she’d like to chase it, to follow it all the way down with eyes, hands, lips.
She’s so absorbed in her train of thought that she almost misses the next whispered words. Almost.
“I love you too.”
Kara blinks. Replays Lena’s words in her head to make sure she didn’t mishear. Blinks again for good measure. “You— what? You do?”
Lena chuckles, shaking her head. “Yes, Kara. I do.” She bites her lip. “If the— enthusiastic reciprocation of your kiss wasn’t clear enough, I would have thought the conversation we had in the Black Mercy world would have been a dead giveaway.”
Kara’s still reeling, still a little shell shocked. Still struggling to manage much more than repeatedly blinking in Lena’s direction.
Green eyes gaze up at her from under dark lashes. “I told you we could have a life like that one day. I wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true. I— I want what you want, Kara. I want you.”
Kara absorbs the weight of the words like a straight shot to her solar plexus, like all the air has been forced from her lungs never to return. This must be how Lena had felt when she’d woken up in Kara’s hallucination, she realises. Breathless and a little blindsided, presented point-blank with incontrovertible proof of the reciprocated feelings she’d never dared hope for.
Without another second of delay Kara slides both hands up to cup Lena’s jaw, tugging her in for another bruising kiss. The things she’d felt kissing dream-Lena – the peace, the belonging, the unequivocal sense of home – they’re nothing but feeble shadows compared to the megawatt blaze of the real thing.
“Well,” Lena manages when they separate at last, clearing her throat over the slight crack in her voice that Kara gallantly pretends not to notice. “We clearly have a lot to talk about.” She chuckles, shaking her head. “Not least of all the fact that you’ve apparently already picked out our daughter’s name.”
Kara feels an answering blush burn hot on her own cheeks and ducks her head, but Lena doesn’t let her get far. She slides her arms snug around Kara’s waist, tucks her head under her chin and rests her cheek right over Kara’s pounding heart. Without conscious thought Kara’s arms come up to match, wrapping them up together and swaying them gently on the spot.
She buries her nose in Lena’s hairline, breathes her in. Lets her lips press feather-light against her forehead once, twice, three times. The life she’d created for the two of them while caught by the Black Mercy might have been the product of her over-active imagination and too many years of silent longing, but the feeling that wraps around her heart at the simple fact of having Lena in her arms has never been anything less than real.
“D’you wanna maybe start with dinner?” Lena mumbles against her neck. Her lips ghost over Kara’s collarbone as she speaks and she has to fight down a shiver.
“Dinner sounds good,” she murmurs, pressing her smile against Lena’s temple.
From inside the Tower she can hear the sounds of Alex and J’onn’s return, can hear Brainy filling them in on what he’s learned of Leviathan’s powers. There’s so much to fix in the aftermath of the day’s events, so much that needs doing.
But, Kara thinks, shivering a little at the sensation of Lena’s eyelashes fluttering against the exposed skin of her throat, there’s nothing that won’t wait just a little longer.
She may not live in a perfect world, but she’s been gifted her share of perfect moments. And if the last few days, months, years have taught her anything, it’s that she should grasp those ephemeral flashes of joy with both hands and hold tight with everything she has.
She noses into Lena’s hair again, breathing her in. Chuckles quietly as something occurs to her. “Y’know, there is something serious we should probably discuss before this goes any further,” she says quietly, and Lena’s arms tighten around her almost to the point of mild discomfort.
Kara smiles, pressing a reassuring kiss to the crown of her head. “I can’t believe you’re actually more of a cat person.”
Lena huffs out a laugh, sagging a little against her. “Shut up.”
She grins. “I’m serious. This might be a deal-breaker for me, Lena.”
Lena sighs, her voice shot through with affectionate resignation. “We can talk about getting a puppy.”
Kara presses another kiss against her hair, just because she can. “Good enough for me.”