Chapter 1: Lessons in Pride over Shame
Chapter Text
Alex Danvers felt a little funny about the tiny bulge over her heart, pretty much invisible beneath the supersuit tactical uniform Winn Schott had built for her a while back, given that the little bulge came from a plastic rainbow ring (on a chain) that DEO Agent Susan Vasquez had given her in Metropolis at the start of June--right after Lois Lane and Clark Kent's (eventual) wedding (time travel had been involved; don't ask)--and right before most of the team attended Metropolis Pride.
There had been the parade, with Supergirl taking Superman's place flying above looking out for danger, sporting her Black/Brown Lives Matter version of the gay pride rainbow flag as a cape and representing all of her people, even though she still mostly identified as bisexual herself.
But so many of their friends and relatives identified in different ways. Her parents were straight, as were J'onn Jonzz and M'gann Morrz, Agent Riley Finn, Rose in Decontamination, Jess Huang (Lena's personal assistant) and a few others. In contrast, Agent Alex Danvers, CEO Lena Luthor, Agent Susan Vasquez, and Detective Maggie Sawyer were die-hard lesbians.
Major Lucy Lane (and possibly her ex, Agent James Olsen), Dr. Callie Torres and Agent Winn Schott identified as bisexuals. Agent Jillian Holtzman identified as pansexual. And nobody really knew about Pam in HR, Cat Grant, or that blue alien, Brian, which was fine because that was totally their business.
And when the majority of them had attended a Drag Queen & King show where there were puppies to adopt, disco to be danced to, and fabulous exotic mixed drinks to, well, drink... it had been an interesting time.
And the fact that the (super)-out queers had taken James aside to give him the (four)-shovel talk about his potentially leading on Winn and probably breaking his heart...
Well, let's just say that Alex loved her badass friends, and also, feared them just a tiny little bit. Because James had had feelings like love for Lois Lane and then Clark Kent and then Lucy Lane and then Superman and then Kara Danvers and then Supergirl and then Lucy Lane (again) and then Winn Schott (just a little bit) and then Lena Luthor and now he was lost and adrift.
And now, as the Assistant Director, soon to be Director, of the Department of Extranormal Operations, Alex Danvers had to know the issues going on with all her agents, old and new, and somehow, deal with them.
///
Jess Huang, Lena's personal assistant at LCorp, had put up with her boss's split focus for the previous year, because she had recognized, as Lena Luthor had, that CatCo Worldwide Media, in the hands of the fascista-wanna-be CEO Morgan Edge would have been a disaster for more than just their city or their country. Lena had acquired CatCo, patriotically, as a way to protect media reliability in a world awash with propaganda and fake news.
Unfortunately, print media had been beginning to die the death ten years previously, so it took a steep discount to get people who had stopped reading print to subscribe to online papers. Lena had seen this necessity early on, right after acquiring CatCo, and had had great difficulties conveying the urgency of this shift to (then-acting-CEO) James Olsen. Lena, however, as Jess well knew, never took shit from anyone, even (and possibly especially) someone who was posturing at falling in love with her.
Jess Huang was as straight as the proverbial arrow, but that also meant that she knew men who were completely, totally straight. And that meant that she was much better than a lot of people at recognizing people who were... not.
And she looked around her, at the CatCo/LCorp/DEO mesh, and she realized that James was probably just as bi as Lucy Lane, Kara Danvers, Winn Schott, and quite likely some other of her friends.
But it would probably take a tornado, hurricane and/or great white shark to get him to explicitly admit it.
///
Kara knew that these days, game night would be... thin. Lena was working around the clock to shore up CatCo's profitability, even while she was working with Winn and her company's engineers on a number of R&D projects that were keeping her sane. Lena was at her best when doing science and engineering, just as Kara was at her best when writing, painting or saving people: so, basically, art.
And James had been pining after Lena for a while (after spending two years castigating her at every opportunity) and when Lena had explicitly turned him down, reminding him (again) that Lena was very, very gay, James had turned and noticed his best friend, Winn.
And Kara didn't know everything that had happened during the Pink K catastrophe a while back, but she guessed that it had been awkward for the two Best Bro's Forever. So yeah, the shovel talk at the Pride party had... happened. And James was being circumspect, but Kara had known him for a few years, and she knew that he was one of those people who routinely crushed on impossible people. Lena suggested that it might be because he was insecure. Kara didn't know. She just planned for him to say he was working that night, which he had, and got on with picking up pizza and potstickers to feed her guests.
Winn brought Jess, who had never joined them for game night. Alex and Vasquez both came, though they showed up separately. Kara had made sure to invite both Callie and Pam from HR, because Callie was Alex's friend, and Kara was 60/40% sure that Pam was somewhere in the LGBTQIAA etc. mix. Nobody knew. But Kara was all about inclusivity, so that.
She would have invited Holtzy, but the woman was on duty that night with Finn and James. J'onn was also busy at the DEO, arranging the handover of the Directorship to Alex. But Alex said she wouldn't miss it for the world, and Kara knew that was her way of reminding Kara that they were a team, so she blew her bangs out of her eyes and welcomed in her sister and her sister's... ex? girlfriend? assistant director?
And Winn and Jess, Callie and Pam, and Maggie and Lucy. Monopoly, she thought. When in doubt, lean on capitalism to get you through an awkward evening.
///
Lucy sat on the couch with her glass of honey whiskey, watching her colleagues ringed around Kara's dining table, buying houses and hotels, paying rent, rounding the corner, passing Go and collecting $200.
She was more of a Risk kind of gal: war, world domination, like that. She thought it amusing that Kara was most likely to pull out Monopoly when Lena wasn't available, knowing that Lena would wipe the floor with their asses if business was in the mix. Lucy didn't blame her.
As a Lane, dealing with Supers and Luthors was practically a family business in itself. But really, it was the Danvers sisters who most interested Lucy, the way they seemed to share a brain sometimes. The way Alex still looked at Maggie with a soft, lost look before looking at Vasquez who also looked lost and sad. There was a lot going on there, and she'd heard rumors, but knew better than to put stock in the DEO rumor mill. There was something about Alex at an offworld wedding and something else about Vasquez, on another Earth apparently, failing at her mission. Agents talked shit in their downtime as a way to pass the time between missions. Didn't mean anything.
She also noticed that Maggie's looks towards Alex were cautious, guarded, as if her heart were still at risk and she was protecting it.
Alex, in her capacity as the soon-to-be director of the DEO, had asked Lucy if she wanted to come back to National City, but Lucy knew Vasquez would be Alex's first choice for Assistant Director, and Lucy couldn't fault her with that choice, knowing how those two also shared a brain sometimes. And if Lucy weren't going to be in the line of succession, she preferred to stay in charge of the Nevada site, at least for the time being. Maybe if she and Maggie started to think about the future, a future together or...
Better to watch her friends play Monopoly together than to try to predict and then pre-navigate the future. The future was an open road and anything could happen.
And given that this was National City? Anything probably would.
Chapter 2: Getting Back to (Our New) Normal
Chapter Text
Alex rolled out of bed on the first day of August, determined. They had been back in National City for three weeks, but she had been so busy shuffling duty rosters and finishing up the third-quarter budget paperwork that she hadn’t had time—hadn’t made time—to sort out her own goals. But now she tied her running shoes and headed out the door of her apartment, starting at a slow jog down the street at 5:45, just as the dark was starting to lift from the city.
Clark’s wedding in Metropolis had gone better than she’d hoped—Cadmus and the repeated day shenanigans notwithstanding—and the Pride weekend had ended with herself and Vasquez back in a better place than she’d had any reason to hope for.
She took the small incline at a brisker pace before slowing for the hill up Archer Street. Her to-do list for the day included briefing J’onn about what they had discovered about this new version of Cadmus, liaising with Maggie about the graffiti she had texted—anti-alien slurs on the walls of the Luthor Alien Clinic—agility training for Krypto with Supergirl and Winn, and then maybe, possibly, hopefully, dinner with Vasquez?
She’d been watching YouTube videos on how to make quesadillas all week. Her first four attempts had been embarrassing, but the last two weren’t half bad. With any luck, tonight would be the charm.
///
The conference room at LCorp was overwarm and heavy with the first-chair lawyer’s cologne as he droned on about the PowerPoint of their case against LordTech. Lena Luthor was a strong woman, but it was eleven o’clock and she had been up with the sun, had forgotten to eat breakfast except for the cup of coffee Jess Huang had insisted on right before the meeting—God bless her—and so, thin, trim, fashionable Lena Luthor feared her stomach might start an embarrassing rumble any time now.
Which of course made her think of Kara. She smiled, thinking of their hotel room in Metropolis. Luckily, she had brought the portable red sunlight emitters with her for Clark’s wedding. It was one thing when Kara broke the headboard of the bed at Lena’s condo in National City. Explaining a broken headboard to a hotel concierge might have proved… challenging.
The lawyer at the front of the room faltered. “Er, Ms. Luthor?”
“Yes, George?”
“Er, you’re smiling.”
“Yes.”
“But, ma’am, this isn’t good news.”
“No,” she said, rising out of her chair, taking advantage of the opportunity to end the meeting. “But I have faith that you and your team will earn those high salaries we’re paying you. Maxwell Lord won’t know what hit him.”
Then she swept out of the room and headed down to R&D. It was time to do some real work.
///
Supergirl’s morning had been going well, right up until the rogue Infernian had decided to light up the park not far from LCorp. Supergirl tried not to take such things personally, but anything that might endanger Lena brought out her protective mode. She had been about to pummel the man but Vasquez on the comms in her ear said, “Supergirl, we talked about excessive use of force… Bring him in and let our agents handle this.”
“Sorry, Vasquez. It’s just that this is the fourth time since we’ve been back that somebody has been messing around in this neighborhood.” She flew into the DEO with the red-haired alien over her shoulder and laid him down on the floor of the command center for a trio of agents in black tacticals to take down to holding.
Vasquez stood with her hands on her hips, frowning--and Vasquez had A Frown for Every Occasion, all of which Alex knew categorically, but Kara really didn’t—so Supergirl stood looking nervous while agents pretended not to be impressed that their small human boss was terrifying the alien superhero.
“Supergirl, if you’d think about pattern recognition, you’d realize that all the other attacks have been by humans, not aliens. This young man appears to be the equivalent of a teenager, and quite likely doesn’t have control over his powers yet. Not the same thing.”
“Oh! You’re right! It’s just that Lena has been so worried lately—”
“Supergirl, walk with me. I need to bring some paperwork down to Rose.”
The Kryptonian grinned. “I haven’t seen her in a while. We haven’t had to get decontaminated in—”
“Don’t say it,” said Vasquez quickly. “Don’t jinx us. The last thing we need is an ichor-spewing mutant.”
“Whoops! Sorry. Wow, I’m just screwing everything up today.”
“No, you’re not. Sometimes it’s just Wednesday and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”
Which didn’t really make any sense, but Supergirl did feel a little better. She sighed. “I just wish we were back in Metropolis. Cadmus aside, it was a lot of fun.”
“You’re not wrong,” said Vasquez, looking thoughtful. “So. Tell me about Lena. You have concerns?”
“You know about her intellectual property battle against LordTech?”
“That’s been going on for a few years. I thought it was supposed to be an easy win.”
“That’s what they expected, but Lord has influenced some legislation, apparently…”
“Say no more.”
“He is such a blowhard annoying jerk-guy!”
Vasquez’s expression didn’t change. “I have heard that.”
“Anyway, it’s not just that. There’s problems with CatCo, apparently, profits are down, and since I know she bought it to save Cat’s baby but mainly for me…”
“Ah.”
“And since we got back she’s been working eighteen-hour days…”
“I see.”
“And Jess is great—”
“She is.”
“But. Well. Lena is struggling to sort it all out and I don’t know how to help.”
“Mm. Well, there’s always food. You’re good at that.”
“Oh, you’re right! I could get those crepes she likes so much from that shop on the Left Bank! What a great idea, Vasquez! You’re the best!”
And she left Vasquez in the wake of her superspeed.
///
Krypto followed Scruffy down the stairs—at least elebenty of them—to the training hall. It had steps and inclines and hoops and a narrow wall and every time they went through, it was a little different but he got a treat each time, and two if he managed to walk along the narrow wall without falling off.
And yay, treats!
But also, yay that the pack was back. They had all gone to see Kal El and his mate in Metropolis and had left him in charge of National City’s safety while they were gone, and he had worked very hard with the DEO agents patrolling the city and occasionally peeing on trees to ensure that the dogs of the city at least knew that he was on the job, protecting everybody.
But he was glad that Kara was back. The agents were generous with sharing their lunches, but they didn’t know much language: sit, stay, come, lie down. It was embarrassing. But maybe that’s why they hadn’t been asked to go on the mission to Metropolis. It made sense that Kara had left Krypto in charge. And thankfully, they hadn’t had any major disasters, probably because Spring Chaos was over.
Apparently, the hotter weather put off criminals and terrorists and flying cats.
Chapter 3: What We See When We Look at What We Have
Chapter Text
Winn led Krypto back to the command center and threw himself into his usual chair below the computer feeds, energized. Nearby, James was consulting with Alex and Vasquez about what level of threat the recent uptick of anti-alien violence might constitute. James still didn’t look completely at home in his black tacticals, but as Krypto settled himself on Winn’s right foot and immediately fell asleep, Winn thought that DEO agents like Alex and Vasquez were born, not made, and folks like James and himself simply had to slog their way toward that lofty goal at their own slow speeds.
Winn was happy to be back at work. He’d heard in the break room that crime had been slow while they had been away. Well, of course, all the excitement had been happening in Metropolis. His mind was still reeling about the repeated day shenanigans that the Legends had explained. Apparently, in at least one scenario, he had slept with Kara, and that was enough to boggle the mind. He knew about the multiverse theory, knew that it was true, knew that everything that was possible at all eventually happened somewhere, but he had just assumed that no universe actually held that as a possibility.
He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the list of alien restaurants that Kara had recently reviewed. Then he texted Jess Huang at LCorp.
ForTheWinn: Hey, Jess. Care to try out some Infernian barbecue some time? There’s a place not far from LCorp.
While he waited for a reply, a call came out and James followed Alex down to the armory. Krypto rolled over to Winn’s left foot.
JessIsBest: Tonight around 7 or not until next week. I’m slammed.
ForTheWinn: Tonight it is. If you need to cancel, I can get takeout and bring it to you.
JessIsBest: You’re my favorite. Cuz you know that will probably happen.
Winn blushed.
ForTheWinn: Vasquez has taught me about contingency planning. Look at their menu online and text me what you want.
This whole dating thing was relatively new to Winn, but if he’d learned nothing else from the wedding and Pride celebrations in Metropolis, it was that if he just showed up, as himself, and loved as hard as he could, things would probably work out.
///
Maggie was just getting out of her car to grab a burrito at No Way José’s when the call came: a possible hate crime in the warehouse district, not far from the Luthor Alien Clinic. With a gusty sigh, she got back in the car, hit the light and siren and sped across town. She barely had to navigate since she had done this route so much lately. Fox News blamed the uptick in violence on the Luthor Alien Clinic, of course it did, CNN called for better funding for the police Science Division, and Channel Seven/CatCo put the blame on the president’s dangerous anti-alien rhetoric.
Didn’t really matter who was to blame, though, thought Maggie. She and her people were always the ones called in to clean up the mess. She expected it to be the usual, some young man, green or purple, winged in a drive-by shooting, victim of spontaneous hatred.
But no.
The school bus had just let off a dozen elementary school kids, some human but most alien, when a truck came roaring down the hill, skidding out of control and plowing into them, rolling over on its side and exploding. It took out almost all of the children and the donut shop, as well as a telephone poll and the electricity for six blocks.
Just an accident then, although a horrifically tragic one. She saw Alex and James in their “FBI” jackets surveying the scene. James looked like he might vomit, but he was holding it together. The DEO’s crime techs were bagging and tagging while the Fire Department was covering the truck with foam. The fire was out but she could feel the heat off the truck from twenty feet away. They wouldn’t be getting evidence from there for a few hours at best. She looked around at roof level and saw several surveillance cameras. She called to an NCPD uniform and told him to pull the film and bring it to her at the precinct. Then she went to liaise.
Alex was pointing back to the black SUV and James hurried away.
“Danvers, what’s your take on this? Tragic accident?”
“Detective, I truly hope that’s the case, but I just talked to a Fourian woman who had just come out of the donut shop where she was waiting to pick up her kids. She said she felt the malice so strongly that she ran outside in time to see the truck bearing down on the kids. She saved the only two survivors by pushing them away…”
“Right,” said Maggie. “Fourians are psychics. God, what a mess. How many victims?”
“Nine children, six of them aliens. The driver.”
“A suicide run? Who would kill kids that way? I mean, terrorists kill themselves to take out military bases, high value targets. Not kids.”
“That’s the theory, but you’re right. I agree that it makes no sense. So we’re going to look for a better answer. Winn and Lena had started on a scan of psychic pathways last year. I don’t know how far they got.”
The wind shifted and the smoke, even as the fires were being put out, smelled acrid and heavy, a combination, they both knew, of gasoline, the foam suppressant, and charred flesh. Maggie gagged and Alex put her hand on her sleeve. She put her other hand in one of her cargo pockets and pulled out a small tube of pale green. “Here, Maggie. Wasabi. If your nose is shut down, you can’t smell anything.”
Maggie took it gratefully, squeezed some of the horseradish sauce onto her tongue and felt her tongue and nose shut down. Small mercies.
“Hey,” said Alex softly. “We’ll figure this out. Come with me to St. Christopher’s. I want to talk to the principal, ID the kids, see if we can figure out a motive. You should take point, but I want to make it clear that we’re considering this a probable hate crime, so it’ll probably be federal unless we can prove it was just an accident. We need to present a united front on this, let the city know we are taking this shit seriously.”
///
James returned to the DEO, showered and changed into fresh tacticals, bringing the smelly ones down to Rose in Decontamination. She shook her head sadly and said she’d do her best. Then he went up to the command center to write his report. There were moments when he was glad to work here rather than back at CatCo, where he would have had to take pictures of the blaze, treating tragedy as spectacle to pay the rent. This was better.
“Hey, Winn, Alex said to ask you how far you and Lena got on a device to identify psychic activity.”
Winn shook his head. “Nowhere. Spring Chaos happened halfway through the process and then we just never got back to it.”
“Spring Chaos?”
“Oh, that’s the term Kara made up to explain to Krypto how we always seem to fighting some big bad or other in May.”
“We do, don’t we?” James shook his head. “Like clockwork.” He took in his friend’s happy look. Cleary, being behind the scenes had its benefits. Winn never had to see the worst of it when he so rarely went out into the field. It suited him. “So… how’s the agility training going?”
Krypto opened one eye and zipped over to James, his tail wagging so fast it was almost invisible.
“Guess your English is improving, boy!”
Winn laughed. “Yeah, because he knows the A word leads to T-R-E-A-T-S.”
James held out his open hands. “Sorry, Krypto, I don’t have anything for you.”
Krypto sighed and went back to sit on Winn’s feet.
James said, “Hey, want to come over to play Call of Duty tonight?”
“Nah, I have a date with Jess!” Big grin.
“Right. Great. Date with Jess.”
“I know, right? Raincheck?”
“Of course.” But James felt like he had just been hit by a downpour.
///
In the few years he had lived in National City, Brian the blue alien had had a number of jobs, run a few side businesses (he refused the DEO's term for them, scams), and had been arrest-free for nearly a year when the Luthor Alien Clinic had been built. So he had jumped at the chance to get some education and make the most of his appearance and maybe do some good in the world.
The Alien Emergency Med Tech training had been arduous, but he'd made new friends who, like him, had found that their obvious alien origins were often held against them in other fields. But when aliens called an ambulance, they would actually be reassured rather than afraid to see that the responders were blue or green. Lena Luthor really was a genius.
They had been called out for the explosion, but the children, and the driver responsible, were "crispy critters" before he and his partner had even arrived, and Brian pretended to be just as jaded as his partner was, but he knew that, after work, he would be going directly to Dollywood where he could drink something very, very strong and--what was it the detective said? Lose his cool.
Because Brian knew that he wasn't the sharpest nut in the cookie jar, but he had a big heart.
///
Lillian Luthor's lawyers left her, smiling at the good news they had brought her, a plea deal that would take ten years off her sentence if she sold out her Cadmus contacts. It was a tempting offer, one she would seriously consider. To get more time to think it over, she told her lawyers of the Metropolis warehouse that had been their first base, which held computers with nonessential information, a few firearms and some explosives. Not much of course. And all left behind intentionally for just such a moment.
There would be a few arrests of low-level minions, which should win her some good will, make it look like she might be "learning her lesson" or maybe even "experiencing remorse." Excellent. It was always easier to fly under people's radar when they thought you were complying with them.
The lawyers had left behind a National City Tribune with a front-page story about the Lionel Luthor Alien Medical Clinic, written by the Danvers girl. Supergirl. She grimaced with distaste, but read it anyway. Forewarned was forarmed, though she had but two.
Chapter 4: Happy Returns of the Day—And the Other Kind
Chapter Text
Cat Grant was back.
CatCo knew it. Lena Luthor knew it. And Kara "Supergirl" Danvers knew it. So, basically, everyone who needed to know, did. Excellent. That only left the rest of National City, the vast majority of whom didn't know how much democracy depended on the unbiased reporting of historical truth.
Or, to put it another way, Cat needed desperately to increase subscriptions and/or other forms of income to put the paper, magazine and website back in the black. Lena had, surprisingly, done a better job than James had--
--okay, not so surprisingly. She had an MBA. He had an MFA. Never mind.--
Anyway, they were going to need out-of-the-box thinkers, and those weren't the kind of people James and his minions had been hiring over the previous year. Well, shit. Plan...C? D? Cat didn't even know. She emailed her brand manager and her CFO for a meeting. Then she asked Eva to get her a lettuce wrap and a triple cappuccino. She was in for a very long afternoon of work.
///
Millie Bernetti was first a chef, second a perfectionist, and third the wife of an alien, usually in that order. But not always. And anyway, the first two overlapped enough to be practically one category, so she didn't feel the need to feel guilty. She had three extraordinarily successful five-star restaurants in three cities. She had friends among the political and cultural elite--and also Lena Luthor, who herself pretty much composed the technical elite. And Millie knew that Lena, despite her xenophobic upbringing, was outspokenly pro-alien.
Millie was no spring chicken and no fool. She had met Kara Danvers. She was herself married to an alien. She knew what she was looking at, or who. Supergirl was a talented food critic, and Millie was the last person to call out a refugee, especially not one who had single-handedly increased their subscriptions by 11%. But Millie recognized the look on Lena's face the few times in the last year when they had been able to spend any significant amount of time together, and what she saw was loneliness.
So she had contacted Lena's ultra-capable assistant, to get an impregnable two-hour appointment with Lena. She had brought menus, her assistant and a few samples of wedding cake flavors that her brand was known for.
Millie said, "Lena, you are a woman of good taste. I need your opinion for the wedding of an elite... well, I guess I can't say, professional ethics being an issue. But try a taste of each of these five different cakes. Tell me what you think. There is Interesting Vanilla Praline, Swiss Chocolate Almond, Strawberry Longcake, Pineapple Coconut, and Mango-Passionfruit."
Lena didn't bother to argue that she was always on a diet. There was no point with Millie. She simply tried a forkful of each one.
"No, yes, longcake?, ooh, and just no."
"So what about layers of the chocolate and the pineapple coconut?"
"Oh my--you do know that I'm an atheist, right?"
"Everybody has a weakness..."
"Why are you even asking me? Who is the wildly secret celebrity that you're working for?"
Millie shrugged. "I'm assuming that the couple I have in mind will come to me shortly. I just want to be prepared. Maybe a raspberry/chocolate?"
"Sure, maybe that. Or banana."
"Fewer folks like banana than you would think." Millie sighed.
"You seem down," said Lena.
"Kara Danvers is keeping my brand afloat. Times are rough. People are becoming narrow about life and culture, even food. Maybe especially food. Your Kara has been keeping our alien and alien-adjacent businesses afloat. But I think she doesn't realize how important she has been for this city. And I'm terrified that she will go back to straight journalism--you should forgive the phrase--and if she does, the food scene in National City, and maybe Metropolis and Gotham as well--will surely suffer."
"Mil, she's just one writer."
"Yeah, she is. But Dr. Oppenheimer was just one scientist."
"The bomb," said Lena. "'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.'"
"Yup."
"Are we really in such a shite situation? I've been told the worst of the environmental catastrophe is still at least twenty to thirty years out."
"That's on the planetary scale. On the interpersonal scale, we are here: apocalypse now."
“Hm. Well, I’ll talk to her. Oh, do you know Fleur—”
“The one who makes the chocolate mousse Kara drools about?”
Lena smiled. “The very same. She came up with a version of a jalapeno chocolate cake layered with her mousse. I thought Kara was going to burst into tears when she tasted it.”
“Good to know. I will do some networking. But Lena, don’t be a stranger, okay?”
And Millie left Lena staring off into the distance and, hopefully, thinking about weddings.
///
On Thursday morning, Agent Susan Vasquez woke a few minutes before her alarm went off and absently rolled over to find that her dream about Alex Danvers coming home with her had been… just a dream. Growling, she rolled out of bed, onto the floor and did sit-ups, push-ups and planks, before throwing on her running clothes and sneakers, turning on the coffee maker and hurrying out the door to run a mile around her neighborhood, hurry back to shower, coffee and no real appetite for breakfast.
She recognized the signs of depression and knew she needed to see the DEO therapist soon. Things had mostly been better since Metropolis, but when she heard through the grapevine that Alex had asked Lucy Lane to come back to National City, a weight that she had thought dispelled had settled in the pit of her stomach. Alex didn’t trust her to be her Assistant Director.
Well, Vasquez couldn’t really blame her. Once she read the mission report on how Vasquez had royally fucked up her undercover mission at SHIELD, nearly getting the whole team killed and then getting Lost in Space with Daisy Johnson… Hell, Vasquez didn’t trust herself anymore. How could anybody else possibly trust her?
She drove to work, parked her Beetle in the sub-basement parking lot and took the stairs to the command center, arriving winded to find Winn half asleep at his station and Al—the Director pacing restlessly.
“Agent Schott,” said Vasquez. “You are relieved of the watch.”
He yawned and tried to hide it, rising from his station. “Agent Vasquez, you have the watch.” Then he dragged himself to the elevator, probably to crash in the men’s barracks.
She didn’t know why he so often pulled the night watch. He complained about it enough, but he certainly had enough seniority—and pull—to be able to avoid it if he wanted. She suspected insomnia. Winn, like most of their best agents, had a history of trauma. Sometimes being on duty in the darkness was the only way to make the darkness stand down.
She sat down at her station and checked her to-do list.
• Check in with Livewire and get Dr. Hamilton’s assessment of her field readiness.
• Meet with Pam in HR to get Livewire’s paperwork sorted out.
• Lunch with Callie at the Luthor Alien Clinic.
• Brief Director Danvers re: the above.
And she realized that this would likely be her last briefing as Acting Assistant Director. Her heart sank.
///
Supergirl strode into the command center at midmorning to bring the women coffee from Noonan's. Vasquez looked like she was about to cry when she took her cup, and at first, Supergirl thought it was just because she’d gotten the Toasted Almond, and as much as Vasquez was a butch Marine, she really loved her “girly flavored coffee” as Alex called it.
But then Alex also looked upset, absently rubbing the slight lump under her own black supersuit (as her sister thought of it), right above her heart.
“Alex, were you injured?” Supergirl used her x-ray vision to check for injuries, and realized that the lump was the plastic rainbow ring Vasquez had given Alex, hanging on a chain around her neck under her suit.
“What? No. Ooooh. Coffeee. You are a lifesaver.”
“Peppermint or wintergreen?”
“Both. I don’t know how J’onn managed to squeeze necessities like good coffee into our ever-shrinking budget.” She took a long sip and looked semi-orgasmic. Supergirl looked away, catching the fleeting look of longing on Vasquez’s face.
Supergirl took note but said, “You mean in between the inessential things like kryptonite bullets?”
“Exactly.”
Vasquez said lightly, “I’m pretty sure he was sneaky about it. The coffee went under foreign medicinal supplements, i.e., Columbian caffeine, and the potstickers were beaker insertion units.”
Alex laughed. “You’re right. I’d forgotten about that. Amazing. Three hundred years as a bureaucrat and he still has a sense of humor about it.”
Suddenly, Supergirl’s head snapped up. “OH, SH—Get a team on the ground! I’ll radio the location. Alert fire—” Then there was a whoosh of air and she was gone.
///
Papers fluttered off Vasquez’s station.
Alex said, “Let’s go!”
But Vasquez said, “Director, you need to stay here and QB. I’ll go! Finn, Holtzy, you’re with me!”
Alex felt lost watching them run out. She looked at the computer feed and saw nothing unusual, but she called down to Winn in the men’s barracks and he came running, looking mussed and half asleep, with his knit tie askew.
“Reporting for duty, Director Danvers, ma’am. What’s the sitch?”
“I don’t know. Supergirl smelled fire and flew off. Vasquez is taking a team.”
“If it’s just a fire, why do we—”
“I don’t know but Supergirl said get a team together so she must have smelled more than smoke.”
Winn typed away at his computer and the map on the screen above his head changed to—literally—a heat map. A portion of the theater district, just west of the finance district, was showing red dots growing in size.
“Oh, that’s not good…”
Alex came and stood behind him looking up. “Wait, that’s Alien Alley.”
“Holy sh—If I’m not wrong. That is Jupiter’s Feast, and the place next door is Millie Bernetti’s restaurant, and that’s—”
“Call Maggie. That’s either one very coincidental set of fires or it’s serial arson, targeting aliens.”
///
If Supergirl had gotten there five minutes later, the whole neighborhood would have burned to the ground, or at least that’s what the fire chief told her later. Her freeze breath kept the fires contained, so yes, three out of the five restaurants burned to the ground, and two were badly damaged. But it could have been much worse. A dozen ambulances raced to the scene, including two from the Alien Ambulance Corps.
///
Maggie had her light and siren on but couldn’t get from her precinct to the theater district. She tried sidestreets, even drove on a sidewalk at one point but it was no use. The entire city was gridlocked. Maggie called Alex and let her know. The DEO and all three hospitals sent in helicopters, and Alex called out M’gann and J’onn to help Supergirl transport victims.
In the end, the only people who actually made it to the hospitals were the ones who were taken by air. More than a dozen aliens and three humans died en route. In her police report, Maggie recommended an investigation into the construction companies whose trucks had blocked the roads. The whole thing just stank of Cadmus.
Chapter 5: Running on Fumes
Chapter Text
Vasquez set the Blackhawk down on the helipad on top of the DEO building, told Finn and Olsen to stand down and write up their mission reports while she finished post-flight checks and hauled herself down to the command center, exhausted. The city’s traffic pattern hadn’t been that fucked up since the Battle of National City with the Daxamites creating chaos. And nothing got that fucked up in National City without outside help. It wasn’t Boston, after all, planned after cow-paths.
When she arrived at the command center, J’onn and M’gann in their street clothes were standing talking to Alex and Supergirl. They looked just as tired and worried as she felt. They had done the trickiest of the extrications, directly from traffic to the hospitals.
M’gann said, “And when I landed at the Alien Ambulance, one of the nearby drivers had a case of road rage and I had to bring Brian to the Luthor Clinic as well.”
Vasquez came up to them. “Those burns were bad, Alex. And our people are only minimally trained for med-evac.”
J’onn frowned. “I talked to the fire chief about the accelerant used. He said it looks like one that’s been used in Gotham: once it ignites, it burns long and hard. In fact, freeze breath is one of the only things that stops it once it gets going. Whoever did this was going for maximum damage.”
“Damage to aliens,” growled Kara. “And worse than that, damage to alien restaurants. I feel like this is personal.”
Vasquez nodded slowly. “Do we think Cadmus? And M’gann, you might want more security at Dollywood. I can give you a referral.”
“Thanks, good idea. Actually, you’re all welcome to come down tonight. First round's on me.”
Alex was looking at her sister, concerned. “I know you want to pound someone, Supergirl, but let’s investigate this thoroughly. Do we know that Lillian is still locked up?”
“Yes,” said Vasquez, who had already checked.
J’onn said, “Don’t worry, Director Danvers. You’ve got this.”
“Oh, I sure hope so.”
Vasquez could feel the waves of worry pouring off her as Alex went back into J’onn’s—into her new office. Vasquez turned back to Supergirl and the Martians. “Supergirl, you need to write up your report and give me a separate page or so of your initial gut reactions, what you saw, what you heard, anything that might be important or unimportant, while you still remember. And J’onn and M’gann, would you accompany me down to Pam in HR? I want to make sure your deputations are up to date. I’m afraid we might be needing to call you out more than usual for a while, at least until we know who is behind all this.”
///
Pam in HR kept her nails polished, her ear to the ground and a plate of homemade cookies on her desk—oatmeal chocolate chip for preference—so she was always ready for anything. When Vasquez and the Martians came in, she handed Vasquez four folders.
“I’m way ahead of you, Susan. One for you, J’onn, M’gann, and Livewire.”
Vasquez frowned. “Wait, but—”
“Finn came to tell me about the deputations after your mission, so I could prep the paperwork.”
“Yes, that’s like him. But I meant—”
“You asked me about Livewire on Monday, and I just got the paperwork from Dr. Hamilton, okaying her for training and light fieldwork.”
“Yes, but I meant, what is this for me?”
“Your promotion.”
Vasquez stared. “What promotion?”
“To Assistant Director? Your new contract, your raise?”
“But I’m only Acting Assistant Director.”
“Yes, until you sign that paper.” Pam handed her a pen.
Vasquez stood there, folder in one hand and pen in the other, looking like she didn’t know how they worked. “But it’s not me. It’s Lucy, Major Lane. I know Alex asked her.”
“Um, no? Director Danvers asked her to take over our training program, but Major Lane prefers to remain in Nevada.”
J’onn tried not to smile, and M’gann carefully turned away to sign the forms in her own folder.
Pam said, “Didn’t Director Danvers already discuss this with you? I’m pretty sure she said she had.”
“No, the only discussions we had about it were right after Alura's funeral and right before the wedding, but it was only about the interim…”
J’onn and Pam were both frowning. J’onn said, “I know Alex isn’t always the best communicator, Agent Vasquez, but it was always clear to me, both explicitly and telepathically, that you are the only person she even considered for the job. I believe her words were, ‘She’s the only one who I know will always have my back.’”
“She. But. I. But who’s going to do Threat Assessment?”
“Ah, yes. I asked her that too. She said, ‘It’s not like we could stop her if we tried.’”
Pam allowed herself a chuckle. “That’s accurate, Vas. Now, if everybody would give me your John Hancocks, you can each have a cookie. Then go get out of my hair.”
///
When Dr. Callie Torres got to the bar, she was practically dead on her feet, but also abuzz from working off adrenaline all afternoon. She could see that in the faces of the DEO agents she recognized as she pushed her way to their usual table.
Dollywood was crowded that night, as often happened whenever the alien community was targeted in any way. All of the bartending staff came in without being asked, just like the residents and attendings not on call had come in to the Luthor Alien Clinic as soon as they could when they heard about the fires.
Alex, Kara, Vasquez and Maggie were sharing a booth, but Kara sweet-talked a chair from someone blue when she saw Callie and set it at the end of the table. Callie sank into it gratefully, and then someone handed her a double scotch. Not for the first time, she was also grateful for her psychic bartender. She took a long sip and swallowed, appreciating the burn as it went down.
Maggie turned to her. “How did it go at the clinic today, doc?”
“I worked my ass off, but the burn unit had it worse. I just had to deal with the firemen who were under the stairway that collapsed at Jupiter’s Feast. Broken arms, ribs.”
Alex said, “But you’ll be helping them out too, won’t you, with the prosthetics and skin grafts?”
“Yeah, but that’s in the lab, not the OR. Much less traumatic.”
Vasquez shook her head. “Better you than me. I could never be surgeon. Terrifying.”
“Says the woman who rappels out of helicopters,” murmured Callie.
Vasquez waved that away. “Pfft. Anyway, Alex, when were you going to tell me that I was graduating to official for-real Assistant Director of the DEO?”
“Huh? Wasn’t it obvious? Why wouldn’t you? You do want to, don’t you?”
Callie grinned at the shocked look on Lexie—on Alex’s face.
Vasquez sighed. “Of course, I do, but why didn’t you tell me?”
“But I did. I said, Vas, you’ll be my AD, won’t you? And you said yes.”
“But they made me Acting Assistant Director when they made you Acting Director.”
“Yeah, that’s just HR stuff to make the transition easier on payroll or something. Ask Pam. I was too busy learning the ropes from J’onn to figure out the paperwork of it.”
Callie shook her head. Alex was still a little clueless about some things. Changing the subject, she said, “Brian got brought into the clinic too. He got beat up while the ambulance was caught in traffic. We’re seeing a lot more of that these days.”
“Yeah, we’re looking into that, and that bus accident,” said Alex.
“Look faster,” said Kara darkly. “Somebody needs to be pummeled.”
And Callie didn’t laugh even though the pale pink shirt with little flamingos all over it took a lot of the danger out of the threat. She finished her scotch, put down a twenty. “I’m beat. I’m calling it a day.”
And she left, still musing about the mix of personalities that was the Danvers sisters.
Chapter 6: Room for Recovery
Chapter Text
Millie was just stepping off a plane from Metropolis when she first learned the news. She was walking past an airport bar and looked up at the news on the big TV screen, saw the flames, kept walking, then walked past another bar and recognized the street where the flames were burning. Then she recognized the smoking ruin of her restaurant. Then she passed out.
She woke up in National City General Hospital’s Emergency Room, explained to the nurse about her restaurant, and how her business trip had gone longer than she had expected and she hadn’t brought enough of her blood pressure medication along. She gave them her wife’s phone number and practiced deep breathing techniques while waiting for her.
When the thin red-haired woman arrived with her pill bottle, Millie took her dose and said, “How bad is it?”
Audrey looked exhausted. “Total loss. I’ve already talked to the insurance people and referred them to NCPD, who have said it looks like a hate crime. Jupiter’s Feast went down too, and the Saturnalia. Luckily Supergirl got there in time to save the rest of the street.”
“Was anybody hurt?”
“Chef George has bad burns, but Supergirl flew him directly to the hospital, and they said that made all the difference, that and her freezing his arm. We didn’t lose anybody. Artzy lost two waiters.”
“Who?”
“Steve and B’nar. As far as I heard, everybody else was mostly smoke inhalation and a couple of firefighters were hurt when a staircase collapsed.”
“That’s a bloody miracle.”
“Well, Cassie said she was outside, ha, on her smoke break and saw the smoke and pulled the signal, but Supergirl was already on her way, got there a few seconds later.”
“I’m surprised that someone pulled this off in the middle of the day. Don’t most fires like that happen at night?”
“You got me. I called Lena. She said you should drop by LCorp.”
“I’ll do that, but first we need to go home. I’m too old for shocks like this.”
///
In the conference room at the DEO, Fire Chief Martin Short took in the new Director, a woman with reddish hair, looked a little queer, big difference from that Jones fellow. Just great.
“Your conclusions, Chief?”
“Well, Miss—”
And the shorter woman with the boy’s haircut next to her growled, “It’s Director to you.”
“Er, Director. Sure. Anyway. Yes, clearly a hate-crime-motivated arson. Somebody tapped into the neighborhood’s water supply, probably the night before and laced the accelerant into it. When the smoke detectors went off, they were spraying the stuff everywhere.”
“That’s diabolical,” muttered Danvers.
“And I am trying to keep that information from getting out. Last thing we need is copy cats.”
“I concur. Not that that could be easy to do, I’d think.”
“It gets worse. We have several aliens who live and work in the neighborhood found dead that night. Apparently they drank it.”
“So this is arson and mass murder? What about the results on the truck v. bus the other day?”
“The coroner found a device implanted in the truck driver. He said it looked like one of those LordTech prosthetics people got after the Daxamite battle. We’re looking into it.”
“Because it failed? Or because it succeeded?”
He gave her a second look. She might be deviant but she wasn’t dumb. “Either way. Right now that’s all we’ve got.”
“I see. Thank you for coming, Chief. Don’t let me detain you.”
///
Jess Huang got a ping about the Alien Alley arson in the news, watched the footage of the NCFD fighting the fires, with red and blue, and green flashes in the background as the homegrown heroes fought the traffic gridlock to get the victims to the city's hospitals, including the Luthor Alien Clinic, which was why she got the ping. She felt faint, but she was made of sturdy stuff, so she kept calm and called people who would want to be making appointments with Lena in the wake of this latest tragedy: Millie Bernetti, Cat Grant, Alex Danvers.
Kara Danvers.
Probably Meghan from the alien bar. Definitely Kate and Ron from R&D. Possibly that Dr. Torres from the clinic. Quite likely Winn...
And thoughts of him did distract Jess for a hot minute, because they had sat in the conference room only a few days back, eating Infernian barbecue between Jess's late meetings, and he was sweet and nice and nerdy, and she found herself liking him more and more.
And she was learning to love alien cuisine. So this? This attack on aliens and their culture and food and way of life? And lives?
Oh, Jess was pissed. And people, bad people, domestic terrorists might think that they knew what they were facing when they went up against the US government, the Luthors and the Supers.
But they had no fucking idea what they would face if they ever angered a Huang.
//
Cat's meeting with the CatCo Board of Directors was interrupted with news of the arson fires downtown in the theater district. Cat immediately recognized the importance of spinning the story and was about to put her resident alien reporter on it when she realized that Kara didn't actually work for her anymore, Snapper was still on medical leave, and James had gone to play GI Joe with the DEO. So she went and did the interviews herself.
Probably just as well. It would give the piece éclat for her to deign to do the reporting herself. With subscriptions and readership down, it made sense for her to lend a hand where she could.
///
Detective Maggie Sawyer, NCPD Science Division, was looking at the board with some dismay. They had pictures of the victims and perpetrator of the truck/schoolbus crash, lists of purveyors of the fuel the truck was carrying and the resume of the driver, along with the ID number of his titanium smart synthetic shoulder prosthetic, which had apparently been hacked from a short distance right before the accident. Uniforms were currently scraping video from the truck's route to see if they could find some visual somewhere of someone pushing a kill switch, but so far, no luck.
Maggie's phone buzzed. She picked it up.
FastLane: I assume you are working the schoolbus and arson cases?
HuckFinn: Duh.
FastLane: Got space in your bed for a long weekend?
HuckFinn: Duh. Again.
FastLane: What can I bring from Nevada?
HuckFinn: Um, the heat?
FastLane: I like how U think.
///
M'gann was taking inventory when the black woman in black pantsuit and white shirt walked into her bar.
"What can I get you?" she asked automatically, even though she thought she knew the answer.
The woman looked down at her phone. "Um, Meghan Morse? I'm Sophie Moore."
"I'm Meghan. I'm assuming you know about the anti-alien violence here in National City?"
"Absolutely. I talked at length with Agent Susan Vasquez about what sort of security you might need here. She mainly emphasized perimeter security, but I was wondering about background checks for your employees and some way to screen your clientele beyond the 'Joe sent me' level."
"I appreciate the first, but I've been doing this for dec-- years and never had the Joe strategy fail me."
"All you need is one first time. And, sorry to say this, but I've done my due diligence. You did have that fail you, what? Two years? A year and a half back? I read the news clippings about the alien pogrom."
"Shit. Yes, of course. The mind, the heart, they want to forget. What do you suggest?"
Sophie sat down at the bar, pulling out her tablet and tapping on it. "It's complicated, as you point out, a tradeoff between security and civil liberty. We can scan driver's licenses, which is still iffy, and they can be counterfeited, obviously. We can bring in mind-readers, but that is also a potential civil liberties problem."
Meghan sighed. "Okay, come up with a menu of possibilities. Lena Luthor has offered a few hours of her lawyers' time for this because we're her watering hole. And that's another reason for me to keep my bar safe. The people who come here are... important, whether they're targeted aliens or ally millionaires."
Sophie was privileged enough that her jaw did not drop.
///
Eve Tessmacher walked into the break room at CatCo to refill her water bottle, and as the cold water poured, she watched her coworkers with their paper cups of coffee and seethed. The fucking world was burning and people still insisted on pouring their drinks into single-use paper and plastic, pretty much ensuring that humans would in fact cause their own sixth extinction and take all of the animals with them. As an environmentalist vegetarian, Eve took this shit personally.
These thoughts distracted her from her true purpose, however, so she took a deep breath and let them go. She made a show of taking the ice cube tray (which only she ever used) out of the freezer while listening to her coworkers complain about the increased traffic and decrease in jobs and blame it all on the influx of aliens in National City.
Eve plucked three cubes from the tray with her long nails and dropped them into her water bottle.
She said, "And then there was that alien selling those vitamin supplements last year, the ones that turned people green--"
And Eve smiled as she walked back to her desk. It wasn't hard to twist the conversation in the direction you wanted and then let people fill in the gaps themselves. Lex had been right about that little Gestalt trick.
///
It was a miracle, really, Jess Huang thought later. Not a Deus Ex Machina lightning bolt from the sky type, but an unremarkable chain of events, the kind that led to the presence of a horseshoe nail that led to a hopeless battle--the kind that could change history--being won when every possible other outcome meant it should have been lost.
They had walked into Dollywood holding hands--and when had Jess ever held hands with a guy in public? Never?--and Winn was grinning from ear to ear. It was a little odd to see the human in black tacticals, with a Crow Security patch, standing by the door, but in retrospect, she supposed it was no surprise. The woman had scanned their IDs with some device and let them go through.
Winn wondered aloud what the device was and whether they had one back at... er, "work." Jess rolled her eyes. His beer and her white wine came without them having to ask for it, and just as the waiter was setting the drinks down, a text came through on Winn's phone. Jess sipped her Chardonnay, waiting while Winn texted back and forth with whoever. Then he put his phone down and stared off into middle distance, clearly thinking, possibly even inventing. Jess was familiar with the look, and drank more of her drink.
"You need to go back to work, don't you?" she said, with no judgment--their jobs were their jobs, and neither one of them would have changed them--and a little disappointment.
"Yes... But only to pick some things up and drop them off to Lena at the clinic. They have an alien patient who needs surgery, but the only way to anesthetize them is a sonic-- Anyway, the point is they need a sonic bomb, more or less, and for the surgeons, they need those earbuds I developed to thwart Reign..."
"My boyfriend uses the word 'thwart' in a sentence," said Jess fondly.
"Wait, I'm your boyfriend? Was I supposed to change my Facebook relationship status?"
"Well, Winn, it is the twenty-first century after all."
"I'll so do that after I do this. I'm sorry about our date being cut into."
She indicated her empty glass and tossed a twenty on the table. "I'm good. Let's go."
And Winn's car was a Mini-Cooper, of course it was. And he drove quickly and carefully back to the DEO, and parked in the sub-basement parking lot, and she stayed in the car while he picked up the devices he needed. Then they crossed town to the warehouse district and parked on the street across from the Luthor Alien Clinic, and Jess led him through the front door and up the elevators to the sixth floor and followed the arrows to the surgical unit, where Jess showed her ID to the security guy, who let them through.
Lena, Callie and two men in scrubs were standing in front of the whiteboard that listed the surgeries. There was only one for that night. Lena lit up when she saw them.
"Winn, thank you so much. This came up suddenly. It was a motor vehicle accident, but the patient is a species that bleeds more by day, so they have to--"
And Winn said, "Oh, you don't need to tell me--"
And Callie was citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which had privacy issues--
And then there was a small explosion. The three doctors threw themselves to the right. Winn, Jess and Lena threw themselves to the left. The lights went out, and the emergency lights went on, and Jess immediately closed her eyes to acclimate faster, grabbed Lena's arm with one hand and Winn's with her other and dragged them after her toward the stairs. She knew she had an iron grip. They had to follow.
Lena huffed, "If this is Lex's annual assassination attempt--"
Winn said, "We should call Supergirl--"
But Jess rushed them down to the first floor. If they could just squeeze past the pharmacy, they could be out the door across the street from Winn's car--
But no.
The moment they exited the stairway they heard voices that sounded drunk and loose, talking about the "bitch-ass drugs the greenies take to get hella high," and heard the sound of several people stumbling down the hallway toward them, Jess knew she had to act.
"Winn," she whispered. "We're going to need those earplugs now! Give me the sonic anesthetizer. Lena, do you have the red sunlamp in your bag? Please say yes!"
And Winn handed her the tools and Lena, blushing, handed her the grenade-shaped sunlamp. They stuffed the plugs in their ears. Then Jess dialed the sonic device down and hit the strobe feature on the lamp.
A siren and rotating red lights filled the hallway. Lowering her voice, Jess yelled, "NCPD! Come out with your hands up!"
Shouts of distress. A half a dozen people scrambling for the exit. Doors slamming. She turned off the devices, pulled the plugs out of her ears.
"Excellent. Now we can let the doctors do their work."
Winn's heart eyes were huge. "You. Are. Awesome."
Lena said, "You need another raise. I'll get right on that tomorrow morning."
And Jess thought, they're not wrong.
Chapter 7: Fixing What's Broken
Chapter Text
Cat Grant had her driver let her off at the side of the Luthor Clinic, rather than the patient entrance, so that she would be closer to the conference room where the Board would be meeting. Lena had texted her, asking her to cancel everything so she could be at the emergency meeting, and Cat knew that Lena didn't panic.
Ever.
Well, neither did Cat Grant.
(Well, except for that one moment a few years back when RedK Supergirl had tossed her over the balcony of her office and she'd been plummeting toward the ground. But anybody would have taken that badly, so she didn't feel guilty about it.)
In general, Cat didn't panic. She didn't react. She showed the hell up.
She made her way up to the conference room on the top floor radiating confidence, and even when a crowd of people was hurrying in the other direction, they parted like the Red Sea to let her pass through.
Of course they did.
The conference room was full of humans and aliens. She nodded to the ones she knew: Millie Bernetti, the alien chef from Jupiter's Feast (who looked exhausted), a few others. Then Lena Fucking Luthor swept in, wearing a dark green dress and four-inch heels and the murmured conversation ground to a halt.
"Hello, good morning. Thank you for coming. Last night we had a break-in. Some human hooligans decided to see if they could find some alien drugs. They blew the lock off the back door and shot up the pharmacy, stole a few things that are likely to make them very sick indeed, and put myself and several of our doctors at risk."
Shock made people shout, Cat knew, but after two minutes of panicked reacting from both sides of the table, Cat said quietly, "So, Lena. How should we have avoided that and what is your plan going forward?"
"Thank you, Cat. Cutting to the chase as always. I have liaised with NCPD and the... local FBI and they both recommend the same thing. Adding private security."
"That'll be expensive," said one man Cat didn't recognize.
"Hm," said Cat. "More expensive than the lawsuit if we can't protect our patients from identifiable threats? Hate crimes are on the rise. Don't you read the news? Anti-alien sentiment means we are a magnet for such problems."
"I agree," said Lena. "I have spoken with the Crows' director, and she gave me some options..."
And after that, the rest was just PowerPoint, so Cat sat back and let Lena run the show. The Board members were putty in the Luthor's elegant hands.
///
Vasquez sat at her station with a Moleskine notebook open next to her keyboard, but she was watching the computer feeds above Winn's head and letting her mind wander. She flipped through pages, noting the dates she had written things: before and after the Daxamites.
Before and after Reign.
Before she'd gone off on that hopelessly messy undercover mission with SHIELD.
After she'd returned, defeated.
She looked at that, the top of the page saying, "FLYING MONKEYS??? There's no place like home..."
And at the bottom of the page:
Something something I can't remember
When the small rain doth rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again! (16th century? author?)
Oddly, in the two-inch space she had left after those lines were two small circular discolorations, as if water had been dripped there.
As if... tears.
Vasquez took a cold, hard breath. Alex had read the notebook she had left behind. Alex had seen the lines of the poem she had misremembered... and shed tears.
Somehow, Vasquez had to make this right.
///
Supergirl flew fast over National City, ignoring the light rain, looking for trouble. From that height, the devastation of Alien Alley was like a gut punch--the blackened remains of three restaurants that she loved, places where she had eaten alone or with her editor Cassie DeWitt. Places she had planned on taking Lena, but somehow with all the fallout from Reign, they had never gotten around to it.
She slowed as she thought about all the things she wanted to do with Lena. She knew that Kryptonians lived longer than humans, even without the influence of the yellow sun. With all the crises in their lives, it would be very easy to just let one day slide into the next and not do the important things. She knew Lena wanted kids eventually. Supergirl wasn't sure how they would fit child-raising around superheroing, but if it was important to Lena, she would find a way to do it. She just had to fit in marrying her first.
And that's when, for the first time in the years since she'd come out as the Girl of Steel, Supergirl flew right into a building.
///
Winn was on the comms when he heard the explosion. "Supergirl! What is it? Terrorists? Is it Cadmus? Are you under attack?"
He could hear people screaming and glass breaking. He turned to Vasquez. "Go!"
She took off like a shot.
"Supergirl!" he yelled. "Where are you!"
"Ow! National City--ah... Bank and Trust. Um, sorry, what floor is this?"
Winn stared at the computer screen above his head, which he toggled to show the map of National City. The bank's skyscraper was not far from the theater district and Alien Alley.
"Was it terrorist? More anti-alien attacks?"
"No, just inattention while flying. And, oh, Winn, this is going to be expensive for the DEO. I am just so fuc--oh, ow. Can you, we're going to need J'onn to hold up, oh Rao..."
And that didn't sound good. Winn called J'onn and relayed Supergirl's location to him and to Vasquez. Then he put a call in to Dr. Hamilton downstairs in medical. If Supergirl was swearing, she was probably in a lot of pain.
///
Alex was pacing in Dr. Hamilton's office when Vasquez brought a dented Supergirl down to the yellow sunlamps, made her lie down, then went to report.
"Vas, what happened? Is she all right?"
"Terminally embarrassed, but otherwise, she'll heal. Apparently she had a major epiphany while flying and crashed. Luckily, J'onn says the damage wasn't structural, just a lot of broken glass and a banged up floor. Cuts and bruises on a few bankers, but she let them take selfies with her and she's offered to pay for the damage."
"Did she say what the epiphany was?"
"No, but I'd put money on it having something to do with Lena."
Dr. Hamilton chuckled. "Should we prepare for another wedding?"
"That would be my bet," said Vasquez.
Alex stared at them. Then she closed her mouth, thought about it for a moment, and said, "Vas, I think I'm going to need a raincheck on our dinner plans. She'll be freaking out, and there's only so much the infrastructure of this city can take."
Then she marched out looking determined.
Vasquez watched her go, sighing sadly. "Yeah, raincheck."
Dr. Hamilton crossed her arms and said quietly, "Are you two back together or not? And I should tell you in advance that I don't have any money in the pool on this one."
"Probably? Maybe? We're finding our footing."
"Fair enough. Two thoughts. One, help her help her sister. Two, food. The Danvers girls are very consistent about what they need and how they recognize love. Cook for them."
"Yeah, you're right about that. But for this first bit, if we're right? Alex needs to do this alone. They haven't been spending nearly enough time together since Reign. With Alex taking over the DEO, she's been overworking and they both have the Danvers Ethic of Overwork."
Dr. Hamilton smiled sadly. "Yeah. That other DEO."
///
Kara had changed back into her street clothes, her face a bit flushed from the sunlamps when Alex walked in. "Your place or mine?" Alex asked.
"Mine. But could you drive? I'm still a little..."
"Sure. C'mon."
Alex liked when Kara rode behind her on her motorcycle. It was a little bit like flying with her, but in reverse. Kara's grip was firm but careful, and when she parked in front of Kara's apartment, Kara let go with a deep sigh.
"C'mon, Kara. We can order takeout and just talk."
But when they got up to 4A, Vasquez was standing in the hallway with a stack of pizzas in her arms. "Hey, guys, I'm not trying to horn in, but I figured you'd need food and Giorgios was on my way home..."
"Vasquez, you're the best!" said Kara with a huge grin.
Alex gave her a grateful smile and squeezed her arm affectionately.
The sisters came into the loft, closed the door behind them. Kara carried the pizza boxes over to her island and lifted lids. "Ooooh. Hawaian, Veggie, and Peppers & Pepperoni. She knows us well."
"Yeah, she does. She thinks you had an epiphany about Lena."
"Fu-- Fudge. Am I that obvious?"
"Maybe. Just a little. So you figured out you loved her?"
"Oh, no. I've known that forever. I just realized I had to marry her."
"Okay."
"And you need to be my best person, and Mom and Astra and SpaceDad have to sort of give me away, although that's not really how it worked on Krypton."
"I wonder what Lena will want to do about that. It's not like she has family."
"Oh, you're right. This might get... complicated." Her face fell.
"Don't worry, Kara. I'm pretty sure all weddings are complicated. Mom always says that the best indication of a good marriage is that you survive planning the wedding together."
"Makes sense." She got down two plates and they piled pieces on top and went and sat on the couch. "What about you, Alex? Have you ever given any thought..."
"To marriage? A wedding? I used to. Before. But since the White Canary Incident, my mind has skittered away from any thought of weddings."
"You never thought about you and Vasquez...?"
"Oh, well. Just once, when we got all dressed up and went out for Valentine's, you know, after..."
"After the imp tried to fuck with my life? I recall."
"Don't let Mom hear you talk like that."
"I won't. It's just been a hell of a week, and now I have to plan an engagement."
"You mean how you'll ask her?" Alex picked off a dangling piece of pepperoni and popped it into her mouth.
"Yeah, that. Plus find someone to make the bracelet and see if we can find a recipe at the Fortress of Solitude for the dessert."
"Your people didn't use rings?"
"Rings are for the wedding." Kara finished her piece of Hawaian, then frowned. "What if she says no?"
"Why would she?"
"Oh, you know Lena's bad self-esteem issues, and the whole Luthors-are-evil thing."
"Well, then, you will simply have to be persuasive. Also, stop flying into buildings. Promise?"
"Promise. But I'm bushed. I'm going to call it a night. You should go say thank you to Vasquez." She wiggled her eyebrows.
Chapter 8: What We Do When We Can't Sleep
Chapter Text
Kara showered and put on her white yummy sushi pajamas and lay in bed watching the lights from the cars strobe over her ceiling. She remembered her cousins' weddings on Krypton in the Palace of Love, with the red sunlight shimmering through the tall windows. She had now been on Earth longer than she had lived on Krypton, and to publicly marry Lena Luthor, she could not advertise her alien origins, not at the wedding. But an engagement was a private matter, something very intimate, and for that, she wanted to offer Lena as much of who she was as she could. Lena deserved that.
It had been hard after the whole Reign fiasco, to watch Lena curl into herself a bit. She missed Sam and Ruby, but everyone recognized the cathartic nature of a new start in a new city. And Kara had been so busy helping with the transition at the DEO that maybe she had been scarcer than she meant to be. And to be sure, that distance was precisely what had just made her realize how much she needed Lena Luthor, not just on the periphery of her life, but at the center of it. Lena was her heart.
She rolled over on her side, but sleep eluded her. Winn had taken Krypto home with him, because tomorrow they would be traveling to Metropolis to give Clark some experience with running Krypto through the agility training in case they ever had an emergency like that (Vasquez's idea, of course). Kara missed having him, a warm bundle of fur at her feet. But the change would do him good.
Finally she gave up on sleep, got up and brought her laptop to the island. She could at least send out a few emails, get the ball rolling.
KDanvers: Hey, Cat. I need a recommendation. Do you know any really good jewelers, like the kind that make jewelry? Thanks.
KDanvers: Dear Ms. Bernetti, I need to talk to you about a particular alien dessert. If I found the recipe for it, could you help me source the ingredients or figure out replacements? It's for a very special occasion. I might need help cooking it too... Thank you very much.
She thought about emailing Clark, but that was a conversation better done in person, and if he was going to be working Krypto for the first time it would be better if he didn't have any distractions.
Absently, she ate another piece of the veggie pizza. Then she wiped off her fingers and typed one more email.
AgentPotsticker: Hey Jess, I need a favor. Can you look at Lena's schedule this week and find a time for her to join me for dinner? And maybe could you book us a reservation at the sushi place she loves so much? It's really important. Thank you.
Finally she felt like she might actually be able to sleep. And she knew she would dream about Lena.
///
Vasquez watched Madam Secretary reruns on Netflix, longing for the days of President Marsden's solid, thoughtful, uninflammatory rhetoric. They were being run off their feet by all the anti-alien domestic terrorists, and it was just horrible. And unnecessary. And exhausting.
But it was one in the morning and she couldn't sleep. Her phone pinged and she looked down to see a text from Alex.
DirectorD: You awake?
AgentKevlar: Yeah. You want to come by?
DirectorD: I'm downstairs.
AgentKevlar: Come on up.
Vasquez felt a hot hopeful thing in her chest, which traveled down to her belly and between her legs. Alex hadn't come by at night in months. Vasquez hadn't known how to ask her. She hurried to the door just as the knock sounded.
Alex stood in the hallway looking uncertain. Vasquez opened the door wide and waved her in, her face fighting not to grin and failing.
Alex entered. In her street clothes, with her hair off to the side as she wore it when she was off duty, she looked far less intimidating than she did by day in the suit Winn had made her. Vasquez wanted to caress that hair, slide her fingers through it, but she forced herself to put her hands in her pockets instead. Alex closed the door, looking tired.
"I could use a drink."
"I've got some decent merlot."
"Perfect."
"So to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I missed you," Alex blurted. She shook her head, blushing. "And that's crazy, because we work together all day every day."
Vasquez shook her head, frowning lightly as she poured two glasses of red wine and brought them over to the couch. "We're different people at work."
"You mean badass?"
"Well, pfft. That, of course. But also more formal, more distracted by the work, the stakes. Trying to remember all the details because getting it wrong on a mission can get people killed. When we're alone, we can be... softer."
Alex sipped her wine. "I miss that. Being soft with you."
"Me too."
"Are we going to be able to go back to that if we're in charge of the DEO?"
"We're not in charge, Alex. You are."
Alex rolled her eyes. "We both know that's not true. We're a team, a unit."
Vasquez felt surprised, and she suspected it showed.
Alex gave a little laugh. "Seriously, Vas? You don't have a frown for this one?"
"I... I didn't know you felt that way."
"When you were gone, and I knew it was my fault that you'd needed to go--"
"J'onn sent me on a mission," Vasquez protested.
"Mm. Or SpaceDad recognized a good excuse to put some distance between us, give us both perspective."
"My perspective nearly got some of our friends killed. One of my friends lost her arms."
Alex nearly spit up her wine. "What?"
"It's okay, she got them replaced with weird alien prosthetics, but it was ugly, Alex. I botched the mission beyond the telling of it. While you were back here saving the world."
"And missing you desperately." Alex shook her head. "You know, I think Livewire has a tiny little crush on you. So did Astra."
Vasquez didn't even deign to reply.
"So do I."
"Only tiny little?"
Alex sipped her wine. "You know I'm not good at feeling things. Feelings are... dangerous."
"Oh, I hear you on that." Vasquez got up and brought the bottle back to the couch to refill their glasses. "So, Alex, after all this time, why are you here tonight? I kind of expected you to stay over at Kara's. I assumed she'd be panicking."
"No, I think she's more grounded than she's ever been. And I think it's because of Lena."
"Is she going to propose?"
"Yes. She's going to have to figure out some cultural things, to honor both Krypton and Earth, and she's a little nervous that Lena might say no at first."
Vasquez nodded. One only had to spend a tiny bit of time with Lena to recognize the self-esteem issues that fought with her stellar mind and finely honed scientific instincts. And body...
"But," said Alex, "she doesn't seem afraid. And I realized that that is because of her rock-hard faith in her love for Lena. You know Kara. She doesn't do anything in half measures."
Vasquez smiled. "The Danvers women don't."
"Hmm. Would you ever consider that?"
"Getting married to someone someday?"
"Becoming a Danvers woman."
Vasquez was never speechless. Silent, yes. Incapable of talking, no. "I. You. Alex, are you... proposing to me?"
"No, don't be silly. But I wondered if it could be something. Not now. In a few years, maybe? Do you think we could build something real?"
Vasquez stared.
Alex hurried on. "You understand why I jump out of buildings. And you've taught me so much these last two years. Hell, ever since I met you, you've been teaching me. And at first, I thought you were just teaching me to be an agent, and I wanted that because I wanted to protect Kara. And then you were teaching me to be a lesbian, and I wanted that because I wanted to finally understand myself."
Vasquez couldn't think clearly, so she just waited.
Alex took her time gathering her thoughts. "But now, after I fucked up with us, and you fucked up with your mission, we've still somehow made our way back to each other. And maybe it's like we can teach each other how to be together. Because I realized tonight when I saw you with those pizzas that maybe, I don't know, maybe you've learned some things from me."
"Like food equals love? Pretty sure I learned that from your sister."
"Uh huh. And where do you think she learned it from?"
Vasquez blinked, and suddenly she realized that was probably true. "You used food to help her get over her homesickness for Krypton."
"I was a kid, and she was always, always hungry. It seemed obvious."
"So, those quesadillas last week..."
"I know you like quesadillas. So I practiced."
"They were tasty."
Alex sighed with relief. "I wasn't sure they were good enough."
Vasquez suddenly thought she might cry. And she hated crying. "Alex... Will you stay tonight?"
"Um, in your bed?"
"Yes, please."
"And, um..."
"Naked? Ideally. But not if you're too tired."
"After I talked to Kara, I just rode around the city on my bike. She had said I should come thank you for bringing the pizza and I knew what she really meant but I was just so scared you wouldn't want... me."
"I want you."
"But I haven't been sleeping more than three hours a night in a long time."
"I am also a very highly qualified cuddler."
"I know you are."
"And as Director of the DEO, you are tasked with making sure all your agents are up to date with their qualifications."
"I am, aren't I...."
"Finish that wine, Alex Heart-of-My-Beating-Heart Danvers. Then come to bed with me."
Alex grinned.
///
At 2:35 in the morning, Jess was lying in her full-size bed, with her ginger Tom Tigger and her tabby Roo lying each on one knee, which made it impossible for her to move, which would have been less of a problem if she had been even the slightest bit inclined to sleep.
Yeah, no.
After dinner that night, which Winn had insisted on having in one of the not decimated restaurants in Alien Alley to support the side, she had been about to invite him back to her place for... a nightcap, maybe more. But then he had told her about Krypto and the trip to Metropolis, so rather than ending the night late, they had ended it early, and that was just depressing. She really liked Winn, hoped there was something there, but it had just been so fucking long since she had... well, fucked. She barely remembered how.
And she loved Krypto. Who didn't? The dog was a canine version of sunshiney Supergirl.
But still...
At 2:53, Tigger stood up, stretched and then jumped down to go eat or poop or do some other cat thing. She ran one finger over Roo's head, and the cat rolled over so that she was no longer on Jess's knee. Jess took the opportunity to get up and go to the bathroom, where Tigger was finishing up in the litter box. They left the room together.
Her laptop was on the island in the kitchen. Maybe some kitten or goat videos on YouTube would distract her, relax her, make her think of something else.
But when she powered up, she saw she had an email.
From Kara.
Which meant, of course, from Supergirl. And that was a strange thought.
AgentPotsticker: Hey Jess, I need a favor. Can you look at Lena's schedule this week and find a time for her to join me for dinner? And maybe could you book us a reservation at the sushi place she loves so much? It's really important. Thank you.
Jess inhaled sharply. But no. Kara wouldn't... A Super and a Luthor? No. Probably Kara just realized that she hadn't been paying enough attention to her girlfriend, which, to be fair, she really, really hadn't. And Jess knew about the anti-alien violence and Alex's transition to become the Director of the DEO, but Lena Luthor was quality, and Kara really needed to step up her game if she had a hope of keeping her. Jess had threatened the Girl of Steel with the possibility of shovels in their future if Kara messed up. She would do it again if she had to.
But she also knew how happy Kara made Lena, so she looked at Lena's schedule, realized that Thursday night was open, and emailed the manager of Tentaifun about a small private room for seven o'clock.
JessIsBest: Hey Kara. I asked for Thursday at 7 pm in your name, so you're paying. I'll let you know if we have to change the date. But teeny tiny beech sand shovel. Do right by Lena.
///
Krypto had hurried into Scruffy's nest and Smelled All the Things with great interest while Scruffy filled a brand new bowl with Krypto's kibble and then cooked things, the way People did, and ate the things, and then sat watching things happen on the box opposite the couch, all the while slowly stroking Krypto's fur and sighing deeply.
Krypto sat up, sniffed Scruffy, and curled more tightly against his thigh. Usually, by this time at night, Kara had changed her fur and lain down, with or without Soft Hands and Beautiful Voice, and they would all sleep.
Not tonight. Krypto sat up again and licked Scruffy's face. He seemed sad, and anybody who gave Krypto peenabuttrcrkrz deserved love. He could smell Very Serious on Scruffy and looked around to see if she was there but she wasn't.
Krypto settled down again, sad for Scruffy. Obviously, he was sad because Very Serious wasn't there to give him biscuits for being good.
Chapter 9: What We Do When We Wake Groggy
Chapter Text
Cat rose early, did her yoga, fed her son and sent him off to school, and then went to CatCo, her Once and Future Kingdom. It felt surreal and awkward and a bit off to run it without actually owning it, but Lena had rebuffed her first attempt at buying shares of it back. She knew that the woman would eventually let her buy back a majority (while making a tidy profit). But she also knew that while the aliens of National City were in danger, Lena would be too distracted to bother thinking about it.
Fine. Cat could bide her time and strengthen CatCo's brand.
And Kara, or Supergirl, or both, could help.
Cat strode into CatCo strategizing about how to get her empire back. When she sat at her desk and opened her laptop, she saw an email from Kara from zero dark thirty in the morning and opened it, intrigued.
KDanvers: Hey, Cat. I need a recommendation. Do you know any really good jewelers, like the kind that make jewelry? Thanks.
Huh. Make jewelry?
Because if it was about a ring, any jeweler could source a ring, even finding some conflict-free diamonds.
But then, rings were human. What if other... types of people used different jewelry to... stake a claim?
JungleCat: You want Stephan's. He's based in England. York, I think. I'll look up the email and send it later today.
///
Lucy kissed Maggie goodbye and ran down to the Lyft that would take her to the DEO. After a hot night of tantalizing sex, she was relaxed, loose, confident and happy.
And that thought nearly stopped her in her tracks as she exited the car and looked up at the DEO's skyscraper. For a hot second, she wondered if she should rethink her decision to turn down the gig training rookies in National City. But a bigger part of her knew that she was at least half convinced that the relationship with Maggie was working, not despite, but because of their living in two different cities. A long distance relationship forced them to be clear on their boundaries, be intentional about spending time together. She didn't want to have what happened with her and James happen to her and Maggie. Maggie deserved better than that.
She kept walking. And then she realized that she deserved better too.
Okay. Not good at emotions. She knew that about herself. But it was better to figure out her feelings slowly than not at all.
She took the elevator a long way up to the command center. With Alex as the new Director of the DEO, all the regional directors were going to meet and basically kiss her ring and promise fealty.
Well, not really. But it felt a little like that. And she knew that the Manhattan, DC and Chicago directors were going to push back at this "new girl" (emphasis on girl) taking the lead role in the national organization. Alex was going to require backup.
Well, Major Lucy Lane was ready to provide backup to Alex Danvers.
Agents Susan Vasquez and Winn Schott, Jr. were womanning and manning the comms together. In the background, she recognized Holtzman, Finn and... Jimmy Olsen.
Deep sigh.
She approached Vasquez. "Major Lucy Lane, reporting for duty."
Vasquez shot up from her station and hugged her. "Good to see you, Major. The Director is waiting for you. Follow me."
And Lucy followed to the office that had belonged to J'onn Jonzz and now belonged to Alex Danvers. The moment she stepped into the room, she could feel the difference. Alex was back, in a big way. It wasn't just the rad suit or the gay hair. It was something else. Vasquez didn't even give her a glance, which was a little strange, given how those two had been giving each other sad puppy eyes for the last--
Oh.
That.
Dansquez were back together again. Dansquez for the win. Lucy grinned.
Alex asked, "Something you want to comment on, Lane?"
"You almost make me want to rethink my declining your offer. Almost."
"Your loss, toots. I mean, Major."
"I could go by Major Toots, but only in private. But I suspect you have better things to be... talking about in private."
Alex grinned. "That I do. So. I've been looking at regional directors, their resumes, etc. And it seems to me that you are overdue for a promotion. So, Lieutenant Colonel Lane, congratulations."
"I... Well, that's. Thank you, Director."
"None needed. You have been holding the line for years out there in Nevada, and I trust you more than almost anybody. We need to hold the detainees tight, protect our citizens from alien threats and protect our aliens from citizen threats. Your work is integral to the mission of the DEO nationally."
"Thank you, ma'am!" Lucy said sincerely.
Alex waved that away. "Go see Pam in HR after this. But Lucy, things are going sour, not just here in National City, but across the country. So I have procured money and resources to expand your holding facilities. And yes, I know, construction comes with its own security problems, but I don't see another option. You are close to capacity most of the time. We need to increase our capacity."
"We'll need more people."
"On it. We are recruiting in seven different cities. And we're trying to recruit recruiters so we can further widen our net."
"Excellent. Um, if I can ask. I read about the school bus and the alien restaurants..."
"Yeah, the jury's still out. But that is one of the reasons we would really like to expand your holding capacity..."
"Got it."
"Say hello to Maggie for me."
"Um. I will. But. Um, she did ask me about you and Vasquez... Maybe that's private and I shouldn't..."
But Alex smiled. "Vasquez and I are good. Really good. Go talk to Pam. Make sure to snag an oatmeal cookie. And if you ask nicely, she might even give you one for Maggie. Pam always had a soft spot for Maggie."
///
Millie Bernetti kissed her wife goodbye and got into her car to drive into National City. Normally, the commute energized her, but then, normally, she would be driving to her restaurant, prepping, commanding, and most of all feeding.
So not that. Not today. Not that anytime soon. Luckily, the editorial offices for Taste the Bern magazine were in a different part of town, and that was where she was headed. She had appointments with her bank manager, an insurance consultant, her staff, and, interestingly Kara Danvers (i.e., Supergirl).
And that last promise of an interesting conversation gave her (just) enough energy to get her through all the other meetings.
She had received the email from Kara the night before. Apparently the superhero hadn't been able to sleep; well, Millie couldn't blame her. Probably a lot of people in National City were having trouble sleeping these days. Millie sure was. So was her alien wife.
So when Millie pulled up Kara's email, it had brought up a whole lot of feelings.
KDanvers: Dear Ms. Bernetti, I need to talk to you about a particular alien dessert. If I found the recipe for it, could you help me source the ingredients or figure out replacements? It's for a very special occasion. I might need help cooking it too... Thank you very much.
Millie leafed through the recipe book her alien mentor had left her. The self-made index was crude, but the only entry for Kryptonian desserts was a custard of sorts used in the ritual of marital engagement.
Huh.
So Kara and Lena were finally a thing. It was about damn time.
///
Lena was exhausted. She had lain in her king-sized bed, alone again, unable to sleep until just before the birds started chirping, and when her alarm went off she nearly hit the ceiling. Then she smacked the alarm and lay back, heart still beating wildly. She thought back to her dreams, a practice she did as a matter of course; she had often solved engineering problems in her sleep. And although the red sunlamp grenade had been a part of one of her dreams, it had not been in either an engineering or a sexy capacity, but part of yet another attack on her, this time without Jess there to save the day. Or Supergirl.
It was a bit like dreaming about having her period a few days before it was due, except in this case, she was clearly worried about an assassination attempt. Lex was usually prompt, if annoyingly consistent. She felt she was overdue. And Supergirl had been... less available lately, except for that excellent French lunch a few days back.
Lena understood. She had dropped by the DEO to discuss some things with Winn and had seen Alex and the waves of worry and distraction just rolled off her, as she hurried past Lena in the corridors without seeing her. And that was unlike Alex. And if Alex was in that shape, Lena knew that Kara would be trying very hard to help.
Lena had followed Winn down to his lab, where Krypto was sleeping on his bright red bed in the corner, with a purple teddy bear, well chewed.
Winn had shown her the sonic anesthetizer he had brought to the clinic. When she had seen it the other night, she had gotten ideas for narrowing the bandwidth that she wanted to discuss with him. But then Krypto woke, jumped up and trotted over, insisting on belly rubs.
And Lena was a Luthor with all that that meant. But belly rubs were belly rubs.
Actually, that had been just what she needed. Then Winn had said he had to get Krypto to Metropolis, and Lena had put a hand on his arm.
"Winn, I'm not sure this is my place, but I don't know who else there is, so I'll just... Jess is very special, and she is probably my best friend aside from Kara, maybe better in some ways since I've known her forever and worked with her very closely for years."
"Um, is this the shovel talk?"
"It is. And when a Luthor uses a shovel..."
He swallowed. "It's a very big shovel?"
"Size doesn't matter. The point is, your body will never be found. Are we clear?" She smiled sweetly.
"I will never, never, never hurt Jess."
"Be sure that you don't. I'm glad we had this chat. Enjoy Metropolis. Say hello to Clark."
And maybe it was the combination of belly rubs and death threats, but she felt so much more herself than she had felt all week.
Chapter 10: Not Quite How That Was Planned to Go
Chapter Text
When Lois got the text from Clark, she sighed deeply, but then went out and bought another two jars of spaghetti sauce, two more boxes of capellini, and four more pounds of ground beef. Then on second thought, she bought six more peppers and three more boxes of mushrooms, and another bag of onions.
Feeding one Kryptonian was bad enough. Feeding two was a Herculean task.
Not that she resented the occasional presence of Kara in Metropolis. Who could resent that ray of sunshine? And if she asked, she knew Clark and Kara would be more than happy to do the cooking, with or without superspeed. But she did like doing things for them. It made up for the times when they saved her or her city.
Or, you know, the world.
So by the time Clark came home from working with Winn and Krypto at the Metropolis DEO, she had one Dutch oven filled with spaghetti cooking and another filled with meat sauce.
"Hi, hon," said Clark, setting his satchel on the couch. "That smells fantastic."
"Why didn't you invite Winn? We certainly have plenty of food."
"Mm. Kara seemed to want to talk to just me. I mean, me and you. She said it was important."
"So when is she getting here?"
He looked at his watch. "Soon. She said she'd pick up dessert first."
They heard a thump on their balcony and Lois sighed and went and opened the door. "Hey, Kara. I hope the neighbors didn't see you."
"Whoops! I doubt it, though. It's just that I caught that amazing smell and wanted to get here while it was still hot!"
Lois didn't bother to point out that they were hardly going to let it get cold before she got there. Hungry Kryptonians often didn't make very much sense. "It's hot. What did you bring for dessert?"
"The best éclairs in Paris!" Kara grinned.
Lois gave up. For Parisian éclairs, Lois could tell her neighbors they had been hallucinating.
///
Maxwell Lord sat in his office reading the reports from his company's departments and trying hard not to growl. LCorp was stealing his market share in a whole number of subfields, and it pissed him off.
Also, Cat was back in charge of CatCo and he had been sure that she would not be in control of her empire when she came back from working for the last president. He had thought she would be poor and vulnerable. But perhaps he had underestimated the power of CatCo Worldwide Media and the DEO.
He stood up and stretched, then walked over to the windows to look out on National City. The short term of prison time he had endured the previous year for the hand-dominance fiasco and the theft of kryptonite had given him a profound appreciation for the most basic parts of free life: a ten-minute shower, decent coffee, easy personal safety.
He had accidentally made friends with an Infernian teenager whose life he had saved, after which the alien had let it be known that anybody who messed with Max would get burned. Literally. And that had fundamentally shifted Max's thinking on aliens.
He still didn't like alien superheroes racing to save humans and make them soft and helpless, but he recognized that not all aliens were villains either. And it was one thing to build technology to potentially protect humans from stronger aliens, but it was another to burn down their restaurants. That was a bridge too far, even for him.
He looked through the pile of folders on his desk, which his personal assistant left in the top left corner as a sign that it was work that could wait, important but not necessarily urgent. The top one was marked “Clippings.” He sat and sifted through bits clipped from the Times, the Post, the Tribune…
And there sat one with Cat Grant’s byline. As he read about the schoolbus from St. Christopher’s on its afternoon route bringing the children home, the children singing and shrieking, the boys making fart noises and the girls playing patty-cake, he wondered why Cat would be writing about such things and why his assistant would think to cut this out for him, since it wasn’t as if—
And then the small tanker zoomed through the intersection, crashing into the bus and setting it all ablaze.
Okay, well, a terrible tragedy yes, but—
A Fourian mother stepped out of a donut shop, sensing the disaster and diving on top of two of the children who had just hopped off the bus, apparently her daughter’s human best friends. Not her daughter, who was too close to the bus to save.
Max’s heart dropped to his stomach, undoubtedly Cat’s intent.
He scanned further down the article and saw LordTech mentioned. Apparently, the tanker’s driver had a LordTech smart prosthetic in his shoulder that had either malfunctioned or, the police suggested, possibly been tampered with from a distance, causing the man to wildly turn the wheel and sending him cannoning into the school bus. Enquiries were being pursued, according to NCPD Detective Sargent Maggie Sawyer, the very woman who had arrested Max himself.
The FBI was also involved, investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, which was under federal jurisdiction. And given that aliens were involved, he knew that the “FBI” really meant the DEO, under its new director, Alex Danvers.
His first thought was that those two very competent women hated him, and he was going to have to get out in front of this. His second thought was that he needed to have a conversation with his assistant about what counted as urgent. His third thought was that this was not what Lillian had had in mind when she was weaponizing his smart prosthetics, he was sure of it. But then she was in prison too, as he had just been, so maybe somebody else in Cadmus was taking the organization in a new, much deadlier direction.
And that was appalling, of course it was. Killing innocent children was just wrong, even if some of them were aliens. But… But it also might be an opportunity for him to rehabilitate his reputation, maybe even rebrand LordTech. Clearly, this needed some consideration.
///
Dr. Callie Torres looked at the X-rays on the light box. It was no use. She knew that different species often had different metals in their blood, the way humans had iron. The most common was copper, and she was learning to tell when its presence was creating an artifact or a false reading on an X-ray, but this was something else.
Her phone buzzed, but she ignored it. Anybody at the clinic who needed her would page her. Most other things were unimportant.
She pulled the X-rays down and tried to think of another way to check the patient's state. An ultrasound?
Above her head, the loudspeaker announced, "Attention all personnel. Code Black. Repeat. Code Black. Proceed to your stations. Code Black. Repeat. Code Black."
Callie's stomach fell to her feet. Code Black. She remembered that from Seattle Grace Mercy Death.
Code Black meant a bomb threat.
///
Supergirl was flying back to the DEO after talking with Millie Bernetti, and she had the signed NDAs folded up in the shoulder pocket of her cape when she heard the Luthor Clinic's Code Black, banked and flew as fast as she could, using her X-ray vision to scan the building for explosives.
Her hearing also took in Lena and Callie's heartbeats, but she had to stay focused on the threat. It was a hospital, and as Lena had said in the past, she had to be a hero for everyone, not just the people she loved most in the world.
The Emergency Room was rigged to blow. She said, "Vasquez, Alex. The clinic is having a bomb threat. I think it's the ER. Lena is there, and Callie, and probably a few hundred alien patients and more doctors. Get your asses out here! We'll need J'onn and M'gann too!"
And then she swooped down, flew through the glass sliding doors which did not sense her moving at super-speed, spraying glass everywhere, and then she raced to the janitor's closets to strip out the C4 and fly it away over the river, dropping it into the water to explode as she raced back to the hospital to double check that there hadn't been more.
Too late.
Somewhere on the third floor, a room exploded.
Third floor. Pediatric oncology. She flew faster than she knew how to, blew her freeze breath into the fires, dispelling the smoke. Alarms were going off all over the hospital and the wails of terrified, sick alien children cut the air. She had failed, and she couldn't stop. In one MRI-type room, where a wall was melting, she scooped three bald children and a green doctor and flew them out onto the sidewalk then went back in.
In her side vision, she saw blurs of green and thanked Rao that she didn't have to do this alone anymore. She blew out fires, dispelled smoke, extracted children and clinicians. At some point she realized that the DEO had sent SUVs and helicopters, and NCGH and St. Olaf's had sent their helicopters to evac patients and bring them back to the other hospitals.
When she finally heard no more cries, she landed at the incident command post, where the Martians were checking in with Vasquez and Alex was giving orders. She saw James, Winn and Holtzy trotting off in one direction, while Finn came straight to her.
"Supergirl. Ma'am! Director Danvers wants you to know that they're safe. Dr. Torres and Ms. Luthor--"
And she recognized that Callie's heart was still beating wildly, but Lena's was calm and measured. Rao, she loved that woman's faith in her. "Thanks, Finn." She took off into the sky to check the perimeter, then landed on the balcony outside the CEO's office in the clinic, which had been built with precisely her in mind.
Lena held the door open. "Thanks, Supergirl. My hero, as always."
Supergirl charged forward and engulfed Lena in a hug. "Rao! Lena, I don't know what I would have done if they'd blown you up before I had the chance to ask you to marry me!"
Lena said, "Um, Kara, tight--"
And Kara let go. "Sorry, sorry!"
And Lena stepped back and then her translucent green eyes went wide. "Marry?"
And Kara's blue eyes went wider. "Oh, shit! You weren't supposed to hear that. I mean, it was supposed to be in my head, not out here!"
And Lena laughed until she cried and Kara stood there looking like a brightly colored and muscular awkward and embarrassed puppy. With a cape.
Finally Lena took a huge breath, leaning on the very solid Kryptonian. "Oh, darling. If you really like, I can pretend I didn't hear it. I know that Jess thinks that the dinner tonight is only intended for us to spend some quality time together. And we both know that my brain goes into hyperdrive during emergencies, assassination attempts, alien invasions... Maybe I misheard you."
"It was supposed to be a surprise," Supergirl said sadly.
"Mission accomplished." Lena caressed Supergirl's perfect face. "And I expect I am going to be surprised all day and half the night, so don't fret, Kara. Also, spoiler alert. I'm probably going to say yes."
And Supergirl grinned. "I've got to check in. See you tonight?" She took off before Lena could answer.
And she only lost her footing a little bit when she landed at the DEO. "Wait. Probably?"
Winn was at his station and Vasquez was coming into relieve him.
“Good job, Supergirl,” said Vasquez.
“Were there any casualties?”
“No, only injuries, fairly minor. You look upset, but it was a successful mission. What’s wrong?”
“Yeah, I may have accidentally told Lena I was going to ask her to marry me. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“I’m sure it was. Probably a good surprise, I’d think.”
“Oh, I hope so.” She watched Winn gather his things with the Crinkle in full force.
“So,” he said. “Dollywood?”
“No, I’m going to fly around some more, finish my patrol…”
And with a whoosh, she was off.
///
Jess had heard about the clinic bombing while at work at LCorp, and had very nearly panicked, even though she knew Supergirl (and the DEO) wouldn’t let anything happen to Lena (and the hundreds of alien patients and doctors). So she kept on working through the day, and was getting ready to leave around 6:15, thinking of Netflix and strawberry coconut ice cream, when she got a text from Winn.
ForTheWinn: Buy you a drink at Dollywood? We may have some planning to do.
Jess smiled. This dating thing was unexpected and lovely.
JessIsBest: See you in fifteen.
She found him at what she thought of as the Danvers’ table, with a beer for him, a cosmo for her and a steaming basket of fresh mozzarella sticks. “I could get to love you, Winn.”
He blushed but hid it by sipping his beer. “This is going to have to be a working date, Jess. I normally don’t tell other people’s stories, but you and I are the forward planners, and we may need to get ahead of the mayhem.”
She sipped her cosmo, sighing. “What fresh hell?”
“It’s not… Well, it looks like Kara is planning to ask Lena to marry her.”
“Ha. That explains a lot. But why would that…”
“Think about it.”
Jess thought about it. “The wedding will be a target.”
“Yup.”
“At least Lillian is still in prison. So is Lex.”
“Mm. Like that’s ever stopped them. And I’ve been researching Midvale, trying to find a venue that we could protect, but—” Winn shook his head.
“What’s Midvale?”
“Um, the Danvers’ hometown?”
“Surely Lena would want to do it in Metropolis. The Luthor mansion was built to be a fortress.”
“One that Lex and Lillian know intimately.”
“True.”
They sat sipping their drinks thoughtfully. Jess burned her tongue on a hot moz stick. She looked up to see M’gann with a cosmo in one hand and a business card in the other.
“Oh, thanks.”
M’gann put the card on the table. It read, “Crow’s Security, Sophie Moore, Commander and CEO.”
M’gann said, “I didn’t mean to pry, but you guys are worrying pretty loudly. Vasquez gave me this.” She nodded to the man in black tacticals who had checked their IDs at the door.
Jess nodded. “They’re very good. We used them when we had events in Gotham. I hadn’t realized they were branching out.”
“Well, given it’s going to be a private event, we couldn’t very well use DEO troops,” said Winn. “Thanks, M’gann.”
She smiled. “I try to be a full-service bartender.”
///
Lena had her driver, Ted, get her to Tentaifun early, and sat at the bar with a neat whiskey. She had a lot to think about.
She had been surprised when Jess had informed her that Kara had asked her to make reservations for them at this prime sushi restaurant, and was planning to pay. Even before Supergirl’s blurting about marriage, Lena had noted that this was the restaurant where they had their first, and very memorable, date. She had wondered what the significance might be, but hadn’t dreamed that Kara was thinking about engagement, marriage.
A Super and a Luthor? Who would have imagined such a thing? She had never let herself.
And sure, maybe once or twice in her sleep, she had dreamed of walking down the aisle toward Kara in her Supersuit. After the wedding shenanigans in Metropolis, it had gotten into her head a little bit. But upon waking, Lena had always dismissed the image. She had learned not to imagine or hope for impossible things.
So: Nobel Prize, sure. Personal happiness in a relationship, not so much.
But now, sitting at the bar, waiting for her personal ray of sunshine, she wondered what it would be like, say, waking up on a normal Wednesday morning, rolling over to see Kara there, not because she had visited but because it was her bed too and she lived there.
Kara using superspeed to make pancakes and bacon and eggs, and convincing Lena to have some of it rather than just yogurt and tea.
Kara landing on her balcony at work with salad for her wife, or éclairs from Paris for her wife, or that strange Indian pizza from Sunnydale for her wife.
Lena, being Kara’s wife…
And then, because Lena was a pragmatic scientist, she imagined Lex’s fury, Lillian’s icy disregard, their assassins carrying Kryptonite bullets, setting off a kryptonite bomb, killing Kara, Lena’s wife. They would never accept a Luthor being a Super’s wife, a Luthor marrying an alien. And Lena could never let Kara that close to her, only to lose her to the people who considered themselves to be Lena’s family, and in so very many ways were not.
Kara was. By extension, Alex and their friends were.
Lena signaled the bartender for another whiskey. She sipped it, imagining Kara’s funeral, their friends hating Lena for being its cause, her hating herself, the way she always had before she met Kara. She pulled her phone from her purse just as it buzzed with a text. Kara, of course.
SunshineD: Had to get a dog out of a tree. Be there soon.
And Lena was too close to tears to laugh.
Chapter 11: The Best of Our Energies
Notes:
Sweet soft and canon, the way SuperCorp should always be.
Chapter Text
Kara flew by Lena's place to drop off her small bag on the balcony, annoyed at Krypto for making her late. She hoped to be sleeping at Lena's tonight, so she had to walk him first, and then he decided he really had to chase one very surprised cat.
So that had been an interesting experience.
It hadn't helped her jangling nerves. She hated to be late for Lena. And actually, checking her watch as she walked into Tentaifun, she was still five minutes early, but she was sure Lena would have come in even earlier and probably started drinking. They would both be nervous about this conversation, but Kara was sure. And she could be very persuasive.
The kimono-clad hostess greeted her and Kara said, "Danvers, private room for two. My date is probably already here, maybe at the bar?"
And they both turned to look at the bar, but Lena wasn't there. The woman looked back at her, "Which gentleman?"
"No, it's Lena Luthor. I know she comes here a lot."
"Oh, yes, Ms. Luthor was just here. She came in very early, but... I do not see her."
"Ah. I'll just ask the bartender."
The man behind the bar had a kindly face, but Lena wasn't one to spill out her troubles to strangers. Still. Kara came up and asked him, "Was Lena Luthor here recently?"
"Oh, yes, I don't know where she went, but--"
"Was she drinking cosmos or scotch?"
"Whiskey. Top shelf, of course."
Kara got a sinking feeling in her stomach. She pulled out her phone.
SunshineD: I'm here, at the bar.
She waited, trying to be patient, trying not to imagine Lena leaving the bar, running away.
Finally, her phone pinged.
EmeraldL: Sorry, I'm in the ladies room.
Kara asked for directions, and found Lena at the sink, looking... pale? strained?
"Lena, are you all right? Was it the attack today?"
Lena shook her head. "No, just. A case of nerves, I guess. Very unlike me."
"You know what's good for nerves?"
"Well, I already tried whiskey, but..."
"Food, Lena. Empty stomachs breed butterflies."
And even Kara thought that made no sense, but Lena just smiled. "You're right. Let's go eat."
Kara took her hand and they followed the hostess to their small tatami-matted room with the well in the floor under the table. They had no sooner taken their seats than the waitress in a pink flowered kimono brought them a large plate of potstickers and sake.
So they ate the dumplings and Kara told Lena about Krypto getting his leash caught in the branches of the tree when he chased the very surprised cat, and Kara having to climb the tree to get him untangled, and since there were passersby, she couldn't just fly up to do it.
"And I'm pretty sure if he gets the chance to try that again, he will. I yelled at him, but he seemed pretty unrepentant."
"Did he fly?"
"Not exactly, but you know that he has hang-time when he jumps. We still don't know about all his abilities, even after a lot of agility training. Kal-El said he's never seen a dog as good at walking on a narrow wall."
"Kal-El. Superman."
"Um."
"Kara, I've signed all the NDAs. I do know. But when did you see him recently?"
"I had dinner in Metropolis last night. He and Lois said to say hello."
Lena bit her lip. "Did you, I don't know, need to ask his permission? To ask me..."
"What? No, well, sort of but not that part. I needed to borrow something from him. Also, Lois gave me a pep talk, and she is a very peppy person as it turns out... I really don't know her all that well. I didn't even meet James until he came out to live here in National City."
"You sound sad."
"Family was big for us on--" She glanced at the thin walls. "Back home. And the Danvers, well, you've seen what they're like. It was the same on, where J'onn's from, and he has reproduced that at... Alex's job. But Clark grew up on a rural farm with elderly adoptive parents and no siblings or cousins. So he doesn't think to share his life with me."
"Well, as you know, in my experience siblings can be a mixed bag."
Kara nodded, swallowing the last of the shumai. "Oh, that does take the edge off. Lovely."
Two waitresses came in to remove the appetizer plate and set down the sushi boat. Kara couldn't help herself. She positively glowed. A little wooden ship with enough sushi for four humans always made her ridiculously happy. "It's so pretty!"
And Lena laughed. But then she got serious. "So, is this where we have the talk?"
"What? No, there's time for that later. Right now, we simply nourish ourselves. Important discussions can't be rushed, and shouldn't happen on an empty stomach anyway."
"Kara, you just put away seven chicken gyoza and five shrimp shumai."
"Yes, and you only had one of each. We have to feed you up." Kara took her chopsticks and picked up a piece of tuna, offering it to Lena.
"Kara, I know what you're doing, reminding me of our first date and being a huge romantic."
"Yup. Open wide. You need feeding."
Lena shook her head but opened her mouth and let Kara feed her the tuna.
Kara said, "See, Lena, it's not that hard to let someone take care of you. And I mean to take care of you for the rest of your life. Not just protect you from the scary things, although I'll do that too. But I mean to do for you what your family never did. You deserve affection and comfort food and giggles and cuddles. And I know I haven't been as present this past year, but that is exactly what made me realize that I need to be here, with you, permanently. And I know you probably sat at that bar for half an hour working to convince yourself that you didn't need anybody else, and especially not me, or maybe you didn't deserve to be happy... Rao, I don't know. But I need you."
Lena chewed and swallowed. "Kara, my family..."
"Don't deserve you. But mine does. And I intend to keep you and me both safe from your family so that my family can enjoy you and be saved by you and protect you and me, because that's what a real family does, and you deserve a real family. And I would like to offer mine to you, to be your family. Formally. Lena, will you marry me, and be part of the House of El and the Danvers?"
Lena's pale green eyes went wide. This was not the proposal she had expected.
"Kara..."
"Lee, just say yes."
"Kara..."
"You don't have to take my name, but I'd like it if you did. You could be Lena Kieran Luthor-Danvers."
"Yes, but Kara..."
"And yeah, that would totally make Lex lose his shit, but I actually think Lillian kind of likes me. She doesn't want to, but she actually gave me a compliment when we were on the Daxamite mothership. And I think she recognizes my rock-hard commitment to you. She'll come around. Lex won't. He's a bit of a pig, really. Sorry. But I think she will."
"Yes, but--"
"And now that Alex is in charge at... work, you know you have the whole of the, that organization behind us, to protect us from him and other... not-so-pleasant people."
"Well, but--"
"Lee, just think about it. While we eat. Because I'm famished!"
And she grinned her 1000-Watt smile, knowing that even Lena Luthor would be helpless to argue against that.
///
Lena ate slowly, at a loss for words. At the bar it had seemed so clear to her that her family, in their sheer Luthorness, was an ironclad reason why she could not in good conscience tie herself to Kara and her family. Yet somehow, Kara had just turned that around. Earnest Kara.
Lena thought about the solidity of her Kryptonian girlfriend, the heat of her. Going to sleep next to Supergirl was like leaning against a very warm, affectionate wall. Sometimes, arguing with her was the same.
“Kara…” she started.
Kara put her chopsticks down and swallowed. “When I was in junior high, our English teacher made us write a paper about a famous speech, and Alex was very excited for me and encouraged me to look at Kennedy’s speech announcing the moonshot, and at first, I thought it was because it was about humans and space, so, you know, both our families. But then she recited part of it from memory: ‘We choose to go to the Moon in this decade…not because it is easy but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win…’”
Lena looked into Kara’s sapphire eyes and was mesmerized.
Kara continued, “That’s when I realized that the Danvers were a part of the House of El. Eliza and Jeremiah had raised Alex to be just like what my biological parents raised me to be, and I recognize the same thing in you. And I will probably live longer than you, but that is precisely the reason that I want so desperately to spend the next seventy or eighty of my years by your side.”
Lena said, “Kara, I love you, but—”
Kara put one finger to Lena’s lips. “You don’t have to answer right away. Let’s finish dinner, let your thoughts settle in your heart. Then we’ll go back to your place, if that’s all right with you, have dessert, talk a bit more. And stop thinking about the reasons to say no.”
Lena sighed. “You want me to think about the reasons to say yes.”
“No, I want you to think about how you would propose to me, and why.”
And that left Lena thoughtful, especially as Kara carefully scooped both of the sweet omelet sushis onto Lena’s plate, because it was both their favorite, but Kara always gave hers to Lena.
“Off the top of my head, I would have to point out that you are as sweet as this tamago, and if I don’t marry you, who’s going to break my headboard?”
Kara laughed. “You’re off to a good start.”
///
They stood outside under the stars waiting for Ted to pull the towncar around front. Kara was grateful that she had started to put away money each month since their first date, knowing that getting engaged to Lena Luthor and marrying her, if those events ever happened, would be expensive. And she hadn’t ever entirely believed that it would or could happen—or she wouldn’t have flown into a building—but she now felt sure with a warm, solid certainty in her gut. This was right.
Her cellphone pinged as they got into the car.
DirectorSis: Did she say yes?
AgentPotsticker: Not yet.
Lena glanced over. “Alex?”
“Yeah, she’s checking in on me. Whenever I do something stupid, like fly into a building—”
“Wait, you—”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what happens when you realize you need to marry your best friend.”
Lena fell silent as they slid through the city, the streetlights and the shadows alternately revealing and concealing.
Kara idly wondered what she should wear to marry Lena. She had felt awfully snazzy wearing the white tie and tails at Clark’s wedding. Wouldn’t that make Eliza lose her shit.
“You’re smiling,” said Lena.
“I’m happy.”
“But I haven’t said yes yet.”
“You will. You know I’m the one that can make you happy, safe, appreciated. And I know I haven’t been doing so well on that last one lately, but I’m going to work on that from now on.”
“Why do I feel Jess had words with you?”
“A very small shovel might have been mentioned. Will she be your best person?”
“Probably. She’s the only one— Wait. I see what you did there.”
Kara grinned as the car pulled up in front of Lena’s building and they got out.
///
The moment they entered Lena’s apartment, Lena automatically scanned the apartment and then jumped and pushed Kara back into the hall.
“There’s a bomb on my balcony.”
“Um, no, actually, that’s my lunch bag. I didn’t want to have it with me at the restaurant, so I dropped it off here. I’m sorry, Lena. Take deep breaths. Your heart is hammering.”
“I’m aware,” said Lena drily as they reentered the condo.
Kara quickly crossed to the balcony door and opened it to extract her blue lunch bag. Lena saw that her hands were shaking, and that made Lena pause. Kara carried the bag over to the kitchen island and set it down, unzipped it and lifted out a pale blue ceramic bowl, its lid blazoned with the sigil of the House of El. Then she said, “Can I borrow your blanket?”
Lena frowned. “Why would you—”
“Please. Would you do me the great favor of lending me your blanket?”
“Uh, yes?”
Kara went back into the living room and opened the blanket chest under the window, lifting out the bright red blanket that Clark had given Lex and Lena had taken when Lex went to prison. She came back and handed it to Lena.
“I went to Metropolis to ask Clark if he wanted his blanket back.”
Lena felt nervous. “Did he?”
“He had forgotten about it, so no.”
“You look unhappy.”
“Sometimes Clark is such an Earthling.”
“Do you want it, Kara?”
“Yes, I do.”
Lena felt like she was going to cry, and Luthors didn’t cry. She handed it back to Kara. “It’s your blanket, Kara.”
Kara’s hands were shaking harder as she took it back and shook it out so that the crest of the House of El was showing. She brushed her fingers over it. “It took me a while to figure out how to mix our customs, because I wanted to do this right.”
With the blanket in both hands, the crest facing Lena, Kara got down on one knee. And although her hands were shaking, her voice was confident and sure. “Lena Kieran, of the House of Luthor, a life alone is a heartless life. I want to offer you my heart to live in and my family’s crest to be yours. Will you accept me, Kara Zor-El Danvers of the House of El.”
She offered Lena the blanket.
And Lena knew all the reasons she should say no:
Her criminal brother
Her genocidal mother
The perennial target on her back
Her own long-icy heart
And suddenly none of that made any difference.
She reached out, took the blanket from Kara, saying, “I, Lena Kieran of the House of Luthor, accept you, Kara Zor-El Danvers of the House of El. I accept your heart and offer mine in return. I want to be your wife, and you to be mine.”
Tears were streaming down her face. “God, Luthors don’t cry.”
Kara stood and wrapped the blanket around her. “You are no longer only a Luthor.” She kissed her. “Now we need spoons.”
///
After they ate the custard, and Kara explained about the bracelets they would need to give each other, they went to Lena’s enormous bed and made love, with Lena crying and apologizing and saying how happy she was. Then Lena finally fell soundly asleep, curled in Kara’s embrace.
Kara snaked one arm out to scoop her phone off the bedside table and sent a text to Alex.
AgentPotsticker: She said yes!
Chapter 12: The Rules of Engagement
Chapter Text
Alex had taken the night shift, knowing that she would not be able to sleep that night and wanting to put her insomnia to good use: now that she was the Director, she knew people would expect her to lead only by day. That might have been J'onn's style, but it wasn't hers.
Vasquez and Winn had shifted their schedules to match hers, probably expecting her to be expecting nocturnal mayhem. That was just as well. When the command team joined the night watch, they gave it, what was that word? éclat? that it didn't normally have. And that had to be good for morale.
And when, at a bit after 2 a.m., Alex's phone had pinged, she pulled it out of her cargo pocket, read the text, grinned and whooped.
She grabbed first Agent Vasquez, and then Agent Schott and then Agent Holtzman and kissed each of them on the mouth. Holtzy took advantage and kept the kiss going until Vasquez and Winn pulled her off of Alex.
Vasquez, her voice low, growled, "Agent..."
Winn, his voice very high indeed, squeaked, "You might want to stop...?"
Alex looked shocked and Vasquez inserted herself between the Director and the junior agent.
"Whoops?" said Holtzman, looking a little guilty, but not repentant.
J'onn, who had been giving his report, murmured, "You know how last fall I said that your unrelenting seriousness was one of your best qualities? I might have been wrong about that..."
"And I have to disagree with you there, sir, I mean, J'onn," said Alex. "I am not unrelentingly serious, but by Rao, I am serious tonight. She said yes!"
Vasquez let go of Holtzy and would have fallen if the woman hadn't caught her. "Wait, what?"
"Lena agreed to marry my sister!"
The agents cheered, and the color came back into Vasquez's face, and Holtzman let go of her arm.
"Yes. Well," stuttered Vasquez. "Of course. Because we knew. That, that she was going to. Ask."
"Vasquez, are you all right?"
Vasquez sat down in chair at her station, nodding absently. "Yeah, I will be. Just give me a sec."
Holtzman said, "Sorry/not sorry, Director. But does that mean there's going to be another trip to Metropolis?"
Vasquez added, "Or to Midvale?"
And Alex stopped and stared. "Oh, that's going to be... a question. Huh. Well, I guess we'll just have to see what they decide, won't we?"
///
Jess Huang got to work as always just before eight. When Lena hadn't shown up at eight, Jess checked her phone for a text. Maybe Lena had had an idea in the middle of the night and had come in to work on a personal project in the sub-basement. But there were no texts.
Maybe Lena had been abducted? She texted Winn.
JessIsBest: Have you heard anything I should worry about re: Lena?
She sat for three minutes forty-two seconds, sweating, until she received his reply.
ForTheWinn: Yes! She said yes to Kara! (Heart emojis in the seven colors of the rainbow.)
Jess breathed a sigh of relief. Then she texted him back.
JessIsBest: So you were right. We have some planning to do.
ForTheWinn: Called it!
And Jess just rolled her eyes and got on with her day. She could imagine (although she'd rather not) that Lena Luthor and Supergirl getting engaged might have led to some... rather athletic sex. Probably Lena wouldn't be in until 9:00 at least.
///
Millie Bernetti had finally bitten the bullet and gone to Alien Alley to look at the charred remains of her restaurant, with Audrey on one side and her insurance agent, Howard, on the other. Howard was half-human/half-Infernian and was very queeny and very good at his job.
"The police reports were very clear, honey. Hate-crime for sure. We should be able to get you the money to rebuild in a snap." And he actually for-real snapped his fingers. "In between now and then, though--"
"Thanks, Howie. It's just so depressing. I don't even know how to--"
Her cellphone pinged. She dragged it out of her coat pocket. "Probably trying to sell me solar--" Then she really focused.
KDanvers: She said yes! She loved the custard! Cater our wedding?
"Huh."
Her wife leaned in to read the text. "Wait, is that--"
"Kara Danvers. Sunshine personified. Also, apparently, newly engaged to Lena Luthor."
Howie pulled out his phone and Millie clamped her hand down on his wrist and twisted until he dropped his phone. "Professional ethics, Howie. I am your client and that is my professional information that you cannot share."
"Ah, right. You're right. Ouch. But surely they'll announce formally? Soon? Right?"
"Maybe..."
///
Maggie had gotten called out at 7:15 for an alien hate crime, because of course she had. And seeing blue guts strewn across the bus stop bench had been more than enough to cancel her plans for one of those egg-cheese-croissant sandwiches--
More than enough.
She had gotten used to a little gore when she was a rookie, had learned not to lose her dinner or her cool when humans were horrible to other humans.
For the most part.
But knowing so many aliens, most of whom were refugees trying to escape war, famine, plague, death--yeah basically the four horsemen of the apocalypse--oh, that just made it all so much harder.
So when she got back to the precinct, she put her phone on vibrate and tried very hard to just get through the paperwork for the case. But then her phone vibrated, and she ignored it, and it stopped and then started again three times, and then it vibrated itself off her desk and onto the floor.
Sighing deeply, she picked it up, only to find messages from Vasquez castigating her for not picking up. She replied tersely:
TomSawyer: Busy with another hate crime. Grisly.
AgentKevlar: Then a light lunch. We need to talk.
That gave Maggie pause. Why on Earth would Vasquez need to talk to her?
TomSawyer: Come to the precinct. Not interested in food.
AgentKevlar: Your loss. I thought you liked Infernian barbecue.
And Maggie laughed. Her partner Reynolds glanced at her and rolled his eyes.
TomSawyer: Well, maybe just a little. 12:30?
AgentKevlar: You betcha!
Maggie shook her head. But when Vasquez showed up an hour later with cardboard boxes, and they found an empty interrogation room, she said, "Since when does Fire Devil do cardboard?"
"Since a few weeks back, when Supergirl freeze-breathed their kitchen fire out, saving the place. Now they've ditched their styrofoam because of her lecture. Also? DEO agents get 10% off at their food truck." Vasquez grinned.
Maggie shook her head. "So, Agent Vasquez, what can I do you out of?"
"Kara's engaged."
Maggie stared.
"To Lena Luthor."
"Well, I certainly wouldn't expect her to get engaged to Mon-Hell, Winn or James. Seriously? When did that happen?"
"Sometime before two in the morning when she texted her sister."
"Hm. Dinner, engagement, sex. Text."
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Anyway, it's going to be a major security issue. So I thought we should start planning, get out ahead of it."
"I'm NCPD, you're national DEO. We don't have jurisdiction."
"And Winn said he's been looking into private security. I recommended the Crows, out of Gotham. But you and I both know that Lena and Kara, due to no fault of their own, are likely to be targets on both a local and national level, given Lena's felonious family and Kara--"
"Felonious? Try psychotic."
"Mm. Your point?"
"Oh, right. Same difference."
Vasquez pulled a metal fork from her cargo pocket and started doing serious damage on the Venusian Pulled Pork. Maggie glanced at the broccoli slaw with tangy something or other and pulled lacquered chopsticks from her bag. They spent a few minutes simply chowing down. Finally, she said, "What do you need from me?"
"You are like me, a forward planner, who understands how the criminal mind works. You've been up against the Luthors before, and I know you love the Danvers sisters."
Maggie looked away.
Vasquez asked, "How's Lucy?"
Maggie couldn't meet her eyes. "Alex asked her to take over the rookie training program here, and she said no, said she preferred the Nevada site."
Vasquez chewed and swallowed. "That doesn't mean--"
"Vasquez? Just don't. The fact that you even think to say that doesn't mean pretty much means it does! She doesn't want me, more than a friends with benefits kind of--"
"No, Maggie." Vasquez rested her hand on Maggie's arm, quietly forcing her to put down her food and pay attention. "I understand Lucy Lane. She is a soldier, like I was. She saw some serious shit out there and it changed her, and not all for the good. She's cautious about relationships because she is convinced that her damage will spill over and damage anybody she cares about. You. And she couldn't bear it if she hurt you like that."
"You don't know that," said Maggie thickly.
"Yeah, I do. Oh, honey. I totally do."
"But you're with Alex."
"Just barely. Yes, I am. Again. But as God is my witness, I don't know how that happened."
"But she was... unfaithful. Wasn't she?"
"She was hurting. Because outside of her job and her relationship with her sister, she has zero self-esteem. And I thought I had fixed that, that I could fix that. But you can't fix people. You can only choose to love them, or not. And I am choosing to love her, and maybe I'll get burned and maybe I won't. But Kara saw her world literally explode and then spent years, years in the Phantom Zone, and then Clark, her one relation on Earth—hell, in the universe—abandoned her, left her with strangers."
"I'm sensing you agree with Alex on this..."
"Don't you?"
"Abso-fucking-lutely."
"So whatever relationship or hurt you and I have had or experienced or suffered because of Alex Danvers, and however much we love Alex Danvers, this isn't about her. It's about Kara. What she needs: backup, security, foot-warmers, advice... Because you just know she would do all of that for any of us."
Maggie sat thoughtfully, nodded. "Okay, I'm in. What do you need me to do?"
///
Astra In-Ze was walking out of an Argo zoning meeting with the mother of all headaches when her interplanetary device pinged with a message from her niece.
KZE: Um, you know how you offered to stand up for me if I decided to marry Lena and she accepted me? So, yeah, that. Could you come to Earth one of these days so we could talk about the customs, figure out how to adapt them for Earth. I made the custard for Lena and she really liked it!
Despite the annoyance that Astra had taken on when she had chosen to take her sister's place on Argo, her niece's enthusiasm was always a welcome part of her day.
GeneralA: Let me fix my schedule. Then I will come by.
Chapter 13: Reacting to the News
Chapter Text
Pam from HR got the email and sighed deeply. She pulled a folder from her file cabinet and slipped her feet back into her heels. She had work to do and cookies would, unfortunately, not be involved.
In the command center, she slipped the Title IX brochures onto the workstations of Vasquez, Winn and Holtzman. They would find them there when they returned from whatever mission they were on. Then she went to the Director’s office and knocked.
“Come.”
Alex Danvers was looking cheerful, if harried, as she argued into her cell phone. “Well, just look into it for me. I’ve got enough to worry about here. Thank you.” She turned her phone off, growling, then rearranged her face. “Pam. What can I do for you?”
“Director. I was just informed of an incident that occurred in the command center in the wee hours that could potentially be construed as sexual harassment.”
Alex stared. “Oh, shit.”
“Mm. Quite. I know you’ve had a lot on your plate with the transition, but you really need to do the training in Title IX that I emailed you about. Also, if you and Vasquez are on again, I have some paperwork for you two to fill out.” Pam slid two pieces of paper out of her folder onto Alex’s desk. “I’ll just leave you to it, shall I?”
///
James was in the armory, trying to take apart his M-15 and put it back together again, all while blindfolded. He was, he had to admit it, doing a shit job. Finn had tried to help him, but he just didn't think with his hands. He never had. The door to the armory opened and closed. He sniffed.
"Lucy?"
"Huh," she said, surprised. "They told me you weren't good at this blindfold stuff. I guess they were wrong."
"They weren't wrong." He pushed off his blindfold. "I just know your perfume."
She smiled. "I haven't worn it since I got here. I don't travel with it. What you smelled is me, and not with my usual shampoo, since I've been sleeping either here in the women's barracks and I borrowed shampoo from Kara... So quite likely what you smelled and accurately recognized was me, and her shampoo."
"Fuck. That is so wrong."
"Maybe."
"How can it not be?"
"Honey, you loved me. I know that. Yeah, not enough. We didn't do each other justice and we both know that. But you know me well. And since you've been in National City, you've gotten to know Kara, maybe not as intimately, because she was always a little bit gay? And you didn't know that, hell, she didn't know that. But she was inching toward her truth just as you two... tried to... hell, I don't know."
James sighed wistfully. "You're not wrong..."
"I know, love. And I have someone else, and now Kara has someone else, pretty much permanently."
"Wait, what?"
"You haven't heard about her engagement?"
"Wait, the last guy was Mon-El, and we had to do that elaborate--"
"Sweetie, you have seen her with Lena Luthor."
James flailed. He opened his mouth and closed it, "Why can I never remember that Lena is gay?"
“Because even though I still love you, you can be heteronormative as shit, darling.”
He sighed again. “You’re not wrong…”
///
Livewire was working out in the DEO gym, thinking that she had made a huge mistake in letting herself be co-opted by the DEO as an agent. And then the hot Latina surgeon who had given her back her life walked in.
"Hey, Dr. Torres. What's the what? Vasquez tell you I'm doing too much?"
"Um, what? Are you? Because don't. Waste of my work if you do."
"No, of course not. I'm being careful. You only get one last chance, or some such fuck like that."
"True enough," muttered Callie as she climbed on a stationary bike and opened her Kindle.
"So you're not here to mind me?"
"Huh? Why would I? You're an adult."
"Well, yeah, but people always complain about me."
"Are you doing something I should complain about?"
"Um, no?"
"Then what's the problem?"
And Livewire had never not been somebody's problem and she did not know how to stop being anyone's problem now.
///
Maggie's day started bad and then got worse before it got better. She had been awakened at 3:47 by Lucy tensing up next to her, whimpering, and she had warily rubbed her back until Lucy had woken.
"Lu, it was just a dream. Just a dream, babe."
Lucy sat up and turned on the light as if to satisfy herself that she was indeed back in the States and not under fire.
"You'll feel better if you pee and then drink some cold water."
And Lucy didn't ask her how she knew that. They all had their own demons to deal with.
Lucy came back to bed and turned out the light. "Thanks, Mags."
"You know I always have your back. 'Course, it would help if you dreamed of me."
"Yeah, actually, I can picture you shooting my alien attackers with a shotgun."
"Hm. Lately in my dreams, the aliens haven't been the bad guys. Do you remember that guy Joe from Slaver's Moon?"
"Yeah."
"He's just been transferred to my precinct. He's going to be on my task force."
"Is he still wearing bow ties?"
"Pft. Of course."
Lucy chuckled and eventually fell asleep. Maggie lay there for two hours worrying, only waking up at six when her alarm went off. She was not well rested.
Outside her precinct, an orderly mob of aliens were protesting, calling for the NCPD to do more to keep them safe. Maggie didn't disagree.
Joe was carrying in a cardboard box and settling into an empty desk across the bullpen.
"Morning, Joe. Task force meeting in ten minutes."
"Joe will be there."
And she had gotten most of the people she had requested, but only half of the budget. The task force had been the mayor’s idea, but putting Maggie in charge of it had been her captain’s. He was also pushing her to take the sergeant’s exam and take on more responsibilities. She had pushed back at first, but then when all of it turned out to be non-negotiable, she had negotiated to get Joe, and an alien expert from Metropolis, and a domestic terrorism expert from Gotham. All three had been happy to transfer to National City to work with her. She had a reputation as an honest cop who closed cases and got shit done.
When all of the members were sitting around the table in the conference room, Maggie went over what they knew about the attacks at the clinic and Alien Alley, as well as the school bus tragedy.
“Right now, we have to assume they could be related, so keep an eye out for any commonalities,” she told them. “I’m liaising with the FBI later today.”
Her team groaned about the “fibbies” but of course Maggie really meant Alex and Lucy, so she ignored that. “All right, people. Get out there. Ears to the ground.”
As her team filtered out, Maggie gathered her notes. Joe had not left. She looked at him in his polka dot bow tie and sweater vest. “Yes?”
“Joe would like to volunteer for special assignment.”
“What would that be?”
“Joe hears Lillian Luthor about to give names and locations of Cadmus, to gain freedom sooner. Joe would like to sniff first, before scents are compromised by agents.”
Maggie stared. “Where did you hear that?”
“Joe knows many ears that live in the ground.”
“Confidential informants?”
Joe shrugged.
“All right. I will make sure that happens.”
Joe nodded and left. And ten minutes later, Maggie was called out to an active shooter at a mall, so she didn’t have time to think about Lillian Luthor.
///
Lillian Luthor didn't completely hate her prison version of scrubs. Maybe 95%. The prison couldn't spend an extra two dollars a week for fabric softener? Really?
But they did let the prisoners read the city newspaper, and although she loathed the Tribune for its ridiculously liberal slant, it still gave her a window on her daughter, and, (sigh) her daughter's friends and acquaintances.
Supergirl. The DEO. The NCPD.
Sigh.
Lillian was a pragmatist, always had been, since long before she caught Lionel Luthor's eye, captured his heart (for a while, at least). And as she had spent the last few years after Lex's imprisonment focusing on her daughter, she had learned a few things.
• Lena was resourceful as fuck.
• Kara Danvers would risk her (super) life for Lena. Always.
• Alex Danvers would do anything for Kara, which almost included her doing anything for Lena, but not quite.
• The DEO agents would follow the Danvers sisters to the grave. Many probably had.
So Lillian started reading the entire National City Tribune every day, scanning for things that either explicitly mentioned crimes by or against aliens, or superheroics involving Supergirl, or other events that might involve the DEO. And that day, she had, accidentally, found herself reading the obituaries of the six alien children and three human children horrifically killed when a tanker truck ran into their schoolbus. She read about the mother of one of the alien children, the hero who had thrown herself on top of two human girls, her daughter’s best friends, saving their lives.
She had not been able to save her own daughter.
Lillian stared off into space, thinking about that. Was there anyone in her life Lillian would risk herself for? Well, Lex, obviously. Maybe Adelle DeWitt. Probably Lena.
Suddenly, she thought of Cat Grant writhing under her hands on a narrow cot in the thankfully soundproofed cell in Lex’s old mountain base a few years back, when everyone was under the influence of the pink kryptonite, thanks to Max “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” Lord.
Who had also invented the smart prosthetic that someone had apparently hacked to cause this tragic accident. And Lillian stood by Cadmus’s mission statement of bringing Earth back to being for humans only. But children? Burning was a terrible way to die. Who in Cadmus hated aliens even more than she did? Hated them that much? And didn’t care if humans died?
Oh, that had given her a whole lot of things to reconsider.
///
Krypto trotted proudly through the corridors with Kara Zor-El, who was outrageously happy, so Krypto was happy too. Something had changed--he didn't know what--but something really good had happened and he was wagging his tail nonstop to signal that he was--what did Scruffy call it? on board?
Just because it made no sense to him (Peoples, sigh) didn't mean that he couldn't join in the fun.
So Kara was happy and smelled strongly of Soft Hands and Beautiful Voice, and all the DEO Peoples were happy (even if they didn't, sadly, have tails that they could wag), so Krypto was onboard with the happy.
It was so different from the horrifying emptiness of the Phantom Zone, even if it also wasn't the red warmth of Krypton. People who loved him were happy, so he was happy.
Tail wags all around.
Chapter 14: Enjoying Our Wins
Chapter Text
Dr. Pamela “Pill” Isley liked her work, even when it turned… a little sketchy. She had been asked by her department’s lead scientist to identify the active ingredient of some off-white tablets that she assumed from the man’s obvious discomfort had been unethically obtained from a rival pharmaceutical company.
Well, she had gotten all the memos from the KahlTech execs about their division not carrying their weight in R&D output or FDA approval or profit input, and their jobs were probably on the line. So she weighed the problem of decreasing another big Pharma company’s profits against the benefit of herself still being able to pay rent, and the moral compass gave her a pass.
So she ground the first tablet down to a fine powder and put it through the mass spectrometer. Now she just had to wait for preliminary results before she could start positing hypotheses, planning experiments.
All she knew about it was that it was thought to be a kind of poor man’s Viagra. And it was more out of scientific curiosity than anything, but she knew that having a side project like that to work on when she was between ideas for her work on a non-steroidal growth enhancer would allow her mind to incubate ideas and maybe she would learn something in the process.
///
Supergirl swooped into the DEO with a handful of red flyers advertising Chinatown For Alien Alley, a festival planned by the Chinese Business Association to raise money to help the alien businesses hurt by the fire as a thank-you to the aliens of National City for supporting Chinatown businesses affected by human fears about the coronavirus. She also had a bag of takeout for Alex, Vasquez, and Winn for their lunch. Naturally, she was beaming.
Winn jumped up and hugged her. She laughed. "You're not getting Alex's beef and broccoli, Winn."
"Ha, very ha. I wasn't trying for it. I wanted to congratulate you for having excellent taste in women."
"Alex told you?"
"You could say that..."
Vasquez put down her notebook, rose and took her turn hugging the superhero. "Catching Lena, very impressive! Did you give her a diamond?"
"No, I'm having a bracelet made for her in England. And she's going to have one made for me. That's how we did things back home."
"Huh," said Winn. "I thought Clark gave Lois--"
"He did." Crinkle.
"So," said Vasquez. "What did you bring me?"
"I couldn't remember if you liked sesame beef or orange chicken, so I got both, and plenty of lo mein and fried rice for us. And there's fortune cookies!"
Alex entered, laughing.
"What's so funny?" asked Supergirl.
"Mom just called, asking me what was up. I swear she's got mom antenna. You're going to have to call her."
"Actually, I was thinking we should go to Midvale this weekend, maybe bring Lena, and Vasquez, you should come too."
Vasquez frowned. "You're being strategic, aren't you?"
"Yup. Someone needs to protect Alex from Eliza's unfortunate habits when I do something good."
"I'm in."
Supergirl noticed Alex absently touch the slight bump over her heart, where she wore the plastic rainbow ring Vasquez gave her under her suit on a chain. Kara wondered when they would go back to wearing the matching Claddagh rings they had given to each other, or if they ever would. Supergirl sure hoped so. They were two of her favorite people and she wanted them to be as happy as she and Lena were. They deserved it.
///
Callie left the staff meeting at the clinic, depressed but pragmatic. The damage to the third floor had been bad, but structural integrity had held. She supposed that Lena Luthor was used to making her facilities relatively bombproof. That had also meant that they hadn't lost anyone, patients or staff. Some injuries, of course, and they'd had to shift their pediatric patients to the Luthor Children's Hospital. It could have easily been much, much worse.
She went to check on Brian. The bruiser who had attacked him had broken Brian's arm in two places. But he was cheerful about it, chatting up the alien nurses, who just rolled their eyes about him. Apparently, it didn't really matter the planet or species. Some straight guys were universally hopeless. Literally.
///
M'gann was tending bar when Lena came in around three in the afternoon, dressed in skinny jeans and a polka-dotted shirt that might have belonged to Kara, with purple Converse sneakers. Her eyes were flashing and she gave M'gann the biggest grin M'gann had ever seen on the Luthor. Her happiness was rolling off her in waves.
"M'gann, you are just exactly the person I need to see because, you see, after breakfast this morning, I had this idea about the theoretical particles Wainwright discovered in Dresden last year, you know, the ones that are similar to the alpha waves that humans produce when they meditate, and it occurred to me that I actually have the technology to test for them--of course, it was simply a matter of reverse-engineering the psionic blocker that I perfected for the DEO last year with Winn, but adding tuneability and functionality and you know how a Geiger counter works, of course--"
"Nope," said M'gann. "I really don't."
"Oh, well, it's based on--"
"Lena? Slow down. And whatever caffeinated beverage of choice you've been drinking today? Stop. For all our sakes."
"Caffeine? Hardly. Water all day."
M'gann stared. Then she pulled down a bottle of Balkan vodka, poured half a glass, added some tonic water and a lime and said, "Drink up. On the house."
And Lena drank it down and took a deep breath. "Oh. Yes, I see. Going too fast, I take it?"
M'gann held her thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart. "Little bit, yeah."
"Sorry. Inventing mode. Normally, when I do this and have to talk to normal people, Jess comes with me to translate."
"She can?"
"I pay her so highly because she has a rare and very useful skillset."
"Ha. I'm impressed. Now, very slowly, tell me how it is I can help you with your technological wonder."
"I think I can scan for psionic activity."
M'gann thought about that. "That could be as dangerous to my kind as your alien detection device."
"God, yes, I know the tradeoffs. But I think the difference is that I'm not focusing on individuals, but on the environment. If we can tell there are high levels of psionic activity, we can avoid events like the year before last when those aliens caused all those fights and traffic accidents and--"
"Lena? I'm not saying I won't help, just that I want to discuss it with J'onn and some other friends. Also, you are off-the-charts happy today. What's gotten into you?"
Lena blushed, grinning. "Kara and I are engaged!"
"Congratulations!"
"Thanks. I'm still reeling!"
"I can tell."
Chapter 15: Passing on the News
Chapter Text
In the end, they took Vasquez's Beetle to Midvale, with Vasquez driving, Alex in front with her, and both of them staunchly ignoring Kara and Lena mooning over each other in the back seat. The late summer weather was warm and breezy, the windows were down, and Alex ran her hand through her hair, smiling at the world.
Vasquez thought she was in danger of running off the road, but they were only a few miles out from Eliza's house, so, to distract herself, she asked, "Hey, Smiley Elder Danvers, why are you so happy?"
Alex laughed and rubbed a bump over her heart under her shirt. "My sister has been hit by a love ray, which has nothing to do with a fifth-dimensional being, and the weather is absolutely perfect. And you know what they say."
"Uh, no."
"Love is in the air. If you're not in love, you're not breathing hard enough."
Vasquez gripped the steering wheel hard. "Danvers, you need to be very careful in the next eight minutes. I'm not going to be driving particularly well if I'm hyperventilating."
Alex just smiled.
///
Eliza went out to the back yard with scissors and an agenda. Something was most definitely up with the girls, given that they were both bringing their significant others home on a non-holiday weekend, even though the attacks against aliens in National City had yet to be foiled. She cut flowers for both their rooms. She had also put a turkey in the oven and cut most of the apples for two pies. Family Events Require Adequate Food was the family motto (no, seriously; the girls had looked it up when they were in high school: requirere familia festivitates adaequatum victus). And Eliza was a scientist and a feminist and a sort-of widow, but she was also a mom. And it didn't matter that the girls weren't even there yet. She could see their ribs from here. Whatever the issue was, they would all require feeding.
///
When Vasquez turned into the drive and cut the engine, Lena swallowed, put on her game face, and stepped out of the car. She hooked her large Gucci bag over her shoulder, leading the way to the house with the rest of the girls following with the suitcases.
Butches and superheroes liked to feel useful, so she let them.
Eliza opened the screen door and Lena pulled a bottle of wine from her bag and offered it with a smile.
"Lena! Thank you. Beaujolais from 2010. My, my."
Lena was impressed that Eliza knew her wine, but Jess's research into the scientist had been characteristically thorough.
Alex and Kara were already bickering the moment they entered the living room. Vasquez was frowning quietly behind them. The DEO agent looked out of place in the homey domesticity of the Danvers house, and it reminded Lena of something, but she couldn't place it.
Eliza said, "Dinner's in about an hour. I'm going to need a volunteer to help with the pies."
Alex and Kara called, "Not it!"
Lena said, "I have a feeling that Vasquez is your woman for that, Mrs. Danvers. I can cook, but I'm not that great at baking."
And Vasquez gave her a betrayed look that also sent waves of déja vu through Lena, but she just shook it off. "Woman up, Agent Vasquez. This is pie we're talking about. Pie is important."
And Vasquez nodded very seriously and marched off after Eliza into the kitchen.
///
Eliza pulled out two large pie tins and handed Vasquez the box of piecrusts to open. "How are you with a knife?"
Vasquez frowned. "I'm great with a K-bar, ma'am. But I always followed orders in the Marines, so I never got KP."
"Right... Makes sense." Eliza handed her a weathered recipe card and pointed to the canisters on the shelf. "Sugar, flour. Spices over the sink. I'll cut the rest of the apples."
As Eliza cut and Vasquez measured, they fell into a companionable silence.
"What happened to the two of you, Susan? Everything was going so well, and then, suddenly, it wasn't."
"I'd rather not say, ma'am."
"Call me Eliza."
"Yes, ma'am. Eliza."
"But you're back together again?"
"Yes, m-- Yes, we are."
"You sound surprised."
Vasquez paused, looking out the window on the broad green yard and the sun on the water beyond it. Slowly, she said, "Both your daughters are exceptional women. Alex maybe more than Kara, because she does just about everything Kara does, even though she's only human. And I have always loved her, ever since I trained her. And before she came out, I spent countless nights losing sleep because I wanted her and she was a badass agent, yes, but she was also a clueless straight girl." She shook her head. "And then Supergirl happened. And Alex was frantic, just frantic that Kara would get herself discovered or killed or--" She swallowed.
Eliza listened.
"I flew the Blackhawk when Alex shot her out of the sky with kryptonite bullets. Hardest thing she's ever done, I'd bet. Compared to that, leaping off roofs--"
Eliza cut herself. "Wait, what?"
Vasquez handed her a tissue. "Not the point. When I saw Supergirl for the first time, it was... Like when you've lived among oak trees and somebody shows you an acorn... I'm not describing this well. Sorry."
Eliza held the tissue to her finger. "You love her."
"Every day, I'm amazed that she wants me. Her heart is enormous." She handed the bowl of filling to Eliza. "Sorry, I think I need to take a walk."
And she went out the door still frowning.
Eliza muttered, "Leaping off roofs?"
///
Kara and Alex set the table, Alex drinking from the cheap Merlot they'd brought while Lena's much better bottle breathed on the sideboard.
"Why are you nervous?" Kara muttered. "I'm the one engaged to the daughter and sister of supervillains."
"And who do you think she's going to blame for that?"
"You have a point. Rao. I should have brought some Aldabaran rum."
Sighing, Alex pulled a silver flask out of her pocket. "Little goes a long way. Make it last."
And Kara took a swig and hugged her big sister. By the time dinner started, they were both more relaxed.
As she took her place at the head of the table, Eliza asked, "All right, when am I going to hear... whatever this is about?"
She looked toward Alex, but Kara cleared her throat. "Lena and I are engaged. She's agreed to marry me."
Eliza looked from Kara to Lena, and then back to Alex, who gazed back at her calmly.
Finally, Lena said, "Mrs. Danvers, I can understand why you would not want your daughter to marry a Luthor, but I will do everything in my power to protect her from my family."
"Lena, it's nothing personal--"
"Mom," said Alex. Her voice was hard.
Vasquez clamped her hand on Alex's wrist.
"Well, but does she know about your biological parents?"
Alex said, "She's signed all the NDAs, Mom."
"Oh, well, actually, Lena, I'm more worried about you. With Kara's strength, when you two decide to become intimate--"
"Yeah," said Vasquez quickly. "We already solved that. It was a tech fix. More turkey, anybody?"
"Actually," said Lena. "More of that mushroom stuffing would go down a treat."
Kara reached out to serve her some, catching the "we'll discuss this later" look Eliza shot Alex.
///
That night in Alex's old bedroom, Vasquez was changing into shorts and a Marine t-shirt to sleep in, and Alex came in with a kicked puppy look.
"Your mom read you the riot act?"
"Yeah, anybody else would tell me I'm a great big sister if Kara has the great self-esteem necessary to sleep with somebody as hot as Lena Luthor, but no."
"The youngest is always the baby of the family, no matter how old they get. And moms are... complicated. You've met mine. At least yours isn't ashamed of you for being a badass."
"Yeah, about that. Did you tell her I leap out of buildings?"
"Shit, yes, it did slip out when I was telling her-- Sorry about that."
Alex came up and put her hands on Vasquez's hips. "When you were telling her how much you love me."
"Um, maybe?"
"Well, that won me some points at least. So thanks for that, by the way. And, you know, thanks for loving me."
"Heart-of-My-Beating-Heart Danvers."
"I love you too. And once we've all managed to brush our teeth in the single tiny bathroom, I'd like to ask you to fuck me very thoroughly tonight in my childhood bed."
Vasquez grinned. "You rebel, you."
///
Kara pulled her toothbrush out of her toiletries bag and went out into the hall where Vasquez stood waiting. Kara sighed. "She'll be taking off her makeup. We may be here a while."
From inside the bathroom, Lena yelled, "I heard that, Ms. Danvers."
Vasquez smiled.
Kara looked at Vasquez's lean tan legs, with the long claw-like ropy scar an angry mark down the outside of one thigh. Vasquez raised an eyebrow.
"Does it still hurt?" asked Kara.
"Only when it rains."
The door opened and Lena came out wearing grey MIT sweatpants and a National City Heroes t-shirt. "What only when it rains?"
Vasquez sighed. "My scar hurts."
Lena looked down and went pale, then looked up at Vasquez's face. "Wait. You-- I've seen that scar before."
"I doubt it," drawled Vasquez. "It's not like you've ever seen me with my pants off--" They stared at each other. Vasquez said, "Oh shit. Lee?"
"Izzy?"
"Wait, what?" said Kara.
Alex popped her head out of her bedroom to see them all staring at each other open-mouthed.
"I need to sit down," said Lena faintly.
"I think we all do," said Vasquez, herding them into Alex's room. "Al, get the emergency kit from my bag."
"The med kit?"
"Not the red one. The blue one."
Alex pulled a large canvas kitbag from Vasquez's suitcase. She unzipped it and pulled out a bottle of scotch and four glasses. "The white box too?"
"Absolutely. We've all had a bit of a shock."
Alex opened the box to show chocolate truffles. "Seriously, Vas? Like Harry Potter?"
"Chocolate helps with shock--a little sugar, a little caffeine. Don't you remember that from your training with me?"
"Oh, yeah..."
But Kara had the Crinkle. "Thirty-year Laphroag. That's Lena's favorite."
Vasquez opened the bottle, gave each glass a generous pour. "She's the one who taught me about scotch." She picked up a glass, took a swallow and shuddered. "She also taught me to play chess."
The Danvers sisters stared. Alex took a glass and drank.
Lena picked up hers, swirled the liquid, sniffed appreciatively, and sipped. "Your hair was curlier."
"Yeah, I'd had a tight crewcut in the desert. London was cold and wet, so I let it grow out some."
"So, the scar..." said Kara slowly.
"Was fresh and painful and a very angry reminder about everything I hated about myself. And Lee made me stop hating it, hating me." She sighed. "Sometimes you meet somebody who has an effect on you all out of proportion to the time you know each other. And Lee, what was the last name you used? Kieran?"
"It's my middle name. And Izzy, what was it? Peters?"
"Piper. My grandmother's name, and my middle name." She looked at the Danvers girls, who looked confused. She explained. "I still used a cane, was going to therapy every day. I'd finished the rehabilitation and the physical therapy, but the Marines weren't convinced I was going to be mentally fit to return to duty. But I'd already been recruited by the DEO. Hank convinced them to send me to the War College in London. So I took classes and talked to my shrink everyday."
"And she played piano at my chess club as a part-time job. Do you still play? It was so beautiful." Lena smiled nostalgically.
Vasquez chewed on a truffle. "Not a lot of time for that these days. I've got an electric keyboard in my closet, but--" She looked at Alex. "I'm sorry I never told you about any of this."
Slowly, Alex said, "You once told me that trauma was practically a prerequisite for being a DEO agent, and you weren't wrong. We all have our histories of trauma, Vas, and I do understand trauma. Times like those we don't like to think about, much less talk about. I understand."
"And we slept together," said Lena. "For about two months."
"Yeah, full disclosure. And it was very good. Lee gave me back to myself."
Lena looked embarrassed. "Well, it wasn't all one way. Izzy started teaching me karate."
Eliza stuck her head in the room. "What are you all doing in here?"
Lena said, "Vasquez and I just realized that we knew each other briefly many years ago."
Eliza frowned. "When you say 'knew'..."
"Leave it, Mom," said Alex.
"Yes, but--"
"Really, Eliza," said Kara. "Leave it. We're all good."
"Okay, well, don't stay up too late." She withdrew.
Kara handed Lena her glass but ate a truffle. "People always tell me it's a small world, and I've flown all over it, so I didn't think it was true."
"It's like Alice's Chart from The L Word," said Alex. "I guess it's just part of our culture."
"American culture?" asked Kara.
"Lesbian culture," sighed Lena and Vasquez together.
///
As Eliza turned her light out and pulled her covers up, she tried not to think about her daughters' eventual spouses having had sex with each other. It was enough to know that they had found love, had found people to love them. Lena was a genius. Vasquez was courageous. The world wasn't safe or easy, and they would all need each other to hold onto, to fight back-to-back with, together.
El Mayarah.
Chapter 16: Beginning to Find the Edge Pieces
Chapter Text
On the road back to National City from Midvale, the women sang along to the Indigo Girls CD that Vasquez had in her car (because four queer girls in a Beetle = Indigo Girls).
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine, yeah
The closer I am to fine, yeah
Lena said, "I wish I had as good a voice as all of you do."
Kara said, "A lot of it is just training. I can teach you, if you like. I know you've talked about how important it's been for you to use your voice to help people. The voice lessons I took in junior high really helped with my self-esteem, and then I was in the Glee Club in high school."
Vasquez asked, "So have you guys considered where you'll hold the wedding? The sooner you decide that, the sooner Winn and Jess and I can start planning for the security issues. Midvale, National City, and Metropolis all have unique problems and opportunities."
Lena looked at Kara with The Eyebrow™. Kara just shook her head. "That's Vasquez, always thinking ten moves ahead."
"Which apparently, she got from me. Huh. It's weird to think I could have such a strong effect on anybody. It's almost like having children."
"I heard that, Lena," said Vasquez. "And given that you have a mom even more problematic than mine, do you even want to think about being one?"
Alex said, "Kara and I are more than happy to share Eliza. She's awkward and a little overbearing, and all that, but she is the proudest, fiercest mama bear ever. That goes for you, too, Vasquez."
"Not really. It's not like she's going to be my mother-in-law, after all. But Lena, I'd agree that she likes you, if she was willing to back off on all that other stuff."
"You never know, Vasquez," said Alex. "We might get there too, eventually."
And Lena saw the look of shock on Vasquez's face, so she changed the subject.
///
Maggie had been called into work Saturday evening when the task force turned up a ton of evidence about Cadmus from the location and names that Lillian Luthor had provided via her lawyers. Joe had "sniffed" the Metropolis warehouse before the rest of the MPD and another member of Maggie's task force had gone over it, collecting evidence, fingerprints, ordnance, weapons and computers. And while most of the surfaces had been wiped clean, wads of dried gum under one of the conference tables had turned up the DNA of an MPD detective who turned out to have connections to several anti-alien groups, one of which was listed as a domestic terrorist organization: Cadmus.
Yahtzee.
And Maggie had liaised with the DEO to arrange for him to be detained by the feds because the plans they had found on less-than-thoroughly scrubbed computers crossed state lines. He was currently being held by the DEO in Nevada and Lucy had promised a thorough and hard-nosed interrogation, after they had made him wait and stew a while. (And that made Maggie fall a little bit in love with Lucy, the way she had snarled "stew.")
Maggie read the reports and sent off emails and made calls and then suddenly realized that it was past sunset and she hadn't eaten dinner. She looked across the bullpen to see Joe poking away at his keyboard. She stood up, stretched and went over.
His screen showed what looked like an acoustic signal, but in rainbow hues.
"Whatcha doing, Joe?"
"Joe is building aromatic profile of warehouse."
"From... memory?"
"Of course. Joe is like the sonic artists."
"Musicians?"
"Yes. Sonic artists can recall and notate a song. Joe does the same with smells."
"And we can use this in court?"
"Part of Joe's training with DEO-Paris was Alien Olfactory Notation. Joe could have taught class. Interpol uses AON. America behind the times, but catching up."
"Huh." Maggie watched a while longer. "Hey, do you want to get dinner?"
"Sawyer is vegetarian. Joe is carnivore."
"Yeah, I don't eat meat. Doesn't mean I won't buy meat for a friend. What are you hungry for?"
Joe pulled a wallet out of his pocket and gave her a twenty. "Cheeseburger, with jalapenos and extra pickles. Fries with vinegar."
Maggie took the bill and went to the burger joint down the street. They had the best veggie burger in town, and she knew they put jalapenos on their burgers. Not all the joints did.
///
Winn was sitting at his station in the command center under the computer feeds when he heard a familiar voice and felt Krypto rise from his numb right foot to shake himself and stand between the newcomer and Winn.
"Winslow of the House of Schott. And the canine. I am here to meet with my niece. Has she arrived yet?"
Winn turned to see Astra In-Ze stride out of the elevator, wearing a Kryptonian bodysuit and a DEO visitor's pass on a DEO lanyard around her neck. He put a hand on Krypto's shoulder. "Not yet, Astra. She usually flies morning patrol and then gets coffee for the team. I'd say another twelve to fifteen minutes."
"Hm. Well what about the small ex-Marine agent?"
"Vasquez? She should be here any moment. You're a little bit early."
"Yes, managing conflicting chronologies while traveling is always complex."
"Jetlag," murmured Winn. Krypto whined.
"Your canine appears to be trying to protect you from me. At least they are loyal, dogs."
"Krypto's great. So, will you be staying with your niece while you're here?"
"No, that would be inefficient. While here, I will be reviewing the Lance Blaster Squad that I trained before I moved to Argo, test their mettle, reassure the Director that they have not grown soft in my absence."
Privately, Winn was glad she was not going to test his mettle. Even with the combat training he had been doing with Vasquez, he was pretty sure he had always been fairly soft. "I'm sure they'll all be glad to see you."
Astra snorted. "We shall see. And where is Director Danvers?"
"She's in meetings until 1300 hours, when she intends to meet with you over lunch."
"Efficient use of time. On Argo, there is no mixing of business and pleasure, so everything takes longer than it could."
"Well, the Director has been working long hours every day for months with the transition. But she already had me put the order in for lunch and she's really hoping you enjoy it. There will be potstickers." He searched his memory for the Kryptonese word. “Um, grnelpah?”
The ghost of a smile. "That is kind of her. And how is my niece?" The only time Astra sounded even the slightest bit soft was when she spoke of the Danvers sisters.
"Well, I don't think Kara's feet have touched the ground since Lena said yes."
"I look forward to welcoming Lena into our family's House."
Just then Supergirl flew in, saw her aunt, and hurried forward to hug her. "You're here! We are going to have so much fun."
Winn turned away so his look of amazement wouldn't show.
"Yes, Little One, we will. Also, I brought what you asked for. I am surprised Alura didn't include this at your Fortress, or with the construct of her."
"She probably didn't think it was important."
Winn turned back to see Astra hand Kara one of those information crystals. Probably something for Krypto.
"Okay, well, I know you're meeting with Alex soon, so I should get back to my other job. Are you sure you want to sleep in the barracks?"
"It is the most efficient thing. Besides, if you host me at your dwelling, you will feel the need to stay with me, and I imagine that you would rather spend your nights with Lena."
"Oh, I. You're. She. I'm going to. Just. Yeah, see you later..." And she zipped away.
Astra gave a small laugh. "When she blushes, she matches her cape."
Winn looked surprised.
She shrugged. "Once, long ago, I also was young and in love. One does not forget. And now I will settle into your barracks before my meeting."
Winn watched her march with great dignity down the hall. Then he turned back to his computer and typed.
ForTheWinn: Hey, Jess, we haven't had a romantic date in like forever. What are you doing tomorrow night?
Chapter 17: Finding Corner Bits of Sky
Chapter Text
Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane sat in her office in the Basement, the DEO’s super-secret containment facility in Nevada, looking at her online paystub with a modicum of pleasant surprise. Somehow in all the kerfuffle of the last few weeks, she had managed to forget that her promotion brought with it an extra $793 per month. Huh. Maybe when the pandemic was finally over, she and Maggie could take a small vacation together.
Of course, thinking of Detective Dimples brought with it both pleasure and frustration. Lucy liked her work and knew that she served a critical function for the DEO, especially during the current divisive presidential administration, with its racist, sexist, species-ist Earth-for-Humans tweets and its border wall and its children in cages. The last three and a half years had been exhausting, between her under-the-radar investigation of every single agent on the base (to root out white supremacists and retrain rookies who had been influenced by those former agents) and the constant indigestion she had experienced every time she passed by the mandatory photo of the president in the front entrance lobby.
After a while, she had consulted with Dr. Hamilton about the best antacid to use. The blonde had given her a dry look and said, “The back entrance.”
Compared to all that, going down to the human containment wing for another round of questioning Metropolis Detective Mac Rogers about his involvement in Cadmus, (conveniently using intel squeezed from the white supremacist agents she had just fired) was looking to be a walk in the park. She had, as she had promised Lucy, let the man stew for several days. But because this was a federal black site that was allowed--even encouraged--to use enhanced interrogation techniques, Lt. Colonel Lane had decided to get a little… creative.
So, for the past week, she had her underlings pipe opera into his cell.
But only eighteen hours a day. She wasn’t a monster, after all.
///
The NCPD Science Division conference room smelled of tired coffee and freshly made donuts. Detective Alexa Crowe, on loan from the Metropolis PD Science Division, was an amateur baker of exceptional talent; Maggie allowed herself only one of Crowe’s ridiculously delicious donuts a week and made sure to take the stairs anytime she wasn’t actually chasing a perp to make up for it.
Across from Crowe was Joe, wearing a pale blue dress shirt and a pink bow tie with cherry blossoms on it. Next to him was Maggie’s partner, Reynolds, looking rumpled as always, this time, however, because he had in fact been working all night. He hadn’t done that as much lately, since his wife had put her foot down once the cleanup after the Battle of National City had ended. But with the multiple domestic terrorist attacks over the last few weeks, everybody was putting in serious overtime, and their taskforce was “spearheading the efforts” as their captain had reported in his interview with Cat Grant on Channel 7. The night before, Reynolds had been making calls to contacts in Europe about extremely sketchy financial transfers. He looked ready to fall asleep on his feet. After the meeting, she’d have to browbeat him to go home, or at least take a nap down in the barracks. But first, she needed to hear his report.
Out in the hallway, she heard swift footsteps and cheery good mornings, and the whirlwind that was Gotham University Professor Justin Klaus blew into the room. 9:05. For him that counted as early.
“Klaus,” she said. “Excellent. Let’s begin.”
Reynolds opened his mouth to go first, but Klaus waved his grey folder and said, “I’m concerned about the choice of the three restaurants that were targeted: Saturnalia, Jupiter’s Feast, and the one owned by that human woman—”
“Millie Bernetti,” said Maggie. “But two other restaurants also sustained major damage, Astro’s and Mare Nectaris.”
“Yes, but the fact that they did not in fact incur such crippling damage suggests that they were, at worst, secondary targets!”
Reynolds snorted and clicked the Powerpoint that he, Maggie and Joe had put together. The first slide showed a map of Alien Alley, with all five of the restaurants, two on one side of the street and three on the other. In the middle of the street, in between the first two restaurants was an S inside a pentagon.
“Nope,” said Maggie. “The others just happened to be closest to where Supergirl landed and started blowing her freeze breath. Klaus, you may be an expert xenobiologist, but remember not to reason past your evidence.”
Joe leaned over and sniffed Klaus’s arm. “Also, Klaus’s pot dealer is cutting product with infant dust.”
Everybody blinked.
“Maggie said, “Inf— Baby powder?”
“Yes. That. Not good for lungs to smoke such things.”
Klaus opened his mouth and closed it again.
Quickly, Maggie said, “Reynolds, what have you got?”
“Interpol recognized Detective Rogers, said he’s got a passport under the name Graham Cox. His jacket is thick. He’s suspected of money laundering and dealing in controlled substances. Not pot. Kryptonite.”
Maggie tapped her forefinger against her lip. “Cox. Why does that name sound familiar?”
Reynolds shook his head. “You’re thinking of the LCorp exec who tried to oust Lena a few years back, during the pink kryptonite fiasco. Different guy.”
“Do we know they’re not related?” asked Maggie. “I hate an unexamined coincidence.”
“I’ll check.”
Maggie turned. “Crowe, what have you got?”
“One of the names your FBI friend gave us set off all kinds of bells with my contacts at Homeland Security. They first noticed him at Charlottesville a few years back, but he was using a different name, Jason Smith instead of Vincent Scott, which we think is his real name. He is thought to be the person responsible for radicalizing 104 federal agents since he joined the FBI in 2014. Before that, he was a state cop in Michigan, turned dozens of officers there. But the difference is there he was still just focused on white versus black or brown. He joined the FBI not long after a final tweet under the old name: quote, ‘The greenies must be stopped. Hashtag Earth for humans.’”
“So where is he now?” asked Reynolds.
“Doing a quarter at Nevada State Pen. And quite likely radicalizing his fellow prisoners.”
“Lovely,” muttered Maggie. She sighed. “Joe, what have you got?”
Joe took the clicker from Reynolds and clicked through to two nearly identical figures. They looked like acoustic signals in a rainbow of colors. He explained Alien Olfactory Notation. “On right, scent profile from Mare Nectaris, the least damaged eating place. On left, scent profile from Martin Short. Joe and Reynolds interviewed him evening of arson.”
Reynolds stared, and the blood drained from his face. “The Fire Chief?”
Everyone swore loudly.
Maggie rubbed her temples and dropped into the nearest chair. Eventually, the team calmed down.
Quietly Maggie said, “This is damning, but according to the rules of evidence, it’s not conclusive.”
“So what do we do?” asked Crowe.
Maggie stood up. “We keep digging.”
///
M’gann sent out the texts and then had her cook make up a heap of sweet potato fries. The people who were coming to Dollywood to meet with her weren’t exactly the fried mozzarella types. She also made up a pitcher of Arnold Palmer, half iced tea and half lemonade. It was the middle of the afternoon and these people were taking an hour out of their professional duties to discuss the issue. Most of them were driving to get there. So alcohol was out.
J’onn arrived first and transformed into the apparent human, Hank Henshaw of the FBI in a dark suit and tie. He gave her a grin and she waved to a table in the back and had the new girl, Gina, bring the fries and pitcher. M’gann watched as Hank politely made small talk with her, putting her at ease. She smiled. You could tell an awful lot about folks by how they treated the “help.”
The next to come in was Dr. Rodak, the Fourian oncologist at the Luthor Alien Clinic. She looked exhausted, and M’gann recalled how many of their pediatric oncology patients had needed to be transferred to the Luthor Children’s Hospital across town because of the bomb. Undoubtedly this woman was spending her time driving back and forth across National City every day. Okay, maybe one Sikkarian ale for her and she’d volunteer to drive her home…
A minute later, Lena Luthor and Jess Huang came in together. It was a little odd for M’gann to see Lena and Jess in their pencil-skirted power suits and heels. Usually, she saw them in skinny jeans and leather jackets. They waved at her and immediately strode over to J’onn’s/Hank’s table just as Rodak was coming out of the ladies’ room.
M'gann led her over to her friends, dragging a chair over to the end of the booth for herself.
She made the introductions to Dr. Rodak, adding, “We also have an NCPD detective who was going to join us, but got called out for something else somewhat suddenly, so it’s just the five of us.”
Lena said, “Maggie?”
“No, Joe. He’s not psychic, but he is very well traveled through a few galaxies and has seen how these things can go on different worlds. But they are still trying to track down the arsonist and the bomber and the terrorist behind the schoolbus thing, so it sounds like the department is running on fumes.”
Lena shrugged. “At this point, bringing him in is probably a bit previous. I simply want to present my concept to see if you all think it is simply too dangerous or if there is a way to make it a safe, useful thing.”
They all nodded. Jess took out a notebook and a pen.
Lena explained her idea about reverse-engineering a psionic blocker and adding tuneability and functionality by adding a tube filled with inert gas, so that it would conduct electricity when impacted by a high-energy particle. She posited that psionic activity had an electrical component, and that they could capture that activity via a quantum conductor.
“So it wouldn’t target individuals. It would be like a heat map of the city. If we noted a high level of this energy in a small location, we would potentially have a heads-up if we had something like those aliens a few years ago whose anger and lust et cetera got transmitted across a twelve-block area.”
Dr. Rodak nodded. “I lost a patient that day, because of that. I went into a blind rage just as I was about to cut a tumor out of a patient. The malpractice suit was set aside from a legal standpoint.” She snorted. “Act of God and/or Alien Clause. But a death on your hands never goes away. If we had warning, we could reschedule such surgeries.”
Jess scribbled in her notebook. M’gann could feel the surprise coming off her and Lena in waves, surprise and certainty, especially from Lena.
“We want to save lives. But we won’t move forward on any of the steps of this project until the theory and methods have all been tested thoroughly. I have also asked the Centers for Disease Control to recommend an outside consultant to oversee our process.”
“Psionics are not a disease,” said the doctor.
“No, ma’am,” said Jess. “It’s more like the way the United Nations does election monitoring. The purpose is to keep us honest, and not get blinkered in thinking about our own work.”
Mollified, Rodak nodded.
Hank said, “Well, it seems reasonable to me, at least as a cautious start…”
M’gann nodded. “I agree. Doctor?”
She sipped her drink slowly and said, “Yes. I never want to lose a patient that way again.”
The group broke up. On his way out, Hank said, “M’gann, would you be up for a late dinner tonight? Say, 8:00? Always assuming hell doesn’t break loose?”
She laughed. “Sounds about right.”
///
Out in the prison yard, Lillian Luthor set down a tired brown yoga mat on the ground and proceeded to go through her set, from the sun salute to downward dog to standing like a mountain, turning into a tree, warrior one, warrior two, etc., etc., etc. Some of the other women prisoners laughed at her but they were likely twenty years younger than her and didn’t face the difficulty she did keeping arthritic joints loose and strong. Give them another decade or two and see if they still thought it funny.
She had a lot to think through. The Tribune had started a series of pieces—interviews, op-eds, photo-essays—about the recent domestic terrorist events. They even mentioned her… interventions… from over the past few years, and maybe it was because Cat Grant was one of the op-ed writers—
--and Cat had a loft spot for Lillian, had ever since their little pink K affair—
But somehow Lillian came out sounding, well, villainous, sure. But more humane than these more recent villain-wanna-bes. Lillian had attempted alien genocide and mass deportation, sure.
But she always targeted adult populations.
(Okay, maybe not with Medusa. She had dropped the ball there. But, to be fair, that was when she had first been unknowingly dealing with the vast hormonal shifts of menopause, and her mood swings that autumn had been off the charts. Since then, the red clover twice a day and frequent tofu (two to three times a week) had started to smooth that out and she could think more clearly more of the time. Finally.)
These people, whoever they were, were actively targeting children, between the schoolbus incident and the bombing of the Luthor Alien Clinic’s pediatric oncology wing. To her, the restaurant arsons felt separate, different. Except—
And Lillian wasn’t one to question her own reasoning, never had been. But lately…
Well, to be honest, since the Battle of National City.
It had occurred to Lillian that Lex always played chess focusing on the queen, the rook and the bishop, the pieces that moved as many squares forward as they wanted to but only in straight lines, forward, sideways or diagonal. And that led him to zoom around the board engaged in wanton destruction.
Lena, on the other hand…
Well, from the age of four, she had relied on her knight, the one that moved in small L-shaped moves, starting off in one direction and then veering unexpectedly.
And when Lillian thought about Cadmus from Lex’s point of view, big flashy kills made sense. She could see him bombing the Lionel Luthor Alien Clinic, absolutely. But the adult wings, surely. And she knew he was in contact with her Cadmus minions, so she wouldn’t put it past him… and maybe her minions had gotten the details wrong…
But the schoolbus thing was just sloppy. So what if one of her minions had decided to go rogue? And how could she find out if they were and put a stop to it from a medium security prison?
This was going to require more thought.
Chapter 18: Problems, Those Solvable and Also the Other Kind
Chapter Text
Jo Fowler, CPA, was relentlessly serious. That’s what made her good at her job. She had started her career at LuthorCorp years before, but had been poached by LordTech before Lena Luthor rebranded her company, thankfully, so she didn’t have to accept the woman’s pro-alien policies. She recognized the value of near-human aliens like the Supers, but the blues and greens, and the ones with tentacles? Yeah, no.
So at first when she was preparing the paperwork for the coming IRS audit and she had noticed cash flows going to the Alien Tactical Technology Advancement Consortium (ATTAC), she had not thought anything of it. She knew the group as a loose association of regionally based tech companies working together to develop tech to protect humans from aliens with dangerous abilities. Someone had to.
But as a matter of due diligence, she had followed a separate flow, barely a trickle really, that wended its way through minor service providers that looked suspiciously like shell companies and seemed to end at the private bank account of a private investigator who was actually a Metropolis police detective.
And that seemed… off.
But following it further was above her paygrade, so she simply wrote a memo to Max Lord and moved on to her next task.
///
The funeral, held in a rented room at the National City Royal Hotel, was small, well-attended and, from Lena Luthor’s perspective, utterly tragic. She sat in back, together with Kate Templeton and a dozen human engineers from LCorp and Winn Schott Jr.: the team that had worked against time to develop a material to protect members of the Vo’on species who had been mutilated by their planet’s ethnic cleansing before becoming refugees on Earth. The team had, in fact, succeeded eventually, but too late to save the boyfriend of Ron, one of Lena’s top engineers.
She blamed herself. Her distraction with CatCo had kept her from being more directly involved with the project. And although she knew that they would have had to have had instant success to have had any hope of saving K’Knarr—his brain tumor having been far advanced when the project started—still, Lena couldn’t help taking this on herself, one more time a Luthor caused human and alien pain.
So when the rest of the team left to return to LCorp, Lena directed Ted, her driver, to take her to CatCo, and to wait for her outside.
She pulled the key to Cat’s private elevator off her keychain, inserted it and watched the doors open. She entered and smelled Cat’s signature perfume. As she rode up, she thought, yes, this was the right moment. Things in her life were shifting. It was time she got her priorities straight.
Well, maybe not straight. But sorted out, anyway.
She strode to the open door of Cat’s office.
Cat looked up, looking pleased but wary. “Lena Luthor, to what do I owe the pleasure? Come in. Drink?”
“God, yes. It’s been a rough day.”
“Trouble with your Board?”
“Funeral of an employee’s boyfriend. Cancer.”
“Ah, I’m sorry to hear it.” She brought two glasses of scotch to her sofa and they sat down. She raised her glass. “To finding a cure.”
“Amen.” They both sipped their drinks.
“Listen, Cat, recent events have given me pause. I know you asked about buying CatCo back several weeks ago, and I’d like to give you the opportunity to buy 51%.”
“So, a controlling share, but not the whole thing.”
“It’s still a good investment for me.”
“Make it 55% and I’ll get my lawyers to put together an offer.”
“Done. And to prove that I’m in earnest about this, I believe this belongs to you.” She handed Cat the key.
“You know I have my own copy of that.”
“Of course, it’s just a symbol. But I’ve been realizing recently how powerful symbols can be.” She smiled fondly.
Cat tilted her head. “Hm, why do I have a feeling this is about your engagement to Ms. Danvers?”
“She can be surprisingly persuasive.” Lena shook her head with disbelief.
“It’s the earnestness. It’s such a rare quality these days. Well, thank you for this Lena. Both for saving my company and for giving it back to me. Also, have you given thought to where you’ll hold the wedding?”
“We’ve considered a few places, here, in Metropolis, or Midvale where the Danvers sisters are from, but all of them are problematical from different perspectives, according to our safety consultants.”
“I have an idea, an offer really, that we might potentially leverage as part of the deal for me to take back more of CatCo…”
“I’m intrigued.”
“I own a private island, about an hour from here. It’s been in my father’s family for generations, and there is a large house on one end and a tiny fishing village on the other end with a small inn. It’s lovely in summertime, and with the kind of resources at your disposal, it would be fairly easy to protect.”
“Hm. That might be a brilliant compromise. What kind of leverage are we talking here?”
“I will let you have the wedding on my land, and the bridal party can stay at the house. I will make you the offer I would make for 55% of the company and you will sell me 60%.”
“Interesting. Well, let me discuss it with Kara, and if she likes the idea, I can talk to my lawyers. Send your proposal and I’ll get back to you, hopefully, by the end of the week.”
They drained their glasses.
“Good show with asking Kara to marry you, Lena. She would have dithered too long.”
“Oh, but she asked me. Very earnestly, I can assure you.” With a winning smile, Lena swept out, but not without hearing Cat mutter, “Atta girl, Danvers!”
///
Millie Bernetti was having the time of her life, and most of it was because of the brilliant plan Kara Danvers had come up with and Lena Luthor had helped her put into place. Kara had "interviewed" Supergirl about Kryptonian foods that she missed, talked to her aunt on Argo about finding her mother's recipe crystal thing and bringing it to Earth. Then she had persuaded Lena to fund a food truck for Millie to run while she waited for the police and the insurance companies to release her restaurant and give her the money to rebuild. And she had shared her mother's recipes with Millie.
So now Millie was personally running the Kryptonian Eats truck not far from the finance district where palates were notoriously jaded and pockets were deep enough to pay the slightly higher prices required by the necessity for some fairly distantly imported ingredients. And the people of National City were literally lapping it up.
And Millie suspected that the idea had occurred to Kara after she had asked Millie to cater her wedding. And the fact that Lena had taken on a 5% share of the truck venture both to further increase the alien portion of her portfolio and to help Millie out was no small thing.
And the caramelized turnip-equivalent had been a bust, but the Kryptonian potstickers were pretty much paying for the whole venture.
///
AgentPotsticker: Game night at my place, Friday, 6:30, potluck. RSVP.
AgentBlack: Duh. Assortment of pizzas.
AgentKevlar: As you wish. Craft beer, chess.
AgentPlaidShirt: Candyland, potstickers. I'll bring Jess, too!
AgentGuardian: Winn, noooo! Not Candyland. Risk, maybe. Vodka and vermouth, olives.
AgentFastLane: Scotch and Monopoly?
AgentTwain: Clue and tequila!
AgentEmerald: Def Scotch and Monopoly or chess.
AgentEctoplasm: Candyland! My favorite! and Kryptonian potstickers!
AgentCatScratchFever: If the hospital isn't busy, but you know Friday nights...
GeneralA: I could be persuaded to take R&R, as you say. I would not know what to bring.
Kara grinned at her phone as ping after ping responded to her post. She looked down at Krypto, who lay in his bright blue dog bed chewing on a cow tendon happily. "What do you think, boy? Are we going to have fun at our festive celebration?"
And Krypto had no idea which of her friends would be coming over, because Kara's device didn't let him smell the responses, but he was "onboard" with whatever festive celebrations Kara wanted to host. He barked.
"Yes, I'll remember to pick that up right before, so it's still fresh."
And he rubbed his head against her knee affectionately. She was always thoughtful like that.
Chapter 19: Game Night, Post-Engagement
Summary:
It's the end of the semester, I am working on chapters 80-84, a bit more than a year after I wrote this, so I figured, hey, let's give them an extra chapter....
Chapter Text
James drove himself and Holtzman from work to Kara's loft, listening to her going on about the plasma rifle that she was working on and feeling pretty glad that he had joined the DEO. He was slowly getting back into photography in his time off, putting together portraits and candid shots of the aliens of National City, hoping to have enough for an exhibition that Kara and Lena had dreamed up as a fundraiser about how aliens are people too, or something like that. But tonight was downtime, although, as he realized from Holtzy's effervescent rambling, none of his friends ever fully turned off their work personae. Came with the territory, he supposed.
The Friday night traffic made him a little later than he'd meant to be, so Alex and Vasquez were already there, in their skinny jeans and plaid flannel shirts. And Lena in her skinny jeans and what appeared to be Kara's Power to the Girls sweater--
--and right there, James's brain just about shorted out from a memory of Lucy wearing his white dress shirt and nothing else--
Kara was saying, "James! Hello, James, I asked what you wanted to drink."
But Lena handed him a glass of scotch with a smirk and he took it gratefully. Krypto bounded up to him and avidly sniffed his crotch until Kara dragged him away muttering in Kryptonese. Lena laughed.
"What's so funny?" he asked, feeling the burn of the scotch in his throat.
"Kryptonese is just such a formal language. Kara just told her dog that it is impolite to sniff a person's fertile crescent."
And even he had to laugh at that. "You speak Kryptonese?"
"Among others: French, German, and Kryptonese. I can make myself understood in Italian and Russian, but I tend to get pitying looks."
Somehow he doubted that, but he nodded. "Congratulations on the engagement. I'm not surprised she said yes to you, but I never thought Kara was the marrying type."
"She asked me, actually." Eyebrow™.
And James had that awkward feeling that he would be chewing his feet all night.
Vasquez saved him by showing him the handful of Monopoly tokens. He picked the racecar. Vasquez grinned. Alex sighed, pulled out her wallet and handed her girlfriend a five-dollar bill. James rolled his eyes.
Holtzy was setting up Candyland on the floor when Winn and Jess came in hand-in-hand, and when he joined Holtzy on the floor, Jess went and got them both hard ciders and joined them.
The doorbell rang and James looked up to see Dr. Torres and General Astra, both looking wary, and he realized that neither one of them had been to a game night before. Astra was wearing her signature body suit, but the crest was covered with a cranberry MIT sweatshirt that she had presumably borrowed from Lena.
"It suits you, ma'am," he said to her.
"Well, apparently, it's a conversation starter. At the Kryptonian food truck, I got into a fascinating dialogue about theoretical physics with a young college student."
And James was used to hanging around with people who had a different education than his humanities studies, so he just gave her an easy grin.
///
Vasquez watched Alex ribbing her sister about taking the top hat (and they never bet on sure things) and she watched James notice Callie walk in wearing a scarlet v-neck shirt and tight black jeans. She walked past him as if she didn't notice his regard. Callie handed Vasquez the tequila, asking, "Does Kara even have shot glasses?"
"Doubt it, but we can look."
With her back to the gamers, Callie murmured, "El calvo, es guapo." (The bald one, he's handsome.)
"Si," replied Vasquez. "Si ese es tu tipo." (Yes, if that's your type.)
"Not yours?"
"Alex is my type."
"Hm. Half butch, half femme, jumps out of skyscrapers still shooting?"
"Yeah, you probably think that's just a story that grew in the telling, but it's 100% verifiable fact. We have surveillance footage of it actually happening. If you go down to see Pam in HR, she has authorization to show you. But it’s not for the faint-hearted. What about you?"
"All types. Men, women. Is he single?"
"Yup. He dated Lucy for a few years, back in Metropolis, Kara here for about a week, made heart eyes for Lena a while back, but she's a gold star, so yeah, no."
Callie made a purring noise and moved off to watch the Monopoly game, standing innocently behind Alex, which pretty much put her cleavage at James's eye level. Winn came to get another hard cider and saw where Vasquez was looking and saw what James kept getting distracted by.
"Are you and Alex going to bet on that?" he murmured.
"You know us better than that, Little Plaid Shirt. We never bet on sure things. Poor guy doesn't know what's about to hit him." She noticed that Winn looked relaxed, happy. "How are you and Jess doing?"
He blushed.
"Really."
"First time in years."
"Congratulations. She seems very competent and very fierce. I do like that in a woman."
"Yeah, me too. And she's very sweet. And she likes it when I do even really small things, like pull out her chair for her at a restaurant. It's crazy."
"Just follow your instincts, Winn, and you'll be just fine."
"Yeah, so do we have a decision yet on the venue? I've been running simulations for Midvale."
"We'll know for sure next week, but we're going to be keeping all of our logistics very close to the vest. It's sure to be a magnet for trouble."
"Roger that. Any reason you're not playing tonight?"
"I like watching Alex. Since she became the Director, I haven't really had a chance to just watch her. She's so beautiful, you know?"
"Yup. And you do know, right, that she's been wearing that plastic rainbow ring you got her on a chain around her neck, even when she's wearing the badass suit I made her..."
Vasquez turned to stare at him. He grinned, went back to the girls on the floor with the Candyland game, said something to them, and they both pulled out their wallets and handed him a five each. She turned back to watch Alex hit Go and collect $200, gleefully laughing. Vasquez had seen the slight bump but had not thought to ask... She would never have guessed. But that would be so Alex. She smiled. Goober.
She glanced back at Jess and Winn, who were laughing at something Holtzy was doing, maybe impressions of the DEO agents they knew. Jess couldn't take her eyes off Holtzy, and looked a little dazed. Oh, dear. That could get messy. Still, she wasn't on the clock tonight, so she could save her assessment on that for Monday morning. It would keep. That plus Callie's effect on James. She shook her head. When Alex talked about Seattle, if she wasn't revisiting her past trauma, she joked about the hormone-soaked hospital, the kind of "rest" that happened in on-call rooms, and the way that, at some point, just about everybody had slept with everybody else, even if the vast majority of the relationships had been straight. And the DEO wasn't like that, not really, although it turned out a whole lot more agents were discovering themselves to be bisexual lately. Probably it had been the pink kryptonite a few years back. She wondered if there were a way to test for long-term effects. Dammit. She went to pull a notebook out of her cargo pocket, but she was wearing skinny jeans. She pulled a paper plate from the stack and started to make a list.
Alex came up behind her to get another beer. "You're not supposed to be working." She kissed Vasquez on the back of the neck, and a shiver went down Vasquez's spine.
"Yeah, Alex, please don't start something you are not prepared to finish in your sister's bathroom."
Alex laughed and leaned against the sink. "It was just a kiss."
"You're saying a single match can't start a forest fire?"
"It would have to be very dry for that to happen."
"Don't you have a turn coming up?"
"Nah, I'm out. Bankrupt."
"You're out before James?"
"No, he's been out for a while, but I'm pretty sure he's admiring the view."
"I noticed that. There's a lot there to admire."
"James hasn't got a chance. Callie goes after what she wants with a great deal of enthusiasm."
Just then the doorbell rang and Alex trotted over to let in Maggie and Lucy, who took one look at the Monopoly game and went and joined Winn, Jess and Holtzy on the floor. Vasquez caught Lucy noticing James noticing Callie's cleavage, and Maggie noticing the dazed look on Jess's face, and getting up to get them beers.
She murmured to Vasquez, "Do you see what I'm seeing?"
"Oh, yes. Love is in the air."
"Mm. Or that other thing."
"I'm not immune either. Maybe it's just mating season for everybody?"
"Sometimes it sure feels like it." Maggie went back to the game.
Astra came over. Vasquez poured her some Aldabaran rum and she sipped it appreciatively. "Assistant Director."
"General."
"Given that watching is what you do at work, I would think you wouldn't keep watching when it is time for recreation."
"And yet, on this planet, watching stories play out is a major form of entertainment."
Astra snorted. "I do not imagine you are watching for entertainment."
Vasquez see-sawed her hand back and forth. "You know what it's like in the military, a lot of downtime, sitting around waiting. You learn to take your entertainment where you can get it. And I find, as the DEO's threat assessment officer, I like to get out ahead of..."
"Threats? I do not see anything here that constitutes a threat."
"Because you don't know most of these people. And from what I've gathered from Kara and Alura's construct, sexual attraction works a bit differently for your people."
"We try to be logical about it."
"We rarely do and even when we try, we mostly fail." Vasquez sighed.
Astra regarded her very seriously. "I know from experience that it can be difficult to be a general's mate. It requires a patience my husband, Non, did not find came naturally to him."
"What makes you think Alex requires patience?"
Astra sipped at her rum, considering the people in the room. "She is a scientist, I know. But she leads with her heart. Kara told me about her... habit of leaping from tall buildings. When she knows what she should do, she simply does it. That can take... a little getting used to."
"You're not wrong."
"I admire her greatly, you know. She is the only warrior who has ever bested me in combat."
"I admire her too. This room is full of people who admire her."
"You balance her. So, pardon me if asking this is not my place. Do you anticipate bringing Alexandra into your House? Because if and when that happens, I would be honored to be her parental support, as I will be doing for her sister."
Vasquez stared, opened her mouth and closed it again.
Astra said, "I apologize if I overstepped the mark."
"No... no, you didn't. I think she would be shocked and delighted to find that you think of her in that way. But we had... a bit of a... problem... last fall. We're only just now really working our way back to each other. So... I guess it's early days. But I will remember, if we ever get that far, and I will call you."
Astra smiled. "I admire you, as well, Assistant Director. Alexandra thinks the world of you, and I did some reading about your Marines. She could do no better for a mate than you."
And she walked away, leaving Vasquez gaping like a fish.
///
When everybody had left except Kara, Alex, Lena and Vasquez, they all plopped down on the couch, happy and tired.
Kara said, "So. Callie and James. That should be interesting to watch. What odds are you running Vasquez? Can we get in on the bet?"
Alex said, "Pfft. We don't bet on sure things."
Vasquez said, "So Alex, Astra functionally offered to walk you down the aisle if you ever marry me."
Alex spit up her beer. "Would you guys stop doing that to me! I think I wear more of my drinks these days than I drink!"
Lena laughed. "So, Kara, I was talking to Cat earlier, and she made an offer... She knew we'd be struggling to find a venue we could protect. I'll run this past you when we're alone if you'd prefer, but since these two are likely to be our security team..."
"You're not wrong," said Kara. "Out with it."
"She has a private island about an hour from here..."
Vasquez's eyes shone. "That's fucking perfect! Or... I mean it could be, if that's what you guys want..."
"She didn't give me the coordinates," said Lena.
"Well, get them as soon as you can," said Vasquez, "but I think you're right. An island could be perfect. We could bring in the Crows, with one or two of our own people, protecting our assets on an overtime basis..."
"Assets?" asked Alex.
"The Director, Supergirl, and our most valued outside collaborator."
Kara grinned. "Good old Cat. I'm assuming she's going to make you pay through the nose for it?"
"Not exactly. We can talk about that later." Lena smiled.
Vasquez said, "We could run private ferries from the coast to the island to get people there, and run land, sea and aerial surveillance and protection. It has the potential to simplify a lot of the problems I've been predicting."
Lena nodded, smiling. "I'd hoped that would be the case. So, darling, what do you think?"
"Hey, if Vasquez thinks it's a good idea, it probably is."
Alex stretched her arm out to pull Vasquez closer to her. "That's my girl."
Chapter 20: Shifting Tides
Chapter Text
On Monday morning, Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane was back, prowling through the corridors of the “Basement,” her black site that currently held a few hundred aliens and half a dozen humans, domestic terrorists all of them. She was wearing camos, carrying a file folder that had been given to her by an NCPD detective, Science Division—
And the memory of Maggie Sawyer choosing to play Candyland with Winn, Jess and Holtzy rather than joining in at Monopoly (“with the big kids, because, duh, Little Luthor will wipe the floor with all of us”) tugged Lucy’s grim look into a very tiny smile.
The folder contained bank records of cashflows from LordTech and five other National City tech companies, each just a trickle really, but tracing the trickles back through small shell companies had led her to the wellspring that was their source, ATTAC. And an email to her most recent human "guest" from one of the CEOs (not Max Lord) read, “Let me know when it’s done. No payment without results." That email and the reply to it, “Don’t use this address,” had both been sent the night before the Alien Alley arson fires. Coincidence? Lucy didn’t think so any more than Maggie had—
And Lucy’s memory of after game night, with Maggie driving back to her apartment as Lucy slowly unbuttoned the twenty small buttons of her own shirt with Maggie gripping the steering wheel, ripping into the parking spot across the street from her apartment, grabbing Lucy’s hand and dragging her into the (thankfully empty) elevator, kissing her face and her throat and the tops of her breasts just showing above the lacy black bra and dragging her by the hand (past a very surprised female neighbor) into her apartment, pushing Lucy up against the door as it closed behind them, tearing the unbuttoned shirt off her as Lucy moaned under her mouth--
Outside the prisoner’s cell, Lucy leaned one hand against the wall, pulling herself together. She couldn’t let two days of enthusiastic sex distract her from her duty to safeguard American lives, human and alien. She had a job to do. Lucy Lane was very good at her job.
Well, she was good at a lot of things, as Maggie knew very, very well. Some of them were weekend things and some were not. And today was Monday, so Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane got on with her work.
///
When Detective Reynolds got to the precinct on Monday morning carrying two paper cups of coffee, he saw his partner Detective Sawyer already in front of the murder board that was actually three whiteboards side by side, each one dedicated to the school bus incident, the hospital bombing, and the Alien Alley arson, respectively. The photos taped to the boards were grim, the damage to life and property, nasty.
Yet Maggie was standing there, arms crossed in front of her, staring at the boards with a small smile on her lips.
Reynolds had known Maggie for years. Professionally, she was as good as they came. Personally, well… Her last successful relationship had been with the rich little butch back in Gotham before he knew her. Then two years ago that hot federal agent had fallen for Maggie, and Maggie for some reason had not tapped that and the woman who had was enjoying a great relationship with her and making Maggie question everything she thought she knew about being a lesbian.
And then a hot soldier had marched into her life and changed everything. Reynolds knew that most people couldn’t make a long-distance relationship work because most people were clingy and needed constant affection and a reassuring presence. Maggie was not and did not. Maggie needed to do her job and have an occasional weekend spent in bed with a hot soldier, like Lucy Lane.
Reynolds set down one of the coffee cups on the desk behind her, smiling. It was good to see her happy.
///
Jess, as always, got to LCorp ten minutes before eight, leaving the mail on Lena’s pristine white desk, distracted by the sight out the window of the sun peaking out from behind a cloud. She felt a bit like that. The earnest conversation she had had with Winn Wednesday night about where their relationship was going had surprised her, as she hadn’t really given it any thought. She knew she worked well with him, both in planning for Lena’s wedding and in supporting his tech work on Lena’s projects. She enjoyed their occasional dates. He was fun, a good conversationalist and a gentleman. Her cats liked him. The sex hadn’t been bad, just different. In the past the men she had been with had been tigers. Winn was more like a big puppy. He was warm and sweet, if a little shy, but eager to please…
“Jess?” said Lena, breaking into her fog.
Jess jumped. “Oh! Sorry, Lena. Lost in thought. I’ll have your agenda ready in ten minutes. Wow, I lost track of time.”
“You’re allowed to be human, Jess.”
“You’ve really never met my parents, have you?”
“No, but you’ve met mine, so you know that I know how it can be when people have pushed you all your life. Anything I can help with?”
“How do you know when a relationship is right?”
“Well, the first step is to make sure it’s not wrong. But if you mean the love of your life?”
Jess nodded.
“When Kara Danvers walked into this office two years ago, I felt like I recognized her, almost on a cellular level. I just really wanted to get to know her. I still feel like that. Don’t know if that helps. Is this Winn we’re talking about?”
“Yeah, so I slept with him last week.”
“You don’t seem happy about it…”
“I just thought I’d feel something. More excitement or, I don’t know. And I really shouldn’t be having this conversation with my boss! Sorry, sorry. I’ll go get your agenda!” She moved to leave.
Lena put her hand on Jess’s arm, pulled her back. “Jess, we’ve known each other for a long time. I hope you consider me a friend, not just your boss. If you need to talk about this, any meetings I have for this morning can bloody well wait.”
Jess was torn.
Lena said, “Come, sit down. What is it?”
They sat on the white couch. Jess asked, “You’ve always been gay, right?”
“Queer as a three-dollar bill. I had my first crush in kindergarten, a girl called Jocelyn with blonde hair and blue eyes, hated dresses. She let me keep her small stuffed hippo in my desk after one of the boys was bullying me.”
“I think I may be less straight than I thought.” Jess was surprised to hear herself say it. “Oh, my heavens.”
Lena stood and poured Jess a single finger of scotch and handed her the glass.
“Lena, it’s eight o’clock in the morning!”
“And you’ve just had a bit of a shock. Jess, think about the women we know: Alex, Kara, Lucy. They all figured themselves out a bit late too. Alex completely freaked out, which, given the compulsory heteronormativity of our society, isn’t an unrealistic reaction, sadly.”
Jess drank the scotch down and winced at the burn.
“Can I ask who?” asked Lena.
Jess sighed. “Holtzman. I have never in my life met anyone like her. She’s fascinating. She says the most ridiculous things. And I think she might have been flirting with me at game night. And I’m pretty sure Winn didn’t even notice.”
“But you did.”
“I felt things I never have before… I forgot the rules of the game we were playing.”
“Desire can do that.”
“It was freakin’ Candyland, Lena, not Texas Hold-em!”
Lena laughed and pulled Jess into a light hug. “Do you need the day off to work through this?”
“No, I can do my job. I’ll be glad to be distracted. I know that thing you talk about, taking time to work on something that isn’t the project to incubate your ideas… Maybe my brain will solve this for me in the background while I work.”
“Does it need to be solved?”
“I’m working closely with Winn on the wedding plans, Lena. It’s going to be all kinds of awkward. Last week we took things to the next level, and now I’m contemplating breaking up with him to pursue something with another woman."
She stopped short. "Oh shit! I am?”
“Apparently,” said Lena wryly.
Jess felt chagrined. “What do I doooo?”
Lena laughed gently. “When is the next time you expect to see him?”
“We were going to meet this Thursday, to work on the security for the venue.”
“So you have a few days to think about it. I’ll talk to Kara about her meeting with you, maybe with Vasquez as well, so at least you won’t have to be alone with him until you figure out what you want to do.”
Quietly, Jess said, “I’m pretty sure I know what I want to do.”
“Holtzman. Well, Jess, I’ve never known you to dilly-dally. But take a little time to be sure, and then if that is what you want, I will help you with the fallout.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“He’s tougher than he looks.”
“Somehow, I kind of doubt that. He hasn’t had an easy life.”
“And that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Lena looked at her watch. “Eight-thirty. Cancel my meeting with Martin and then just shift everything forward a bit. He just wants hand-holding, and I don’t have time for that.”
“But isn’t that what you’ve just been doing for me?”
“And I reserve the right to decide whose hand I will hold, and one of those people will always be you. Now, shoo. I’ve got to look at the financials before my 9:00.”
And Jess returned to her desk feeling like she’d just been turned upside down, like the sky was green, the grass blue, like it had always been that way and she just hadn’t been able to see it before. Holy mackerel.
///
Finn and Holtzman lined up with the rest of the Blaster Lance Squad, under the direction of, well, the Director and went through the form Astra had taught them with speed and precision. Finn could see the general smiling, apparently despite herself. He kept his expression neutral, executing the sweeps, strikes and shots automatically while also trying to figure out how to help his friend not antagonize their commanding officers by hurting another DEO agent. It didn’t help that Holtzy held Agent Schott in high regard, both personally and professionally.
He just didn’t see how it could work, and as he had already told her, sabotaging herself at the DEO would mean losing access to what she liked to refer to as its “seriously sick tech” and her lab space. He told her that sometimes you have to just walk away, that you couldn’t have both love where you were trying to build your career, at least not in his experience. He told her that the more impressive a woman was at her job, the less likely she was to cheat in her love life or to put up with someone cutting corners.
What he had told her, he deeply believed, and he knew that she could tell. He also knew that she was probably going to ignore all of his well-meant and hard-won good advice. But at the end of the lance form, he snapped to attention, realizing that maybe he should follow his own advice and find a hobby, or try dating again, but definitely outside of work. He certainly wasn’t going to find the love of his life at the DEO. He really wanted to find a straight girl, and he was pretty sure the DEO didn’t have any left.
///
Astra watched “her” troops with great pride. They had not grown soft, as she had feared, and Alexandra led them well. As they finished the form and snapped to attention, Astra said, “I commend you, Director. They have excellent form.”
“Thank you, General Astra,” said Alex. Turning back to the squad she shouted, “Dismissed!”
As the troops went back to the armory, Alex led Astra back to her office. “How is it going with Kara?”
“She has taken copious notes on everything, and asked me my opinion about blending some Earth traditions, especially into the public ceremony, but as I told her, the engagement is the crucial thing, and she described that she did everything as closely to tradition as possible, even including the custard, which I would not have thought she would have remembered. She was so young when she left.”
“I think Kal-El’s wedding this summer brought a lot back."
"So she said. I also mentioned to her that everything I told her, she could have gotten from her mother's construct."
"Yeah, Myriad was... complicated. And you're real. She wanted a real connection for this."
"Understood." Astra smiled. "Well, it has been a pleasant holiday, but I don't like being away from Argo for too long. The Council will be voting on some contentious issues soon."
"We were really glad you could come. It's good to see you, Astra."
"And you, Alexandra. You will grow to fill this role. I have great faith in you." And she opened her arms and Alex stepped into an embrace. "Also, I have introduced this hugging to Argo. It brings great comfort in these trying times. Farewell!"
///
After securing his lance blaster in the armory, Finn forced himself to go up to the command center and watch General Astra hug Director Danvers and then wave goodbye to her from the elevator. Finn approached the Director, saying, "Ma'am, I think we have a problem."
Alex put her hands on her hips. "Strategic? Logistic?"
"Personnel."
"Let's go to my office."
Chapter 21: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...
Chapter Text
Down in the DEO gym, James was teaching Winn a karate form, but Winn kept messing up, blocking down instead of up, turning left instead of right. Finally, James said, "Hey, Winn, get your head in the game. What is with you?"
Winn sighed. "Woman troubles. It's not important."
"I thought you guys were solid. Did you have that conversation about taking it to the next level?"
"Oh, we did."
"And did she not want to?"
"Oh, she did, although she seemed surprised when I mentioned it, but I mean we've been together for more than a year, and I know we've had alien invasions, and I don't see her as often as I'd like, but seriously, dude, I was beginning to think that she was asexual. And that would be fine. I value her as a friend. I do."
"But? Did you?"
"Yeah. Wednesday night."
"And your performance was..."
"Fine! It was fine. But then after game night, I drove her home and I asked if I could come up and she said she was tired."
"Dude, sometimes women are genuinely tired."
"I know. But it didn't feel like that." He sighed. "Anyway, what about you? That hot doctor is into you."
"What? Dr. Torres? Nah, she's just friendly."
"Is that what they're calling it now? She couldn't take her eyes off you."
"Yeah, great, watching me get bankrupted by the great Lena Luthor."
"Yeah, but Lena beats everybody at Monopoly."
"True," James sighed. "So... you're really not up for this today."
"I'm really not. I want to learn it, I just..."
"What we need to do is have a Bro Night: Call of Duty, pizza, beer."
"Or tequila shots."
"Or that." James grinned. "Take our minds off the inexplicable female mind."
"I'm in."
///
On Monday night, Vasquez offered to cook dinner for Alex at her own place and Alex was so busy sorting out detail schedules on her tablet that all she said was, "Great. But no kale," as if Vasquez had ever committed that particular dating faux pas.
Vasquez drove them back to her place in her Beetle, trying to remember what groceries she actually had in her pantry, and assuming some version of spaghetti would be the answer. It was clear that Alex would hardly notice, but that had been their new normal. They had had sex Friday night after game night, but then Alex had fallen into such a deep sleep that Vasquez had had to hold her pee for an hour longer than might have been ideal. When Alex finally rolled over, Vasquez ran to the bathroom, relieved herself, and then set up the coffee for the next morning.
When she returned to bed, Alex had been whimpering in her sleep, which Vasquez assumed was her remembering the airplane crash where she had lost her lover and her love of medicine. She curled up around her, stroking her back and her hair and murmuring things meant to calm the hurt and anneal the broken places. Alex had awoken the next morning seemingly unaware of her trauma throughout the night, and Vasquez just went with it.
On Saturday, they had cleaned Vasquez's apartment, gone grocery shopping, and in the late afternoon, gone with Kara and Lena to taste-test wedding cakes. To Alex's surprise, but not Vasquez's, the human caterers' offerings had been boring. Artzy, the fellow at Jupiter's Feast, one of the burned-down alien businesses, had wowed them. His cake had been lighter, softer, sweeter and more flavor-forward (a term Kara had learned in her restaurant review training) than anything else they had tasted. Kara had insisted on introducing Artzy to Fleur and getting them to collaborate on an orange-nimqua-chocolate-mousse layered cake, and although Vasquez still couldn't figure out what nimqua was, she knew she liked it, so she approved the idea.
On Sunday, Alex had been restless, so they went to a climbing gym and pitted themselves against each other, and although Vasquez had beaten Alex seven times out of ten, when they got back to Alex's apartment and ordered pizza, Alex had stripped Vasquez of her climbing gear and given her at least two orgasms (Vasquez was fuzzy on that) before wrapping herself in her terrycloth robe to receive the pizzas from Jess, the pizza delivery guy.
Then she had insisted on playing strip Scrabble, but Vasquez, already tired, pointed out that they were both already naked and very hungry, so Alex had simply said, "Fine. Raincheck. Next weekend." She crossed her fingers and added, "If the good Lord's willing and the aliens don't get in the way..."
Vasquez just laughed. She had never dated anyone even the slightest bit like Alex Danvers. Her mind drifted back to what Astra had offered, visualized for the slightest moment Astra walking Alex up the aisle with Eliza on her other arm and J'onn Jonzz walking a half step behind.
Maybe.
Maybe someday.
It probably wouldn't ever happen because, in her life, things like that never did. But just...
Maybe.
///
On Monday night, James had just ridden his motorcycle out of the DEO on his way to pick up tequila for Bros’ Night, when he encountered a rain of shit from the sky, causing his bike to slide across the street. Suddenly he was lying on the edge of the road in great pain. Above him, a large blue dog flew down to sniff him while bystanders called 911.
In his ear, the comms were calling him in for duty. Still wearing his helmet, he said, “Sorry, Alex, no can do. I’m benched. MVA, broken arm, I think. And those damn flying dogs are back.”
He could hear sirens going off all over town and it was the Alien Ambulance Corps that picked him up and took him to the Luthor Alien Clinic for some reason.
He kept saying, “My bike! My bike!” But no one paid attention to him, too busy cutting his leather jacket off him to assess the damage to his arm. He didn’t even know when they’d taken his helmet off or put the cervical collar on him. He was vaguely aware of an IV being put into one arm while a portable X-ray machine was brought over to the other, and then he was looking up into the beautiful face of Callie Torres.
“James Olsen, what are you doing here, of all places?”
“No idea,” he grunted. “And what about my bike?”
She stared at him and then burst into a peal of laughter. “Sorry, sorry! It’s just that ‘ma’bai’ik’ is Infernian for alien.”
Of course it was, thought James.
///
Winn picked up the pizzas on his way home and pulled up Call of Duty on his gaming system. When James hadn’t shown up in half an hour, he texted.
ForTheWinn: Dude, where are U? Pizza’s getting cold.
Fifteen minutes later, he called Vasquez. “Hey, Vas, have you seen James? Did he get called back at the last minute?”
“Yes and no. The flying dogs are back, but James had an accident, we think just a broken arm from what Callie said—”
“Wait, why is Callie—”
“Long story. Amusing misunderstanding. He’s fine but they’re holding him for observation. His helmet took a beating. Look, you need to set your alarm, take a nap and get your ass back here by midnight. With the flu going around, we’re understaffed for this, so there’ll be overtime.”
And Winn had only been an agent for two years, but he’d learned to sleep on command.
///
Kara Danvers, mild-mannered reporter, was carrying a very large umbrella and walking her dog Monday evening over in Snopes Park when several blue dogs with small wings landed to sniff Krypto and exchange barks.
The blue dogs sounded disbelieving, but Krypto could be very persuasive. With any luck, thought Kara, there would soon be increased sales of large litterboxes in the city.
Sometimes being a superhero really wasn’t about pounding people.
///
Eliza stood in the line outside Baker Hall, five feet behind the two masked undergraduate roommates having a muffled but annoyed conversation about, apparently, their third roommate who never washed her dishes. Standing behind Eliza stood an older masked man flipping through his phone with irritation. Eliza sighed. Three months into “these unprecedented times,” everybody was cranky, but at least the undergrads and the old guy probably weren’t having hot flashes.
The line moved slowly. On the one hand, she really wanted to get to her lab and check on the most recent results that her post-doc had emailed her about. On the other hand, having a nurse insert a long swab into her brain was not something she was exactly in a hurry for. She pulled out her own phone and went to Instagram and flipped through the feed. One of her collaborators at Harvard had seen a small flock of wild turkeys on his daily sanity walk in his neighborhood. Kara had shared a picture of Krypto sniffing flowers in the park by Kara’s apartment. M’gann had posted a series of beers made by alien brewers in California and was basically advertising a “So Near and Yet So Far” six-beer flight (3 oz each ) for $20. Bride Magazine was posting about “Your Covid Wedding,” which included information about how to make sure your guests either got tested or you tested them yourself, which seemed unlikely, and how you should have a Covid Compliance Officer, maybe one of the wedding party, who was in charge of enforcing masks, wiping down surfaces etc. Eliza sent the post to Kara.
She got to the front of the line and filled out the attestation form, got skewered and put her mask back on to hurry across the quad to her office, where two grad students were gushing over a third’s engagement ring, and how enormous the diamond was.
“Oh, hey, Professor Danvers,” squeeled Anya, who was otherwise a usually very serious young woman. “Didja see Maya’s engagement ring? Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Very nice, Maya. Actually, my daughter just got engaged too a week or so ago.”
“Yeah, what was her ring like?”
“Oh, she asked her girlfriend, so I don’t know if they’ve gotten around to getting rings yet, or even how that works with lesbian relationships,” Eliza hedged. Kara had explained about bracelets, to Eliza’s great disappointment. Apparently, the girls were having them custom-made for each other. At least she was pretty sure that Lena would wear a dress; since Clark’s wedding, Eliza really didn’t know what Kara was likely to do. But whenever Eliza saw a picture of a good wedding dress, something to show off Lena’s shoulders, she cut it out of the bridal magazine she had subscribed to and stuck it into a small scrapbook. Not that those two would think to ask for her advice, but if they did, she would be ready. After all, she couldn’t imagine Lillian Luthor stepping up, and who else did they have?
“All right, ladies. Let’s get back to work. Show me your test results.”
///
On Tuesday morning, Finn and Holtzman and two new transfers from Metropolis drove a black SUV out to Nevada to deposit the geneticist owner of the dog kennel for holding, questioning, etc. Alex had been a little unclear on what the law was about genetically engineering Earth animals, but she said Lucy would know. Finn assumed that she was taking advantage of the situation to get Holtzy out of National City for a few days, and although he felt a trifle guilty for telling on his fellow agent, he was grateful that Director Danvers was being circumspect. She had simply said that Lt. Colonel Lane wanted to consult them on the expansion of the Nevada site, Finn because of his experience at the containment site back in Sunnydale and Holtzman because of her experience containing poltergeists in New York. Alex was nothing if not resourceful.
///
Tuesday afternoon, Callie Torres told James Olsen he could go home, and if she flirted with him a little while she was signing his discharge papers, the nurses didn’t call her on it. Increased self-esteem could only help bones heal, after all. He had told her about his photography and when she showed interest in the upcoming alien exhibit, she’d asked for his card and promised to check out his online portfolio. She had seen him without his shirt while she had been casting his arm and he was in phenomenal shape. It had been a few years since she’d slept with a man, and he was pure prime rib, with a slow, easy smile. She definitely had to find a way to tap that.
///
“Dude,” said Winn as he drove a battered James home. “I’m telling you she’s into you.”
James leaned his head against the headrest, enjoying the aroma rising from the pizza boxes on his lap. “Maybe. But isn’t she a lesbian?”
“Bi, from what Alex said.”
“Have you talked to Jess yet?”
“No, because I got called to be on nightshift last night, and I crashed at the barracks this morning and when I woke up you called me to come get you. It can wait. Bro Night comes first.”
James laughed and then winced.
“Did she give you any pain meds?”
“Nope. Doesn’t matter. The tequila should do the trick.”
When they got to James’s apartment, his battered motorcycle was parked outside, but Winn discouraged him from looking at the damage until after he got some pizza into him. “Disappointment and hospital food don’t mix. Besides, your insurance should cover it.”
Winn got Call of Duty up on James’s console and pulled the tequila off James’s fridge. “Dude, where are your shot glasses?”
“Damned if I know. Just use the lowballs in the cabinet.”
And in retrospect, Winn thought much, much later, that had not actually been one of their better ideas.
Chapter 22: C-c-consequences
Chapter Text
On Wednesday morning, Jess came into the DEO to meet with Kara and Winn in one of the conference rooms. The previous day, Supergirl had flown to Cat’s island and taken pictures from above and on the ground with her phone. Cat had emailed a map and the layout of her house and property. Kara and Jess discussed how many people they could fit in the house, where they could park vehicles.
Jess said, “So you guys are going to have to consider the size of your wedding party, start putting together your guest list. The more people you invite, the harder it will be to protect everybody if things go wrong.”
“When,” muttered Kara. “When they go wrong.” She looked over at Winn who was working on his tablet, wincing. “You okay over there, Winn?”
“Yeah, just a headache. It’s fine. Look, it sounds like you guys got this. I’ve got some work I have to do at my station.” Winn sat at his station, head pounding and unable to think. He didn't know how it had happened.
Well, he did.
Tequila.
Obviously.
So he could explain the hangover.
And maybe that explained the rest of it too: how he had woken up, naked, in James's bed, opening his eyes to see the empty tequila bottle on the floor and James's hand--
Well. That had woken him up fast.
The sun hadn't quite risen yet, so he'd scrambled in the dark for his clothes and gotten dressed in the bathroom. He contemplated leaving a note, but what on Earth could he possibly say?
That was great. Call me?
I'm sorry. Don't hate me?
Epic mistake or true love--you decide?
So he just slipped out the door, drove home to shower and change and tuck a bottle of aspirin in his jacket pocket.
Jess was already at the DEO when he got here at eight o'clock and he could barely look her in the eye. He had cheated on his girlfriend with his best friend. Everybody was going to want to kill him.
He wondered if the Metropolis DEO had openings.
///
Lucy Lane had been the one to recommend to Alex a short-term solution to her personnel problem, telling her that she had truly been thinking about asking for these two agents for a while, but hadn't since she knew Alex was short-handed due to illness. They were in the conference room with the DEO architect and builders, consulting while Lucy sat in her office, digging through her stack of law books, looking for precedents in the flying dog case. She knew for sure she had the man on not picking up after his dogs, but you couldn't hold a person at a black site for that. National City probably had laws about the maximum number of animals allowed in a residence, but ditto. Currently, she was waiting for Dr. Hamilton to get back to her on the dogs they had confiscated, doing an exam, getting X-rays, blood samples, genetic testing. Kara had reported that they seemed happy enough and she was letting Krypto get to know them, although Lucy wasn't clear on how that would get them any more information than they already had, when she mentioned her doubts to Alex, she just sighed, saying, "Seriously, Lu? It's Kara. Just trust her."
"But can they communicate with each other?"
"Can neither confirm nor deny. But I've asked M'gann to come in, to see if she can sense anything."
"So it's a waiting game."
"It always is."
///
After a raft of meetings, Lena did one thing she was dreading and another thing she'd been looking forward to. She emailed Winn, asking him to come to LCorp and help her with a device she was working on. Then she called Sam Arias.
"Lena! It's great to hear from you! What's up?"
"Well, Sam, I'm engaged. To Kara Danvers."
"Holy mackerel! That's amazing! Who asked who?"
"She asked me. Spent several hours making her case, actually. She was very earnest."
"Wow. Didn't you always say you'd never marry?"
"Well, yes, because I never thought it would be legal, and by the time it was, I was pretty much a pariah because of Lex, so I never really had relationships. But Kara is a ray of sunshine, and I have needed that in my life for so long..."
"Do you have a date and place?"
"Not yet, but Sam, I have to ask, would you be willing to be one of my bridesmaids? I promise we won't make you wear anything you hate."
"Wow, Lena. I'd be honored."
"And do you think Ruby would be willing to be a flower girl?"
"I'm pretty sure she'd love to, especially since it's for you two."
"So what about you, Sam? Are you seeing anyone? Wasn't there a banker?"
"Yeah, no. He and I didn't work out. But there is... someone. An engineer."
"What type of engineering does he do?"
"Yeah, that. Um, actually, that's kind of something I've been meaning to call you about."
"Does he work at LCorp?"
"Um, yes. Yes. Uh. She does. Her name is Sylvia."
"Breckinridge?"
"Yes. Um."
"She's brilliant. Made some great inroads into nano-processing last year."
"Lena, you're ignoring the elephant on the phone."
"No, Sam, I'm not. I would have thought that after the Pink Kryptonite incident a while back people wouldn't be so surprised when they discover they're not who they thought they were. But I'm happy for you. She's quite a catch. As are you."
"Thanks. Ruby is happy too. She pretty much thought I was gay back during, well, you know. Mainly because just about all my friends seemed to be gay."
"Yeah, I remember a time when just about everyone I knew was straight. Not anymore. Oh, and speaking of that, I have a meeting quite soon. I'll get back to you with the date. And I'll email Ruby to ask her."
"Ciao."
Jess was standing in Lena's doorway holding her tablet. "So, did she say yes?"
"She did. Wait, how did you know what I was going to ask her?"
"Because you need a Maid of Honor and of course it would be her." She checked something off her list.
"Actually, Jess, I was really hoping that you would play that role."
Jess nearly dropped her tablet.
"Don't look so surprised. After Kara, you are my best friend. You know me better than anyone and you always, always have my back. I want you to stand up with me."
Tears flowed from Jess's eyes and she opened and closed her mouth a few times before she could remember how to pronounce, "Yes!"
"Excellent! I thought I'd ask Cat Grant to be another bridesmaid. What do you think? She's always been so supportive..."
"She'll say yes. Even if she didn't have immense respect for you, and I know she does, she'd want to see Kara and you get married."
"Excellent. I'll call her next. Um, so Winn is coming over soon to help me miniaturize one of my devices, but I've emailed you a list from the doctors at the clinic, innovations they're wishing for, biomedical devices. I want us to be more proactive than we were about that material. Can you go around to the heads of R&D and show them the list and get a sense of which projects might be more or less feasible?"
"I'm on it."
"Thank you."
And that ensured that when Winn arrived at her office, Jess was elsewhere in the building and would be for quite a while. Lena showed Winn the plan she had sketched out and the prototype for the portable black body field generator they had been working together on for over a year, with little progress.
He looked at the plan and shook his head, wincing. "Maybe electromagnets? They've been working on using them for a drug delivery device at MIT. The magnets create a small on-off switch... Sorry, Lena, I'm not at my best today."
"Anything wrong, Winn?"
"No, not exactly. I've just made a few bad decisions in the last day or two and I'm trying to figure out if I can fix them or not, and I've got the hangover from hell. I haven't gotten that drunk since He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named..."
"I'm assuming the alcohol led to the bad decisions?"
"Tequila. Pretty sure it never leads to good decisions."
"Ah, no. Not in my experience. Is there anything I can do to help?"
He sighed gustily. "Do you have a job in another city for a guy with my qualifications?"
"That bad?"
"Just about. Or possibly worse. I really don't know."
"Have you talked to whoever is involved in the problem?"
"It's more than one person, differently involved. And you know how tight our friend group is. Things were all kinds of awkward after the Alex/Vasquez thing, and Alex was offworld when it happened, or, well, on a different Earth, so at least that part of it was contained. This is going to be messy, and I'm afraid people will take sides, and hell, I wouldn't take my side, so I really can't expect anyone else to."
"And you don't think you can fix it?"
"Oh, I don't know. In the real world you can tear down a burned bridge and rebuild. But in life..."
"Which is not part of the real world?"
"Well, the metaphor is more malleable than the way we use it is."
"Ah, well. Do note that the Alex/Vasquez thing did work out. Eventually. Also, our friends are the kinds of people for whom a heartfelt apology and visible efforts to change can go a long way."
He nodded sadly. "I know. But how can you change who you are?"
And he left then, but Lena had often seen him looking at James at game nights, and she had wondered about that relationship, because James gave every sign of being 100% straight, if not more. And she'd often thought that Winn... probably wasn't. And she didn't imagine James could change that part of himself, even if he'd wanted to.
Poor Winn. She'd fallen for straight girls a time or two. She didn't envy him his dilemma.
Chapter 23: Damage Control
Chapter Text
Callie Torres had had a long damn day. A fire in a factory had claimed two lives and taken down four firefighters, three of whom had broken multiple bones when the floor they were standing on had collapsed into the floor below. One of them had been human and was taken to NCGH. The other three, two Infernians and one they had yet to identify were brought to the Luthor Alien Clinic. The Infernians weren't a problem. X-rays worked on them just fine. The other creature was too solid for the radiation to penetrate, and she was afraid that even if they found a way to identify the kind of damage it had experienced, they would have no way of cutting into its body to go in and fix it. On a hunch, she had tried exposing it to red sunlight, which had allowed her to palpate and eventually use lasers to cut into the creature's abdomen and melt the broken "bones" back together.
They really needed more information on the different kinds of aliens they might have to work on. She hated having to fake it when lives were on the line.
When she finally was able to change out of scrubs and into street clothes, she wanted nothing more than a drink and a talk with someone who might know more about xenobiology than she did, so she headed out to Dollywood.
M'gann saw her enter and poured her a double scotch straight up.
"You are a lifesaver," said Callie, handing M'gann her card. "Start me a tab and keep 'em coming. I can get a Lyft home. I've got tomorrow off for a change."
M'gann did that and then handed her back her card. "I sense you've got questions."
"Mm. I do. And what I'm about to do is probably going to be breaking some medical privacy laws, but if I don't figure out what kind of alien this is, and how to treat it? It might die. So I'm going with Do No Harm." She pulled out her phone and showed M'gann a picture of a green biped with two arms with seven fingers on each arm, and tufts behind it's sort-of catlike ears.
"Oh, I haven't seen a L'vernian in a coon's age. They're a bit like Earth armadillos, skin is a kind of armor, their structural bits are some sort of metal, and their blood is very high in, what's the word, vitamin C."
"That's... remarkably specific and a little odd."
"They're a bit like Infernians, in that fire can't touch them. No laser vision, but they're generally very strong."
"Well that part fits. He was a firefighter. Is a firefighter."
"She. They're all female, reproduce by themselves."
"I couldn't X-ray her, but with red sunlight, I was able to cut and go in to make repairs."
"Their system has a red sun. Good guess."
"I was scrambling for anything, to be honest."
"I think I'd be terrified to have someone's life in my hands like that," said M'gann.
"It's a huge adrenalin rush. Well, the good days are. The bad days..." Callie sighed and looked around. "Small crowd today."
"Midweek is usually slow. But I get semi-regulars like you, and regulars like James over there."
"James..." Callie purred. "Is he with anyone?"
"Nope. Head on over. I'll bring refreshes for you both in a sec."
Callie normally strode through the hospital. She was a big woman and she had things to do. She felt a bit like that meme of Anne Lister/Gentleman Jack ,"Move! I'm gay!" But she was also a Latina and a bit of a jaguar. So she insinuated herself between the small knots of people at Dollywood until she stood at the table where James was staring into a glass of scotch with a frowning intensity.
"Can anybody join?" asked Callie, "or would you like to be alone with that?"
He gestured loosely. "Join."
"So I just by-guess-and-by-Godded my way through an emergency surgery on an alien I have never seen or heard of in my life, and by some miracle of great proportions guessed right and maybe, probably, possibly saved her life. Apparently."
"Congratulations."
"So, I'm wondering, do you know how I could get Dr. Hamilton to come on as a regular consultant at the Clinic until we are way more up to speed on the different kinds of aliens?"
"Hm. Talk to Director Danvers. I'm sure there is a protocol for that."
"Excellent." She sipped her scotch. "Taken any interesting pictures lately?"
"God, no. Sometimes life... gets in the way of art."
"Yeah, sometimes life gets in the way of life."
"You got that right."
"So you're DEO now. But didn't you used to be a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist?"
He sighed. "I've been a few things over the years. I'm still trying to figure out..."
"Who you are?"
"Who I am? What I am? Oh, yeah. That. Did you always want to be a surgeon?"
"Just about. I had a year when I wanted to be circus or zoo vet, and one summer when I wanted to be a flamenco dancer. And in high school I did a lot of musical theater, but it's not like you can exactly make a living at that unless you're really lucky. Medicine just requires endless, grueling hard work."
"Yeah, the DEO's a bit like that, as it turns out."
"That and other ways... Lois and Clark's wedding was a bit of a revelation."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, all of those time changes, with different people pairing up and sleeping together in different combinations, if what those Legend folks had to say was true."
He looked away.
"Wait, did you have some kind of awkward...?"
"I've heard you're bi. Maybe I shouldn't ask about that..."
She shrugged. "I don't hide it."
"So, how does that... work?"
"Have you heard the line 'It's the hearts, not the parts'?"
"Yeah, but um, aren't the parts kinda the point?"
"Not to me. And I'll be honest, it hit me like a ton of bricks when it happened. I was stunned, groping. But it was also very freeing, to just be a bigger version of myself." She laughed and patted her own butt. "Well, not bigger physically, but like mentally, I suddenly could take up more space in my own head? I'm not explaining this very well. But sometimes I had felt, in the past, that I was constraining myself, and I didn't know why, and it felt like it mattered, like the whole question was dangerous, but I didn't know what the question was."
"Yeah, but being a black man in America, constraining yourself can save your life."
"Yeah, being a Latina can be the same. And the ironic part is that I'm half Irish."
"Wow. But one drop, man. Nobody sees the other bits."
M'gann brought them fresh drinks, took their empty glasses.
"So you're asking about bisexuality. I'm assuming this isn't an academic discussion."
"God, I wish it was."
"So... How can I help?"
"I dunno. I have this friend..."
"And not normally with benefits."
"God, no."
"And not one of your women friends."
"And I don't know what to do."
"Because you're attracted to him?"
"Because. Yeah, no. Maybe. I don't know."
"Because you slept with him."
"Tequila was involved."
"Ouch. Been there. Done that. So, Winn?"
"Wait, how--"
"Do you have any other male friends? I feel like the DEO is 97% lesbians."
"Well. Maybe 45%."
Callie ran through the list of DEO agents she had met in her head. "Finn?"
"What? No, he's straighter than I-- Oh."
"So it is Winn. Because I've got pretty good gaydar, and I'm fairly sure that J'onn is very straight and has a thing for M'gann."
"I don't know what to do."
"What's your first instinct?"
"Honestly, join the French Foreign Legion."
"Fair enough. Do you actually speak French?"
"No."
"So probably that option is out. What is your second instinct?"
"Go back to the Nevada base. Although my ex runs it, so..."
"Wait, Lucy Lane?"
"Yeah..."
"How did you go from that hot Latina to, well, the DEO's hobbit?"
"You have met Maggie Sawyer, Lucy's girlfriend?"
"Oh. Yes. That. Right. Ouch."
"So how do I know?"
"Know what, which exactly?"
"If I'm gay or bi or straight but confused?"
"Well, what I did after I slept with a woman for the first time and couldn't figure it out, I went back to sleeping with my ex, a guy, just to make sure."
"Yeah, Lucy's not exactly available."
"Well, I am. I mean. If you want. I think you're hot as fuck, and although I haven't been with a man in a few years, I still remember how your plumbing works."
He almost laughed, but there sounded like there might be incipient tears behind it. "My plumbing?"
She purred. "I am a very, very good plumber."
And as pick-up lines went, it was very, very lame, but after they paid their tabs and got into their Lyft, she proved herself to be a very honest woman.
Chapter 24: Testing Our Hypotheses
Notes:
Because April 23 is Shakespeare's birthday and I will get my first vaccination in the evening, here is an extra chapter to celebrate.
Chapter Text
Adelle DeWitt strode through the Dollhouse tapping at her tablet, trying to decide. She had received a coded message from an old friend with deep pockets who had finally, finally admitted that he needed Adelle's professional help. Adelle could not afford to let him down. She had to choose the most appropriate, the most able, the most adaptable Doll for this engagement, so obviously, Echo. And she had to convey to Topher the complexity of the parameters he would have to design to make all aspects of the Doll's personality appropriate to the experiment the client was asking for.
She found him eating Twizzlers in the Chair Room. Of course.
"Topher, we have a new, high-value client who needs a Doll for an engagement. I'm thinking Echo."
"What are the parameters?"
"Kidnapping and persuasion, probably not termination, but we're going to need more input on that." She handed him her tablet.
"Okay, so Negotiator Nikita, with just a soupçon of sociopath. Not a problem."
"And send Meredith as her Handler. The boys have been having qualms of conscience of late, and that could get in the way on this one."
"Got it, boss lady. You have come to the right guy!"
She rolled her eyes and walked out. How tedious. She desperately needed a cup of tea.
//
Lillian was surprised to be called for a guest visit that Thursday morning. When Lena made the time to come in, she usually came on Tuesday evenings. And when Lillian walked into the room and the guard secured her left hand to the table, with the chess set, she didn't recognize the slight young brunette with glasses and her hair tied back in a bun.
"Lillian Luthor," she said as she took her seat across from Lillian and pushed a pawn two spaces forward.
Lillian pushed one of her pawns two spaces forward, but said nothing.
"You may call me Samantha Groves. We have mutual friends, who tell me that someone you care about has been working too hard and is in need of..." She hopped her knight over the pawns, "a holiday."
Lillian considered that, then slid her bishop through the gap left by her pawn. "Perhaps a short one, nothing too expensive. Just a change of pace."
The woman moved another pawn forward. Clearly, whoever she was, she knew nothing about chess. She said, "Perhaps a few days at a B&B, a little light yoga, facials, massage."
Lillian knew that Lena hated spa treatments. "That sounds about right."
"Mud bath?"
"Nothing so extreme." There was no way in hell that Lena would sit still long enough for anything like that.
"Understood. We have a great deal of experience with overworked executive types. When they don't get enough rest and recreation, they can make unwise decisions, both professionally and personally. We help them unwind, get their perspective back."
"Well, that would be helpful."
"Excellent. Oh, also, Martin said to tell you hello." The woman took her own king off the board, gave it to Lillian, and stood. She shook Lillian's other hand and had the guard escort her out.
Lillian sat there, her veins filling with ice water. Martin King. Luthor. Lex. What had she just agreed to?
///
Kara hurried into the editorial office of Taste the Bern food magazine for a special meeting called by Cassie DeWitt, who was standing at the window of the narrow conference room, drinking coffee out of a Batwoman mug, wearing wrinkled khaki pants, a denim shirt, and a dark green necktie covered with little embroidered pizza wedges. Her platinum hair was mussed, as if she had been running her hand through it, which she often did when she was aggravated or just overly busy, which was often.
Scribbled on the whiteboard at the head of the room were story assignments and reporters' names. Kara frowned at the absence of her own.
Cassie saw the frown and grinned. "Danvers, you're on special assignment with me. We're covering the food trucks at the Chinatown festival. You get the Vo'on waffle truck and Krypton Eats, and if Georges gets his permits sorted out in time, his luxury ice cream truck."
Grinning, Kara said, "Well, boss, if you insist."
Around her the other reporters laughed. Kara's capacity for, and enjoyment of, food was legendary.
"Earl, you're on Mayor Tucker's announcement of the Foodways Initiative. He'll be there to talk it up. Get pics of him eating something exotic. Maybe we can put that on the cover. Kate Kane will be in town, too. She's one of the sponsors for the photography exhibit. Thanks for that, Kara."
Kara ducked her head.
Earl, a tall, bald, paunchy older man with a ready smile, said, "Hey, Kara. Do you know all the rich lesbians?"
"No, but I am friends with one of Kate's exes. And she said Kate was thinking of investing near the area, building a gay bar. It'll depend on if she can find the right property, location, you know, real estate stuff."
"Right," said Cassie. "Unimportant non-food-related stuff."
"Exactly!" More laughter.
"Louise, you'll be at the exhibit, writing on Artzy's hors d'oeuvres."
"Got it."
"Okay, peoples. You've got your regular assignments too. Let's get it done."
///
Krypto was hanging out with Rosie in the Take-Away-Bad-Smells Room.
The trip with Scruffy to play with Kal-El had been strange. He knew Language, but spoke it in a funny way, not the natural way that Kara spoke it, or the poetic way that Soft Hands and Beautiful Voice spoke it, and not even the clumsy way that Scruffy and Whistler spoke it. Their sentences had good words, but Kal-El’s words were often the wrong words or in the wrong order and Krypto had to sit there and then shake himself until he could figure out what Kal-El was trying to say. In the end, they had gotten by in a mix of Language and Human, but it had been messy and a little sad. So he was glad to be back home with Kara and DEO and get back to work.
Kara had tasked him with assessing the strange flying dogs, and Krypto was a Good Dog, who knew how to get the job done. The strange dogs were not as well acclimated to manners when dealing with People, so one had tried to hump Rosie's leg, and Krypto had had to intervene. Another one was chewing on the cord to Rosie's computer-thing, and again Krypto had to dissuade her. Mostly they spent their time flying around the room and occasionally pooping and then Krypto had to leap into the air and grab the offending dog by the scruff of the neck and land him near the litterbox, pushing his sorry butt in there and standing guard, not letting him leave until he had Done His Business.
It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
///
Cat put her phone down, just a tiny bit astonished. No one in her many years on this Earth had ever asked her to be their bridesmaid before. Maid of Honor, once. Bride, four times. But how could one say no to Lena Luthor, especially when she was wedding Cat's best protegée? Cat would have paid a lot to watch Lena (fucking) Luthor marry Kara (Supergirl) Danvers. And cover it for the National City Tribune and CatCo Magazine.
And not having to weasel her way in, and Lena promising that they wouldn't ask her to wear something she would hate, all of that was just extra. Welcome, of course, but extra.
Chapter 25: When You Turn Away for a Moment
Notes:
Finally, I got some action happening! That only took 132 pages...
Chapter Text
Alex sat in her office, dealing with the never-ending paperwork that J'onn had often complained about. Duty rosters were easy. Commendations and reprimands were easy. Those things required paperwork that she had no problem processing. But then there were the other things, the things that did not automatically produce paper, like agents lusting after each other, which she still had to figure out. Thank God for Lucy Lane.
Meanwhile, the email from Maggie about the signs that Cadmus was back was more concerning. The financials she had sent matched up with the ones that Lucy had sent. Someone was planning something, and that usually didn't bode well. And of course, the fact that she had fourteen agents out with the flu, plus James with a broken arm, and Winn not acting like himself for reasons that Finn had given her possible intel about, intel that had encouraged her to send off four more of her agents to Lucy...
There was a knock on her door. Vasquez entered with a paper bag that smelled heavenly. "Yeah, so, you need to eat, and Kara reminded me about Vittorio's, so I got you a veggie calzone."
Alex's eyes lit up. "Vas, you are my hero. What time is it?"
"Thirteen oh nine."
"Shit, the morning went fast. Okay, we are going to need to support the NCPD this weekend when the Chinatown festival happens. Between our usual anti-alien brouhaha and the coronavirus ridiculousness, we are likely walking into a situation that will turn into a mission. So please. Tell me you have predictions for how this might go down and how we might mitigate the damage."
Vasquez handed her a food container with one hand and two folders with the other. "You ask and I provide."
"Damn, I love you, Vasquez. I mean professionally. But also, hell, personally. Just all the things. And also, you trained me. Why aren't you doing my job and why aren't I doing yours? Because this feels off."
"I predict future catastrophes, and I'm very good at it. You live in the present. You inspire people in the present. I always feel like once we're in the here and now, we'll handle it. That's not what scares me, what motivates me. But just because of our differences, we complement each other. We need each other."
"Yes," said Alex with great feeling.
Vasquez felt her face flush, set the folders down on Alex's desk, said, "I need to check on the rookies," and hurried out.
///
The woman currently calling herself Samantha Groves and the Asian woman currently calling herself Sam Shaw did not know they were composite personalities primarily based on two women Topher Brinks had spent time with on one terrifying weekend in New York. And although personally, they had made him come very close to peeing his pants, from a professional point of view, their dynamic had been just fascinating. But he was miles away and the only concern of Meredith, their handler, was that they completed the assignment without coming to harm or getting their cover blown.
Samantha had taped her package under the bench in front of Jade Pavilion, right where the Chinese lion dance would end, having come through Chinatown. Sam had taped her package under the bench in front of where the Infernian dragon dance would end, having come through Alien Alley, and the two sets of dancers would stage a mock fight in the intersection in between. Then the women met at the nearby Vo'on waffle truck, because Sam was always hungry and always ready to eat breakfast, whatever time of day. Samantha watched her fondly.
Meredith sat in the van, hacking the city's surveillance to keep eyes on them as they entered the exhibit at the Chinatown Business Association. In the center of the floor were dozens of grey pedestals, each showcasing sculptures and textile art from a variety of planets. On the walls were blown-up photos of the aliens of National City at work and at play, the photos by James Olsen and the accompanying text by Kara Danvers.
"Jeez," said Sam. "Look at the list of sponsors: CBA, yeah, but also CatCo, LCorp, Wayne Enterprises, Gotham Pride. Heavy hitters."
"Perfect backdrop for us then," murmured Samantha, smirking.
As the exhibition filled with people, many of them wearing medical facemasks, they noted their mark entering with friends. The small group took their time admiring the art before the fiancée got mock serious and said she had to get back to work. Samantha and Sam drifted out after them. In two distant directions loud music, drums and clashing cymbals sounded.
Sam smiled. "Showtime. See ya, babe."
They drifted in opposite directions, each with an ice cream cone, to sit on their bench of choice, eat, watch, wait. So it was Sam who saw the mark and the fiancée purchase Infernian waffles and come sit on Sam's bench to eat them. The mark had bought one with pistachios and jalapeño maple syrup--a classic. The fiancée got six different ones and tasted each one, taking notes on her phone, and gradually turning red from the Volcano of Andor waffle, which even Sam hadn't ventured. The mark helped the overheating woman take her pink sweater off and used a napkin to wipe the spilled syrup off the sleeve, laughing at the noises her friend made, which sounded a bit like an orgasm.
By the time the dragon dance came into view, Sam had pulled the package from underneath the bench and had her hand reaching for the syringe. Samantha was ten feet away. Then the head of the dragon appeared, roaring in the direction of the lion approaching, the fiancée jumped up to look, and Sam stuck the syringe into the mark's neck, pushed the plunger.
Samantha caught the woman as she stumbled. "Oh, heat stroke. Too much time in the sun, miss. Let's get you into the shade."
Together, they "helped" the young woman around the corner and into the waiting van.
"Mission accomplished," said Sam, strapping in and reaching for her water bottle, as Meredith inched them down the crowded street, out of Chinatown to where they could drive at a normal speed through and out of National City, and get on the highway, racing north. Sam drank some water, watching while Samantha checked items off a list.
"That's not the mission. That's just stage one."
Meredith listened to them bicker, shaking her head. This was going to be a long week.
///
Kara noticed that the Vo'on chef had glued a 3D-printed crest to the skullcap he'd gotten from LCorp. His cousin was making a killing with his startup, he told her, as she ordered another five waffles "for comparison purposes." She had wanted to try all twelve, but the twelfth was called Center of the Sun and he refused to sell to humans, he told her, so he didn't get sued.
He said, "This event is great. I've seen the Infernian dragon dance before, of course. Who hasn't? But the lion dance is new. And, um, have the Chinese ever actually seen a real lion?"
"Um, I think it's stylized to be symbolic. But I like that both cultures use loud music to scare the bad things away."
He laughed. "Let's hope it works."
She turned to watch the dance-fight. The dancers under the long rippling cloth in bright colors jumped, climbed on each other's shoulders to make the animals rear up, while the drums rumbled loudly and the clashing cymbals added chaos to the fun.
Kara looked around but didn't see Lena. She did see Holtzman and Jess across the street holding hands. Wait, what? Because that looked like--
Maggie, wearing her NCPD windbreaker with her badge around her neck, waved to Kara and came up to her. "Hey, Little Danvers. You've got syrup on your chin."
"Hey, Maggie." Kara wiped her chin with her napkin. "Have you seen Lena? She was here just a second ago."
With great drama, the dragon "slew" the lion, the Chinese giving the aliens great face, and the crowd cheered and started to disperse.
Still no Lena.
Kara grabbed Maggie's arm with one hand while she tried to call Lena's phone with the other.
"Kara--" said Maggie, and Kara let go. "Yeah, that's gonna bruise."
"She's not picking up."
"Don't panic, Little Danvers. Let's go to where you saw her last. It's still awfully loud."
And they went to the bench and Kara called Lena again, and they could hear the ringtone going off not far away.
"See," said Maggie as they hurried around the corner. "She's just--"
And still ringing on the ground was Lena's white phone with the LCorp sticker on the back.
And no Lena.
///
Maggie's head turned away for a second and when she turned back, Kara Danvers was gone and Supergirl was standing there looking absolutely furious. Slowly, the superhero said, "You're going to tell me the police won't even start looking until 24 hours have passed, aren't you."
"Su--"
"Don't. Just find me some off-duty cops to secure the scene until the DEO can get here. She tapped her ear. "Winn, get Krypto and a team here to my location yesterday, you hear me?"
She looked at Maggie. "We're going to do this by the book. I'm not going to make the mistakes I made with Alex. But I need you to secure the scene. I'm going to go up and listen for Lena. Can I count on you, Detective?"
"You got it, Supergirl. I know just who to call."
///
When Joe's Vespa wended through the festive crowds in Chinatown, he found that Maggie had taped off the scene. He heard a series of barks and saw a DEO agent with a white dog wearing a black DEO dogvest. Joe parked his Vespa, and Maggie let him in under the tape to join them.
Supergirl landed among them and the agent turned to her and said, "Do you have anything of Lena's he can scent on?"
"I can get--"
But the dog barked at her. Then Joe barked at the dog, who looked very surprised. The two of them barked back and forth. Joe asked Supergirl, "So Joe is sniffing for Soft-Hands-and-Beautiful-Voice? Supergirl’s mate?"
Supergirl looked shocked. "Um, apparently?"
"Okay, Joe knows what she smells like."
"Uh, how?"
"Krypto just told Joe. Joe will now investigate."
And he walked around the scene with Krypto at his side. Joe sniffed the air while Krypto sniffed the ground. They passed under the other side of the police tape and kept walking through National City, with DEO agents following behind them, asking people to move out of their way. Half an hour later, they stood near the on-ramp to the highway headed north out of the city.
Joe and Krypto conversed and then turned back to the DEO agent. "Krypto agrees with Joe. That tire-tread belongs to vehicle with Soft-Hands-and-Beautiful-Voice in it. Also, Krypto want cow potstickers for being Good Boy."
Joe shook hands with Maggie and the agent, patted Krypto on the head, and headed back to Chinatown to get his Vespa.
Chapter 26: Fallout
Chapter Text
Winn returned to the DEO, having briefly forgotten what a horrible human being he was, and wondered if Joe could teach him how to talk to Krypto. That would make him a much better handler, if they could communicate more directly. The evidence techs had gotten a partial fingerprint off Lena's phone and were comparing pictures of the tire tread with manufacturers of different brands and sizes of tires. Finn and Holtzman were going through the surveillance video of the last few hours from the local ATMs and some of the fancier stores and restaurants. Supergirl was pacing, with her fists clenched at her sides. She obviously wanted to punch something and was trying very hard to keep her temper in check.
Vasquez trotted in, having been above Chinatown in a Blackhawk for the fastest possible deployment in case of a bombing at the festival. She had said she was 68% certain there would be a mass casualty event, but apparently, she had been wrong, and Winn knew she'd be kicking herself later, and pushing them all because of it. Not that she'd need to push. All the DEO agents who had seen Lena help them so often admired her, and they would all push themselves very hard until they rescued Lena and brought her home.
Alex exited the elevator, having been supporting the NCPD at Mayor Tucker's speech.
Vasquez turned to her, her voice ragged. "Just tell me. Nothing happened. He's safe as houses."
"He is now," said Alex. "We've got two humans in custody at Maggie's precinct. I don't think they're Cadmus, just anti-alien assholes."
"You didn't just--"
"Sorry. Slipped out. But my earbud popped out when I was restraining one of them and then I stepped on it, so I'm out of the loop. Any problems on your end?"
Vasquez turned toward her, but Supergirl got there first, hugging Alex hard.
"Su--"
"Sorry! Sorry! Lena's been kidnapped, Alex! And I promise I won't go off the deep end and fuck this up like I did with you, and I am trusting your guys to get her back, but by Rao, Alex, if anything happens to her, I will kill whoever is responsible!"
Alex took a deep breath and rested one hand on her ribs. "Okay, ow, I need to sit down."
Supergirl didn't even seem to notice, just went back to pacing. Vasquez and Winn shared a worried look. Vasquez said, "Winn, why don't you escort the director to get her tech fixed?"
(Which Winn interpreted as meaning he should help Alex get down to Dr. Hamilton and see if Supergirl had just cracked one of her sister's ribs, so he jumped up and they hurried out.)
In the corridor, Alex was walking stiffly with her mouth open, and he laid a hand on her back to comfort or guide, he didn't even know. He got Alex up to speed on the investigation, including describing Joe and Krypto's contribution.
When they got to Medical, he left her in Hamilton's capable hands, promising to get her a new earbud ASAP.
///
Finn had been surprised when Alex had called him and told him to come back "with everybody" for the "anti-alien shenanigans" that Vasquez had predicted, and so he had been one of about twenty agents roaming the festival in plainclothes with concealed weapons. He had seen the quick and efficient way Alex had intervened when a member of the audience for the mayor's speech had run forward and leaped onto the stage with a knife, yelling, "Earth for humans!" Alex's serious expression hadn't even changed as she strode forward and twisted his arm around, pushed him to the ground and cuffed him. She didn't even bat an eye. One of the NCPD had grabbed the woman who ran forward with him, but not nearly as elegantly.
Now down in the AV room, at the console next to his, Holtzman was playing with what looked like Winn's yo-yo (but for all he knew she had her own; those two were a lot alike that way, except for Winn being hella straight).
"So, Holtzy, no alien shenanigans in your part of Chinatown?"
"Yes and no. Obviously Lena got scooped, but I was a few blocks away when it happened, and we didn't see anything."
"We?"
"Me and Jess."
"Jess."
"Mm. Actually, for a mission, it was a pretty good date." She grinned.
"Date."
"Yup."
"You move fast."
"Always." Then she sat up and scrambled for her mouse. She dragged it to show the film a minute earlier. "There. If that is not Lena Luthor's exquisite jawline, I am a drunken monkey."
Finn paused his film and got up to look at hers. "Yes, and who are those two women behind her? Because that's Kara Danvers stepping away, right?"
"Looks like it to me. Winn can do facial recognition. I'll keep looking. You tell Winn."
///
Dr. Hamilton looked at the X-ray on the box. It was a small crack, to be sure, but she had to report it to HR. Anytime one employee physically harmed another, it had to go into their employment record, even if it was an accident. Then she called Supergirl down to Medical. The Director had asked her not to, but the rules were very clear, and Alex respected that, but left so she didn't have to watch it.
When she had talked to Pam, the woman had sighed and said, "As I understand it, she used to do this in her teens before she got control of her power. Pretty sure she hasn't done it since."
Hamilton frowned. "Do you think she poses a threat? Should we bench her?"
Pam, jaded, rolled her eyes. "As if you could bench a Kryptonian with superstrength. How would you even go about it? And frankly, this is her fiancée we're talking about. Would it even be right to keep her from trying to save her?"
And Dr. Hamilton thought about that when she saw Supergirl walk in, her cape swinging and her fists clenching. The doctor would have to be exceedingly delicate.
"Supergirl, I'm glad you could come. We need to talk."
"About what? Oh, Rao, do they think Lena's been hurt?" Her eyes lit up and Dr. Hamilton dove behind a gurney.
"Um, no?"
"Holy smokes, Doc. I really didn't mean to scare you!"
Hamilton peaked out at her and, seeing her eyes back to normal, she slowly stood up, thinking, no sudden moves.
"Supergirl, look at the light box please?"
And she turned towards it. "What am I looking at?"
Hamilton pointed to a small white line on the fourth rib on the right. "That is a small crack in the fourth rib of your sister."
Supergirl gaped. "What?"
"Apparently, although you have largely learned to control your strength in normal times, you still are having some control issues when things are... um, extra-normal. Like today."
Supergirl's tension dropped away. "I hurt her? Again?"
"It's not a major fracture. But it will slow her down for at least a few days. And that will make it harder for her to do her job and protect Lena Luthor. You need to work on control again."
"I hate hurting the people I love. Or just failing them. I turned away for just a few minutes..."
"Supergirl, we're all fallible, but if there is one thing I know about Alex and Vasquez and Winn and Holtzy and, hell, even Pam in HR? They are excellent at their jobs and they are dedicated to helping you save this planet. And given that Lena has helped save the world at least twice? Trust me, they will take it personally and take out whoever is responsible with extreme prejudice. But you need to help them stay safe so that they can do it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Doctor."
Dr. Hamilton had been tempted to hug the woman before she walked away, but the DEO needed Hamilton in one piece. Discretion was the better part of valor, after all.
Chapter 27: Switching It Up and Taking Turns
Chapter Text
Meredith pulled into the driveway of the upscale Tudor house, grateful that the four-hour drive was over. Lena Luthor had come to about fifteen minutes prior, but was still muzzy, so they helped her into the house while Meredith locked the gates on the driveway. Their consultant was supposed to meet them at this location in eighteen hours to assess Luthor's mental and physical state before they took her to Cadmus's black site for the work they would have to do, but it had to be prepared first and their window for taking the prisoner had happened 72 hours before their logistics people could ready the space. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to do.
There was a room upstairs with just a bedframe and a mattress, "burglar bars" on the windows and a reinforced padlocked door. Samantha and Sam secured the prisoner up there, and then came down and Sam dug around in the cabinets for things to make dinner for four with while Samantha checked in with HQ and got their updated orders.
"And?" asked Sam.
"Hurry up and wait."
///
Lena tried to focus, but those drugs had done a number on her. She vaguely remembered Kara, waffles, a lion dance and two women "helping" her around a corner and into a van. Then she was on this bed, one wrist handcuffed to the metal frame. She tried to recall whether she had even had a chance to cry out, but she doubted it, and the crowd had been cheering, so it wouldn't have helped anyway, most likely.
She rolled over as best she could and curled up into fetal position, throwing the pink sweater over her bare arms. She was cold. The house was cold, and her situation was precarious, and she had been saying for weeks that Lex's annual assassination attempt was late and overdue, but no one ever took her seriously when she said things like that, not even Jess, who knew better.
Jess. How long would the police wait before they let her know what had happened? Probably 24 hours or a bit longer. Out the window, the sky was golden, so it was probably an hour before sunset, which would mean she had only been missing for four to five hours. But surely Kara would notice sooner, would recognize that Lena wouldn't disappear of her own volition. Would the cops say she had gotten cold feet about the wedding? Or if there was a bomb threat at the festival, blame her and assume she'd run from justice?
Lena had always respected Vasquez, who apparently spent the vast majority of her time predicting worst-case scenarios. It was something they had in common.
///
Agent Jordan was in the armory, putting his weapon away when the Director called him. "Jordan, have you seen Agent Collins? He's not picking up."
Jordan tapped his earpiece. "Ma'am, you just missed him. He was up in the command center when Supergirl flew in, and about twenty minutes later he got a ping from one of her sweaters with the trackers, so he went out to pick up her clothes in Chinatown."
"Okay, well, let me know when he returns. Funny, though. We thought that Supergirl's sweater was separate from her clothes change."
"Roger that, Director."
Jordan texted Collins. "Yo, what's your 20?"
And he got no reply for an hour and a half. Then his phone pinged.
TomCollins: I'm about 90 minutes north of NC. Stopped to gas up. Why?
AirJordan: The sweater wasn't in Chinatown?
TomCollins: It's on the move. Why?
AirJordan: It shouldn't be. Continue mission but do not engage. Let me sitrep.
Jordan put down his phone and hurried up to the command center. Supergirl was wearing a rut into the linoleum, Winn was looking hyper-stressed, and Vasquez was wearing her DefCon 3 frown.
"Assistant Director. Ma'am. Agent Collins is 90 minutes north of the city, following the sweater's tracker."
"North?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Oh, shit. You're in contact with him?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Okay tell him to follow but not engage, repeat not engage. He is recon only. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am. Ma'am, can I ask?"
"Collins might not just be tracking a sweater. He might be tracking Lena Luthor's kidnappers. And if he tries to engage, he might get them killed, him and her both."
She hurried off towards the Director's office.
Jordan called his friend, muttering, "Pick up, pick up!"
///
Callie Torres showed up at the hospital for the evening shift, singing "Chasing Cars" under her breath as she looked at the board, anticipating the kinds of surgeries she might have to do on a Saturday evening: broken bones due to motor vehicle accidents caused by people driving under the influence being the most likely. Her last two nights had been a little bit light on sleep on account of them being a little bit heavy on the athletic sex with James Olsen in a gay panic, but Callie felt lighter and more energized than she had in months.
When the first ER trauma patient was rolled in, her personal soundtrack shifted to "How to Save a Life" and then she did. So booyah.
Then a turf war downtown turned into turf surgeries, with blue, pink and yellow aliens taking up the clinic's three ORs. That turned the music in her head to "How We Operate," because of course it would.
It was three in the morning before Dr. Hamilton called her to come by the DEO ASAP, and she was still buzzed from the surgeries, so she didn't even think to change out of her blood-soaked navy scrubs before getting into her car and going to the skyscraper in the middle of town, parking, showing her consultant lanyard that she kept in her glove compartment, and heading up to Medical.
Apparently, the last few hours of the Chinatown Alien Festival, when the humans and aliens both had tumbled out of the bars the worse for wear, had gotten... interesting. Livewire had been one of the responding agents, and Hamilton wanted Callie for a consult.
The woman was sedated in the medbay. They had stabilized her, but it seemed to Hamilton that the 3D-printed femur and tibia they had made for her about six months before had possibly got micro-cracks, and the material they had used, unlike bone, couldn't heal itself.
Now that by itself wasn't exactly a surprise. They had anticipated the problem and had spent six months searching proactively for solutions, and Hamilton had done some experiments with starfish and had the beginnings of a solution, but Livewire was here now and in pain. So the beginnings of a solution were not a solution, and they needed to figure out something that would be.
After Callie looked at the X-rays and checked on Livewire herself, who was in and out of consciousness due to concussion, she turned and looked at Dr. Hamilton herself, who was pale and had dark smudges under her eyes. Callie rubbed the woman's back, saying, "It's all right. I've had some ideas about this, and I've been doing some reading. The cartilage we grew has her DNA in it. I'm thinking there may be a way to grow more and use... Hamilton, are you all right?"
"Yeah, of course. But I was on call after being here for 48 hours straight and I'm exhausted. It's one thing pulling a shift like that when you're young, in medical school. I'm too old for this."
"Let me drive you home. I often sleep on problems like this, then wake up with the answer. Let me take you home and pick you up at, what? Eight? Then we can solve this."
"Yeah, that'd be great."
And Callie had bits of "The Story" going through her head, and it was the first time all day that her internal soundtrack did not match her context.
You see the smile that's on my mouth
It's hiding the words that don't come out
And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed
They don't know my head is a mess
No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know
What I've been through
Like you do
And I was made for you
Callie dropped Hamilton off in front of her brownstone and watched her unlock the door and go in. Then she shuttled on home to her boring apartment, suddenly feeling the exhaustion her adrenaline had been keeping at bay. She thought about James, and the deep physical feelings he drew from her, and then she saw Dr. Hamilton's drawn, tired face. Callie didn't even know the woman's first name, but she felt a pull there. One of those dangerous on-call-room pulls. She would have to be cautious, moving forward with all of these attractive people in her stress-filled life. She knew how that could go.
No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know
What I've been through
Like you do
And I was made for you...
///
When Meredith came back with the pizza, Dr. Saunders had arrived to assess the prisoner's baseline and prep her for the treatment. After the first day, Lena had been transferred to the basement, which was windowless and lead-lined. They had fed her once a day, at different times of day and night to increase her disorientation. When Saunders came in on day four, the prisoner was sleeping uneasily. Sam let Saunders into Lena's cell to listen to her heart, take her pulse and blood pressure and ask her a number of questions.
"What is your name?"
"Lena Luthor."
"What day is it?"
"Maybe Thursday?"
"Where are you?"
"In a house, I think, in a suburb."
"What is the nearest city?"
"Somewhere a few hours away from National City. I don't know in which direction."
"Why are you here?"
"Probably Lex's annual reminder that he disapproves of me."
Saunders snorted, gathered her equipment into her med bag, and knocked to be let out. Samantha and Sam were waiting outside the door for her report. She said, "She's healthy and a little disoriented, probably low blood sugar and hungry and frustrated. Start anytime. I'll be back tomorrow night to check her again."
Samantha smiled grimly. She turned to Sam and they did rock-paper-scissors. Samantha won, so Sam unlocked the door, watched her go in, and locked the door behind her. She led the doctor upstairs, saying, "You sure you don't want to stay for dinner? We can reheat you a slice."
"No, I don't want to be around when this starts."
"We're sound-proofed. You won't hear anything."
"Yes, but I'll know it's happening. It's one thing to do my job. But I hate being part of these types of operations."
"Yeah, my type two personality disorder comes in handy sometimes."
The doctor shook her head as she left the house and got into her car, wondering what Echo and Sierra's real personalities would think if they ever found out the kinds of things they were being made to do.
///
Supergirl was down in the gym, killing the big bag, punching concrete blocks and generally trying to take out her frustration in a way that wouldn't hurt anyone. It was wrecking her not knowing where Lena was or what might be happening to her. Finally, she knew in her bones what Alex and her other friends had felt like those times she went missing, on Barry's Earth, on Slaver's Moon. Or even that time she and Cat and Lena and Snapper had been kidnapped by Lillian's people during the pink K incident.
And she'd hurt Alex again. That hadn't happened in over fifteen years.
And she was feeling like she'd been hit by red K again: all the rage and all the helplessness and she had nowhere safe to put it.
And she was terrified, because she knew she was trying to physically wear herself out so that she would be able to sleep, ironically, so that she would be strong enough and clear enough to swing into action at a moment's notice if they found anything, and if the call came before she got the sleep, would she be strong enough? Clear enough? There were just no answers.
Chapter 28: Holding Each Other Together through the Turns
Chapter Text
After the long, grueling weekend working Lena's abduction, sleeping in the DEO's barracks and eating the DEO food, Susan Vasquez was beat. She was trying not to overwork the agents, especially since overwork would compromise their immune systems and she didn't have the agents to spare if more people got the flu, or worse. But she still needed all of them to be processing what little evidence they had as quickly and accurately as possible. As she always reminded her rookies, you couldn't fight crime with bad intel.
They had brought Jess in an hour after the event. Vasquez thought they should have brought her in sooner and made a note in a fresh notebook about that fact. Jess put in place the Incident Management Plan that she and Lena and the top stakeholders at LCorp had devised. Jess gave Vasquez a copy, and Vasquez noted that people to be immediately informed included both Kara Danvers and Supergirl, so she guessed the plan might not have been updated recently. Not good.
Vasquez had assumed (in the assessment in Lena's DEO folder) that Jess would be the person the kidnappers called. She had been during the pink K incident. But no one had heard anything this time, and that did not bode well. That suggested the motive wasn't ransom or blackmail, but rather possibly something personal. Of course, Lex Luthor came immediately to mind, but Lena had a long list of potential enemies, and Vasquez didn't like taking anything for granted. She put one agent on Maxwell Lord's trail and another on that Edge fellow, wherever that particular rat had gotten to.
Cat was brought in to ensure a media blackout, and she knew how these things went, so she promised to help.
Agent Collins said the trail went cold in Opal City, and that was not a place anyone had thought to look, so Vasquez had set another agent to look at properties that could in any way be connected to Lena or her family.
Then she was briefed about the connection of the dirty Metropolis detective to ATTAC, so that gave her another avenue to explore.
And then it was after 8 pm on Tuesday night after the Saturday afternoon abduction. She stretched and cracked her knuckles and went to find Alex in her office. She knocked. Alex called out, "Come!"
Vasquez opened the door. The Director was alone. Vasquez smirked despite her tiredness. "Your wish is my command. Ma'am."
Alex looked up, exhausted and uncomprehending. "We're getting nowhere."
"Mm. Not so sure about that. I want to go see Lillian tomorrow morning. Possibly see about a temporary change in her custody."
"You think she's involved?"
Vasquez shrugged. "Lena's family takes 'families are complicated' to a whole new level. Jess was in right before lunch, saying they've postponed Patent Appreciation Night 'due to concerns about the coronavirus' and she is sweating that people will figure out the real reason."
"Well, it sucks to have a global pandemic, but if you have to..."
"At least it can be useful. I agree. Let's go home."
"No, I'm here for the duration."
"Babe, for just one night, let's eat home-cooked food and sleep in a bed bigger than a DEO cot wrapped around each other and get, I don't know, rested. Or at least better rested than we can do here."
"I'm too tired to cook."
"Me too. But I froze the leftover lasagna last week. We can thaw and microwave that."
"You are persuasive..."
"Rest leads to brains incubating complex information, so that when you get up tomorrow, when we do, we have a chance of being more useful, having better ideas."
"I'm in."
///
Lena lay on the sheetless cot, exhausted. She still wore the pale green shirt and skinny jeans that she had worn to the festival and had Kara's sweater to use as a pillow that smelled of her fiancée. She was barefoot, but currently the temperature in the room was ambient, which surprised her, given that the first thing the woman had said when she came in after the doctor left was, "We have five flavors for you to choose from: loud, hot, cold, blunt and sharp. I don't suppose you have a preference?"
Lena had chosen loud. Back in college she had learned selective hearing in the face of a dorm filled with people who had crapped out their hearing in high school. The Doors and the Rolling Stones wouldn't have been her first choices, but she made the best of it, pretending to hate it so her captors wouldn't decide to go with rap or klezmer. That would have really made her lose her mind, which was exactly what they wanted.
She was still unsure why she was there. She had pretty much completely lost track of time. It felt like she had been there for weeks. She knew in her heart of hearts that Jess had implemented their incident plan and that Supergirl would be flying all over the country listening for her heart, while Alex, Vasquez, Maggie and the rest would be kicking ass and taking names in their effort to find her. And they were very good at their jobs.
But these two women, the psychopath and the sociopath, were taking turns with her. Not assaulting her, not really even torturing her exactly, just pointing out, over and over again, that they could if they wanted to, and that no one would ever know. And she was starting to believe them, but she couldn't figure out why they would.
She had told that doctor that she assumed this was Lex. As in, when you hear hooves, expect a horse, not a zebra. But what if...
What if this time, for a first, the hoofbeats were signs of a zebra?
///
The night shift at the DEO showed up to relieve their day shift compatriots. So, basically, James and Winn relieved Finn and Holtzman. Right. That.
And James knew that he should bring it up, address it, talk about it. Lucy Lane had been very clear about the importance of boundaries and communication in a relationship, and this thing with Winn wasn't a relationship really, well, yes, a friendship, of course, but not a romantic relationship, except for the tequila-fueled sex that had apparently happened--he wasn't too clear on the details--
James sighed gustily.
Winn looked over at him. "Puts it into perspective, doesn't it?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, ever since Supergirl ordered me into Chinatown with Krypto, and I realized that my friend Lena was in danger, I kept thinking, what if it wasn't Lena? What if it was Kara, or you? What if you were the one who I couldn't find, and couldn't help? What if it were Jess?"
"Yeah, that'd suck."
"And then I realized. I put Jess fourth on that list. I put the practically impervious person who wouldn't need my help first, and I put the person I'm supposedly dating last. That is some messed-up priorities."
James sighed gustily. "You want messed up? I hadn't even thought of that at all. Not you, not Lucy, not Kara, not Callie..."
Winn turned toward him. "Um, Callie?"
"Huh? Yeah, what about her?"
"Since when is she in the group that includes Lucy, Kara and me?"
"Oh, I. She just. We. Hung out at Dollywood a few nights ago. Thursday? Friday? She was asking about whether she could consult with Dr. Hamilton about alien species and their medical care."
"Yeah, poor Hamilton."
"Wait, what? Why would Hamilton spending time at the Luthor Clinic be a bad thing?"
"Oh, it wouldn't be the clinic. I'm sure she could help them a lot. But she is staying at her sister's, I heard. Gossip is that her husband finally found out she wasn't working for the FBI, that she's been lying to him for the last fifteen years, and he was pissed. He didn't get violent. Or maybe he did, and she restrained him? Dunno. Different stories going around. But, dude, you think we have problems?"
"Winn, we kinda do."
"Yeah, I know. And I just wish that Lena were here to help us figure it out. Because Vasquez muttered something under her breath the other day about 'possible pink K aftershocks' and it just scared me a little."
"Wait, she thinks... But how?"
"You got me."
"Winn, can we just agree to just be friends and to support each other through whatever fresh hell is coming?"
"Yes," said Winn definitively. "You got me."
///
Lillian Luthor ate the prison meatloaf without really tasting it, which, to be honest, wasn't that hard. She watched the entire lack of news about LCorp with growing dread. She read about the poorly executed assassination attempt on the mayor with a sneer, but she also saw the snippet on the Channel Seven news and recognized Alex Danvers engaging in fearless badassery, thinking it was misplaced. Two and a half days of a "celebration of difference" and that was the best Cadmus could manage?
So, when her lawyers came to meet with her to tease out what morsels of Cadmus intel she would be willing to trade for earlier release, Lillian gave up their current base, the names of the top ten officers, and the main bank account number.
If they were incompetent enough to not have been able to leverage the alien exhibition and fund-raiser, they didn't deserve her loyalty. If they had chosen to leverage it to harm LCorp, then they totally deserved her ire, if not her enmity. And if they hurt Lena? Oh, then they totally deserved her enmity.
///
The messenger was escorted up to the DEO command center and Winn signed for the package and brought it to Alex's office, where she and Vasquez were looking at a map of National City and the area around it. They both looked hyper-serious and borderline exhausted. They looked up when he knocked on the open door.
"Um, Director. This just came by messenger from Albatross Prison. There's a note with it. From Lillian Luthor's lawyers. Ha. Try saying that three times fast."
With her left hand, Vasquez took the package and with her right, she smacked him on the head. She took the note and read, "Our client is greatly concerned for the safety of her daughter and believes that this person, previously unknown to her prior to this interaction, may be a person of interest for your investigation. The NCPD has also just received from our client what she hopes will be valuable intelligence to aid in your investigation."
Winn said, "Seriously?"
Vasquez said, "Well, that's--"
Alex's phone rang. She looked down, picked it up, hit Accept. "Sawyer. I was just thinking of you."
///
After her phone call with Maggie, Alex called Winn and Vasquez back into her office. "Winn, find a laptop that's not connected to anything and play this DVD. Maggie says it's the woman leaving the prison in a pencil skirt and heels that is the person we need to be looking into. She said she's run facial recognition, but so far nothing."
Winn came back with the laptop showing the video of several people leaving the prison together. "Our facial recognition came up with the name Caroline Farrell, a student activist who disappeared a few years back. The name she used at the prison was Samantha Groves."
"It's a start. Any luck on that other woman?"
"No. She's got that black ballcap pulled so low, and she's shorter, so her face is behind Lena's shoulder. Finn and Holtzy are trying to trace back how they got to the intersection, though, so we could still get lucky."
"How about the partial fingerprint from the phone?"
"They're sure it's not Lena's or Kara's, so it is a good bet it's from one of the abductors."
Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. "Anything on Opal City where Collins lost the signal?"
"Two hits," said Vasquez. "One's Lillian's, a condo in the middle of downtown. The other belonged to LuthorCorp, so technically it may belong to LCorp or to Lex. The lawyers upstairs are sorting it out now."
"Why does ownership matter?" asked Winn.
"Because the owner might have blueprints and that would be very valuable if and when we breach."
"Wouldn't that endanger Lena?" asked Winn.
"There's always a risk," said Vasquez. "But the bigger risk is that they move her somewhere we can't find her."
Alex said, "Vas, will you take point on this? I can QB from here or go in with you." When Vasquez frowned, Alex said, "Thanks, Winn. Let me know if anything else turns up."
He left.
Alex turned back to Vasquez. "What's wrong?"
Vasquez sat down in one of the chairs in front of Alex's desk. Alex sat in the other and rested her hand on Vasquez's knee. "Talk to me."
"I thought you would want to take point. For Kara. So she'd know the best person was on it."
"You taught me to consider when my personal feelings might get in the way of mission necessity, and to delegate. This one is very personal, and there's no room for mistakes. I do want the best person on it, Vas. That's you."
Vasquez was silent.
"You don't agree."
"This is hard to say to you. It's just, well, I've only known for a few days that Lena is, was Lee. And at first when she was taken, I was like 'Lena's in trouble. Must be Monday.' But last night, lying with you in my arms, I realized that's Lee out there, scared and alone."
"You love her."
"Lee, yes. Lena, no. It's complicated. But Alex, for her sake and for Kara's sake, and Lena's saved the world twice just since we've known her... It's more than personal."
"Then we will put the best people we have on it. You and me for tactical, Kara, J'onn and M'gann for speed. And we'll bring her back home. For all our sakes."
Chapter 29: Turning Up the Noise
Chapter Text
When the music shifted to Van Halen, they turned the dial up to eleven, and Lena sighed, but she knew it could be worse: it could be Muzak quietly tinkling in the background. She did notice that the room was colder than it had been, but the real indignity was the bucket in the corner, which she had to use for a toilet. At least the cold meant the smells from that were milder than they would be if it was warm.
Presumably, that would be next, followed by blunt and then sharp. She wasn't looking forward to that, but as long as they were taking their time, Supergirl and the DEO had a chance to find her. She had to hold onto that.
She presumed her captors would assume that Lena, like most people, would be bored out her mind and crawling up the walls because of it.
Lena, however, was unlike most people.
With her eidetic memory, she could call to mind the schematics of the new version of the black body field generator and spend hours trying to figure out how to miniaturize it.
With her powerful imagination, she could recall the things she had done to Kara with her hands and her tongue after they got the red sunlamps, the noises Kara had made at length, and those big blue eyes looking at her with awe and admiration, and what a rambling loveable idiot she had become.
And then, of course, what Kara had done to Lena, first slowly with the red sunlamps, and later on, with superspeed without--
And the memory of that made Lena come in her clothes without even needing to touch herself, which Lena thought was her own private fuck-you to her captors.
A mind like Lena Luthor's was unlike other people's minds.
Lena Luthor could never truly be held in captivity.
///
The team to go in met in the armory to arm while Alex briefed them on the mission. Vasquez and Finn would fly the DEO agents in the Blackhawks to the Opal City DEO, where they would pick up four SUVs. Supergirl and the two Martians would get to the mission location first and do high aerial surveillance, dropping down when the SUVs blocked the entrance to the fenced property. They would breach first and the agents would surround the house to catch anyone who managed to slip by them. When they located Lena, if she was injured, Supergirl would fly her back to the Opal City DEO.
It was a good plan, and it should have worked.
The flyers watched and waited for the agents to catch up with them and saw no one enter or exit the place. A black van sat in the driveway.
But when Supergirl landed at the front door and the Martians at the back, and entered and searched the house, it was empty.
On the kitchen table was a set of cards halfway through a game of Solitaire and a cup half full of coffee.
The coffee was still warm.
///
The evidence tech people from the OCDEO (and yes, the NCDEO agents teased them a bit about the name) dusted the cards and took DNA from the coffee cup. Vasquez and Alex, followed by the rookies, went through every room with literal plastic gloves and a metaphorical fine-toothed comb.
Vasquez said, "We'll get DNA off the hairbrushes, at least."
Holtzman followed them into what looked like a makeshift cell, with a bare cot and no other furniture. She pointed to the bed where a long black strand of hair curled.
"Good catch," said Alex.
///
Maggie Sawyer led the raid on the pharmaceutical factory that was in fact manufacturing biological weapons with a combination of chemicals and a hypersonic trigger. The NCPD confiscated enough ordnance to take out at least two-thirds of the aliens of National City. The human workers, who clearly had not known what they were building, showed signs of precancerous growths. The NCPD escorted them to the city's hospitals. The president and Board of Trustees, on the other hand, they escorted to jail.
///
At Dollywood that night, gossip abounded. It was no secret that M'gann Morzz was deputized to help the DEO during emergencies (which the dwellers of National City referred to as "Mondays"). So, when she was absent from the bar two nights in a row, there was talk. When she was absent a third night, the aliens polished off a single drink each, then slunk home to (metaphorically or literally) hide under the bed (depending on species).
///
After three days of tearing the Opal City house apart, they had found two hidden doors in the basement: one opened to what was clearly a cell with a bare cot and more of Lena's hair, and the other to a tunnel below the yards of four blocks of houses. All Alex could figure was that their aerial surveillance had blown their cover and the captors had taken Lena and flown the coop.
Kara had been stoic about it at the time, but her face as she stalked out of the command center in National City told Alex that after she filed her mission report, she would be down in the training room smashing concrete. Alex didn't blame her.
Winn told her about the NCPD's raids, the slew of arrests, the ill factory workers.
Lucy emailed her that they couldn't find a reason to hold the dog breeder, and he had been resistant to the idea of getting the dogs litter boxes, but Rosy had already reported that Krypto had already trained the ones they had confiscated, so they were rehabilitated and could be returned to the breeder.
So there were a few good things happening. As Vasquez pointed out, sometimes you just had to hang onto the small mercies.
At the very least, they had four sets of fingerprints, one of which was definitely Lena's. Another belonged to a Meredith Taylor, an LA native whose occupation was listed as Personal Surveillance, whatever that meant. The other two sets were pending, probably Caroline Farrell and her partner.
Alex felt like she was putting together the pieces of a puzzle, but the only tiny pieces that actually fit together just gave them a patch of sky in the corner, with 9,987 pieces left to go.
So, when Vasquez said, "Let's go... thank Lillian for her help with our enquiries," Alex, said, "Oh, yes. Definitely."
///
Albatross Bay Prison's library was a joke: three Spanish-English dictionaries, a biography of Malcolm X, and easily a hundred trashy romance novels. Lillian had already read thirty-two of them and was utterly bored. So many overused tropes. So, when she was called from her cell to talk to visitors, she was pleased to see the ever-competent new Director of the DEO and her perpetually frowning Assistant Director.
"Director Danvers, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Mrs. Luthor, I am here to officially thank you for aiding in our efforts to find and rescue Lena."
"Your so-far unsuccessful efforts, I take it."
"We have leads." Alex opened the folder she carried and showed the best photos they had of the two women, and the driver's license photo of the third. "Do any of these women look familiar to you?"
"That one," said Lillian. "She visited here, talked about offering a short vacation to someone I cared about who was overworking. I haven't been sleeping well on these cots. Well, that and menopause." She shrugged. "I think I actually took her literally. She called herself Samantha Groves and at the end of the visit, she said that a Martin said to say hello and then handed me her chess king."
Together Danvers and the other growled, "Lex."
"That was my surmise as well. But..."
"What?" asked Danvers.
"Lex isn't... This doesn't seem like him. He is usually... just..."
The Assistant Director supplied, "Flashier? Messier?"
"Yes, he scoffs at covert and instead... If he could inscribe his initials on the moon with a laser and in doing so, flood Australia, he wouldn't hesitate."
"And the other two?"
"I've never seen either of them before. Who are they?"
"We don't know. Taylor's occupation is listed as Personal Surveillance."
"That's an odd... Are you sure you don't mean Security?"
"Surveillance."
"But who would pay someone to watch them?" Lillian shook her head. "Figure that out and you might find the answer's right in front of you."
"Have you ever heard the name Caroline Farrell?" asked Danvers.
"Not that I can think of. Who is she?"
"We think she's Groves. She was an anti-vivisection activist. Disappeared quite suddenly a few years ago."
"Disappeared?"
"No trace. The last picture that came up for facial recognition was a yearbook picture for a community college outside of LA."
"Community college students are unlikely to be recruited for black ops, Director Danvers. A pretty young woman like that, the problem would be much more likely to be male, wouldn't you think?"
"But then she'd have stayed disappeared, in a shallow grave somewhere. Not walking into a prison offering... vacations."
Lillian frowned deeply. It reminded her of something, but she couldn't put a finger on it. Damn this getting old anyway. She rubbed the back of her neck as a hot flash shot through her. "I'm sorry, Director. I can't think of anything, but I'll sleep on it. Sometimes inspiration comes in the morning."
"Yes, thank you, Lillian. We'll find her."
"Director Danvers, the DEO is not known for investigating crimes perpetrated by humans against humans."
"Lillian, you know that your daughter has been one of the DEO's most effective forces for good, saving aliens and humans several times."
"And your sister loves her. Is engaged to her. A Super and a Luthor." She shook her head. "Lex won't approve."
"I'm sure he doesn't, ma'am. But would he quietly kill her for it? That's the number one question. And number two, would he hire someone else to do it for him?"
Lillian nodded very seriously, and they left. Lex didn't hire... well, Lex had minions. But not killers for hire, that was something else. Wasn't it?
Chapter 30: One Good Turn
Notes:
An extra chapter in honor of Mother's Day in the States. This one is for pclauink.
Chapter Text
Maxwell Lord was a science tech genius, and while some of his… experiments and his more interesting… innovations had skirted the outer edges of what was, technically, well… legal, he wasn’t a criminal. His nine months in prison last year had convinced him of that. He was a law-abiding citizen who never, never wanted to be forced to share a shower with Bugs McGee ever again.
So when he woke up that morning and was drinking his latte while watching the morning news about the NCPD raid on NyCor Pharmaceuticals, one of the most prominent members of ATTAC, his personal fucking brainchild, he spit up his coffee all over his pristine Jermyn Street London dress shirt, which actually was, in fact, a crime in his book.
As he stripped off the stained shirt and pulled a clean one off the hanger, he left a voicemail for his Personal Assistant. “Brendan, contact PR and distance the company from ATTAC. We would never condone biological weapons, yada, yada. Had no idea that our reasonable caution regarding aliens would ever be used to endanger extraterrestrial-American citizens. Are working with federal authorities to ensure that our ongoing projects are in agreement with federal regulations, blah, blah. I’ll be in the office within half an hour—wait, make that forty-five minutes—”
He nearly dropped the phone. CNN was claiming no knowledge of FoxNews’s assertion that LCorp’s Lena Luthor had been kidnapped by aliens. Bloody hell.
///
Jess was working at her desk, fighting to pay attention to her tasks and ignore the icy fear she felt every time she thought about Lena. She had gotten texts from both Winn and Holtzman conveying that they had gotten close and then lost Lena. Both reassured her that the whole team wouldn't rest until they brought her back home.
The elevator doors opened to reveal Gideon Stott, the Vice Chairman of the Board, a greying man in an expensive navy suit. He looked angry.
Lovely.
"Miss Wang, I need to speak to Lena."
"Ms. Luthor isn't on site today, Mr. Stott."
"What? Where is she?"
"Working from home. Social distancing."
"That's ridiculous. Oh, wait. Wasn't she going to that damn festival in Chinatown? Did she get the Coronavirus there? For fuck's sake!" He turned around and hurried back into the elevator before Jess could correct him.
Her phone pinged with another text from Winn.
ForTheWinn: Check the news.
She went into Lena's office and turned on CNN. Pretty much all the colleges were sending their students home before fall finals and they were planning to administer their course exams digitally and conduct spring semester online.
The Dow was down.
And Lena Luthor was missing. Sources said she had been kidnapped by aliens.
///
The man who was escorted into Adelle DeWitt's office was tall and handsome, a silver fox. His suit looked Italian, his shirt English, and his cufflinks Cartier’s. Just her type.
"Ms. DeWitt, you came highly recommended. My client would like to avail herself of your services."
"Thank you, Mr. Wagner. That's good to hear. What will be the parameters of the engagement?"
"My client's daughter was recently kidnapped and hasn't been heard from since. It's been about a week."
Adelle frowned and crossed her elegant legs, noticing the man's eyes flicker down to her scarlet stilettos. She said, "Wouldn't the police or FBI be a better choice?"
"They've been trying, without any luck. My client is convinced that you are in fact in a much better position to conduct an extraction."
"We have done hostage negotiation before, but a full-blown investigation with no leads would be impossible for us."
"My client thinks otherwise."
"Why on Earth would your client think we might have any way to help her?"
"Because my client is Lillian Luthor."
Adelle felt the blood drain from her face.
Bugger all.
///
By the time Jess reached the DEO, the rumor mill had flourished. Some said Lena had been taken by aliens from the dragon dance. Anti-alien violence had increased.
Some said she was quarantined with Covid-19. Anti-Asian violence had increased.
People would use any excuse to spread their pain around. Probably the craziest theory on Lena's absence was that she'd been recruited to be an astronaut for NASA. (And Jess thought Lena would like that one; she hoped that if, when Lena got home, she could tell her.)
Jess knew that Cat Grant was poo-pooing the theories. In one interview Cat had said, "Maybe she's just taking a well-deserved vacation in the south of France. Ever think of that?"
Jess hoped that would help keep Lena safe, but the longer they didn't have any contact from the abductors and there was no call for ransom, the more the cannonball in her stomach looped its vines of unreason through her body, convincing her that Lena was, at that moment, being buried somewhere in a shallow grave.
Jess made her way into the DEO command center, totally unnerved. She knew herself well. Mixing metaphors meant she was panicking.
Alex Danvers was standing behind Winn and Vasquez looking up at the feeds. Vasquez turned on hearing Jess's footsteps and immediately jumped up to offer Jess her chair. "Jess, have you slept at all?" she asked. "Have you eaten?"
Jess sat down and frowned. "Can't remember. At some point, probably."
Winn jumped up and trotted out of the room.
"Where's he going?" asked Jess.
"Probably to get you a stale donut and some so-so coffee," said Alex. "His heart is in the right place."
Jess waved that away.
Alex put her finger to her ear, said, "Copy that. We have a guest."
A minute later two agents accompanied an extremely well-dressed businessman with short white hair.
"Director Danvers," said one agent. "His ID says he is Lyle Wagner."
Alex stood with her hands on her hips. "What can I do for you, Mr. Wagner?"
"Actually, Director, it's what I can do for you." From the inside pocket of his navy suit jacket, he pulled a green Post-It Note and handed it to her.
She looked at it. "A zip code?"
"I am Lillian Luthor's lawyer. She said that this may help. It's the best I could do for you, I am afraid. You have her hope and my own that this will allow you success. I have always had great respect for Lena."
"Thank you. Please escort Mr. Wagner out."
They left just as Winn returned with a small china plate with a coconut-covered donut and a paper cup with steam coming out of it, which he handed to Jess. "It was the best I could do. What did I miss?"
Alex handed him the note. "Pull up the map of this zip."
"Looks like it's up in the mountains."
Jess dropped her half-eaten donut. "Fuck! I was right."
They stared at Jess. Vasquez leaned down, picked up her donut, brushed it off, and set it back on the plate. They stared at Vasquez.
"What? Five-second rule."
Jess said, "I had this idea, but at the time, I thought it was crazy, so I didn't say anything, but it makes sense. I mean, a member of LCorp's Board of Directors just leaped to the conclusion of the Coronavirus not even an hour ago, and suddenly, that's in the news? And because I knew that Lillian had actually been helping you, so of course, who else would have knowledge and access, right? But--"
Vasquez laid her hands gently on Jess's shoulders. "Jess. Slow down. Tell us what--"
But Winn, staring at the map, said, "Oh! Fuck, Jess, you're a genius! Of course!"
Alex stared from one person to the other, lost.
Winn said, "The pink K! Lex's old bases, the ones we cleared. Except, wait. We cleared them."
Jess took another bite of the donut, overwhelmed by the sweetness. "Fill a truck with supplies. You're good for two weeks, easily."
Alex said, "Vasquez, there were two sites..."
Vasquez pointed to the map above them. "The second one was right about there."
"My thought exactly. What have you got for me?"
Vasquez grinned, leaned down, opened the small file cabinet under her station, pulled out a brown file folder and handed it to her. "You tweak while I call out our flyers."
For the first time all week, something tight below Jess's heart eased a fraction.
///
When they got to the mountain, Supergirl led J'onn and M'gann to breach and clear.
Lena was strung up with rope between two poles, a cloth bag over her head, battered and confused, but alive and warm. Supergirl thought she would never let her go.
Chapter 31: To Every Season, Turn, Turn, Turn
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Dr. Hamilton walked out of the medbay to face a group of soldiers and superheroes who looked like they were about to burst into tears. She stripped off her rubber gloves and said, "She's stable and given what she quite likely endured, healthy."
Supergirl growled, "What do you think she endured?"
"The worst of it from what I could see was a light beating, and a needle under one of her fingernails."
Jess stumbled and Winn caught her, set her in one of the plastic chairs, and gently pushed her head down between her knees.
Hamilton continued, "Apparently, she was only strung up in that Palestinian hanging position for about half an hour before you got to her. That's enhanced interrogation techniques. It's kind of bizarre, really."
"Bizarre?" snapped Alex.
"I've seen patients who've been tortured for two days with a thousand percent more trauma. They had her for almost a week. And yet, sure, she's disoriented, doesn't know what day or time of day it is. But she knows her own name, fortunately. And she knows the current president's name, unfortunately. She has a bit of light bruising, but no lacerations, no concussion, no lost teeth or digits."
Vasquez crossed her arms and frowned.
(And Dr. Hamilton did not have the encyclopedic understanding of the Forty-Nine Frowns of Susan Vasquez that Director Danvers was said to have. But she was pretty sure that this one was Only Mildly Dangerous.)
"Okay, Doctor," said Vasquez. "What are you saying? These people were amateurs?"
"Not at all. Total pros. Amateurs wouldn't know the technique. Pros are cold and clinical and not at all afraid to cause permanent damage, but that's not where they start. Amateurs--Jess, keep your head down--Amateurs are often total psychos who get off on causing pain, maiming. They start at major damage and go from there. These were pros." She pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly. "But oddly reluctant pros, maybe because they were female? Or knew who Lena was? I think they weren't trying to really hurt her, just..." She glanced at Supergirl and took a step back. "Maybe trying to change her mind?"
"About marrying me," said Supergirl. "But who--"
At the same time, Alex and Vasquez growled, "Lex."
J'onn said, "Likely, but difficult to prove. We did double check that he's still incarcerated."
M'gann said, "What's really crazy is Lillian actually helping us, turning on Cadmus."
Alex turned to Vasquez. "You predicted that last month."
"Not predicted, per se. I just thought maybe she's been blowing smoke where her two children are concerned." She shrugged.
"Supergirl," said Dr. Hamilton, "I've sedated her, so she'll be sleeping, and you look like you could do with some downtime in the sunlamp room, but you should go in and hold her hand for a while."
Supergirl marched through the doors.
"Will that help?" asked Jess.
Dr. Hamilton said, "Probably won't help Lena, but it might help Supergirl."
The group disbanded.
Alex said, "Dr. Hamilton, walk with me?"
The doctor pulled a hair tie from her lab coat and tied her hair back in a messy ponytail. "Director?"
Alex did not march back to her office or the command center as Hamilton expected, but rather wandered through the corridors, nodding to the agents they passed, acknowledging them by name. They ended at the cafeteria, which was minimally staffed after the dinner hour, but always had halfway decent coffee fresh and hot, and stale donuts available for after-hours energy surges.
Alex picked out a jelly donut and poured too much half-and-half into her coffee. She dropped into a chair and bit into her donut, washed it down with a swallow of coffee.
"Oh, that is so much better..." She focused on Hamilton. "Okay, that felt... mm. White-washed? Soft-pedaled? How is Lena really?"
"Fair enough. Yes and no. Physically, as I said, she's going to be fine. Psychologically? It's too soon to tell, and that's not my field of expertise."
"But you're not optimistic?"
"Alex, I--" Hamilton sighed deeply, fearing that she was about to burst into tears.
Alex laid her hand on hers. "Doc, it's okay. We can handle whatever comes."
"Can we? I thought we could. Then again, I thought I could lie to my husband for our entire marriage, and it would be fine, and if he found out, we would be fine, and I read the CDC's annual briefings about the possibility of some new disease coming in and wiping out thousands, and we would be prepared, we would have a government that would prioritize its citizens' health and safety, and not shut down whole swaths of researchers, agencies. I thought that if a new plague came, I wouldn't be dealing with traumatized superheroes and a divorce proceeding that I can't even do legally because of all the NDAs." Tears slipped down her face.
Alex frowned. "Wow. That's just. Okay, well. What do you need from me as your Director."
"Honestly? You might need to take my husband to the Nevada site. He's threatening to out the whole DEO."
"Shiiit. Okay. I'll have Vasquez look at that and prep a team. I promise that if that is something we need to do, we will do it quickly, carefully. We won't harm him. We will be as respectful as we can be of his civil liberties. Hang on a sec." She pulled out her phone and sent a text to Vasquez and Lucy. "Okay, that's him. What do you need? What will Lena need?"
"Oh, Agent-- Director--"
"Alex," said Alex.
"Alex, what's coming? It's already here. It's so much worse than just Ed and Lena. I've been getting emails, texts, formal communiques--all day. The fact that our agents and you and the mayor and Lena were all in Chinatown seven days ago? They just found out that the cruise ship with all the cases still had active virus on surfaces seventeen days later. Seventeen days! We need to shut the whole country down, and that is going to be a job of work. They've closed the schools and the nonessential businesses, all of that, but..."
"We're essential. We can't shut down."
"And we may have been compromised already and not realized it. People can be asymptomatic for days... So sure, normally? Ha! Extra-normally?" Hamilton was laugh-crying. "I would be worried about Lena's long-term trauma. I would. And Supergirl because she takes on the worries of the world. But I have bigger things I need to figure out for the DEO. For the world. You know? And I'm sleeping on my sister's fucking couch, Alex."
"Well, do we know if aliens can get this thing?"
"So far I haven't heard of a single alien case. But they could simply have a longer period, or it could depend on their biology, or how long they had been on Earth. There is just so bloody much we simply don't know."
Alex nodded slowly, and she seemed... more solid somehow as she took the information in, as though tragedy and imminent chaos boiled her down, condensed her into something as solid and strong as... a Kryptonian.
"Well," Alex said. "We have quite a number of aliens currently deputized to work with, and as, DEO agents, not just J'onn and M'gann, but Psi and Livewire--yes, I know she is out of commission physically, but she has a sharp mind and she's the kind of person who needs to be doing. We can use that."
"The president isn't going to go for deputizing aliens."
"No... But there are other ways of managing such things. Vasquez has likely been getting all the health briefings you have, plus a whole lot more--armed forces, national security, economic, international relations. I'm sure she has already started running scenarios, will be in touch with experts around the country and the globe. So we have a place to start." Alex took out her phone again and typed. Seconds later, the phone pinged. "Ah, excellent."
"What?"
"We can get you off your sister's couch. You know Callie Torres. She has a guest room. We can go get your stuff from your sister's place and get you to a place that has an actual bed for you. And then we'll go from there."
Notes:
To the best of my memory, I probably wrote this around spring equinox 2020, right after we were all “Pandemic: wash your hands a lot” and just as we started “Wait, lockdown? What is a lockdown?” So. That.
Chapter 32: There Is a Reason, Turn, Turn, Turn
Notes:
An extra chapter for you in honor of my getting my second vaccination shot and not feeling horrible yet. Hooray!
Chapter Text
Finn had not immediately understood, back when he first started at the DEO, why he would need to have at least one dark suit and tie, at least one white shirt and black shoes. He had expected, as when he'd served in the army, to need either his tactical uniform or full-on civvies. But when the DEO was acting as FBI or Secret Service, apparently, they needed to look like low-level businessmen (and -women) to be taken seriously while also flying under the radar.
That was how the arrest of Edward Cain took place. Agent Vasquez had an official arrest warrant for Cain's threat to national security. They had waited outside his domicile until he arrived and then walked up like civilized businesspeople with very readable (if somewhat doctored) IDs. Cain had known exactly what was happening when he saw the FBI IDs and had tried to run, but Finn was very, very good at applying minimal force to get maximum cooperation, so the odds were that Cain's neighbors hadn't noticed him being encouraged into the DEO's black SUV.
And Winn, apparently, had notified the man's office that he had tested positive for Covid-19 and was entering quarantine. His coworker/boss/whoever had emailed sympathy and a commitment to continue to pay the company's ill workers. So that was a plus. Vasquez told Finn to update Dr. Hamilton on the ongoing situation with her not-entirely-ex-husband.
///
Pill knew that she was one of the lucky ones. Her project in the Biochem side of R&D at KahlTech National City had been completely unrelated to the Senior VP’s secret project to make biological weapons with hypersonic triggers, which the NCPD had taken down back in late November. Well, a little light corporate espionage was one thing. Making weapons of mass destruction was something quite different.
And she still had one of the tablets, smuggled out in her shoe on her last day at KTNC.
So, after the entire board had been arrested and many of the workers on that enormous project had been hospitalized with precancerous growths, the company was in a bad place and she had tendered her resignation.
///
Lena woke up in the DEO's medbay and immediately recognized where she was... just not why. Or when. Or why she was just so bloody tired. She felt like she had just woken from a horrible dream. But Kara's strong, warm hand held hers. She turned her head to see Supergirl curled up in the chair next to her medbay bed, snoring lightly. And even as disoriented as Lena felt, she knew that Kara only snored when she was horribly tired or horribly traumatized. So a small part of Lena's brain assumed that Lex had finally gotten around to his annual attempt on her life, which was, in its own weird way sort of a relief. Then she went back to sleep, clutching Kara's hand in hers.
///
Livewire lay in a narcotic haze, trying to think where she had gone wrong. Was it in joining the DEO as an Extra-Normal Agent? Accepting their help on her shattered leg? Or maybe accompanying Supergirl and Psi when they went to that intergalactic prison? Or just, at the prison, when she had inserted herself between Supergirl and Reign. That felt like a huge mistake, in retrospect.
Didn't matter. Here she was in the DEO's medbay, being taken care of by some of the best of the best. So, yeah, Dr. Hamilton, but not Dr. Torres, who was busy at the Alien Clinic. And even Livewire could tell that Dr. Hamilton was stressed out and maybe only working at 85%. But that badass Alex Danvers was standing next to Supergirl in the periphery of Livewire's vision, both of them with their arms crossed over their chest, looking angry. And she was about 63 and 1/45% convinced that they weren't actually angry at her.
But again. Interesting drugs. Wheee.
///
Callie looked at the X-ray box that Dr. Hamilton showed her, and yes, of course, she saw the micro-cracks that they had all anticipated. Dr. Hamilton had in her hand a folder of ideas for how to use the new self-healing materials coming out of places like MIT, but mostly what Callie noticed as the two women stood there staring at the X-ray was the same scent she had found pervading her bathroom since Hamilton had moved in temporarily. Was it honeysuckle? She rubbed her eyes, tried to get her attention back on the job.
Dr. Hamilton put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Yeah, we're all a little blind tired at this point."
And Callie thought ruefully, yeah, she was going to go blind, but not from the work.
///
Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane turned away from the feeds to see Agent Finn enter with a brown folder. He said, "Mr. Cain has been secured in the human wing. He's... not too happy about it."
"Tough. We're in an international pandemic. Dr. Hamilton and the DEO are on the front lines protecting national security during a very unstable time. He threatens either one of them, he becomes a threat to national security." She took the folder and flipped through it. "Vasquez believes he would follow through on his threats. I think it is quite likely as well. So we hold him."
"For how long?" asked Finn.
"For as long as he remains a threat. Thank you, Agent Finn. Grab a meal in the canteen before you head back."
She watched him go, wishing she could be in National City with Maggie, but for the duration, her job was here, overseeing the expansion of the containment facilities. Things were eventually going to really heat up, and they were going to need to have somewhere to house the fire-starters, both figuratively and literally.
///
Winn took Krypto through his agility training, his left cargo pocket full of doggy treats. The hang time when Krypto leaped from one tall concrete block to another had increased by two seconds, but it was still unclear whether or not Krypto would ever fly. Winn had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it would be cool, but on the other hand it might be harder to control him, and if anything went wrong, the results would be unpredictable.
As they finished the new routine, Winn's phone pinged with a message from Jess to call her, so he said to Krypto in heavily accented Kryptonese, "Okay, Good Wolf, we shall have sitting and breathing time while I communicate with Jess."
Krypto barked happily and sprawled on his back for a belly rub. Winn obliged, saying, "Yes, I'll tell her you offer greetings."
Jess picked up on the first ring. "Hey, Jess, Krypto said to say hello. What can I do you out of?"
"Um, yeah, we need to talk. I'm in the breakroom having lunch and I just felt like I couldn't put this off any longer. It's about, well, us."
Oh shit. "Jess, I can explain--"
"It's just that I do like you, Winn, and I've enjoyed spending more time with you lately, and you're a very sweet friend, but I don't know, it might be leftover effects from the pink K, since I know Lena was looking into a kind of chemical aftershock effect, but since I met Holtzman, I just, I don't know. She's just so, so, I don't really have words for how I feel when I'm around her. It's just different from anything I ever felt for a guy--"
"Wait, Holtzman? So you're a lesbian too?"
"I don't know. I might be bi. I haven't really figured it out yet, but I need to try, and she really likes me too and she is a little bit crazy, in a good way, but--"
Winn let out a stunned breath. Slowly, he said, "No, I get it. Holtzy is a very particular and fascinating human being. And I, well, I'm bi too, and that has been a little weird lately, so I get it if you feel the need to, well, not be with me. You should be happy, Jess."
And he hung up feeling stunned but also relieved because the guilt had been eating away at him, and he also felt disappointment at being towed into the Friend Zone.
Again.
And he was certain to his bone marrow that he would in fact stay friends with Jess, because he was incapable of not staying friends with the women in his life. And he also felt a tiny iota of hope, hope that maybe he and James could try....
Krypto sat up and licked his face very thoroughly. Dogs looked at things like the Friend Zone very differently.
///
Kara had taken to sleeping on a cot beside Lena's bed in the medbay each night and, as Supergirl, flying patrol all day long, primarily landing on beaches where people were congregating, and giving them speeches about social distancing and hope and how viruses spread, and she was exhausted because she just couldn't be everywhere at once the way she wanted to, and she was so worried about Lena.
Because Lena had apparently been tortured, probably at Lex's behest, possibly to convince Lena not to marry Kara. The person she loved best in the world had been tortured because of her.
And every time Kara saw Lena slowly wake to see the medbay, she watched her green eyes turn toward her, Kara, see her, and that face broke into a smile. And then the smile faltered. And Kara couldn't bear it. And then, that night she returned to the medbay to see Dr. Hamilton talking to one of the medtechs, and the older woman looked exhausted, and Lena's bed was empty. Kara nearly passed out.
"Where's Lena? Is Lena okay? Did she have a--"
"Calm down, Supergirl," said the doctor tiredly. "She went home to her condo. She said she has some plans for retooling LCorp to help with building ventilators. Jess is at LCorp managing the transition as they get the admin people to work from home, but apparently the scientists and engineers-- Well, I didn't follow all of it, she was talking so fast, but apparently Lena has an idea for ramping up the creation of more testing kits, but she was going to need to collaborate with, and I quote, 'That shite, Maxwell Lord,' and she didn't sound too happy about it, but like I said, it was pretty hard to follow."
"Wait," said Supergirl, frowning. "She was in inventing mode? After... everything? Did she seem manic?"
"No, just sped up, eyes flashing, drawing with a mechanical pencil in a notebook as she talked about everything that she would have to set up..."
"But inventing mode is Lena's happy place. How on Earth..."
Hamilton smiled. "Lena is one of the most resilient humans I've ever met."
Supergirl changed in the electrical closet, and exited wearing burgundy skinny jeans, a white shirt polka-dotted in pink, and a pink sweater (the one Agent Collins had retrieved for her; it really was one of her favorites). She walked from the DEO with Krypto on a leash and ended up at Lena's condo building. Security let her in, and she rode up in the elevator, with Krypto wagging his tail happily. He knew where he was.
At Lena's door, Kara rang the bell and waited. Lena let her in and hurried back to her laptop open on her kitchen island, where Jess and Kate from R&D inhabited two tiles of a video conference. Lena was wearing WiFi headphones and kept talking, but Kara couldn't hear what the LCorp employees were saying.
"Yes, I know, Jess," said Lena. "But there's a reason it was part of the protocol."
Jess looked stressed as she explained soundlessly.
"Well, call first thing tomorrow and see what her availability is. Kate, how is Ron handling the lockdown? Yeah, I was afraid of that. I feel like most of the engineers will welcome the opportunity to--" Lena frowned as Kate replied. "Yes, but HR handled that. Immuno-compromised employees will be given the opportunity and equipment to digitally--"
Krypto watched Lena talk at her computer and then turned to Kara and whined softly. Kara said, in Kryptonese, "Yeah, I know, Friend. She barely even knows we're here. How about you help me make the evening meal. I will cut and stir and heat, and you can supervise."
And Krypto barked his enthusiasm for that plan softly. Lena moved her laptop into the living room and Kara set about mixing a pizza dough, then kneading the shit out of it. She wondered if Lena was stuffing her feelings, but Lena's eyes were flashing as she talked quickly, so Kara figured about six veggie pizzas would work off her own hunger, and she could make a chicken cordon bleu pizza for Lena and maybe a chocolate mousse for dessert. Normally, Lena forgot to eat. When Lena was stressed, she drank her dinner. When she was happy, she gave Kara a run for her money in the eating department. Someone who had just been tortured, presumably at the behest of her own brother, should be apathetic about food (and work, and sex).
Oddly enough, Kara thought that, just perhaps, Lena was in a much better place than she would ever have imagined. It paid to be prepared.
Chapter 33: And a Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven
Chapter Text
Dr. Eliza Danvers was exhausted, naturally. She had been working with her friend, the epidemiologist, Allison Buttenheim, who had asked for her help in a set of seriological studies of aliens in seven of the biggest cities in the US: Metropolis, DC, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Tampa and National City. So far, the results had been promising. The blood of aliens that was copper-based had shown a natural immunity to Covid-19. Those with iron, alas, less so. But the work was finicky and painstaking and occurred around the clock.
So Dr. Danvers was also nervous, unsurprisingly. There were so very many variables they didn't even know to test for, how to test for, how often to test for... And in the front of her mind, she was furious about how the federal pandemic team had been fired two years previously by the current president, and in the back of her mind, she worried furiously about the health of her human daughter, who was essential personnel, her adopted daughter, who was an alien, and their friends and colleagues who were... a mixed lot.
But more than anything else, Eliza was disappointed. In the previous years, no matter whether Alex was in Seattle and Kara in Geneva, they had managed to get back to Midvale for Thanksgiving.
Not this year.
She had bought the smallest turkey she could find--fourteen pounds, from her friend Abigail, the butch butcher--and she had cooked down six pounds of mushrooms in the microwave to add to her handfuls of celery and oatmeal to make her signature stuffing. And she had skinned and mashed turnips, and made her glazed carrots, and of course, the chocolate pecan pies--
But when K-- Supergirl had breezed in, picked up the enormous hiking backpack full of Tupperware boxes for her girls and their friends and colleagues, so that they could have a reasonable Thanksgiving despite the Current Mess (or Orange Disaster), Eliza just felt sad. She could give her girls and the people they cared about at least the trappings of a Real Thanksgiving.
But what she really wanted was a piggy-pile group hug for herself. And that just wasn't going to be happening anytime soon.
///
M'gann had complied with the mandatory shutdown of public spaces like Dollywood even though the current thinking was that aliens could not get and/or transmit Covid-19, precisely because although she was pretty well convinced that aliens couldn't get it themselves, if the virus could stay viable for seventeen days on the surfaces of a cruise ship, there was no convincing argument that it couldn't say viable on aliens' clothes, etc.
But that meant she had a lot of downtime on her hands.
And yes, although she was (alas) a White Martian, a member of a species that had used any and all means to commit genocide on her planet (including exciting new viruses), in the end M'gann was, at heart, an Earthling, who had, over the course of the last three centuries, been witness to, among other things good and bad, the British Empire.
And yes, of course, the colonialism and imperialist grab for land and power and people was appalling. It was.
Just...
There was something really lovely about sitting at home in her Snoopy and Woodstock pajamas binge-watching the Great British Baking Show.
She was still trying to figure out whether or not Sue Perkins was an alien. For sure, Paul Hollywood was. But what species?
///
Pill knew that she was one of the lucky ones. Her project in the Biochem side of R&D at KahlTech National City had been completely unrelated to the Senior VP’s secret project to make biological weapons with hypersonic triggers, which the NCPD had taken down back in late November. Well, a little light corporate espionage was one thing. Making weapons of mass destruction was something quite different.
And she still had one of the tablets, smuggled out in her shoe on her last day at KTNC.
So, after the entire board had been arrested and many of the workers on that enormous project had been hospitalized with precancerous growths, the company was in a bad place and she had tendered her resignation. Returning to her hometown of Gotham where an old colleague had a vegan vitamin company, it wasn’t too hard to get a job, and not a moment too soon, as practically the very next week, they had started to hear about Covid-19.
So thousands of people were out of work and facing eviction, but there she was in her little one bedroom apartment with great southern exposure and a job with her own tiny lab. She was happy to be back in Gotham. The Crows had really been cleaning it up since Batman went AWOL, so it wasn’t quite the hellhole it had been when she was in college there. And also, CatCo Magazine had recently done a feature on the city’s newest hero, Batwoman, who had come out as a lesbian. Pill felt right at home again.
///
Early December was dusted with light snow, but the streets of National City were empty. If one were walking "for fresh air and exercise" and could dodge the dog-walkers and joggers, one would see snowdrops peeking up from the soil. One would hear a car a long way off, buzzing past. One would feel a shiver of cold, not just from the meteorological effects but also from the existential aloneness.
If one were taking one's young children on their tiny razor scooters to visit--quickly--the pharmacy/store to pick up tissues and acetominophen and chocolate, one would get in and get out quickly, even paranoically, to get your progeny home without getting them infected. And one absolutely wouldn't even think to think of oneself being the infected one and how that would impact one's progeny.
If one were an "essential" delivery person, parking one's truck in front of a small apartment building, stacking large, heavy boxes onto one's dolly and wheeling them up the stairs to the exterior lobby, pushing the apartment's buzzer with gloved hands and waiting for a woman in pajamas to come down and open the lobby door, one would quickly offload those boxes and return to one's truck, trusting the petite woman to somehow get those large boxes of booze up the two flights of stairs herself.
And if one were, for example, an orthopedic surgeon at an alien clinic, one might see the worst of humanity in the injuries to the aliens who were the last people--literally--on the planet to blame for the virus. And one would have to figure out how to mend their broken bones and, well, bone-equivalents.
And Dr. Callie Torres, orthopedic surgeon extraordinaire, was exceptional. But she was also very, very tired.
///
When Dr. Kate Templeton showed up for work at LCorp, wearing easily washable green scrubs and a face mask her mother had sewn for her from an old bandana, the security guard at the entrance (also masked, this time with a floral print for a 6'4" bearded bear) stepped back while asking her to drop her mask and show her picture ID.
Then she passed on to her department on the fourteenth floor. Ron was out. He had been feeling poorly since his partner's funeral, and Lena had a strict sick-leave policy that had a lot of leeway around stressful life-events. And that was (probably) good for Ron. But it did leave Kate short-handed in R&D.
The building was all but empty. Only the four corner conference rooms on every floor were in use with one person in each, connected to video conferencing or working alone on laptops or with portable 3D printers for making proof-of-concept prototypes of the seventeen new designs Lena had come up with "while she was gone" and had been scrambling to get on paper "since she came back."
Kate had worked with Lena a long time, more closely in the past year or so, but even she didn't know what to make of Lena's whirlwind of inventing. They had tried one video conference at the beginning after her return from... no one really knew where. But she was talking too fast for most people to keep up, so the ensuing conferences had been with Jess on the video, with Lena speaking to her assistant through her earpiece from home. It was... odd. But they were making it work.
Kate looked at the pieces of plastic that had finished printing overnight. They reminded her of the model airplanes she had put together with her dad in the basement of her childhood home. He had always insisted that they snip the pieces off the frame that they came in from the box, lay them out carefully and methodically, then glue them together one at a time, in order. This felt a lot like that, except without the modeling glue headaches or weird highs.
The only highs these days came at lunchtime, which Lena was having delivered, each day from one of her favorite restaurants: Monday was Golden Joy Chinese, Tuesday was Tentaifun sushi, Wednesday was pizza, Thursday was Indian from a place north of the city that Kate had never heard of before. Friday was sandwiches, which wasn't all that exciting, but then, it was Friday after all. That had to be exciting enough.
That variety went to all the office workers, admins and R&D, Kate's department. Out at the LCorp manufacturing sites outside of town, Kate had heard that they were alternating between pizza and sandwiches, but it was an awful lot of workers, working four six-hour shifts since the retooling to make ventilators for the city's hospitals. Kate had heard that Lena had also negotiated with LordTech to make a streamlined system for building testing kits, since the city desperately needed more of those too.
Kate glanced out the window to the small green stretch of city just barely visible between other buildings: a thick stand of trees that bordered Fair Meadows, the city's oldest cemetery, where Channel Seven had reported that a private service was being held for the children killed in that horrible accident a few weeks back. At first the service had been postponed while the police were investigating, and then while social distancing rules were being sorted out. But Kate imagined that the mortuary was going to need the space soon.
The thought made her blanch. She might not eat that much sushi today after all.
Chapter 34: A Time to Be Born, A Time to Die
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
When the call had gone out through the alien grapevine from the city's two biggest funeral homes looking for volunteers to help with the funerals of the children killed in the school-bus attack, Brian immediately texted his availability. He had never driven a hearse before, but driving was driving. He had also never served as a pallbearer, but his EMT training, lifting gurneys out of the ambulance and hefting them back in with injured aliens, had put new muscle on his normally lank frame.
And anyway, the coffins were small and light.
Apparently, the city had worked with the funeral homes to set up a radius around the nine small graves, a circle marked by large potted plants at intervals twenty feet away from each other, where the small family groups representing the victims stood, wearing black clothes and surgical masks.
Brian and his Infernian friend from the fire brigade carried each of the coffins to rest next to the hole in the ground that would be the young people's final resting places, six humans and three aliens. Then they stood back at attention while the human minister and the Maldovan cleric said their pieces. The humans sang "Amazing Grace." Then everyone turned away, back to the long black cars, to return to their quarantine and their long grief.
Brian went back to the Luthor clinic, showered and changed his clothes. There was work to be done. As he went to get back into his ambulance and handed Dro'udd, the driver, a cup of hot coffee, Brian looked up to catch a flash of blue and red. He had been aware of her overhead throughout the funeral but had forced himself not to look up so he wouldn't distract anyone.
Now he glanced at the sky and felt a little less hopeless. Things were bad and people were going to die, all because of an invisible virus. But at least someone was keeping watch, keeping them safe from the things they could see.
///
Supergirl hovered above the cemetery, keeping careful watch. She had not needed Vasquez to tell her that the children's funeral might be a target for domestic terrorists. These families had already suffered enough. She would make sure that at least today, they would not be made to suffer more.
Since Lena had come home, Supergirl had been hopeful and depressed in waves. On the one hand, Lena had shrugged off the physical suffering she had gone through and seemed barely aware of the psychological suffering. She had explained to Kara, Alex, Vasquez and Dr. Hamilton how she just routinely put her mind in another place, solved complex technical problems that she had been putting off for months, imagining handwriting her notes and blueprints and committing them to memory. They all gaped a little at Lena as she talked, but Kara had grinned. Her girlfriend was a certifiable genius, which had also allowed her to be a certifiable badass. She was also, lately, sexually insatiable. And every morning after... all of that.... Lena would jump up and make Kara a ton of waffles from scratch so that "Miz Danvers, intrepid reporter, and Supergirl both" could "keep up their strength." So yeah. Yowza. Kara often found herself humming under her breath whenever she thought of Lena's flashing green eyes.
From a distance the world looks blue and green
And the snow-capped mountains white
From a distance the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight
From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
It's the voice of hope
It's the voice of peace
It's the voice of every man
But then all the fear that Kara Zor-El had felt while the woman she loved to bits was far away, alone and in danger washed back over her. Kara had lost so much over the years: her planet, parents, friends, future. Then she got new parents, new friends, a new future. Then she got her aunt back, and then she had lost her again, and then she got her back again, and now Astra wasn't precisely lost, just far away. And she got her second father back, but then he was taken away again. And every time Lena was torn from her, she just dreaded that this time, it would be permanent. There would be a great gaping hole in Kara's chest that would never be filled. And so far, Supergirl and the DEO, J'onn, Alex, Vasquez, all of them: they had come through time after time.
From a distance we all have enough
And no one is in need
And there are no guns, no bombs and no disease
No hungry mouths to feed
From a distance we are instruments
Marching in a common band
Playing songs of hope
Playing songs of peace
They are the songs of every man
Winter solstice was coming, the longest night of the year, followed by Christmas and the new year. Supergirl flew over the city, riding out her feelings as she rode out the winds, clinging to the belief that Rao's light would continue to guide her through the darkness, even when she was soaring above a sparkling city in Sol's bright rays.
God is watching us
God is watching us
God is watching us
from
a distance
Notes:
“From a Distance,” written by Julie Gold.
Chapter 35: A Time to Plant, A Time to Reap
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
On the morning of December 16, Vasquez had woken and stretched and dropped to the floor on her side of the bed to do pushups and situps. Alex sat up, stretched, groaned and muttered, "I'll make coffee."
They were at Alex's apartment, having settled into an uneasy truce--
And Vasquez hated to think of their relationship like that, but there it was. They were taking a long damn time to rebuild the trust that had been severed when Alex slept with Sara Lance on that other Earth.
Vasquez had mostly put it behind her. She had met Sara Lance after the bizarre wedding shenanigans in Metropolis, and she realized that neither she nor Alex had meant to hurt anyone. Alex simply had fundamentally low self-esteem underneath her brilliant, beautiful badass exterior. Vasquez hoped that taking on the Directorship of the DEO during a time of crisis might firm up some of that self-esteem. Alex was so much better in a crisis than in normal times.
And these were in no way normal times.
She pushed up off the floor and slid off her sweatpants just as Alex approached with coffee.
"Mmm," said Alex, handing her the World's Best Girlfriend mug. "I'd pay to see that. Do you take coffee? I'm out of dollar bills."
Vasquez laughed. "Coffee will do." She took a sip and flavor exploded on her tongue. "Wow. This is the fancy stuff. What's the occasion?"
"Oh, today is Beethoven's birthday. Schroeder always celebrated it in the Snoopy comic strip, so I figured, why not?"
Vasquez grinned. "Director Dansquez celebrates Snoopy holidays. Of course she does."
Alex gave her heart-eyes, blushing.
"What?"
"You just called me Director Dansquez."
"What? No, I didn't. Only Winn calls you that."
"Yeah, but he doesn't mean me when he says that. He means us, as a team."
"Okay, fine, I need to find some pants. Can you--"
"There's a bowl of Cheerios for you on the island. We're running out of milk."
And as Vasquez rummaged through her portion of Alex's closet for her black tacticals, she thought about her own closet at home. Maybe she should pull out her electronic keyboard tonight, give Alex a little concert. She hadn't played Beethoven in years.
///
Winn went through the command center, wiping down all the surfaces with disinfectant wipes, focusing on the task at hand and working hard NOT to think about how much Holtzman had been grinning lately. Probably she was simply working on one of Lena's new inventions for the DEO. It undoubtedly had nothing to do with Jess.
Right?
The alarm went off suddenly, causing Winn to jump and drop the container of wipes. It rolled away as he grabbed for it and he nearly tripped up Finn who had just run in.
"Winn, what's the sitrep?"
"I, oh, it looks like a fire, south of town, a small apartment complex." He tapped his earpiece. "Supergirl, what have you got?"
"I've got the fire under control but I'm bringing an Infernian and a human to the Luthor clinic. Neighbors got into an altercation. Looks like quarantine nerves. You don't need to send agents. I've contacted the NCPD and they're looking into the domestic situation."
Winn turned to Finn. "Stand down. Supergirl took care of it. Looks like people staying home in tight spaces is making 'em a little crazy."
Finn looked disappointed, rolled his shoulders. "Yeah, can't understand that at all."
"Come now, Riley. Let's not get sarcastic. It's not like we can ask people to commit alien crimes just for our amusement."
Finn smiled ruefully, "Maybe just little tiny crimes?"
Alex strode in. "I heard that Agent Finn. You want something to do? Go help Rosie decontaminate the gym."
And Winn heard Finn grumbling about "keeping his stupid mouth shut from now on." Well, the whole quarantine lockdown was making them all a little on edge.
///
Eliza finished recording her lecture and emailed her TA about uploading it with subtitles for their hearing-impaired students. Then the back of her neck grew suddenly hot, and she rubbed her eyes--
"Eliza, stop touching your face!" she growled at herself.
But honestly, she was going to need one of those Canine Cones of Shame for that to happen anytime soon. If it wasn't the dry eyes from being inside all day, it was the runny nose when she walked around the 12 to 23 blocks of her neighborhood, depending on her energy, or the hot flashes that always gave her a moment when she thought, "Have I caught it? Is this it?" right before she recalled, "Nope, you're just getting old."
She didn't feel old, not most of the time, certainly not unless they had a few days of rain in a row, since the low-pressure system always hit her arthritic bits, and because she lived in Midvale, that mostly only happened at the end of fall and the beginning of spring. Now, in the last few (distance shopping) weeks before Christmas, it shouldn't have been rainy, but it was.
Well, of course it bloody well was. Climate change. Who even knew what the weather "should be" these days? Within seconds, her shirt was drenched, armpits and upper back.
Silently she thought, well fuck getting old anyway. And without Jeremiah to at least companion her through lockdown.
She thought of her girls--now women, she knew, of course she did. But they would always be her girls. She was most concerned about Alex. Kara would, probably, be just fine. Probably. To be sure, it was still a little fuzzy and they didn't have nearly enough data.
From the seriological tests of the aliens in their pilot study, non-Terrans did not seem to be getting Covid-19. Some aliens seemed to have a natural defense against it. But the numbers were still too small. Not enough testing was being done in the United States. Lena had called her two days previously to ask her to consult on the new tests being made in collaboration between LCorp and LordTech, and the process Lena had described excited her in a cautious way.
Lena had suggested narrowing the individual-level tests by first testing neighborhood sewage pre-treatment, which had proved useful for other epidemiological concerns. Monitoring wastewater to assess community health had helped in the past for identifying community exposure to opioids and pesticides, but increasingly, in the wake of concerns about novel viruses, researchers were expanding their remit.
So far... so far, it appeared as if neighborhoods with dense populations of non-Terrans were not reporting high numbers, or really any numbers, of positive tests. It just maybe might be one of those rare situations when the human tendency to ghettoize Others might actually be serving the minority population. Maybe. They would have to gather a whole lot more data over a much longer time series to be able to say anything even remotely confidently.
But it gave her hope for Kara. And J'onn, of course, and M'gann and all the others, even that blue fellow, Whatshisname. But Kara was Supergirl, and if the world had ever needed a hero, it was now.
The problem, of course, was that Alex was 100% human. And the world really needed her now too.
So Dr. Eliza Danvers went out in the late afternoon every day for what she thought of as her Exercisanity Constitutional, and she thought about her girls. And she sweated a ridiculous amount, because, duh, over fifty. And she worried.
///
Lena noticed a slip of paper under the couch of her condo and leaned down to pick it up, sighing. It was a to-do list from Before Kidnapping. Well, she supposed a thing like that could distract you. She opened her laptop and typed.
[email protected]: Hey, Ruby. I’ve been meaning to ask you. Kara and I are getting married, hopefully next year when we have a vaccine. It would make us both very glad if you would be our flower girl. Krypto will help. Warmly, Lena
Thirty seconds later, a reply came back.
[email protected]: Hell yeah! I’ve never been in a wedding before! Bellyrubs to Krypto!
Lena smiled. Sometimes it was nice to have someone wholly uncomplicated in your life.
///
Jess Huang stripped off her mask and stepped into the executive bathroom off of Lena's office to quickly pee and then wash her hands, humming.
I threw a wish in the well
Don't ask me I'll never tell
I looked at you as it fell
And now you're in my way
I'd trade my soul for a wish
Pennies and dimes for a kiss
I wasn't looking for this
But now you're in my way
Your stare was holding
Ripped jeans, skin was showin'
Hot night, wind was blowin'
Where you think you're going baby?
Hey, I just met you and this is crazy
But here's my number, so call me maybe
Okay, so not humming. Singing. She couldn't help it. Holtzman had sent her a text that morning as she was getting ready to drive to LCorp and, basically, run the place. She had tapped the YouTube video link of a small choir and orchestra at Yale practicing Carly Rae Jepson's "Call Me Maybe," and it had totally gotten under her skin.
She had bounced out the door, jauntily walked to the garage that held the Tesla Lena had given her a year back for her Christmas "bonus" and drove to the LCorp garage, where she put on her first cloth mask of the day and took the elevator up to the fortieth floor, from which she was coordinating... well, everything really.
Under normal circumstances, she was simply Lena's Personal Assistant (and sometime inventing partner, translator, bodyguard, trouble-shooter... the job description was fairly broad). These were not normal circumstances.
Ninety percent of the LCorp workforce was either working from home, working in very small groups in this or other major buildings across the country, or working in the retooled factories. Lena was working from home, not doing executive things but inventing her brains out. And of course, that left Jess to take point on... well, everything really.
She dried her hands on paper towels and pulled on a new pair of gloves and a new mask. Once a day she went around the building and checked in with the individual engineers working alone in their little conference rooms. She was supposed to do it by email or video, but she had found that the minimized human contact was making folks anxious, so she had decided to change the protocol. She was careful to keep at least ten feet of distance, but she found unmediated eye contact calmed the anxious, let them know they were not as alone as they probably felt.
It's hard to look right at you baby
But here's my number, so call me maybe
And yes, she knew that engineers, for the most part, didn't even notice that they were alone if they were working an active problem. But they were used to working in teams. So Jess had to be the Other Teammate for everybody individually, not just for Lena.
Hey, I just met you and this is crazy
But here's my number, so call me maybe
And Lena would only call her twice a day to check in, talking way too fast and referring Jess to files by six- to eight-digit call numbers, so Jess had taken to recording any call from Lena so she could go back later, slow down the recording and write down the numbers she couldn't always catch in real time.
And all the other boys try to chase me
But here's my number, so call me maybe
And numbers, of course, made her think of Holtzman. Jess had taken her lunch break (if it's sandwiches, it must be Friday) while rewatching the video of the choir and orchestra, Googled it a little and discovered that the group had performed on America's Got Talent, and the Today Show, and watched them sing that ridiculous ear-worm song over and over again. And then she'd gotten back to work, yeah, basically, running the place.
She returned from her QWA (Quarantine Walk-About) with a few minutes to strip off her mask and gloves, pee and wash her hands at length, humming.
You took your time with the call
I took no time with the fall
You gave me nothing at all
But still you're in my way
Oh, who was she kidding? There was no one else on this floor at all. She was singing at the top of her lungs.
I beg and borrow and steal
At first sight and it's real
I didn't know I would feel it
But it's in my way
--and dancing around the executive bathroom and out the door into Lena's overwhelmingly aseptic white office (where Jess had once or twice caught Lena singing along to "Shut Up and Dance with Me"), feeling more light-hearted than she felt like she ought to, given the apocalyptic circumstances. And yet, whenever she thought of Holtzman, of wandering around Chinatown and Alien Alley a week back, two? Holding hands and grinning at each other?
Your stare was holding
Ripped jeans, skin was showin'
Hot night, wind was blowin'
Where you think you're going baby?
Hey, I just met you and this is crazy
But here's my number, so call me maybe
And Jess checked her watch, thrilled to realize that it was almost five, that she could knock off, go home, feed her cats, make spaghetti, or hell, order Pad Thai to Support Local Restaurants (While Eating Comfort Food).
It's hard to look right at you baby
But here's my number, so call me maybe
She gathered her laptop and her bag, put on her last mask of the day and took the elevator down to the parking garage, and buzzed home, with the song still stuck in her head.
Hey, I just met you and this is crazy
But here's my number, so call me maybe
She pulled into the garage, walked the few blocks back to her condo, her cats, her quarantine safety, wondering what to do about food. Cook? Order? Cook? Order?
Or just snack all evening. She still had half a jar of dill pickles, hummus, chips and...
And all the other boys try to chase me
But here's my number, so call me maybe
She unlocked her front door, turned, closed the door and dropped her keys in the copper bowl to the right of the door on the half empty shelf of her wall-long Ikea bookcases.
Before you came into my life
I missed you so bad
I missed you so bad
I missed you so, so bad
Before you came into my life
I missed you so bad
And you should know that
I missed you so, so bad
And the jangle of her keys suddenly jarred her out of her head. She remembered something Lena had said once about Kara being a "typical lesbian smol oblivious bean."
Did Holtzman want Jess to call her?
Was Jess actually a lesbian?
Notes:
The videos I refer to exist. My nephew Colin Britt set "Call Me Maybe" for Choir and Orchestra. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVhSDQmIxs It's awesome.
Chapter 36: A Time to Dance, A Time to Mourn
Chapter Text
Maggie drove home from work through mostly empty streets. Snowflakes dropped lazily from the sky, and the weather forecasters were saying they would get at least a foot, but there would be no children cheering for a snow day since they were already stuck at home with their families. And she knew that most kids had relatively loving families and relatively safe homes, with parents whose income was relatively stable and whose jobs were relatively safe. But she had been a cop for a long time, and she knew that just because crime and violence weren't happening out here on the street that didn't mean it wasn't happening somewhere.
So she checked in with her exes: a nurse, a schoolteacher, a social worker, a softball coach and a pediatric surgeon and she asked them to check in with her if they knew anybody having domestic problems. It helped to have more eyes on things.
She pulled into a rare open parking space on her street, only two blocks from her apartment, and took the short walk as an opportunity to disconnect from work problems. In the lobby, she pulled her mail out of the mailbox and picked up a small package, with a postmark in Nevada and Lucy Lane's handwriting.
She took the three flights of stairs to her apartment, knowing that the elevator was much more likely to be a mass of germ warfare. Also, she needed the exercise. With crime down, she hadn't had to chase, subdue and cuff anybody in at least three weeks. She was going to have to do better at portion control if she didn't want to suddenly look like a Donut Cop.
As she closed her apartment door behind her, her phone pinged a text. She dropped the mail and her gun on the island and carried her phone to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer and popped the top, then hit the text.
PassingLane: So then I unbuttoned you at great length. And slid my hand down
Maggie dropped her phone, choked on her beer. She scooped up her phone, flipped back through her texts and realized she had missed a text while driving. Apparently, Lucy had dreamed of her the night before.
Yes. So. That.
She texted back.
TomSawyer: Am I gonna need a burner phone to communicate with you?
PassingLane: Open the package.
Maggie went to the island and tore open the package. One burner phone.
TomSawyer: There's a reason I love you.
///
Rosie down in the decontamination room of the DEO was working long overtime hours, scrambling to clean up the DEO's fifty-story building (counting basements and sub-basements, and the garage). Luckily, the new Director had been adding to Rosie's staff anyone who complained about the lockdown conditions, so she had some extremely badass agents wearing gloves and masks and wiping down computers, doorknobs, free weights... It wasn't ideal for anybody, but she'd take the help.
J'onn J'onzz would never have thought to put complainers to work, but then he had grown up with a single brother, and Rosie had never heard him talk of his mother, but she would bet dollars to donuts his Martian mom had been nothing like Dr. Eliza Danvers.
///
Eliza Danvers sat behind her microscope, looking at the two specimens, side by side. Alex had messengered them to her, asking for her initial thoughts. She had not prefaced that with any specific context, which Eliza thought was just good science. If she didn’t tell Eliza what to see, Eliza was free to see whatever was there. Or not.
They were blood, of course, that was clear, and human, or at least mostly human. And that was odd. She had seen specimens of the blood of human-alien hybrids or, rather, multi-species individuals. And the number of aliens who could successfully have progeny with humans was tiny, in part because having iron in the blood was rare. Copper, of course, even gold. But not iron.
But this… This did not look like that. Hm. Okay. So how else might a human get alien elements in their blood? She sat back and thought about metahumans, like Livewire and the Flash. You took a normal human and influenced them with some basically normal Earth physical phenomenon and you get… something not human but also not NOT human.
Right?
And she had read something about that… She turned and looked at the fifteen-foot-wide bookcase behind her, filled floor to ceiling with scientific journals. And yes, she had them divided by Astrobiology, Astroxenobiology, etc., etc. etc., but still, it could take days to go through the most likely journals to find the one article on whatever genetics were behind the metahuman… phenomenon. Or she could talk to the research librarian at the university’s bio library, except that this stuff might be top secret. Or maybe she could ask Lena Luthor? But no, Lena was tech, right? Not Astroxenobio…
Or she could email Alex.
Except that Alex wasn’t a field agent anymore. She ran the National City DEO.
Hm.
What about Dr. Hamilton? She and that new Dr. Torres (from Seattle via New York) had both worked extensively on Livewire. Maybe she could explain the science behind metahumans.
Because these blood samples were not human or human progeny. Eliza didn’t know what they were.
///
Adelle DeWitt had kicked off her stilettos and was pacing back and forth in her office barefoot. The last engagement had very nearly gone very badly wrong, in part because she hadn't done her due diligence, instead putting her new Personal Assistant in charge of vetting the target of the operation. Of course, she wouldn't have thought to run the names past Adelle, to check that, oh I don't know, the target might not be the boss's best-friend-from-boarding-school's daughter. Adelle blamed herself for that. She had dropped the ball and it was up to her to make it right.
She called down to Topher's office.
"Hey, boss. What's up?" said Topher.
"I need you to print Echo with the last imprint she had, the super-hacker. Then send her to my office with Meredith."
"You got it!"
Adelle rolled her eyes. Topher sounded high. She could practically smell the weed from inside her office several stories up. Luckily, that never affected his work.
///
Lena woke up to a warm but empty bed. Kara had mostly shifted to living in Lena's condo, and was almost always there in the mornings when Lena woke up horny and hungry, but there was a bright blue Post-It on the alarm clock. Lena put on her glasses and read the hastily scrawled message: "Callout from DEO. Meet you hear for lunch?"
And the spelling mistake spoke to the speed with which Supergirl had undoubtedly written the note. Lena stretched, got up and went into the living room. She turned on the TV news and saw that Michiganders were protesting the social distancing measures, Floridians were congregating on their newly reopened beaches, and LordTech's National City facility had been broken into overnight, and 13,000 newly made medical masks had been stolen.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
But that didn't seem like a Supergirl-type emergency, so as Lena ate her yogurt and granola for breakfast, she kept watching the news: a foot of snow expected by the weekend in the northern part of the state, home-schooling parents giving up in despair, an epidemiologist recommending that high school seniors who could, should take a gap year before university. There was even a follow-up piece about the geneticist who had bred the flying dogs, and how he was now recommending litter boxes for dogs.
Well. Lena had heard about that from Kara--while Krypto had proudly barked his agreement and then rolled over for bellyrubs from Lena.
And just as she was about to turn off the television and start her workday, Lena saw a headshot of a familiar face: Gideon Stott, her Vice Chairman of the Board of LCorp. Apparently, he had snapped and gone to the National City Bank & Trust with loads of guns, ammunition and at least one homemade bomb. He was currently holding twelve people hostage at the bank building that Supergirl had accidentally dented back when she realized she had to ask Lena to marry her.
Huh. Appropriate, if somewhat ironic. Lena pulled her phone off its charger and called Jess. She would know what was going on if anyone did.
///
Gideon Stott was having a bad day.
Actually, that was the World's Biggest Understatement. And Gideon was long past being interested in understatement, and a long way into overstatement. He needed to state to the world just how badly his life was going.
With, like, bullets. And consequences.
It hadn't started as a bad day. It had started like a normal day, really. He woke up and went running. When he came back, his wife had failed to make him breakfast and they had had a huge argument that had only ended when she went into her art studio and slammed the door behind her. He had heard the lock turn, but then he had to get to LCorp so he had just yelled something inflammatory and stormed out of the house.
He stopped at his usual Starbucks only to find that they were officially closed due to Covid-19 and the governor's orders to shut down, because of course they were.
He tried the convenience store across the street. He had poured himself a large paper cup of cheap coffee, but when he had gone to pay for it with his debit card, it had been rejected. Luckily, he had actual money in his wallet and could pay the two dollars and change and drive to LCorp, but the security guards at the front desk had told him that he was not on the list of Essential Personnel and could therefore not enter the building.
He had argued, but the masked guards had stolidly said that they had their orders from the head of LCorp's Security, and they were letting in no one who was not on the list. Not only that, but when he had called the security chief on his cell phone and she had repeated the order, they had escorted him out and threatened to call the police on him as a trespasser.
So then he went back home, but that was worse, because someone had emailed his wife a video of him having sex with three prostitutes and he had tried to argue that it had been before he married her, but yeah, the video was very clearly dated to three years before, when they had been going through a bad patch and he had acted out. Then she asked for a divorce, right before his phone rang and a very familiar woman's voice, with a posh British accent, had asked him about his satisfaction with the recent engagement with the two women, and his wife heard that and grabbed his phone and had ripped the Dollhouse woman a new one verbally.
And, of course, the fact that Lena was still the CEO of her company after the Dollhouse had been supposed to completely traumatize her meant that he had not gotten his money's worth.
But then his financial advisor had called him to ask what he had done with his retirement money, because his accounts had been drawn down to zero. And then...
Let's just say it had only gotten worse from there.
And he had gone to his hunting lodge in the mountains to clean his guns and load his SUV. And then he had gone to the bank and, wearing a black bandana as a plague mask, had started shooting. The bank manager had tried to talk to him, had tried to tell him that things would get better, had insisted that he not kill any more people. And then Gideon had shot him in the head.
But by then the NCPD had surrounded the building and one of those women cops (and women had no business being cops) had tried to negotiate with him. But he had insisted that the bank give him back the money they had stolen from his accounts.
And then Supergirl had crashed the party and frozen him with her freeze breath right as he was about to shoot himself in the head.
Two hours later, he was in solitary confinement on suicide watch at Albatross Bay Prison. But they had taken his belt and shoelaces, so about the only thing he could do was bang his head against the pristine white walls of his cell, coloring the cinderblocks red with his blood and despair.
///
Jess picked up her phone when she saw Lena's call. "Jess Huang. What can I do for you, Ms. Luthor?"
"Jess, have you seen the news about Gideon Stott?"
"News? Hang on. Let me turn it on. Oh! Oh, holy shit."
"What's going on with him, Jess? I thought he was solid."
"Well, actually... After you went missing, he said things about Covid-19 one hour before the news started saying you were sick. So, sure, I thought that was weird, but this? This is mental."
"That's what I thought. The news said he had his financial accounts drained down to zero and a troll sent some compromising video to his wife and he just lost it."
"Well, I can't say I ever liked the man, but wow. That's disturbing that any of that could be possible."
"Holy sh--. Sorry Jess. Just got a text from Maggie. They think he was behind my abduction, not Lex."
"Well, that's good news. I mean, isn't it?"
"Hardly. It means I'm still overdue for a Lex-Fucktastrophe."
"Oh. Yeah, that is bad. What can I do?"
"Well, Vasquez pointed out that our protocol is a little outdated, so we should probably work on that next. And did you get the appointment with my therapist?"
"Yeah, but it's not until next Thursday. I'm so sorry I didn't automatically ask her for an appointment when I learned you’d been abducted. I literally was dreaming of some horrible guy digging your shallow grave."
"I find, lately, that hope is one of the most expensive luxuries, and the most worthwhile. As Kara pointed out to me recently, I have her Danvers family, her House of El family, and her DEO family ready and willing to save me, for her sake and my own. That is a shitload of competent, strong, resilient, and unwavering people."
"And me," said Jess. "You also have me, for what it's worth."
Lena smiled. Jess could hear it on her phone. "I have you, Jess. That means a lot."
Chapter 37: A Time to Cast Away Stones
Chapter Text
Pill read about the Covid vaccine research with great interest. The most promising idea seemed to be synthetic messenger RNA, a manmade version of the natural substance that directs protein production in the body’s cells.
She hadn’t always been interested in medicine. Her first love had been beekeeping. In high school, her best friend’s mother had always had a few hives in the back yard, and she had taught the girls how to care for the bees, how to put on the protective equipment, smoke the bees out, and collect the honey. And the honeycombs had fascinated Pill, nature doing geometry instinctively. But it was honey’s medicinal uses that had turned her interests in this new direction. Apparently, humans had been using honey as an antibacterial, an antifungal, and a host of other uses for centuries, maybe even millennia.
And then she got a part-time job working for a florist and she learned about how herbs and blossoms were used for medicinal purposes, and she finally decided that maybe science wasn’t so boring after all. Maybe she could use it to learn interesting stuff. And now, here she was, so many years later, working in a vitamin company when she should be out there curing a pandemic.
Well, she had made her choices. She would have to live with them.
///
Maggie was exhausted. She sat at her desk in the precinct typing up her notes in a Word doc, the WiFi having been patchy all morning long. Normally, she would type her notes directly into the NCPD system, but, yeah, no. Saving and logging out, she skirted around Reynolds's desk, taking care to keep six feet away from the other detectives, all of whom were wearing surgical masks and gloves. Maggie wasn't used to looking like the robbers half of cops and robbers, but there they were. She went to the office supply cabinet and pulled out a large round plastic container of disposable sanitizing wipes--
and she caught herself in her head thinking of them as sanity wipes. Huh. She wished.
She went out into the parking lot to wipe down the back seat of her car where she had stowed the normally pacifist Maldovian who had tried to rip the face off his human neighbors for playing their music too loudly. Maggie considered herself lucky to have caught that on her scanner and responded immediately. It was rare that she had the opportunity to prevent a homicide. Reynolds had caught the next call with the (apparently) human taking out his Infernian neighbors with an AK-17, and that had not been pretty.
Maggie had seen how green in the face Reynolds was after that, and she had helped him with processing the human for deportation to the Nevada site of the DEO. The NCPD just didn't have the space for all the people they were holding, and Maggie wasn't 100% convinced that the shooter was human, or maybe he had been taking some really interesting drugs to get him so hopped up, strong and paranoid. Luckily, Alex had sent Agent Olsen over with Agent Finn to pick him up, sedate him and drive him out to Lucy.
And because Maggie was feeling more than just exhausted, but was a very resourceful person, she folded a personal note for her girlfriend into the paperwork for the detainee in an envelope marked Eyes Only.
///
James Olsen was floundering. First, he had wiped out his motorcycle in a (literal) shitstorm, broken his arm, gotten ridiculously drunk and had sex with his best friend. Then he had slept with Callie Torres, a thunderstorm of a woman, in an effort to see if that would make the (figurative) shitstorm of feelings about his best friend go away.
So, no to that, but the sex had been great.
But now he was learning what might just be a new form of self-defense in the form of training for how to put on and take off Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), a class taught by Agent Riley Finn, because the aliens who had taken to living in the Amazon, where Finn had been posted after Sunnydale, California, sometimes carried life-threatening diseases. Who knew?
And now Olsen was driving the DEO's black SUV northeast to the Nevada site. Finn was in the back with the sedated and cuffed detainee, and James didn't envy him, since they really weren't even sure what species he was and whether or not they could rely on his height and weight as an accurate metric for how long he would be out cold.
And normally when James did a trip to Nevada, he was most concerned about what it was going to be like seeing Lucy again, but right now that was almost the furthest thing from his mind, because he hadn't seen Winn for a few days, and although Winn had said that they were good, that they were still friends, James felt uneasy.
And the fact that his unease about Winn was at the top of his list of things to be uncomfortable about when the clipboard with the detainee's paperwork also contained what he suspected was a love letter to his ex-girlfriend from her girlfriend said an awful lot about his state of mind.
Floundering.
///
Winn's cough had started Saturday night when he was at home playing video games and thinking about James and trying to decide whether it was a shame or a mercy that he couldn't remember what had happened the last time he had been playing video games, when he had woken up naked in James's bed.
On Sunday, the cough was worse, but he spent his time doing last-minute Christmas and Hannukah shopping online, so it wasn't until dinner time that he realized that he wasn't really hungry and might possibly be running a temperature and he thought something might seriously be wrong. He texted Dr. Hamilton, and he didn't actually own a thermometer, so she said to take a hot shower, push hot liquids and self-isolate. She said she would let the director know.
But all Winn could think was that if it was Covid-19, then there was a good chance James might have it too, as well as Finn and some of the other agents he was often in contact with, including Vasquez and Alex.
And that would be very, very bad.
///
The moment Vasquez had gotten the text from Dr. Hamilton, she had sent one to Alex ordering ("recommending") her to go home and self-isolate, and work from her apartment. Then Vasquez had gone down to the quartermaster's office and had a very long and difficult talk with him and Rosie about PPE, ventilators and other equipment they might need if the DEO was to withstand a considerable number of agents and support personnel falling ill.
She was using Alex's office, its door left open and a large sign that said no one was to come any further than the doorway. Rosie was making and distributing similar signs all over the DEO. Administrative staff members who could work from home were sent home. Agents who needed to be available for missions were living in the barracks, as far apart as they could manage, communicating with their loved ones only by Zoom, Facetime or text, pretty much like the rest of the country, the rest of the world. And they were nervous. Of course they were. But at least most of their missions were dealing with aliens, and so far, no one had heard of an alien coming down with the virus. So they considered themselves lucky. They felt far more fortunate than the army, navy, police, and prison guards. But they had heard about Winn. So, yeah, nervous.
Meanwhile, Vasquez sat at Alex's desk, scribbling out scenarios. She and Alex had had Zoom meetings with a group of epidemiologists, the governor of California, and an old Marine buddy of Vasquez's who, like her, had been predicting that something like this was coming but, unlike Vasquez, had correctly identified the timing. She, optimistically, had thought they had another year to prepare. And they still didn't have enough information even to tell if surviving the disease would give immunity.
Luckily, when Alex had her Zoom meeting with all the deputized aliens, they had immediately offered to rotate patrols of the city so that Supergirl wasn't the only one supporting the DEO and NCPD. And Vasquez had a thousand things to worry about. But that small fact--which really wasn't that small, she knew--brought the number down from a thousand and one.
///
Lena always dressed for the work she planned to do on any given day. Previous to the pandemic, that usually meant pencil skirts, serious dark colors and an updo. But there were other types of work that she did and other types of outfits. Sometimes it wasn't about being intimidating. Sometimes it was about being comfortable and inspired.
Also, pockets, because like every other woman on the planet, Lena most wanted true love, bodily autonomy and plenty of pockets, possibly in that order, but not necessarily.
So, on that Monday morning, Lena had rolled out of bed at five-thirty, left Kara snoring softly in their bed--and Lena loved referring to her king-size bed as their bed--and put on her Princess Leia t-shirt, faded skinny jeans, one of Kara's plaid flannel shirts, and her own purple Converse All Stars trainers. She had four different color pens in her right back pocket, and the small Moleskine notebook Vasquez had given her in the DEO medbay in her left back pocket. She tucked her wallet in her left front pocket, her keys and handkerchief in her right front pocket. In the pockets of Kara's flannel shirt, she tucked the Marvin the Martian facemasks that she had bought in boxloads from M'gann for her R&D people.
On them, Marvin the Martian was wearing his usual Roman helmet and skirt, saying, "Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be a lovely earth-shattering kaboom!" Clearly, with Dollywood closed for the foreseeable future, M'gann had way too much time on her hands and a need of income. Lena was more than happy to help her out, and the masks were good for morale at LCorp, so that worked out for everybody.
She left Kara still snoozing. Sunrise wouldn't be until 6:36, and Kara generally woke the moment she sensed the sun. Let her sleep.
Lena threw on her parka and took the elevator down to the garage level. She very rarely drove herself anywhere mainly because of her tendency to invent while driving, which was dangerous for everybody, but she didn't want to endanger her two best drivers, Ted and Tom, both of whom were asthmatic, and since there were few people on the roads these days, she figured she could safely get from her condo to LCorp without killing anybody.
In the garage at LCorp, the security guards looked surprised to see her, but they let her in, and she parked in her rarely used parking space, which was simply marked LLCorp. Then she donned her mask and took the executive elevator to her floor.
Sitting in her pristine white office, knowing the building was echoingly empty, watching the sunrise and texting Kara that she'd had to go in to LCorp to work with Jess in her lab, she wanted coffee, but she knew that would put her over the top with energy, so she just drank water as she pre-ordered dinner for Kara: six pizzas and two dozen potstickers. She left a big tip for Jess the pizza delivery guy and texted Kara to let her know that dinner was covered. Then she took her private elevator down to her basement lab.
At half-past eight, Jess came down with some delicious decaf coffee and a blueberry bran muffin, looking a little nervous.
"Jess, what is it?" said Lena.
"Um, I. Well. It's. I don't know how to. Ask. Um."
Lena looked at the woman who was probably her oldest friend, this powerhouse little Chinese-American woman who was right up there with the DEO's finest when it came to kicking ass and taking names. And she looked downright bashful. Oh. Ah.
"So this is about sex," said Lena. "With Holtzman."
"How did you know what I—Yes. But I can’t. Never mind."
"Jess, you don't have to blush. Just think about what you've liked men to do for you."
"Yeah, but they haven’t-- And well, it's not like they all really. And I mean. God, why is this so hard to talk about?"
"Did your mother not talk about these things?"
"Are you out of your mind? And it's not like I have siblings, a big sister. My college roommate told me more than I got from my mom and school combined, and I was just lucky that she was premed, so her information was actually good."
"Well, do for Holtzman what you would do for yourself."
"Yeah, that's not gonna... I can't really be having this conversation with you. Especially now, on one of your Work Days."
Lena could hear the capital letters and laughed. "All days are my Work Days, Jess. You know that. If you're not comfortable talking to me about it, talk to Vasquez. She's another old school lesbian. Or talk to Dr. Torres. She's a doctor and was married to a woman for years."
"Lena, you don't think they're going to be a little too busy to give me the lesbian Talk? The DEO's Assistant Director/Threat Assessment Officer in the middle of a pandemic? And the head osteo surgeon at the clinic for aliens, who are getting beaten up and having their limbs broken by the covidiots who blame this virus on them when they're not blaming it on, for example, me?"
Lena shrugged. "It's up to you. I have no problem talking to you about these things. My own brother gave me the best advice about sex and consent I ever got. You can't let shame get in the way. But if you ask me, those two people would probably love to have a conversation where they felt they were actually for sure helping on something they have control over: information rather than human psychology. And they're family, Jess. A lesbian and a bisexual woman are always going to help the baby gay if they can. Decide for yourself. But if you ask me, the person you should really be talking to is Holtzman."
"Yeah, I guess..." Her phone buzzed and she looked at it. "Oh no. That's... not good."
"What is it?"
"Winn's sick. He is self-isolating, but they are contacting the people he's been in contact with for the last week or two. People are contagious before they start showing symptoms."
"Oh, for the love of-- So that includes you?"
Jess flipped back through her calendar on her phone. "Actually, not really. The last time I saw him was when you were rescued, and I nearly passed out in the medbay. I have no idea what day that was."
"Right before Thanksgiving. About a month."
Jess breathed a sigh of relief. "But even if I'm probably in the clear, what about all those agents? And Vasquez and Alex?"
"We just have to keep calm, keep working, keep hoping."
"Hope is exhausting. Oh! But I did make an appointment for you for eleven with the DEO shrink you prefer. She had a cancellation. She said she'd call you, if that works for you?"
"Sure, that's great. Meanwhile, here is the thing I'm working on." Lena picked up a clipping from a newspaper. The edges were singed.
"Did Kara... cut it out for you?" asked Jess.
"I couldn't find my scissors."
"Yes, ma'am,” said Jess dutifully. “I'm sure she's a very useful person to have around."
"ANYway. This group of Afghani women engineers figured out a way to make a ventilator from the parts of a Toyota Corolla engine, and last night I was looking at the plans, and I think we could make the same thing, and possibly micro-size it, at about half the speed and half the cost, and it would require us to retool in the factory in Detroit and the one in Akron, but even if we sell them to the states at cost, it won't be a huge loss, our factories and workers will keep moving and earning and with any luck we might get a bit of good will out of it as well."
Jess nodded and handed the clipping back to Lena. "Okay, that is so not anywhere near my capabilities to help you on. I'll just do backup."
"Thanks, Jess. And I'm sorry I was hard on you for not calling Dr. Larkin when I was abducted. I know what Kara has said about emergencies, how she is so focused on getting back that she never considers what the people trying to find us are feeling. I always yelled at her for that, and I know you did too. I never thought I would find myself doing that. I apologize."
Jess looked drained, but she smiled sadly. "The thing about people like you and her, Lena, is you always apologize, and you try to change. That's the important thing. Okay, I've got to go do... things..."
"Run my business for me? Thanks, Jess. I don't know what I'm going to have to give you for a Christmas bonus this year, but it's going to have to be big."
"You already gave me a Tesla and a place to park it so that I don't have to move it for street-cleaning on Wednesdays, Lena. Going to be hard to top that."
And she left, but Lena opened her laptop and went on eBay to look for a used copy of the out-of-print classic, The Joys of Lesbian Sex.
She was Lena Fucking Luthor.
Literally.
She was extra and she could ALWAYS top that.
///
Dr. Andrea Larkin had trained on POWs from Kuwait and Afghanistan, many of them service-people who had extensive training in resisting torture. Few of them had managed the stunning success that Lena Luthor had. Yes, it helped that she had a fraught childhood, although (as Assistant Director Vasquez pointed out frequently in training sessions) that was practically a prerequisite for working at the DEO. And it didn't hurt that Lena had an eidetic memory and had been trained in how to put that to her best advantage by highly paid experts. But still.
"So, Lena, how are you coping?" asked Dr. Larkin.
"With which fresh hell? The torture? I'm fine. I got a lot done between the torture sessions and now I'm managing to roll out blueprints and prototypes and I've got a new project to retool our factories to create better ventilators--"
"Okay, and how about the pandemic. I know that a lot of people stuck at home as you have been for the past month have found themselves getting cabin fever--"
"Seriously, Doctor? I had no problem being stuck for a week with people who were literally torturing me. Do you honestly think a little downtime in my own condo is going to be worse than that?"
"Oh, ah, no, I suppose not. Although the one could bring back problematical memories of the other."
"Did I mention that Kara is there too? The sex has been fantastic. She's... quite glad to have me back."
"That's great. A good libido is usually a sign of good mental health. But how are you feeling?"
"My last therapist always asked me that. 'How do you feel about that?' God, I hated it. I didn't do feelings back then, which I guess is why she always asked. But right now, I'm inventing. I'm collaborating with brilliant people. I'm having the best sex of my life with the woman who asked me to marry her, and I NEVER thought that that would happen, the proposal. So yeah, I'm happy and productive, and talking too fast for most people to follow me."
"You're not manic?"
"What, like impulsive shopping? Hardly."
"But mania does sometimes show up as nymphomania."
"When Kara starts to complain, I'll get back to you on that."
"Um. Okay, but do remember that she is a super-powered alien... If she were human, I wouldn't be too concerned, but as it is..."
"Kryptonians didn't really do sex, though, so I think we're probably okay."
"How are you doing with the drinking?"
"No coffee on inventing days, which is most of the time. I think I've had two glasses of scotch in the past week, mainly because I was having a hard time winding down last Tuesday night."
"Okay, that sounds good. Is there anything else you want to discuss?"
"No, I'm good and, hey, I think today is Chinese food for lunch, so that's exciting. Oh, and if I move the power source to the edge, the heat buildup will dissipate faster. That's bloody brilliant. Oh, sorry, Doctor. I have to go!"
Dr. Larkin sighed and pushed the off button on her phone. The rest of her calls that day were going to be with a trauma surgeon, an epidemiologist in DC, and an agent who had accidentally shot a child while responding to a school shooting a few weeks back.
So basically, all much, much easier than Lena Luthor.
Chapter 38: : A Time to Gather Stones Together, Part 1
Notes:
An extra chapter for Memorial Day.
Chapter Text
It had started from Alex's laptop in her apartment. It would never have occurred to her to get non-DEO personnel involved. But Kara suggested that Alex talk to Millie Bernetti, and they had gone from there. The Vo'on waffle man had also been pulled in to help, as well as the French guy who made killer ice cream, according to Kara. They had all brought their trucks to the DEO and let agents in civilian wear take them out of state to the warehouse in Northern California.
Hours before their planned departure, she was told to expect only a quarter of her original order. They went anyway, since they desperately needed any supplies they could get. Upon arrival, they were jubilant to see pallets of KN95 respirators and face masks being unloaded. Alex opened several boxes, examined their contents, and hoped that this random sample would be representative of the entire shipment.
Supergirl flew above and was able to tell them when the FBI agents were about to crash their party. Alex dealt with them.
"No," she told the agents. "This shipment is not headed for resale or the black market."
The agents checked her credentials, and she convinced them that the shipment of PPE was bound for hospitals. After receiving her assurances and hearing about their health system's urgent needs, the agents let the boxes of equipment be released and loaded into the trucks. When fully loaded, the trucks took three distinct routes back to National City to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.
They arrived several hours later. The shipment was small, but it would buy the DEO some crucial time. Already they had agents calling in sick and self-isolating, and so far, no one was reporting temperatures over 99 degrees, but it was only a matter of time.
Alex went through a decontamination shower and returned to her apartment. The shower had reminded her of those ichor-spewing mutant beasts and that shower she had taken with Vasquez back when she was still figuring out her sexuality. The ropy scar down Vasquez's leg had been a distraction from her... other attractions. Alex had been tempted to race through her shower and get out of there--not that Rosie would have let her--but holy moly. Vasquez was hot and who knew that women could be hot? Obviously, all the straight guys and lesbians and the bi women and... Well.
It was a nice memory to look back on, thought Alex, and might end in her "incurring a cross" as the nineteenth-century British aristocratic lesbian Anne Lister would have said in the coded part of her diaries.
Which was probably all the sex she was likely to get in the coming (ha!) months.
[Artenstein, Andrew W. "In Pursuit of PPE." The New England Journal of Medicine. 17 April 2020. NEJM.org.]
///
Eliza always missed her girls. That was simply being a mom in the twenty-first century. She had gone to see Little Women not long before the virus became news, and it had triggered a nostalgia first for when Kara had arrived with Clark on their doorstep and Jeremiah was still with them, and later for after he... disappeared. She and her girls had struggled to put their life back together in the wake of what they assumed to be his death. Alex had acted out, during her punk rock/Goth phase. Kara had doubled down on obeying rules. But they had been together, a family, even when everything felt chaotic and a mess.
Now, years later, everything was chaotic and a mess, starting from the highest level of government in Washington DC and skidding down from there to Florida opening its beaches in mid-December. She kept sharing memes with her Facebook friends about abandoning one's parachute when one's downward momentum had decreased. People liked/saddened/angered her posts, and she realized that these weird digital interactions were the closest she was likely to get to real human interactions. It wasn't ideal, but then she had friends who had given up on Facebook for some very good reasons BC (Before Covid-19) and might lately be regretting that move AD (After Disruption).
It was weird to think of something as inconsequential as memes keeping folks sane during this maddening disruption to their normal lives. But there they were.
Still, Eliza was a mom. And Christmas was around the corner. She did her shopping for everyone online, sending things directly to Alex and Kara, but also to Vasquez and Lena, their girlfriends, and J'onn, her girls' Space Dad. And M'gann, who was their bartender, even though all the bars were closed. And Winn, their sort-of little brother.
Being a mom to a superhero and her alien little sister was a lot more work than she normally had ever done, but Eliza knew in her bones that it was totally worth it.
///
Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane had a headache. Of course she did. The construction team had spent three weeks tearing a piece of Nevada desert out above the human containment facility, which had been deemed the safest place to cut into to build the new containment spaces which would functionally double their holding capacity. That didn't mean it wasn't going to be noisy.
On the upside, when Agents Olsen and Finn had arrived with their newest detainee, James had passed along the more... personal note from the... arresting officer.
AKA Lucy's girlfriend.
"Hey, FastLane. I miss you something fierce. And my bed is cold without you. Maybe I should adopt a cat? What do you think? Anyway, I'm trying really hard to do all the social distancing stuff while also doing my damn job. How are you?" It was signed Maggie, inside a circle of little hearts.
Lucy smiled, texting back.
"Hey, TomSawyer, I'm okay. Could be better. Containment at the breaking point, but you knew that, since you all keep sending me more people. Le sigh. How's the gang? What are you lot planning to do for Christmas? I miss you too, more than I can say."
There was a pause, then the grey dots, and then an answer.
"Zoom Christmas caroling and tree-trimming party. I'll send you the invite."
"And New Year's?"
"Pretty sure M'gann is planning a Zoom dance party, from what Alex said. Again, I'll hook you up."
"Hook up? Is there something you're not telling me?"
"Seriously, Lane, don't mess with me. My job is complicated enough."
"Sincere apologies. I just miss you."
"But not enough to take the rookie training program."
"I felt it wouldn't be best for my career trajectory. Do you"
Lucy paused, anxiety-filled and nervous.
Maggie texted, "Did I lose you? Lucy?"
Taking a deep breath, Lucy texted back, "I'm here. Do you want me to come back to National City? Do you think we can do a non-distant relationship? Make it work?"
"Sure. Maybe. Possibly. IDK."
"Yeah, see, that's why I turned the job offer down."
"At some point we're going to need to talk, via Facetime or Zoom or"
"Yes."
"some other platform. Cuz you're not getting to NC anytime soon."
"Makes sense."
"Babe, I do love you."
"Back atcha," texted Lucy, but honestly, inside herself, she wasn't quite sure.
///
Supergirl hovered above the city after a long (damn) boring day of keeping watch. The air was less polluted and tasted better, but the bustle she was used to, the people hurrying to and fro, the cars, the kids laughing on school playgrounds was all missing. It was strange and unnerving, but she flew around the city, making sure to be seen. The people needed to know that they were still being protected. Potential looters needed to remember that she would nail their sorry asses for breaking into the closed shops. Kids doing their school remotely needed to remember that bullying would not be accepted.
It didn't make her feel better.
Alex was sheltering in place at her apartment. Lena was working on some genius project at LCorp that would take a few days. Winn was ill, probably with Covid-19. They hadn't heard from James, Finn or Holtzman.
Vasquez checked in every three hours on the dot, which honestly made Supergirl's anxiety recede (right after it had increased exponentially) each time. So she was grateful.
And she had gotten a text from M'gann, who was taking over the "watch" over the city when Supergirl's watch was done, and that had helped. And Lena had ordered take-out dinner for her practically right after she had woken up that day, so Supergirl knew that when she returned to Lena's condo that evening, she would be receiving a ton of comfort food, although no Lena :0( for at least another full day while her experiment... did things.
And they hadn't talked much about it, and when they had, Lena had been talking very fast in engineer and Supergirl had been tired and listening in human, so she hadn't caught all the important bits.
Or, possibly, any of the important bits.
It was hard to concentrate when they didn't know just how bad this disease was or how to keep it at bay except for the social distancing measures. They had no idea how aliens might be affected. They didn't know how long they would have to carry out the social distancing, although Florida and Las Vegas were offering themselves up on the altar of sacrificial stupidity, which might, tragically, give them more information. Several of the pastors of evangelical churches, who had derided the disease as a "liberal hoax," had died. And it would probably take several days for a good/bad chunk of the Michigan armed protesters to get sick and die before a larger proportion of Americans really started taking it seriously.
Supergirl landed on the rebuilt balcony of the DEO, physically strong but emotionally exhausted. She didn't recognize the agents in the command center, nodded tiredly at them and went and wrote up her mission report, then changed into her Kara clothes and went home to Lena's condo.
She got there late, and Krypto was whining because his dinner was late and he was lonely.
She said, "Sorry, friend. Things are strange in this disease-ridden reality. It's not as bad as things were back home, but it is bad, and we still do not know if quadrupeds are endangered. I want to protect you. Here is your dry food. You are a Good Boy."
Krypto chowed down on his kibble as Kara chowed down on her pizzas and gyoza. She wondered if Lena would be okay with potstickers at their wedding reception. Maybe as appetizers? And they still hadn't discussed what either of them were going to wear. Kara thought of that black dress that Lena had that showed off her snow-white shoulders and it made her feel a bit damp at the thought. Maybe something like that in pale green, the color of her eyes...
She flipped to the back of her reporter's notebook, where she had the beginnings of the wedding party: J'onn as the officiant; Eliza and Astra to walk Kara up the aisle; Alex to stand with Kara; Vasquez, Lucy, Maggie and Winn as Kara's bridespeople; Jess to stand with Lena; Cat, Sam, and Dr. Hamilton as Lena's bridespeople; and Ruby and Krypto to be flower-creatures.
Kara closed the last pizza box, sighing. "Hey, Krypto. Do you want to practice with the flower basket?"
Krypto jumped up and trotted over to his bed, where Kara had left a large basket that she had filled with origami flowers. Gently, he lifted the handle and walked over to her.
"Good Dog, Krypto." They walked across Lena's living room with Kara reaching into the basket and strewing flowers to either side of the room. When they finished, Kara gave him a treat. She turned to pick up the flowers, but they looked so pretty strewn across Lena's white carpet that she decided to leave them for now.
The vast remainder of the guest list was M'gann, Callie and the DEO agents and LCorp engineers who had helped them save the world a few times, plus the off-world heroes, Barry and Iris, Sara and Ava, Kate Kane and her sister Mary. And Kara's friends from Millie's magazine.
Oh! And Lois and Clark. How could she have forgotten her own cousin? That didn't bode well...
Chapter 39: A Time to Gather Stones Together, Part 2
Chapter Text
When Callie Torres had moved to National City, she had looked for an apartment that was the complete opposite of the apartment she had had in Manhattan (small, cramped and expensive). Luckily, National City's cost of living was much, much lower, and she had been able to find a relatively spacious apartment, with exposed brick walls in the living room and a guest room for when her daughter visited, for almost half the rent she had been paying in New York. So, when she arrived home in the morning after a long night shift and got ready for bed just as Dr. Hamilton--Jane, she reminded herself--was getting ready to go to work, she was grateful for the extra space. If Callie and her ex had been forced to quarantine together, they probably would have killed each other.
Jane Hamilton, in contrast, was a quiet woman who kept to herself in the guest room most of the time they were both in the apartment, which was rarely, since their shifts were mostly opposite. If they needed to communicate, they either texted or left notes on the dining room table, so they never ran out of bread or eggs or--ha!--toilet paper. But on Saturday (at least Callie was pretty sure it was Saturday; the days ran together, especially since she mostly worked nights, when most traumas happened), or maybe it was Sunday, somehow, they both had two days in a row off from work and Callie noticed for the first time how thin and drawn Jane looked.
"Hey, you," she said. "I was going to make scrambled eggs. Want some?"
"What?" Hamilton looked up from her phone. "Oh, yeah. That would be..."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm. It's not me. It's my, it's Edward. I just got a text from Lucy Lane. They've had an outbreak in containment."
"He escaped?"
"What? No, he's tested positive for Covid-19. And he has high blood pressure."
"The studies linking those aren't conclusive," said Callie cracking eggs against the bowl.
"I know, but I worry. I mean it's not bad enough that he feels I betrayed him and he threatened to out my entire black budget organization to the media and had to be taken into custody, but now he's basically got the plague, and even if I could help, if I could be with him, he wouldn't want me to."
"Sometimes, there's just nothing you can do. I had to help amputate my ex-wife's leg. I think she still hasn't entirely forgiven me for that." She picked up a fork and whipped the eggs.
"But that's a medical decision. You were saving her life."
"And you are saving all the lives every time you take care of the agents and Supergirl."
"He doesn't see it that way."
"No, he wouldn't." She sighed. "Hey, tomorrow is Christmas Eve day. Did you guys have any traditions that you would do?"
"Just church before dinner and a turkey on the day."
"No tree?" Callie turned on the gas under the frying pan, threw a lump of butter on the pan and watched while it melted.
"He thought they were wasteful." She sounded sad.
"But they're great when you have a kid." Callie added the eggs to the pan, listening to the sizzle.
"Yeah, that was not to be..." She shook her head. "What about you?"
"Traditions? Well, last year I went out to Seattle, stayed with my ex, my daughter's other mother, and we spent a lot of time decorating the house, watching kid's Christmas movies, baking."
"Was that awkward, with your ex?"
"A bit. But it was worth it to spend time with Sophie. Get down some plates?"
Hamilton pulled two small plates from the cabinet.
Callie said, "You know, I do have some decorations we could put up, including a whole slew of snowflakes Sophie cut for me last year. We could put those up in the front windows, share some Christmas cheer with the neighborhood. I think Kara is planning a Zoom Christmas party tomorrow evening. We should represent."
Hamilton smiled. "Yeah, let's do that. Those eggs smell heavenly."
"Comfort food for trying times."
"Music to my ears."
///
J'onn J'onzz had enjoyed his time as Director of the DEO, well, except for all the budget battles. He had lived a long time and done a lot of different jobs over the years, but few that had been so personally and professionally meaningful. So it felt a little odd, now, to have chosen to walk away from the DEO and then be called back in and deputized to be an Alien On Call to give National City's overworked superhero a rest now and then. When the DEO was at full strength, Supergirl could work nine- or twelve-hour shifts, sleep a few hours and then go put in a full day at her human job. But the DEO was not at full strength.
Already even before the quarantine, they had had about fifteen agents down with the seasonal flu, and Agent Olsen on desk duty with his arm in a cast. Agent Schott had been the first to apparently come down with Covid-19 but he was by far not going to be the last. Currently, they had twenty-three probable cases, but they still couldn't test, so those agents were sheltering at home and calling in to Dr. Hamilton for telemedicine. It wasn't great, but it was working, for the time being. J'onn knew that Alex had helped Dr. Hamilton move in with Callie, although now that her husband was at the Nevada site, he wondered if she would move back into her own home. He hoped she wouldn't. The last thing she probably needed right now was to be living alone.
He flew through the sky, enjoying the cold breeze on his face. He was more than ready for the new year, though he had little hope that it would change much for the better. Across the city, he caught sight of M'gann flying her patrol, and he smiled. He knew that she, like him, was enjoying helping her adopted city stay safe while it tried to flatten the curve. He never thought he could be friends with a White Martian, much less fall in love with one--
J'onn J'onzz pulled up short in the air. He was over three hundred years old, so he did not fly into a building upon realizing that he was in love with M'gann.
It only felt like he had.
///
With Dollywood closed, M'gann had a lot of time on her hands between her patrols of National City, and she spent a lot of that time sewing Marvin Martian face masks and thinking about her friends and her clientele, whom she missed. So, when she landed in the DEO to make her report, she texted Kara about an idea she had, and Kara's reply was characteristically enthusiastic.
SuperDork: I know just the place! Meet me at the Battle Monument and we can fly from there!
Like many other citizens of National City, M'gann was in the habit from time to time of visiting the park/cemetery that was sacred to the memory of all who had died in the Battle of National City a few years back, so while she hung in the sky waiting for Supergirl to join her, she sent a prayer to the god of the Green Martians that J'onn worshipped. She didn't understand a lot of human religions, and she didn't much care for her own people's god, so she rarely prayed, but here it seemed right, especially as they had just passed through the shortest day of the year in a really dark time.
A flash of red and blue broke her meditation. Supergirl hung in the air, looking down at the monument sadly, then nodded to herself and said, "Ready? This is going to be fun!"
///
Jillian Holtzman did not hate the lockdown. She was a performing introvert, so being alone didn't suck the way it did for the extroverts in the city. She was always a little lonely anyway, but she was used to it. And lately, Facetiming with Jess had changed that a little bit.
Sure, she missed the equipment in her space in Winn's lab, but she had a few toys in her apartment, including a 3D printer, so she could continue to work from home. If she could build plasma rifles and a Phantasmagoric Containment System on a community college budget, there was blessed little she couldn't do.
That's what she told herself anyway, but as the "workday" inched to a close and her distance date with Jess Huang inched closer, she had a few doubts. The virtual date night had been Jess's idea. She didn't celebrate Christmas so hadn't had any plans for Christmas Eve. But she left the choice of the movie to Holtzman.
Holtzman had made a list of her thirty-two favorite movies and rated them from each from one to seven for how likely Jess was to like them as much as Holtzman did.
Or at all. Even the other Ghostbusters didn't always appreciate Holtzy's taste in the cinematic arts. And Holtzman hadn't known Jess for very long, so most of what she knew about her was second-hand from hearing Winn talk about her. Like him, Jess was a bit of a nerd, so science fiction seemed like the safest choice. Star Wars seemed too ordinary, Star Trek too passé. In the end, Holtzman decided to go with a classic: Buckaroo Banzai: Adventures in the Eighth Dimension. Was it chancy? Sure. The movie was weird as hell, and if Jess didn't like it, she might decide that Holtzman was too weird for her. And that would be disappointing and sad, and Holtzman would go back to being very lonely all over again.
On the other hand, she was enough of a rational engineer to recognize, however much she hated the idea, that if Holtzman was too weird for Jess, they shouldn't be dating in the first place.
///
M'gann and Kara flew back to Dollywood loaded down with miniature Christmas trees. Kara had discovered the spot a few years before while scouting out places for the Danvers' annual camping trip. From what she had learned from a park ranger, a small campfire had gotten whipped up by wind and gotten out of control and burned a small portion of the forest before the smokejumpers got it under control, maybe ten or twelve years before. Now it was coming back slowly. M’gann and she did not take many trees, and certainly not the ones that looked strong enough to refill the space. No, they took the small, weak, scraggly ones, the Charlie Brown's Christmas ones.
Back at Dollywood, M'gann went through her booze, dusting off bottles and choosing presents for her friends. Good scotch for J'onn and Lena. Sikkarian ale for Brian. Tequila for Maggie (and not, M'gann privately thought, for James or Winn). When they were all tied with ribbons and matched with a small tree, M'gann and Kara drove around the city dropping off their Christmas gifts to their friends.
Because they might be two healthy aliens in the middle of a pandemic, but, as Kara said, their friends needed cheering and, by gosh, this was the work of superheroes and bartenders.
///
James had been on desk duty in the bowels of the DEO for a week and he was dead bored. He texted Winn.
GuardBoy: Yo, Winn. What up?
ForTheWinn: Being sick sucks.
GuardBoy: You're sick? Since when?
FortheWinn: Don't really know? What day is it?
GuardBoy: Thursday. I think.
ForTheWinn: A few days? But my temperature is down. So yay.
GuardBoy: Wait, is this Covid?
ForTheWinn: Dr. Hamilton thinks so. I talk to her a few times a day.
GuardBoy: Did she say
ForTheWinn: She thinks I'm DEO's Patient Zero.
GuardBoy: how long you might need to
ForTheWinn: Two weeks, minimum.
GuardBoy: Shiiiit.
ForTheWinn: Yup. Don't get this disease, bro. It is seriously no fun.
GuardBoy: Are you well enough for distance Call of Duty?
ForTheWinn: For short sprints, with naps in between. Maybe.
GuardBoy: I'll call you tonight.
ForTheWinn: It's a date!
GuardBoy: ...
ForTheWinn: I mean, not a date date. Just a plan. It's a plan.
GuardBoy: ...
ForTheWin: It's a solid plan. A good plan.
GuardBoy: It can be a date if you want it to be.
ForTheWinn: ...
GuardBoy: Lucy's been dealing with an outbreak at the Basement. Doc's husband has it.
ForTheWinn: Ouch. Poor guy. God, I need a nap.
GuardBoy: Talk to you later.
///
Lillian Luthor sat in the courtroom, carefully keeping her internal smile off her external face. Her lawyers argued calmly and convincingly that she should be released from prison on a health basis, due to her asthma and her age. They had a pile of evidence of her "cooperation" with the police, giving away locations, names, bank account numbers, and they argued that her rehabilitation was the biggest reason why she would be perfectly safe "out in the community" and "not a flight risk."
Then it was just a matter of fitting the ankle bracelet... Then she was outside the courthouse, waiting for her Lyft, and dialed a number she’d had to trade favors to acquire.
"Cat Grant. Hello? "
"Cat," Lillian purred. "Long time, no... talk? Lillian here..."
"Ah. Well. Lillian. Is this your... phone call of the week?"
"Surprisingly, no," said Lillian. "I've been released on medical grounds, because of my underlying immuno-compromised state."
"I... see," said Cat, who clearly didn't see.
"I've run into a snag. The hotels aren't taking reservations and I can't get back to Metropolis until tomorrow. The car hire is limiting reservations too. I wondered if you had a space where I could hunker down for the night..."
"Have you been tested?"
"Yes, it came out negative. They had to do that before I appeared in court. It wouldn't do to potentially expose our honorable judges to a plague rat, after all."
"Hmm. Well, conveniently, my son is quarantining with his father for the duration. And I do have a guest room. But if you're willing to take a long, very hot shower while I throw your clothes in the washing machine, you could probably stay with me for the night."
"Mm. Lovely. But you know, the thing about prison, one forgets what it's like to have to shower alone..."
"Ah, well. Let's burn that bridge when we come to it, shall we?"
"Whatever you say, Cat," purred Lillian.
Chapter 40: A Time to Test
Chapter Text
Kara left Dr. Hamilton’s office in her civvies, throwing the black DEO backpack on over her camel wool overcoat. She didn’t much feel like flying. Finn and Holtzy had both tested negative, so Finn drove the black van and Holtzy sat in the back labeling the tubes. Kara was in the passenger seat, tired in a way that had nothing to do with her body.
They were running on Dr. Hamilton’s theory that the metals in the blood of Kryptonians and Infernians, as well as their extremely high resting body temperature, made them immune to Covid-19, so the National City Fire Department’s Infernians were conducting tests of all the first responders on the front lines, which left Kara to test the DEO agents and collaborators.
Kara was starting with the collaborators. Or, well, with Lena Luthor. She left the agents in the van and took the elevator up to Lena’s condo, unlocking the front door with her handprint and her new key. It still felt strange. Nice, but strange.
She came in the door to see Lena asleep on the couch, and the coffee table littered with what looked like rolled up blueprints. As she slid the backpack off, Kara listened to the peaceful marching of Lena’s heartbeat, and felt a swell in her own chest, like that Japanese woodblock print, the Great Wave of Kanagawa, love sweeping through her. She gasped, and Lena’s eyes fluttered open, those emerald eyes.
“Kara, you’re home.”
Home.
Kara stuttered, “Y-yeah. I’m home. Just not to stay, not yet. I’ve got some work to do, testing agents, but Dr. Hamilton recommended that I start with you. It’s not as bad as the earlier test, where they stick the swab practically up through your brain, but it’s not fun.” She bent down to open her pack and pulled out the tube-like container labeled, “Luthor, Lena. 34 y.o. f, C” and the date.
Lena sat up, snorting, “Kara, you’ll recall I was recently tortured. This is nothing.”
Tears welled up in Kara’s eyes. “I remember.”
Lena put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Kara. I didn’t mean—”
Kara sat down next to her. “To remind me? Don’t worry. I think about it constantly. I can’t stand that anybody would hurt you, that I couldn’t protect you, that it took me so long to find you.”
Lena put her arms around Kara and pulled her close. “Kara, it really wasn’t all that bad. It could have been much worse. Dr. Hamilton thinks they were strangely reluctant to actually hurt me. The needle was late in the game, and they gave me a local anesthetic before they put it under my nail, so it was a while before it started hurting, and by then they’d gotten the call that made them panic and scramble to string me up and get out the door. They even said, ‘We’ve got maybe thirty minutes before the cops are on our ass,’ so I had a good sense that whatever pain I was feeling at the time probably wouldn’t last long, and that kind of knowledge is power in a situation like that.”
“But if it had taken longer for us to find you…”
“I’d have been exhausted and my shoulders might have been very tired. But they didn’t do the job right, or I’d have suffocated. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the Palestinian hanging. It was more a crucifixion with ropes, which means after an hour or two, if they had set it up right, I might have asphyxiated. But they didn’t. The one who tied me up while the other was wiping down surfaces to clean fingerprints, she tied me fairly tight. Then the other one said, ‘Are you crazy? What if they get here late? She can’t die!’ And she loosened the ropes and made it so I could stand on my feet, not hang with my toes barely touching the floor. I wasn’t in much danger.”
“Rao, Lena. It is hard hearing you talk about it so matter-of-factly. And I thought Vasquez said it was the Palestinian thing.”
“Agent Vasquez is an expert in forward planning and risk assessment, not torture.”
“And you are?”
“You’re forgetting about my brother. You know how you said Eliza always talks when she’s cooking, explaining her current science problems while you work together?”
“Yeah, but what—”
“Lex was like that. He’d talk about battle strategy, or forms of torture and how to resist them, or—All kinds of things really. And you know me, I don’t forget anything. So, as I was hanging there, I was calculating how long I might have to last and how to reserve my energy. And matter-of-fact thinking, both in a moment like that and after it, is just a survival strategy. Getting upset doesn’t help you when you are in a potential life or death situation, you know that.”
“But aren’t you mad? Don’t you want to just—”
“Vengeance, Kara?” The Eyebrow.
“I get so angry sometimes. When I think about Krypton, or those witches who hurt Sam last year, or this. I don’t know what to do with it.” She sighed even as Lena hugged her again. “And I’m terrified,” she whispered, “that I’ll go all RedK again.”
“Sounds like it’s time to go back to that DEO therapist again, darling. Getting mad at Gerald Stott, a man who wanted to hurt me but apparently didn’t have the balls to kill me, wouldn’t do me any good. Getting mad at him now, after he killed himself in jail by beating his head against the wall, wouldn’t hurt him, so that wouldn’t give me any revenge, not really. Mostly I just pity him.”
“You’re so much better than me, Lena,” murmured Kara into Lena’s neck.
Lena sighed. “No, Kara. We’re just good at different things. You’re passionate, an artist. I’m a scientist, so I guess you’d say I’m dispassionate.”
Kara sat up, with a little evil grin on her face. “Not all the time…”
Lena laughed. “No, dear, not all the time. Just when I need it. But that’s why we’re so good together, why we make such a good team. A Super and a Luthor. It still amazes me.”
“I can’t wait to marry you. But, actually, there are agents waiting for me downstairs, so I have torture you a tiny little bit and then run out the door to do it to all our friends and acquaintances.”
She pulled the swab out of its tube and said, “Here we go!”
///
When Soft-Hands-and-Beautiful-Voice yelled, “Ow!” Krypto jumped up from a dead sleep and ran across the living room barking.
Kara said, “Krypto! Quiet! Lena is unhurt. I had to administer the exam, to ensure she is not ill, and it pinches the nose. She is fine.”
Krypto jumped up to sit next to Soft-Hands to see for himself, sniffing her for distress.
Lena said, “Krypto is a canine of great dexterity and care. I trust Kara to keep me healthy and hale. You may cease your worries and anxieties.”
Kara laughed. “Lena, have you been reading Kryptonian poetry again?”
Lena’s skin gave off heat. “Um, yes? I was looking for some lyrical phrases. For, well, our vows of matrimony.”
“Poetic dyads? Kryptonians were obsessed with symmetry. I like the human Rule of Three better. But I just had an idea. Everybody is pretty much sheltering alone. I think I’ll bring Krypto with me, as a therapy dog.”
Krypto jumped down off the couch and trotted to the door where his two leashes hung: the red one for play and the black one for work. He pulled the black one down and trotted back to Kara, whining softly, his tail wagging furiously, banging against Lena’s knees.
Soft-Hands said, “It seems someone is pleased with that strategy.”
Kara clipped the leash on Krypto, threw the backpack on her back and kissed Lena. In English, she said, “I might be late.”
“Well, then,” said Lena, “I guess I’ll have to keep the bed warm for you…”
“Damn it, Lena! I’m not allowed to use superspeed in my civvies!”
///
In the van, Agent Finn handed Kara the bottle of hand sanitizer and said, “Where to next?”
“Alex’s. Then we do Vasquez and James. Holtzy and Jordan are going with M’gann to test Pam and her department tonight, while Dr. Hamilton tests the folks on duty at the DEO this evening. But she was concerned about the top leadership and our lead agents.”
When they pulled up in front of Alex’s building, Kara and Krypto hopped out, and Kara grabbed her backpack. Krypto trotted ahead and hopped up to hit the elevator up button with his paw. When the doors opened, they stepped in. Kara hummed a tune. The doors opened on Alex’s floor and Kara knocked. Alex answered in her bathrobe.
“Hey, Kar. Took you a while to get here. I was just going to jump in the shower. Just realized I haven’t changed my clothes in three days.”
Kara pulled three massive notebooks from her backpack. “Your sweat never smells anyway, and it’s not like Vasquez—”
Alex’s face fell. “True. What are those? And how long before I can touch them?”
Kara grinned. “Actually, Holtzy came up with a backpack that sanitizes objects inside of it, powered by my body heat. She’s making one for Krypto too. So you’re good. Dr. Hamilton created a new set of protocols for the DEO for you to sign off on so she can send them to the other offices and to Lucy back at the Basement. Do you have anything for me to bring anybody?”
Alex said, “Oh!” and jumped up and trotted over to her bedside table, where a short stack of Moleskine notebooks sat with a small white box on top tied with a ribbon. “Yeah, if you could return these to Vasquez? I put my comments on Post-Its for her. Thanks, Sis.”
Krypto barked as Kara put the package in her backpack. Kara frowned. “I think he wants you to… sing? Or whistle? I’m not really sure…”
Alex dropped onto her couch and let Krypto hop up onto her lap. He rolled over for belly rubs while Alex whistled “Red, Red Robin.” He sighed with contentment when she finished and hopped up with his tail wagging.
Kara hugged Alex carefully hard. “I’ve missed you. Now for the gross part. Sit down again.”
She took out the swab and carefully inserted it up Alex’s nose.
“Well, shit,” said Alex.
“Yeah, everybody says that,” said Kara, returning the swab to its labeled tube and sticking it in her coat pocket.
“See ya, Sis,” said Alex.
“Enjoy your shower.”
Krypto barked, tail wagging, as they left.
///
Vasquez paced around her apartment, using her restless energy to water her plants. She had spent the afternoon going over Holtzy’s blueprints and the accompanying documentation explaining the projects, the equipment required, and potential budgets.
Was Holtzy asking for a lot? As usual, yes.
Would Holtzy overperform? Absolutely.
Vasquez had written questions on Post-It notes all over the different blueprints, questions for Winn to answer before she could greenlight the obvious yes ones and send the less obvious ones to Alex. Anti-Kryptonite shielding and advanced combat PPEs were at her paygrade to decide. Some of the other wild ideas, she would simply pass on up the food chain.
When her doorbell rang, she picked up her Glock with one hand and her mask with the other before she answered it, but it was simply Kara and Krypto. Kara opened her backpack and pulled out the Moleskines and the small box. “Here you go. From Alex, fully sanitized. Do you have anything for me?”
Vasquez folded the blueprints and rolled them up, sticking them in a short plastic tube that she screwed shut. “For Winn. Thanks.”
Kara pulled out the inevitable swab. This would be the third time Vasquez had been tested. She sat down and sighed. “Get it over with.”
Kara obliged, and as she was inserting the swab into the tube labeled Vasquez, S., Krypto jumped up and ardently licked Vasquez’s face, whining lightly.
Kara frowned. “Um, okay, so the Alien-Canine language lessons that Joe has been doing with me over Zoom are still in the introductory stages, but I think he is saying you are… full of salt?”
“Yeah, I did some weight-lifting earlier. Raised a sweat.” She roughed up Krypto’s fur and he wagged his tail enthusiastically.
Kara offered a hard, warm-bodied hug and then they left. Vasquez looked at what Alex had sent, reached out to pick up the box, then stopped. She turned back to the kitchen and poured two fingers of scotch into a low glass, brought it over to the couch and sat down. The little white jewelry box was not unique in any way, but she looked at it carefully before taking a stiff drink and then pulling the ribbon undone and opening the box.
There lay something she had not seen in more than a year. Her Claddagh ring. She took another stiff drink, then set down the glass and slid the ring on the ring finger of her left hand. It felt… right.
///
Krypto was enjoying his duty this evening. Kara had carefully explained in Kryptonese that the disease was forcing people to live separate from their pack and they were very sad. Luckily, she said, his and her Kryptonian hot temperature meant that the disease couldn’t live on them so they had to go and share information things and belly rubs, so their friends could also do their duties alone without being so sad.
He barked his willingness. Increasingly she seemed to be understanding him better, although when he had watched her practice interpreting Joe’s barks over Zoom, it was all he could do not to… what was the Person word? Laugh? And Joe had explained to him about accents, but he just figured Canine was probably too difficult for a Person to truly be able to learn. He loved Kara even if she did talk funny. In his experience, on Earth, everybody talked funny one way or another. Whistler was very informal, but she was family, so that was okay. Soft-Hands-and-Beautiful-Voice talked like Alura’s poet friend, and Scruffy was also sort of oddly and inconsistently formal, and Kara said that that was because he had learned his Kryptonese from books. And Krypto had eaten one of Kara’s books once, so he didn’t think much of that. And poor Salty couldn’t say much more than sit and stay and come, but he could tell that she really loved Whistler and had great respect for Kara and affection for Scruffy, even if she didn’t have a tail to wag.
But he really liked Scruffy, so when Kara said they were going to his den next, Krypto’s tail wagged non-stop. Maybe Scruffy would let him have Peenabuttr Crakrz for a treat…
Unfortunately, when they got to Scruffy’s door and leaned on the buzzer… nothing happened. They waited, leaned again. Nothing. Finally, Kara lowered her glasses, squinted at the door, and kicked it in. Krypto raced in, following his nose—
--which was surprisingly easy.
Kara tapped her ear. “Agent Jordan, get me Dr. Hamilton. I think Winn is really, really sick. She’s going to need to get him into containment. I’m going to fly him in right now.”
She turned to Krypto. “Go back down to Finn and return with them to the DEO. I’ll meet you there.”
Then she was in her supersuit. Then she was gone, with Scruffy in her arms
Krypto nosed the door closed and trotted down the stairs to where the van waited. Finn let him in, and they left.
///
Supergirl flew as fast as she could from the roof of Winn’s building across the city, with Winn held against her bridal style. Even her overwarm alien body could feel the unnatural heat coming out of her human friend. His beard was scraggly and he smelled bad, and she was scared for him, so she held him tight.
Groggily, Winn said, “Oh, Surgirl, you gotta tell James. I remembered I had his shot glasses, an’ he really needs ‘em back!”
“Winn, there’ll be time for that later. You’re the emergency tonight!”
But Winn said, “Oh, but my dude, you REALLY don’t wanna be drinking tequila outa scotch glasses!”
And Supergirl didn’t understand that, but she got him to the PPE-wearing DEO team, superheated herself to disinfect and then flew back to check on James.
Chapter 41: A Time You May Embrace, Part 1
Chapter Text
Winn the Kid had been a riverboat gambler since… well, since he was a kid. An older man had taken him under his wing and taught him everything he knew, so he had a little money put by to maybe start a ranch in the badlands far from the burgeoning port town of National City. Out there in San Paso, a man could invest in land, some shaggy Scottish cattle with horns and make his small nest egg into a dragon egg. That was the goal. When he rode his white horse into San Paso wearing his signature white suit with the flat riverboat style hat, he felt like he was starting a new life, because…well, he was starting a new life.
But damn, was this town hotter than a three-peckered billy goat.
It was a bustling little town, with respectable young ladies in high-collared calico dresses and the less respectable ladies…
Winn lowered the brim of his hat, blushing in the heat. He’d simply never get used to that.
He passed a saloon called the Wicked Witch, a barber shop and the sheriff’s office. Out front of that last one, a tall black man sat in a tipped-back chair wearing all grey clothes, with a grey Stetson on his head and his grey boots up on the hitching rail, and a shiny silver star on his grey shirt. He was reading a paper called The Guardian.
Winn didn’t imagine there was enough news to fill an entire paper in a town like this, but he was curious, so he hopped down off of Sir Holtzy and asked.
“Howdy, Sheriff. Winn the Kid’s the name. Looking for a new start in San Paso. What’s the news in this tiny town?”
The sheriff gave him an easy smile as he eased himself down from his chair’s precarious position. “Name’s Olsen. Sheriff James Olsen, at your service. Lotsa news even in a little place like this, mister. Births, deaths, tooth-pullin’s. Looks like our blacksmith Alex is figgerin’ to cast us a big ol’ silver bell to hang in the church steeple, so’s Santa Claus can find us this year. See, last year there was a helluva snowstorm, and he never did show up. Blew down from Liberty, Colorado. We didn’t dig out until Easter!”
Winn was pretty sure he would have heard about that, but he just bobbed his head amiably. “O-kay. Can you tell me where a respectable man can have a bit of a thirst-quencher?”
“We-ll, if you’re respectable, I’d go to the Wicked Witch, run by a Green Martian, don’tcha know, name of M’gann. But if you mean ‘respectable,’” and there he made air quotes with his fingers, “then that’d be the Bits and Brass. But you gotta have the brass if you want access to the bits!” He laughed.
Again, Winn blushed. Surely it was the heat. “Martian. Got it!” The sheriff’s laughter followed him down the street.
///
Dr. Hamilton was grateful for the elaborately (and conveniently) quarantined holding cells in the basement of the DEO. It had taken some work, and a hero with superspeed and strength, to get the required medical equipment from the medbay to the prison level, but it meant that no one in the building was breathing the same air as the Covid-19 patients, of whom Winn had been the first of ten.
They had immediately started an IV drip with anti-pyretics and vitamin D, and he was being carefully watched, but did not look like he was going to need a ventilator anytime soon, which was just as well.
They still didn’t have enough of them.
///
M’gann had seen a thing or two in her time on earth—almost 150 years. So she wasn’t all that surprised when some tom fool swaggered into her saloon wearing all white, probably not even noticing how dusty his pretty white boots were. She smirked and thought, Root beer? Lemonade?
“Howdy, stranger,” she said. “What’s your poison?” She could feel him think about tequila and then shy away from the thought.
“Craft beer,” said the city slicker. “Small batch, if you’ve got it.”
“Honey, it’s all small batch. I make it myself.”
“Er, oh. Right!”
Shaking her head, she pulled him a pint and he drank it down in one go. “Riding’s thirsty business. Another.”
“Mm. Show me your greenbacks, stranger.”
He handed her enough money to keep them coming for a while. Worked for her.
///
James was in his darkroom under the red light, developing the photos he had taken of the emptiness of downtown National City: the barbershops with their closed signs, the empty laundromat, the empty port piers, the empty beaches, parks, and streets. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and used the tongs to pull the photos one by one out of the bath and clip them to the line that ran across the back of the room so that they could dry.
He heard his buzzer and carefully left the room and made his way to his front door. Through the peephole he could see Kara looking down and talking. He opened the door and Krypto pushed his way in.
Kara took one look at him and asked, “James, have you taken your temperature lately?”
“Um, no?”
“Get your thermometer while I set this up.”
James got his thermometer, sat down and stuck it in his mouth. Krypto lay down across his feet and accepted James’s proffered belly rub. Kara took the thermometer out and hissed. “That’s 101. Okay, now for the less easy part.” She stuck the swab up his nose. It was not pleasant.
“I never get a fever. The thermometer must be wrong.”
Kara said, “Yeah, no. We’re bringing you in. Sorry, James. At least you don’t look or smell as bad as Winn.”
And to be fair, the cold wind as they flew at least meant that James stopped sweating for a bit.
///
In the saloon, Winn swaggered over to where a woman? a man? in a plaid flannel shirt and dungarees sat watching a young woman wearing men’s clothes stare at her cards. It was unaccountable. There she was, a lovely young woman with long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing a collarless white shirt, with ink-stained wool trousers. The sleeves of her white shirt were held back at the elbows with black bands, and on her nose was perched a pair of spectacles. Frowning, she set down a pair of queens, and the other person smiled and put down a royal flush.
“Face it, Sis. You can’t beat me.”
The blonde pouted. “Fine. I’ve got laundry duty this week.” She pulled out her pocket watch. “Oh, sherbert! I’ve got to finish the editorial about the, well, you know.”
“The whorehouse?” laughed the other woman.
“Alex! We don’t call it that now. It’s the sex workers’ establishment.”
Winn scratched his head. Nothing about that interaction made any sense. He turned back to the green bartender. “Yeah, I’ll have another.”
Just then another patron of the establishment swaggered in, wearing all black, with a gunslinger’s holster and Smith & Wesson. Her skin was like alabaster and her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her emerald eyes swept the room and they landed on him. One perfect eyebrow rose.
“Um,” said Winn, whose poker game was flawless. “Drink?”
///
Lena’s driver Ted didn’t make any small talk these days. He and Lena both wore face masks and they kept the partition up between the front seat and the back. Lena sighed. She liked chatting with her drivers, but they all wanted to keep each other safe, so they followed the safety protocols that Jess had gotten from their epidemiologists. But she waved to him as she left the car and marched into LordTech.
She knew that Max Lord’s legendary paranoia and self-love probably meant that she would be safer here than anywhere else in National City (except just possibly in Supergirl’s overheated muscular arms…). Focus. Right.
None of that made her feel better about having to meet with a masked Max, each of them at two ends of a fifteen-foot conference room, to discuss the bottlenecks both their teams had discovered in prototyping and building the parts for the micro-ventilators. Without visible blood-red lipstick, she felt… less equipped… to deal with the bastard.
Then she remembered that his parents had died from a horrible disease that would not have killed them if they had had proper PPE.
So this effort might be frustrating from a technical point of view, sure. But her latest nonprofit venture, SOS: Save Our Superheroes, meant to get PPE to the city’s first responders, was another matter. Max Lord was a soft target for funding that, at least.
///
It had been a long time since Lena Luthor had met such a citified fellow in San Paso, and she didn’t trust change. He held his hand out, saying, “Winn the Kid.”
She looked at his hand and then went back to her whiskey, saying, “Luthor.”
“Wait! Luthor, like Lionel Luthor Trains? Or like Lex Luthor Munitions? Lillian—”
“Lena,” she said, finishing off her drink and signaling M’gann for another. “Mining.”
“There’s still gold here?”
“There are more things to mine for than gold. Aluminum, for example. And… other things.” She picked up her fresh drink and ambled over to the table where the two sisters had started a new poker game.
The androgynous woman completely ignored the attention, but the woman in spectacles immediately got flustered. “You want something, Miz Luthor?”
“Yes, Miz Danvers. I’ve been reading your little collection of editorials about the alleged labor violations at local businesses. I do hate to remind you that your paper and ink come in on Luthor trains. It would be a shame if any of those trains found that they had not enough space for those importations from the coast… don’t you think?”
“I, er. Uh. That would. Yes. Be a shame. Yes.”
“Good,” said the woman, turning away. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
She set down her empty glass at the bar, added a nickel for a tip, and strolled out through the swinging doors.
///
James woke up in the med-bay of the DEO, exhausted, thirsty, and confused. A nurse? Or maybe a med-tech? Whatever that meant? They wiped his brow and made him feel like the younger sister of a poor aristocratic family in a Jane Austen novel, but there were no fancy epaulettes, so he let it slide.
Dr. Hamilton was trying to tell James how Winn was also sick and had been deposited in the confinement cell next door, but he was raving about how evil Lena Luthor was a threat to the paper, whatever that meant. He really wasn’t making too much sense, so she left him as he was. His temperature was high but was staying steady. He’d simply have to see it through and hope his immune system would eventually fight off the disease.
She was pretty sure Winn was wrong about Lena Luthor. Her plans to build those new ventilators had the potential to save a whole lot of lives. Maybe even Winn’s and James’s.
///
After the spectacled young woman said her lunch break was over and left, the person in the plaid flannel looked up at him. “Well, now. Someone new in town. Where you from?”
“Mississippi River, originally, but most recently from National City.”
“Come have a seat and tell me the news of the big city. Buy you a drink.”
Winn took the sister’s seat and as he looked at the person more carefully, he saw the soft eyes and elegant cheekbones. “Winn the Kid,” he said.
“Alex.” The person turned and signaled to M’gann, who brought over another tankard of beer for him and a fresh glass of scotch for Alex. “Play nice,” she murmured to Alex.
“What are you doing in a Podunk town like San Paso, Winn the Kid? You look like you belong in the city.”
“Yeah, just as I got there, I got word that they’re dealing with the cholera, so I got a train ticket for me and my horse and hauled it out to Opal City. I rode Sir Holtzy all the way down from there.”
“You mean, you were lookin’ to come to San Paso? Most folks come here strictly by accident.”
“I have a friend who was in the cavalry, and she told me to look up her old mate from the regiment. You wouldn’t by chance know a Sargent Susan Vasquez?”
Alex blinked. “I suppose I do. Who was the mate?”
“Sargent Sameen Shaw.”
“Huh. How about that. Yes, I reckon I can introduce you. What’s your interest?”
Winn made his eyes go flat, like he did while playing poker. “We’ve got a business relationship. Sargent Shaw said your Sargent Vasquez would already know all about it.”
“Hm. Might be she does.” Alex looked thoughtful. “Where you stayin’ tonight?”
“Having to pay for Sir Holtzy to be freight means I’m a little light on coin. I was figuring to see if anybody needed chores done in return for space in their barn for us.”
“What, like chopping wood or cooking?”
“Well, I was thinking more mechanical. I’m an engineer in my spare time.”
Alex’s eyes lit up. “Well, now. I can offer you a place myself. I’m a blacksmith by trade, but I… tinker. I could use another pair of eyes on one of my projects. Stay with us tonight and come with me to the forge tomorrow.” She held her hand out, and he took it, noticing its strong grip and hard calluses.
“Deal,” he said. As she turned to stand up, he rubbed blood back into his hand.
Chapter 42: A Time You May Embrace, Part 2
Notes:
The idea for this came from my rewatching The Partridge Family, a major inspiration from my youth. The plot point of the sheriff getting almost lynched came from an episode of DC's Legends of tomorrow. This extra chapter is due to my hopefully engaging in a Boston Pride activity today.
Chapter Text
Max Lord shook his head as Lena Luthor swept out of the conference room. It was hard to tell with the masks, but he had thought she looked a little miffed when he had described the lightweight hazmat suits that he had developed for the DEO years ago. They had been clumsy, not good for finicky work, but the material they had developed… He had been thinking about maybe adding nanofibers?
And then she had talked so fast that even he couldn’t keep up, but she seemed pleased and left LordTech in a hurry. So that had happened. He’d heard rumors that Lena was manic-depressive, but he was pretty sure that nobody switched from one to the other that fast. He pushed a button on the conference room’s communication console. “Douglas? Get me the head of Department L. I have some work for her.”
///
Kara Danvers’ arms were tired, and that was saying something. But she had spent five hours hand-cranking out the week’s newspaper, only taking breaks to completely rewrite the article she had half-written about the labor practices of the Luthor family businesses. She was a journalist, yes, of course, she was. But she wasn’t stupid.
Well, but that was an article for next week anyway. This week was about the whor—um, the sex workers’ establishment. She had spoken to a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco on a quick flight into town to pick up chocolate for the town general store run by her friend, Brian, who was trying to offer his shoppers a bit more variety than just flour, nails and calico. She was glad to help.
But her new friend Ming had told her about these silk cases that men in China used to keep from making babies or getting the pox. He was starting a small manufactory just outside of the city. She’d put in an order for a hundred. She would never the use the things herself; what use did she have for sex? But Sam, the mama bear at the local house of reasonably priced love, would probably be grateful. They could work out the cost between them.
She was massaging her arm when she heard Alex’s horse cart outside, keeping pace with another horse, and she looked out the dusty window to see the odd fellow in the fancy white duds riding next to Alex. Rubbing her glasses on her shirt tail, she stepped through the front door of the newspaper office, turned and locked the door, returned her glasses to her face and climbed up next to Alex.
“Winn the Kid?” said Alex. “Meet my sister, Kara.”
Winn beamed.
///
Brian slept in the on-call room at the Luthor Alien Clinic, bored to tears. With aliens being apparently immune to Covid-19, and sheltering at home quietly, or busy doing Essential Work, the clinic was practically empty. In fact, several doctors who normally worked at the clinic were taking extra rounds at NCGH or St. Olaf’s. He hadn’t been called out once this week. And he knew this was a good job, and that he was getting paid precisely to wait around just in case. But he wasn’t being particularly useful, now was he. Brian liked to be useful. Maybe he could think up a new side business, with all this free time on his hands. Nothing like the energy drinks or the vitamin G pills, of course not. He’d be very careful this time. It needed thinking on.
///
Susan Vasquez had been riding Semper Fi all day, bringing the llamas back from the hills and guiding them into their barns. As she fed and watered them, she could hear Alex’s cart coming up the dirt path to the house, and she grinned. But then, as she closed the barn door, she saw that Semper Fi was favoring one of his hind legs, and she went and felt it and the tendon was warm. So she walked him back to his stable, took off his tack and ran her hands over his other legs as well. She checked his hooves, but didn’t see anything, so she rubbed him down and gave him fresh oats. Then she patted his nose and went into the house from the back.
It was one of the most solidly built houses in town, but it would be, with Alex designing it, and Kara, Lucy, Maggie, and Sheriff Olsen and the rest of their friends all helping her build it. It was like a barn-raising times ten, so M’gann had made a small feast for the workers every night that month. Their friends had hammered their love into the walls, as a wedding present. Vasquez grinned to think of it.
She was passing from the kitchen to the parlor when she saw the sisters and the newcomer, who carried a large soft paper-covered parcel from the general store. Practical clothing, most likely, she thought. Looked like Alex was taking in another stray. She sighed.
Alex stepped forward and kissed her soundly. “Babe, this is Mr. Winn the Kid. Says he knows Sargent Sameen Shaw. Winn, this is Sargent Susan Vasquez, my wife.”
They shook hands. Winn looked expectant. Everyone stared at everyone else. Suddenly Kara pulled three big envelopes out of her back pocket. “Oh! I forgot. I picked up the mail at the post office.”
She handed the mail to Vasquez, who handed the second letter to Alex and then pulled her bowie knife from her belt and slit open the third. From it a little brown photograph fell, clearly Winn when he was much younger and much less well to do. Kara picked it up and passed it to Alex while Vasquez kept reading. Finally, Vasquez looked up. “Well, now. Any friend of Shaw is a friend of mine. Welcome to San Paso, Winn. Now you get changed while Alex gives me a hand with dinner. Kara, go wash the ink off your fingers.”
///
Dr. Hamilton heard the coughing before she saw the cougher, but she recognized the voice, even behind the agent’s mask. Riley Finn. He rounded the corner, stopped short and saluted.
“Agent Finn, reporting for… um, quarantine?”
Number Twelve. Somehow Dr. Hamilton didn’t think that she and Callie were going to get their quiet Christmas Eve dinner.
///
Lena sat upstairs in the offices of the Luthor Mining Company that evening, doing multivariable calculus problems to keep from shooting someone, starting with her family members and probably not ending until she plugged a few holes in The Guardian’s annoying little editor.
She’d spare the bartender. They were business partners, after all. Also, the cute little dominatrix that ran Mama Reigns. But probably not the sheriff.
She dropped her pencil stub, stood and stretched. She had gotten the editor to stand down, for now at least. All she needed was time enough to finish sinking her pit, get the engine working to pump the water out of the mine. Time. She never had enough time. Or money for that matter. The new pump was ridiculously expensive, $22,717.06 just for setup, and more to throw at it when, no doubt, problems occurred. God, she needed a drink. But she’d already had two doubles, and she knew what the family would say if she went back to the House smelling like scotch.
She couldn’t ask for a loan from her parents. They had made that very clear. She could sell them back a share or two of her stock in their companies, but that was it and, once it was gone, she would never get it back. And Lex would demand an unspecified favor to be called in sometime in the future.
Yeah, no.
She’d done that once. Some mistakes you could make once. Not twice.
She had already bought the hotel, because if you have rental property, that was just good strategy. For some reason she had wanted to paint it red, but that was Mama Reign’s color, and what would Lillian say?
No, this mine absolutely had to work. And the engine absolutely had to drain the water. This land, her land, the scrub land that her parents had scoffed at when she bought it a few years back. What they didn’t know was that land like that, scruffy, with lots of reddish rocks that did not in fact contain iron, where that gentle pink flower kryptonita rosa flourished: that land was even better than a gold mine. And she was going to strike it rich.
///
When the masked alien with the broken wrist showed up in Callie’s office, at first, she said, “Oh, another one.”
The woman frowned. “Another what?”
“Shi—Oh. Sure. Um, sorry. I’ve been on call since Saturday, which was supposed to be my first day off since… um. Since the previous Saturday? Or maybe the Thursday before?”
The woman asked, “But the papers said that aliens can’t get Covid-19. Do you guys even have any cases?”
“As far as we know, they can’t. But they, and their human counterparts, can--if they so choose--drive 97 miles per hour through the streets of National City. They can. It’s a really bad idea. But they do. So we’ve been taking Ortho patients who test negative for Covid and we put them together back here.”
“Yeah, well, I was cleaning my gutters and halfway down the ladder, I mis-stepped.”
“Okay, well, I need to go sanitize before we do this, so my intern will test you for Covid and then I will put you in a splint.”
But as she was scrubbing her hands, quietly singing the tune from Gentleman Jack, something clicked. The woman had a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. Fever? She put on her PPE mask and plastic face shield and went back into the room. The intern came over and showed her the test result. Oh dear.
She stepped out of the room and called the Charge Nurse. “Hey, Lauren. Could you call NCGH? We’ve got one of theirs in Ortho with a broken wrist. She just tested positive.”
The woman’s voice through the phone stuttered. “Wait, wait. Not the red-head, human-looking?”
“Yeees.”
“She’s half-human, half-alien.”
“So, where do we send her? Do we keep her? We don’t have any…”
“I know. Just. Deal with the wrist and don’t let her out. I’ll call around to see how this is being handled.”
And that was how a black van came to collect the patient with her new splint and Callie texted Jane Hamilton that she had to self-quarantine for two weeks back at the apartment and could Jane stay at the DEO’s barracks? And Callie felt horrible for having to ask.
But not as horrible as when she got the text back: “Have no choice but to stay. We have too many positives.”
///
The following morning Kara took her turn at cooking a dozen eggs, three dozen bran pancakes and a rasher of bacon. Alex made the coffee, rolling her eyes when Kara insisted that she use the mesh strainer so they wouldn’t have to “chew their coffee again.” (Although, Winn had to admit, it was fine damn coffee.)
He watched the siblings carefully, still unsure whether Alex was the man he thought she was… like 70% sure? He rubbed his eyes, and then surveyed his own new plaid flannel shirt, dungarees and boots. He fit in here. The cards were behind him, honest labor ahead.
Well, that’s what he told himself. The night before, they had worked out a deal, where Alex and Kara would take Sir Holtzy (Vasquez’s horse Semper Fi being under the weather and Dolly the cart horse apparently being “bloody useless” when not ahead of a cart) into town to work. He and Vasquez would “amble” over in the cart to their friends’ adjacent ranch, The Copper Line, where they would pick up two women named Maggie and Lucy, and then go out and take a look at the land that he and Shaw had bought together.
It was a pity that Kara wasn’t going along. Kara sounded all college-educated, even more citified than he was himself. And she was fairly cute, even if she did wear men’s clothes, so he hoped he could get to know her better. Oh well. Another time.
The day was fine, if too warm by far. His loose flannel shirt was better than the white shirt, tie, and vest that he’d warn the day before, and the dungarees were looser than his white trousers. But weather was weather, and they hadn’t driven fifteen minutes before he was sweating. Luckily, he saw the head gate of the Copper Line ranch ahead of them and breathed a sigh of relief. They rode under the rickety wooden structure, with the name carved and burned into the lintel. Ahead, he saw two women, tanned and strong and a lot like the people he had often met on the riverboats back in the day: TNS, GNF. He smiled.
Take No Shit, Give No Fucks.
These were his kind of people.
///
James had been put into a cell next door to Winn and he could hear his friend rambling in his fever dream. At first, he’d thought it strange to be put there. By all accounts, Winn had been patient zero, so shouldn’t James have been put next to patient ten?
Yeah, it had taken him two hours to realize that just maybe, patient one hadn’t made it and had left a cell empty and open.
To be fair, he wasn’t thinking too clearly. He lay there hour after hour, hearing Winn ranting and raving about Lena Luthor and possibly gold and aluminum? And having a killer poker face, but who had it? Her or him? And, also, Kara and censorship…
Even if he had been at his best, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to follow it.
Surprise, surprise: he was not at his best.
///
Lena Luthor ate her ranch breakfast with an enthusiasm that did not translate to her parents, although her brother gave her a wink and asked her to pass the plate of bacon. Lionel and Lillian were from Metropolis and had only moved across the vast country in search of the kind of profits that the East Coast could no longer generate. Lena had been six and Lex fifteen when their parents had moved them all 2,000 miles west to seek their destinies and grab their brass ring, and hell, who knows? Fluff their auras.
It had started in California, after all.
San Francisco had been different from Metropolis, but only in the way that one city is different from another city.
When the family had moved to San Paso to develop the businesses, the siblings had been in for a shock. There was no port. There was a narrow river and streams that slowed to brooks during drought. There were no department stores like Sears Roebuck. There was a general store, run by some blue alien fellow.
But Lionel and Lillian had trained their children to be obedient, flexible, and (within boundaries) open-minded. So they’d got on.
But now that Lena had finally split off her own company from the family amalgam, it became clear that her parents and her brother still expected her to toe the company line. And that… that was… problematic.
Her father used Chinese labor moving west to east, and Irish labor moving east to west, to build the transcontinental railroad, and she knew without even having to do any research that all of those poor bastards were overworked, underpaid, and a bunch of other dangerous and bad things that she was just too tired herself to contemplate.
And Lex? Lex claimed to be a tireless proponent of women’s right to work, but that was only because he had watched the French-Prussian War a few years previously, and had deduced that when unprecedented numbers of men were drafted to fight, the munitions industry would be bled dry of workers if they didn’t hire women. (Irony understood.)
And don’t even get her started on her mother’s machinations.
So when, in the “family meeting” ten years ago, they had all asked her what she wanted to achieve, she had said very confidently, “Well, none of you can do anything if you don’t have metal to work with. I want to build a mining company.”
And they had all patted her on the back, and patted her on the head, and told their friends and connections that Lena had a head for business in her teens. And Lena had smiled along with them, but for very different reasons.
They had expected her to be digging for iron and gold. And the teenaged Lena had privately muttered, “Pfft. Fuck that.”
Because she had had this one teacher, apparently a journalist, who had filled in for her science teacher one week when Mr. Johnson was sick or kidnapped or something. And he had adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses and told them about alien metals trapped in the Earth because of meteorites. And Lena had done her homework. And he wasn’t wrong.
So, yes, her company dug gold where they could and iron where they could and aluminum where they could. And they made a little money. And they dug copper, silver, coal and quicksilver. And they made a little more money. But her real goal, the real purpose of her company, all came down to this town, with its reddish rocks and pinkish miniature roses. Her past had led her to this town and this town would help her establish her legacy, outside of her family.
Soon. So soon. If they could just sink the pit and get the pump working.
///
Dr. Hamilton stuck the swab up Holtzy’s nose and then apologized, but Holtzy had lived through the AIDS epidemic. A small pinch was a small suffering. They had taken her temperature, but it had come out, as usual, at 97.6. They had let her go back to her DEO lab with her blueprints that Vasquez had approved, even if those were only about two-thirds of what she had requested. That was double the batting average of Baseball League Hall of Famers. She was okay with it.
But the problem was that she was lonely.
It was weird. She worked alone most of the time. But usually, with the Ghostbusters, they had had meetings once or twice a week, during which she had been able to show off her mad skills at tech (which everyone of course assumed would carry over to her mad skills at sex. And it could. It might. Jess was…)
Well.
Jess was articulate, neat, funny, efficient, sweet, earnest, and impressively badass when she needed to be. When Lena needed her to be that. And she had been those things lately, while Lena had been paddling the dual mental kayaks of administration and invention. Jess had her back.
But that also meant that Jess was crazy busy, not just during the day or during the week, but just about 24/7. And Holtzy found that she missed her. She missed her soft voice and her fierce brown eyes, and her sharp hand gestures when she got passionate about a topic and laughter like a burbling brook—
And when had Holtzy ever compared a woman’s laugh to a water feature? What was wrong with her?
Chapter 43: A Time You May Embrace, Part 3
Notes:
TW for brief racial violence
Chapter Text
Alex dropped Kara off at the newspaper and headed across town to her forge. Kara unlocked the office door and pulled up the blind. Ruby would be coming over later to help her assemble and fold all the newspapers, but in the meantime, she had to read yesterday’s mail. There was a letter from Ming, very chatty, talking about the goings on in San Francisco. She had agreed to be his penpal to help him with his English, but she got a benefit from it too, as he was also her Coastal Correspondent. He described events in his own words, but also included scraps cut out of the local papers to confirm the events happened. It was a win-win.
Kara thought about Winn. He had watched her raptly the night before over dinner, which came as a shock. Men didn’t tend to notice her at all. Winn was sweet. A little short, but sweet.
A knock on the door caused her to drop the mail, flustered. The sheriff waved and she gestured for him to come in.
“Howdy, Sheriff. What can I do you out of?”
“Hey, Miz Danvers. I just wanted to ask how you’re coming along with the article on the Luthor businesses.”
Kara fidgeted with her glasses. “Oh, yeah, that. That’s been shelved for a while. I’m… still waiting to hear back from my… correspondent in Metropolis, and you know how slow the mail is these days.”
Sheriff Olsen put his hands on his hips and frowned. “Miz Danvers, did Luthor threaten you?”
“Me? Oh no. Not at all. Besides, what could they really do to me anyway?”
“Um, shoot you? They’re unscrupulous, you know that.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to work for them, but I doubt they’d go that far.” Kara leaned down and picked up her letters, not meeting his eyes.
He leaned down to help, put the extra letters in her hands, used one finger to push her spectacles back up her nose, and when he saw her eyes, he said, “Miz Danvers, I do believe you told me a lie. Now, you really don’t want to be lying to an officer of the law, do you? How can I protect and serve if you’re not straight with me? He did threaten you, didn’t he?”
“No, he didn’t. It’s just… Well, the trains might have been mentioned.”
“Doesn’t strike me as the tying-you-to-the-tracks type, but I might be wrong…”
“It’s the ink, okay? And the paper. My supplies come from San Francisco and from Opal City by train.”
“So you’re going to give in?”
“I’m going to bide my time, deal with other businesses who don’t have any leverage over me and be strategic. It’s my choice, Sheriff. If we want The Guardian to stay in business, we can’t act rashly.”
He looked so disappointed in her when he left, that Kara felt glum. But she had discussed it the night before with Alex at length. She knew it was the right thing to do, if only for the moment.
///
J’onn bought the flowers from the local flower store, put them in a vase and drove very carefully to M’gann’s condo. For a three-century-old alien superhero, he was feeling very shy, but the little spruce tree and the bottle of his favorite thirty-year-old scotch had made him want to give something back to her, and he knew she got down in the winter, from the grey skies. Daffodils were her favorite. Maybe he could start the conversation with the flowers and then get around to telling her how he felt. Maybe they could share the Bond. Maybe…
///
When he had first taken the train west to join Lex Luthor in San Paso, Otis Graves had intended to work closely with his boss on Lex’s newest venture. However, he wasn’t a particularly strong reader, so his work had been largely manual. And that had been fine for a while, but Otis was also something of a klutz, and the one kind of person you really don’t want to be working in a munitions factory is a klutz. But trains, now, trains were glorious. So he got a job working for Mr. Lionel’s company, cleaning the new train cars before they were sent on their way to whatever cities Lionel had negotiated new routes between.
And it was a good job, but it wasn’t like the old days. Cleaning was honest work. So, yeah, basically, no fun at all. Otis had his own little cottage at the back of the Luthor estate on the north side of town, and he drove the little single-donkey cart carrying the lunch baskets for the family, following the stately Luthors on their shiny horses, as they rode to their respective companies. Lionel’s factory was on the southwest side of town, far from prying eyes or uncautious children. That morning, they had gotten a late start and then the donkey had refused to go to the stable where normally he stood around placidly eating hay until he was needed again.
So, by the time that Otis was walking across the factory courtyard to start his job, he was sweaty and cross. And seeing the grey-clad sheriff casually walking around the factory looking shifty was enough to make Otis’s blood boil. He walked over to where a few of Mr. Luthor’s heavies were standing around taking a smoke break and he said, “Gentlemen, we seem to have an unwanted visitor. Care to make him feel less welcome?”
And these were the kind of men who had come west to avoid prison, and men like that were always ready to give a copper lessons in anti-hospitality. They tossed away their cigarette stubs and hurried over to the sheriff.
Otis hurried to stay ahead of the small gang of big men. “I say, Sheriff! You’re on private property! That there is trespass!”
“Really?” said the tall black man, looking down on Otis and his friends. “A fellow can’t come around and see how the shiny trains get made?”
Otis blanched. Another fellow growled, “You’re here to blame us for a crime!”
“Am I? Should I? Have you committed a crime?”
And the skinny one said hurriedly, “It wasn’t me! It was Al here!”
“Shut up, Shorty!”
Otis said, “Don’t listen to them. My point is, Mr. Luthor wants you off his land.”
“Really?” said the sheriff. “Did he tell you that himself?”
“What? N- uh. Yes. Yes, he did. Oh, fuck it, boys. Get ‘im!”
And Otis had heard the Sheriff was a quick and accurate shot, but not if he had to physically fight off four strong manual laborers before he could get to his gun, and definitely not after one of them smashed a rock into his head.
They pushed off the ground looking at him bleeding peacefully into the dry dirt.
Al said, “Huh. T’wudn’t so hard. Boys, get the horses. Otis, we’re going to need some rope.”
///
Winn sat uneasily in the horse cart as Dolly placidly ambled northeast on a rutted track. Attached to the back of the seat was a rifle holster. He eyed the rifle and then he eyed the driver, Sargent Vasquez. “Um, why do you need a rifle to visit your friends?”
She gave him a pitying look. “Local wildlife can be a little… assertive.”
“So like what? Bears? Wolves? Snakes?”
“Depends on the time of year. Could also be rustlers.”
He was beginning to question the wisdom of his foray into rural life.
About ten minutes later, a sprawling house appeared on the horizon and, as they grew closer, he thought that the center part of the house was very old, and the extensions on either side looked newer. Vasquez let out an ear-splitting whistle. By the time they stopped rolling forward, two lean dark women in sturdy work clothes and boots stepped out of the front door and waved.
“Well, that beats a doorbell,” muttered Winn.
“To what do we owe this delightful surprise?” asked the shorter one with dimples and dark eyes.
“Maggie, this is Winn the Kid. He’s business partners with my old friend Shaw from my cavalry days. They bought land on the edge of your back forty. I thought we could take a look at it, so I can write back to her about it. Winn, this is Maggie and that’s Lucy. Maggie was a copper in Gotham and Lucy was posted at Fort Mudge when I was in training there.”
“How d’you do, ladies,” said Winn with a grin.
They glanced at each other. Lucy, the grey-eyed one, said, “We’ll be right with you. Just gotta put our makeup on.”
Winn thought that was odd. They were going to survey wild ranch land. Why would they need to wear makeup? But then, women were strange. Oh well.
But when they came out the door, they did not appear to have done anything to their faces at all. They were wearing a gun belt each slung around their hips, sporting Smith & Wesson’s finest. Winn caught Vasquez smirking.
“Yeah, very funny, Sargent.”
She laughed. “C’mon, ladies. Get your horses and let’s go.”
///
Eliza spent the holiday alone and sad. Both the girls texted every evening to tell her they were well. Apparently, Winn had tested positive and was very ill, being taken care of by that lovely and brilliant Dr. Hamilton. Vasquez was being bossy about Alex taking care of herself, and Alex had confided in her mother that she had asked Supergirl to bring a small jewelry box to Vasquez, and Vasquez had texted her a photo of herself wearing the Claddagh ring. Eliza had used extraordinary self-control to NOT ask if that meant they were engaged. It hadn’t meant that last time, and certainly a pandemic wasn’t a great time to plan a wedding.
Except, of course, Kara was planning her wedding. Eliza had said, “Sweetie, don’t you think you should put that off, what with everything that is happening?”
And Kara had gone all Supergirl on her, giving an impassioned speech about how Now Was Precisely the Time, when they had Time to Consider All the Things, and Such Things Gave People Hope.
Eliza sighed. She loved Kara, of course she did. But from time to time (and you couldn’t quote her), Supergirl could be a bit of a windbag.
Of course, she was Eliza’s windbag and she’d fight to the death to protect her. But still.
///
James Olsen woke up dizzy, nauseous and hanging like a sack over the saddle of a horse. He threw up a little as the horse trotted forward. His hands were tied tightly behind him, and his wrists were starting to go a little numb. He tried to consider his options, a black lawman in the hands of a handful of white ruffians, probably criminals all, working in the wild West to avoid facing the consequences of their actions back East. They knew his office bulletin board was littered with wanted posters and they didn’t want him suddenly deciding that he recognized them, given the chance that he would then communicate that information to his colleagues back east.
Admittedly, they would probably call them “motherfuckers” rather than “colleagues.” Potayto, Potahto.
Any way you looked at it, this was not going to end well.
The thugs were sharing pulls from a whiskey bottle and shouting at the top of their lungs, “Yee-haw! Whoo-whoo-whoo! Look at ‘im, boys!”
They pulled him up and forced his right leg over the horse’s right side. Then they set a noose around his neck. He was terrified but determined to go out fighting and take some of them with him. They threw the rope up over a tree branch, and he took a deep breath.
James growled, “You think this is finished?”
“Lookin’ pretty finished to me. Don’t you think, boys?” said Al.
The thugs laughed, but James pulled his leg back and kicked Al in the chest.
Al fell to the ground. “You son of a bitch!”
“You might want to slow down there,” said a woman’s voice from behind James’s horse. “Because these here parts aren’t big enough for the… five of us.”
“Who the hell are you?” yelled Al, pushing himself up and dragging his gun out of its holster. Shorty slapped the horse’s ass and the horse ran, leaving James dangling.
BANG! A shot rang out and James fell to the ground, his heart pounding wildly with relief.
There were more shots. James stayed on the ground, making himself the smallest possible target.
Two more voices, women’s voices he knew he recognized, yelled among the shots fired and told the thugs to ride until they couldn’t ride anymore and then, well, keep riding. Someone pulled the noose off his neck, cut the tightly tied ropes off his hands. He rolled over. Susan Vasquez, with a rifle over her forearm.
“Miz Vasquez?”
“Mr. Olsen?”
“Was that your bullet I am thankful for? Thank you, ma’am.”
“Pfft. Don’t mention it. Black and brown people have to stick together. Lemme give you a hand up, sir.”
///
Kara took a chair from the guest room and carried it out to the balcony to get some air. She’d been home since bringing Winn and James to the DEO and she loved Lena’s condo, she did, but mainly that was because of Lena. And she missed her loft, although she knew that if she were back there right now, she would have dragged a chair to the roof.
Claustrophobia had haunted her for more than half her life, because of all those years in the Phantom Zone. But it wasn’t just that. She was also scared for Winn, for James, for Finn, for all the sick agents she didn’t know so well. For Dr. Hamilton who was caring for them, along with the DEO’s nurses and med techs. For her mom and Lena’s employees working round the clock to make more accurate predictions, to make more efficient PPE and ventilators.
For Alex in her apartment and Vasquez in her own, apart from each other. Kara was pretty sure that the little jewelry box had been something important, maybe a Claddagh ring? That would be cool if they were going back to being more connected even when they couldn’t even be in the same neighborhood. She hoped it was true, that Vasquez had accepted it.
She opened her laptop on her lap and emailed Stefan’s, in Yorkshire, England.
[email protected]: Hi guys, I was wondering when you expect the bracelet to be ready? Thanks. I hope you and your family are well! Kara Danvers
She knew that a platinum bracelet set with sapphires and emeralds wouldn’t keep Lena safe from the virus if she was exposed. But it would remind her she was loved.
Kara felt separate these days. Well, hell everybody did: hello, social distancing! But it wasn’t that. Or it wasn’t only that. They had planned a Christmas tree-trimming Zoom party, but since Winn and the rest got sick, and Dr. Hamilton was doing her damnedest to take care of them, and Callie had been exposed at work and was self-isolating, and Alex was spending hours every day trying to track down another major shipment of PPE for National City… Hardly anybody had the time for fun. Hardly anybody had the heart. And nobody had both.
And she tried to remember what Lucy and Maggie had said last year about celebrating Solstice as a turning point from the darkness to the light, and how both Christmas and Hannukah had that in common with Solstice, and how all one could do when the world was dark was light one candle, and when you found someone else in the dark, light their candle…
But it was dark as shit these days. And Kara didn’t have a single candle. At this point, she felt like if somebody had come to her with one of those little toothpick birthday candles, she couldn’t even have lit it with her laser eyes.
Chapter 44: A Time You May Embrace, Part 4
Chapter Text
Doc Torres finished pulling the man’s tooth and looked at how long the roots were. The man was practically the missing link. But the top of the tooth was rotten and abscessed. Also, the man was drunk as a jackrabbit on moonshine, although that had actually made the process much easier for both of them.
“Mr. Tucker? Mr. Tucker, I want to show you your tooth. You see this is what happens when you don’t brush.”
“Hell, Doc, kin I have that? I’ll show all my kids!”
“Excellent! And you can teach them why brushing is so import—”
“Nah, they’ll just see their daddy is a sabertooth tiger!”
Doc wrapped it in cotton and handed it to him. His friend, sitting in the corner with his cowboy hat in his hands, looking vaguely sick, nodded. He’d get the man home. They left.
She was exhausted. This was her third week in this infinitesimal town and already she was halfway ready to leave, go back to Gotham, or Seattle, or maybe Boston. Someplace civilized. Hell, even a city in Kansas or Texas looked good in comparison.
A manic rapping shook her front door. She moved from the treatment room to the front room, seeing familiar faces on the other side of the front door’s windows. She hurried to let them in.
Susan Vasquez and Lucy Lane had hanging from their shoulders a large, fat, muscular and stinky man who was bleeding from the shoulder. Behind them, Maggie Sawyer and a young man she didn’t recognize were helping in the sheriff, who didn’t seem to be bleeding though he surely wasn’t well.
Vasquez said brightly, “Howdy, Doc. Three patients. GSW to the shoulder, rope burns on the neck, and a warm and tender right hind-leg tendon. That last one’s at the ranch. Let’s start with this idiot.”
And Doc Torres thought, well, Vasquez always did know how to triage.
///
M’gann was reeling. J’onn had shown up unexpectedly with the flowers, her favorites and told her how he had been flying, had been doing his watch when it had hit him. And she had heard the story about Supergirl flying into the corner of a bank building, luckily not doing any major structural damage, and then going on to propose to Lena Luthor…
And M’gann, as a bartender, heard things. So it wasn’t like she’d done some kind of formal poll or survey or anything like that…
But from what she could tell 95% of the people who knew Kara and Lena would NEVER have bet on Kara being the one to ask.
And that included Jess and Alex. So.
In comparison, she felt that if a similar hard or soft poll or survey had been conducted among the people who knew her and J’onn, the number of hopeful people would have been somewhere closer to 0% than 5%.
And yet.
He had gone home, leaving her with a large vase of bright yellow-white, yellow-orange, and yellow!--yellow! daffodils on her dining room table.
It was all very… surprisingly… heartening, really.
///
James looked at the small pot of salve Doc Torres had given him and sniffed it. Apparently, she’d added lavender. Usually, such things smelled terrible. Might get him some good-natured ribbing at the bar that night. Or perhaps not. Probably nobody would want to talk about the incident at all. He was grateful that it was Lucy and Vasquez who had rescued him. It would have been hard to live down if he’d had to owe his life to the Danvers sisters.
Winn the Kid and the women were out in the lobby. He’d taken a moment to step back into his office to put the salve in his desk drawer and pull himself together. They had offered to volunteer as a posse to help him arrest the men who had attacked him, but he wasn’t convinced the one judge in town, Max Lord, would be willing to do a thing about it. Lord considered himself a “laissez-faire” judge, which most of San Paso residents took to mean that as long as Lord was lassoing in the money and favors, all was fair in love and war. As a sheriff, James didn’t make enough money to grease the wheels of justice. With a sigh, he returned to his friends.
Vasquez frowned. “So, Sheriff, how’d you end up in the noose?”
“I was investigating Lionel Luthor Locomotives, Ltd. Not that I got that far.”
“Investigating for what?” asked Maggie.
“I believe Lionel threatened Miz Kara Danvers.”
“Lionel? No, it was Lena. And it wasn’t exactly a threat from what Alex said, or at least not a threat to her person.”
“Lena?” asked James. “What could she do to Kara? She mines aluminum.”
Lucy said, “Yeah, but she and Lex are tight. And Lex could probably figure out a way to block the goods she needs brought here.”
James scoffed. “I don’t buy it.”
“Mm, interesting,” said Vasquez, frowning. “Well, folks. It’s Tuesday. And you know what that means.”
Everybody perked up. Winn looked confused.
Maggie explained, “Bison steaks and potatoes at Eliza’s Kitchen!”
James shook his head, winced, and touched the bandage around his neck. “Yeah, I’ll pass. I think I’ll drink my lunch today. But you enjoy. And again… thanks.”
///
Eliza’s Kitchen was a little place that served the folks who couldn’t get home for midday dinner, and everybody knew what the meals were ahead of time because she drew up a list every two months based on the local farmers’ and ranchers’ offerings and the things that came in on the train most months of the year.
Eliza was a talented cook. She was also Kara’s adoptive mother. So even if Kara and Alex could have gone home for their midday dinner during the week, they mostly didn’t. They had a big round table in the back corner, and that was where they were when Vasquez, Lucy, Maggie and Winn came in. They joined them and immediately told them the horrible news about James.
Kara said, “Somebody needs to do something about Lionel Luthor’s men. They’re no better than thugs!”
“That’s what James was thinking,” said Lucy.
“But he went in without backup,” said Maggie. “The man needs a deputy or five.”
“Are you volunteering?” asked Lucy.
“No! I’m done with being a cop. Corn doesn’t talk back. Or try to shoot you.”
Eliza came over with a pitcher of lemonade for the table and took their orders. She said, “I’m glad to see you all. Patronage has been awfully light these last few weeks.”
“Really?” said Vasquez. “That’s odd. When’s the last time you had a lull like that?”
Eliza thought about it. “Not since the war, so more’n five years.”
Alex said, “Mom, this here is Winn the Kid, a friend of Vasquez’s mate, Shaw. Winn, this is Eliza Danvers, our mother.”
He jumped up and shook her hand. “How do, ma’am?”
Vasquez was frowning. (Well, there was nothing new about that. Vasquez was always frowning, except maybe when she was looking at Alex, talking about her days in the Cavalry fighting the rebels, drinking whiskey, or possibly shooting llama rustlers.) She turned to Eliza.
“Weeks, you say. How many exactly? When was the last time you recall the place being normally full?”
Eliza shook her head. “Well, we had a good crowd on Founder’s Day, of course—”
“But Mom,” said Alex, “that was mid-October.”
“So two and a half months?” asked Vasquez.
“More,” said Eliza. “The drop-off happened in September, I’d say, just as the weather was finally starting to cool down.”
Vasquez turned to Kara. “Do you remember what you reported on back then?”
“Well, they finished the second room at the schoolhouse. And Eve Tessmacher won the hog-tying contest—”
“And I lost three dollars!” muttered Alex.
Vasquez patted her on the shoulder. “It’s okay, hon. Nobody could have seen that one coming.”
Kara continued, “Judge Lord tried to campaign to bring electricity to San Paso, but then there was that riot in protest, and his outhouse got burned down and there was that explosion because of the methane—”
“Blew sky-high,” sighed Alex blissfully. “Some of my best work.”
Vasquez squeezed her shoulder. “That’s my girl.”
Maggie grinned. “That’s when I realized that you guys are fun.”
“ANYway,” continued Kara, “about the only other thing I can think of is that Lena Luthor started digging her mine.”
The table went silent.
Eliza said, “That’s true. A lot of people got some extra part-time work on that… They told me that here… and then they stopped coming here…”
“Mine?” Winn asked. “What kinda mine? Gold?”
Kara shook her head. “Nobody’s been mining for gold through these parts for decades.”
Maggie said, “Well, she’s pulling something out of the ground that’s making her rich. When M’gann had money troubles after the last recession, Lena bought a 50% share in the saloon. She’s got a share of the whorehouse--”
“Sex workers’ establishment!” insisted Kara.
“—and she bought the hotel. There was talk she was going to paint it red, but nothing ever came of it.”
Eliza left them contemplating and came back sometime later with their meals. Uncharacteristically, they ate without talking. Kara noticed that Winn was staring at her a little, as she had ordered two entrees. She ignored him.
They finished up and paid. Eliza hugged her girls and Vasquez and waved goodbye.
They wandered through downtown, heading instinctively toward the beating heart of San Paso: the Wicked Witch Saloon.
Kara said, “Lena’s got an office above the saloon, and about a dozen men to make sure that no one gets close to her.”
Vasquez said, “I think I know how we can. Winn. You said you were a riverboat gambler for years.”
“Yeah, that’s how I could afford to—”
“Winn.” She pulled a small roll of bills from her vest pocket, tossed it to him. “Why don’t you mosey on in there. Have yourself a good time.”
He caught the bills, grinned, then turned on his poker face. “Well. If you insist.” He marched into the saloon.
Alex frowned. “I’m not sure I understand your plan.”
Vasquez, for once, had an easy grin on her face. “Honey, I just set a match to a powder keg. Luthors hate losing money. And if Lena doesn’t want her saloon to burn down, then she’s going to have to come out of her office and deal with it.”
Lucy said, “Better yet, get your boy to get into a fight with Lena and bring her out here on the street.”
“Alex,” said Vasquez. “Your job is to see that Winn creates a little chaos of the not-exploding-the-judge’s-outhouse variety.”
Alex shook her head. “Clearly, I drew the short straw.”
Kara watched her sister with concern as she followed Winn into the saloon. She turned back to Vasquez. “So what do you want us to do?”
Maggie said, “Reckon I can post up nearby with a long gun.” She spat a black liquid onto the dirt.
Lucy stared. “Hon, are you chewing… tobacco?”
“Mm, no. Tootsie Roll.”
Vasquez said, “Get rid of your hats and your guns. You want to know how Lena went from being a debutante to an entrepreneur running half the town’s businesses? I’m gonna need you to infiltrate her base of operations.”
“As what?” asked Maggie.
Up in the church steeple, the bell tolled one.
Chapter 45: A Time You May Embrace, Part 5
Notes:
An extra chapter in honor of our new (finally) holiday of Juneteenth, celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. May we follow up on this with concrete changes toward building a country that supports and reinforces justice and integrity for all.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Jessica Huang was newly imported from San Francisco, where Lena had made friends with her and enabled her to get an education, knowing from an early age how important it would be in the future to have allies and helpers not connected to her family. So, it was true, Jess didn’t really know the townies from the visitors, but when these two women walked into the office above the saloon, requesting access to the Luthor Mining account books, she didn’t see the harm in it. After all, they were unarmed, which was rare in San Paso, and certainly, the woman in the menswear and glasses was pale enough to be a DC desk jockey.
Jess said, “Y’all are tax collectors?”
The woman with the sleeve garters pushed her spectacles up her nose, saying, “We just need to look at your books and make sure everything’s in order.”
“And we’re in a bit of a hurry, so…”
Jess let them into Lena’s office and brought them a stack of ledgers. Then she decided to nip downstairs to the saloon, see if Lena was there. Just in case.
///
Maggie closed the door behind her. Then the two of them started looking at the ledger numbers.
Maggie had gotten some training at accountancy while working fraud back in Gotham, but it had been a long time. Nothing was jumping out at her. Kara was flipping pages much faster and had finished three ledgers in the time it took Maggie to go through one. Suddenly she stopped.
“Oh. I think I’ve got something. Each ledger is labeled with dates, geographical coordinates and the elemental symbol for the ore being mined: a little gold, silver mostly. An old ledger from Georgia for bauxite. But this one… this is local. Lena has been pulling up an element I don’t recognize the symbol for: PK(r). It looks like she’s not shipping it anywhere for purification. She’s just stockpiling it at a nearby mining camp.”
The door opened and two big, bearded men in battered hats walked in.
“And who are you?” asked Maggie.
“We work for Miz Luthor.”
“Well,” said Kara, fidgeting with her glasses. “We’re with the Internal Revenue Service.”
“Ah, Miz Luthor don’t like no taxmen.”
Kara said, “Well, nobody likes paying taxes, but they are an essential part of the Federal Government.”
“Miz Luthor don’t like the Federal Government, neither.” He pulled his gun.
Maggie pushed his gun away and punched him in the jaw. Kara backfisted the other one in the temple. Both men crumpled to the ground.
Kara immediately started unbuttoning the taller one’s shirt. “We’ll get into camp easier if they recognize their clothes. He’s too big for you. Just take his coat and hat. I have some bandanas. We’ll make it work.”
Maggie wasn’t too sure about that.
///
Lucy followed James as he made his rounds of the town. Out behind the hotel, at Gao’s laundry, he found a bench and sat tiredly watching the Chinese immigrants scrubbing hotel linens on scrub boards and hanging the cleaned sheets on long lines strung between the trees. Nearby a patchwork quilt in blues and yellows rippled on the breeze.
Lucy watched him ruminate, lightly rubbing the bandage around his neck. She asked. “So what’s your history with the Luthors? You said that you had dealings over the years. I can tell a vendetta when I see one. I’m kind of an expert when it comes to revenge.”
“Is this what it’s like working with a woman? You sit around, talking about your feelings?”
“Well, if your ‘feelings’ are what almost got you hung, then yeah, I’d say they’re worth talking about.”
He sighed. “Not in my century.”
///
Lena Luthor had been taught, from a very young age, that if she were going to spend the time to learn something, she had bloody well better become a master at it. For her, that covered business, sex, (definitely not cooking), and games: poker, chess, blackjack.
(And given that Lena got easily chilled, learning to be a master at strip poker with Mama Reign had also come naturally. As had Mama Reign.)
Playing with this hard-eyed “Winn the Kid” came as a revelation. When she had met him in the saloon the day before, she had dismissed him as a lightweight, and even now she still imagined that he probably was in many ways. He had rejected her offer of a round of whiskey at the start of the game and stuck to beer. But he didn’t let himself get distracted by the big-bosomed saloon girl who sat near him drinking up his every move.
Judy had mad skills and a bottle of very expensive perfume, was known as the nicest smelling thing in San Paso. So this Winn was either very self-disciplined or gay. Interesting. The dealer dealt them the cards and Lena came out at 19. Winn came out at 21.
“Blackjack. Must be my lucky day!”
Lena was almost convinced that he was cheating but she couldn’t figure out how he was doing it. She counted cards automatically, had since Lex had taught her this game when she was eight, but she didn’t think Winn was doing that.
She went for a light-hearted tone. “Winn, are you cheating?”
He laughed. “I’m winning.” The dealer passed him a small stack of large bills, and he took one and handed it to Judy. “Sweetheart, that’s for you. I’ll see you around.”
Judy left.
Winn stood up and said, “Piano man! Play something else. I’ve had more fun at a funeral.” He slapped a bill on the piano and went to the bar to order another beer. Lena followed him carrying her whiskey glass and nodding at M’gann for a refill.
The piano man shifted to a livelier tune.
“So, Winn the Kid,” Lena began playfully. “What brings you out to San Paso?”
He took a swig of his beer, swallowed, and said, “The clement weather, the beautiful women, the scintillating entertainment… So very many reasons. I could ask similar questions of you.”
“When Lionel and Lillian Luthor say jump, Lex and I say, ‘What color?’” said Lena with a smirk.
Winn nodded easily. “Can’t say I had parents like that. Well, can’t say that I had parents. So I don’t have any experience of that sort of thing. But mining… Why mining?”
“All their companies require metal. It seemed natural.”
“Mm. But when I asked you what you mined, you said aluminum.”
“Mm. So?”
“Well, pardon me, ma’am, but bauxite doesn’t grow in Colorado. Now, Georgia, maybe. But not here. And from what I understand, nobody has mined for gold here in fifty years.”
She smiled. It was a good way to put men off. “Do you know, Winn, that in the ten years since I first proposed this business, I have always used aluminum as my example. And no one, in all those conversations in the course of the whole damn decade, has noticed that.”
“Ah!” he said. “East African Horticulture.”
“I, wait. What?”
“At the orphanage, they were big on educating us to be productive members of society. And they’d ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. And I always wanted this…” He gestured around the saloon. “Riverboats or dusty towns, and cards. But you can’t exactly say that to an uptight minister. So I always said East African Horticulture.”
“How did you even know the words?”
“Avid reader. The orphanage had a library that was… fairly eclectic. I read whatever I could get my hands on.”
“We’re alike in that way. My orphanage had science books. I read them all. I was adopted at six by the Luthors.” She didn’t know why she was telling him this. She didn’t usually talk about it.
He nodded sagely. “Maybe I will have that whiskey after all.”
///
Maggie and Kara pulled their bandanas up over their noses as they walked into the mining camp.
“These clothes smell like ass,” said Maggie.
Kara sighed. “We’re criminals. It’s important to smell the part. Okay. Game face.”
A man from the camp took one look at them and raised his rifle. “I don’t recognize you two.”
With a lowered voice, Kara said, “That’s probably because of our new bandanas.”
The man turned to Maggie, saying, “Is he off his rocker?”
She lowered her voice too. “You could blow his brains out, only he doesn’t got any.”
The man laughed, lowered the rifle, patted Kara on the shoulder and walked away.
Kara muttered, “I think the mine’s this way, where that lean-to is.”
They tramped their way through the camp, largely ignored by the miners, who looked dirty and exhausted. Kara and Maggie waited until no one seemed to be paying attention and then they scooped up a lantern each and ambled into a mine shaft, dark and damp.
A few dozen steps in, Kara noted a large wooden box with large rocks of a pale lavender/pink color. She blanched. “Oh my god.”
Maggie turned. “Rose quartz? Why would Lena be stockpiling Rose quartz? I mean it’s supposed to amplify love, healing and joy, but—”
“Maggie, that’s not Rose quartz.” Kara’s voice shook and felt her skin tighten with heat.
“It’s not?”
“No. It’s kryptonite. The energy potential in a piece that big is… astronomical.”
“So energy as in power? Or as in blowing things up?”
“I don’t know. Different colors of kryptonite have different powers…” She scuffed her foot in the dirt until she found a flat piece about the size of her hand. She dropped it into the front pocket of her loose wool pants. “We need to get this back to Alex, so she can test it.”
And Maggie walked out behind Kara, so she didn’t see the pink threads arising from the skin of Kara’s face.
///
Alex didn’t know what to think. Partly, that was because she was starting her fourth whiskey in two hours. Partly, it was her very mixed feelings watching Winn and Lena. Alex liked Lena, always had. Her parents and Lex? No. Very no. They were money-grubbing, criminal and homophobic as shit. But Lena…
When Alex and Vasquez had moved to San Paso ten years previously, the town first ignored them, then befriended them, then realized they were lesbians. Then there had been a riot.
With actual pitchforks and torches.
The mob had burned down the tiny cabin they had built and run them out of town. And then there had been a townhall meeting, as M’gann told it. Lionel Luthor had made an appearance, dressed to the nines, with a Colt 45 Peacemaker on each hip. He was flanked by his similarly dressed and armed family members and fifty similarly armed hench-people. He gave a short speech, which appeared in the newspaper the following day.
“If I’m to understand what happened southwest of town yesterday, I would have to think that the people of San Paso don’t care for inverts. That would be a very great shame, because then they would not care for my daughter. The daughter who is employing 18% of the townspeople, most of whom had been odd-jobbing before she started Luthor Mining. Now, if they didn’t care for my daughter, she might be forced to close her company and leave San Paso. And if my daughter was forced to leave, then her parents and her brother would also be forced to shut down their companies and leave San Paso. And that would be a crying shame, as it would leave 61% of San Paso residents without a way to earn a living.”
He stopped then, pulled out his Colt, opened it, checked the bullets, and snapped it closed with a righteous, “CLICK!”
“Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I decided that tomorrow evening, I’m going to ride up to that parcel of land southwest of town to see for myself if the rumors I have heard are true. And I very much hope that the cabin I have been reliably informed was burned down, is in fact intact. Or will be. Because then I will not be forced to take such drastic action.”
He turned to the mayor, who was visibly shaking in his cowboy boots. “Yessirveryclearsir,” the man said.
“Excellent. Y’all have a good day now, y’hear?”
When he went there the following day at 7 pm, the evidence of burning had been removed and re-sodded, and a roomy cabin stood (freshly) on the lot.
M’gann had found Alex and Vasquez and driven them home on her cart. The town hadn’t said, “Boo!” ever since.
So yes, Alex liked Lena because it had always been very clear to her that the Luthors would never have made a public spectacle like that unless they had been pushed. Hard.
But now Lena and Winn were apparently… fangirling? About scientists. And she just couldn’t.
Her earbud twirped. She pressed it.
“Alex, it’s been forever,” said Vasquez. “What the hell is going on in there?”
“Your plan’s caught something of a snag.”
“Explain.”
“Well, it’s hard to, but Winn and Miz Luthor… like each other.”
“What? What happened to Winn starting a fight?”
“I think it’s more likely that he and Lena get matching tattoos.”
She heard Vasquez talking heatedly and then sigh deeply.
“Vas, what do you want me to do?”
“Brace yourself.”
///
Winn poured back another ice-cold beer, waving his arms around as he told his story. Lena Luthor’s emerald eyes flashed.
“So there I was sitting at the table with stacks and stacks of chips, and just as I’m about to cash in, these two Revenuers got hauled up from their rowboat and tried to arrest me for failure to pay my taxes. But the laugh was on them because the boat wasn’t technically on United States property, and I lived there, so I didn’t owe taxes to anybody.”
Lena laughed. “I’m sure that made them want to change the laws!”
“Oh, they did change it. That’s why I’m here. To invest it in something real before they come around to take it from me.”
“Something real. I like that,” said Lena. “That’s the great thing about mining. You’re pulling something real out of the ground and then folks like my family take it and turn it into something else, like a shiny train zooming across the prairie, its whistle like a wolf howling into the night.”
“Miz Luthor, I do believe you are a poet.” Winn toasted her unsteadily.
Suddenly from behind him, Winn heard James’s voice. “Luthor!”
Lena set down her glass. “Well, if it isn’t the great James Olsen himself. You’ve got quite a pair to walk into my establishment like this.”
“I’m taking you in.” James pulled both his pistols.
Immediately half the bar stood cocking their pistols, including Judy, the saloon girl. They were all pointing at James.
Lena raised her eyebrow and slowly stood. “Actually, James,” she said, pulling her own pistol from its holster, opened the chamber and let bullets fall to the floor. “I’m glad you decided to pay me this visit. See, I’ve been working on a little side project.” She pulled a bullet from her vest pocket and inserted it into the chamber. “You see I recently discovered a new ore and, well, it’s got… special qualities.”
She pointed her gun directly at James’s chest. But just as she was starting to squeeze the trigger a whip snapped around her wrist, pulling her aim off true. She shot an enormous hole in the back wall and people dove for cover. The whip lashed out again, this time around Lena’s ankle. Vasquez yanked the whip and Lena collapsed to the floor.
Winn grabbed two pool cues and threw one to Alex at the bar. Then they were breaking heads and taking names. Alex grabbed a bottle and smashed it against one man’s head, ducked another punch and popped back up to thrust the butt end of the cue into another man’s throat, leaving him on his knees gagging. James shot two more and wrestled a third, before being overwhelmed by the Luthor minions. Winn saw Alex running upstairs and was shocked because she didn’t seem like a coward, but she caught his eyes and yelled, “Chandelier!” and he understood. He ran to the chandelier and used the pool cue to push it toward her on the balcony. She grabbed hold of it and jumped off the balcony, swinging down fast and landing feet first on the mob of men on top of the sheriff. By the time Winn got across the room, she was pushing him through the ragged hole in the side of the building.
They ran to a cart loaded with barrels just as Kara and Maggie were hurrying in their direction. Lucy hugged her wife, but Maggie was grinning. “Hey, why should you guys have all the fun?”
Gunshots both inside and outside the saloon went off. The group pulled back, heads low, to a large stack of baled hay and wooden crates.
Kara said, “We just got back from Lena’s mine. We’ve got trouble. She’s digging up kryptonite.”
Lena stepped out onto the porch of the saloon and aimed her pistol directly at their defensive bales.
Alex said, “Get back to the ranch!” They turned and ran.
Lena shouted, “That’s right, run, you yellow-bellied cowards!”
Then she shot the bales and they exploded in a shower of pink light.
Winn turned back and shot down one of Luthor’s henchmen, and Lena turned and shot at him. James ran in front of Winn, but Kara got there first and the bullet went through her and through James and hit Winn with a soft harmless thud.
Winn gasped, “And here I thought… we were going to be friends!”
Lena scoffed, “I don’t have friends.” She turned away and led her people back through town, allowing her not-friends to escape, regroup, whatever.
Notes:
Large bits of this were stolen wholesale from DC's Legends of Tomorrow, with gratitude.
Chapter 46: A Time You May Embrace, Part 6
Chapter Text
The cart was right there, so Alex made a command decision. “Lucy, you get Doc Torres, bring her back to the forge. Mags, Vas, help me get these two into the back of the cart. Winn, get out of the way!”
She jumped up to gather the reins and the instant everybody was onboard, she cracked the whip and Dolly, one very surprised cart horse, galloped like she’d never galloped before. Alex risked a quick look behind her, just long enough to see that Winn, Maggie and Vasquez were using bandanas to staunch the exit and entry wounds on the two victims.
They were both clearly in shock, and quite frankly, Alex wasn’t too far behind. How could a bullet have gone through her solid-as-rock Kryptonian little sister? But wait, hadn’t Kara said Lena was mining kryptonite? What the hell was kryptonite?
“Hyah! Hyah!” yelled Alex as they sped through town, less for Dolly’s benefit and more to encourage pedestrians to dodge to the sides of the road.
Maggie yelled, “There’s too much blood!” and it sounded like Winn vomited over the side of the cart. When she saw the sign of the anvil and horseshoe, she pulled on the reins. “Whooooah!”
Maggie and Alex dragged James out and then Maggie and Winn dragged out Kara. Alex unlocked the forge door, and they laid out James on the long wooden table and Kara out on the stone hearth which was still warm from the day’s work. The banked forge fire kept the place warm in the coldest of seasons, and that would be good for people going into shock. Vasquez knew where the blankets were and got them and helped wrap their lower bodies with blankets while the others went back to holding bloodied bandanas to the entry and exit wounds. Alex opened up the forge and stuck the pointed end of a poker into the dull coals until the poker took on the same orange color. By that time, Vasquez had managed to cut the two victims’ shirts away from their wounds. Carefully and quickly, Alex touched the red-hot poker to those wounds, ignoring their screams of pain. They had lost too much blood and they had to close the wounds fast.
Alex poured whiskey over the burns on both sides of their bodies, paused and then took a pull from the bottle herself, then passed it to Vasquez, who drank and passed it Lucy, who drank and passed it to Maggie, who drank and passed it to Winn, who found that the bottle was empty.
“Just my luck,” he grumbled, but Alex patted him on the shoulder. “There’s more back at the ranch.”
By the time Doc Torres got there, both James and Kara had passed out from the pain. Doc Torres looked at Alex’s grim handiwork, shaking her head. “That’s not my first choice, for sure. But I did see the amount of blood in the back of your cart, so I see why you chose this way. We’ll have to keep an eye on them.”
“In case of infection,” rasped Lucy.
“I think that will be less of an issue than the possibility of internal bleeding. Their chance of survival is better than average, mostly due to your quick thinking, Alex. Normally, I’d say get them home in a cleaner place than a forge, but honestly, I think the less we move them now, the better chance they’ll have. But we’re going to need more blankets and sheets and we’re going to need more booze. I can go back to my surgery and pick up a few things. Vasquez, if I give you a note for Pam at the hotel, she’ll set us up with linens. Maggie, the saloon will probably be closed, what with them needing to board up that wall, but maybe you can buy a bottle or two of whiskey from M’gann. Hm. Make that three. It’s going to be a long night.”
///
It was a long, dark night. Winn lay in the loft above the forge, having just finished his second shift watching James and Kara, and it was three in the morning, according to his pocket watch. He was exhausted and in shock and far too tired to sleep. The forge was stifling, which was great for the wounded but not great for anybody else. Even when he did drift off, he had strange dreams. In the first one, he was kissing Kara and in between smooches, she was telling him that she had always been asexual until she’d met him. He’d woken surprised and hard and had to scramble down the ladder to go outside and relieve himself behind the forge. Luckily, when he came back in blushing, Alex had given him a tired wave, probably thinking he was just overheated like the rest of them. Well, in a way, he was.
His next dream was less… fun. In it, James was kissing Kara, and she was telling him that she had always been asexual until… So yeah. That. Again, he woke up sweaty and unhappy. Finally, just as light was beginning to peak through the windows, he dreamed about Lena kissing Kara, and Winn had never been great at lucid dreaming, even though he’d had training in it, but some small portion of his brain had enough savvy to wake him up and send him down the ladder to where Vasquez was sitting between Kara and Lena, whittling a small bear out of an old chunk of wood she probably got from a little crate of chunks at the back corner of the forge. Winn had assumed they were for the fires, but maybe not.
“Morning,” he whispered. “When does Eliza’s Kitchen open up? We’re going to need a hell of a lot of coffee.”
Vasquez jumped up, dropping the wood but gripping the knife. “Oh, shit. Eliza!”
“Oh, she’s Kara’s mom, I forgot!” said Winn.
“Yeah, shit. Okay, um.” She looked at her pocket watch. “Seven oh two. She will definitely have coffee started… and she does sometimes bring Alex a thermos when she’s working all night… Here, let me send you with a note.”
“Uh, why me? Why don’t you just go tell her yourself?”
“You’re new. She’s much less likely to kill the messenger if she doesn’t know you yet.”
“O-kay.”
And that was how a very rumpled Winn found himself carrying a note to Eliza Danvers. The front of the restaurant still wore a Closed sign, but he went around back and knocked at the back door. Eliza let him in, and he noted that, whereas the previous day she had worn a calico dress down to her ankles, today she wore jeans and boots, more like her older daughter. The sleeves of her chambray shirt were rolled above her elbows and there was a smear of flour on her cheek.
“Um, sorry to interrupt you, Mrs. Danvers, but I have a note for you from Susan Vasquez.”
She took the note from him with her left hand and started reading it even as her right hand was pulling down a mug and pouring coffee into it. By the time she finished the note, she had added cream and sugar without even realizing it. She stared at the mug, uncomprehending. Then she looked back at him. “Coffee?” she asked.
She handed him the mug and then went into the next room, came back with small leather satchel and a large thermos and poured coffee into the thermos until her coffee pot was empty. She handed him the warm thermos.
“Let’s go.”
///
Kara was dreaming. It was a heated battle dream. Fires raged everywhere and she was crawling across the hot battlefield. Some rebel soldier had bayonetted her, and she was sure that she was going to bleed to death, and of course that would mean that Alex would yell at her and Eliza was going to march through hell to turn back time and prevent it from happening. So basically, she just had to wait.
But while she was waiting, a Valkyrie rode down on a black horse. She was stately in her armor, with a silver spear that had a sharp pink spearhead that glowed in the late afternoon sun. The woman’s helmet had immense wings and her eyes were startlingly green. Huh, she thought. Death wasn’t so bad, if it meant she got to ride with a woman like this.
The woman stared down at her and asked, “Kara Zor-El, are you worthy to sit at Frigg’s right side, to sup at the table of heroes and share the cup with the Valkyries?”
And Kara just stared because the woman was so beautiful. Kara had never seen anyone so beautiful in her short life. Some sunsets and some horses, sure. And once, outside of town with Alex and Vasquez, she had seen a wildcat who reminded her of this woman, but otherwise no.
“Kara? Kara!”
She opened her eyes to see her mother. She was sweating bullets, but her mother’s light eyes were a mix of concern and command. “Kara, how do you feel?”
Well, thought Kara, blushing. Wasn’t that the $60 question.
///
Lucy watched James twitch in his sleep. She laid a cool cloth across his forehead, but in the heat of the forge and with whatever infection his immune system might be fighting, it wouldn’t stay cool long. Under the light blankets, it was clear that he was becoming aroused, and she shifted her chair to block the others from noticing. She wondered if he were dreaming of her. She hoped not. She still loved him, in her own way, but Maggie was her wife, and the only one she wanted to want her.
When Eliza had come in, she had seemed remarkably calm, even though Lucy knew that Alex had expected Eliza to read them all the riot act for not contacting her sooner. Vasquez and Maggie had very adroitly sidestepped that. At first, they had been so scared and just trying to save the two lives. Then they had been shocky and exhausted and had simply not thought of it.
Both things were true.
The idea that, at 4:30 in the morning, Alex had remembered to think of Eliza at all and the rest of them had argued against waking Eliza until morning so that she could get a good night’s rest, and what could Eliza have done three hours earlier anyway, etc., etc.? That had been a bit of… fabrication. Convincing fabrication, apparently. But yeah. That.
Behind her, James groaned lightly. She poured him two fingers of scotch and helped him raise his upper body just enough for him to drink it down. Doc Torres was expecting some morphine on the next day’s train. Until then, they’d just have to improvise.
///
Alex didn’t tell anyone what she had found in Kara’s trouser pocket. She simply waited until there was enough going on at the forge and had taken it out back to examine. Kara had seemed to know what it was, kryptonite, was that the word? It didn’t feel bad. Alex paced a while thinking, then tucked it into the pocket of her flannel shirt and marched over to the telegraph office. She had some questions that only a mild-mannered reporter a long way from there might possibly be able to answer.
///
Eventually, when it was clear that Kara and James were probably not going to die that morning, Lucy and Maggie collected their horses and rode home. Winn had taken the cart to one of the town’s water pumps and had sluiced the blood off the cart, ignoring the looks he got when people saw what he was doing. He didn’t offer an explanation, knowing that would just make him look guilty of something.
On the other hand, it was a very small town, after all. Maybe they’d heard about the shootout and knew exactly what he was doing. He just kept his mouth shut and got on with it. Then he drove it back to the front of the forge, where it could dry in the sun while they got their patients ready for transport.
Dolly seemed much happier plodding slowly than she had racing wildly the night before. He didn’t blame her.
In the end, he rode his own horse home, while Alex and Eliza sat in front of the cart, and Vasquez watched the two patients in back. He was glad for the break from constant female company. He rode easily a hundred yards ahead of them, but that little bit of separation allowed him to pull the bullet out of his vest pocket, the bullet that had smashed its way through two bodies before it bounced harmlessly off his chest. He had scooped it up immediately before James and Kara had collapsed on top of him.
He looked at it now a bent lump of pinkish rock. He felt overheated again and this time it seemed to be emanating from the rock, but that was foolish. Rocks didn’t give off heat.
He remembered his dreams from that night? Morning? Only this time in his mind, it wasn’t one of the girls he was kissing. It was James.
He dropped the bullet back into his vest pocket, and gently nudged his horse with his heels. If they went a little faster, the breeze might cool him off.
///
At breakfast that morning at the Luthor mansion, the family gathered at six to eat in silence. Lionel was reading The Daily Planet a week late, since that’s how long it took to get from Metropolis to San Paso on his trains.
Lillian asked, “What news of the big city, dear?”
“It looks like that supposed breakout of animals from the Central Park Zoo was just an elaborate joke on the public.”
Lex looked disappointed.
Lena said, “I’m thinking of closing the mine. It looks tapped out.”
“After only four months?” asked Lionel.
“It was a narrow seam.”
Lillian shook her head but said nothing. Nobody could say “told you so” with zero words like Lillian Luthor.
Lightly, Lena said, “So I guess you were right, Mother.”
Lillian choked on her bacon. Lex pounded her on the back, and she spat it out.
Lena saved her smile for later when she was in private. Right there, instead, she went on, “Luckily, I think we’re going to break even, or almost. So I don’t feel too terrible about it. And when I let the miners there go, there won’t be that drain on outlay from their wages anymore.”
“Very sensible, my dear,” said Lionel. “Admit defeat, take your profits if you can, and move on.” He put down the paper and rubbed his neck absently. “Is it me, or is it very warm in here?”
“Don’t ask me,” muttered Lillian. “With the Change going on, I never know what temperature I am.”
But Lex said, “I think it’s going to be a warm winter. Certainly nothing like Metropolis, but....” There was a light sheen of perspiration on his bald head.
And Lena said nothing about any of that. Although Lillian forbade her children from wearing their guns to meals, Lena always carried a few spare rounds in her pockets as a rule wherever she went, just in case.
And these days, the rounds she carried were… the special ones.
///
M’gann was arguing with John Jones, the carpenter when Lena arrived for work and checked in on the damage.
“Lena, did you absolutely have to blow a hole in my wall last night?”
“Our wall. Yes, I did. It was a proof-of-concept, very necessary, and I will pay for the reconstruction, so don’t worry. Has Jess arrived yet?”
“No, there was a note on the bar this morning that she was going up to Opal City for something. Said she’d be back in a day or two.”
“That’s odd… Well, carry on.” Lena left.
John said, “You know how it is, M’gann. I can do it well, fast, or cheaply, any two out of the three. You pick what’s most important.”
“Well, if Herself is paying, do it well and fast, so I don’t have to spend another night shooting trespassers who want free booze.”
“You got it.”
Upstairs, shots were fired. They stared at each other. Then they heard yelling: Lena’s voice and the voices of at least two men. They both ran for the stairs.
Up on the landing, Lena was standing with her gun trained on two of her men who were talking so fast they were falling all over themselves. One was in his underwear and the other was bleeding. A chunk of Lena’s coat, right around her bicep, was torn, and there was a dark hole in the plaster of the wall behind her.
She turned to look at John and M’gann. “Get Doc Torres. And wire the office in Opal City. I want Jessica Huang back here, preferably alive, as soon as possible.”
M’gann turned to John. “You get the doc.”
Chapter 47: A Time You May Embrace, Part 7
Chapter Text
Back at Eagle Anchor Ranch, Kara was carried to her room and settled on her bed. She was pale and in pain, but seemed oddly serene, which Alex found disturbing, although Eliza seemed pleased. Then they carried James to the guest room, and if they had to angle him across the bed so his feet didn’t dangle off the end, at least he mostly fit. Doc Torres had told them that once she got the shipment of morphine, she would ride out and administer it to her patients, but that might not be for a day or two, so Alex made sure that James had access to a bottle of whiskey. Not that that would help Kara, of course, but they could only do what they could do.
Out in the kitchen, Alex, Vasquez and Winn sat around the table, exhausted and glum, while Eliza moved around the kitchen with easy familiarity and scrambled eggs.
Alex pulled the six-inch piece of kryptonite out of her pocket and showed it to the others. “Mom, what do you make of this? Kara says it’s kryptonite. I’m guessing that bullet was probably made of the same stuff.”
Guiltily, Winn put his fingers in his vest pocket and pulled out the pinkish slug. “Looks like it.”
Slowly, Vasquez said, “That… went through both of them. I’m surprised it didn’t do much damage, but Doc was pretty sure that their lungs were uncompromised, and it didn’t look like any bones were broken.”
“Miraculous,” said Eliza, but Alex looked doubtful. “What?”
Alex shook her head. “At the fair last year, where Eve tied those hogs so fast. Do you remember the sharp-shooting contest?”
“Crystal clear,” growled Vasquez. “It’s the first time I’ve lost in nine years.”
“Lena won. She is a crack shot. If she had wanted any of the three of you dead, you’d be dead.”
Sighing, Vasquez said, “I tend to agree.”
Alex picked up Winn’s slug and rolled it between her fingers. “Right before she tried to shoot James the first time, she said the ore she discovered had ‘special properties.’ But if one of those special properties was that it could pierce two bodies in a row, why not shoot to kill?”
Winn shrugged. “Probably killing wasn’t the point. Are you telling me that you’ve never shot somebody just to make a point?”
Vasquez raised one eyebrow. “You have?”
“Er, just the once? Or twice? ANYway, the point is, well, what is the point that she’s trying to make? That she has super bullets? That she can make better munitions than her brother can? I thought she adored her brother.”
Eliza said, “She used to, for sure, back when they were in San Francisco and before he had that huge fallout with Superman, which is pretty much what made them have to leave the city, the state, the businesses they had been in. Most people who stay in San Paso for more than a year either choose to live here, like we did, or they just don’t have any other choices. Lena was a debutante when they moved here. Can’t imagine she likes living rough.”
Alex laughed. “You call living in the Luthor mansion living rough?”
“San Francisco has indoor toilets these days with chains to pull for the water to come down to flush. Very posh.”
“True,” said Vasquez, “that sure ain’t San Paso.”
“Alex,” said Winn, “you’re a blacksmith. You’re all about metal ores. Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Alex shook her head.
Eliza said, “I think I have, but it was so long ago. It was bright green and it was poisonous…”
Alex said, “Mom, I wired Clark, just in case he might know something.”
“Good thinking,” said Eliza.
Vasquez nodded.
Winn looked at the women, waiting for an explanation that he did not get.
Vasquez said, “I’m going to look in on our patients. Eliza, do you have any of Jeremiah’s old shirts for James?”
“I’ll look.”
“Good.”
///
Vasquez stood outside the door of the guest room, listening for the loud snoring of the night before. Nothing. Good. She knocked.
“Come in.”
She entered and sat on the chair beside the bed. James sighed.
“How ya feelin’, Sheriff?”
“Like Swiss cheese.”
“Oooh, very posh. I haven’t had anything but cheddar for years.”
He tried to smile but failed. The walls were painted a pale blue, and the quilt on the bed was red and white with blue flowers. He asked, “You here to take my temperature?”
She touched the back of her hand to his forehead. “Helluva lot better than last night, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, last night was… bizarre.”
“How so?”
“This is not the first time I’ve been shot, but I’ve never seen a bullet reach me after it went through somebody else.”
“Yeah, ‘special qualities.’ I guess Lena wasn’t making that shit up.”
“No…” He reached for the glass of whiskey and Vasquez reacted without thinking. Her bowie knife was sticking out of the bedside table between his thumb and forefinger. Okay, that was weird, but she went with her gut.
“We had a plan. You went off book. Now you’re going to cut the crap and tell me what was going on last night between you and Lena.”
“I don’t answer to you, Miz Vasquez.”
“It’s Sargent Vasquez. And if you did answer to me, Kara and you wouldn’t have gotten shot. Now I imagine you don’t like taking orders from a woman, but you’re gonna like getting your ass kicked by one even less.”
“Eleven years ago, I was a reporter in San Francisco, back when Lex Luthor and Superman were best friends. I was… acquainted with Superman through my best friend, Clark Kent. But then Lena Luthor turned Superman and Clark against Lex, and Lex tried to kill Clark and nearly ended up killing me.”
“Wait, how would Lena turn Superman against her own brother? And why? That makes no sense.”
“She was jealous… And she used her sexual wiles to turn them against each oth—”
Vasquez laughed. She laughed and laughed and held her stomach, she was laughing so hard. Tears sprang from her eyes. She hugged her own ribs and wheezed. Eventually, when she couldn’t breathe anymore, she gasped for breath, let out a few last giggles, and subsided.
James stared. “Huh. I wasn’t even sure you knew how to do that.”
“Oh, James. Sexual wiles? On a man? Lena? Hardly.”
“She’s a beautiful woman!” said James. “Devious, sure, but—”
“Oh, honey, she does not play for your team. Lena’s like me and Alex, and Maggie and Lucy. Sure, Superman is kinda cute, with the cape and all the muscles, but seriously? Oh, my heavens, no.”
James looked thoughtful. “He really is, isn’t he? Huh, I never noticed that before.”
And Vasquez was pretty sure that that wasn’t true, but it wasn’t for her to say. “So, go on with the story.”
“Lex allegedly bombed the San Francisco Chronicle offices to target me and Clark. A lot of people died. But they couldn’t prove it was him. He was just a kid at the time, and the Luthors were… are… very powerful. So they left town, moved around, eventually ended up here. I joined the army, got out and made it my work to follow them, find them, and take them down: Lex and Lena, and their parents who enabled their criminality.”
Vasquez frowned. “If you are going to be the law, James, don’t you think you should follow the law?”
“I don’t know why I’m even trying to explain this to you. You’ll never understand.”
“Wrong. All of us know a little bit about the desire for revenge. Can’t say it’s ever helped anybody, but we are familiar. We need to get to the bottom of this, but not by shooting. I’ll help you capture Lena and question her, and if you’re right about her actions and motives, then I’ll help you bring the full force of the law against her.”
“Judge Lord would never—”
“She’s crossed state lines. This is federal. And I have friends who do federal.”
“Even though I screwed up?”
“Been there too. I’m starting to think that screwing up is just an essential part of surviving.”
///
Several streets away from the red-painted Mama Reigns stood a smart Victorian house, two and a half stories tall, painted white like most of the houses in town. On the broad porch out front, a wooden swing hung from two sturdy chains affixed to the ceiling of the porch. There, Ruby Arias set down her carpet bag full of her product to stop and retie the bonnet under her chin. The wind was shaking the trees and she didn’t want to lose this bonnet. It was the one Mrs. Danvers had made for her birthday.
Completely sure that her head was covered, she picked up the bag and marched into the center of town. Her first stop, of course, was Brian’s general store, to drop off her product and get paid (and maybe use just a little of her pay on penny candy; she had worked hard for the money, after all). Then she would pick up the mail at the post office, and last, she would go over to the newspaper office to finish compiling and folding the rest of the newspapers for the week.
That was the plan.
She had not expected a crowd to be gathered across the street from the store, mostly working men standing around, gossiping and spitting tobacco, and watching the reconstruction of the side wall of M’gann’s saloon. She paused in her walk to watch the fun. She recognized Riley Finn from the Western Union office. Her mother always had nice things to say about Mr. Finn, among them that she did not know him professionally.
Ruby touched his arm and asked, “Hey, Mr. Finn. What’s happening here?”
“Hey, Miz Ruby. There was a big fight here last night and some damage got done. Mr. Jones is making it right.”
“Was there a fire?”
“Don’t think so, but accounts are mixed. We’ll know more when next week’s paper comes out.”
And that made her remember her duties, so she bade him goodbye and crossed the street to the store. Brian was inside, watching through the front window. She knew he was skittish around crowds; if she were blue, she would be too.
“Hey, Mr. Brian. I finished the next order. Early too.”
He sighed. “I never should have offered that bonus. Okay, here, let’s see them.”
They walked over to the front counter and she laid out the six perfectly sewn Cuddle Me Beebo dolls.
“Well, child, you are a master worker. So I will give you your pay and your bonus, and throw in a bag of stale penny candy on the house.”
“You’re all heart, Mr. Brian.”
“Yes, people say that.”
Happily, Ruby skipped over to the post office, waited for Mr. Jordan to get their mail, and tossed it in her satchel. Then she pulled out one of the licorice whips and chewed on it as she made her way to the newspaper office. Surprisingly, it was closed, though the clock on the church steeple read 10:35. Just as she was turning to go home, she saw a familiar face striding toward her.
“Howdy, Miz Sawyer.”
“Howdy, Ruby. You won’t find Miz Danvers at work today. Probably not tomorrow either.”
“Is she okay?”
Maggie Sawyer see-sawed her hand. “That remains to be seen. I think quite likely yes, but that saloon fight was nasty.”
Ruby gaped. “Miz Danvers was in a saloon fight? Miz Kara Danvers????”
“Not directly. A newcomer and the sheriff were in danger, and she tried to help.”
“Oh, well that makes sense. I bet her sister was in the middle of it though. Miz Alex taught me how to throw a punch!”
“I know she did. She’s a good teacher. Yeah, she was in it, helped make sure that the Sheriff didn’t die of his wounds. Doc Torres says Alex saved his life.”
“Of course, she does,” said Ruby confidently. Miz Alex was her hero.
“Hey, Ruby. Could you get a message to your mama? We need to have pow-wow at Eagle Anchor Ranch tomorrow.”
“Um, well, yes, of course. But you know that using words like pow-wow is cultural appropriation, right?”
“Oh fuck,” said Maggie. “I did it again. Thanks, kid. I’m working on it. Anyway, tell your mom it’s at noon tomorrow if she can get away.”
Ruby said, “It’s easier for her to get away during the day anyway, so it should be fine. I’ll let her know.”
And she skipped home, leaving Miz Sawyer watching her go thoughtfully.
///
His morning break over, Riley Finn sauntered back to the Western Union, to trade places with Eve Tessmacher on the typewriter. He picked up the two punched tapes that had just come in and glanced down. He could read the punched Morse code by sight just as well as he read English.
Eve was getting better, but as he read it, she said, “Um, I’m not sure I understand the message on that one, Riley. Maybe you better handle it…” She was blushing.
He said, “Not to worry, Eve. I’ll handle it.”
She hurried out the door to take her break. He sat down at the typewriter and typed the two telegraphs, one from Metropolis to Alex Danvers, and one from Opal City to Lena Luthor.
The Luthor cable was most likely in code, as it mentioned a shipment by train of fortune cookies for The Hotel Monopole. The Danvers cable was… not in code. He typed away, blushing mildly himself, but only mildly. He figured that what those invert lady ranchers did on their ranches was their own business, just like nobody in San Paso said a word about M’gann and Brian being aliens.
When the Luthors laid down the law, the law stayed laid.
So to speak.
Don’t ask, don’t tell, live and let live, and make a profit.
Finn agreed. Other people’s telegrams were none of his business.
///
Lillian Luthor sometimes looked around dusty old San Paso and missed her time in Paris, studying with the widow, Madame Lavoisier. This town had no culture and damn little precipitation, and sometimes it made her cranky. But only sometimes. Because the other thing that San Paso largely lacked was education. And that made her business much, much easier to carry on here.
She had started Curandera Cure-Alls before her marriage to Lionel Luthor. The first great success (after a number of false starts) had been Poppy’s Purging Cordial, a laxative made with aniseed, fennel seed, raisin, rhubarb and a very high portion of brandy. The next was Nana’s Nostrum, to ease colicky babies (like Lex had been), and it contained a little opium, a little honey, and an orange liqueur of her own devising. Some worked better than others. But when the Sharp’s Stinger, that unfortunate mix of opium, herbs and chloral hydrate, had caused… well, deaths… the brand had taken a nosedive.
But then, the same year that Lex and Superman had gone head to head, the Pacific Medical Journal had published a scathing article condemning the makers of patent medicine. So the move from San Francisco to little San Paso had been timely for her business. She rebranded to Luthor Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., and was doing better than ever.
The one she was working on now, Letitia’s Elixir, was meant to boost energy and morale. So far, the recipe contained coca leaves, cola nut oil, and carbonated water. She was still fine-tuning it. Maybe a wee bit of cocaine? All of her family drank it regularly and they all agreed it made them much more productive. It desperately needed a better name, but Lillian was a chemist, not a marketing genius. Letitia’s Elixir would simply have to do for now.
///
Krypto trotted around the Anchor Eagle Ranch, sniffing for coyotes, peeing on fenceposts and generally keeping track of ranch business like a Good Dog. He liked his job, which he shared with the part-German-Shepherd-part-beagle-part-who-knew, Gertrude. He had never been happy, back when Whistler and Salty had first met back in National City. They had met in Hill Park, with Kara and Whistler walking him and Salty walking Gertrude. He and Gertrude had hit it off immediately, which led to them taking long walks together with their People and after a while, there were two puppies, and the People decided to start a llama ranch in southern Colorado. Snoopy and Schroeder were good little mutts, and much better than their parents at herding the llamas.
Krypto finished his rounds and whined to be let into the house. He knew that Kara was unwell, and he needed to be with her, to lick her face and help her get better. She was his Favorite Person, sneaking home bits of her bison steak for him on Twosdays, and speaking Kryptonese better than the halting attempts by the rest of their friends, even Whistler. Krypto also knew that someone else was unwell, though he couldn’t remember his name, but he would look in on him all the same. Then he would have to oversee Salty making dinner.
It was a busy job, but he didn’t mind. After all, he hadn’t come across seventeen galaxies just to lie around the house licking his fur like some… cat. He had his dignity after all.
Chapter 48: A Time You May Embrace, Part 8
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sam Arias woke up at home, very late, as usual. Well, she… worked nights.
San Paso was far better than either National City or San Francisco had been. National City was, what did Ruby call it? Uptight? San Francisco was wildly more accepting in comparison, but nothing like San Paso, where what you did was one thing and who you were was another thing. Sam Arias, who she was, was a church-going single mother, getting by in the world with her unique skillset. Mama Reign was what she did, usually in the soundproofed basement of the establishment of the same name.
She had a good working relationship with Morgan “The Edge” Meriweather, the town’s skilled leatherworker, and one of her best clients. She knew him from San Francisco, and when the shit had hit the fan for both of them, he had been instrumental in getting her and Ruby safely out of the city with most of their possessions intact in a mutual friend’s barn in the San Miguel Hills, and had followed her a few days later, narrowly missing the mob with torches and pitchforks.
Sam sat up in bed and stretched. Downstairs, Mabel (who had turned out to be a much better housekeeper than dominatrix-in-training) was probably teaching Ruby how to make flapjacks. She could smell the lovely scent. She smiled, stood, and looked at the notes she had jotted in her daybook the afternoon before and realized that she would need to hurry if she was to attend the meeting at the ranch within a reasonable proximity to the time of the meeting. Ruby had said the meeting started at noon, but with women like them, that really meant somewhere between one and half-past. She would be fine.
Unlike her normal work clothes, her clothes for what she considered “community engagement” were pastels. Maybe her pink chiffon?
There was a knock on her door.
“C’mon in, Rubes.”
Ruby entered carrying a tray with a plate of flapjacks, silverware, a cloth napkin, and a cup of coffee. Ruby set it down on her mother’s vanity and stepped back. She said, “Can I come with you to the ranch? I haven’t seen Miz Alex in weeks.”
“You saw her at church two Sundays ago, when she sang the psalm.”
“Right. That’s two weeks.”
Sam sat down and dug into her breakfast. “Mm, these are good.” She swallowed. “No, my love, you can’t come this time. From what I’ve been hearing, whatever it is we need to discuss is serious. You’re the one who told me about what happened at the saloon. I need you safe, Rubes.”
“But it’s boring here with just Mabel.”
Sam turned and took her daughter’s hands. “You won’t be here. You’ll be at work. You can use my office to study your French.”
Ruby stared. “You’re letting me hang out at work?”
“The girls will protect you should anything untoward happen. That place is a fortress, and you know that Madam Psi was one of the infantry’s best sharpshooters in the War. All those girls have army experience or the equivalent. They’ll take care of you.”
Ruby nodded, speechless.
Sam pulled Ruby into a hug. “Now, run along. Mama has to dress for battle. Mabel will take you over to the house after you’ve finished cleaning up. Be good.”
Ruby left and Sam sighed. She knew that her work was needed, and it did allow her as a woman to make a good living, but sometimes it felt a bit sordid. Still, it also gave her power. She remembered back when the Dansquez’s got run out of town and Lena had come to her to ask her to convince her father to intervene. It had run against Sam’s training to even mention blackmail, so she hadn’t. She had simply made an ethical argument about Lionel Luthor’s hypocrisy, and the need for them to work toward making their community more open about such things, so that hypocrisy wouldn’t be necessary.
That was what she had said. If what he had heard was blackmail, that was something totally outside of her control.
///
Alex Danvers had made a list. Of course she had. Back in her days as a quartermaster for the Union army, lists had made her job—acquiring food, clothing, horsetack and ammunition for an army on the move—possible. She hadn’t lost the knack. The ranch house’s dining room was the obvious place for the meeting, being the largest room of the house. She had designed it to be long and wide, to accommodate both dinner parties and these other types of gatherings. They couldn’t rely on someone like Lionel Luthor for their safety. They had to work together with their friends in the community to keep each other safe.
She looked again at the telegram and shook her head. She knew that Clark had absolutely zero imagination, so he hadn’t been making this shit up. He was a reporter’s reporter and only ever dealt in 110% verifiable fact. And the fact that this was some weird shit was simply extra.
Well, Lena frickin’ Luthor was extra as fuck, so that was no huge surprise.
Eliza wasn’t going to like it. She had been understanding and loving when her older daughter came out as loving women and her younger daughter came out as asexual. But she was very straight herself. She still held a torch for her late husband, killed by rustlers when the girls were young. She didn’t notice the glances Sam Arias sometimes slipped her in church. She couldn’t: compulsory heteronormativity. QED.
The real surprise had been that Clark thought he might have been the one to slip Lena Luthor that tiny piece of information that she had then followed through on to potentially enormous effect. He sounded… guilty/not-guilty? Hard to tell from a telegram.
Alex put in all the leaves of the table and brought down all the chairs from the attic, dusted them off and set them around the enormous table. They were expecting ten people but could seat fourteen in a pinch. She put all fourteen chairs in place, sure she was forgetting someone.
She looked at her pocket watch. The meeting time they had told people was high noon. So by one, or maybe one-ten, people would start arriving. Most of them were going by Sapphic Standard Time, after all.
///
Eliza set a “Closed—Sorry, not feeling well” sign on the door of Eliza’s Kitchen as soon as she got up that morning. Maggie had dropped by the afternoon before to tell her about the meeting, and today she had dressed for riding out to the ranch—chambray shirt, jeans, boots, a gun on her hip, her husband’s tired old cowboy hat, a purple bandana that had seen better days tied around her throat.
She set off from town on her horse, Isotope, riding easily and appreciating the natural beauty of the area. It was a brown, sere beauty, but as an aging woman, she could appreciate such things. She thought briefly of the time she had met Lillian Luthor a few years back. Lillian was a lot like San Paso. There were lines on her face, and she tended to wear browns and blacks, but those blue eyes! They were so much like the bright blue, cloudless sky that ran from horizon to horizon over San Paso’s dry brown road. Between town and the ranch, there was increasing green, and as she approached the ranch, she could hear the calls of the llamas grazing in the fields.
Vasquez stepped out of the front door as Eliza approached the main house. One of their ranch hands hurried forward to take Eliza’s horse to the stable, so Eliza alighted gracefully and handed him the reins.
Everyone hugged and Krypto was running back and forth between people with his tail wagging so fast she could hardly even see it. Vasquez led Eliza into the dining room, where ten places were set, and Maggie was helping Alex serve the cornbread and baked beans with cold coffee. Eliza sat at the far end opposite Alex and between M’gann and Lucy. Winn sat next to M’gann, and Maggie next to Lucy. Kara and Vasquez sat on the other end, closest to Alex. Eventually Krypto lay down on Kara’s feet and went to sleep.
By one they had eight people, so they ate first, before beginning to speak of the new threat posed by Lena Luthor’s newly discovered ore with its special qualities.
///
Most towns the size of San Paso didn’t have their own train depot, but with Luthor Locomotives having its headquarters there, he got to decide where the trains stopped, and the trains between National City and Opal City took a slight detour in San Paso. Lena rode from the House to the depot in a leisurely enough fashion that the henchmen and women who rode behind her were probably unaware of how much her stomach was clenching with anger, sadness and deep, deep disappointment. She had trusted Jess Huang and the woman had betrayed her. That could not stand.
They arrived at the San Paso train depot three minutes before the train was due, according to the timetable, but by Lena’s estimation, the trains usually ran at least eight minutes late when the weather was good, and the telegram from the Luthor factory in Opal City had mentioned massive thunderstorms, so all bets were off about when the train might show up. Didn’t matter. Lena would be here when Jess arrived. She would wait all day if she had to.
The sound of the train’s wailing whistle caught their ears before they saw the smoke rising off the track in the horizon, and the shiny locomotive streaked with charcoal smut chugged into view. Lena gestured to two of her men and they dismounted and went to stand inside the depot itself. Idly, Lena watched the locomotive workers prepare to water the train, but mostly she kept her eye on the depot doors. A few minutes later a confused Jess Huang in a black and pink calico dress came out between two men who were easily eight inches taller than her. One of them had the handles of her travel satchel in his ham-handed fist.
“Miz Huang,” said Lena coldly.
“Um, Miz Luthor? To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’d say you owe it to the inconvenient, but surely interesting, timing of your most recent trip.”
One of the beefy henchwomen reached down and pulled the small woman in front of her in her saddle, as the other men got back on their horses and followed Lena back into town. The outside wall of the saloon was almost finished. Jones worked fast. No doubt that was going to be expensive. She dismounted and hitched her horse next to the saloon in the shade.
“You folks take her on up. I’ll just be a moment.” She stepped into the saloon to see the usual assortment of day drinkers and gamblers. Lena stepped up to the bar.
Darla wiped down the counter and said, “The usual?”
Lena nodded. “Where’s M’gann?”
“She said she’d be eating midday dinner at the Anchor Eagle with the Danvers sisters.” She poured Lena two fingers of whiskey.
“Hm. That’s odd.” She tossed back the whiskey, set change on the bar and went upstairs to her office.
The door to her office was closed. She steeled herself, put on her poker face, and entered. The smell of her henchmen was a little ripe. “Gentlemen, I’ll take it from here. You might want to wash. Marta, you stay with me.”
Jess sat in the chair in front of Lena’s oak desk with the leather top. Marta stood behind her with her arms folded over her chest. Lena took her seat behind the desk.
“Yesterday, Charlie and Bert walked in here and found two women looking at Luthor Mining ledgers, women who claimed to be with the Internal Revenue Service. When Charlie expressed his… disapproval, these two women beat them up, leaving the place with Charlie’s coat and hat and most of Bert’s clothes. That is not… typical behavior for Revenuers.”
Jess stared. “They seemed legitimate. One of them even had spectacles and armbands on her shirt, and suspenders on her trousers.”
Now it was Lena’s turn to stare. “Did she have long blonde hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and startlingly blue eyes?”
“Um, yeah, how did you know?”
“What did the other woman look like?”
“Like a typical lady rancher, brown hair, brown eyes. A bit of a dimple…”
“Danvers and Sawyer. Of course. The editor of The Guardian, our local newspaper, and the sapphic co-owner of Copper Line Ranch.”
Jess gulped.
“Jess, I know you haven’t been here long, but have you truly never seen these women at the saloon? They are regulars.”
“Oh, Miz Luthor, I don’t drink. Nobody in my family can. It makes us sick.”
Lena sighed. “Right. I knew that. But look, Jess, you have to see that this looks bad. Why did you suddenly run off to Opal City?”
“Well, I went down to the saloon to see if you were there, but you weren’t. I was going to ask you if you knew that we were being audited. So then I went to the Western Union and I got a telegram from Mr. Oldham, panicking because the factory workers were threatening to strike, and ma’am, we can’t afford a strike, not when we’re so close with the Opal City iron mines putting out so much ore. I know how important the new blast furnaces are, so I just threw a few things in my bag and jumped on the next train.”
“Oh, Jess. Never let anybody but me and you look at any of our numbers. Got it? The IRS can bite my ass, but I doubt they’ll bother to try, not out here in the middle of nowhere. That’s precisely why we’re here.”
///
It was the smell of baked beans as much as the buzz of conversation that woke James, and he sat up slowly and painfully, remembering about the dinner meeting. He put on the old linen shirt that Eliza had brought for him, slid his feet into his boots, and slowly made his way to the dining room. There were two places between Winn and Kara and two between Maggie and Vasquez. Winn turned, rose and pulled out the chair next to him. Vasquez hopped up to fill a plate with food for him.
Kara’s head snapped up and she looked over the tops of her glasses… through the wall?
“Sam’s here.”
Alex left and came back with Sam Arias, a vision in pink chiffon. James felt woefully underdressed, as he always did around the perky madam. Vasquez was putting the full plate in front of James and picked up the empty plate next to him, but Sam said, “Oh, no thank you. I ate already. My daughter is learning to make flapjacks, and what kind of mother would I be if I didn’t let her practice on me?”
Eliza chuckled.
Sam said, “So Miz Kara, Sheriff Olsen. I did hear tell that you two got into a bit of a tiff with Miz Luthor.”
Kara shrugged. “I heal pretty fast.”
James grimaced and kept eating. He was suddenly famished.
Eliza gave Alex a pointed look.
Alex said, “Well, I guess we all know why we’re here.”
“Not entirely,” said Sam.
Alex said, “Lena Luthor has discovered an ore that has ‘special qualities.’ One of those qualities is the ability of a single bullet to blow out an entire wall. Another is to go through two very solid people without stopping. Those are what I believe to be its less dangerous qualities.”
///
Charlie was pissed about his coat and hat, but he went about his duties for Lena the same as always. She had said that if they didn’t turn up at the mine, she would pay to replace them, and it wasn’t everyday a fellow got brand new duds.
He picked up the Luthor mail and telegrams and brought them back to Lena’s office, and that Chinese girl apologized for the confusion the day before. He accepted her apology, but told her she might want to avoid poor Bert for a while. She thanked him for his advice, took the missives, and returned to Lena’s office.
Charlie wondered if Miz Luthor was going to replace Bert’s clothes too. That would go a long way toward making him not hold a grudge against that sweet young thing.
///
Jess sat in Lena’s office flipping through the infamous ledgers, but as best she could tell, they were all there and all completely intact. She listened to Lena’s sharp intake of breath as she read a letter from a scientist friend back East.
“Of course! I should have realized!” Lena stared off into space for about three full minutes. Then she blinked. “Jess, I need you to put on riding clothes. You can borrow mine, just roll up the sleeves.”
“Miss Luthor!”
Lena opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a folded shirt and pair of pants. “I know you keep your riding boots here in the office. Just roll up the pant legs and stick them in the boots. You’ll be fine. We leave in ten minutes. I’ll meet you downstairs with Trudy saddled. Okay, make it fifteen.”
Lena trotted down the stairs and out the door. Jess locked the office door and took off her dress and petticoat and put on Lena’s chambray shirt and dungarees. She felt ridiculous. She padded into her own office and pulled the boots out of the closet, where she kept them for rainy season, which in this town was normally about three weeks long, and stomped downstairs. Lena had her own horse Emerald and the large pony Trudy saddled and ready to go.
Jess was not the most confident rider, but Lena rode ahead of her through town at a modest pace, and only sped up when they got on the road out toward the Anchor Eagle Ranch. Jess and Trudy did their best to keep up.
Notes:
And we have just passed 100,000 words 18 months after I started writing, 6 months after I started posting. I am currently struggling with chapter 98 and we're only halfway through from the characters' point of view of this "season." Hoorah. Thanks for reading and recommending this fic to your friends!
Chapter 49: A Time You May Embrace, Part 9
Chapter Text
Cat Grant hated dusty towns like this. She was a city girl, born and bred, a germaphobe who washed her hands several times a day and had even before the cholera had arrived in National City. But… the cholera had entered National City, and so Cat had decided it was time for her to leave it for a bit. As the Assistant Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle years before, she had often interviewed the Luthors on their companies. Lately she had found herself thinking about Lillian and she had decided The Tribune needed to do a retrospective, like a “where are they now?”
Unfortunately, it turned out that they were now living and working in San Paso, a very long tedious train ride into some very dusty terrain. Ah, well. Sometimes a gal had to suffer for her work.
Lillian’s answering letter had been warm and cordial, which had surprised Cat, as those were two words that she was not accustomed to applying to the Luthor matriarch. Lena, maybe. And only just maybe. But not Lillian. As a woman, she had to out-cold-and-hard the boys, in heels and backwards, and she was very damn good at it. So the tone of the letter intrigued Cat. Was Lillian softening from living rough in the wild? That seemed… backwards.
But that also meant that the story might be more nuanced. Not just business as usual, but business with heart? She could sell that.
The train slowed and the conductor came through announcing their arrival in San Paso. Cat asked him for help pulling down her carpet bag, which was large and heavy, and he was such a gentleman that he carried it out to the station platform and whistled for a porter to take it into the train station for her. Cat tipped the porter what she would have tipped a porter in National City or San Francisco, and the man’s eyes grew wide and he thanked her profusely. She sighed, thinking there ought to be some kind of standard.
Then she saw a vision in bright blue, Lillian Luthor in an elegant dress with navy accents and a little blue matador hat. Hanging on a gold chain and lying on her collar bones was a lavender stone of rare beauty. Cat Grant watched Lillian stroll among the passengers milling around the station, and they parted for her like the Red Sea. She stood a head taller than even most of the men and her smile was sardonic and pleased.
Cat thought she was about to melt in place. She opened her mouth but didn’t have a single idea of what to say, and that was a situation that had simply never happened in her entire life. Lillian turned to look behind her and a young man in a brown suit hurried forward to take Cat’s bag for her.
“Thank you,” she breathed, never taking her eyes off Lillian.
Lillian smirked. “Cat Grant. As I live and breathe. Let’s get you settled in at the hotel, and then we can gossip over lunch.”
Cat was pretty sure that Lillian had never gossiped in her entire life, but Cat was a reporter and if this was going to be a historic first time, then she would be there for it.
“Why, of course. After you.”
///
Vasquez read Clark’s cable to the group. “Alex. Received your previous. Had to research before responding soonest. Pkr is a rock from my hometown. Unlike green, it causes people to be more like you than me. LL first found piece c. 1863. Small so effect limited. If LLjr stockpiling, you’re fine. Your friends like me in for a hard time. Warn JO. He’ll remember. Will continue research. Love to all. Clark.”
Everyone turned toward James.
Vasquez asked, “Sheriff, can you explain what he’s talking about?”
James’s jaw had dropped. “She’s stockpiling pink kryptonite? Holy mother of God.”
Sam asked, “What’s kryptonite?”
Alex asked, “More like me than him? What does that mean?”
M’gann said, “Small so effect limited? What does that mean?”
Kara’s head snapped up. “Two horses. We’ve got company.”
Vasquez walked into the parlor and picked up her rifle. They followed her out to the front porch, where she stood rifle at the ready. They watched two figures, one on a horse and one on a pony, trotting up the path.
Lena Luthor and a Chinese woman. Maggie muttered, “Oh, we’re in trouble.”
Vasquez hallooed the visitors. “What’re your intentions?”
Lena called out, “We need your assistance! We come in peace.”
“Get down off your mounts very slowly, and Lena, we’re going to need to you let Alex take your gun. Agreed?”
Lena slid down off her horse and clasped her hands behind her neck. Vasquez aimed at her head while Alex crouched down, hurried over, pulled the gun from Lena’s holster and hurried back to hand it to Lucy.
Vasquez asked, “What exactly do you need our help with?”
“Pink kryptonite,” said Lena. “I need to weaponize it.”
///
Kara hadn’t joined them on the porch. Neither had James. Kara knew that James was in worse shape than her, not having her accelerated healing power. But they had other reasons for not wanting to stand, walk, face the new visitor. Kara knew the sheriff hated to appear weak. As for her, she knew it was Lena from the woman’s heartbeat, that she had memorized during her poker games with Alex at the saloon.
Lena made her feel… things. And she didn’t know what to do about it.
The crowd came back and resumed their seats. Vasquez pulled a chair out for Jess, opposite James, and for Lena, opposite Sam. Kara felt that strange flush when she met Lena’s perfectly emerald eyes. Vasquez was about to sit down but Kara said, “Vas, aren’t we going to offer them food? They’re probably hungry.”
Vasquez muttered, “You think everybody’s hungry.” But she turned to them and said, “It’s just cornbread and baked beans, nothing fancy.”
Both women’s eyes flashed. “That sounds amazing,” said Lena. “My mother disapproves of what she calls cowboy food, even though Lex and I love it. We can never get enough.”
Kara smiled happily as Vasquez served them. Alex had seconds, probably to cover for Lena and Jess otherwise being the only one still eating. (Alex was good like that.)
When everybody had had enough, Alex said, “Okay, Miz Luthor. Weaponize it? Not sure I follow you. You already made it into bullets that are remarkably… robust.”
“Mm. That’s not its greatest strength. Sure, we can make armor-piercing bullets, but it’s not like anybody wears armor anymore. Lead bullets are good enough for most of your shooting needs. What I want is to aerosolize it, so people breathe it.”
Winn went white. “You, you, but. That’s. But Lex. And then you. Bad idea. Very bad. Bad.”
Everyone stared at him except Lena, who smiled. “I thought you’d say that, Mr. Schott.”
Everyone turned to stare at her. Winn looked down at his plate.
Lena said, “I got a letter from a friend at a university back East. Turns out, he recently read an old paper theorizing about the mechanism my good old brother used on Superman in San Francisco some years back. A paper written by one Winn Schott, Jr.”
M’gann turned to Winn. Everyone knew that she was an empath. She said, “Winn, I assume he’s a… relative?”
“Yeah, no. He’s me. I was pretty much laughed out of academia. So I went back to my first love, cards.”
Kara asked, “Winn, why did they laugh?”
“I hypothesized that Lex Luthor had attempted to irradiate San Francisco with a mysterious green substance that might have had psychoactive effects. I hypothesized that the substance might be a meteor from an alien planet. C’mon, it was 1864, and the war was still on, and nobody had time for a fellow talking about alien planets.”
Lucy looked skeptical. “Well, it does sound a bit… far-fetched.”
James sighed. “Not a bit. It was right on target. Green kryptonite, fallen from space, but originating on Krypton, the planet that was torn asunder… It’s where Superman came from. Lex meant to use it to undo the strengthening effects he gets from our yellow sun, make him weak, vulnerable.”
Eliza looked confused. “But this isn’t green. It’s pink. Might that not give it the opposite effects?”
James looked acutely uncomfortable.
Lena said, “Ah, no. It has an inversion effect on people. It wouldn’t affect me or your daughter, Vasquez, Sawyer, or Lane. But you folks might find yourself… being attracted to people of the same sex as you.”
“But that’s horrible!” said Sam. “I would lose nine-tenths of my business if men could admit their attraction to men.”
Kara opened her mouth and closed it again. Her interesting dreams about Lena as a Valkyrie were starting to make a lot more sense now.
Quietly, Winn said, “Um. It’s not so bad.”
Alex stared at her (perpetually) frowning wife. Slowly, she said, “I’m not sure I follow here, Miss Luthor. Are you threatening to sapphicize the women of San Paso?”
Lena said, “It won’t only affect the women. If everyone finally admits that they sometimes are attracted to men and sometimes to women, we won’t have to deal with the patriarchal bullshit society forces onto us. People could make choices based on how they really felt.”
Vasquez said, “Well, first, it seems like an ethical issue, if you want to, as you say, weaponize it against people not like us. But also, how do we know it would be physically safe? And third, how long would the results last? Might that not create backlash when it wears off?”
In a tiny voice, Winn said, “Um, in theory, I. Well. I think I can aerosolize it and spread it and it would probably have a three-month long trajectory.”
“You don’t know that pink would work the way green worked,” said Eliza.
“No, but I know some tests we could do to figure that out. All we would need would be some specialized chemistry equipment and a very hot forge.”
Eliza, Lena and Alex met each other’s looks.
Jess put down her fork. “You know what? No offense, guys, but men are often gross. I say we go for it!”
And Kara thought that no one looked more surprised at this than Lena.
///
Before she built the forge in town, Alex had built a small forge on the ranch so she could shoe their horses, build door hinges and handles, and take in daywork from the neighboring ranchers. Iron wasn’t hard to work with if you understood it and had a healthy respect for white hot metal. But kryptonite was another thing entirely. It was denser and harder, and she was pretty sure the only way to heat it to the breaking point was to borrow her little sister’s alien skillset. But even then, she thought it might not actually melt. It was more rock than metal from what she could tell. If it shattered rather than melting, that could be deadly, like getting shot point blank with shotgun pellets a few thousand degrees hot.
It was Lena who suggested using the empty mine for the attempt. She got her men to borrow a cartload of blocks of the ice the trains used for their restaurant car to line the bottom of the mine where the largest block of kryptonite sat. She didn’t ask Alex how she expected to be able to explode the kryptonite, and Alex didn’t bother to give her any information. Neither did Lena ask to be a part of the experiment. Either she trusted Alex, or she didn’t want to be around if it all went wrong.
Surprisingly, it didn’t. At the top of the mine, Kara hugged Alex for luck, shouted, “Fire in the hole!” and then let her laser eyes blaze down. The explosion was loud, and a cloud of pink blew back at them out the hole, but it was no worse than when the bullet had blown out the saloon wall. They dug through the rubble and retrieved the shattered ice, now bright pink with chunks, pebbles, and dust. They packed it in barrels and hurried back to the ranch.
By the time they arrived, Winn and Lena had designed a device to further process the kryptonite and a sort of bomb to let the aerosolized kryptonite escape into the air.
Vasquez watched as they cheered each other’s achievements, but she said, “Um, guys? I just thought of a problem.”
Eventually, the room grew quiet.
“So, humans, fine. There are a few million humans on the planet and if one small dusty town all gets inverted and doesn’t have any children, we won’t die out as a species. But we’re ranchers. We depend on our animals breeding. If we invert them, and the wildlife around the town, the whole balance of nature in this region could die.”
Faces fell.
Vasquez shrugged. “I just thought we should consider that.”
Lucy said, “Winn said it should only last a few months.”
Winn nodded slowly. “I said that. I believe it’s true. But there are some species whose lives are shorter than a few months. And other species that if you put a few months hold on their breeding cycle, they might end up breeding in the wrong season, putting their young at risk in winter.”
They stared at him.
“What? I’m a city boy. I’m not an idiot.”
M’gann said, “Well, what about the caves north of town? They’re contained, dry, not a lot of wildlife.”
“But no people to affect,” pointed out Maggie.
Kara fidgeted with her glasses, watching Lena looking sort of sad. Lena caught her eye and her face went blank. “What?”
“Just thinking. I did receive a letter to the editor a while back. I didn’t publish it because I thought it might start a bit of a riot, but…”
“A letter,” said Lena.
“Mm. Complaining about your company, Miz Luthor. How it seemed wrong that you had the monopoly on mining in this region, which was known years ago for its gold. Everybody says that the gold’s tapped out, but well, this person seemed to think you might have started those rumors for your own benefit.”
Lena’s eyes narrowed. “So, you want to publish this letter defaming my character?”
“Oh, heavens no. But I might reiterate The Guardian’s policy on not publishing letters that might be thought to defame the character of the town’s upstanding citizens.”
A smile blossomed on Alex’s face. She said, “There’s no letter, is there?”
Kara just sighed. “Doesn’t need to be. There only needs to be the idea of a letter. The paper goes out tomorrow. We can print a small insert.”
///
Across the town square from the hotel, the church bell tolled four. Cat and Lillian both looked up in surprise. In their private little nook by the front window, they had not noticed the dining room become gradually empty of diners except for themselves.
Lillian said, “Well, time flies! I didn’t realize—”
But Cat was saying, “It’s the excellent company and conversation. I hadn’t realized how much I missed those days in San Francisco.”
“I believe those interviews with you were the only interviews I ever enjoyed. The newspaper here has an annoying little person in charge of it. Decent writer, but never stops digging.”
“Mm,” said Cat. “Kara Danvers. I trained her. I had hoped she would follow in my footsteps at the Tribune, but then she just had to follow her sister and mother out to this hellhole. No offense, Lillian.”
“None taken. San Paso is dusty and drear, but for the kinds of business my husband and son and I do, it’s a good place.”
“And your daughter. Hard to mine in the big city.”
“True. But as useful a place as it is, it’s not Frisco. Those long walks along the piers…”
“Talking about it takes me right back. National City is a good place, except for the cholera right now. Maybe I just miss being young.” Cat sighed.
“Or maybe we just need a holiday. Oh well. Work calls. This is been lovely, Cat. But I should get at least a little bit of paperwork done before the dinner hour.”
They air-kissed and Cat went up the stairs to her room, while Lillian collected her hat and bag and strolled through town. She heard what sounded like a small explosion in the direction of Lena’s latest failed mine. Most likely she was demolishing it so that it wasn’t a tempting hazard for young rascals to venture into and die. The last thing her family needed was another lawsuit.
Chapter 50: A Time You May Embrace, Part 10
Notes:
Very close to the end of this unexpected subplot, however much fun it was to write. Also, we passed 100,000 words a chapter and a half back, so BOO-YAH for us.
Chapter Text
Lex Luthor had an ego that was a mile wide and two miles long, and when he finally realized that Winn Schott, Jr. was having a Covid-19 fever dream about the Luthors and the Supers and he, Lex, had not been invited, he was livid. His father, uncharacteristically alive, had been playing the patriarch at family meals. His mother, uncharacteristically wearing pink stones as jewelry, had been taking three-hour lunches with an older woman. And his sister, well, Lena was the worst of them. She was playing the villain, but he wasn’t convinced.
Lex knew Lena’s chess game and she always played the long game. Lex figured that Lena was jealous of a normal woman and was probably going to release the pink kryptonite in order to turn her to her own unnatural ways.
Well, Lex Luthor was not going to let that happen, you could be sure.
If anybody was going to have a woman like Mama Reign in unnatural ways, it would be him.
///
Lena sat at the dinner table, feeling the changed vibe, but unsure what was causing it. Lionel sat reading The Guardian, and Lillian was pissed. Reading the paper at breakfast once a week was one thing, especially because it was a national newspaper, not the “frantic scribblings of a wanna-be journalist.” Lex was chewing so loudly, she could hear his teeth click, and that was always a bad sign for somebody.
In contrast, Lena felt free, like she’d been let off a tether she hadn’t known she was on. She knew the bullets in her vest pockets couldn’t affect her, so that couldn’t be it. Odd.
Teeth clenched, Lillian asked, “So dear, what’s the word in town?”
“Hm. There’s been a call for Max Lord to step down and be replaced. Arthur Graves has apparently grown some quite amusingly shaped turnips and he’ll gladly show them to any adult male for a penny. Nothing about the saloon fight or the new Winn fellow who arrived in town, but you can’t expect a paper like The Guardian to be able to report on things in a timely manner.”
Lena asked, “So, Mother, how did your lunch with Miz Grant go?”
“It was lovely. Thank you for asking. A bit indulgent really, a trip down memory lane.”
Lionel grunted. “Oh, Lena, look at this. The editor added an insert reasserting the paper’s policy on not publishing letters to the editor that might smear upstanding citizens like you.”
He put the paper down and looked at her over his glasses. “Is there something I should know about your relationship with Miss Kara Danvers? She sounds like she’s protecting you.”
“I have no idea why she would. I have put pressure on her to not print anything libelous about our business practices. I’d think she quite dislikes me.”
Lex said, “She really does. Remember that editorial she did about mining waste in the groundwater?”
Lena rolled her eyes, but then said, “Oh, actually I heard something about that down at the saloon. Someone was saying something about gold in the Osborn caves and me quashing the rumors.”
Lex said, “Might be worth looking into.”
Lena scoffed. “Gold? The only gold in San Paso is in Father’s molars.”
Lionel smirked.
Lillian said, “Well, it’s certainly not being minted by the trains, given as they are consistently running behind the timetable. Also, Lena, I heard the explosion at your mine. So you really were serious about closing that seam. I’m surprised.”
“Surprised? Why? You know I’m a woman of my word. Unlike some people in this family.”
Lex snarled, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, it’s not about you, Lex. Surprise. Father, did you know that some of your men tried to lynch the sheriff the other day? What did we agree on about attacking law enforcement? You do that and we all look guilty.”
Lionel shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lillian said, “I heard about it too, in town. It’s all anybody’s talking about.”
Lena added, “Well, that and the gold. That blue alien fellow, Brendan? He said he’s been selling out of shovels and picks.”
Lionel stood up and tossed the paper at his chair. “I won’t have this kind of conversation over dinner. I’m going out. I’ll return when I return.”
He stormed out of the room. Lillian sneered, “Go ahead, ‘dear.’ Go cry in the lap of that whore in the black leather. When you return, I might or might not be here.” She got up and stormed out.
Lex looked stunned.
Lena almost took pity on her brother, and then decided not to. “Um, so, I take it that you didn’t actually know that you and our father are sleeping with—lovely euphemism, isn’t it?—the same woman?”
Lex stood up and stormed out. Apparently, it was part of the family business. Lena finished her dinner and then decided to stroll down to the saloon. She might see the Danvers sisters there, and that thought made her very, very happy.
///
The Wicked Witch Saloon was bustling. Vasquez had taken over from the regular piano man, who was helping M’gann at the bar. Vasquez played every rinky-dink song she could remember, and thankfully, she could still do it without actually having to think about the music. That meant she could pay attention to other things.
She watched M’gann make drinks without even taking any orders, the benefit of being a psychic bartender. She watched Winn and Alex in one corner, playing Texas Hold ‘Em. And Winn was, well, winning, but not by much. On the other side of the wide room, Brian was holding forth on how he was going to strike it rich from the gold in the Osborn Caves. Lucy and Maggie were playing skeptics, and most of the people he was talking to didn’t seem terribly convinced, but Otis Graves had a shifty expression on his face, and he hurried out into the evening.
Kara Danvers was drinking alone, which was completely unlike her, but Vasquez knew that M’gann kept a small amount of Sikkarian ale for emergencies. Vasquez wondered what Kara’s emergency was.
Then, of course, Lena Luthor walked in. Abiding by the rules of all saloons everywhere, Vasquez abruptly stopped playing. Everyone looked up to see Lena in black jeans and cowboy boots and vest, over a dark green shirt with the sleeves partly rolled up. She took off her black cowboy hat, nodded to M’gann and stepped away from the swinging doors.
Vasquez went back to playing. Lena went and spoke to M’gann, then turned, leaning against the bar, to take in the multiple conversations happening. Finally, she turned toward the small table where Kara sat looking mournful and absently shuffling a deck of very tired cards. Lena stepped past her to lean down to speak to Jess Huang (who was drinking lemonade). Jess nodded, picked up her glass and went to watch Winn and Alex’s game. Lena picked up the chair she had been sitting on and brought it to Kara’s table.
“May I join you?” Lena asked.
Kara gestured loosely. She was on her third ale.
Lena sat down. “What are you playing tonight?”
“Go fish. I suck at poker and it’s too depressing to play solitaire in public.”
Lena gently took the cards, shuffled them like a pro and laid the cards out in a circle on the table. Kara watched as she deftly dealt and played, neatly stacking the cards in four stacks at the end, then gathered the cards together with the edge of the last card and handed Kara back the deck.
“On the contrary, Miz Danvers. Clock Solitaire is one of life’s little unexpected pleasures.”
Kara sighed. “Maybe when you’re playing it. I always lose.”
“Also, I was watching you the other day. You do not suck at poker. Your sister is just much better than you. Look over there. Winn is a certified river boat gambler, and she is holding her own against him.”
“I’m better at chess.”
Lena’s eyes flashed. “Oh, really?” she purred. “Do tell.”
Kara blushed. “And I’m supposed to be helping with… but I just don’t have the heart tonight.”
“Hmm. Well, I have an office upstairs, and a chessboard. Maybe we could get some drinks to go, and you could show me your moves…”
Vasquez nearly stopped playing again, but she gritted her teeth and finished the song. Narrative Necessity meant that this one time, she could not intervene in Lena’s seduction of Kara Danvers. Instead, she started playing “The Entertainer.” It was appropriate, after all. If Lex and his family took the bait and went with a lot of the townsfolk to the Caves looking for gold, the Superfriends would just possibly be able to outcon a conman. She kept playing.
///
Lena carried the pitcher up the stairs, leading Kara up to her office. Quietly, Kara said, “By the way, I’m sorry that we lied to your secretary. I don’t like lying but…”
“I’m a Luthor. You couldn’t really just ask me what I was doing. I’m a villain. There’s no way I’d play straight with you.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you do anything… particularly straight.”
Lena laughed. “Accurate! I do love to queer things up.” She set the pitcher down on a coaster on her desk, turned to the bookcase behind her and pulled out what looked like a book but was actually a folded chessboard. She unfolded it and they took out the pieces and set them up. “As I’m the villain in this piece, I’ll take the red marble pieces, and you can take the green. You go first.”
“The set is really lovely, Miz Luthor. But don’t you think you should take the green? To go with your shirt and your, your, those eyes?”
Lena looked at Kara’s blue eyes and melted. “You know…” she offered tentatively. “I wasn’t always a villain.”
“I’m not sure you’re a villain now,” said Kara. “I think you’re just trying to protect yourself and your community the best way you know how.”
“I doubt that is how the town will see it when the shouting is over.”
Kara turned the chessboard around so that the red pieces were on her side. “You go first.”
They played for a while and Lena found that Kara was a very good player, although she seemed to be having trouble concentrating. “Kara, what’s really wrong?”
Kara stood and poured two glasses full of pink liquid. She handed one to Lena and drank from the other. “Mm. Tasty. What is this?”
“A Cosmopolitan. Not the most appropriate drink for two badass women in the Wild West, but I thought you’d like it. And you’re deflecting.”
“Miz Luthor—Lena. All my life, I thought I knew who I was, what I was. Back when Eliza was trying to set me and Alex up with eligible young men, neither one of us was any good at courting. Then Alex fell for one of her school friends and she figured out that whole inversion thing. But I just never felt anything for anybody, male or female. The whole thing just seemed so pointless.”
“I notice you are using the past tense.”
Kara sighed and nodded.
“So, do you feel something now?”
Kara nodded again, unwilling to meet Lena’s eyes.
Lena closed her eyes and thought back to the midday dinner, who was looking at who, and how. “Kara, do you feel… something for Jess Huang?”
Kara’s head snapped up. “What? Jess? I mean she seems really nice and all, and I feel really bad for fooling her, but no, no. Not her.”
Lena was mesmerized by those blue eyes. Doubtful, fearful, hopeful, she said, “Then… for me?”
“I didn’t mean to!”
Lena laughed. “Oh, honey. We never mean to. It just happens. Cupid’s arrows come out of nowhere.”
“I started that series of articles after having long talks with James about the businesses in town. He’s always on patrol and he sees things. Sarah Simms, the tailor, she had three little kids working for her because she said they have little hands and can make tiny stitches. But they were working nine-hour days, when they should have been in school. And Hobson’s Stable, well, they sometimes beat the horses. And for a while, Brian was giving short measure. So it was just about giving some accountability to people in town. I thought that was what journalism was for, shining lights into the dark places. But this past week, after I met you and saw you and… well, I realized that James was just starting these conversations just so he had a reason to talk to me.”
“Because he’s sweet on you.”
“Um, apparently. And that was super awkward because I have zero interest in him. And I thought I had zero interest in anybody. But you, you…”
“My, those eyes?”
Kara nodded. “But how can eyes make a difference?”
“They are called the windows to the soul after all.”
“Then your soul must be beautiful.”
Lena blushed. For the first time in thirteen years, two months, and maybe twelve days.
Kara didn’t notice, she just gestured in frustration. “And now I feel things, and I dream about things when I sleep, and did you know you would make a gorgeous badass Valkyrie? Because you would.”
Lena took that in. “Well. I. That’s… Kara, those things you dream about when you sleep… do they involve your doing things… with me?”
Nod.
“Possibly without clothes?”
Nod.
“You know I own the hotel, right?”
Nod.
“I keep a regular room there for when I work late and am too tired to ride home. Would you care to… join me there? For the night?”
Kara gaped. “Heavens, yes.”
Lena grinned.
///
Otis Graves lost no time getting back to the Luthor mansion. He went straight up to Lex’s room. Lex kept late hours. He would be up.
That was what he had thought. As it happened, Lex had chosen to retire early for a change and so when Otis knocked frantically on his door, it took him a moment to wake up properly and let him in.
But then Otis described the bits of gold that Brian had shown them, not large, of course, but really soft gold. The real thing.
And Lex knew that the most important thing with claiming a stake was to be first, as he explained to Otis.
Neither one of them would be getting any more sleep that night.
Chapter 51: A Time You May Embrace, Part 11
Notes:
Sorry for the delay. I accidentally cut when I should have copied and had to type the whole d@mn chapter over again.
Chapter Text
Pam was just leaving her shift at the front desk of the hotel when Lena Luthor walked in, looking, as always, stunning in mostly black. So Pam stopped to get her room key, so the night clerk wouldn’t have to, as he was trying to give directions to another guest.
“Thanks, Pam,” said Lena. “Have a good night.”
“Thank you, Miz Luthor. You have a good night too.”
The Eyebrow. “Oh, I intend to.” She smirked as she turned away toward the broad stairs.
Pam knew that look and checked to see who was following Lena, and nearly dropped her jaw to the floor when she saw the newspaper editor, Something Danvers, the one who wore menswear that wasn’t cowboy-related, which for some reason most of the town thought was odd. To be fair, she was the sister of one of those Sapphic ranch ladies from north of town, and daughter of Eliza Danvers, professional widow lady. But the men in town said she always turned down their advances, and the few women in town who occasionally used the hotel for intimate evenings with other women also whispered that the editor was uninterested.
And Pam had worked at hotels here and there for most of her life, and she knew what interested and uninterested looked like.
This wide-eyed Danvers was very clearly interested in Lena Luthor.
///
Winn gathered the cards and shuffled them before putting them in his shirt pocket. Alex Danvers had a complicated look on her face: accomplishment and annoyance. He didn’t blame her. He felt the same way. He had made a living gambling on the riverboats for most of his life, and he never just trounced someone, because they needed to feel hope and bet more money. But he’d never worked this hard for a measly net gain of twenty-nine cents.
And it didn’t help that she’d been drinking whiskey and he’d been drinking beer and he was definitely fuzzier than she was.
“Good game,” she said. Then she stood and stretched in an interesting way that he totally did not notice, and then she went over to where Vasquez was still playing the piano, and laid her hands on her wife’s shoulders while Vasquez finished the song.
Vasquez turned and looked up at her. “How’d you do?”
“Only lost twenty-nine cents total. It was a good night.”
“Hm. That’s coming out of your allowance, missy.”
Alex laughed. “Let’s go home. Where’s Kara?”
M’gann came over and murmured, “Yeah, Kara’s staying in town for the night.”
“Problem with the paper?” asked Alex.
“Yeah... no. Unless you want to believe that she wanted to... interview Lena Luthor... in depth, as it were.”
Alex frowned, but Vasquez broke out a rare smile. “Good for Kara!”
“I don’t understand,” said Alex.
“Don’t worry, love. I’ll explain it when we get home. Let’s scoop up Winn and head out.”
But Winn was right there, saying, “Winn the Kid, reporting for scoopage.”
And that made no sense to anybody, but it had been a very long day, and the next was likely going to be longer.
///
Cat Grant was sitting in her nightgown reading the week’s Guardian, mildly pleased. She had feared that small town reporting would take the teeth out of Kara’s journalism.
--No, literally, they reported on tooth pullings in this town, part of Doc Torres’s public health campaign to get people to brush their teeth.—
But Cat was pleased to find Kara’s editorial on the alleged corruption of the only judge in town quite scathing, and her ongoing investigations on labor practices in town were also on point. Cat sighed. It looked like she was not going to be able to convince her former employee to return with her to National City.
There was a knock on her hotel room door.
She dropped the newspaper and opened the door to see, of all people, Lillian Luthor in black pants and shirt and riding boots, carrying an expensive bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Mrs. Luthor,” said Cat. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“My husband has gone off to get some reasonably priced affection and possibly a whipping. Lex and Lena are... Well, who the hell knows where my children are. And I thought to myself, Lillian, where do you really want to be tonight. So, naturally, Cat, I thought of you.”
“Well, that’s... modern.”
“You have no idea.”
///
It turned out that Lena Luthor was—among other things—a heavy sleeper. Kara had slept only lightly after the bit where Lena had, when she had stroked and then her hands and her tongue, and then she kissed, and Kara didn’t know how that could, her hands, those very long-fingered hands sliding up and down Kara’s thighs, and those flashing emerald eyes, and then they had. Oh, yes. That.
Holy mackerel.
So when she woke up naked in bed with Lena Luthor of all people, she had panicked. She jumped out of bed and scrambled to find a shirt and put it on. She kept feeling around on the floor in the dark for more clothes, but most of them had been left in a trail in the other room, and she didn’t want to wake Lena, so she just tugged the shirt around her and sat with her legs curled under her on one of the big stuffed armchairs.
A little moonlight made its way between the curtains to make a pale line of light on the floor between the bed and the chair. Kara shivered in the aftershocks of her orgasms. This was not what she had expected. She knew what sex was. She’d lived on a ranch for eight years, after all. But animals doing that was different, messy, abrupt, almost an attack, or at least that was what it looked like.
And Alex had talked to her about what sex could be for humans or, well, people, but she had just never felt the desire for anyone that way, not men, not women. And she wasn’t even sure even now that she would want anyone other than Lena Luthor ever again.
But she definitely wanted Lena again, so much that she ached. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, but even that small movement made her thighs tremble with more aftershocks. She was beginning to understand why Alex and Vasquez’s honeymoon had been a little noisy. For the first time in her life, she felt like making noise in a non-journalistic kind of way.
Maybe this was the kind of thing that had fueled Alex’s vandalism of the judge’s outhouse, the thing that made her swing on chandeliers during barfights. This was the thing that made the badass Union Cavalry sergeant look all soft and gooey on the odd occasion when Vasquez sat carving while Alex was working at the forge. Or when Vasquez was riding in from the range with the llamas and Alex came out of the house with flour on her face and on the rainbow apron that Eliza had made for her.
What if...
Well, probably for Lena, this was just sex. Kara had heard the rumors about Mama Reign maybe having... relationships with the members of the Luthor family. Before she’d interviewed Sam Arias about her business practices, she had assumed those relationships had been limited to the males of the family, but Sam had been adamant about all the help that Lena had given her when she had needed to leave San Francisco suddenly, way back when. And that fondness on Sam’s face looked much more like the way Alex and Vasquez looked at each other than the way that Alex and Lucy looked at each other. So Lena probably didn’t need Kara to be anything but a fairly pleasant experiment.
She didn’t need a wife.
Even as she thought that, Kara gasped. She had never had a thought like that in the entire history of her life of thinking thoughts. And Alex always said that Kara overthought everything, had ever since she had come to live with the Danvers, so that was really saying something.
In the bed, Lena rolled over, muttering, “Get the kryptonite. There’s no time for lolly-gagging trains. Bacon!”
It was cute. Kara had never known that a beautiful (naked) woman spewing nonsense in her sleep could be cute. What had just happened? And who was Kara now? She knew who she had been. Or she’d thought she’d known. If she looked in the hotel’s mirror now, would she even recognize herself? She pulled the shirt closer and then felt her sleeves, pulled up the collar to sniff it.
She was wearing Lena’s shirt. She was sitting in the moonlight, mostly naked, wearing Lena Luthor’s shirt. And it smelled so good. But.
This was not. She should. But then, Alex...
And oh holy fuck, Eliza!
And if she did marry Lena, then Lillian Luthor would be her mother-in-law.
How on Earth had she made her life this complicated this fast?
///
Lex and Otis had their gear together by midnight, and the cart was rolling toward the caves a few minutes later. Otis drove, of course, as that left Lex’s hands free to make his grand speeches. Otis didn’t usually mind that Lex talked and talked, although occasionally, the fact that he talked with his hands meant that Otis had to duck. That was all right, though, because ducking kept Otis awake. Driving on a rough-hewn road was tricky at the best of times, like, for example, the daytime. This was downright foolish with only the nearly full moon to light their way.
But necessary, apparently.
“Otis, I have to say how impressed I am that you finally used that head of yours for something useful, something necessary, something—dare I say it?—profitable. It’s hard to believe an idiot alien like Brian would actually bring in his gold to show everyone—I’m rather surprised that nobody tried to steal it from him, although I agree that you made the right choice to come to me instead, so we could get back to his seam before he did.”
Otis let Lex talk. He knew that when they got to the caves and lit all their lanterns, the back-breaking work of shoveling and picking at the rocks would be his own. He would rest while he could. Lex’s words rolled right over him, in one ear and out the other.
///
Lena woke and immediately knew that Kara was gone. She rolled over and Kara’s side of the bed was splashed with a little sunshine from between the curtains. Lena’s clothes were folded up on the chair near the bed, which was absolutely not where they had been the night before. Lena got up and dressed, pushing down her disappointment.
On the one hand, she was pretty sure she had rocked the editor’s world. On the other hand, that kind of thing could be a little... traumatic. It might take Kara time to get used to the new Sapphic side of herself. It might never happen at all. Lena knew better than to get her own hopes up, especially when they were planning to irradiate as many of the townies as they could with pink kryptonite. As Lionel always said, “Set aside your hopes and fears, and focus on the goal.”
Well, Lena was very, very good at focusing, as Kara had recently discovered. This should be a walk in the park.
///
That morning, the Honorable Max Lord sat at his dining table with eggs, bacon, toast and that wretched rag, The Guardian. He noted the insert in passing but ignored that in favor of reading that woman’s opinion about his inability to be impartial as the only judge in San Paso. Rubbish. Impartiality was for fools.
His housekeeper came in with a tray that held his mail and telegrams. Apparently, the San Paso news was spreading in San Francisco, National City, Opal City, and Metropolis. Other justices were speaking out about the alleged corruption in so-called “rural areas” of the West. His name was being thrown around. Congress was talking about approving more judges for these areas, as the courts were “overwhelmed” with cases. Ridiculous.
An anonymous letter, typed, not hand-written, caught his eye. He slit it open with his pocket-knife. It read:
“Yor Honor, It don’t seem fair that those Luthers kin just up and take the gold in the Ozborn caves. You shud make a law that they can’t so the rest of us has a chance at stricken it ritch.”
Max picked up the newspaper insert, suddenly curious and seriously greedy.
///
Alex woke with the rooster’s crow, and sleepily peeled herself off her little spoon wife. It was her turn to make the coffee and retrieve the eggs from the chickens, Sally, Marcie and Peppermint Patty. The work of feeding and watering the horses was Vasquez’s, and their ranch hands took care of the herd of llamas. The whole ranch largely ran like a well-wound pocket watch. She loved her life.
But when she got to the barn, she noticed that Kara’s horse was still missing. Then she remembered what Vasquez had suggested about Kara staying overnight with Lena Luthor. In all the time she’d known Kara, her little alien sister had shown no interest in sex, and she knew that Kryptonians didn’t use sex to create babies, so maybe they were all asexual? Well, not Clark, but socialization probably played a part too, who knew?
She remembered how flustered Kara had seemed the other day, when Lena came over to threaten her supply chain. At the time, Alex had assumed it had been the threat but, in retrospect, it had started before Lena had even said anything.
Interesting.
And villain or no, Alex could absolutely see the appeal of Lena Luthor, a woman with many very fine assets. Alex herself generally preferred more butch women, but if she weren’t married to Vasquez and Lena had invited her to... Well, how could anyone say no to that?
Alex felt like drinking a toast to her sister. She went back in the house and poured a mug of coffee, adding a little cream and drinking to her sister’s health.
Vasquez walked in just as she was doing this and gave her a funny look. “Who or what are you drinking a toast to?”
“Kara. That girl went from zero to one hundred in what, a couple of days?”
“Mm. Maybe we should be drinking to Lena. That woman has some damn game.”
“True.” She raised her mug. “To Lena Luthor, Sapphic Sister Extraordinaire!”
“Hear, hear!”
The kitchen back door opened, and a very tired Kara walked in looking sheepish. “What are you guys toasting to?”
“You and Lena,” said Vasquez.
“What? Wait, why would you--?”
“M’gann,” said Alex, as if that explained everything and actually, it really did.
“Alex, you told me sex could be nice, but you didn’t say how the, and then, because that thing when she slid her hands, and I, and her mouth, and her fingers, and then holy mackerel...”
Alex and Vasquez laughed and then hugged Kara hard. Alex said, “Shoot, did I leave out the holy mackerel? What was I thinking?”
Vasquez poured Kara a cup of coffee, adding plenty of cream and sugar. “So have you changed your mind about sex?”
“I don’t know. When I think about other people, I feel the same as always, but when I think about Lena, I completely come undone, and then the, the... thinking... thing.” She sighed. “Is just hard to do.”
“Are you going to be able to think well enough to cover the Osborn Cave expedition today?”
“You really believe it’s going to happen today?”
Vasquez sighed. “I know San Paso and I know how a gold rush happens. If it’s not today, it’ll be tomorrow. We should be prepared for anything.”
Winn walked in yawning. He said, “You know, Kara, it might be better if you don’t get too close to the detonation. You don’t want to get inverted.”
Alex and Vasquez turned on him, frowning hard, but Kara said, “Yeah, that train has left the station and I’m pretty sure it isn’t coming back.”
“Wait, what?” Winn looked desperately disappointed.
Vasquez put an arm around his shoulder and led him back to the dining room. “Let’s just go over the plan one more time.”
The sisters were alone again. Alex said softly, “Kara, are you really all right?”
“Well, yes and no. It’s been a revelation, but what if she doesn’t want me? What if it was just a game to her? What if all this is—” She waved a hand around, looking lost.
“Did it feel real?”
“Well, yes, and as a reporter I can usually tell if someone is fibbing or out-and-out lying, but I do that by using my head. With this, well, suddenly my body is involved and, and...”
“Your heart?”
“Is that what this is? Because it kind of feels like my stomach, like an anxiety attack or...”
“Honey, trust me. The heart and the stomach are integrally connected.”
///
A few hours before sunrise, Lex had let Otis stop shoveling and lie down on a cold slab of rock and get some shuteye. At dawn, Lex had woken him and given him a tin cup full of grainy coffee that was, at least, mercifully hot. Having worked up a sweat and then slept in the cold, Otis thought he was going to get the rheumatism before he hit thirty. He drank down the coffee and went back to work.
A few hours later, they heard the sound of voices, lots of voices. Otis threw his shovel over his shoulder, Lex picked up a pick and they went outside to meet the crowd.
Max Lord, of all people, led a group of the most diverse set of San Paso residents Otis had ever seen, including Lionel Luthor, Mama Reign, M’gann and most of her day-drinking clientele, half of the miners that Lena Luthor had just let go of, both Danvers sisters and those other “lady ranchers,” as the town called them. That new fellow, Winn, and the sheriff rode together in the Danvers’ cart. Riding in behind them, all in black and armed to the teeth, Lena Luthor and Eliza Danvers came in side by side, looking like they had all the time in the world, unlike most of the townies, who came waving shovels and picks.
Lex hopped up on a tall rock, shouting, “This is my claim! We worked hard all night to stake this claim. You all can find another part of the caves to work in!”
Max Lord said, “You say that, Mr. Lex, but I’ll need to see for myself in order to make a ruling in this case.”
From the crowd, Brian the alien came running. “Hey, that’s my claim. I staked that yesterday!”
The sheriff got stiffly out of the cart and ambled over to stand between them. “Now, your Honor, Lex, Brian, it seems to me that we need a committee of San Paso citizens to take a look at this claim. What with the allegations being made about your integrity, your Honor, it seems to me that we need better transparency. Let’s say a dozen of your friends here, Mr. Lionel Luthor, and maybe a dozen of your friends, M’gann. Justice requires transparency.”
Eventually, almost forty individuals trooped into the caves, followed a few moments later by Winn carrying an odd cubic device about the size of a melon.
Otis stayed by the cave entrance, along with the rest of the growing crowd. Vasquez took out her pocket watch and showed it to Alex and Kara, who was frantically scribbling in her notebook.
Vasquez murmured, “Ten, nine, eight, seven...”
Alex said, “Six, five, four...”
Lena smiled, saying, “Wait for it...”
The explosion, when it came, knocked the whole crowd to the ground, billows of pink smoke blew out from the entrance, and the “committee” members started stumbling out, choking and coughing and pounding each other on the back.
Max Lord roared, “What the hell was that? Lex, did you set an explosive and not warn us before we walked in?”
“Of course not! I make munitions. You wouldn’t catch me using them! They’re too damn dangerous!”
Lena sneezed. Kara handed her a handkerchief.
Lena used it to wipe the pink powder off her face and hands, then handed it back to Kara. “Here. You’re covered.”
Kara shrugged. “That’s fine with me. You can keep it, if you want.” She smiled shyly.
And Otis knew that Lena fit what Lex liked to call the “lady rancher demographic” but he’d always thought that Kara Danvers was more a lady bachelor. But maybe he was wrong. He sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. At least now that Lex had seen him working his ass off for his boss all night, Lex would see Otis’s devotion. Who cared about what women got up to? He had everything he needed right here.
Chapter 52: A Time You May Embrace, Part 12
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Three weeks after “the Osborn Caves incident,” as The Guardian had called it, Sam Arias put on one of her “community engagement” dresses, this one in a sunny yellow chiffon, and went to The Edge Leatherwork with a shopping list written out in her very best copperplate handwriting. She knew from experience that Morgan appreciated precision.
Two men she knew professionally, Lionel Luthor and Otis Graves, were just leaving as she entered. She waited until they were down the street before she said to Morgan, “Well, now. It looks like yet more of the townsfolk are upgrading their horse tack. So to speak.”
He chuckled. “You’d know.”
“Well, there was that downturn in business in the immediate aftermath and then the wild uptick when people were functionally saying, ‘Oh, say it’s not so!’ Now we’re back to something more like the usual trade, although if you still have male contacts back home who might be interested in relocating for work in a place with a lower cost of living…”
He nodded. “I can put out some feelers, maybe get you a few names. Give me a week or two.”
“Excellent. In the meantime, I have found that my stable also needs some new tack. There’s a rush on those top two, by the way.”
“Who knew that a tiny mining accident could be so good for business?” he asked.
“What, you mean besides you and me?”
///
M’gann was sitting behind the bar writing a letter to Maggie Sawyer’s ex, back in Gotham. The idea had come to them when M’gann had dropped off Kara’s order of Sikkarian ale at the Anchor Eagle when Lucy and Maggie had been visiting.
Lena had been willing to put up 20% of the money to build a new establishment, provisionally called the Ruby Slippers, for the ladies of the town. Maggie knew that Kate Kane, owner of some very particular saloons in Gotham, might well be interested in extending her brand. It was worth a try. She also knew that Sam Arras wanted to make sure that her daughter would be able to hold a respectable job when she grew up and not go into the family business. In a town like this, owning a saloon for ladies would be seen as respectable.
Together, Doc Torres and Winn the Kid had been gathering data on the people exposed during the mine incident. It looked like the effects might be going to last a bit longer than three months, depending on how close people were to the epicenter of the explosion, and how quickly they got out of the caves. Most of the people at the back of the crowd outdoors had already returned back to their normal already. The people who were in the caves themselves at the time, from Max and Lionel deep inside to Winn near the entrance, were all looking likely to be… permanently fabulous.
Of course, the biggest scandal had been that Lillian Luthor and Cat Grant, neither of whom had been anywhere near the caves, had up and jumped on the train back to National City before the people at the mine had even returned to town. Lillian had written one scathing letter to Lionel about wanting a divorce, and another to The Guardian explaining in a great deal of juicy detail precisely why. And Mama Reign was one of the minor points.
Winn had moved in with the sheriff. Max and Lionel were stepping out of an evening. Lena was moving out of the familial mansion and building a house with Kara on the grounds of the Anchor Eagle. Jess and Eve were spending time together, but nobody thought that would go anywhere, given how wildly different they were. But you never knew.
Lex had finally invited Otis to move out of the cottage behind the Luthor mansion and move into the mansion. People were even talking about rings, but Lex insisted they were going to take their time, make every new stage “special.” (And Lena had snorted in a most unladylike way when she’d heard that.)
And Kara, in one of her more brilliant moments, had added a section to The Guardian: Relationship Status Updates. For a penny, you could update the town on who you were or were no longer dating, engaged to, married to. And that had been so popular it had enabled her to put a whole ‘nother quarto page to the newspaper, increasing the paper’s size by 50%.
And yes, M’gann was psychic. Of course, she was. But she had never seen ANY of this coming.
///
A year to the day after Winn the Kid arrived in San Paso looking for a place to stay, he married James Olsen in the little white clapboard church with the tall, narrow steeple and the town clock. It was a small ceremony in the church, but a huge reception on the town green outside of the church. His Honor, Max Lord, had conducted the ceremony. The Dansquez’s, Danvers’s, and the Sawyer-Lane’s had been on Winn’s side. Doc Torres, M’gann, Finn and Eve from the Western Union, Jordan from the post office, and Clark Kent up from Metropolis had been on James’s side. It was the event of the year.
When Max had said at the end of the ceremony, “You may now kiss,” Winn said to James, “I feel like I just snapped my heels together and suddenly I am really home.”
And James had said, “Yeah, man, I know what you mean.”
And they had kissed. And the whole church “oooohed.” And then they went out to the town square and partied like it was 1799. And they lived happily ever after.
The End.
///
Winn lay in bed, cool for the first time in memory, and admittedly his memory wasn’t too great. He blinked at the sunlight coming in through the window of his room in the medbay of the DEO. His eyes were gritty, and his throat felt like he had swallowed knives. His breathing was difficult, and he felt like he had just run six marathons he did not remember running, in a row.
The Assistant Director of the DEO medical team laid a gloved hand on his head and said, “Congratulations, Agent Schott. It looks like you beat it. Your friends will be so relieved to hear!”
Winn rasped, “Where’s Doc Ham—”
The AD frowned. “Yeah, we have twenty-three on the positive list. She’s number twenty-three.”
///
Eliza had emailed Dr. Hamilton two days previously and had gotten no response. She had been trying really hard not to call Alex as often as she wanted to. Eliza just had a lab with a handful of undergraduate and graduate students and one off-the-charts smart post-doc to deal with. Alex was in charge of all the people, hundreds of them, marching around the high rise that was the DEO’s National City division. And she knew that Covid-19 had not spared them.
But this was a professional issue. She was trying to help Alex with whatever those samples were. So surely that was a good excuse to call her daughter? Fuck it. She was calling her daughter.
“Danvers.”
“Hi, sweetie, it’s Mom.”
“Hey, Mom. What’s up?” Alex sounded distracted.
“Well, you sent me those samples and they are clearly not from humans. They’re almost definitely from human-alien progeny, so I was wondering about metahumans.”
“Yeah, I don’t—”
“But when I emailed your Dr. Hamilton to ask about markers, well, she hasn’t returned my email and it’s only been two days, but—”
“Oh, God, yeah, she’s out.”
“What?”
“Covid. She’s in containment here, same as Winn and James. We have two dozen agents down for the count.”
“Oh, sweetie, that’s terrible. Are they okay? Are you okay? And Kara and Vasquez and—”
“Mom.” And that was Alex’s Director-voice. “Right now, we’ve only had one casualty, in part because we’ve been using Remdesivir, and that’s been helping a lot, but it’s early days and I am trying to run the DEO on a skeleton crew.”
“And I get that, Alex, but you asked me about these samples, and I know I read something about the metahuman issue, maybe a gene variant? But I can’t find the article and I—”
“Mom? Oh, shit, deal with it, Vasquez, I’ll be right there. Mom, I’m going to text you Barry Allen’s email.”
“But he’s on another Earth—”
“Yeah, this is one that goes through the DEO and gets pinged and sent via our multiverse, I don’t know, server thing. It should get to him. Ask him your questions because he’s the one who knows the most about this shit. Gotta go, Mom. Love you!”
Eliza stared at her phone. She had always pushed Alex to take on more responsibilities because she knew her elder daughter was exceptional. She had never given any thought to what their relationship would turn into if Alex actually did what she had suggested. And surely, the country and the world and the non-Terran Americans were the better for it. Yes. But suddenly she foresaw that the next few years would mean short, distracted phone calls with her elder daughter. And she should have seen that coming? Yes. But she hadn’t.
Notes:
And now we return to our regularly scheduled reality, starting in roughly January 2020.
Chapter 53: A Time to Refrain from Embraces, Part 1
Chapter Text
When the Chief of Surgery called for a meeting in the main conference room, all the Luthor Alien Clinic surgeons, alien and human alike, asked, “How high?” because that little brunette woman (who was 5’6” and not that small at all) gave the impression of being as dense as a neutrino and as smart as someone smarter than Einstein, someone who could kill you with her brain, and nobody ever, ever wanted to see her when she got mad.
When she walked into the room ten minutes before the meeting’s start, all but two surgeons were already seated. The last two (probably not coincidentally, thought Callie) surgeons were white men, one hurrying in and one sauntering in just as the clock shifted from 8:59 to 9:00.
“Excellent,” said the Chief. “I see you all comprehend the weight of our current moment.”
(Wait, thought Callie, was that sarcasm?)
“We are fortunate that our potential patients are most likely, from what we can tell, immune to Covid-19, particularly those whose blood carries copper and those whose basal body temperature is at least 100.9, so Infernians, Kryptonians, and some less-common species, but those species are also more likely to be able to interbreed, which might lend immunity to multi-species individuals.”
The other surgeons nodded. This had been a topic of watercooler conversations for a while.
The Chief continued, “The other hospitals and clinics are being pushed past their limits with Covid-19 patients, and although our focus is on non-Terran patients, we have enough doctors who are, and/or have spent years treating, terrans, Drs. Kovick, D’Narr, Torres, etc., and I spoke with our board and the heads of NCGH, Luthor Children’s, and St. Olaf’s, and they really desperately need us to take their non-Covid overflow. I have said that we would, tentatively, subject to your expert thoughts on the subject.”
Callie said, “For 85% of our patients, broken bones are broken bones. Osteo can do this.”
One by one, departments were either all in (oncology, cardiac, urinary, dental), all out (respiratory, reproductive, skin), or a mix (all the other departments).
The Chief took notes and said, “Thank you for your time. We’ll get back to you when we have protocols for different departments sorted out. Don’t let me detain you.”
And Callie thought, Well, I can do this. I’ve been doing this for most of my career. But will we be legally liable if any of our people fuck this up?
///
Alex had spent two weeks running the DEO from her apartment before Doc Hamilton had gotten sick and been quarantined in her own cell in the prison basement that Medical had taken over. After conferring at length first with Vasquez and then with Rosie, Alex had requested (ordered) Rosie’s team to do another round of decontamination of the building, and the AD of Medical to do another round of testing, and then she drove her bike to the DEO parking lot, pulled out a complete set of PPE from her saddle bags, and gone up to see what was what.
She followed Vasquez’s protocol to the letter, sitting in her office and listening to reports from one agent at a time standing in her doorway, masked and gloved and a little muffled, but basically understandable. The DEO was down to a skeleton crew, except for Medical, but with the viral sharing of the video of George Floyd’s murder, protests were on the increase, even in National City, which had one of the nation’s lowest rates of police brutality.
But the lowest rate was not zero. It was still a problem and she knew from Zooming with Maggie and her captain that there was major work to be done.
Still, between the Black Lives Matter protests and the Alien Lives Matter protests, and the Blue Line counter-protests, and the tendency of the Blue Line counter-protesters to disdain masks and social distancing, they were in for a nightmare ride.
So she tasked Vasquez and Hamilton’s Number Two with coming up with a protocol for the agents supporting the NCPD at rallies. People were still blaming aliens and Chinese Americans for Covid-19, and they needed to protect their endangered citizens, but they also needed to keep their agents safe and healthy. And that was a bit like asking an architect and their crew to build a house quickly, cheaply, AND of high quality. Nobody believed they could do it, but they had to try.
At the end of the day, Alex went down to Rosie, decontaminated and went home, hoping against hope that she hadn’t been exposed to the virus and that she could spend the next two weeks running the DEO from her apartment and proving that she had not in fact been exposed.
But she missed Vasquez desperately. And there was nothing she could do about that.
///
Jacques Olsen, former reporter for Le Monde, had lost his job when the Nazis had marched under L’Arc de Triomphe. That was annoying, of course, but he still had another kind of job to do, like all French patriots. His new job slinging coal for the trains in and out of Paris didn’t pay much, but it didn’t have to. And his proximity to all that coal dust made it much more believable when he started coughing up black grit and told his boss that he needed to see le medecin. And that was perfect because Docteur Torres was his Resistance contact, and during his appointment when she told him he had a mild case of Black Lung, she also passed him the package that he was supposed to pass on, that night, to his other contacts at Krypton Rouge.
He could feel the heat coming out of the paper wrapped package and wondered if his front pants pocket might not have been the best place to put it for the duration of his walk down Le Champs Elysees.
He got to the bar exhausted, gasping for breath, but he got there, and Eliza immediately seated him close to the stage, and hand-delivered a hot toddy for his throat. The room was warm, or maybe it was him, but then the curtain pulled back to show Kara Danvers, one of the stars of the venue.
She wore a pale blue gown that brought out her eyes, and she had taken off the dowdy glasses she usually wore in public to not be noticed. Without her glasses, it was impossible not to notice her and her voice was perfection
Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
The package in his front pocket throbbed, as did his other package. He thought, Life in Pink.
When you kiss me heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
Normally, when he came to watch Kara sing, he imagined her kissing him. Tonight, instead, he found himself imagining Winn, their manager, kissing him. And he thought, wait, Life in Pink?
When you press me to your heart
I'm in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak
Angels sing from above
Everyday words seems
To turn into love song
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be la vie en rose
James stood and hurried to the men’s room. Winn was there before him. James pulled the paper-wrapped package from his pocket and passed it wordlessly to the Danvers’ manager.
Winn said, “Thanks. Maybe I’ll show you my gratitude properly… later.”
James nodded hurriedly and fled.
///
Agent Jordan was no longer strictly speaking on duty for the day, but he was still on call and that meant sleeping in the men’s barracks. He wasn’t too happy about it, but there wasn’t much he could do. They needed at least some DEO agents to be available if the NCPD Science Division got overwhelmed by anti-alien or alien violence, and while that hadn’t happened yet, Detective Sargent Maggie Sawyer had been liaising continuously with his bosses, and the city, like so many cities across the country, seemed to be on a hair trigger. It wouldn’t take much to set off riots and looting.
He had been DEO since college, unlike many of his peers who had started out as cops or FBI. He had been trained by Susan Vasquez and Lucy Lane and he could recite the Rules of Engagement in his sleep. The DEO had a zero-tolerance policy for brutality since Hank Henshaw had returned from South America a changed man (in retrospect, literally, as he was then J’onn J’onzz). But the agents who had come from other agencies had seen things and told stories that raised Jordan’s hair.
And Jordan knew himself fairly well and knew he would never do that. But he wondered if he would have the strength to take down one of his fellow agents if they did.
He hoped so. But, yeah, he wondered.
///
Callie drove to the underground parking garage of the DEO, pulled down her mask and showed her ID to the security guards, pulled up her mask, parked and took the elevator up to the command center. Field agents were dispersing, so Callie assumed something had just gone down, but she knew that was above her paygrade. Assistant Director Vasquez was standing behind Chen at the computer feeds, rubbing her eyes as if she had a headache, and Callie thought she probably did.
She stood to the side, waiting to be noticed, but she also could hear the agents who had not yet dispersed making disparaging comments about aliens, and she saw Vasquez whip around and verbally rip them all new ones, and some hurried away, but others stayed watching the feed and muttering.
Callie stepped over to Vasquez, saying quietly, “Bueno, eso no suena bien.” (Well, that didn’t sound good.)
Vasquez grunted. “Las cosas se ponen feas con la pandemica.” (Things are getting ugly with the pandemic.)
Callie murmured, “Entonces no se trataba de extraterrestres?” (So that wasn’t about aliens?”)
And Vasquez sighed, “When is it not?”
Callie nodded. “Well, the clinic is going to be taking on humans to relieve the other hospitals of their non-Covid patients, so…”
Vasquez nodded.
“So anyway, I just wanted to check in before picking up Hamilton.”
Vasquez turned and actually looked her. “Wait, what?”
“Dr. Hamilton? Who is living with me? This is the first time our shifts have matched in a week. I texted her to tell her I’d drive her home after her shift.”
And Chen looked up at them and saw Vasquez’s face lose color. He quickly stood and guided Vasquez to sit in his chair. He looked up at Dr. Torres who was at least an inch taller than him if they had been in stocking feet, which they weren’t, because Callie was wearing low-heeled boots.
“Um, Doctor,” said Chen, “here’s the thing. Dr. Hamilton is in containment, along with Agents Winn and Finn and twenty other agents. The agents doing contact tracing have been asking for you. I need to take you down to medical to—”
Callie rubbed her eyes, thinking, of course, it had only been a matter of time.
Aloud, she said, “Thank you, Agent, but I do know the way.”
///
Max Lord had felt like hell all week, but it never in a million years would it have occurred to him that he would be exposed to Covid-19. He had invented the best PPE in the world, was distributing it widely in the city at cost and was changing his own at least three times a day.
And yet.
When he realized the coughing and fever and inability to smell might be signs, he went to NCGH and asked to be tested. And because he was Max Lord, they had tested him.
And yeah, ow! Holy fuck, that hurt!
They hospitalized him and put him on IV and drugs and kept checking his blood oxygen, which was low. And gradually he fell into a weird, feverish sleep.
And that wouldn’t have been a problem at the best of times, but February 14, 1929, when he had things to do and people to see and some of those people were… not inclined to pay taxes on the booze they made in bathtubs… well, that was not one of the best of times.
He had been given intelligence about the possibility of a cut-rate batch of Canadian whiskey which would be made available to his gang for a felicitous price. The transaction would go down in a garage in Lincoln Park. It sounded legit on paper, but Max had his misgivings. The Chicago weather was warm for a winter month, and that had to be some kind of omen. He told his men not to attend the meet, but they said that he was scared and not strong enough to lead the gang, so he had shelved his misgivings, put on a good suit and hat and showed up at 10:20 that morning.
They waited, himself, Morgan Edge and Siobhan “Calamity Jane” Smythe. At exactly 10:30 four people in police uniforms walked in, both one real cop, Maggie Sawyer, and three fake cops: Alex Danvers, Kara Danvers, and Susan Vasquez. He had been right. This was going to be a massacre.
When they pulled out their tommy guns and shot his crew with bullets that made them glow pink, he had fallen into Morgan’s arms, saying melodramatically, “Well, at least we are together, here at the end of all things.”
Then they all died. But how he knew they all died was news to him.
///
Brian had made friends with Joe the alien cop by accident. They both had dogs and bought dog food and dog chews at the same pet shop. And when Joe had had some problems acclimating to human/American culture, Brian had been super helpful. And when Brian had in passing asked Joe whether he thought hydroxycloriquine might be a good side business to go into, Joe had gone on at great, great length about why it really, really wasn’t.
So they were friends after a fashion. Joe encouraged Brian to stay working with the Alien Ambulance Brigade, and Brian discouraged Joe from mixing stripes with plaid. It wasn’t the odd couple, but it was the first small, good thing in Brian’s life in a long damn time.
///
Jess Huang had been going all out for three months, washing her hands till they were rough, changing her masks regularly, switching from corporate clothes to Friday casual to scrubs as the weeks passed and it was clear she should be laundering her clothes much more often. And although Lena had kept telling her to slow down, to take time for herself, to take a day off here and there, Jess thought that Lena just didn’t understand how much energy it took to be Lena Luthor AND Jess Huang AND the Morale Officer for LCorp.
But then she lost her sense of smell. And then she self-quarantined and took her temperature, called her doctor, and talked to her over Zoom. And although her temperature was low at first, it was still higher than usual and didn’t go down.
She kept working virtually, at first via Zoom, and then when she mostly lost her voice, through texts and emails.
And then one morning, she was too tired to get up at eight o’clock and slept until one. She woke groggy to a dozen panicked emails. She got up long enough to drink some cold orange juice, give Lena a quick email sitrep and go back to bed.
And she dreamed. And the dreams were just weird.
///
Maggie Sawyer and the captain of her Science Division precinct had been two hours on a Zoom call with the captains of the NCPD’s eleven other district precincts, and an FBI agent and a DEO agent who were experts in responding to peaceful protests across the nation.
Precincts Six through Ten wanted riot shields and rubber bullets. Precincts One, Three and Five were all for sitting this one out and not even showing up. The other three precincts were with hers in calling for a response that was high in masks and gloves and low in army surplus gear. And the experts agreed with them, so they won the day…. For now.
But two hours of arguing on Zoom left Maggie a little nauseous and her eyes ached. When she went home that evening, she didn’t even have enough energy to scramble an egg, so she put one in a pot of water and just hard boiled it. Then she poured herself four fingers of scotch and texted Lucy out in Nevada.
HuckSawyer: Hey, was your today lousy? Mine was. Ask me how!
PassingLane: Let me guess. NCPD is leaning toward rubber bullets.
HuckSawyer: How’d you guess?
PassingLane: A colleague in Reno just checked in. Metropolis too, but they’re containing it. Gotham sounds worse than Michigan and Oregon combined.
HuckSawyer: Yeah, but, well, Gotham.
PassingLane: True.
HuckSawyer: I miss you.
PassingLane: I have bad news.
HuckSawyer: About us?
PassingLane: About Doc Hamilton. Her husband got put on a vent today.
HuckSawyer: Shiiiit.
PassingLane: Yeah.
HuckSawyer: What’s his prognosis.
PassingLane: Bad. The doc thinks days.
HuckSawyer: Have you told her?
PassingLane: You didn’t hear? She’s down for the count at the DEO. Her second is in command of the medbay.
HuckSawyer: We are so fucked. Winn, James, and Finn are out too.
PassingLane: Take care of yourself. You hear?
HuckSawyer: I hear. As long as the protests stay peaceful here, we should be okay. The mayor has no intention of opening up anytime soon, economy be damned.
PassingLane: This is not going to end well.
HuckSawyer: With the Cheeto-in-Chief in charge, how could it ever?
PassingLane: True. Le Sigh. Love you. Gotta hop. Some fresh hell.
HuckSawyer: Love you too.
Maggie sighed deeply and took a long stiff drink and lost her cool.
Chapter 54: A Time to Refrain from Embraces, Part 2
Chapter Text
This close to the front lines, the sounds of battle were constant. By day, they smoked cigarettes and played cards, and by nights they flew over the German lines and dropped small bombs, or if they were caught by German pilots, they flew fancy circles trying to get behind their enemies with their machine guns and take them down. Jess “Betsy Ross” Huang had been in the women’s division of the Lafayette Escadrille for three months, and had personally taken down fifteen German aces, but you never knew if today was going to be the day you went down.
Today, thankfully, it wasn’t. Time would tell about tomorrow, and the day after that, if there was one.
She flew back to the Spartan base and made her way to the officers’ mess, which had whiskey and more cigarettes, and the prowling lion cub, Krypto, their mascot, who made himself regularly available for belly rubs. Small comfort, but she’d take it.
Today, the mess also had Lt. Olsen flirting with the French Red Cross worker, Jillian, who had brought donuts. Major Sawyer also was a fan of the donuts and of Jillian, but Jillian only had eyes for Jess, with her leather jacket and her helmet and goggles. As she approached, Doc Hamilton came striding in.
“Major, I have a new report. Lt. Col. Lane just came crawling in. Her plane was shot down outside of Ypres. Colonel Luthor was shot down too, and they think she might have been captured.”
Sawyer frowned. “How are Lane’s injuries?”
Doc seesawed her hand. “Better than average chance of survival. She needs blood and we’re running low.”
Jillian pulled out a helmet and goggles. “I’ve got my bike. I can make a run for more.”
Jess hated to see her go, but this was war, and a necessity was a necessity. “Be careful, my love!”
“I will. Au revoir!”
Lt. Olsen said, “Major, surely it’s time to use our secret weapon to free that POW camp? They’ve taken nine of our best pilots!”
Sawyer frowned but nodded. “Has Winn finished assembling the packages?”
“He started as soon as Colonel Danvers delivered the special ingredient.”
Sawyer shook her head. “I always swore it wouldn’t come to this, that we wouldn’t use Special K on the enemy. But this war has gone on too long. Olsen, Huang get your birds close enough to the POW camp and drop everything we have. Then get the hell out. Lt. Danvers Jr. and Lt. Arias will follow a half hour behind you to do SAR for the POWs ASAP.”
Olsen looked pale. “We’re actually doing this?”
Sawyer said, “Go get your go-juice, kick the tires and light some fires. Dismissed!”
Jess thought, Yeah, I can see this going Alpha Foxtrot Uniform. But I did sign up for this. And it’s Colonel Luthor, dammit! They had to save Lena!
///
Kara had been covering the protests in civvies and a mask, and so far, National City had stayed peaceful. Their mayor had been very clear about the necessity for the City Council to shift funding from the police toward social work and mental health resources. Their city’s protests had the potential to be successful, except that other news channels started ignoring protests that weren’t leading to fires in trash bins and bodies in the streets.
But Cat Grant was very clear that the Tribune and CatCo Worldwide Media would cover their protests closely, turning peaceful protest into a Black Swan Story to get people talking about How They Made It Work Against All Odds.
Edward Caine, Dr. Hamilton’s husband had died around the solstice, while Dr. Hamilton was still out of commission, and they didn’t tell her for fear it might make her worse. Alex had had to make that difficult decision. Well, it wasn’t like they could hold a funeral, after all.
Christmas had been a complete bust, with people sick or quarantining. They had tried to do a Zoom decorating party, but with half their friends either on duty or in the medbay, it had been half-hearted and foreshortened. New Year’s Eve was a little better, since M’gann hosted the party from Dollywood, and had shared cocktail recipes with everyone in advance, so it had been a strange drunken disco fest, and there had been hangovers aplenty the next day.
National City was cold and grey, but no snow fell. Kara mentioned to Alex that it felt like that line from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe: always winter, but never Christmas.
All the sports had shut down all the games. Few movies were coming out, since the theaters were all closed. WonderWoman 84 came out on HBOMax, causing a slight spike in trials and subscriptions, and all the DEO agents argued (from six feet away from each other) about how much sense the plot made when a thousand-year-old lesbian from Themiscyra was heart-broken for seventy-plus years over a guy. The jury was still out on that one.
Meanwhile, the incessant Zoom meetings were making people fidgety, nauseated and/or exhausted. And always in the background was the abstraction of a disease they couldn’t see and the daily concrete leadership failure seeping like a poison out of Washington, DC and into their social media feeds.
And that part was just too familiar for Kara. Although her parents had failed in leadership from a point of intellect and science, still the ideology that the great planet Krypton was too good to fail was a point of connection between the two cultures that she had never expected.
And yes, she talked to her DEO therapist about all of it, and the woman had upped her alien SSRI dose by a bit, and yes, she meditated and went to the junkyard and beat up on old cars.
But Lena was emotionally distant and a little bit manic in her Inventing Mode, which Kara had never known to last more than a few days in a row, and now this had been going on for a few weeks. And Kara knew that everybody processed stress and anxiety differently, and that, as her therapist pointed out, that was in normal times, which these absolutely weren’t. But still.
Kara needed hugs. Like a thousand. And Krypto asking for belly rubs and then practically licking her face off was helpful. It was.
She just wasn’t completely convinced that it was enough.
///
In retrospect, given what she had picked up about epidemiology over the years, Pill thought, attending the company’s New Year’s Eve party, where a few hundred employees and their spouses/dates attended without masks while a pandemic was happening might not have been anybody’s best idea, and certainly not her own. With the CEO having tested positive for Covid-19 a week later, everyone who had shaken his hand or spoken with him during the party had been contact traced and ordered to quarantine for fourteen days. And that pretty much meant everybody. And that’s how they had all the learned the new phrase “super-spreader event.”
///
Jess “Betsy Ross” Huang took off into the sky on her Sopwith Camel, with Jimmy “Guardian” Olsen flying behind her. The moon was high and shone lightly on her wings. In her lap was her map and compass, but she had flown this route at night before and in far worse weather. She did not anticipate going astray.
She followed the Leperlee River southeast, flew over the canal and was just readying to start descent to drop her package when machine gun fire rattled above her and behind. Jimmy’s plane canted and she could tell he was going to try to ditch in the river, so she curved around to shoot down the bird that had targeted him. The moment it was in her sights, she shot it full of lead, and it spiraled to the ground in a phenomenal crash, just as Jimmy let loose his cargo and coasted into the river. The explosion on the riverbank was enormous, with clouds of billowing pink smoke and magenta flames. Through her binoculars, she could see James swimming toward the riverbank, and she waggled her wings to let him know she saw him.
Then she turned back toward her target. It was all on her now.
///
James woke covered in sweat but feeling cool for the first time in days. He had been moved in his sleep back to the regular medbay, where the patients who were done with the worst of it were recovering. His bed was between Winn’s and Finn’s.
Winn waved to him weakly. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Let’s not… do this again.”
“Good plan.”
“The sweating through my sheets was bad enough, but… the dreams.” Winn rubbed his eyes. “Some seriously trippy shit. I was a gambler. You were the sheriff. There was pink K…”
James’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah, pink K. I was in the resistance in France. You ran a cabaret. Kara was singing…”
Finn piped up, “I dreamed about Buffy, but I don’t remember anything being pink.”
Winn said, “Yeah, you weren’t around for that particular fiasco.”
“Lucky you,” said James, but remembering his own dream, he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he meant it.
///
Dr. Hamilton stood in her overheated office, looking at the to-do list on her phone: tomatoes, peppers—check; pick up dry cleaning—check; help Alex with Lucy’s bullets—
Oh shit! She knew she’d forgotten something…
And then Agent Danvers and Dr. Hamilton were scrubbing in before they had to pull bullets out of Agent Lane and another agent who had been shot by Cadmus men during the ransom drop. Alex looked grim, but she was humming a song that Dr. Hamilton could just almost recognize.
“What that song?” she had asked.
“’The Story’ by Brandy Carlisle,” said Alex. “It’s the favorite song of a friend of mine from Seattle. I told you about Callie Torres, didn’t I?”
“The bisexual osteo with the Broadway-level voice?”
“That’s her. She is one of the calmest people in surgery, can get up on the operating table to saw through someone’s femur and not raise a sweat. But when she has to do public speaking, she gets so nervous she throws up, or well, she used to. Then she started singing this song in between practicing her speeches and somehow it always helped her keep it together.”
“Are you having a hard time keeping it together, Alex? I know Lucy is a friend.”
“No, ma’am. I’m having a hard time not racing out of here to shoot whoever did this.”
“First thing’s first.”
And Alex had nodded fiercely.
But when the nurses helped them into their operating gowns and handed them scalpels, the woman on the bed had not been Lucy Lane. It had been Callie Torres.
And Jane Hamilton suddenly forgot how to remove a bullet.
///
A cloud passed over the moon just as Jess “Betsy Ross” Huang was making her final approach to the POW camp. The goal was not the center of the camp, where her ordnance might harm the prisoners. The target was the heavily guarded front gate. She dove down and dropped her package and was back at cruising altitude by the time the pink smoke and magenta flames were rising into the night sky along with the screams of the guards. She banked and flew home.
Somehow, she had expected to see a red Fokker Triplane on her six, but it didn’t happen. Probably just as well. The Red Baron didn’t often miss what he shot at.
///
Cat Grant had been married four times, every single time to a man. Suddenly, she was starting to wonder why. The shower with Lillian had been a revelation, and she felt uncharacteristically unmoored. That one time in the containment cell in Lex’s lead-lined bunker she had put down to the pink kryptonite and her human biology’s reaction to it.
This? This was something else. Suddenly she was questioning almost everything she had thought she knew about life.
Not journalism. Of course.
But everything else.
She lay in her bed alone, reeling. She had never done anything like that with a lover before in her entire life, not in a shower.
Well, okay, that one drunken weekend in college. But still. It’s not like she remembered the details.
Tonight, she was remembering the details.
A man had never made her feel… all that.
And she was still feeling the aftershocks as she lay alone, her whole body abuzz. Was this what sex was supposed to feel like? How could she never have known she could expect more, she should ask for more, for better?
And Lillian Luthor was the last person Cat would have expected to… follow in her daughter’s footsteps. From the little Cat had gleaned from Lena over the years, Lillian considered her daughter degenerate and a bit scandalous.
This was not the Lillian Cat had just… experienced.
And to be fair, Lillian had just spent some time in prison, and one heard… things… about what went on in women’s prisons. But still.
Cat wasn’t too concerned about what her sons might think, as they both had blithely informed her now and then that this or that good friend was gay. And, certainly, her colleagues and friends wouldn’t care. It was much more likely that they would throw a party for her.
Still.
It felt like she was seeing into a whole new dimension that she hadn’t been able to see before. It was surreal.
And what did it mean to Lillian? Had the whole Covid-19/no-available-reservations just been a ploy to get into Cat’s pants or had it been true?
And would she mind more the former?
Or the latter…
///
Lillian Luthor was naturally good at a few very specific things:
• playing chess (though she had worked long and hard to learn it, but there was only so far endless practice could take a dull mind);
• persuading people (though the DEO would insist on referring to it as “radicalizing”);
• supporting her son’s genius endeavors (the more villainous, the better); and
• making killer mojitos (yes, yes, she knew; that always surprised people with small imaginations).
Other things, she was good at after extensive training:
• medicine (though they had taken her license away without even a trial);
• experimental alien biology (see above);
• killing and causing large-scale chaos (with a wide variety of military grade weapons);
• arranging a killer updo very quickly (and that was practically a professional skill, one she had passed on to Lena); and
• project management (the more villainous, the better, see category 1).
But in a long life, one found oneself being forced to… pick skills up as one went, from whatever teachers or mentors wandered into one’s life, often fairly randomly.
And while she would not have expected, for example, BJ (prisoner 647-928) or Mimi (prisoner 639-288) telling each other at great length—EVERY DAMN NIGHT--what they wanted to do for or to one another if they got a moment alone after lights out—
Well, she would not have expected all… that… to have had what she supposed one would have to call an… instructive effect.
But then she had decided to walk her kidnapping victims up a mountain in the icy rain a few days after Max “But I Meant It for the Best” Lord seeded the clouds with pink kryptonite. And then she had shared a cell with Cat Grant. And she had… known what to do.
And Lillian had played chess with her children as they were growing up, and she had played chess with chess masters (including her children, after they had grown up), and she knew there was a very great difference between not losing and wiping the floor with your opponent.
Well, perhaps that wasn’t the most felicitous analogy.
But the hell with it. That night in Lex’s abandoned mountain base, Lillian Luthor had given Cat Grant a long, shuddering checkmate.
Lying alone in Cat’s guestroom in the present, Lillian smiled at the revelation which that night had been for Lillian. Cat hadn’t seemed affected by the outcome of that particular… match. Not at the time. And of course, Lillian knew that Cat had attended one of those women’s colleges, so she just figured Cat was an old hand at such things, even though she had always married men.
But the shower a few hours before. Well, now.
Lillian had never gotten on her knees for any man. But Cat had, what was the phrase? Gotten the toaster oven for her?
Lillian snorted, but she had to admit. She had felt like she owed Cat something.
And Lillian Luthor always paid her debts.
///
The DEO could be deadly silent at night. Not all the time, obviously. Some nights were rife with crime, drama and action. On those nights, agents in black tactical gear hurried through the corridors on the double, and the black SUVs emitted snarling aliens with their appendages ziptied. Often there was blood on the floor of the medbay operating rooms.
But that was not this night.
As Doctor Hamilton wandered the darkened corridors, remembering her husband’s angry face, she kept looking into the empty rooms, trying to find her way to the cafeteria, thinking that surely, she had forgotten something. She went into one of the women’s restrooms, but the floors were covered with water dripping from the ceiling, so she left. She wandered into the control room, but none of the agents paid her any attention. She wondered who she should report the plumbing problem to, but she knew if her husband found out that she had reported it, he would go through with his threat to out the DEO on national television.
She was sweating profusely, but she couldn’t figure out if that was the DEO being extra warm or if she was simply having hot flashes again. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, she guessed.
She went into another women’s restroom, but the doors had been taken off the stalls and there was a line of people. She was certainly not peeing in front of her colleagues, so she wandered out again.
A few hours later, she woke up, in the belly of the DEO, with an IV in one arm and a pulse oximeter on the other hand. Oh, right. Covid-19. No wonder she felt dreadful.
///
Mid-January in Gotham was cloudy and cold, with wind coming off the Great Lakes and freezing the bones of anybody who was out and about. That did not include Pill, who was quarantining in her tiny apartment, working on her hybrid rose at home in her spare time, when she wasn’t having weird video meetings with her sick and maybe-infected workmates via her laptop. Everyone commented on the beautiful red and pink roses behind her, but she suspected that had less to do with their interest in botany and more to do with the complete and utter lack of variety in their lives in quarantine. She didn’t blame them. At first, she kept herself sane by having the radio on in the background as she worked and listened to the news about aliens and potential election fraud and Black Lives Matter protests and counter-protests, with all the superheroes being super busy in the different cities.
After two weeks of this, however, she decided to keep herself sane by not listening.
Chapter 55: Embracing Our Limitations, Part 1
Chapter Text
Pill knew that 2020 was looking to be a very different year, and not in a good way. And maybe she had always been a bit superstitious about the first weeks in January. A good January had often led to a good year. This… didn’t look like that.
She had slept through her alarm that morning and got to work two hours late and then had to stay two hours late to make up for it. So at 7 pm, she had found herself hurrying across Gotham Park to get to the subway, but the park had been the scene of a massive protest—something about Batwoman?—and yes, most of the protesters had been wearing masks and all of the police containing them wore masks, but it turned out that Covid-19 was going to be the least of their problems. Against the night sky pale from all the city lights, a sudden swarm like a dark cloud swirled up and then sped down on them all.
“Starlings?” murmured Pill.
And then one smashed into the back of her neck, sinking its fangs into her flesh. She screamed and flailed to get it off of her, but they were everywhere, and everyone was being attacked. Some were trying to run away. Others threw themselves on the pavement, rolling around between the running feet.
The pain was intense and then a man fell on her and she lost consciousness.
///
Pill smelled where she was before she felt or saw it. Disinfectant, that universal hospital smell, assaulted her nose before she could even consciously realize that the back of her neck wasn’t in agony and her forehead didn’t throb from hitting the pavement suddenly.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on a gurney in a wide hallway, and turning her head revealed dozens of other people in varying levels of consciousness on gurneys all the way down the hall. She heard an exhausted sounding man mutter about what a miracle it was that Hamilton Dynamics had done—something.
Cautiously, Pill sat up. A nearby man in pale blue scrubs picked up a chart from the desk and ambled over. The five o’clock shadow on his face was shot with grey, making him look older than he probably was. He rubbed his eyes and looked at her chart.
“P. Isley? You’re free to go.”
Pill hated hospitals, so she gathered her belongings from the desk and got the hell out of there.
What a horrible way to start a year.
///
The weeks passed and life, such as it was, went on. Valentine’s Day went unmarked for thousands of lovers in National City, forced to stay apart. Winter slowed to a halt with slush storms throwing a “wintry mix” on the city’s streets, which then melted into mud time, otherwise known as early spring.
High school and college students who had expected to graduate in spring of 2020 gradually saw that their optimism that the national government would put out mask mandates and force corporations to shift over to producing PPE was so deeply unfounded as to be laughable, and waved good-bye to their hoped- and planned-for senior spring, prom, and even graduation.
Early spring bled into mid-spring, and the numbers of cases, and the numbers of the dead, just increased. The GOP-led Senate agreed to one piddly stimulus check of $1200 for each citizen and then basically told the 320+ million Americans to go fuck themselves. Late spring came and the virus slowed in some places, but not others.
Every week brought with it another video of white police officers attacking peaceful Black citizens, leading to more peaceful protests by Black activists, leading the Orange Menace to send the National Guard into America’s cities armed for war. White mothers joined the Black protesters and set themselves as a cordon around them, and the National Guard and municipal cops shot them with rubber bullets and tear gas. White dads with leaf blowers formed a cordon around them and blew the tear gas back on the law enforcement.
Looters looted. Political pundits condemned the looters. Activists condemned the politicians who had ignored the athletes peacefully kneeling at national games to draw attention to police violence. The Cheeto-in-Chief refused to condemn white nationalists.
Late spring bled into summer. America burned.
///
Joe stood at the three whiteboards side-by-side in the Task Force’s small bullpen: traffic accident, arson, bombing. He looked at the pictures of the victims: school children, a bus driver, a tanker driver; a chef, waiters, firefighters, and local renters; medical personnel and one child, and an assortment of drivers. In all three cases, the victims had been a mix of human and alien. Was that relevant? It felt relevant.
Detective Reynolds came up and taped a copy of the nearby apartment’s blueprints next to the restaurants’ blueprints. He pulled out a red marker and traced a line that went through all of the buildings.
“What is red line?” asked Joe.
“The water pipes. Delivery system.”
“Devilish.”
“Yeah.”
“Would Reynolds know how to access pipes? Joe would not know but Reynolds is Earthling.”
Reynold sighed. “I’d be able to figure out how to turn off the water in the basement of any of these places, maybe. But access the pipes themselves? No.”
“Has crime tech brushed for handmarks?”
“Prints? Yeah. No luck.”
Joe picked up his phone and started typing into it. “Ah. Indiscriminate. Damage was indiscriminate in all cases.”
“Yeah, Maggie really doesn’t like that. There’s no motive. There’s no pattern.”
“Hmm. Chaos is pattern. Chaos breeds terror.”
“You think this is domestic terrorism?”
“Reynolds have other idea?”
The detective ran a beefy hand through his thinning hair. “So who? If it was just aliens getting hurt, I’d say Cadmus. If it was just humans, I’d look at their political affiliations.”
“Pattern is safety. Chaos in safe places: school bus, restaurant, hospital.”
“Hm. And since Covid, the restaurants are closed, the schools are doing distant learning, the Luthor Alien Clinic is taking on the non-Covid cases from the other hospitals. But who could have predicted that? So that can’t help us.”
“Maybe boards should be separate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe look at recent arsons, recent transportation accidents.”
“Recent bombings?”
“Bombing only one with only aliens as first victims. Human victims were in traffic. Sawyer wrote report on trucks in traffic. Find truck numbers.”
“License plates, you mean? For the trucks that caused citywide gridlock?”
Joe nodded. “And Joe continue to look at Fire Chief, sniff history.”
Reynolds patted Joe on the shoulder. “Couldn’t hurt.”
///
Jess was back at work at LCorp. She had been one of the lucky ones, probably because her viral load had been low. She had been sick for a few days, tired for a week and a half more, and now was basically back on her feet. She didn’t hurry anywhere, of course, or do any more physical activity than she actually needed to do to get her job done. But compared to Winn, she was in great shape. Somewhere in between her case and Winn’s were Finn and James, who were back at work with light duty for now. Holtzy had so far stayed healthy, as had Lena, Alex, Vasquez, and Kate and Ron down in R&D. Kara, J’onn and M’gann were working overtime to support the understaffed DEO. Jess hadn’t seen Maggie in weeks.
At least LCorp employees were staying relatively healthy, thanks to Lena’s foresight to get everybody who could working from home or in socially distant ways in almost all of their facilities. The Board had complained, of course. When didn’t they? But she had been right. Compared to several other big companies in town, they had easily 70% fewer positive tests. Only LordTech had a lower number, but then they were making the best PPE in the nation, so it would have been a little embarrassing if their numbers were higher. She had heard that Max Lord had briefly been hospitalized, but like her, he apparently had a low viral load and hadn’t suffered all that much.
Pity, really.
Lena worked from home Tuesday to Thursday. On Mondays, she came in and did administrative work. On Fridays, she worked in her basement lab. She was no longer in her pseudo-manic inventing mode, thank God. Jess didn’t have to follow her around at a dead run to translate her speeded up instructions to her employees. Just thinking about it made Jess feel like putting her head down on her desk and taking a nap.
When all this was over, Jess was going to take a vacation, a real one where she actually left town for at least a week. She’d always wanted to see Hawai’i. Maybe she could go with Holtzy.
Except of course, that would probably make Holtzy assume that they would sleep together, and Jess still hadn’t wrapped her head around that idea. They’d only just started dating when the lockdown started.
Oh well. They were still at best a year away from a vaccine. She would burn that bridge when she came to it.
///
The memo, when it came from the President and CEO of VegaMins, was in no way particularly surprising. Damn 2020 anyway. Pill knew that they had lost folks in the manufacturing division because of not being able to socially distance enough. Like, people had died because of the company’s intransigence back in February (and this, after the New Year’s Gala had acted as a super spreader event, knocking whole departments out for weeks, and a lot of those people still hadn’t completely recovered). So there was plenty of blame to spread around, but of course, you could only take so many hits if you were a small company that made commodities but not necessities. So now they were downsizing and “letting go” any hires from the previous six months.
Luckily, Pill would qualify for unemployment insurance, but after that ran out, what then? Who was going to be taking on new hires in the middle of a global pandemic?
///
Krypto had a new vest, of which he was very proud. He also had a bow tie, a gift from his friend Joe. The vest had the DEO bird on it, and when he wore it at the DEO, it meant he was working. It wasn’t like the other vest that Kara had a man with a funny accent fit him for. That was heavier and covered more of him. That was a danger vest. This was a… what was the word Kara had used? Moral? Something like that. It meant that he was free to walk around the DEO (as long as he didn’t beg for food) and greet the agents. They could pet him and give him belly rubs and he had learned from Joe how to say, “Bouche,” which apparently was an Earth word for mouth, and if they said, “Yes,” he could lick their faces.
The talking lessons with Winn and Joe were strange, but, as with the agility training, he got treats when the lessons went well, and if he did something really good, Winn treated him to peanabttrcrkkrz, which was his favoritest treat of all.
At the end of the day, Kara would come take the vest off and bring him home to Soft Hands and Beautiful Voice, and she was being more normal now, not yelling at the talking screen or scribbling on paper and yelling at him if he put his head in her lap. Kara told him that Soft Hands had been having ideas and had to keep pouring the ideas out until her head was empty again, and that had taken a really long time because Soft Hands’s head was bigger on the inside than on the outside.
That was okay. Now that Soft Hands’s head was empty, she was more willing to give him belly rubs while she and Kara watched superheroes on the story box fight bad guys and ride away on horses.
Krypto hoped one day he could meet a horse. They looked like interesting people.
///
Eliza woke from a dream about Jeremiah proudly giving away Kara to Lena. In the dream both women wore long white dresses, floral crowns and necklaces with a sapphire pentagon like the one Eliza had given Lois for her wedding day: something blue. Yawning, she rose, went to the bathroom, and came back realizing that it was easily 4:30-ish in the morning and she didn’t have any more sleep in her. Dreaming of Jeremiah often did that.
Knowing he was alive, after so many years of believing him to be dead, unsettled her. Where was he, the man who had promised before God, before their friends and family, to stay with her in sickness and in health? He had nearly managed to launch their older daughter into space, across galaxies. He had planned to send the aliens offworld, like some sort of intergalactic Liberia, to attempt to save their lives in the short term, even knowing it might kill them in worse ways in the long term. What had happened to the man she had married?
It had been a glorious day, their wedding day, with not a cloud in the sky. She distinctly remembered watching her little nieces strew flowers in the church aisle, and wondering if she’d ever have a daughter and what kind of man she might marry.
So, yeah. That.
To be fair, she had mostly wrapped her head around her daughters’ choices (although the niggling suspicion that Vasquez and Lena had probably slept together at one point made her feel, well, a bit weird about the whole thing). But she had watched the first season of the L Word, and she understood the problems of small populations. So as long as all of them were okay with it, it was none of her business. Thankfully.
She thought about something blue. She couldn’t go out and buy something for them the way she did for Lois. It had to be personal. And, if she could find something old, she could hit two… rhymes? With one gift.
Sighing deeply, she turned the bedroom light on and went and stood in front of her dresser, where her grandmother’s jewelry box sat. Eliza didn’t have too much jewelry. Earrings, sure, and a few bracelets, a good watch and her camping watch, the necklace with the little nest with four pearls in it that the girls had gotten her for her fortieth birthday, to represent the family. Her high school and college rings. The little garnet rose broach Jeremiah had given her on their first anniversary. And oddly, nothing blue.
She did remember giving Kara the little sapphire stud earrings when she went away to college. And there had been an aquamarine drop necklace, but that had been lost years ago.
She moved to turn the light off, but then Jeremiah’s little antique wooden box (a gift to him from Alex) caught her eye. It was about the size of a cigar box and when she lifted the lid, she found a dozen pairs of cufflinks, three tie bars and an old soft purple velvet bag she didn’t recall. Untying the satin string, she shook out into her hand a little broach, two sapphire flowers with one stem and one leaf each in emerald. There was a story behind it, something about his grandparents, she thought. So many memories lost in that damn South American jungle. So many stories left untold. And if either of her girls ever had children, they would not know about their family’s past.
Sighing again, Eliza slipped the broach back into the bag and closed the box. Better to go make a pot of coffee and work on the textbook. Looking back was futile, but she was a teacher, and there were college kids who needed to learn astroxenobiology. The future was the only way forward.
///
Jane Hamilton opened the door to the apartment lobby tiredly, pulling her mask from her face and pulling an old grey bandana from her jacket pocket, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. What was it about wearing the mask outdoors that always made her eyes and nose run? And a wet mask was a mask that didn’t work, but when she was outdoors, she always dodged other people, even when they were actually wearing their masks correctly and not simply using them as some kind of chin condom. Grr.
She unlocked the mailbox and pulled out three bills and a letter for Callie, from the handwritten address probably from her daughter. As always, she felt a pang about the children she had wanted and not been able to have with Edward, and then a pang of guilt at feeling angry at poor Edward who had died functionally alone in a government black site. And then she just felt angry at Covid-19. God, she was exhausted.
She unlocked the door to the inner lobby and dragged herself up three flights of stairs to the apartment. When she unlocked the apartment door, she could smell something amazing. Maybe leeks in butter?
She dropped the mail and her keys on the dining room table and pulled off her coat as she entered the kitchen sniffing appreciatively and trying not to drool. “What are you making?” she asked.
Callie grinned. “I got this recipe for potato leek soup from one of the field agents. It sounded tasty and I figured my shift ended today two hours before yours, so I went and got the ingredients and started, well, later than I had intended because a doctor at the clinic asked me to do a telemedicine consult, but better late than never? Get changed, wash your hands and come join me. I just opened a Cote du Rhone that is aerating or whatever. I’ll pour you a glass and you can put your feet up while I cook.”
And Jane Hamilton opened her mouth and then closed it, tears streaming down her face.
“Oh, chica!” said Callie. “What? No! Are you okay?”
“Oh, I am so far from okay. I am fucking exhausted. But you, you’re cooking.”
“Well, we have to eat, and I got home first.”
“But, I mean, you’re not just cooking for you. You’re cooking for both of us.”
“Um, yes?”
“But, but…” She wiped tears out of her eyes the way she had been wiping her nose and eyes all day, but more so. “But why would you do that?”
Callie frowned. “We have to eat. I got home first. I did say…”
“But… Ed—my husband never…”
“Well, I am not one to speak ill of the dead, especially not of someone I never met, but… maybe you deserved better? Just sayin’.”
“You said there was… wine?”
Callie turned and poured two glasses of red wine. She handed Jane one and took one herself. She raised her glass. “To people who see what we need,” she said slowly, “and don’t make a big deal of helping us. People like you and me, just doing our jobs. People like Supergirl, Alex, Winn, Holtzy, Lena. Cheers.”
And Jane Hamilton felt lost and unmoored but at the very least she did know how to toast people she respected. “Cheers.”
Chapter 56: Embracing Our Limitations, Part 2
Notes:
Moving through 2020
Chapter Text
As May melted into June, Lena finally hit a wall. All spring, she had kept inventing and tweaking, prototyping and testing, first the miniaturized ventilator (which had mostly worked, at least for children), then the miniaturized black body field generator (which still couldn’t shut down the alien weapons in large numbers), then a hypersonic resonator (which had been meant to use sound outside the range of human hearing to sanitize surfaces but had ended up causing all the dogs in her neighborhood to bark crazily, including Krypto, and had the added weird side effect of causing Krypto’s hair to grow long). That, Lena benched. The PPE and test kit projects in collaboration with LordTech had gone well, so finally, National City hospitals, clinics and nursing homes were among the best prepared in the nation.
And that was a very good thing, because worldwide in the month of June the number of cases went from seven million, to eight, to nine, to ten. By mid-July, it had reached fifteen million. All over the US, people were gathering to protest police brutality, and the National Guard were using tear gas on peaceful protesters until a US District Court put a stop to that nonsense.
Kara, Superman, Captain America, Batwoman, the Flash and Arrow were trying to be everywhere at once and had made a series of Public Service Announcement videos, separately and together, in several different languages, encouraging social distancing and wearing masks. At one point Lena had been invited to a Zoom conference by Tony Stark, as the biggest tech CEOs put their heads together to manage a pandemic that the president was largely ignoring. At least he wasn’t calling it a hoax anymore, though he kept calling it the “China virus,” ignoring the violence such language was causing to Asians and Asian Americans across the country.
One morning when Lena went in to LCorp to drop off some new designs, Jess was sitting at the front desk of the lobby while a security guard taped up a cut on her forehead from someone on the street throwing a bottle at her. Lena was appalled, but she couldn’t manage to feel surprised. That was just how hatred and division worked.
///
Vasquez was on the night shift when the DEO’s alarms went off. Winn’s algorithm to detect a large discharge of plasma weapons lit up the screens, and Vasquez called in Supergirl, gave her the coordinates, and waited impatiently for her report.
Over the coms, she heard an enormous explosion and the sound of Supergirl’s laser eyes, and then a series of more, smaller explosions.
“Supergirl! Report!”
“Need backup! National City General Mail Facility! It’s under attack!”
Vasquez sent Finn and Holtzman and a team in a Blackhawk. “Finn, you are only flying! You are not to engage!”
“Copy that, Ma’am!” replied Finn.
He had been back on duty by February, half-time at first, and full-time since May, but he still got out of breath if he had to run and Dr. Hamilton had only cleared him for “light duty,” but they were still running with a skeleton crew due to how many agents were still out sick or still very slowly recovering. Alex and Vasquez had managed to go months without getting sick, but they never saw each other anymore, beyond hellos when they traded the watch at sunrise and sunset. It was a common story at the DEO, the hospitals, and, from what Lena had texted her, also at companies tasked with producing pandemic-related gear.
“We’re headed back,” reported Finn. “We have two prisoners, but it looks like Supergirl has solar flared. I had to go help Holtzman drag her onto the helo, and we both took some fire. The NCPD is just now arriving. Looks like Sawyer and Reynolds. We’ll be wheels-down in five. Over.”
“Copy that, Finn.” She swore. Exhausted people, either supers overworking or regular agents doing what needed to be done, made mistakes. Vasquez loathed avoidable mistakes. But she wasn’t entirely convinced the mistakes these days were avoidable.
Sure, they had been actively recruiting for the DEO all year, but training took time. Training took personnel who then couldn’t be used in the field. And although Lillian Luthor giving up the heads and assets of Cadmus had meant that Cadmus had been downgraded as a threat, the constant protests and counterprotests required Vasquez to send out agents, who—unlike the National Guard or the NCPD—had the knowledge and means to secure marauding aliens or protect nonviolent aliens and, as the saying went, the wisdom to know the difference.
“Agent Finn, when you arrive, type up your mission report and then meet me in the medbay sunlamp room.”
“Copy that, Assistant Director.”
///
Dr. Hamilton directed the agents to lay Supergirl on the sunlamp bed, dialed the brightness up to eleven and sat beside the bed, exhausted. This was her first week back on a full-time schedule after months of recovery and weeks of part-time work. She felt like she should be stronger, but she was wrecked. Her husband’s death, so far away and alone, had hit her hard. Lately small things would make her feel like crying in the middle of her work-day—or in this case night—like seeing Supergirl look vulnerable and weak. She fought it, of course. She hadn’t gotten through medical school by getting teary-eyed under stress.
When Agent Vasquez came striding in, her frown shifted from genuine annoyance to the one that Hamilton thought of privately as “if I don’t see my agents start to break down, they’ll stop.” And to be fair, it pretty much worked. Was that what leadership was?
“Doc, how is she?”
“Not a total flare, I’d say, since there’s no bleeding. The agents said one of the plasma bombs went off as they were trying to contain the aliens and she shielded them with her cape and then said, ‘Aw, shit!’ and collapsed. Even she’s got her limits.”
“She’s not the only one. I’ve called J’onn in to take over for Alex and me for a few days. We’ve both been running on fumes since…” She looked vaguely confused and then frowned again. “What day is it?”
“You got me. I lost track sometime around Memorial Day.”
Agent Finn ambled in. “Doc. Ma’am. You wanted to see me?”
“A mail facility? Is that what Supergirl said?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s the big National City sorting and distribution center, apparently, where they have those enormous sorting machines. Well, I guess, had them. Now there are these enormous piles of melted metal and plastic and God knows what else. I had heard the Postmaster General was quietly getting rid of machines here and there to maybe mess with the upcoming election, but this is way beyond that. Pretty sure that building is going to be condemned, and it apparently serves the whole city.”
Vasquez stared. “And you know this how?”
Finn shrugged. “Agent Jordan’s nephew is a stamp collector and he’s the cool uncle who decided to learn everything he could…”
“Convenient,” sighed Vasquez. She rubbed her eyes. “So, the weapons were alien. Were the assailants?”
“We caught one K’Hund. It blocked us while the smaller ones got away.”
“Species?”
“Two of them were green. That’s all I saw once I jumped down to help Holtzy with Supergirl.”
“Right. Of course. Green. Lovely. Okay, well, finish out your shift and get your head down in the barracks. It’s probably going to be all hands on deck tomorrow.”
“Ma’am? But we—”
“Don’t have enough hands? I’m aware. No help for it. Tampering with the US mail and tampering with the election are pretty serious crimes. We have absolutely got to get on top of this. Thank you, Agent Finn. You’re dismissed.”
“Ma’am.” He left.
Vasquez swayed on her feet. Dr. Hamilton put a hand out to steady her. “Um, Assistant Director, you might want to take your own advice. You don’t look like you’ve been getting nearly enough sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t make me give you a medical warning. Put somebody else in charge for the last few hours of your watch and go crash in the barracks. If they need you, they’ll know where to find you.”
“It’s just I keep feeling like I’ve forgotten something…”
“Exactly. Get some sleep. Come back fresh in a few hours. Don’t make me make it an order, ma’am.”
“Fine, fine. I’m going!”
And she left. Dr. Hamilton went to find another doctor to put in charge of the medbay. Then she was going to crash in an on-call room and take her own advice.
///
Veronica Sinclair looked sallow in bright orange. She knew that about herself. And for that reason, she was grateful that the bathroom mirrors at the Montecito Max Women’s Prison were small, just big enough for the women to efficiently brush their teeth. Well, Veronica also had excellent teeth, so she appreciated the touch. Just because she was two years into a ten- to twenty-year prison sentence didn’t mean she should just let herself go, after all. And, as today, when she was preparing to meet with her lawyers, she liked to make an extra effort, so she also flossed fastidiously. She had gained a few pounds on the horrid prison food, which was regrettable but unavoidable. The only way she was likely to get back into shape with her very fine entrepreneurial assets would be to get out of this place in a lot less than ten or twenty. Hence the morning meeting. She put on her disposable blue mask (which really clashed with the orange jumpsuit) and straightened her spine.
Deb, the prison guard, six foot two if she was an inch, was the one the warden always entrusted Veronica to; for some reason he was convinced that the diminutive criminal would escape any of the guards who were less… hefty.
And that made Veronica smirk into the mirror. Deb was like her and had already been made acquainted with Veronica’s assets. Still, she always made a point to appear intimidated whenever the two of them were marching across the grounds to the meeting rooms. It didn’t pay to get complacent.
In the meeting room were Ross, Taylor and… a new guy. Caitlin Ross and B. Madison Taylor were law partners for a very well-funded law firm downtown. And Veronica could judge just how well-funded they were from their clothes and shoes. But this new fellow was wearing bespoke. Hm. That’s interesting…
“Ms. Sinclair,” said Taylor, fiddling with his black mask in one hand and stroking his greying beard nervously with the other. That surprised her. Usually, he exuded confidence. “I know you’ve been concerned about the uptick in Covid infections here. An opportunity has come to our attention.” He shuffled the papers on the table in front of him.
Ross, whose floral mask sat on the table in front of her, looked impatient. “As I’m sure you know, Ms. Sinclair. A number of judges have been promoted in the last few years, judges who have been less tainted by the pro-alien propaganda of the previous administration.”
Veronica raised a single, perfect eyebrow. “I’m intrigued. Go on.”
She said, “I’d like to introduce you to Gavin Park, an old friend of ours from Yale Law.”
The masked Asian-American man extended his hand and said, “Ms. Sinclair, a pleasure. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“From my lawyers? Isn’t that a breach of confidentiality?”
“Not from them, no. At least not initially. You came to the attention of one of my clients recently, someone who thought that the severity of your sentence far surpassed the severity of your crimes. Someone who thought you had… style.”
“Both true,” she said.
“Mm. Yes. Well, one of these judges recently found a loophole for my client, who suggested I prepare a brief to get similar reconsideration of your case. When I looked at the court record, I immediately recognized my friends doing your representation and reached out.”
Taylor said, “We were able to shield many of your business partners during the trial. That is just good business practice. However, they are all still at large and profiting from their partnership with you, which seems… unfair, a lack of justice, if you will. The information that you confided to us is still… viable. We were wondering if you would be willing to consider a plea deal to take time off your sentence.”
“You want me to rat out my old business partners.”
Ross said, “We were thinking that, after having had some time to reconsider your past choices, you might be feeling remorse for the victims of your crimes and you might want to ensure that similar such citizens are not taken advantage of in the future.”
“Remorse. Yes, I have been feeling remorse of late. Do you have the names with you?”
Taylor passed her a folder and a red pen. Ross almost smiled. Park nodded, appreciatively.
Veronica made a series of checkmarks and slid the page back across the table. “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Park.”
Even behind his mask, Veronica could tell that he was blushing, and she smiled. Even after months in prison, she still had what it took.
///
Jane Hamilton woke up in the DEO women’s barracks in the middle of the night, groggy and disoriented, but she felt like it was imperative that she get up and get back to the medbay. Yawning hugely as she tried to put on her white coat over her wrinkled scrubs and kept missing the second arm, she stumbled to the elevator that would take her up ten flights. It took her two stabs to get the right floor button.
Something was tapping against the inside of her skull like a miner trapped in a shaft, tapping SOS for help. Was it something Vasquez had said? Or Finn?
When she reached her office door and was fumbling with her keyring, her Assistant Director, Jonah Ewing, an African American woman, daughter of doctors who had named her for Jonah Salk, walked by her carrying a cup of coffee and stopped.
“Whoa,” she said. “Jane, I think you need this more than I do. What are you doing up at the ass-end of the night shift if you don’t have to be?”
Normally, Hamilton would not have accepted a subordinate’s coffee cup, particularly in a pandemic, but she just couldn’t get her mind and body to work together. She traded her keys for the cup and gulped down some scalding hot coffee with too little cream while Jonah unlocked her office door.
“I’m having thoughts,” complained Hamilton, throwing herself into her desk chair and spilling coffee down the front of her coat.
“Um, and that’s good, right?” asked Jonah as she scooped up some tissues out of the box on her boss’s desk and handed them to her.
“It’s like I have the answer to something, maybe more than one answer, but I don’t know what the question is.”
“Well, okay. What’s the answer?”
“The aliens. From the post office. Didn’t they say that they had caught two of them?”
“Yeah, I don’t follow that stuff if they pass Go and head directly to the containment cells. If I don’t need to stitch them up, I don’t pay any attention. Why does it matter?”
Hamilton paused in wiping her lab coat off. “Honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
///
After being let out of the DEO medbay and sent home, Winn spent way too much time thinking about his fever dreams. And he had way too much time to spend, given how long he had been seriously ill and how weak he was, even just physically, after having been in that containment cell for the better part of a month. Dr. Hamilton had said she would give him three months off, with physical therapy three times a week, and then would reconsider.
And when she reconsidered, she gave him another three months. And Winn Schott, Jr. had a busy and creative mind, an endless thirst for knowledge and a prodigious enthusiasm for video games. He had a desk full of plans he had come up with for things to prototype, test and build with Holtzy or with Lena or with Kate from LCorp. What he did not have was energy.
And six months of bubbling ideas and no energy to pursue them was torture.
So, yes, he frequently found himself daydreaming about being a riverboat gambler, so he taught himself Texas Hold’em.
And he found himself daydreaming about Sheriff James Olsen, in his cowboy hat and spurs, so he finally let himself watch Brokeback Mountain.
And he daydreamed about the little clapboard church in the dusty town that surrounded him and James on their wedding day.
And that’s when he dug through his file folders and papers strewn across his ersatz dining room table to find the notes he had made with Jess and Kara about the island venue for Kara and Lena’s wedding. He looked at their long wedding list and checked on his laptop for what California was doing about large gatherings.
Okay, so, not this summer. Maybe next spring?
Maybe, when they had a vaccine, and he knew at least two were looking promising, and maybe if they got open-sided tents, they could have the reception outdoors…
There was no way a wedding this big was going to happen in the next year. But if Kara and Lena could see their way to shortening the wedding list, then fewer people, probably some of them in pods, as the DEO was managing, and then the tables could be socially distanced…
Winn remembered Dr. Hamilton commenting on Lena’s resilience in the face of torture. She’d said, “A certain kind of mind can never truly be imprisoned, Kara.”
He felt a little bit like that.
Not every day, and not for long periods of time, and not without three-hour naps in between bouts of productivity.
But a little bit. Yes.
Chapter 57: Limiting Our Expectations
Chapter Text
Sometimes when she was between projects at the DEO, Jillian Holtzman would twirl around on her office chair in her small lab, munching on Twizzlers and thinking about her life.
She didn’t miss the poltergeists, though she had thought she might. She had certainly enjoyed taking out the Marshmallow Man in Times Square that time, at the beginning of their celebrity. She and Erin and Abby and Patty had kicked some righteous ass that night and made a shiny nickel off not only getting more extermination gigs but also licensing their images for action figures and toys based on the made-over hearse and all the different plasma rifles (and that had spurred Holtzy’s creativity to make more of them, smaller hand-held, larger cannons, etc.).
But on a sunny Tuesday in late March a few years back, her financial advisor had called her gleefully to tell her that, short of a major stock market crash, she could probably live to be one hundred and fund both her research and a much more exciting lifestyle than she had ever bothered to enjoy. And she had smiled and nodded and not given it much thought.
But then a week and a half later, on, hah! April Fool’s Day, the gang was called down to one of those defunct parts of the New York subway where homeless people lived in small communities, underground. And they were being haunted. And the gang had gone down with all of their tech and all of their chick bravado (bravada?) and gotten ready to take out what they expected to be one or two handfuls of mid-level revenant goopies.
Yeah, no.
In retrospect, Holtzy blamed herself. She had gotten careless, and arrogant and worse than that, patriarchal. She had assumed that size mattered.
So when an army of ectoplasm rats had swarmed over the community, over the Ghostbusters, over the subway staff, biting and haunting and in some cases killing—
The Ghostbusters had been lucky. Their suits had protected them. But none of them were the same after that. Holtzy had been the first to go, and she hadn’t really known what to do, but then Superman of all people had come and recruited her for the DEO. And here she was, protecting what she already knew was a fairly weird world from the much weirder world, well, worlds, beyond the stars.
And she enjoyed this new job, and the safety it gave her mostly only working in R&D, rarely going out into the field, although she had trained for that too, and occasionally it did come up, especially when as now they were short-staffed or when her expertise was needed.
She loved working with Winn, loved how his quirky mind spun through options and threw out crazy ideas. She loved visiting his lab when he was working with Lena so she could low-key flirt with the Luthor, more to keep in practice than anything.
And then Jess had… sat down on the floor at Kara’s place that one game night, and something completely unusual, maybe impossible, had happened. It was like that click when the last bit of a device fitted into place, and you know you were done, you had achieved it. Whatever it was.
The last six months had been hard. Holtzy didn’t mind working alone. At least then she didn’t have to wait for people to catch up with her thinking. But Jess was…
And Holtzy didn’t really know how to finish that sentence, but she knew she missed her.
///
After the night when Cat had… put her up for the night, Lillian had managed to arrange a private jet back to Metropolis, where her parole officer had told her to stay until further notice. But the beautiful thing about the Luthor mansion, that old Gothic pile just on the outskirts of the city, where the wealthy suburbs turned into acres of forests and meadows, quite a few of which her family owned, was that living there until further notice did not necessarily mean being on her best behavior, per se, and certainly didn’t necessarily preclude…
Well, she had always thought of it as Getting Work Done. But she realized that Lena and her friends, possibly including Cat, would probably think of it rather as shenanigans.
Potayto, potahto.
///
Before the incident with the bats in Gotham Park, the name Hamilton Dynamics had not been on Pill’s radar. If she had been asked, she would have hazarded a guess that they build munitions maybe? She didn’t think of them as biotech in any way. But when one of her former colleagues from National City had emailed her questions about the company, she had done some research and, in the process, she had heard about a job there, which she then applied for.
She got the interview. She didn’t get the job. Oh, well. It was worth a shot. Wayne Enterprises wasn’t hiring. LordTech was hiring, but she knew from old school friends that it was not a woman-friendly company, so she decided to wait on that until she was desperate. She still had a few months of unemployment to live on while she sent out resumes and cover letters hand over fist. She even sent one to the company that used to be LuthorCorp, and she had never expected to do that, but apparently the place had changed since Lex had been given, what was it? Thirty-seven consecutive life sentences for the massive bombing spree he had conducted in Metropolis a few years back. The new CEO was a woman, which Pill thought was hopeful as she popped her letter in the mail and hoped to get an interview.
Surprisingly, when the email came, it seemed enthusiastic, saying that it sounded like her skillset would help with some recent projects on innovative medicines. Would tomorrow work for an interview?
Pill had tried to put her skirt suit on, but her pandemic belly got in the way. Panicked, she called an old friend whose weight had always been a roller coaster and who had at least three different-sized wardrobes because of it. She had lent Pill a suit and blouse and she flew to LCorp in National City to interview with the HR person.
An hour later, she was walking out completely dazed, with paperwork in her briefcase for her new job and one week to move everything she owned back to National City. Maybe 2020 wasn’t just a bastard year after all.
///
Maggie stood in the Science Department’s ladies room scrubbing her hands relentlessly while humming the tune from Gentleman Jack, which was conveniently long enough for the task.
In Shibden Hall, she had them all
The fairer sex fell under her spell
Ever so fine, won’t toe the line
Handsome Jack seduced them well
Physically, Maggie was fine. Mentally and emotionally, she was exhausted. But that was the job, regardless of an immense public health crisis, regardless of her own feelings when she had to talk to the families of the victims of senseless domestic terrorist acts. They always asked why, but Maggie knew there was no real answer. Apparently, Vasquez taught her rookies that people in pain liked to spread it around, and yes, she had seen her fair share of that over the years. But she was pretty sure she had also seen evil. The clinic bombing felt like that.
Their husbands are coming
You’d better start running
The knives are out
For Gentleman Jack
Sighing, Maggie dried her hands fastidiously and returned to the old squad room her task force had taken over. All the suspected domestic terrorist events had been prioritized over every other crime in National City, by order of the mayor, so the captain had sent them up here on the sixth floor. It was a larger room than six people needed, but it meant that they could more easily socially distance, which gave them a better chance of not infecting each other and that, the captain had reasoned, meant that they would be able to stay on the job until the job was done. And they could bring in experts to help them out who would also feel safe.
On that particular Tuesday, the city’s coroner had joined them in the conference room on the side overlooking the parking lot. The blonde was dressed quite fashionably in a floral dress and little blazer and four-I-fuck-you-not-inch heels. And who would wear something like that voluntarily? Reynold’s flickered an eye at Maggie, knowing exactly what she was thinking. Joe was trying to sniff without letting the doctor see it.
“Dr. Isles, good to see you again,” said Maggie. “Tell me you have good news.”
The woman took three file folders out of her briefcase (Italian leather? Probably). “Detectives, thank you for agreeing to see me. Yes, I think we have a lead, and we should have had it several weeks ago, but my colleague who has been working on this is located in India, and I think you know about the unrest going on there and the internet outages. Finally, he simply wrote me a letter, but even that took longer than it should have to get here.”
Maggie nodded encouragingly.
“It’s the accelerant in the plumbing in Alien Alley. At first, we were simply looking at the restaurants as the ground zero for that particular mass murder, with the chef and waiters as potential targets, and the local residents as accidental casualties, in part because of the NCFD’s report about the blast radius at Jupiter’s Feast and the lack of a V pattern in the burns on the floor.”
Detective Crowe said, “Isn’t that the same pattern they saw when that was used in Gotham?”
“Precisely. Another colleague was in National City this week having come from Gotham to help me look at the poisoning, and his husband is GCFD. I showed him the pictures we had, and he immediately called his department. The pictures that our Fire Department used to support their argument about our fire were lifted from Gotham. I called a friend of a friend to get access to Saturnalia, which is the only one of the five that has not yet been completely gutted because of an insurance mishap and my friend’s husband went in to look, and it looks nothing like these pictures.”
“So wait,” said Reynold, “if you were looking into the deaths, not the arson itself…”
“To the best of my knowledge, no one has previously died by ingesting this chemical in the United States. But people have been burned by it. My Gotham peer has seen that, and I called him in so he could tell me if what I was seeing was the norm. It was not.”
They stared.
“Accidental burning has patterns. We saw three different patterns on the two aliens and one human burned at Jupiter’s Feast. The alien B’Nar was quite likely pushed into the heart of the fire. The chef tried to pull him out before Supergirl removed him from the burning building. Steve, the human, was out back and appeared to have experienced splashback. We think based on that evidence that he might have handled the liquid accelerant.”
“So he was the arsonist?” asked Professor Klaus.
“He might have been an arsonist. But what was more unusual was the renters in the building nearby.” She opened another folder. “Our initial assumption was that the water was running in their plumbing and they accidentally ingested it, say through ice cubes or a glass of water or while brushing their teeth. That was the pattern that my colleague in India had seen when there was a tragic infrastructure catastrophe about a year ago.”
“That seems reasonable,” said Reynolds doubtfully.
“Mm. You’d think so. But when was the last time you brushed your teeth with twenty-seven ounces of water?”
Maggie swore. “All of them?”
“Two had twenty-seven, one had twenty-three. Another only had eighteen, but was a smaller, slighter species.”
Maggie shook her head, trying to wrap her head around the evil people got up to, regardless of their species. “And why do I imagine that your third folder there has even less good news?”
Isles gave her a sad smile. “Well, we have worked together for a few years, Detective.” She opened the last folder and pulled out the photo of the charred driver of the oil tanker that had hit the school bus. “We are still working to ID this man, but his stomach—what was left of it—contained trace residue of a deadly cocktail I can only describe as a roofie with a trace of this accelerant. I believe these two attacks are related.”
Reynolds turned to Joe. “Guess you were wrong about looking at them separately.”
Joe looked uncomfortable. “Yes. Also, no. Fourian hero mother is aunt of fire fighter who broke legs in Saturnalia. But clinic explosives retrieved from river appear Cadmus in origin.”
Maggie’s eyebrows rose. “And when were you going to mention this?”
Joe shrugged. “Just learned of collateral descendant, is that right word? Last night, just before returning home. Got email from… FBI… this morning with donut.”
He nodded to Detective Crowe, who said, “I got in at 8:30, boss, right before you called this meeting.”
“Fair enough. Thank you, Dr. Isles. This is disconcerting, but not, I suppose a huge surprise.”
Carefully, the coroner said, “Um, but doesn’t this suggest that the Fire Chief…”
“Oh, he’s on my radar,” said Maggie. “If you happen to find a few more coffin nails, be sure to let me know.”
“Absolutely, Detective Sawyer.” She nodded to the task force. “Detectives.”
Reynolds stood as she got up and left, then sat down again. “So now what?”
Maggie thought for a moment, then said, “Now, I go liaise with the feds. Joe, can you confirm the Cadmus connection? Klaus, find out more about the species of the poisoned aliens. What can you tell us about geo- or I don’t know astropolitics involved? Do they have any blood enemies who might be running around National City, like the Kryptonians and Daxamites? We didn’t really look at things related to motive when we thought this was accidental, but now it’s different. Crowe, Reynolds, go over the interviews with a fine-tooth comb, all three cases and see if anything anybody says looks different in light of this news.”
They ambled out, but Joe came back in a minute later with a Bavarian cream donut on a paper plate. “Um, Maggie smell like blood sugar low.”
“Thanks, Joe.”
“All the time.”
And Maggie thought, anytime. Right yes. English was hard.
///
Feeling better than she had in a long time, Pill decided to take herself out to lunch before she headed back to the airport. She had the time. She saw a little café a block from LCorp, called Noonan’s. The little chalkboard outside advertised a tomato, mozzarella and arugula sandwich on an asiago bagel that sounded heavenly.
As she was waiting in a socially distanced line to order, she saw a masked blonde wave at her from a table. “Pam? Is that you?”
The blonde jumped up and Pam recognized those blue eyes anywhere, though she hadn’t seen them in a few years. “Chaya? Are you in National City now?”
“The last three years, give or take. I work for LCorp.”
“Really? No way. I just got offered a job there, in R&D!”
“No kidding, that’s fantastic. And did they tell you about the pension and benefits? This is the first job I’ve had that has actually covered dental!”
Pill reached the front of the line and placed her order. When she turned back, Chaya was digging into her little purse to pull out a cardcase.
“Here, this is my number and email. Let me know when you could come by and catch up! Are you doing anything this weekend?”
“Oh, I’m actually living in Gotham, so I’m going to have to pack up and move back here. I can’t believe having to move in a pandemic.”
“Well, how about this. When you know where and when, shoot me a text and I will gather the boys, and if you provide pizza, we can totally unload your truck or whatever.”
“Oh, well that would be nice!”
“Okay, well, see you! This is so exciting, but I’ve got to run back to work.”
And she was gone like a whirlwind, just like back in high school. And once again, Pill thought, 2020 was definitely looking up.
Chapter 58: Beyond Our Expectations
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Lena dreamed she was lounging in the sun on Mykonos, the little Greek island where Lionel had sometimes brought them for Christmas vacation when he tired of Metropolis winters. The sun was shining down on her bare skin and the sea was bluer than Supergirl’s eyes. She felt the superhero’s warm hand on her bare breast and shuddered, waking from her dream as the aftershocks of her last orgasm rippled through her and she remembered what had transpired after dinner.
Lena smirked. So much appreciation for such a simple recipe, Hungarian goulash, but that was Kara, she supposed. For Kara, Rule Number One was food=love. Much, much easier to be a Danvers than a Luthor. Lena had been twelve when Lex had taught her what he called Moscow Rules:
1. Assume nothing.
2. Never go against your gut.
3. Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
4. Do not look back; you are never completely alone.
5. Go with the flow, blend in.
6. Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
7. Lull them into a sense of complacency.
8. Do not harass the opposition.
9. Pick the time and place for action.
10. Keep your options open.
Living with Lillian Luthor, those rules had made Lena’s teenage years much more manageable than she imagined they might have been otherwise. The thing she had learned from Veronica Sinclair in boarding school, however, was simpler and more useful: once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern.
This was true about a lot of things. However, in her life as a Luthor she had learned to skip the first step. So, for example, the first time she had found herself being weighed down by a blissfully sleepy, solid, heavy Kryptonian and suddenly really, really needing to pee, she had thought, what an unlucky coincidence. The second time she told herself to always go to the bathroom immediately after sex and any time she found herself awake and unanchored in the middle of the night. It had served her well.
She glanced at the clock: 5:59. Kara wouldn’t wake for another half hour at least, when the sun started to rise. But Lena knew that she herself wasn’t going to get any more sleep, so she peeled Kara’s hand off her, reluctantly, and went and showered, humming a song she had hear Kara whistling the night before as she had sat at the kitchen island typing on her laptop while Lena cooked. The story had been about the alien attack on the postal distribution center, but Kara was having trouble not making it sound like an alien plot to derail the American election. Since the Daxamite invasion, readers were overly sensitive to such suggestions.
“It’s like simply having ‘alien’ in a sentence about a crime already finds them guilty in the court of public opinion,” she had grumbled.
Reaching for the sour cream, Lena had said, “What? You mean like having ‘black man’ does? Why do you even need to mention their species at all? Can’t you simply say ‘individuals’?”
Kara beamed. “Lena you’re brilliant!”
Lena stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a dark green bathsheet and walked barefoot back into her dark bedroom. She smiled at Kara, lying in their bed in the light of the blue-lit numbers of their new clock (Kara had accidentally smashed the old one with the red lights a few days back when the alarm went off; Lena had a stack of clocks in her closet for just such eventualities). She remembered a girls’ night in college when she had said she wanted to find a woman with buns of steel. Well, now. She slid her eyes over the dimly lit perfect ass of her alien girlfriend—
Fiancee? Fiancee.
Another small shudder rippled between her legs. Better get dressed or she was never getting to work.
///
Ted checked the towncar’s chassis for bombs, ran the miniature K-detector over the car, but it didn’t make a sound. He didn’t expect it to, of course, but it was part of his morning checklist. He got into the car and flipped the switch on the GPS-enabled random route assigner that Jess Huang and her ex-boyfriend from the DEO had designed and built for him to beta-test for them. Well, that’s what they said. He really didn’t believe that the DEO needed such a thing, but he recognized its usefulness for Lena Luthor, and quietly approved of their attention to her safety.
He drove through the theater district, nodding at the new memorial park at the intersection between Alien Alley and Chinatown. Very tasteful: an Asian style gate (torii, in Japanese, Ms. Luthor had told him) built from the rubble of the burnt-down restaurants. Apparently, these gates were set at the entrance to Shinto shrines in Japan, as a sign of the shift from the mundane to the sacred. He liked that. People forgot about the sacred these days.
He glided to a stop outside Lena’s condo and was opening the back door for her just as she stepped out from the lobby at her usual fast pace. They had gotten their transfer points down to five seconds, three if Lena was in Thinking Mode, as he thought of it. It wasn’t impossible for a waiting sniper to squeeze off a kill shot in five seconds, but Ted and Lena weren’t going to make it easy for them.
He hit the route assigner and shot out of her neighborhood. Through the open partition between them, he could hear her humming and he grinned. “Oh, do you like that movie, ma’am?”
“Hm? What movie, Ted?”
“Greatest Showman, about P.T. Barnum. Lovely songs, though it made him out to be a much better person than he was in real life. Apparently, he was a bit of a—” He faltered.
Lena chuckled. “The word I suspect you’re looking for is ‘sumbitch,’”
“Er, yes, ma’am.” In his rearview mirror, he could see her eyes crinkle, though her navy blue paisley mask hid her sparkling smile. He could see her tapping away at her tablet, so he got on with driving her safely to work. Probably she was inventing some brilliant gadget, he thought. What a woman.
///
Lena hurried from the underground parking garage to her personal elevator, which was guarded 24/7 by a set of very particular security personnel who had been vetted by Jess and her security team over the years, and then, more recently, by Agent Vasquez because, as she had told Lena, “If anything ever happened to you or Alex, Kara would go full-on supervillain, especially since your engagement. We can’t take any chances.”
Lena checked her Cartier watch: 7:17. She had plenty of time. She pushed the down button. She had received the long-awaited email from Jess (“It’s here”) the evening before on her ride home with Ted (the evening’s route taking them through the city’s medical area, with NCGH on one end, St. Olaf’s in the middle, and the Luthor Children’s Hospital on the other end. (And that reminded her to check on how the renovations at the Alien Clinic were going.)
She stepped out of the elevator and went directly to her lab. In the back corner, she hit a button on her tablet and a small sigh like a vacuum letting go came from behind the aerial photo of a castle in some high green mountains. Lena pulled it down to reveal the smaller of the lab’s two safes. She tapped the hexadecimal password and then placed her palm on the sensor and the door clicked open. She then typed in another password and opened the door. Aside from a few folders and red notebooks on one side and another pile of folders and green notebooks on the other, there were two boxes, one small on top of another about the size of a shoebox. She had been expecting the small box, but thought she’d have to wait a few more weeks for the other. Excellent. So many things were starting again. So many things to set in motion. She grinned, closed the door and replaced the photo, locking it in place from her tablet. Then she returned to her lab, humming the song she couldn’t get out of her head. It was going to be a good day.
///
Claire Temperance Darrow had looked at the email from Ms. Luthor’s secretary the day before on her helicopter trip from Metropolis. This was… different. Of course, after that horrid business with Gideon Stott, she thought perhaps she couldn’t be surprised. And since she was now the senior board member, she would probably be expected to back Lena’s play and get the rest of the board members, well, on board with the plan. Fine.
She took the elevator up to the thirty-eighth floor of the National City headquarters of LCorp, stepping into the room and as always appreciating the magnificent view. Lena and Ms. Huang were there ahead of her, and from the spread of papers between them, it looked like they might have been there for a while, even though it was only 8:41.
Lena smiled at Claire and reached for a cloth mask. “Good to see you, Ms. Darrow, as always very prompt.”
“Yes, ma’am. That is one of your values I also cling to in uncertain times. I may not be able to control many things these days, but by God, I can at least be on time.”
Lena’s secretary nodded appreciatively.
Lena asked, “And did you get the memo?”
“I did. At first, I thought it seemed like an extreme measure, but we are living in extreme times, so I will totally support you on this.”
“Excellent."
"So I should report to LCorp Security after this meeting?”
“No, in fact. You’ll stay here. There is a small meeting room across the hall, the security consultants we’ve contracted with are setting up over there as we speak.”
More of the board started to arrive and Lena and Jess put their masks on and cleaned up the pile of papers. The board sat around the room in order of seniority, with Clair immediately to Lena’s right, with Ms. Huang to Lena’s left. It wasn’t how Lionel, Lillian or Lex had ever set it up; their assistant was at the other end of the table if they had been in the room at all. But this was Lena, and unlike the rest of her family, she had twice been abducted and once tortured by her most senior board member, just in the last four years. If she wanted her assistant there as a form of insulation, Claire Darrow couldn’t blame her.
“Thank you all for coming,” Lena began.
The man to Jess’s left, Wilson, the head of LCorp in Gotham, snapped, “What is this nonsense about a lie detector test?”
“Yes, Mr. Wilson, thank you for getting right to the point. Yes, after a lengthy consultation with our partners at Crow’s Security, we are instituting some sweeping measures to ameliorate serious gaps in LCorp security. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you about my most recent abduction at the behest of Mr. Stott last fall, or of Mr. Cox a few years back? I find such events tiresome and totally avoidable.”
Wilson muttered, “Are you insinuating…?”
Lena cocked her head. “Do finish your sentence, Mr. Wilson. Am I insinuating what?”
“Well, that anyone here has some nefarious plan to abduct you again? Cox was a Lex man. Stott was apparently insane.”
“Still, a pattern is a pattern. Have you ever experienced Palestinian hanging? No? Good for you. I don’t recommend it.” She shrugged as if at the memory, but even Claire saw that the move drew the men’s eyes to her cleavage, which was modest of course, but still.
Claire said, “Gentlemen, Mrs. Aldrich, Ms. Kim. I think what Ms. Luthor is asking is entirely reasonable. If you don’t want to look at it from her personal perspective, I would invite you to consider what happens to LCorp stocks when her life is endangered. They tank. Now, if you are okay with that, I would want to know why. Because Stott took a page out of Cox’s book and shorted LCorp stock right before the abduction, bought low during it, and made a pretty penny before the unknown hacker drained his accounts.” She looked pointedly at each of her fellow board members one at a time before turning back to Lena. “I volunteer to go first, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Claire. Okay, so we have some new initiatives that will begin at the start of the third quarter, and I want to get everyone up to speed now so you can use the coming weeks to prepare your sites…”
Claire Darrow watched Lena’s dazzling green eyes sparkle above her mask. Claire had been married for forty years, had two sons and a daughter just out of college and was straight as the proverbial arrow. But damn. She’d follow Lena Luthor to the gates of hell. In high heels.
///
Winn ambled from the command center down to his lab. It was so frustrating how everything took him so long to do, even just walking, and took an outsized toll on his reserves of energy. He had read a thread on his Facebook page about how invisible disabilities often meant that a person might have a limited amount of energy for daily activities, and you could visualize it with a limited number of spoons that stood for available units of energy. If you started out with eight spoons, and each activity you did took one spoon, when you got to the end of the day, you had to plan much more carefully: if you were hungry, eating would take up a spoon, but if you had to cook, by the time the meal was ready, you would be too tired to eat, because cooking would take up that energy.
In 2019, Winn had been a cutlery box of energy. These days, on a good day, he had maybe a dozen spoons—and that was after six months of recovering at home doing nothing except eating, sleeping, playing poker or video games against himself, or maybe thinking about Kara and Lena’s wedding.
Today, he had carefully reserved his energy because he had called Lena and asked her to come by his lab. He had been hearing from Kara about Lena’s practically manic inventing, and he had experienced that himself, and just hearing about it or thinking about it was half a spoon right there.
Then he remembered the TV animated show “The Tick” and how the Tick had decided that he needed a war cry and he had chosen, “Spoon!” That made so much more sense now than it had when he was a little kid in the 90s. Suffering brought wisdom. Who knew?
When he reached the lab, Holtzy was there, taking apart one of the plasma rifles the DEO had confiscated from the aliens who had attacked the postal facility. She worked methodically, looking at each part, measuring it, noting it on a list on one piece of paper and drawing it on another. Winn had complained about all the paper they were generating and how doing things on the computer would be faster and more efficient, but Agent Susan “Can’t Hack Paper” Vasquez had given him a three-spoon lecture on the necessity to keep the schematics for these things in a secure location, and he had backed down, more out of exhaustion than because he agreed with her.
Although he did. Of course. But still.
Luckily, he and Holtzman had come to a lab-sharing détente: when one was busy, the other one mostly ignored them and got on with their own work, trying hard to not interfere with each other.
So he sat on his lab stool and stared at the plan for the miniaturized black body field generator, sighing lightly. The large version was built of fairly heavy materials, and so it was solid and could absorb the mechanical energy it produced without affecting its efficiency, but it was heavy and difficult to move between venues. When he had made a prototype that was half as big, it had lost power in part due to the lighter materials, well, rattling.
“Winn!”
Winn jumped and yelped like a girl. He whirled around to see Lena in a maroon pencil skirt and blazer with a black satin blouse. His heart hammered in his chest, but she did seem happy to see him. Her mask was a paisley in the same maroon color.
“Oh, Lena! It’s you. Sorry, I was concentrating…”
“Oh, Winn, it’s me who should be apologizing! I didn’t mean to startle you. But I got your voicemail, and I had a meeting get canceled, so I just had Ted bring me by. In retrospect, I should have called to make sure this was a good time…”
Winn grinned gallantly. “It’s always a good time to see you, Lena. What can I do, or yeah, I guess I called you. Sorry.”
“It’s good to see you on your feet. How are you feeling?”
“Betttterrr? Anyway. Two things. One, the generator at this size and weight rattles too much, and I’ve tried everything. I was hoping to bring Holtzy in on the project, but I get that she would have to sign things, right? But she’s one of the best engineers I’ve ever met. Also, she doesn’t have my constant brain fog.”
“I’ll have Dan in contracts start the paperwork if she’s willing.”
They both looked back to where Holtzman was delicately taking a tiny coil, practically as thin as a hair, out of the open guts of the polar rifle with tiny tweezers.
“I’m willing,” she said, setting the coil on the tray beside her.
“Great,” said Lena, her eyes crinkling behind her mask.
Winn was imagining her scintillating grin. “Right. Right. So the other thing was your guest list, for the wedding. Is there any chance you could cut it down by half or say, two-thirds? Because, best case scenario, everybody gets vaccinated and we mask and social distance and do testing, all of which is going to be a logistical pain in the, anyway, but even if you only have fifty guests, you’re going to need security and caterers and music and all of those people will be in the count allowed for an outdoor event. And from what I’ve been able to tell, a hundred people at an event will be pushing it, but within the realm of possibility once the vaccine comes out. More, yeah, I doubt it.”
“I’ll talk to Kara. Quite frankly, I think she would elope if she didn’t think her mother would kill her for it, or more likely, kill Alex.”
“Yeah, Eliza is… Have you met her yet?”
“I have, actually. We went down before Thanksgiving to tell her the news. She is formidable, but she’s no Lillian. I can handle her. The only time things got a little unexpected was when she found out that Vasquez and I knew each other years ago, which neither one of us had realized up until then, so yeah. That was… less fun.”
“Great. So, if you guys can email me an updated guest list, that would be great. Because we’ll need fewer security and fewer caterers with a smaller number of guests.”
“Makes sense. And I’ll have Dan messenger over the paperwork for you, Ms. Holtzman.”
Holtzy grinned. “It’s Holtzy, Ms. Luthor. And you won’t be sorry.”
“No, from what Winn has told me about you, I imagine not. Well, I’ll let you get back to work.”
And she was gone with a whiff of undoubtedly very expensive perfume.
Winn looked at Holtzy and suddenly frowned. “Wait. Lena and Vasquez… knew each other?”
“So?”
“Um, like, knew how?”
Holtzy glanced at the door Lena had just left through, then looked back at Winn. She shrugged. “Probably biblically. I mean, I would.”
Winn nodded and then immediately worked very hard to put that idea out of his head. “So the generator. Yes, the rattling generator of it’s-not-working-yet. We should focus on that.”
///
Lena made her way up to the command center. Agents in the hallways who knew her waved and smiled or nodded very seriously. If someone had told her three years before that there was a secret government black site that was tasked with dealing with aliens and that its agents would welcome her presence in their supersecret skyscraper base in the heart of National City, she would have asked what they were smoking. But here they were.
Alex Danvers stood behind Vasquez and Chen as they monitored the city feed. Alex was totally rocking what Kara called Alex’s supersuit and the gay hair. She looked very fierce. Lena had a moment as she stood in the doorway, just a tiny moment, when she thought if she had met Alex first and had managed to make friends with her, maybe Alex would have come out sooner and Lena would have gotten the toaster oven for her. But probably, Lena told herself sternly, that was just her ego talking. Shaking herself slightly, Lena stepped into the command center.
Alex turned and smiled. “Lena. What can we do for you?”
“Oh, I just thought maybe my gir—fiancée might be around?”
“No, Kara’s off doing the reporter thing. Saturnalia is planning to rebuild, but they’ve been getting hate mail and horrible anti-alien graffiti on the sidewalk where the restaurant used to be.”
“That’s terrible.”
“And they had hoped that by now, the pandemic would have slowed down enough to do some kind of benefit, but yeah, that’s not happening.”
“Hm. Have they thought about doing a food truck, do you know? That’s worked well for Millie Bernetti…”
“You are asking the wrong woman. Beyond gr’nel pah and that alien ice cream place, I don’t get out there much except on a professional basis.”
“Understood. Winn asked me over to discuss some things, and I just thought maybe. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Back to work. Have a lovely day, Director, Assistant Director, Agent Chen.”
Wild barking came from down the hall and then the frantic sound of a dog racing around agents who had to dodge to keep from getting bowled over. Krypto ran into the room.
Lena turned and snapped out a foreign word and the dog froze on the spot, sat, lay down and put his nose between his paws. She spoke kindly but with authority. Eventually, Krypto sat up again, looking abashed. Then he… sort of gargled at her.
“Yes, dear, I understand enthusiasm, and I love you too. But these agents are trying to do their very important jobs. And you are supposed to be helping them whenever you wear that vest. And I am very glad to see you. But you do know better.”
Krypto looked embarrassed.
Lena sighed and came over and petted him.
He made a sound like “Bssh.”
Lena said, “Not today, dear. I have makeup on, and I have to go back to work. After dinner maybe, if you’re good. Director Danvers will let me know if you’ve behaved or not.”
Agent Chen stood and put a hand on Krypto’s vest. “It’s time for your snack and nap, Krypto, and then you can go back to work.”
Lena waved and stepped into the elevator.
///
Vasquez looked at Alex. “Wait, was she speaking Dog?”
“What she said was in Kryptonese. What he said was in Dog. This is Lena, Vas. She has many skills.”
///
Supergirl flew over the city, starting her afternoon patrol. After spending the morning interviewing the owners of Saturnalia, the Infernian architect who was planning the rebuild, and a few formerly frequent diners who had agreed to talk to her, and then (yuck) two groups of humans who were members of Mothers Out Of Patience with Aliens (MOOPA), and/or Terrans Against Illegal Non-Terrans (TAINT), and Maxwell Lord, who was now putting himself forward as being an ally to law-abiding aliens and against the slaughter of alien children, Kara was just really in need of some supersonic speed to clean off her brain.
Of course, it only helped a little. One problem was that even flying couldn’t get rid of the song she’d had in her head now for days. She couldn’t even remember where she had heard it. It was one thing to have to stand in a socially distanced line at Trader Joe’s listening to Leo Sayer sing “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”—
--and whereas Alex had played her punk music as her act of defiance against her parents constantly singing Journey songs, Kara had found music from the late 60s and 70s to be more effective at annoying them: John Denver; Peter, Paul and Mary; the BeeGees. Kara was nothing if not devious, even if only in really small ways—
But this was different. This felt like a Broadway song, something with forty people singing at the top of their lungs in four-part harmony and doing some huge, choreographed dance number. And what store was likely to play that to its shoppers?
It started quietly and reminded her of Lena.
I’m not a stranger to the dark
Hide away, they say
'Cause we don't want your broken parts
So many of her friends considered themselves broken: Lena, Winn, Alex.
Maggie.
M’gann.
I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars
Run away, they say
No one'll love you as you are
And she often felt that way herself, for all her Kryptonian superstrength and freeze breath and laser eyes. She remembered seeing that poor woman that Max Lord had turned into her doppelganger, Bizarro. And there was no helping Bizarro, not in this century anyway. At least Alex and her other friends had each other to lean on, had friends and lovers who saw them as good, as whole.
Lena. Lena had Kara. Kara saw her as perfect.
But I won't let them break me down to dust
I know that there's a place for us
For we are glorious
And she thought about what she saw between Alex and Vasquez, those two amazing Amazonian badasses who had hurt each other so much in the previous year and were finally, finally building each other up to be stronger.
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown 'em out
I am brave,
I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be,
This is me.
Kara flew over the Luthor Alien Clinic, with the scaffolding hugging the north side of the building where the pediatric oncology unit had been mostly destroyed by the explosives. Finally, they were rebuilding.
And she flew past the bank and waved to the folks whose day she had so memorably disrupted a few months ago. They waved back enthusiastically. The windows had been replaced in a day.
She paused for a moment over Alien Alley, noting the post-modern Torii gate that was supposed to say something about the arson, maybe Alien Strong.
Look out 'cause here I come
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
I'm not scared to be seen
I make no apologies,
This is me
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh,
oh-oh-oh,
oh-oh-oh, oh, oh
She flew over the postal facility, frowning at the extent of the damage the plasma weapons had caused. And she had taken much of the brunt of the explosions, and yeah, ow, but on the other hand, here she was flying above it all.
Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away, 'cause today, I won't let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the sun
We are warriors
Yeah, that's what we've become
And because a magnet will always turn toward the North Pole, she found herself without planning it flying toward LCorp, listening for the beat of Lena’s heart. Often it was solid and confident or even plodding and calm. But this? This sounded like the beat of joy. She flew lower until she could see inside Lena’s white office. And what she saw—
What she saw was Lena wearing the maroon pencil skirt and heels and black satin blouse with the sleeves rolled up, holding her tablet in one hand and dancing in her office, singing at the top of her lungs.
I won't let them break me down to dust
I know that there's a place for us
For we are glorious!
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown 'em out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be
This is me
Kara landed on her balcony, transfixed. Lena turned, saw her, grinned, and waved her in, without pausing in her song.
Look out 'cause here I come!
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum!
I'm not scared to be seen!
I make no apologies:
This is me!
Kara strode in and took Lena’s hands and then they were jitterbugging to the Broadway anthem.
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh,
oh-oh-oh,
oh-oh-oh, oh, oh
This is me!
And Kara had heard Lena sing that one time at the karaoke fundraiser at Dollywood, and had occasionally heard her hum in the shower, but this? No.
And I know that I deserve your love
There's nothing I'm not worthy of!
“Lena, you have to know that’s true,” said Kara. “You have to know how much I love you. Gosh, sometimes I feel like my heart is going to explode from it.”
And Lena was a little out of breath, so she sang quietly:
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown 'em out
This is brave, this is bruised
This is who I'm meant to be,
This is me…
And Kara grabbed her, and they danced around the room.
Look out 'cause here I come
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
I'm not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me
And Lena fell into Kara’s arms and Kara could feel the throb of her blood. She used superspeed and locked Lena’s door and was back holding her before Lena could even blink and she backed her up until she was leaning against her pristine white desk and Kara asked, very seriously, “Um, so, can I fuck you? Here? I’ve, you know, thought about it once or twice, but um, if you don’t—”
“God, yes.”
Kara pulled up the pencil skirt around Lena’s hips and knelt down and took the top rim of her black lace underpants in her teeth and dragged them down to her knees and dragged her face up between the inside of Lena’s thighs and used her tongue and her fingers with modified super speed until Lena was quivering. Then she gradually kissed her way up Lena’s black satin blouse, biting off the buttons one at a time and spitting them on the floor.
Lena shuddered, “K—you— Go back—”
“Soon enough.” Kara kissed the tops of Lena’s perfect breasts over the top of her lacy black bra, then kissed her way down to her thighs again, where Lena was wet and ready for her and begging, and Kara worked down there with her left hand and reached up to the back of her bra with her right and unclasped it and then ran her right hand over those perfect breasts and then kissed her way back up to Lena’s breasts, fondling, touching, then rose up to kiss her on the mouth.
“Kara, please, you can’t just—”
But the kiss kept going and Kara had one hand on Lena’s breast and one hand on her hip, under her skirt, her fingers tickling the back of Lena’s ass and then she thrust her own thigh between Lena’s legs, murmuring, “You know you want to hump me…”
Lena didn’t stand a chance.
///
Jess heard Lena singing, and immediately looked at her schedule for the rest of the day. She could cancel Dan, because the paperwork for Holtzy was something Jess could deal with. That woman really needed to delegate more. The VP for Foreign Marketing she would have to reschedule. If Lena was in inventing mode, then she might be unavailable for at least two hours. What else could she shift?
Then there was a sound of wind and a click from the inside of Lena’s door.
Then there were… other sounds.
“Oh. Okay,” murmured Jess. “Let’s just clear the rest of the day, shall we?”
Notes:
“This Is Me,” by Justin Paul/Benj Pasek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpF_z6Lof7E I found this fanvid several months after writing this chapter, but it will give you an idea.
Chapter 59: Sometimes, One’s Options Are Limited, Part 1
Chapter Text
Lillian Luthor turned off the lights in her basement lab, closed the door and locked it. She rolled her head and stretched her arms to get the crick out, then headed upstairs, done for the day. She looked at the narrow gold watch on her wrist: 5:45. Too early for her guest to arrive but perfect timing for a drink before dinner.
It had taken two years after Lionel’s death before she had been ready to clear out his study on the second floor, changing out his books on trains and golf for hers on astroxenobiology and political change from the shadows. She had torn down the old curtains, which she had always thought looked like the kind of thing Scarlett O’Hara would have turned into a ghastly dress, and in their place had put up cotton curtains in an Art Nouveau Liberty print.
She kept the Persian rugs; they were works of art that had been passed down from one Luthor generation to the next. She kept the original Tiffany lamps; they were classics, after all. And she kept the box of cigars on the heavy quarter-sawn white oak desk. When she missed her late husband, she would open the humidor and inhale the heady scent. Then she would close it tightly and get on with her day.
Those choices had been easy. Lionel had had his flaws, to be sure, but he had lived a full life before cancer ended it, not abruptly but slowly and painfully. And that of course had made it easier to forgive both him and cancer. Lex’s room was another matter. After the bombings, when he was taken away by the Metropolis police, still screaming malice about that Kryptonian, she had been numb. She calmly put away his clothes and books and then, without really knowing what she was doing, she had gotten on with her day. Lena had come over briefly but didn’t stay. Lillian hadn’t expected her to. It wasn’t like they had a relationship, after all.
They might have. Those first two or three years, Lena had soaked up all the lessons that any of them tried to teach her about becoming a real Luthor: the chess, the piano, the French and German, skiing, ballet (briefly, until her growth spurt), and absolutely anything Lex wanted to teach her. They had played with his G.I. Joes, dropping them out of trees with parachutes made out of Lionel’s handkerchiefs. They had played cowboys: Lex was Cowboy West and Lena was Cowboy East. When Lex was off playing with his friends from school, Lena would be in the playroom “riding” the rocking horse on springs and shooting imaginary rustlers with a toy rake with glow-in-the-dark green tines. And Lillian kept waiting for Lena’s tomboy stage to end so that she could train her to be what Lillian’s parents had trained her to be: a debutante with a mind like a steel trap so that she could grow up to become the power behind her husband’s throne.
To become Lillian.
It hadn’t worked, of course. Obviously.
In sixth grade, Lena would come home and excitedly talk about this or that pretty girl in her class at school. She played softball and soccer and only joined the school band in high school (Lillian had learned some years later) because she had a crush on the first violin, a Japanese-American girl, the daughter of some ambassador or consul. That was when Lillian encouraged Lionel to send her to boarding school. Yes, clearly the girl was turning into a lesbian, but that didn’t mean they had to watch it happen.
Lillian sighed deeply and crossed the study to the small wet bar and made herself a peach daiquiri.
In front of friends, family, enemies, rivals, she always drank scotch, a man’s drink. She had encouraged Lionel to teach Lena the same. She knew college-aged Lena wouldn’t take her mother’s advice. She had to learn to be “one of the guys” from an actual guy, dear old dad. He had taught her how to play with the big boys but also be a connoisseur. Lena had never been one to drink rotgut, even after Lex’s trial, when all of the friends of the family had slipped away, with excuses or with curses, when Lionel was dying and Lillian couldn’t tell him about Lex and had to enlist the help of the servants to keep him from finding out about it from television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and at the very end, the internet. She truly hoped he had never heard what his son was capable of.
So yes, in public, Lillian drank good scotch. In public, she drank strong coffee, sometimes black.
But in private, she drank what she privately thought of as “girly” drinks: cocktails, flavored coffee, herbal tea.
And suddenly, for the first time in a long, long time, Lillian wondered about Lena. After all, she knew what Lena… ate… in private. And now, for the first time, she knew why. But she wondered. What did Lena drink? And how did she manage all of her work when she was very, very thirsty?
///
Ping-yi was nervous. When she had served as the Director of Human Resources when Lillian Luthor had been interim CEO at LuthorCorp while Lex’s trial had dragged on in the courts, Lillian had instituted a hiring freeze, arguing that it didn’t make sense to bring in new people when any one of them might be a plant by the Metropolis police or the FBI, simply trying to get intel on Lex to use against him in court. Then Ping-yi had become pregnant, after trying for years, and had to take a medical leave of absence for the last two months of her pregnancy. The enforced bed rest had nearly driven her mad. Then Lex had been found guilty and given thirty-seven consecutive life sentences. Then the board had overwhelmingly voted in Lena as the permanent CEO, much to Lillian’s annoyance.
Ping-yi had never understood that shift, herself. Lillian had done a good job holding the company steady through the storm. It had seemed like a stab in the back to overlook the elder Luthor for the younger. At just about that time, her husband had been transferred to San Francisco, so they had moved and Ping-yi had resigned and written a letter in protest to the board. She still got holiday cards from Lillian, but she had not expected a personal invitation to the Luthor mansion for dinner with an implied job offer attached. That was worth traveling back to Metropolis for. Her husband was an opera director and the pandemic had left him with an empty theater and an unemployed masked troupe. And yes, they had created a Zoom La Traviata after quarantining and testing, but they had to give a steep discount for people to watch it at all online. And with a toddler to raise, and now homeschool, things in their home were understandably tight. So her husband had encouraged her to go, to take the prepaid airline ticket, and meet with Mrs. Luthor.
And now, as the Lyft driver drove away, she stood in front of the Luthor mansion, agog, ready and not ready to lift the heavy Gothic iron knocker. She had a strange sensation that whatever happened next was going to be terribly important. It had been such a long strange six months since the first lockdown had upended the world. She wasn’t sure she would be strong enough to make whatever choice was suddenly in front of her.
///
After clearing Lena’s schedule for the day and sending her a text to let her know, Jess put on a fresh mask, got her tablet and went on her afternoon Quarantine Walkabout, checking in with each of the teams—admin, finance, research—at work in the building. By the time she got to maintenance, she got a reply text from Lena: “Thanks. I might go home early.” And what Jess wanted to reply was “Ya think???” but instead she texted back, “Noted.”
Then with a sigh of relief, she returned upstairs to her desk. Lena’s office was quiet. Jess had the paperwork for Holtzy from Dan and it still needed Lena’s signature, so Jess thought she was safe enough to unlock Lena’s office and leave the folder on Lena’s desk.
But she stood in front of the door with folder in one hand and keys in the other for a full minute, listening hard, before she finally slid the key in the lock and opened the door one inch, two—
Empty.
Thank God.
Jess set the folder on Lena’s pristine white desk and went to reach for a pen and saw something at her foot. She bent down and picked up a black satin-covered button. And under the desk, there were four more. From the indentations in the white carpet, Jess rather thought that they had probably been… kicked there.
Carefully, Jess picked up the buttons and dropped them into the pocket of her grey blazer.
Then she turned and left the office, locking the door behind her. She looked at her watch: 4:10. Fuck it. She was going home. But probably not straight home…
///
Winn was sorting papers into folders to put them to bed in the filing cabinet for the weekend. He was bushed. Holtzy had asked him about the generator, and he had shown her the blueprints and explained the basic problem, and just then the call came out for field operatives to meet at the armory, and Holtzy had turned on a dime to skedaddle upstairs.
On the table, Winn’s phone pinged with a text. Winn picked it up.
JessFine!: Hey, you said both your Covid tests were negative, and mine were too. Do you think maybe we could have a non-socially distanced date tonight?
Winn’s heart leapt into his throat. Quickly he texted back, “Really?”
JessFine!: I’ve missed you so much since our last Zoom date with Buckaroo Banzai… I’ll bring wine.
Winn frowned and turned the iPhone over, to see the Ghostbuster’s No Ghosts sticker on the back. This was not his phone. It was Holtzy’s. Shit.
Ethical dilemma number 204. He sighed and texted back, “Out on field SOS. Text you after?”
“Meet me at my place. I’ll be waiting.”
And Winn gently put the phone down in front of Holtzy’s plasma rifle and quickly left her a note explaining what had happened. Then he called a Lyft to take him home. He was just plum out of spoons.
///
Finn flew the Blackhawk less than two miles from the roof of the DEO to the roof of a much shorter building downtown: the National City Main Post Office. Agent Chen led two agents down the westward emergency exit and Agent Holtzman led two down the eastward. Finn kept the rotors spinning slowly so it would be faster to lift off if, for example, the building looked like it was going to blow up. The Public Garden was less than a quarter mile away; he could always land there and then they could regroup.
If they made it out alive.
Finn wasn’t a pessimist as a rule, but he did find the slow pace of his recovery frustrating, and he hated light duty. He wanted to be out there, cracking heads and taking names, even though there was no way that was going to happen anytime soon. Even hurrying from command up to the roof had winded him a little. At least he was doing better than Winn. But Winn was useful in R&D, so his light duty was lighter than Finn’s.
Finn rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch.
In his comm, he could hear Holtzy whooping, which was probably a bad sign for somebody. Tiredly, Chen said, “Agent Finn, can you meet us on the ground with the bird?”
“Copy that. I’ll set down across the street out front. There’s a park there.”
“Copy. We’ll meet you there. With friends.”
Finn took the helicopter up and delicately landed it in a flat space in the park, letting his rotors wind down. He saw the team escorting four green individuals wearing brown camo uniforms and he pulled out his binoculars to see them more clearly. Chen’s nose looked broken. Holtzy was grinning from ear to ear. And the aliens…
Finn frowned and stowed his binoculars, pulled out his tablet and flipped back to the folder where he kept the Alien Identification Update memos. At least two or three times a month, the folks down in Xeno sent out the AIUs so that field agents could quickly identify aliens and come up with ways to deal with their powers ideally before the aliens started using them. These detainees didn’t look like anything he’d seen recently. But it made sense that Holtzy looked happier about it all than Chen. She had a phenomenal memory for small details. Once, when they were waiting around in a black DEO van on a stakeout, she had recited the entire table of elements from memory to amuse the team. Finn shook his head.
Chen and Holtzman and the other agents got the perps settled and put on their headphones. Finn could hear Chen saying they should have let Detective Sawyer take them, but Holtzy said, “Post office is federal, Chen. These babies are ours!”
It didn’t take long for them to reach the DEO rooftop, and Finn went through his post-flight check and then headed down to the armory, where Holtzman was putting away her M16 and Chen’s. Vasquez was waiting for them.
“Chen can’t rack his own weapon?” asked Vasquez, frowning.
“He got his nose broken in the fight and then the detainee he was holding tried to run just now and smashed his head into Chen’s nose again. Thing bled like fu- like nobody’s business. I sent him down to medical.”
“Fair enough. Fill out your mission debrief and then you’re both off duty for the night.”
“G’night, Assistant Director.” Holtzy grinned. “Hey, Finn, what say Dollywood tonight? I’m in a good mood. First round’s on me.”
“I can tell. Sure, sounds good. I’ll meet you in command after you submit your report.”
But half an hour later, Finn saw Holtzman walk into the command center, still wearing her black tacticals, holding her phone in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other. She looked like she was in shock.
“Holtzy? What’s up? You don’t look so good…”
Dazedly, she handed him the note from Winn.
“Ah,” he said kindly. “So raincheck on the beer, then. That’s okay, Holtzy. Go get the girl.”
Chapter 60: Sometimes, One’s Options Are Limited, Part 2
Chapter Text
By the time Holtzman got out of the Lyft in front of Jess’s apartment building (because, like Lena, her active mind made her a menace if she tried to drive herself), she had worked through most of her shock at the seeming sudden huge shift in Jess’s attitude to them dating. Jess had asked that they take things slow, and Holtzman had watched a number of women come out somewhat later in life, and some managed the shift in almost no time at all, zero to sixty, as Alex had apparently. Others took longer. And Jess was a very deliberate woman, not risk averse, per se, but very intentional about what she did. And from a few muttered comments after a few beers, Holtzman had gotten the impression that someone Jess knew was very much not risk averse and that Jess did not entirely approve. Holtzman just assumed she was not precisely talking about Lena.
And that had given Holtzman pause, out on the sidewalk as the blue 2019 Taurus drove away, remembering the forbidden thought that she and Winn had shared earlier about Vasquez and Lena being naked all over each other. Winn clearly had shut his brain down first, but Holtzman supposed that with all of those hot women surrounding him at the DEO, he had probably had a lot more experience than she had had with stopping himself having those thoughts about his friends and colleagues.
And it wasn’t like Holtzman never thought about sex. It was just that she always thought about tech first. She was pansexual and loved all types, but she was also at least a little bit sapiosexual and she only fell for people with really exciting minds. And Vasquez was cute and had a great ass (from what Holtzman had been able to tell during that one memorable decontamination shower), but Lena Luthor was off the charts. So yeah, Holtzman had thought about her… a bit. She’d also wondered what it was like to have sex with a superhero who could probably flicker her tongue with superspeed…
Whoa. Just stop. Better not to even have that thought. Holtzman needed to ground herself if she were going to spend the evening, and maybe the night, with Jess.
Jess lived on the fifth floor of this eight-floor building. Holtzman needed a little more time to pull herself together, so she took the stairs. She was still wearing her black tacticals, but instead of her official DEO jacket, she had a similar one with patches that said Acme Security. Most of her trade craft she had learned from Lucy Lane. But Susan Vasquez had taught her a few things about hiding in plain sight. And Holtzman was an apt pupil.
She knew she still wanted to tread carefully with Jess, not just because Jess was newly out, but also because Holtzy herself felt newly… something? And on the one hand, yes, of course she was horny and she couldn’t even remember the last time she got laid, but it must have been before she joined the DEO. Maybe that cute little CSI chemist in Metropolis?
And would Jess have lube? She should have thought to pick some up before she came over. She stopped on the landing between the third and fourth floor, unzipped her jacket and smelled her shirt. A little sweaty but not bad, thankfully. It simply hadn’t occurred to her to change her clothes. Dammit. Why was her head not in it these days? Was it just the pandemic? But she had rocked the field mission…
She took the rest of the stairs two at a time, tired of questioning herself. She was always better in the moment, anyway. Spontaneity was her jam, right?
She walked slowly down the hall, reading the numbers on the doors until she got to 5E, took a deep breath, knocked, and waited.
Nothing happened. She frowned and knocked again. She looked at her phone again. Jess had clearly said she wanted Holtzy to meet her there.
Down the hall, the elevator pinged and the doors slid open. Holtzy turned to see Jess in a khaki trenchcoat and black heels carrying a grocery bag and grinning at her.
Holtzy’s mouth went dry. She sometimes liked men, she did. But there was something about a woman in heels... “So,” she said, “I thought you were going to be here waiting for me. I had imagined… lingerie, I think.”
Jess snorted. “Yeah, I think that was the thought, but then I realized that I didn’t know what kind of wine you liked, so I jumped in the car and went to your neighborhood and found the little liquor shop you bought that beer from for the game night last year and I described you and asked if they knew your favorite wine and they gave me this weird look but then went back to the manager’s office and he knew you from when you recommended a restaurant for him to take his wife to on their twenty-fifth anniversary.”
“Oh, Pete! Yes, good guy. Very clueless about women. So. What did he recommend?”
“Two Chilean reds.” Jess tipped the bag and Holtzman saw some familiar labels, a baguette and some Brie.
“Looks lovely.” Holtzy smiled.
Jess purred, “So do you.” She handed Holtzy the bag and pulled out her keys and let them into the apartment, turning on lights as she moved across the living room, her two cats, Tigger and Roo, twining around her ankles. “Let me just feed the beasts first or we’ll get no peace.”
Holtzman put the bag on the kitchen counter and watched Jess interacting with her cats, who also were purring loudly. She understood where they were coming from.
///
Winn got home and slept for three hours, waking before midnight with just enough of a spoon to heat up some baked beans in the microwave, eat them and crash. And his dream was just… weird.
///
Winn the Kid had put his past behind him, for the most part. Since his marriage to Sherriff Olsen, he had worked part-time with Alex at her smithy in town and part-time at the newspaper office with Kara and occasionally Ruby. The town was changing, and The Guardian had to record the changes.
Some extremely… interesting young men had traveled by train from San Francisco to San Paso, to be employed by Mama Reign. And apparently that had meant good business for Morgan “The Edge” Merriweather, the leatherworker. Winn had heard that he had a lot of riding equipment on backorder, which Winn thought was odd, as it didn’t seem that were that many more horses in town. But the Wicked Witch was bustling, and some of those young studs were flush with their hard-earned pay (so to speak) on a Saturday night and surprisingly bad at cards. Sam and J’onn were talking about the new ladies’ bar, tentatively to be named the Ruby Slipper, and Sam was heartened by how many women had moved to San Paso recently, largely to escape the cholera, which was tearing through big cities like Gotham, Philadelphia and National City. They weren’t all part of the demographic euphemistically called “lady ranchers” by the townsfolk, but enough were to keep things interesting in his work on the Relationship Updates column for the paper.
And then one evening when Winn had folded his cards, taken his winnings and swallowed the last of his beer, he saw a petite blonde in earnest conversation with M’gann and his little bi heart fell into his stomach. He was a married man, madly in love with the sheriff with his easy smile and chiseled hard body. But he wasn’t blind.
///
Jess opened a can of cat food and split it between two bowls, and the cats had jumped up on the counter to start eating it before she could put the bowls on the floor. “Idiots,” she murmured fondly, shifting the bowls into the corner of the kitchen under a chair. She pulled a corkscrew off a hook above their heads and handed it to Holtzy, who made quick work of the first bottle.
In a bad French accent, Holtzy said, “Wood yooo care to sneef theee cork?”
Jess took her fingers and lifted them to her nose and sniffed. “Very nice,” she said, with the tiniest of smirks. “Brie?”
“I. Yes. Brie. Great. Um.”
“You unwrap the cheese. I’ll cut us some bread.”
Jess’s heart was pounding, but she had faced down irate board members, and even Lex Luthor once, without showing fear. She could do this too. The buttons in her blazer pocket were like hot coals in her mind, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it was how she felt.
“Do you—” began Holtzy, and Jess handed her a small plate and a cheese knife. “Right.”
“So you had an emergency mission. Am I allowed to ask about it?”
“Probably not. It was just humans in the end, anyhow, so the FBI will probably take them off our hands in the morning.”
“Well, that’s good, right?”
“Not really. They were green. That’s why we were the ones called in.”
Jess stared with the baguette in one hand and knife in the other. “I thought all those green folks got sorted out.”
“Apparently, some people have a gene that gets permanently affected.” Holtzy shrugged. “These people took unapproved drugs to look like and have the power of aliens to make extra money, but now that they permanently look like aliens, and have been treated badly for it, they really hate aliens.”
“That’s…”
“Fucked up? Yep. That’s the consensus for us too.” She placed the unwrapped Brie on the plate and cut a few slices. “So, um, couch?”
They shifted to the small living room, setting the bread and cheese on Jess’s low black lacquer coffee table and sitting with their wine glasses on her rose-colored couch.
Jess asked, “I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while. Why did you leave the Ghostbusters? Why join the DEO?”
Holtzy inhaled through her teeth and sighed. “I was looking for a better class of trauma.”
Jess tilted her head. “So you don’t want to talk about it?”
“Yes and no. The thing folks forget about ghosts and poltergeists, and hell, we sometimes forgot too, is that they used to be alive, and they are only here in this… reality? Because they are seriously pissed off about the past.”
“Lena says that people in pain like to spread it around.”
“Vasquez and Alex say that too. But the thing about all the aliens I have read about or met, and sure, I don’t know about all of them, but so far at least, I haven’t come across one that can pass through you and not leave behind some of that angst. I fixed the suits so the ghosts couldn’t do that anymore, not to us at least, but even seeing it happen to other people… It’s like that thing that first responders deal with, trauma burnout, or whatever it’s called.”
“I wouldn’t think the DEO was much better…”
“Well, when Superman recruited me, my goal was always R&D.”
Jess sipped her wine and gestured to the black tacticals. “But not today?”
“We all start out training as field agents for times exactly like these, when the dedicated field agents are down or out, and we’re understaffed. Then they bring out the little guns.”
“I don’t think you’re a little gun.”
“Well, maybe not a snub-nosed revolver. More like a Luger, or, or, I don’t know. Personally, I feel more like a sonic wrench most of the time.”
Jess grinned. “Who’s your favorite Doctor?”
“The last few have been good, but ever since the Doctor’s Wife, I’ve had a hard time seeing anybody but Suranne Jones as the Doctor.” Holtzy set her wine down carefully on the coffee table and spread some Brie on a piece of bread, then handed it to Jess and put one together for herself. “So,” she said carefully. “Your text earlier sounded… sort of…”
Jess sighed. “Come hither?”
“Lil bit. Yeah.”
“It’s just today was… Well, it started out normal and fine and I was busy and tired, but I was getting things done, but then.” She sighed again, shaking her head.
“You can tell me anything,” Holtzy said quietly.
“I’m not sure I have words…”
Tigger jumped up into her lap and then turned to look at Holtzy, so that his butt was facing Jess, who murmured, “Bozo.” Then she reached into her pocket and took something out and handed it to Holtzy.
A black satin-covered button. Holtzy frowned.
Jess put her hand in her pocket and poured four more buttons into Holtyz’s outstretched hand.
And Holtzy thought back to the lab, with Lena breezing in to talk to a startled Winn and being her usual dazzling self in the maroon skirt suit and mask and black satin blouse. Holtzy blinked. Had the blouse had buttons? Did the blouse have buttons now? Was a buttonless blouse now…
“At LCorp?”
“Under her desk.”
“That’s…”
“I know, right? And at first, I was, like, oh, she loves that blouse, and I should make sure that she can get somebody to sew them back on, but then I was like how do you explain that to your tailor, and the more I thought about them, the more I wondered if I had ever in my entire existence done anything that spontaneously.”
“And you wanted to do something spontaneously.”
“Well, not just anything. You.”
“Me.” Holtzy nodded, thinking hard.
Thinking was hard.
Her brain, empty.
“Well, that’s…”
“Previous, I know. We said we’d wait, take it slow. And I still think that would be wise. It’s just that, I don’t know. Since the Battle of National City and the long rebuilding and then Reign last year, and all the trauma that Lena went through trying to help Sam, and there has been next to no wisdom in National City pretty much since we got here. And the one scouting mission Lena went on here before we moved—”
Holtzy said, “And now this Covid tragedy…” She picked up her glass and drank thirstily.
“Exactly. And back in school you would read about how people start embracing risk during an epidemic because tomorrow you might be dead. And I was super cautious, and I still got this fucking disease, and I didn’t get it as bad as Winn did, but…”
“You can’t compare pain. Pretty sure you know that.”
“Knowing doesn’t stop me.” Jess emptied her glass and set it down very carefully on the coffee table. “The beautiful thing about lesbian sex, I’ve occasionally thought since all this started, was the not needing to worry about pregnancy concerns.”
“True.”
“Or, in many cases, all the body hair.”
“Well, in mine, yes.”
“And you’re not a foot taller than me.”
“Nope.”
“And I really don’t know how to do this, even as much as how little I knew about sex with men in college, but at least, I could ask you.”
“Everybody’s a beginner at some point. I would be happy to teach you, if that’s what you want.”
“My report cards in school used to always say what an enthusiastic student I was.”
Holtzy swallowed. “Enthusiasm. Yes. Is the. That’s key.” She nodded.
Jess took Holtzy’s glass and set it down next to the brie plate. She took her hand. “So, um, come to bed with me? Teach me?”
“Can we keep the cats out of the room?”
“Absolutely. They’ll yowl about it for a while, but eventually, they’ll settle down.”
“Then I’m in.”
Chapter 61: Sometimes, One’s Options Are Limited, Part 3
Chapter Text
Cat’s driver dropped her son off at school and then drove Cat to CatCo, sliding to a halt in the underground parking garage. She took her private elevator up to the editorial floor, humming, “That Old Black Magic.” She was only marginally aware of the looks she was getting from her employees, but she had bigger things to think about.
CatCo’s profitability had dwindled in the two years she had been gone and primarily she blamed James for playing vigilante when he should have been minding the store. Lena had done her best to learn the business from scratch overnight while also running her own company and saving the city. Clearly, if you wanted something done right, you needed to put a woman in charge.
And it turned out that that principle held for sex as well as business—
At that thought, Cat walked into a wall. Hard.
She winced, rubbing her forehead and feeling—
What was she feeling? Was this what embarrassment was like? Walking into a wall in her own damn building? Behind her there were gasps and at least one giggle, and she turned around quickly—
And walked smack into Eve Tessmacher and a 120 hot soy latte.
“Oh! Ms. Grant! I’m so, so sorry! Also, your 9:00 is waiting in your office.”
“And why, pray tell, is anyone allowed in my office without supervision?”
“Well, because it’s Mr. White, from the Daily Planet—”
“A rival newspaper? Oh, do go on.”
“—and I assumed you wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”
“I keep everyone but Olivia Marsden waiting, Ms. Tessmacher. Surely you know that by now. I’m going to need another set of clothes. There should be a set in my locker at my gym across the street. Chop chop!”
“But, Ms. Grant, yesterday afternoon, you told me to contact the board and set up individual meetings with them by noon today.”
“Yes. And?”
“That’s going to take at least a few hours to reach them all—”
“You mean you haven’t even started yet?”
“Well, but I had to get your latte—”
“That is a morning task. If I gave you this task yesterday afternoon, why didn’t you do it then?”
“It was already 5:00—”
“And it never occurred to you to stay? I am trying to pull this company back into the black by main strength, but I can’t do that if the people around me aren’t willing to give the time it takes to do the job.”
Eve crushed the empty cardboard cup in her hand. “I can’t do this job if it’s going to be 24/7!”
“Then don’t. There’s the door.” Cat waved at the general elevators behind the crowd of gawking reporters.
Eve took a deep breath. “Actually…” She handed the crushed cup to a nearby reporter. “That is a capital idea.” And she walked out.
Now it was Cat’s turn to stare. Then she yelled at the gawkers, “Get back to work!”
///
It had been a busy week at the DEO, with Winn’s plasma weapon alarm going off at least once a day, and M’gann and J’onn were regularly acting as aerial assistance to the teams of agents responding to the calls. Monday was another postal distribution center. Tuesday was the local factory that made the Dominion Voting Systems tabulator. Wednesday was the office of the Infernian Councilwoman who was running for mayor. Thursday had been quiet, which never boded well. Friday morning had seen an attack on a warehouse owned by LordTech. The plasma weapons had been used to melt down enormous machinery that sorted mail, built tabulators, ran computer simulations of probably voter responses, or, well, nobody knew what the LordTech equipment had done but it sure as shit wasn’t going to do it anymore.
Friday afternoon, the two Martians reported back to Alex Danvers, who looked wearily at the map of National City above Winn’s station. Agent Vasquez marched into the command center stabbing at her tablet and frowning harder than usual.
“Vasquez, report,” said Alex.
“I was checking in with our counterparts in Metropolis, Gotham, DC, New York… Everybody is seeing these kinds of attacks: Superman, Batwoman, Cap, Tony. Our DEO counterparts in Opal City, Starling City and Dallas are working around the clock to replicate Winn’s plasma alarm system, but nobody works as fast as him, so they are always a day behind these kinds of attacks, playing catch-up.”
Winn nodded. “And I don’t have the energy to travel to any of those places to help them. Sorry, ma’ams.”
Alex patted his shoulder. “That’s fine, Winn. You’re only one person, after all. Where’s Supergirl?”
M’gann rubbed her eyes. “Decontam and then the sunbeds. Whatever Max had in that warehouse stunk to high hell, and she took a blast of not just the, well, blast, but also of the smell. We can shut our noses down, but I’m pretty sure she can’t.”
“Great,” said Vasquez. “Sensory overload.”
Alex asked, “Where are we on the weekend duty roster?”
“Good news, there, actually,” said Vasquez. “We’ve got eight agents who have been upgraded from light duty to full field work, another fourteen from off duty to light duty. But we have two new infections quarantining at home.”
“I’ll take it. Any other good news?”
Vasquez gave her a small smile. “Well, Dr. Hamilton was looking at the overtime you and I have been clocking and ordered a mandatory rest-day for us tomorrow, barring alien invasion, of course. J’onn here has been kind enough to offer to fill in for the day.”
“Thanks, J’onn,” said Alex, her voice full of tired gratitude.
“This job can wear you down, Alex. Take a day and you’ll come back stronger.”
Winn turned, “Um, Director? Detective Sawyer on the line. She says she’s got leads on the domestic terrorist events.”
“More good news? I could get used to this.” She gave a little laugh. “I mean, I undoubtedly won’t because, duh, 2020, but… I’ll take it in my office, Winn. Thanks, guys.”
///
Eliza Danvers had emailed Barry Allen on that other Earth with her questions, and he had said it would take less time if he came to see her and explained it himself. She offered to come to him, but he wasn’t willing to potentially get Covid-19 in his Earth, but if he could transport directly into her university’s cleanroom and they both wore cleanroom suits, then he could show her the information he had on the metahuman gene and she could share her hypotheses with him.
It took a bit of effort to set up, but it was totally worth it, and it gave her a lot more to work with. She showed him the images she had taken of the blood samples that Alex had sent her and he promised to take them back to Star Labs and get back to her.
What a nice young man.
///
Holtzy realized as she followed Jess into the woman’s rather plain bedroom that Jess probably for all intents and purposes lived at LCorp. The full-sized bed was adequate for a petite woman who probably only used her apartment to sleep in on worknights and to catch up with her cats and Netflix on weekends.
Well, there was no shame in that. Her own work with the Ghostbusters had been a lot like that. She had always spent more time at the old firehouse than she had in her tiny condo. Their work was important, and it didn’t follow banker’s hours.
To the right of the bed was a small white bedstand with some business books and a clock and what looked like reading glasses. To the left were two old stacked red milk crates filled with paperbacks, mysteries apparently, a romance or two, a dictionary. There were plaid flannel slippers on the floor and an abandoned t-shirt that looked like the cats had slept on it. There were three Ikea boxes stacked next to the opposite wall.
Jess saw her glance and just said, “Some people unpack in three days after a move. It takes me at least three years.”
“Well, if you work six days a week, it would,” said Holtzy.
Jess looked surprised at the response. She shrugged. “I’m helping Lena save the world, and the benefits are pretty good.”
“Makes sense.”
“Tell that to my parents.”
“Ah. That.”
Jess sat down on the bed and gestured for Holtzy to sit.
Carefully, Holtzy asked, “And what would they think about… well, this.” She waved her hand between them.
“That there won’t be any grandkids? That’s just first reaction. After that, I have no idea.”
“Does it matter to you what they think?”
“Yes and no. I love them, of course, but I’ve always tried to make it clear to them that I will live my life the way I want. Yours?”
“They’ve made their peace with me. Dad talks about my PhDs and Mom tells gross stories about the ectoplasm to weird out her friends.”
“That’s… sort of sweet?”
“Tell yourself that and don’t come home with me for Thanksgiving. Luckily, my older brother has four kids, and he takes up the slack for me.”
Suddenly Jess covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, God! I am doing this all so wrong!”
“How so?”
“I’m supposed to be, I don’t know. Seducing you?”
Holtzy smiled. “And you are doing a fine job.”
“Hardly, talking about my parents?”
“Jess, I’m a girl too, not a guy. I don’t expect lingerie and, I don’t know, what do men want?”
“For women to admire their boner and not complain how quickly it happened because that means they won’t remember to do the foreplay.”
“Shit.”
“Yup.”
“Well, honey, come to the rainbow side. We have foreplay.”
“Thank God.” Then Jess frowned. “Okay, so that has always been my experience with all the men. So I really don’t know how to do this.”
“All the men. What? Did you do your college football team? Sorry, bad joke.”
“I don’t know. Four? Five, I think. Oh, and Winn.”
“Winn.”
“Um, yeah.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What?”
Holtzy opened her mouth and closed it, made up her mind and pulled Winn’s note from her cargo pocket. Jess read it and immediately turned red. “He thought—”
“For a moment. But our lab has security cameras. I checked. The whole interaction from your first text to him writing the note and leaving was three minutes and change. And he looked a little sad, but not resentful or upset.”
“No, he wouldn’t, would he? Not Winn. Oh, great, now I’m talking about my exes.”
“I did kinda bring it up. Or you did, but I ran with it. I thought you should know. No secrets, if we’re going to do this. I mean, except for professional secrets, because those I have to keep.”
Jess put a hand on Holtzy’s thigh. “I do work for Lena Luthor. I have a small stipend that pays for a bank safe deposit box just for copies of the NDAs I’ve signed in case I ever need to go over the details to make sure I can work on different projects for her.” Jess kicked off her heels.
Holtzy looked down at her own black tactical boots. Suddenly she couldn’t remember how to unlace them. Jess reached down, took hold of one black lace and pulled. Holtzy kicked that one off and Jess untied the other and pulled it off.
Then her phone beeped and she looked down, then back up at Jess. “It’s work.”
“Take it.” Jess didn’t sound upset.
ADVasquez: We’ll need you on duty at 0800. New leads and young agents. J’onn will QB.
Murmuring, “Copy that, ma’am,” Holtzy typed into her phone. Then she put it away, sighing.
“You need to go in?” asked Jess carefully.
Holtzman looked at her watch: 9:52. “Not for ten hours…”
“But then you have a mission? That will require you to be well-rested and fresh, so nobody gets hurt, from my point of view, especially you?”
“Well, aren’t you sweet…” Holtzy thought about it. “I’ll need to leave here by seven at the latest, and I have to assume that something might come up before that.” She turned and looked into Jess’s big brown eyes that were obviously trying hard to hide their disappointment. “I think,” Holtzy began. She looked at her watch. “I can stay awake for about 65 minutes of foreplay-style shenanigans before I will need to go to sleep. Would that… work for you, Jess?”
Jess smiled shyly. “Copy that.”
///
Tigger was lying next to the closed door, seriously annoyed. He had spent the day chasing the ping-pong ball around the kitchen until it had gone under the cold place, and then he had window-stalked the local birds, and he had had the zanies twice in between long naps in the sun in Jess’s study. So he wanted nothing more than to curl up on Jess’s knee and sleep. He huffed.
Roo prowled over and batted him on the head, then threw herself down next to him and lay her head on his flank.
They had lived with Jess long enough to hear what she called “laughing,” so at first the noises were sort of normal.
The other noises sent them running into the study to sleep.
Those. Those were just strange.
///
On Friday night, Alex got on her bike and Vasquez got in her Beetle and they went back to Alex’s place. It was maybe the fourth time that they had both been together at either apartment in weeks. Months? Neither one could remember. Alex had stopped by the liquor store and bought a few bottles of wine which she stuck in her messenger bag. She got home first, because Vasquez was picking up Chinese food. Neither one of them had been doing all that much cooking and their diets had been atrocious, but they rationalized that they were helping the pandemic-beleaguered restaurants in National City, so it was For a Good Cause.
They had agreed beforehand on their order: sesame beef, orange chicken, and the Buddha’s delight to pretend that this meal wasn’t entirely unhealthy. Alex opened one of the bottles of two-buck Chuck Cab Sauvignon. They would cook for real the following night, Vasquez had announced with a glint in her eye. They could open the more expensive bottle of white then. Alex poured herself a glass and pulled out plates and forks and serving spoons. After all, she was the Director of the western region of the DEO, and they weren’t barbarians, thank you very much.
She flipped on the TV, but it was all the usual: the orange wanna-be tyrant threatening that the election would be a landslide for him or it would be proof of Democratic voter fraud, clearly setting himself up to pursue at the very least a slew of lawsuits if he didn’t win. Vasquez had actually predicted an attempted coup d’etat. And the other directors, of the eastern and central regions, had openly mocked Alex’s plea that they prepare for that, saying he was a narcissist, yes, and a pathological liar, sure, but he wasn’t entirely stupid.
And Alex didn’t agree with that and didn’t trust the sycophantic followers in his administration or the white supremacists of his fanbase/voter-bloc. So she did what Kara had said was Lena’s secretary’s go-to strategy: Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Prepare for the blast.
And Alex had told Vasquez about this motto and Vas had given one of her rare, brilliant smiles, saying, “I knew I liked that girl for a reason!”
Two peas in a very strange pod, those two. Alex shook her head fondly, then looked at her watch. Must be a line out the door at Golden Joy, but then it was Friday night after all. She turned the TV off.
Vasquez finally got home easily half an hour later than Alex had expected her, but the big bag she brought with her smelled lovely.
“Was there a crowd at Golden Joy?” Alex asked.
“You know that Kara says they’re the best in National City.”
Which was not in fact an answer, but Alex’s stomach was growling so she just started pulling out little white boxes and serving them both some of everything, while Vasquez went and washed her hands. Alex poured her a glass of wine and then grabbed some napkins from the kitchen. She yelled, “I’m going to start without you if you don’t get out here!”
She heard the toiled flush.
“Geez, Danvers, I was standing in line for a while, thank you very much.”
“Sorry. I’m hungry. I think I had a half a tuna sandwich at some point.”
“Only half?”
“It was Winn’s. I was getting hangry in the middle of the mission. He offered it to me, saying he hadn’t been hungry since he was so sick. Personally, I think he was taking one for the team.”
“What happened to the sandwiches I made for you?”
Alex looked blank. “Sandwiches?”
“In the fridge. I left you a note.”
“A note?”
“Taped to the fridge. I figured you’d see it when you went to make your coffee.”
Alex sighed. “I slept through my alarm and had to race to work to be there on time. I think Kara brought me some from Noonan’s after the mission.”
“But debrief from that was around two.”
“I know.”
They dug into their food with a will after that, and didn’t really talk until they had finished most of it. Alex poured them both some more wine. “Oh, that was great.”
“So. We have twenty-four hours—” She paused, pretending to knock on her skull, “knock on wood—before we have to be back in the salt mines. How would you like to spend them?”
“Well, first, I want to sleep in until at least nine, and have a leisurely breakfast.”
“That sounds heavenly.”
“And then, well, I don’t think either one of us has done any cleaning since… I don’t even know. Before summer? So we should spend at least a little time cleaning, because if you’re right about the election, we may not get to do it again for a while, and two seasons is a really long time to not vacuum.”
“Oh, Alex, you are such a romantic. Yes, I’d love to have hot, tantalizing sex with you. Oh wait. You’re actually right. Damnit. Fine, cleaning it is.”
Alex smiled. “Well, we’ll clean by day.”
“Fair. Okay. Thank God for our uniforms. Not having to do laundry while we’re holding the city together with band-aids and bubble gum is highly convenient.”
“And, as you may notice, it is currently, in fact, night.”
Vasquez’s eyes lit up. “So it is.”
Alex shrugged and yawned exaggeratedly. “And I’m so very tired.”
“Well, Director, you should probably go to bed early.”
“True. That’s probably what Dr. Hamilton intended.”
“Indeed. Well, I’ll stay up watching the news. G’night.”
Alex Danvers was a badass because Vasquez had taught her to be a badass. So she stood, tossed off the last of her wine, pulled Vasquez up out of her chair and pulled her to the bedroom in a fireman’s carry.
It wasn’t Supergirl carrying Lena Luthor bridal style from an exploding mountain, but for a woman who was only a few inches taller than Vasquez, it wasn’t half bad.
Chapter 62: Sometimes, One’s Options Are Limited, Part 4
Chapter Text
Jess Huang slept like a rock, dreaming of a Red Cross nurse astride an early twentieth-century motorbike. She rode into camp with a great deal of aplomb, handed a package to another nurse and then strode over to where Jess stood staring at those sparkling blue eyes. Then without a word, she took her hand and led the way into an old-fashioned army tent, stripped off Jess’s clothes and did things with her hands and tongue that Jess had never even imagined.
When she woke, she heard the door to her apartment closing quietly. She reached out to the part of the sheet Holtzman had slept on. It was still warm and a little damp.
Well, that was appropriate. So was Jess.
///
Agent Jillian Holtzman strode into the DEO armory with more than her usual swagger. Finn caught James’ eye, and made a covert and fairly dirty gesture. James looked a little shocked, then glanced back at Holtzy checking her M16 and realized he was right. He gave Finn the tiniest of nods. M’gann saw the whole thing and put it down to human testosterone. She turned and pointed to Holtzman and everyone automatically formed a ring around the former Ghostbuster.
“Listen up, people,” said Agent Holtzman. “We’ve got a forty-minute flight into the mountains for you to calm your heartrate so you can shoot straight.” She paused. “Well, you know what I mean. Be able to hit your targets.”
A few muffled laughs from the nervous rookies who had all heard what an intensely gay organization the western region’s DEO was.
“The DEO has dealt with the site at least twice. It’s one of Lex Luthor’s old bunkers and we have the blueprints, which Acting Director Henshaw has sent to your mission tablets, along with your squad’s assignment. Study them as we fly. We are expecting at least a dozen green individuals, probably heavily armed and probably about to be extremely pissed at having to fight us off during their Saturday morning cartoons. Expect resistance.”
More nervous laughter.
“M’gann Morzz is going to be our aerial surveillance when we get there in case any elude us. Do not, I repeat, do not give her any work to do.” She thought about that. “Also, don’t let my favorite bartender get hurt or we will have Words. Any questions?”
“Um, ma’am? What degree of force should we use?”
“Don’t shoot to kill unless you or your team are in reasonable fear for your life. These are humans, whatever they look like.”
“Um, ma’am? Are we sure about that?”
“Approximately 99.9682% certain. You know about the ‘vitamin G’ drug that was going around National City during the rebuilding? A few people who got weaned off of it lost their strength but not their not green coloring. So now, basically, it appears that they look permanently like who they were masquerading as, and they are pissed about it.”
“I would be,” muttered someone in the back.
“I heard that, Kanarek. You will report to me immediately after your debrief post-mission and we will discuss, at very great length, what you meant by that. Anyone else?”
Cautious silence.
“All right! Who you gonna call?”
And the rookies all shouted, “Gut-busters!”
“That’s right! Now let’s all go be fabulous!”
M’gann just shook her head and followed them up the helicopters on the roof. Agent Holtzman, in her own very unique way, was fitting right in at the DEO.
///
When they landed at the mountain base, James led his squad in and down. The armory was only on the second level and the intel they had gotten said there was potentially a large cache of plasma weapons stored there. Their brief was to bring them back to the DEO or, if they were compromised, destroy the cache. He knew that Alex really didn’t want to have to destroy them, as it would probably take part of the mountain down and they might end up going with it.
He’d heard one of the rookies calling this a suicide mission and he had immediately whipped around and stuck a finger in the man’s face, saying, “Agent Logan! Are you saying that you are not willing to give your life to protect the foundation of our democracy and the fate of our nation? These people are destroying our means of voting, of counting the vote, of ensuring a peaceful transfer of power.”
“But, but—”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing what?”
“Nothing, sir!”
“That’s right.” And suddenly he had a flashback of his first day working for the DEO in National City, when he had called Agent Vasquez “sirma’am.” Ouch.
His was the first squad in. They breached. They did not clear.
Immediately, they were taking fire, and they scattered to find cover and return fire. Luckily, the people they were fighting were not using plasma weapons, just as Vasquez as predicted. Those were not weapons that you wanted to use indoors and especially not underground without an open ventilation system.
The beta squad breached and offered supporting fire and James remembered a side hallway not far from the armory. His unit had used it during the pink K fiasco to get down to the containment cells where Lillian had been holding her hostages, but he knew he could take it to get to the other side of the armory. Somehow, he got there in the midst of the ruckus and hurried down it, terrified to the soles of his boots that he would run straight into a group of armed green humans.
(Well, maybe directly. Good old Holtzy.)
But he didn’t. He got to the edge of the door and peered around the corner and he saw two things that terrified him. One was a K’Hund shouting orders to the green humans that swarmed the armory. That was bad.
The other was Agent Kanarek using a prybar he’d found God knew where to open one of the crates holding the plasma weapons. He would get them all killed in a molten plasma explosion. If the fire didn’t eat up all the oxygen, it would incinerate them all. Or possibly, it would do both.
He hurried toward the man, shooting at the greenies, hoping he could create a diversion that would make it impossible for Kanarek to do what he was trying to do.
Yeah. No.
James had taken a few bullets before, but never like that. The pain was intense. His legs went out from under him and, as he fell, he saw Agent Logan throwing down his M16 and jumping on Kanarek, pulling the prybar away and being shot by the greenies for his trouble. Both agents fell in sprays of red blood.
James passed out.
///
Holtzman kept it together. There was no other option. She had Finn medevac out James and the agents who had been injured. For Agents Kanarek and Logan there was no such urgency. She felt an icy calm as she directed an agent to cover their bodies with the metallic emergency blankets that all the helos carried. Then she moved on to the next problem.
She sent M’gann back to National City to give a preliminary report and get them to send back crime scene analysts and a transport for the K’Hund who would have been way too heavy for one of the helos. She sent the surviving greenies back on the other two helos.
They didn’t need the helos here. It wasn’t like the team was going anywhere for quite a while.
When the analysts arrived, she set them to collect evidence in any of the areas that showed signs of having been occupied by the greenies or their prisoners, who appeared to be normal humans. She didn’t have to be Vasquez to suspect they had been experimenting on fellow ‘vitamin G’ takers who had managed to not stay green. Humans were so predictable.
There would be an investigation into Kanarek’s actions, and probably a posthumous medal for Logan.
As for herself, she wondered if they would ever let her lead a mission again.
///
When she drove her UHaul up the street to her new apartment, Pill thanked her lucky stars that she had run into Chaya at that coffee shop. Apparently, she attended a gym that had a lot of nubile young men with muscles willing to work for pizza and her flighty regard. Pill sighed; she herself had never had even a little bit of that sort of charm. Oh, well. She had found a good job in the middle of a fucking pandemic. If that was the only charm at work in her life right now, she’d take it.
///
People always said that Lena was a genius and by most human standards, she was: IQ, SATs, verbal acuity, ability to think at least fifteen moves in advance at chess. The easy things.
Personally, she thought a lot of what made her a badass wasn’t necessarily her basic intelligence so much as her understanding of people. So, just for example, when Ted had picked her up at LCorp and driven her back to her condo and she’d received a text from Kara about how they really should talk about what they were going to wear for the wedding, and also she had something else to talk to her about, Lena was glad that she had picked up the smaller box from her basement safe two days before…
Which was a day before the, that song, and the dancing, and Kara’s hands, and her tongue and her teeth, and what happened to her blouse anyway, because she didn’t remember that.
Right. Well.
So she already had the box in the safe in her condo’s study. Excellent.
And then Kara had called and said she had to handle something, and she would really, really be there soon, and the harmonics of her voice sounded like she really wanted to repeat—
But this blouse did not have buttons. Probably just as well. But that meant Lena had the time to put on skinny jeans and a purple and green plaid flannel shirt and put together the dry ingredients that she might need the next morning in case the need arose for her to make waffles.
And that wasn’t genius, just foresight. Lena liked to be prepared.
///
Supergirl returned from the fire at the elementary school sad, annoyed and smelling of smoke and ash. She changed in the electrical closet and brought her suit to Rosie who said she would do her best. Then she wrote up her mission report and got a lift from Finn, who dropped her off at Lena’s condo, saying, “We do our best, ma’am. That’s all we can ever do.”
And she knew it was true. She did. She just always hoped her best would be better than… this.
She hated arson. She remembered the wildfires on Krypton towards the end. That someone would start a fire for fun or money distressed her. And that horrible new accelerant from Gotham meant the fire burned hot and long and only blowing freeze breath until she had practically solar flared had finally put it out. Water didn’t touch it. Foam helped, but not enough. And it had been late afternoon, and the children had all gone home, and very few were in the building at all by day since the older grades were doing online classes. But the principal and the janitor had both suffered smoke inhalation and were currently under observation at NCGH.
And now, as she rode the elevator to the top floor of the condo building, she felt washed out, depressed and out of sorts. She had hoped that she and Lena might take the next step tonight, but Kara just really didn’t know how to do anything except maybe curl up in a small ball wrapped in a blanket and try to sleep.
She exited the elevator and walked to the door, feeling in her pockets for her keys. Not in her coat. Not in her pants. She hadn’t carried a bag that day. On Supergirl days she generally didn’t. The handprint scan alone couldn’t get her in without her key.
Suddenly the door opened. Lena stood there in skinny black jeans and a green and purple plaid flannel shirt that brought out her eyes.
“Kara, are you okay? Krypto said you seemed distressed.”
Kara just stared. “Keys,” she said finally. “I think they’re in my suit. Rosie.”
Lena pulled her in and closed the door. Krypto came and sniffed her knees and then sneezed.
“Yeah, I know. I stink of fire. Sorry about that. I was in the decontamination shower for twenty minutes. Didn’t help.”
“I saw you on the news. They said it looked like arson.”
“Same accelerant as the restaurants. Stuff is nasty, Lena. They’ve got to find this person. The whole school is just gone. I got there as fast as I could but…”
“But it was a windy day, they said. Come on, love. Let’s get some food into you.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
Lena frowned. “Okay… What can I do to help?”
Kara sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe just sit with me.”
Lena took her blue trenchcoat off her and hung it on the hook by the door next to Lena’s khaki one. Then she pulled Kara’s arm and set her down on her usual end of the couch. “Dearest Kara. I think you need a stiff drink. Kick off your shoes and put your feet up. Let me see what I have to work with.”
Kara sat obediently and tipped her head back and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she felt fuzzy, as if she’d slept for a bit. On the coffee table in front of her were two pitchers containing a pale pink liquid. One pitcher had one of her hair ties knotted around the handle with a pen going through it. Two scotch glasses with the Superman version of the crest on them sat next to the pitchers.
Lena was on the couch beside her, wrapped in the red blanket with the crest of the House of El, reading on her Kindle. She looked up when she realized Kara was awake.
“Feel any better?” she asked.
“A little. How long?”
“Maybe twenty minutes. I made us Cosmos. Yours has that Aldabaran rum you like.”
“Cosmos don’t have rum. I’ve watched M’gann make them.”
“So I improvised.” She shrugged. “You find me alien vodka and I will improvise better.”
“I’ll talk to M’gann about it.” She poured herself a drink. “Are these the glasses that Vasquez and Alex got you a few Christmases back?”
“Yeah. Vasquez had gotten very serious and told me that they had had a hard time finding something for a woman who had everything. I thought it was a joke, and not a very funny one given how much I was pining for you at the time.”
“Knowing Vasquez, it was more of a prediction than a joke.”
“Mm.” Lena shook her head. “I still can’t get over her being Izzy…”
“Were you in love with her, back in England?” asked Kara curiously.
“A little bit, yeah. She leaned on that cane when she walked, couldn’t go too fast. And a man I had turned down at the chess club had come after us and tried to attack us and she—”
“Kicked his ass?”
“It happened so fast. She knocked him out with the cane and then limped back to my place and…”
Kara fidgeted with her glasses. “I imagine you showed your gratitude.”
“Pretty much.” Lena shook her head again. “I’ve never dated anyone like her, before or since. Though you come close in many ways. Not that--”
“I’m honored.”
Lena frowned. “I’m sorry. That just came out. I didn’t mean—”
“No, I’m honored. I’d been hearing about Vasquez for years before I ever met her. She trained Alex to be the badass she is. I even remember thinking when Alex was a rookie at, well, I thought it was the FBI back then… But she would be all ‘Vasquez this’ and ‘Vasquez that’ and ‘Vasquez is such a badass.’”
“You thought Alex might be gay,” said Lena.
“And immediately chastised myself for thinking it. Hard to believe now.”
“Those were different times.” She smiled. “You know Vasquez gave me the shovel talk for you.”
“Really? I would have expected my sister…”
“Oh, no. Vasquez said, in the most ordinary tone of voice you can imagine, that if I ever hurt you, she would hurt me in ways I could not even begin to imagine and that I would thank her for it because if Alex had to deal with me, it would be so, so, so much worse.”
“That’s… sort of sweet? I think?”
“And then she gave that tiny little smile and said, ‘I’m glad we had this talk.’ Frankly, I think I nearly peed myself.”
“’And though she be but tiny, she is fierce.’ Except I always forget she’s tiny when she’s right in front of me. Winn told me that the agents are convinced I’m terrified of her and they are amazed, but honestly, I don’t know. She’s…”
“A cute little badass butch who is madly in love with your big sister? I’m aware. I wouldn’t mess with her either. Which is weird, given that I’ve rolled around on a Persian rug naked with her— Oh, whoops.”
Kara winced. “That is imagery I could have gone for years without having in my head, thanks.”
“Sorry. Let me distract you with other images. When you texted, you said you wanted to talk about what we might wear at the wedding.”
Kara fidgeted with her glasses again. “Um, yeah. So. I, uh, I don’t think I want to wear a dress, and definitely not white. But I’m worried about what my, what Eliza will say.”
“Do you care what she thinks?” asked Lena.
“Yes and no. I mean, I love her, I do. But I’m thinking about how I felt in the white tie and tails at Clark and Lois’s wedding, and that was just amazing. And I keep thinking that when Alex and Vasquez get married—”
“Wait! They’re engaged?” Lena’s eyes got huge.
“No, of course not. But I’m pretty sure they will. And I know for a fact that Vasquez will wear a tux or at least a suit. And I’m pretty sure that Alex will want to as well, but Eliza might pressure her to wear a dress.”
“And if you pave the way…”
“Exactly.”
Lena smiled, and ran her hand through Kara’s hair. “I love that you think of things like this in advance.”
“Well, Vasquez has taught me about being proactive. And Alex was my most important person for half my life. And I have you now, but that doesn’t just go away.”
“Do you want me to wear a suit too?”
Kara gaped. Her eyes lost focus for a moment and then she blushed. “I had always sort of pictured you in a version of that dress with the, um, and your shoulders…”
“Oh. The MEOW dress. The little black one.”
“Meow?”
“Stands for, sort of, My Eyes Are Up Here. Also, you tend to… purr when I wear it.” Lena smirked.
“I do. But I thought, maybe a really pale green, like your eyes, you know that color like river water coming down from a glacier, a sort of milky green.”
“My eyes look like runoff from a glacier? Is that a compliment or a—”
“Absolutely. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. And I’ve visited some frickin’ amazing planets. So.”
“Well, thank you, Kara. Then I will take it as a compliment. But first, tell me what you were thinking when I said I might wear a suit?”
“Oh, I, uh, just, you know that time when we went to the Valley of Jiru and you wore Alex’s tacticals and she braided your hair to keep an opponent from grabbing it? I sort of shifted that look into a tux and you, I, the James Bond of, I just, wow.”
“Hm. Well, I could wear the dress for the wedding and a tux for the reception.”
Kara’s eyes got huge. “That would, that’s like the best of both worlds.”
“Well, isn’t that what we are together? Krypton, Earth? A Super and a Luthor?”
Kara blinked. “You know, I think I’m hungry after all.”
“Um, okay, is that a euphemism? Or do you really want me to feed you actual food?”
“Well, both, I suppose. But food first. We’re both going to need our strength.”
Chapter 63: Expanding Our Options
Chapter Text
Dr. Hamilton met the helo when it landed and checked James’s eyes, pulse, heartrate. The agents who transferred him to the gurney said he’d taken four bullets to one leg and had lost a lot of blood, but they didn’t think any major veins or arteries had been affected.
Small mercies.
He was in and out of consciousness, loopy from the pain meds, but responsive. As they hurried down to the medbay, Hamilton said, “Well, Agent Olsen. You missed us so much you just had to find a way to visit us again, is that it?”
“Yeah, yannow me, Doc. I’m yer main shqueeze.”
Hamilton laughed as she peeled off to go scrub in. The pain meds were funny that way. Often it was the biggest and baddest who were the most strongly affected by them.
///
In retrospect, thought Eve Tessmacher, spending her Saturday drinking wine in her pajamas and updating her resume, quitting CatCo so spontaneously might not have been her best move ever. For one thing, she probably was not going to get a letter of recommendation.
Via LinkedIn, she had let a few people in her network know that she was… looking for new opportunities to… build her skillsets, find a place where she could make the most of her Yale double major of business and nuclear engineering, and generally... stretch herself in a way her former job had not allowed her to do… to the fullest extent.
So she sent her bona fides out to KahlTech (which had a hiring freeze), LCorp (maybe she had an “in” with Lena?), LordTech (even though she had sworn she wouldn’t), Hamilton Dynamics (though she really, really didn’t want to have to relocate to Gotham), and six other tech corporations across the country.
She folded the letters and resumes, stuffed the envelopes, applied the stamps, and went out in a mask to the corner of her block to slip them into the post box. Then she came back home, stripped off her mask, and shifted from wine to vodka tonics, light on the tonic.
What was that line from The Once and Future King? If Lancelot was going to be a lie, let him be a lie in earnest...
Well, if Eve was going to make ill-advised career moves, she would, like Lancelot, make them in earnest.
///
Alex and Vasquez split the tasks. Alex swept and mopped the kitchen, cleaned out the old, soggy vegetables and refilled the ice tray. She applied baking soda and elbow grease to the actual grease stains on the surface of the stove, wiped down the door to the pantry, threw all the used dish towels into the laundry pile, sorted the mail, recycled the crap and paid four bills, two of them overdue. She emptied the trash, brought the recycling out to the back of the building where the big blue bins were already overstuffed because people simply never bothered to break down their cardboard boxes, which would have saved easily 25-40% of the space—
--and she knew this because that was one of the things she had found out as the Director of the DEO, that the volume vs. density of their recycling meant she was going to have to retrain her agents in something less obviously important than field badassery—
--which of course made her think of Vasquez, who was busy sweeping and mopping the bathroom, emptying trash baskets, sorting and recycling old magazines and sighing audibly.
“Bored?” Alex asked.
“Hardly. Shower mold is absolutely riveting. You?”
“I could stand a break.”
“Maybe we could make lunch...”
“Yeah, that boat sailed. Hummus was fuzzy. Salad greens were mushy.”
“Well, I do need to get groceries if I’m going to cook for you tonight.”
Alex’s face went soft. “I had assumed we would cook together... You’re going to cook for me?”
Vasquez wrapped her arms around Alex and pulled her close. “I thought beef Stroganoff on egg noodles, maybe steamed asparagus?”
“Mmm. That sounds lovely. Although I had kind of thought you would go with oysters...”
“Yeah, except that you are a Danvers woman. You desperately want to be a vegetarian, but beef is your aphrodisiac.”
Alex sighed. “Accurate.”
“And after we get groceries and lunch, I thought we’d go through our clothes, weed out things that don’t fit anymore, or you know, don’t ‘spark joy.’”
“Our clothes? You have maybe 7% of your clothes here.”
“So?”
“So you are complaining about my clothes?”
“Nope. I was just hoping to see in you in different states of undress over the course of the afternoon.”
“Oh, well, that. Is. Um, I, oh. Why didn’t you say so?”
///
Winn was still on light duty. So, although he knew that a raid on a Cadmus site had been planned, he didn’t know any of the mission details and didn’t give it much thought as he left the DEO and headed for home at lunchtime.
He knew that James had been upgraded to regular duty and the buzz at the DEO was that Holtzman had in some way been promoted over Olsen for mission readiness, whatever that meant. Finn was still on light duty too, and Winn had heard him wheezing while hurrying from one meeting to the next. So many agents were at reduced capacity, and most of them were field agents, not admin/support like he was. He wondered what that would mean for the world, for all the people who didn’t even know that the DEO was awake and at work around the clock to keep them safe from the weirder worlds that might mean to do them harm... except now it wasn’t, at least not completely. But the world still needed protecting.
Supergirl, her cousin, her sister’s ex’s ex, and her girlfriend’s opposite numbers at places like Star Labs and Stark Industries—
Well, there were a lot of people across the nation who were trying to do the job, in their own way.
But was that going to be enough? It exhausted him just thinking about it. His apartment was quiet and dusty. He would take a nap for an hour or two.
Or, more likely, four. He texted James.
ForTheWinn: Call of Duty tonight?
Then he crawled into bed. Human-ing, post-virus, was just too much work.
///
Alex was a trouper; her parents had always told their daughters that the show must go on. That, they had gotten from their high school and college theater experiences.
Alex was also a trooper; Vasquez had drilled that into her when she had been a rookie: just because you had been beaten or shot or knifed, that did not mean that your squad didn’t desperately need you to woman up and get through the mission. Adrenalin was the ambrosia of Athena, goddess of war. You could sleep when you were dead.
And that was easy, really, when the mission was about taking down mad scientists, saving enslaved aliens, going up against power-hungry Kryptonians (for example).
But trying on all of one’s skinny jeans or old girly blouses, or faded and stretched-out t-shirts, or, God forbid, old cocktail dresses from the weddings where one had been (for example) a bridesmaid: oh, God, just no.
“You know, Vas, we could put you through this at your place tomorrow. Just so you remember, what goes around comes around.” Alex tucked a floral blouse into a khaki skirt.
Vasquez said, “Alex, number one, why have you kept that outfit for so long? Do you actually like it?”
“God, no. I hate it. But you need to have skirt sort of outfit for, I don’t know, emergencies? Job interviews?”
Vasquez stared. “You are the director of the western region of the DEO. Why on Earth would you need to do a job interview these days?”
“Well, this administration—”
“—is shit. Yes. Unquestionably. But you could get a job with, I don’t know, Blackwater, with a snap of your fingers, and a ten-year old khaki skirt would not help with that.” She opened the black garbage bag as Alex took off the skirt and blouse and tossed them in.
“Ah, hm. Actually...” said Vasquez.
“What?” asked Alex, hands on hips, looking a little pissed off.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Vasquez said with a small grin. “I just, um, had thought, you know, with Kara and Lena’s upcoming wedding and all...”
Alex’s frown didn’t change and she didn’t move to put more clothes on. “What?”
“Well, I know that you said that Kara was considering wearing a tux for that.”
“Yes?” said Alex, suddenly looking less confident standing there in her underwear. “I kind of thought you would too.”
“And you know that I rock a tux. But my point is that, when Clark and Lois got married, I’m pretty sure that Kara wore whatever her usual Jockey underwear was under that, and maybe you did too.”
“Um, yeah, about that...”
“But if she is going to marry Lena Fucking Luthor, she is really going to step up her underwear game. And you know you are her role model in basically everything.”
Alex went to her underwear drawer and pulled out a set of lingerie in cheetah print. “Are you telling me you don’t remember these?”
Vasquez gaped. “Did we— Oh... We did, didn’t we. But I don’t remember those, no.”
“To be fair, we were both a little drunk from the reception and I don’t think we bothered to turn the lights on.”
“We had left the bathroom light on when we went out, so there was some illumination, but then, well, I guess I didn’t take my time, like I usually do.” She sighed. “I just wanted to get my hands on you. I wanted... I don’t know, to make you mine again.”
Alex smiled. “You may have been in a hurry, but you were very thorough.”
Vasquez shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “While I was away, I had... given it a lot of thought.”
“Also, when I got these, Kara got a set in Supergirl blue. Don’t worry, Vas. We do know how to represent when we have to.”
Vasquez pulled Alex into her lap and kissed her. “Well,” she said, “then I guess I can just return your Labor Day present...”
Alex cocked her head. “My what? You got me a present for Labor Day? Who does that? And why wouldn’t you just give it to me. I mean, you’re a week late, but...”
Vasquez sighed dramatically. “But you clearly don’t need it if you have those. And actually, we should probably make sure they still fit...” She grinned. “Go put them on. I have to make sure that cheetah is the right animal print for you.”
Alex looked at them and sighed. “Probably not. Cheetahs are fast. We all know how abysmally slow I am.”
“As I recall, you weren’t on that particular night.”
“Hm. You may have a point. Fine. But turn around and don’t watch. It will ruin the effect.”
Vasquez turned around. Alex said, “I can see you looking in the mirror.”
Vasquez laughed and picked up one of Alex’s concert t-shirts and covered her head with it. “Better?”
After a moment, Alex pulled the shirt off her head. Vasquez turned around to see her girlfriend rocking very skimpy cheetah lingerie. “Those. Um. Fit you well. Turn. Yes, oh I do love your ass, Alex. And those bring out the gold highlights in your beautiful root beer brown eyes.”
Alex straddled Vasquez and pushed her down on the bed. “So you like what you see, Vas? Cuz that’s what I’m getting from that.”
Vasquez pushed herself up, grabbed Alex’s ass and stood up, turned and laid her on the bed.
“Jesus, Vas, your core is a work of nature!”
Vasquez smirked and went to her leather jacket hanging on the doorknob, pulled out a small package, wrapped in Superman wrapping paper. She handed it to Alex, who gleefully opened the paper, to find three other wrapped packages inside it. The first set of lingerie was black lace, the second was cranberry lace and the third—
Alex burst into laughter. “Royal Stewart? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Very seriously, Vasquez said, “Well, I know you wear very serious underwear at work so that you are DEO down to the skin—”
“Says Ms. Semper Fi.”
“Precisely. So this is for when you want to be a flannel dyke down to your skin. I mean, it’s not really flannel, because who would wear flannel underwear? But you know what I mean.”
“This is hysterical. And now I’m going to have to thank you very thoroughly for this,” she started laughing again, “Labor Day gift. Very thoughtful Labor Day gift.”
“Well, I knew my girl would totally work it.”
Alex groaned. “You’ve been waiting to say that all day, haven’t you?”
“Yup.” Vasquez grinned.
“God, you are beautiful, Vas. When you frown, when you smile. Just so, so beautiful. Fuck me?”
“Ma’am! Absolutely, Director Danvers, ma’am. But not until after dinner, which I need to go prepare.”
Alex sighed. “So. Do you want me to help you, to watch you or to stay here and take care of myself because my girlfriend won’t?”
“I. You. Yeah, um. You should come help. Otherwise, I will probably burn myself from not being able to focus. On the food. Right. And you are going to have to put on clothes. Because. Focus.”
“Well, if you insist.”
Chapter 64: Expanding Our Capacity
Notes:
An extra chapter in honor of Butch Appreciation Day!
Chapter Text
Lt. Col. Lucy Lane marched into the briefing room in her camos feeling in charge and relaxed and ready to start her week with good news. And for the most part, she did. The Army Engineers explained that the expanded human containment project to increase holding by one hundred cells was almost finished and they had tested the separate HVAC system and it had passed with flying colors. On the other side of the base, the non-volatile alien containment project was on time to finish by the end of the month. Logistical problems with obtaining materials to contain the volatile aliens were causing a snag, mostly due to supply chain problems connected to the pandemic response in cities and states where their usual providers were unable to source materials. While this was, technically, bad news, it was not something Lucy had failed to see coming. She thanked the engineers and dismissed them, and managed to grab a cup of coffee before her provost, Lt. Andy Tailor, came in to update her on the new human prisoners that had come in the day before from the National City DEO.
She invited him to sit and offered him coffee, which he took gladly.
“You look wrecked,” said Lucy with some concern.
“Thanks. It was the mission that brought us the greenies. Two agents were killed, two of the rookies we sent out there last month, Kanarek and Logan. It looks like Kanarek might have been radicalized and Logan died stopping him. And James Olsen took a few bullets to the leg, so he’s back on the injured list. But Holtzman will be getting a commendation for leading the mission, capturing a K’Hund and a dozen greenies alive. I talked to Agent Finn. He said she was pretty traumatized by the whole thing.”
Lucy frowned. “What was the goal of the mission?”
“They got intel on a cache of plasma weapons like the ones we’ve been hearing about all over the country, the attacks on postal facilities and the like. Quite likely Cadmus. That was successful.”
“Kanarek radicalized? God, Andy, I tried to be so thorough cleaning house last year.”
“I know. But Winn said his computer records show that he went to college for one year with one of the greenies, then transferred. These guys weren’t on our radar when we were tossing out the trash last year. We really didn’t know that a small percent of the vitamin G users might not lose the pigmentation effect and resent it. So, of course, we couldn’t have names for them.”
“And Cadmus always knows how to find folks who hate aliens, but why would they be working with a K’Hund?”
“Apparently, he was being used as a tank on a leash. They’d hopped him up on those drugs we kept seeing last year. Remember the Infernian who kept burning down her cell at National City until Danvers convinced the ice alien to shut her down for the promise of Netflix?”
Lucy smiled. “Alex always was an out of the box thinker... I’ll check in with her later to see what she needs from us. Thanks, Tailor.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am. And thanks for the coffee.”
///
Maxwell Lord had spent the weekend reviewing LordTech’s current portfolio and his notes for future projects he had wanted to pursue before his time in prison the previous year. He had decided to separate LordTech completely from ATTAC, the anti-alien consortium that had been his brainchild. It had gone off the leash while he was away and he couldn’t afford to appear to be anything but a golden boy while his parole lasted.
That Monday morning, he had come in and called a meeting of department heads and presented them with the new game plan going forward. Two had resigned right there. Another had called him crazy and been fired. Everybody else toed the line and he had tasked HR with finding some replacements to promote.
As he returned to his office, his assistant Brendan handed him his mail, and most of it was ordinary, but one creamy envelope stood out. He slit it open and read:
Maxwell Lord is cordially invited to attend the gala celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first publication of The Daily Planet on September 21, 2020 at 7:00 pm (dinner at 8:00) at the Metropolis Etude Royale. Black tie. RSVP. Suggested donation $100; 50% of proceeds will support the Metropolis Network of Homeless Shelters.
Max tapped the card thoughtfully, then dialed Cat Grant.
“Cat Grant’s office,” said a harried female voice he did not recognize.
“Yes, this is Maxwell Lord from LordTech. I’d like to speak to Ms. Grant.” He could hear shouting in the background. Apparently, there was trouble in paradise.
“Grant.”
“Cat. Max Lord. I assume you got an invite to Perry White’s upcoming do.”
“I did.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to be my arm candy? Unless, of course, you’ve got a better offer.”
“I’ve had two, in fact, but neither of them dance, and Perry did mention there would be dancing.”
“It would be my pleasure to twirl you around the ballroom for the benefit of the paparazzi.”
“You make a compelling argument.”
“I’ll have a car pick you up at CatCo at 5:00 and I will meet you at the airport. We’ll take my private jet, if that works for you.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll already be in town on business. I’ll meet you there at seven.”
“All right. It’s black tie. I look forward to seeing what you wear...”
She barked a laugh. “As well you should. Must run. Ta.”
Max sat looking at his phone, wondering if he had just missed something.
///
Holtzman slept in the women’s barracks over the weekend, reluctant to go home and even more reluctant to call Jess. She kept seeing Kanarek and Logan over and over again, dying in a spray of blood and falling lifeless. On repeat. All day and all night.
And the crazy thing was that J’onn had recommended her for a commendation for the mission, for containing the damage and bringing home all the aliens and all the plasma weapons without blowing up the mountain or her agents. Some had been injured, like James, yes. But J’onn had pointed out that the vast amount of forensic evidence the crime scene techs had collected would potentially enable them to identify more Cadmus agents. And the DEO agents who had survived, especially the rookies from Kanarek and Logan’s class, had learned some lessons that would potentially save thousands of lives going forward.
She heard the words and nodded in the appropriate places, but she wasn’t convinced. She hadn’t thought much of Kanarek, the man had been an ass, and apparently also a mole, but she had kind of liked Logan. And now he was dead.
The Martian had paused and looked at her, and in retrospect, J’onn was psychic, so he had probably looked at her thoughts too, because he sighed and said, “I’ll recommend desk duty for you for the next week or two, Agent Holtzman, and Psych will call you in for an eval and counselling. These kinds of missions are never easy. Work with Winn for a while. Get your equilibrium back.”
So now she sat in front of Winn’s prototype of the Big Bad Friggin’ Gadget, looking at his plans and trying to figure out ways to dampen rattling. Solid insulation would probably cause it to overheat. A liquid insulation would reduce overheating but could create waves that would still cause instability. Springs?
And she thought about Friday night when Jess had shyly unbuttoned Holtzy’s shirt with shaking hands and a determined frown and Holtzy had gently guided Jess’s hands over her breasts and down between her legs and up over her ass and then Holtzy had returned the favor, and Holtzy had been wet and ready but Jess really hadn’t been. And then Holtzy had asked her about what she did for herself, but Jess just shrugged. Yes, she had a vibrator, of course, but it didn’t do much. And Holtzy had examined it and wasn’t too impressed with the design, although part of the problem was quite likely old batteries.
So although, yes, sure, Holtzman was a tech whiz and would probably get around to figuring out a better vibrator design for her girlfriend, she was also old-school and knew how to do the things Jess really, really needed... analog style.
///
Winn woke in early evening, foggy from his nap and thirsty because his apartment was warm and the air was dry. He went to the fridge and opened a beer, gulping it down as he looked at his phone. He would have expected James to have responded by now to his invitation for gaming. Or was James feeling awkward again?
Winn sighed. Fuck 2020 anyway. Winn had gotten laid literally twice this year, which, hey! was an improvement on 2019, and even 2018 for that matter, but still. Barely a week after the night with Jess, she was having gay feelings for Holtzman and letting him down easy. And then when James had gay feelings for Winn, they had both been way too drunk to remember what had happened between them and then James had been in a straight panic. All Winn really wanted was for someone to love him. And sex would be nice too, because, duh, sex was nice.
And sometimes it felt like everyone at the DEO was having lots of sex, just not with him. (Especially the women, but he knew better than to let his brain even consider that.)
He put down his empty beer bottle and realized he felt nauseous. Oh. Maybe alcohol was not a good idea only six months after Covid. Great. Just great.
///
The first thing Veronica Sinclair did when she was released from prison was purchase a burner phone and call her old friend, Brendan from LordTech and ask him if he could set a few things up for her: an apartment, an unhackable laptop and tablet, and appointments with her masseuse, personal shopper, and business manager. She was about to be a busy woman and she couldn’t do that without information, good clothes and a little bit of cash.
Also, her back was a wreck from the prison beds.
The first thing she did when she got the laptop was search for information about Gavin Park, well-dressed lawyer. What she found was... interesting. He was born in 1968, so he was in his early fifties, about twenty years older than he looked. He currently worked for himself and one partner, but twenty or so years before, he had worked for a much bigger firm in Los Angeles, Wolfram & Hart. And Roulette had heard of them.
More recently, he had been working in Metropolis and was frequently seen with the jet set at philanthropic events, particularly organizations that Roulette recognized as being funded by old families who were no friends to aliens. Well, now.
One of the stipulations of her parole was that she not leave the state. Her ankle bracelet was supposed to make sure of that. But if one knew the right people, one could fairly easily purchase a new set of papers and a programmable Roomba to periodically wander around her apartment with the bracelet parked on top of it.
And she had always enjoyed Metropolis’s jet set. It would be... interesting to see some of them again.
///
Millie Bernetti handed Kara the menu they had agreed upon. “Did we get everything you wanted?”
“Well, the gr’nel pah are the crucial thing for the hors d’oeuvres, for me. And I think Lena was most concerned that we had vegetarian options even though she knows a lot of our friends will probably go for the Infernian-style steaktips. Do you expect to have any difficulty sourcing any of the ingredients?”
“Actually, my spice merchant still hasn’t gotten back to me. I think he’s offworld. But I have ideas for how to handle most of them. You’d be surprised how many alien flavors can be replicated with Terran equivalents. So it’s just for Artzy and Fleur to provide the cake, and my wine guy to provide the numbers I asked for and then I can probably do this with a six-week notice.”
Kara put the menu in the planner in front of her and checked off another thing on her long list. “Now it’s pretty much just Lena’s dress and the music. We’ll deal with the flowers when we have a better idea of what season it’ll be when we can finally do this.”
“Oh, and Kara, make sure you thank Lena for the idea of setting Artzy up in his own truck and having us do the truck wars contests on Mondays and Fridays. It’s definitely driven up business for us both.”
Kara just laughed. Lena hadn’t told her about that, but Kara wouldn’t put it past her. That woman was a businesswoman down to her bone marrow and couldn’t help but come up with things like that to help her friends.
///
Sophie Moore took the lie detector tests’ results to Lena Luthor herself. This job was too important to delegate. She was ten minutes early for their meeting and sat in the small waiting area outside Lena’s office, watching the Chinese-American assistant typing away busily. At exactly 11:01, Lena’s door opened, and she shook hands with an older man with a slightly battered briefcase, a slightly tired suit and well-kept Italian shoes. Accountant, probably.
“Commander Moore,” said Lena, “Come right in. Jess, you come too.”
Sophie followed Lena in and sat across from her at her white desk. Jess followed them in with a small cart with a coffee pot and three sturdy LCorp mugs, sugar and a pitcher of half and half.
“Oh, Jess, you are a life saver.” Lena immediately poured herself a cup and added the tiniest amount of the creamer and no sugar.
Jess poured Sophie a mug and then poured one for herself. Sophie added sugar. Jess added both.
Lena smiled. “Let’s take a moment to get properly caffeinated before we take a look at the damage.”
Sophie thought that was an interesting word choice, but she sipped thoughtfully, and complimented Lena on the view from her office.
Lena grinned, looking out at the balcony. “Yes, it is a lovely view.”
Jess coughed.
Lena sighed and looked back at Sophie. “So Commander, bad news first.”
Sophie took a black Crow’s folder out of her bag and handed it to Lena. “First, Gerard Wilson. His results were inconclusive, but between myself and my head analyst, we have twenty years of experience with these types of tests and agree that we don’t trust him as far as we could throw him. But there is nothing here that is actionable.”
Lena ran a practiced eye on the numbers. “Mm, but you note that he was sweating. I remember that we agreed to keep the room cool. And I have seen him at board meetings with my... more intimidating family members, and I have only ever seen him sweat once, when Lex had started to...” She shook her head. “Who’s next?”
“All of the other men are within acceptable parameters. Helena Aldrich and Andrea Kim are both fine. Claire is rock solid.”
“Good old Claire. All right. Barring any unfortunate events, let’s revisit this in six months. Now could you tell me where we are at the alien clinic?”
“My agents do routine sweeps around the perimeter day and night. We’ve beefed up our presence at all entrances and in the ER waiting room, especially at night. That neighborhood is known to the NCPD as popular for drug deals, apparently especially around the full of the moon.”
Lena said, “Yes, I’m aware. Apparently, that is also a busy time for ERs everywhere as well. I had not expected that aliens would be just as strongly affected as humans are, but from what I’ve heard from the doctors, some species are even more strongly affected. And Dr. Torres pointed out that humans are often at fault in car accidents at those times, which can affect anyone on the street.”
“I was thinking, with your approval, to beta test using drones in the Extra Wide Perimeter, since those are zones the NCPD had identified as being problem areas.”
“And how much more would that cost me?” asked Lena tiredly.
“Nothing for the beta. If they don’t find anything in three months, we abandon the idea. If they do, we could work out a cost structure. I did run this by your security consultant, and he said that he didn’t think we’d find threats to aliens, just humans dealing pot or ecstasy to other humans.”
“But you think?”
“I don’t have enough data to think, ma’am. If this were Gotham, I could practically give you the addresses where the problems would be. Up until recently, I had never spent any time in National City, and I hadn’t made it a habit of reading your city’s crime stats every month. Information has to precede strategy.”
“Fair enough.” Lena looked at Jess, who handed Sophie a green LCorp folder.
“What’s this?”
“The information about an extremely top-secret venue for an extremely top-secret event that I am hoping to hold at some point in the next year, once everyone is vaccinated. Also what LCorp’s legal department and our security consultant assured me are, his words, ‘A pretty gnarly Non-Disclosure Agreement.”
Sophie flipped through the pages, grunting. “A wedding. And you are afraid of who crashing this exactly? Navy SEALS?"
“Lex, my psychotic brother.”
Sophie sighed. “Ah. Psychotic sibling. Yeah, my ex has one of those. I’m familiar.”
“That,” said Lena, “is exactly why you came so highly recommended. Thank you, Commander Moore. Jess will see you out.”
And as Sophie was leaving, she thought she caught a flash of red out on the balcony.
Chapter 65: Expanding Our Network
Notes:
This is the chapter that was due two days ago, when I was supposed to be home before #thetropicalstormformerlyknownashenri messed up my travel plans.
Chapter Text
Supergirl always kept some cash in the shoulder pocket of her cape for emergencies, so when she dropped down out in front of Big Belly Burgers, strode in and ordered a black bean burger with onions, pickles, tomato and lettuce, an Everything Burger and large fries, it was easy to pay in a way that would never be traced to her real identity. And she was okay with the manager asking to take a selfie with her and post it on Instagram for publicity, because those were just really good burgers.
And yes, the burgers would get cold as she flew across National City, but that was never a problem.
She landed on Lena’s balcony just as Lena was watching Jess lead out a young black woman in a black pantsuit. Lena turned and grinned and hurried to open the door for her.
“You know you’re going to kill my diet, right?”
“I got the black bean burger the way you like it, and I remembered the whole wheat bun this time.”
“Well, if you insist. Just don’t tell me you got one of those decadent shakes. They go straight to my hips.”
“Directly,” said Kara absently. “No, I thought maybe we could ask Jess to make some of that green tea? That would cut the grease from the fries.”
“You don’t drink top quality green... Oh, hell, yes, let me go ask her.”
Supergirl grinned and set out their meal on the coffee table in front of Lena’s couch. Sitting there waiting for Lena, she glanced over at her desk and grinned some more, then she frowned.
Lena returned. “Something wrong, dear?”
“Um, so I. Wow, I. That wasn’t. Oh.”
Lena followed her gaze and smirked. “That was. It really, really was.”
“No, I meant your shirt. You really liked that shirt, and I, I—”
“You did. And apparently Jess picked up the buttons so I could put them back on, but I told her I can replace the blouse. An experience like that I wouldn’t have missed for the world. It was a little chilly flying home, though...”
Supergirl blushed scarlet. “I held it closed for you!”
“I’m teasing, Kara. Eat.”
So after Kara had gotten through most of her burger and half of the fries, she slowed down and told Lena about her meeting with Millie. “You didn’t tell me about Artzy’s truck.”
“I started setting that up right before we went to Midvale and after that, I got a little distracted.”
“Because of Vasquez?”
“A little that. A little just contemplating your mother. She’s...” Lena waved her hands helplessly.
Supergirl sighed. “Yeah, she is. One time when Alex was really drunk after I first came out,” and here she gestured to her crest, “Alex said, ‘The problem with Mom is that she is an enormous teddy bear sitting on an anvil, wrapped up in chainmail with just a dab of perfume and a lab coat.”
Lena laughed at the image. “I do love your sister.”
Supergirl smiled. “I’m glad. And I think she loves you too.”
“Remember when she poked me with that stick in the valley of Jiru?”
“Ha. And you always said most people wouldn’t come near you with a ten-foot pole.”
“Well, the Danvers women aren’t most people,” said Lena.
“Right, and Mom is not most people either. Vasquez was in the lab when Alex came out to her and she said that Eliza just turned on a dime, and hugged Alex and was really supportive.”
“Well, I’d think she must have had some idea that Alex would be a lesbian.”
“I think we all had moments now and then, wondering.”
“What about you, Kara? Did you ever think you might be?”
Supergirl shook her head. “Sex was different on Krypton and I was so young when I lived there. I didn’t hit puberty until I’d been on Earth for a while and it all was just one more thing to try to figure out in two languages, one I was fluent in but didn’t have the adult vocabulary for things that weren’t science based—well, not biology. Nuclear physics, sure. And then English is such a crazy language with crazy rules and so, so many exceptions. And human society is so far behind Krypton in some ways and so much ahead in others. Every day was like wandering a maze that had instructions for getting places written on the walls but in hieroglyphics.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It was. And I was always hungry, and that’s how Alex learned to cook, because Mom and Dad would be working late in the lab, so Alex would put a frozen pizza in the oven and make me eat salads as an appetizer while we waited for them to heat up—”
“So you do eat vegetables,” Lena teased.
“I eat vegetables! Kale is just gross.” She sighed. “So anyway, after I left Millie’s place, I was thinking about music for the wedding.”
“We talked about just making a playlist.”
“I know, but I was flying over the theater district and I was thinking about how much cultural and arts groups have suffered economically this past year and I remembered the band that you got for the CatCo Christmas party back during the whole Reign fiasco, and I really liked them.”
Lena stared. “But you weren’t there.”
“Um. Yeah. I came in with Reign and I went out with Reign and even though we decimated the food table and the ice sculpture and the ceiling and the windows, and even though I was kind of fighting for my life, I noticed that the band never stopped playing, and I might not have noticed, but they were singing ‘Rocking around the Christmas Tree,’ which is J’onn’s favorite, so it sort of stuck in my head.”
Lena shook her head, laughing. “I’ll get Jess to look up the band and see what their non-Christmas playlist is.”
“Excellent. Oh, there is one more fry left. You haven’t had any.”
“It’s probably cold.”
Supergirl frowned at the fry and sent a tiny laser beam to warm it up, then handed it to Lena. Lena took it in her mouth straight—directly—from Supergirl’s hand, winking.
“Rao, Lena. Don’t do that when I have to patrol this afternoon. Besides, you really like this shirt.”
Lena glanced down at the cream silk blouse. “Well, then, should such an event... what is it J’onn says? Eventuate? You will simply have to behave with a little more decorum, missy.”
Supergirl grinned. “That’s Supermissy to you.” And when she took off from the balcony, she could still hear Lena laughing.
///
Maggie gripped the LCorp mug in her hand as she stared at the white boards in the task force’s bullpen: the school bus, Alien Alley, the Luthor Alien Clinic, and the elementary school. Even though aliens had probably been involved with the postal facilities that were destroyed, that was federal and way above her paygrade. Let Alex and Vasquez figure that one out. Maggie had more than enough on her plate.
The school bus smelled like Cadmus, because of the connection to LordTech’s smart technology, since Cadmus had briefly kidnapped Max two summers before. The same devilish accelerant had been used in the restaurants and school, which made them seem connected; Joe had gone to Gotham to see if he could track down who was making it or selling it. Maggie had put him in touch with both Kate Kane and some of her former GCPD colleagues, most of whom were in the private sector now, either with the Crows or as PIs. Didn’t matter. They were all cops to the bone and would always have their nose to the ground, if less literally than Joe did.
The clinic, though, that was the one they hadn’t found a single lead on. The clinic bothered her. She went back into the jacket on that and found her interview with Lena. Something niggled at Maggie’s mind and she read through until she found it.
She remembered the interview clearly. The doctors, patients, visitors and security crews had all been deeply shaken by the event. Lena had been seriously pissed off.
She had invited her up to her LCorp office, offered her some excellent coffee, and generally treated her like Maggie had not in fact arrested her that one time. She walked Maggie through everything she had seen and done that morning and the night before, and Maggie had corroborated every detail, but then she remembered Kara talking about Little Luthor’s phenomenal memory. And as Maggie read through the interview, she noted something small, at the end. Maggie had just thanked Lena for her trouble and shaken her hand, and Lena had said fiercely, “Find whoever did this, Detective. This is my father’s legacy and I take it very seriously. Find who did this, and when you discover that it’s my brother Lex, let me know and I’ll wring his neck myself.”
Then she had said very lightly, with a little grin, “Oh, and keep the mug. If Lex is behind this, you are going to have a lot of long nights and early mornings until you find him.”
What if Lena wasn’t wrong? Maggie remembered Jess saying something during the latest kidnapping fiasco about Lena always joking about Lex’s annual assassination attempt. Maggie should call Lucy and dig into that. Generally, Maggie worked hard to avoid bringing up Lois to her sister, but she knew that Lucy was, ha, super pissed about all the alien attacks and how the DEO kept coming up empty. What if she actually had information that she wasn’t even considering because she was too close to it?
Her phone buzzed with a text. Not her work phone. The other one.
LIA4LW: Hey, hotcakes. Time for sexting tonight?
TwainHeart: Yes & No. We need to talk.
LIA4LW: ... about?
TwainHeart: Lex.
LIA4LW: what fresh hell?
TwainHeart: Maybe the clinic bombing
LIA4LW: ...eight?
TwainHeart: K.
And Maggie now and then had intuitions about things, and she pictured the conversation she was probably going to have, and then she pictured Lucy growling in frustration and telling her to go to Metropolis and talk to Lois herself, so she emailed her captain, letting him know that she might need to follow some leads there and could he reach out to his opposite number to grease the wheels.
And then Reynolds came hurrying in, and he had his big black police mask on, but she could tell he was smiling. Maggie reached for her own mask and put her coffee cup down. “Talk.”
“The two Cox’s? You were right. They’re brothers, twins.”
“Seriously? A high-end corporate lawyer and a career cop?”
“They both went to Yale Law. Our guy, Graham, flunked out. One of his professors suspected he cheated on a major exam but couldn’t prove it. It went to the student judiciary thing and he failed the course, but his grades were low anyway, so he just left. Not expelled.”
“Well,” said Maggie. “Expulsion probably looks different when your family has money. So do we know when he became this other guy?”
“A few years later, Graham Cox disappeared and his new persona enrolled in the police academy in Gotham.”
Maggie groaned. “And we know what kind of cops you get there. All right. Put it—dammit. We’re going to need another board.”
///
Lillian Luthor was sitting behind her desk in her study, poring over LCorp’s most recent quarterly report, practically purring and she didn’t know how to feel about it. Since the rebranding and the move to National City, LCorp had been doing better than ever. It had stuttered twice: once when Lena had acquired CatCo and had her attention split three ways between, as it turned out, two companies and a supervillain, and again at the start of the pandemic. Well, everybody had suffered losses in all that uncertainty.
But Lena had very quickly turned her organization around to be as digital and as distanced as possible; she had partnered with Max Lord for little monetary gain for either one of them and a whole lot of earned trust from the city; she had survived yet another attempted boardroom coup; sold off a majority share of CatCo, somehow turning a small profit and definitely winning her Cat’s unyielding loyalty; and gotten engaged to the strongest alien on the planet.
Well, those last two weren’t precisely about LCorp, Lillian realized. It was just that thinking about Cat led her to think about her daughter... differently than she ever had before. She had always considered Lena’s predilections to be deviant, disordered. Lionel refused to ever talk about it. Lex didn’t seem to have an opinion one way or another, although she remembered his pink K attack on Superman, which had been a complete disaster, turning Superman into a huge ally and protector for the whole LBQTG alphabet soup community. As had Batman, for some reason, around the same time...
Oh, wait...
Lillian took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. It really did feel as though she were thinking about things differently these days. It was so hard to focus. And it was harder to know how much of her brain fog was due to menopause and how much due to the pink K manipulation of her brain.
Putting down the report, she looked at her computer screen. She had an email from LinkedIn, where she kept a lookout for people who could be useful to Cadmus. Oh. Very nice.
She heard the doorbell ring through the house and looked at her watch: 6:29. Just on time.
Moments later, her butler, Nelson, in his trim grey suit, knocked on the study door and stepped in. “Ms. Veronica Sinclair to see you, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Nelson. I’ll meet with her in the parlor.”
///
Ping-yi got out of her Lyft and found herself walking up the path to the huge Gothic mansion on the outskirts of Metropolis for the second time in a month. And again, she was nervous. Mrs. Luthor had been nice enough when she had invited her for dinner last time, dressed slightly more casually than she usually had when she was the acting-CEO of LuthorCorp, but still all in black. But she was six feet tall if she was an inch and Ping-yi was 5’3” in her flats, so it was a little intimidating. But Lillian Luthor appreciated loyalty and Ping-yi was nothing if not loyal, and that loyalty had paid off in a big way, allowing her family to move back to National City, where the cost of living was lower than in San Francisco and her salary was higher. For now, her husband was taking care of the baby, cooking and cleaning while she went to work. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but it was better. They couldn’t expect perfect in a pandemic, after all.
So she had sent a thank you card and a bouquet of lilies to Mrs. Luthor and had received a lovely note back, also inviting Ping-ye to dinner again and, once again, paying for her plane ticket. The rich were strange, but Ping-yi knew which side her bread was buttered on, so she showed up.
Sighing, she pushed the doorbell.
The door opened and Ping-yi stepped into the foyer to see Mrs. Luthor and a stunningly beautiful half-Asian woman in a skirt suit and low heels. “Ah, Ping-yi, just in time. I was just having a drink with my friend, Veronica Sinclair, and I was hoping you would get here in time to meet her. She is also recently returning to live in National City, and she worked in HR for a while. Veronica, this is Ping-yi Zhao. She just started working in HR at LCorp. You remember my daughter’s company.”
Veronica smiled easily and shook Ping-yi’s hand. “It’s a pleasure. I’m a little rushed at the moment but,” she dug into her purse and pulled out a business card. “I haven’t lived in National City for a while and it would be good to have a friend in town. Maybe at the beginning of October when I’ve finished moving, we could get together for lunch.”
Ping-yi took the card. “I’d like that.”
And Veronica stepped through the still open front door just as a towncar was pulling up to the curb. Then the butler closed the door.
“Now, dear, let’s sit down to dinner and you can tell me all about your first weeks back at Lu—at LCorp.”
And once again, Ping-yi felt a stab of injustice, but at least if Mrs. Luthor had lost control of her company, she still had a first-rate chef.
Chapter 66: Expanding Our Skillsets, Part 1
Chapter Text
Pill had been working at LCorp for six months before she finally met Lena Luthor. Her team had been working on the alien crack that the FBI had apparently confiscated from some criminals, trying to decrease its potential for harm or counteract it because for some aliens it caused hallucinations and violent behavior, and they needed a way to stop that when it happened. There were stories about a pair of Infernians in Gotham and a K’Hund in Metropolis, who had each taken out a whole city block before they were captured, if the stories were to be believed.
And when she had asked her Primary Investigator, “But why isn’t the government doing this themselves?”
Her PI had just nodded tiredly and said, “Do you really think that this administration and this Congress is going to okay funds for a government lab to do research into a hallucinogen? An alien hallucinogen?”
Pill opened her mouth and closed it again. “Good point.”
So she had gone to their company librarian and asked for information on those attacks and noticed that in both cases, the aliens had been exposed to extreme heat around the time they had taken the drug (well, the Infernians had created the heat themselves) and Pill wondered if heat increased the drug’s efficacy or decreased the users’ tolerance.
And the weird thing about alien medical research, Pill had discovered, was that the most common equivalent to mouse models for human research were lobsters because of their bloodlike substance, hemolymph, which contained hemocyanin as many aliens’ blood did, which was why most aliens tended to be immune to human viruses. So, if she could come up with a good hypothesis and experimental setup, then she could actually test it without actually harming other aliens.
Or, say, burning LCorp to the ground.
And after a few false starts, it had worked.
And roughly once a month, LCorp scientists updated Lena Luthor on their labs’ accomplishments, and Pill’s PI was so impressed with her that she gave Pill permission to be the bearer of good news for their lab that month.
Pill sat in the sparsely but comfortably furnished waiting area outside Lena Luthor’s office on the top floor of the building, practically shaking in her shoes. Everybody heard about Night Owl One (Lena) and Night Owl Two (her personal assistant, Jess Huang) and how they often worked around the clock just like the scientists did. But Pill had not expected to be giving Lena Luthor her presentation at eight o’clock at night. But there she was.
Jess Huang tapped her ear and looked up at Pill. “Ms. Luthor will see you now, Dr. Isley.”
Pill stood up and walked into the pristine white office. Lena Luthor was wearing a form-fitting dark red dress, pearls and three-inch black heels. Her hair was done up in a bun at the nape of her neck. Pill’s mouth went dry. Lena turned to look at her and set down the tablet she had been holding.
“Dr. Isley. Thank you for coming in at such a late hour. On the one hand, of course it’s great that our research groups have been so productive this year, but it does mean I tend to have a very long day on these occasions. Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the chair in front of her desk, and she sat down behind it.
Luckily, her PI had prepared her for this, laughing when Pill had asked whether she should make a PowerPoint. “For Lena-Fucking-Know-Your-Research-by-Heart-Luthor? Yeah, right! A PowerPoint? Hoo, oh, I haven’t heard anything that funny in months!” And she’d literally wiped tears away.
Pill said, quite honestly, “It’s an honor to meet you at any time of day, ma’am.”
Then she launched into a quick and highly detailed description of her work, including numerical data that she had worked all week to memorize. Lena asked detailed questions, made her go back and explain her thinking behind different decisions and how she had tested her results for robustness. And she didn’t hide how impressed she was, and Pill had never known a boss at even middle-manager level who was like that.
Lena said, “This is really good news. Conveniently, I’m having breakfast with the... FBI agent who is our point person for the collaboration tomorrow. She will be very glad to hear about this.”
Pill frowned. “But we still need to run more tests—”
“Of course, but preliminary progress on this research will keep them from breathing down my neck on some of our slower collaborations.”
And Pill recognized those kinds of negotiations, so she just nodded.
Lena flipped through her tablet, lost in thought. Pill wondered if she was supposed to leave. She had had bosses like that before. She stood.
Lena looked up, surprised. “Please, Doctor. I know it’s late, but I still have some thoughts I want to run past you.”
Hurriedly Pill sat. “Sorry, I had a boss when I was in grad school and once he was done with you, you were expected to just leave.”
Lena frowned. “That sounds like patriarchal bullshit to me. No, I have a few other projects that I would like your input on.”
Pill stayed, astonished.
///
It was nearly nine-thirty before Lena’s door opened to let Pill out. Night Owl Two was still at her post but had long since given up on getting any work done and had been texting with Holtzman, who had been distant lately and Jess was afraid it was about how bad she had been at sex that one night.
She looked up to watch Pill looking a little dazed as she walked to the elevator. Well, engineers having The Meeting with Lena for the first time often did. Jess smiled and turned to see Lena looking at her.
Possibly looking through her to her soul. “What?” she said.
“Jess, it appears to me that you have a work anniversary coming up. It’s been ten years this month, hasn’t it?”
Jess was surprised, but she thought back. “I guess it has.”
Lena went back into her office and came out with a small rectangle wrapped in flowered gift wrap, about eight inches by four. “Hope this helps.” Then she collected her purse and waved good night and entered the elevator.
Jess watched the door close behind her and unwrapped her gift.
It was a book. The Joys of Lesbian Sex.
There was a reason Jess Huang would walk through the fires of hell for that woman.
///
Eve Tessmacher got that workbook, What Color Is Your Parachute, and took the quizzes and made lists, and prepared very thoroughly for her interviews. The woman at HR for LordTech had been nice and honest and said that, no, Max Lord wasn’t exactly bad to work for, you just had to be adamant about your boundaries, keep your work absolutely confidential, and get results. The fellow at HR at Hamilton Dynamics in Gotham had admitted that they didn’t offer a moving stipend, and Eve didn’t really want to move to Gotham in the first place. In contrast, the Chinese-American woman in HR at LCorp had been fabulous. She had listened to Eve describing her science skills from Yale and her administrative and communication skills that she had honed at CatCo and had offered her a job on the spot. Their R&D department had lost three members to early retirement recently and needed a Director of Communications who really understood both the science and the media. It was practically a job made precisely for Eve.
///
Joe drove his used Volvo back to National City from Gotham, thoughtful. He had taken the opportunity of the trip to use some vacation days and see the country he had been living in for the past two years. Earth had some extremely specific smells in different regions, and he wanted to build up his olfactory portfolio. When he had explained this to Maggie Sawyer and showed her how it worked, a self-made database using Alien Olfactory Notation for the smells he could immediately recognize, she had talked their captain into giving him another two days off. She may have used the phrase “invaluable skillset” to the captain, who simply rolled his eyes and gave him the go-ahead.
Joe enjoyed driving. Back on Slaver’s Moon, he had had to hike everywhere. This was better.
Maggie’s contacts had been very helpful. The former cops were a bit wary of a green alien whose spoken English was imperfect, but Kate Kane had invited him to come to her bar, The Holdup, and even had a glass of Aldabaran rum waiting for him. She had come up with names and the location of an abandoned warehouse and had gone with him when he investigated it and she listened calmly when he explained about the smells. She then introduced him to a woman he had seen once speaking with M’gann at Dollywood, who ran a private security firm. She also listened to Joe explain what he had found.
She and Kate and shared a look. Clearly, these two had known each other a long time. There was a whiff of human female pheromones between them. He showed them the information that he had gathered on Martin Short, the National City Fire Chief.
Kate swore. Sophie frowned.
Joe asked, “Do Sophie and Kate know Short?”
“He’s had some work done,” said Kate. “But yeah, I’d say that’s Firefly. He is wanted in a big way here. Batman almost caught him a dozen times, but he’s slippery.”
“Batman got burned by him, didn’t he?” asked Sophie.
“Yeah, he was out for months.”
“Hm,” grunted Joe. “National City hero is fire-proof. Firefly came to wrong city.”
Maggie would be pleased about his results, but Joe thought he would avoid mentioning anything to her about the pheromones.
///
Maxwell Lord knew that aviation was a huge problem when it came to greenhouse gas emissions, of course he did. So he only ever used his private jet for extremely important occasions. Meeting presidents (and Beyonce that one time), yes. Collaborating with his European counterparts, yes. Vacation travel, no. He’d take the train for that. Business meetings, he’d fly commercial, although naturally in first class.
And when he had invited Cat Grant to come with him on his jet, to be honest, he had been hoping for hanky and possibly even panky to occur, but no, she had to already be in Metropolis. He sighed. Still, she might appreciate a ride back to National City after the gala, right?
And Max imagined Cat Grant, thin, feline Cat, wearing a clingy dress, with slits up to her thighs and a plunging neckline just barely covering braless breasts, with only thin spaghetti straps on those shoulders...
That would make taking his private jet to Metropolis a very important occasion, to be able to be alone with her, like that, on the trip back for a few whole hours...
Thinking about it, he hurried to the back of the plane where the narrow bathroom was.
Maxwell Lord knew himself to be a womanizing jerk, but he wasn’t going to jack himself off in the middle of the plane where his female flight attendants could be triggered.
///
Perry White surveyed his guests with a paternal eye, approving of the men in tuxes with Daily Planet masks and the women in clingy, revealing dresses—he was old, not dead—mostly with masks that matched their dresses. Everyone was being festive and careful.
Then he saw Max Lord in a tux and a LordTech mask.
Perry White had started out as a beat reporter in Metropolis, but at other times in his career, especially when he had been covering science, he had traveled quite a bit and had met just about every important STEM CEO over the years, so of course he had sent an invitation to Max Lord, who was known to appreciate the opportunity to engage in flashy philanthropy for the benefit of the paparazzi, regardless of who his money actually benefitted. And Perry also knew that Cat would be invited, which would make it even more likely that Max, and his money, would show up to Metropolis for the gala fundraiser.
What he had not anticipated—great Caesar’s ghost! Was he getting old?—was that Cat Grant would think of all of these things as well. He had not anticipated her very... 21st century... way of handling Max.
Because when Max walked into the open bar at seven on the dot and saw... what Cat was wearing...
Perry really hoped one of his photographers was on the job to get that. Because it was priceless. Cat turned away from Max for a moment as he walked toward her, looking stunned. She sought out Perry’s attention and, quite blatantly, winked at him.
What a woman.
///
Clark Kent saw the whole thing from a distance, across the room drinking his Perrier in his tux with Lois on his arm beside him.
Lois followed his gaze. “Hmph, looks like somebody has been shown the photos from our wedding.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Clark. “But are you surprised?”
Lois snorted. “Nothing that woman does would surprise me.”
///
Max forced himself to walk toward Cat. A waiter offered him a glass of champagne and he paused, chugged it and gave the glass back. There Cat was in the center of the room in the center of a group of admirers from The Daily Planet, in four-inch-high black stilettos.
And a tuxedo. And a matching CatCo mask.
He rearranged his face into a pleasant smile, greeted her graciously, offered an air-kiss next to her cheek and pretended that was absolutely thrilled to have such a beautiful woman on his arm.
Because he was. Sort of?
///
The gala was a glorious affair, with free-flowing drinks, a four-course sit-down dinner, an hour of awards to some of the editors, reporters and other Daily Planet employees who had, over the years, made the paper one of the best in the nation.
Cat Grant had been invited back from National City to present the Best Reporter award to Clark Kent, who had scooped the other papers over and over again when it came to supervillains threatening the city, the country and the world and Superman and his friends saving all of the above.
Cat’s short speech had been breezy and witty and Clark’s fumbling speech--about how people like Perry and Cat, James Olsen, who couldn’t be present, and most of all his fellow reporter, his wife, Lois Lane had allowed him to do what he did—had been sweet and heartfelt. Because of course it had.
Lillian Luthor only had eyes for Cat. She had always loved to see Lionel in a tuxedo, but he had never worn it with any of the dashing aplomb of Cat Grant. And Lillian had never given any thought at all to the potential effect of a tuxedo with black stilettos.
And of course, being six feet tall herself, barefoot, meant that she never went to an affair like this in more than one-inch heels, especially if she were going to be dancing. It was one thing to tower over the men in the boardroom or in the field with Cadmus. But this sort of thing was something else entirely.
Cat was what? 5’5”? So being 5’9” in heels would bring her up past Lillian’s shoulders, thankfully. It would have been too unseemly to dance with her head at Lillian’s breast level.
And Lillian Luthor had every intention of dancing with Cat Grant that night.
Chapter 67: Expanding Our Skillsets, Part 2
Chapter Text
When the dancing started and Max stood and offered Cat his hand, she immediately followed him out to the dance floor. Max was a lot of things Cat did not care for, but the man was a masterful dancer. As he had promised, he twirled her around the room with great panache and grace, but then Cat had glanced over his shoulder during a turn and lost her footing.
He caught her of course. A man like that always would and it was one of his finer qualities.
Suddenly a hand rested on Max’s shoulder from behind and a voice said, “Mind if I cut in?”
Max turned with a smile. He took Lillian’s hand and air-kissed her cheek. “By all means.”
Lillian turned away from his proffered arms and stepped into Cat’s. “Cat Grant, as I live and breathe. Don’t you look dapper this evening.”
And they danced away, leaving Max gaping.
Cat looked Lillian up and down as they danced. The slightly darker than royal blue dress, but not midnight blue, brought out Lillian’s eyes. Her updo drew attention to her perfect neck and jawline. Her slight smirk reminded Cat of the things she had done to?
With?
For? Cat in the shower a while back.
Cat felt warm. She had worn the tuxedo to put off Max. She had had no way of realizing that Lillian would be there—or she had a moment of panic when she thought that maybe Luthor shenanigans in Metropolis wouldn’t be limited to Lex—and she had not in any way anticipated that her choice of formalwear might... cause Lillian Luthor’s pupils to dilate.
Cat knew about cats, of course. She knew that when a cat’s eyes dilated, one really needed to be cautious, because they might well attack, either in play or for real. And intellectually, Cat knew that this was not how humans worked. But it made her a little nervous, just the same.
“So, Lillian,” she said breezily. “I didn’t really expect to see a Luthor here to watch Clark Kent get an award.”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Cat.”
Cat thought that was an odd way to talk about the reporter, but she just said, “Of course. I don’t see an ankle bracelet as part of your ensemble.”
Lillian smiled. “I managed to get tickets for my parole officer and two off-duty cops and got dispensation for the night.”
“It helps to know the right people, I suppose.”
Lillian hummed thoughtfully. “Are you staying here at the Royale Etude?”
“Alas, no, I’m going home to National City right after.”
“Commercial?”
“I was offered a ride in Max’s private jet.”
“Pity.”
Cat didn’t quite know what to say to that. The song ended and she let Lillan’s hands go, reluctantly. “Drink?”
“How’s the scotch?”
“Glenmorangie Nectar d’Or. Perry knows my tastes. That’s how he convinced me to come and present the award.”
“Lucky me,” Lillian purred.
They strolled over to the bar and the bartender automatically poured a generous glass for Cat.
“And for my friend here, please.”
He handed Lillian a glass.
Cat raised her glass. “To... journalistic integrity.”
Lillian snorted. “Please. Surely we can find something more interesting to toast.”
“Feel free.” Cat watched her curiously, her eyes still dilated and her breath a little fast.
Slowly, Lillian murmured, “To... realizing that I might have been a trifle... misguided... about my daughter.”
Cat’s mouth went dry. “Misguided?”
“About some of her... choices.”
“But are they choices?”
Lillian clearly was fighting to put it into words. “It... feels like that. Like both. Like this is inside me. And I could fight it. I could walk away and be what I’ve always been. Or I could choose to stay. And I feel... like I’m standing on a precipice?”
Cat nodded. “You know, I’ve base jumped Kilimanjaro.”
“Really.”
“Mm. Exhilarating.”
“I’ve always preferred to keep my feet on the ground.”
“And how has that worked out for you?”
Lillian seemed surprised at the question. She opened her mouth and closed it again. Cat suspected that it was rare for her to not know how to reply to someone.
Cat raised her glass. “To considering more courageous options in our choices.”
As if automatically, Lillian raised her glass and then drank the scotch down. Setting the glass on the bar, she looked at the bartender, who poured her another. This one she drank more slowly. Finally, she said, “I don’t believe you’ve ever seen the Luthor house.”
In her head, Cat Grant replaced the euphemism “house” with the more accurate word “mansion.” “I think I would have remembered that.”
“Of course, if Max is planning to get back to the National City Airport by one, when it closes, you wouldn’t have time to come by tonight.”
Cat had two thoughts at war in otherwise suddenly empty brain.
Thought One: Lillian Luthor was going to kidnap her the way Lex would have.
Thought Two: Lillian Luthor was a WASP woman of a certain age and this was her offering to show Cat Grant her CD collection and, very possibly, a good time.
“Unless you have to get back for your son.”
“No... He’s with his father...”
“Dance?”
This time Lillian led, while Cat went back and forth between her two thoughts. When the dance ended, Lillian looked at her Cartier watch. “Almost midnight. Time for me to turn into a pumpkin, I’m afraid.” She nodded at the woman in a floral dress and two men in tuxes who almost certainly were wearing shoulder holsters.
“Well, then,” said Cat. “Let me just go bid Mr. Lord good night and tell him I won’t be needing a ride home. From him.”
///
Max heard the words coming out of Cat’s mouth and he knew the actual dictionary definition of every single one of them, but the meaning took a little longer to hammer itself into his brain. Because yes, when he had planned this trip, he had imagined Cat returning to National City on his plane in formalwear that was as close as a woman could get to being in a state of undress in public when she wasn’t actually on a beach.
And that... had not happened.
But he had been good. He had. He had treated her the same way he would have treated her if she had worn the dress of his fantasies even though he felt kind of gay dancing with her while she wore a tuxedo. To be fair, the stilettos helped.
But then she had, let’s be honest, ditched him.
For Lillian fucking Luthor.
And that stopped him in his tracks.
Oh, shit. This was all his fault.
A few days before he had released the pink K, someone (in retrospect Cadmus, which probably meant Lillian) had kidnapped Cat, Lena Luthor and Kara Danvers. Apparently, they had been out in that almighty rainstorm on some mountain in central California. He had seeded the clouds with pink K, and they had been walking around in it. For hours.
So, if Lillian Luthor of all people and Cat freaking Grant were now giant lesbians, he had only himself to blame.
///
Lillian gave Cat the twenty-five-cent tour of the house and then brought her up to her study on the second floor. She said easily, “I don’t have any Glenmorangie, but I do have some Macallan Edition Number Two.”
“That would be lovely, thank you.”
Lillian went to the drinks table and poured two glasses and handed one to Cat. “So,” said Cat. “This is where you plan your world domination schemes? It’s lovely.”
Lillian smiled and sipped her scotch. “It’s not about domination.”
“Are you going to tell me it’s about trust?”
“Hardly. It’s about knowing that the people who stand next to you on the bus are safe.”
“I can’t imagine Lillian Luthor takes the bus anywhere. And there are a lot of humans who do who aren’t any safer than the aliens you fear.”
“Like Kara Danvers?”
“What about Kara makes you feel unsafe?”
“Her tendency to make my family look bad.”
“Ah. If the truth makes you look bad, you might want to reflect on your actions, no?”
“And what have you got against world domination anyway, Cat?”
Cat looked at the two armchairs near the drinks table. “Shall we sit?” She sat and sipped her drink. “Let’s talk about domination, shall we? It’s a fascinating subject.”
Lillian frowned. “Are we talking about sex or about geopolitics?”
“Oh, sex, absolutely. When you have the choice between those two subjects, always choose sex. You get more readers.”
“You don’t strike me as the fuzzy handcuffs type, Ms. Grant.”
“No, more like iron fist in a velvet glove, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Luthor? We have that in common.”
Lillian nodded.
“Now, I know that you are not going to be persuaded by arguments based on metaphors like alloys being stronger than pure metals. But I did once do a series of interviews with Dominatrixes in Metropolis, years ago. And they were fascinating. Because it turns out that people, and of course white males especially, sometimes want to be punished for being... not what they want to be.”
Lillian nodded. “And is this where you try to blackmail me, Ms. Grant?”
“Not at all, Ms. Luthor. Your late husband had a bit of a reputation, yes, but anyone I have ever talked to about you has described you as having deep and grounded self-confidence, something I have myself seen.”
“Somehow I doubt that Lena talks about me that way.”
“She and I both have complicated relationships with our mothers. We don’t generally talk about you. Sorry.”
Lillian nodded again. “Fair enough.”
“I do respect her, you know, quite a bit.”
“Well, she bought your company to save it from that cretin, Edge.”
“She did. But I have respected her since the first time I interviewed her, back when she got her first patent, what? Ten, twelve years ago?”
“Interesting. I remember you interviewing Lionel. I don’t think I ever read—”
Cat laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t have. I was... freelancing at the time. In this case for Curve, a lesbian magazine.”
“But you’ve always married men.”
“I always identified as straight. I mean, sure I... experimented back at Wellesley. We all did. But sometimes that sort of thing is actually just a phase.”
“So what is... this, this thing between us.”
“Pink kryptonite, which your son invented in an attempt to torment Superman--bad luck on that, by the way. Two years ago, it was weaponized against the country by Max Lord in his attempt to completely discredit the current occupant of the White House and his sycophants.”
“Well, obviously that didn’t work.”
“That’s why they call them sycophants.”
“And us?” asked Lillian.
“Max seeded the clouds with it, all over the country. Not just DC. California too. I don’t suppose your recall that heavy rainstorm we all were out in? We probably got a heavier dose than just about anybody.”
Lillian sighed. “That was... a memorable day. Thanks for the perfume, but the way. I had no idea you were an artist. Those lilies on the card were lovely.”
“Kara Danvers drew that for me.”
Lillian’s eyes grew large. “Did she know it was for me?”
Cat shrugged. “I didn’t ask. But she’s not stupid.”
They sipped their drinks thoughtfully.
Finally, Lillian asked, “So why did you come with me, if this is all just a pink K...” she waved her hand, “what? Mirage?”
“Hardly. What we feel about each other is real: respect, distrust, lust. Curiosity. Enjoyment.”
“So I suppose I will have to put you on a Luthor private jet in the morning.” Lillian sighed.
“Well,” said Cat. “I don’t normally take Mondays off from work, but if you don’t have plans for tomorrow, we could, perhaps, I don’t know. Go shopping together? Make a day of it?”
“For?”
Cat looked around the room, lined with bookshelves. “Books? Metropolis has some really quite lovely antiquarian bookstores.”
Lillian smiled. Slowly, she said, “After Lionel died, I slept in our bedroom for five years. Then I moved to one of the old master guest rooms. Just so you know. There won’t be any ghosts if you join me there tonight.”
“That is much appreciated.” Cat tossed off the remains of the scotch. “So, Lillian Luthor, supervillain extraordinaire. Take me into your bedroom and fuck me to within an inch of my life?”
Lillian smiled. “I thought you’d never ask,” she purred.
///
Nelson had not been hired by Lionel Luthor and had held no great loyalty for the man. Nelson was half American, from a family born to diplomacy, and half English, from a family born to service, so on the one hand, he knew that marital infidelity could be weaponized against a person in power, but on the other hand, he knew when to keep his mouth shut. But Lionel’s mistresses had galled him.
He had never held it against Lena, who was blameless. He had always been kind to her, especially when Lillian was so caught up with dealing with Lionel, or trying to contain Lex’s unpredictable genius, or just trying to keep the company afloat, that she had no time for her adopted daughter. So Cook had taught her how to bake cookies, and the chauffeur had taught her not only how to drive, but defensive driving. The gardener had taught her about flowers, and soil acidity and even how to whittle, after a fashion. But Nelson, the butler, had answered any other questions she had about absolutely anything.
Which had, at times, been trying. Which had, at times, required him to find books in the Luthor library or in other libraries to figure out what the answer was and how to tell her.
So, on the walk back from the museum in Metropolis to the garage where the chauffeur waited, when they had seen three dogs mating, she had asked him what they were doing and he had very carefully answered truthfully about female dogs in heat and how it attracted male dogs, even though it had made him sweat a bit. He hoped that if he ever had a child, he would give them the information they needed to make their way in the world.
And a year later, when her period first started, she came to him terrified that boys would do... that. And he had talked her down off that particular ledge.
He had helped her with her geometry homework (he couldn’t help with calculus) and physics but not chemistry; and he had done all that by letters and phone when she was in Ireland and Scotland at the boarding schools. He had helped her think about the fields she wanted to study so that by the time Lillian and Lionel got around to asking her what she wanted to major in, she had a firm answer.
And when she had come out as a lesbian, she had gone first to Lex and then to Nelson, and they supported her and intervened with her parents as best they could.
But after Lex’s crime spree and trial, after Lionel’s death, the rift between mother and daughter had widened, and Lena had only very rarely been back since then, even before she moved to National City. He missed her. He had hoped she would have come to his wedding, at the age of fifty, to a woman he had met at the museum on his day off and had dated sparsely over the years when he had time to himself. But Lillian came—well, he had to invite her—so Lena made her excuses, sent him a personal check to cover his wedding expenses and a diamond tie pin for him and earrings for his bride.
And in most ways, Lillian was a good employer. She had always been faithful to Lionel, doted on Lex, tried to remember Lena existed, gave the house staff regular raises, and bonuses during the trying times—like when they all worked around the clock to make sure Lionel never found out about Lex’s crimes before he died—and never made outrageous demands.
But she did complain about Lena’s homosexuality and she never hid her disgust.
And whenever any of the staff had suggested that they agreed with this opinion, Nelson would find cause to fire them and replace them with more progressive staff.
Which, on this night that Nelson had literally never seen coming in the thirty years he had worked for the Luthors, was probably just as well.
He let Lillian and her... friend in and Lillian told him to take the night off and probably the next day as well. And the look in those two women’s eyes...
What was the word? Sapphic?
He finished his tasks for the day, and then locked up and turned out the lights, but not before he heard...
Well. That.
And he had quietly let himself out the back door, locking it behind him and... to be honest... fled to the little house on the back of the property where he and his wife and their cats lived.
Maybe he would indeed take the next day off.
Chapter 68: Mad Skills, Part 1
Summary:
: I just changed the rating to Mature because of the next four or five chapters. James and Winn finally get together (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). It’s a little explicit so if that’s not your thing, feel free to skip to Ch. 71, which will post next week.
Chapter Text
Since being so ill for so long, Winn felt like his body just didn’t work the same anymore. For one thing, he was always cold. At the DEO, he went back to wearing plaid flannel shirts, knitted neckties and thick cardigans. Since he wasn’t going to be in the field anytime soon, there was no need to wear the black tacticals. And when he went home, he kept the heat higher than he ever used to keep it. Well, it was California, after all. It wasn’t like the winter there was ever all that cold, not like back in New Jersey when he was a little kid.
He couldn’t drink alcohol and his tolerance for caffeine was practically down to zero. His sense of smell and taste had finally returned, but he had lost quite a bit of weight, mostly fat but some muscle and he just always felt so weak all the time. At least his hands were still strong and nimble. When an alien with electrical powers had zapped the containment and field agents had been racing around chasing after the few aliens they were holding in the city, and bullets were smashing through the glass walls of the upstairs labs, he had stuck a few tools into his pockets and climbed into the crawl space in the sub-basement, unscrewed the panel and gotten in there to replace the wiring and the corroded gasket that had allowed the water leak that had conducted the electricity and fried the whole system. By the time the aliens were back in their cells, Winn was crawling out again, covered in dust and grime and whatever had been in the leak. He took one look at himself when he went into the men’s room to wash off and immediately turned around and went to Rosie in Decontamination and she agreed that he wanted a deep clean and that his cardigan was a lost cause. Then he had stood there naked and dripping while she sorted through a pile of extra tacticals. And he always felt safe even when he had to be naked in Rosie’s presence because she apparently didn’t even notice and more importantly didn’t care. People said she was asexual, and that was really convenient because women who were into men were always shocked (it was kind of rude really) by how big he was.
But she handed him a set of the extra tacticals that she always had on hand and he got dressed and went back up to the command post. And he’d frozen all day.
Vasquez had seen him shaking and had taken him aside and asked if this were PTSD and he had said, “No, ma’am. I’m just freezing my ass off. I have had no body heat since I was sick.”
She went into Alex’s office and came back with her own uniform unmarked field jacket and since they were close to the same size, it had more or less fit him. And the weirdest part of that was that an hour later, Alex had come back from liaising with Lucy in Nevada, and she had stepped up next to him to look at the computer feeds and then said, “Wait, Winn. Why are you wearing Vasquez’s jacket?”
And that made no sense. All their jackets looked exactly alike: black. No DEO markings (or FBI or Secret Service), no rank, nothing.
“I was cold?”
And she had grunted and walked away.
He had given it back before going home. This was the day that James was being released from the medbay, so Winn borrowed his jacket (with the sleeves rolled up a bit) and followed James slowly as he navigated his crutches, and they went down to the underground garage where Winn’s MiniCooper was parked. Winn had offered to let James stay with him at his place as he was still getting used to the leg-length knee brace and exhausted quickly. At least Winn could stand long enough to cook for them.
That was Thursday. On Friday, the field agents had to scramble to save another postal facility and confiscate more plasma weapons and throw more green humans into containment and James and Winn just met each other’s eyes, depressed at their inability to get back out into the field. That night, Winn had pulled up Call of Duty, and they both slumped on his couch with their feet up on Winn’s coffee table.
James sighed. “This used to be fun, but it’s a poor substitute for the real thing.” He shifted his bad leg, grimacing.
“You still in pain?”
“Comes and goes, but Hamilton has been gradually decreasing my pain meds and at the end of the day, when I’m tired, it’s a little bit worse. Dude, do you really need the heat that high? I’m sweating here.”
“Sorry, I have absolutely no body heat these days. Hamilton says it’s a normal symptom and they have no idea how long it’ll last.”
James unbuttoned his shirt. Winn tried really hard not to notice is six pack abs. And... tattoos?
“Dude, you have tattoos?”
“Uh, yeah...?”
“I did not know that. How did I not know that? Is it just one?”
James took off his shirt and showed Winn his full sleeves.
“Wow, I’ve heard that really hurts.”
“Nah, it’s not so bad. But it took a really long time and I had to go back three times for each arm for him to finish it. The other bits he did were a lot more painful.”
Winn tried not to think about what the other bits would be and couldn’t help himself when the image of Lucy’s name on James perfect black muscular ass just materialized in his head. “That’s just... I did not know that.”
James frowned. “Dude, we both know you have in fact seen me with my shirt off at least once...”
Winn blushed a little. “Yeah... But it’s hard to see a tattoo when you’re blind drunk...”
James laughed at that. “So you said you had weird Covid dreams too...”
“Yeah, you ever have a night when you fall asleep and dream some weird shit and wake up and go to the bathroom and fall back asleep into the same dream? Like two or three times in a night?”
“That only happened when I was a rookie out in Nevada. We were going eighteen hours a day and I slept like the dead.”
“Well, imagine doing that for weeks on end.”
“You said you were a wild west sheriff?”
“No, that was you. I was a riverboat gambler. The only person I came close to not beating was Alex, who was a rancher. But fun fact, I’ve spent the last six months teaching myself Texas Hold ‘em.”
James grinned. “Dude, that’s my game. I almost never lose. We should totally play!”
Winn got up and got a deck of cards and a poker chip caddy. He helped James to his feet, and they sat down at the table in the kitchen. Winn dealt and they played a few slow games and Winn won the first one and then lost five games in a row.
“That’s the problem with playing alone, Winn. You don’t learn what your tells are.”
And Winn felt a bolt of lightning go right from his brain to his groin and he said, without giving himself a moment to think it through, “Okay, smartypants. You think you’re so good at this? Let’s make it interesting.”
“You mean betting money rather than chips.”
“I mean strip poker.”
And Winn felt a flash of victory when James’s face went completely blank. “Yeah, I’ve got this cast on...”
“I thought you said you were good at this game. Maybe you won’t be the one who has to strip.”
“Well,” said James, swallowing but keeping his face completely blank. “I did say I don’t lose.”
“You did.”
“Well, then,” said James swallowing again and sliding the deck of cards across the table. “Deal.”
///
The night passed slowly at the DEO. Vasquez sat scribbling scenarios in one of her ubiquitous notebooks, mostly concerning Cadmus (apparently) radicalizing the vitamin G long-haulers that everyone had taken to calling greenies. She was pretty sure that if they ever found that out, they were going to be even more pissed off. She glanced across the command center at Chen who was minding the feeds. He had really grown as an agent during the pandemic, as more and more of his fellow agents had fallen ill, and more responsibility had fallen to him. That was one piece of good to come from 2020, this wretched year that couldn’t end soon enough for her. Well, for everyone really.
She flipped back through the pages from the previous fall, to the pages she had transcribed from the paper plate she had written during the game night they had after the trip to Midvale. She had been right about Jess and Holtzy, apparently. Poor Winn. She wasn’t sure about James and Callie. Those two were usually pretty professional and didn’t generally have their hearts pinned to their sleeve the way Winn did, or their libidos, the way Holtzman did.
And poor James, for that matter. First, the literal shitstorm motorcycle crash had broken his arm, and then he’d had Covid, but at least he hadn’t had it as bad as Winn had. Winn still won the prize for the longest time in the medbay for Covid. And now James had taken bullets on an op, and Hamilton was very clear about how carefully she was regulating his pain medication, but Vasquez knew pain intimately and she would keep an eye on him. Maybe she could find a project for him to work to would keep him busy. She knew he liked to feel needed, more than most people. She would chat with Alex.
When the DEO’s alarm sounded for the National City Bank, she shouted, “Chen, you’re up. Take a team!” And he had shot out on the double, just the way she liked to see her agents do. More plasma weapons? Or that infernal fire? She put a call in to Supergirl, who responded immediately. Then it was just a matter of waiting.
///
In retrospect, James told himself, he was lucky about Winn’s new heat problem, because Winn had been wearing a lot of layers. Winn also blinked when he was lying, and his face went blank when he was being honest. So after about an hour and a half of playing game after game, there was a pile under the kitchen table.
Both of Winn’s shoes and one of James’s.
Both of Winn’s socks and one of James’s.
Winn’s tie.
Winn’s cardigan.
Winn’s sweater vest.
Winn’s plaid flannel shirt.
Winn’s t-shirt.
Winn’s keys.
Winn’s wallet.
Winn’s pocket comb.
Winn’s pen.
Winn’s handkerchief.
Winn’s belt.
James’ belt.
Winn was shivering in the warm apartment. James was starting to sweat.
///
Stanley, the security guard at National City Bank, had seen things. He had been there when some strange SWAT team had come in, shot up the bank’s ceilings to call out that strange leather-chick supervillain, Reign, the previous year, and to try really hard to take her down. They had failed, but they had managed to protect everyone in the bank that night, so they had Stanley’s unfailing respect.
But tonight, when the bank started raining fire just as it was supposed to close, Stanley thought, to hell with the money and raced to help the bank customers and tellers get out of there and hurried them across the street, because he’d been reading in the papers about the devastating arsonist who had been targeting buildings in National City and by the end of the day, there was usually very little left.
He watched as a tall figure in black—why was it always black? We get it. You’re evil—entered the building and then Supergirl was there blowing her freeze breath on the fire and then a black helicopter landed and pushed the bystanders further back as the NCFD’s trucks sped to the scene with a squeal of breaks and started to pour foam and water on the blaze.
They all stood there mesmerized by the towering flames and Supergirl seemed tiny in comparison, but eventually, the bank was sort of saved. It had walls anyway. And Stanley was thinking that he still had another six more hours to work--
But then the building exploded, sending them all flying. With a deep sigh, Stanley picked himself up and walked away from the inferno. There was nothing left to guard.
Chapter 69: Mad Skills, Part 2
Chapter Text
To distract James, Winn told him about his dream, with Lena Luthor shooting up M’gann’s saloon.
“The Wicked Witch Saloon? I don’t get it,” said James, studying his cards.
“Dude, she’s green. My brain... did that. And Mama Reign’s was the um, what did Kara keep calling it? The house of reasonably priced affection?”
“The what now?” James rearranged the cards in his hand.
“The whorehouse. Apparently, she specialized in leather. There were rumors going around that Lionel liked a good whipping now and then.”
“Oh, because Reign looked like...” He sighed. “Poor Sam. I wonder how she and Ruby are doing.”
“And at the end, Lena and Sam and Kate Kane, Maggie’s ex who runs that gay bar in Gotham? They were going to start a ladies bar called the Ruby Slipper so that Ruby would have a respectable job and not go into to the family business.”
Finally, James said, “One.”
Winn slid him a card and James felt relieved. He put five chips in. Winn said, “I meet and call.”
James lay down his cards. “Five to nine. Straight.”
Winn lay down his hand. “All hearts. Flush.”
James took off his other shoe, dropped it in the pile.
“So what about Alex?” asked James as he dealt. “She was a cowpoke?”
“Um, more like an alpaca poke?”
“Alpacas?” For the first time all night, James lost his poker face.
“Yeah, nobody thought it was funny. They just all took it for granted. And Maggie and Lucy too. Their ranch was called the Copper Line.”
“Did Alex’s have a name?”
“Yeah, Director Dansquez’s ranch was Eagle Anchor, I think.”
“Vasquez was there too?”
“They were married. Alex was a blacksmith.”
James took another card. “Yeah, that tracks.”
“Two,” said Winn. He rearranged his cards. “I bid two.”
James said, “I see your two and raise you three.”
“I see your three...”
James said, “What did Holtzy do?”
“That was weird. Sir Holtzman was my horse.”
“Dude, you totally have the hots for her. You know they say horses in a dream are about sex. You wanna ride her!”
“... and I call.” Winn put down his cards. “Full house.”
James smiled and lay down his hand. “Four queens.”
Winn stood up and took off his pants. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s not Holtzy I want to ride.”
And James saw just how...full Winn’s briefs were. “Guess... not...” he said faintly.
///
Chen had Finn land the helo across the street from the bank, closer to where the civilians were standing way too close to the fire and away from where the fire trucks would likely pull up, for all the good they could do. He asked Finn to call Vasquez for backup, because it was windy, just as it had been for the elementary school, and if the fire couldn’t be contained, they were going to have to evacuate people PDQ.
Supergirl was already there, blowing freeze breath, but he didn’t see how she could possibly do this all herself. He tapped his earpiece and suggested Vasquez call out the ice alien that they had in containment. Maybe she could help? Then he jumped down and started guiding the civilians away, and they resisted until he shouted that they weren’t going to be safe there if the gas mains exploded. That finally got them moving.
The fire trucks came squealing around the corner with the multiple loud sirens making his heart race. Then he yelled into his comms for Finn to move the helo further away. And he saw a tall man in all black exiting the inferno apparently unharmed and he instinctively reached for his phone and snapped a quick picture. But they could still feel the heat where they stood so he kept pushing them back.
By the time Supergirl and the NCFD had almost gotten the fire contained, Chen was dripping sweat head to foot and, as always with these terrible fires, he smelled, well, terrible.
Great. They were all going to have to strip in front of Rosie. God, he hated that.
Then the bank exploded.
///
Winn played the next four games like his life depended on it and won all of them. Into the pile went:
James’s other shoe.
James’s other sock.
James’s wallet.
James’s handkerchief.
But James’s eyes kept trailing down Winn’s chest and then swiftly rising again to go back to look at his cards. Winn pushed his chair infinitesimally back and leaned it against the kitchen counter, raising the level of his crotch to where James would just be able to see it. And he felt the flicker of James’s eyes go down his body, linger and then fly back to his cards.
James took two cards. Winn took one.
They bid and matched two, and then three, and then five, and then ten. Finally, visibly sweating, James called and laid down his cards.
“Diamonds. Royal flush.”
Without changing his expression, Winn set down his hand. “Spades. straight flush.”
James’s poker face completely disappeared followed by in quick succession: disbelief, panic, hope, more panic, excitement, more panic and finally, something Winn couldn’t entirely read, but he thought it might be... anticipation. Slowly, Winn got up and came to stand before James.
“Want to do the honors?”
James looked up at Winn’s face and then down at his poorly disguised enormous boner.
Winn said, “It’s okay, you don’t need to drag my briefs down to my feet with your teeth. You can use your hands. You know, slide those big, long-fingered hands down my increasingly naked ass and, as you drag my briefs down my naked legs, you will come, so to speak, face to face with...”
And James looked up at Winn’s face and down at his bulging briefs, swallowed and reached around to slide his fingers under the back of Winn’s waistband, which did in fact bring his face closer to... that... that... object of worship.
“Now, James, be a good friend and do what I asked. Please? Pretty please. I want those gorgeous big hands on my naked ass. I am more than willing to beg.”
And one more time James looked up and Winn thought he must be able to see the honest longing in his face and James looked down and swallowed yet again and then he gave a tiny smile and then slowly, slowly, slowly, caressed Winn’s increasingly naked ass and came face to face with his enormous boner. An enormous boner that was for and because of him, James Olsen, who up until this moment—
(Clark and Superman and that one moment during the pink K fiasco notwithstanding)
--had always thought he was straight.
Huh. Maybe not.
///
Hamilton was on the roof in a triage gown when the injured agents and an injured civilian alien landed, partially frozen by Supergirl. She turned to her Assistant Director and yelled, “Call the burn unit at NCGH and Callie at Luthor’s. We are going to be needing grafts!”
Then she triaged and hurried ahead of the gurneys to scrub in and do her damnedest to save these people. She hated burns, but she really, really hated this accelerant. By the time she entered the OR, the first two agents and the civilian had died, but they had managed to save the three final agents, but there was going to be one hell of a scar on the leg of the agent she had operated on.
It had been maybe nine o’clock when she’d started the surgery. It was almost eleven when she finished, but only because the burned area was so small, a stripe across the back of the man’s thigh about the size of the wide end of a necktie. Supergirl’s quick freezing of his leg meant the tissue had not necrotized and he would not lose the leg.
She dragged herself out of the OR to clean up and write her report and saw her assistant, Jonas, looking devastated. “Jo,” she said. “What is it?”
“Agent Jackson didn’t make it out.”
Hamilton stared at her. “I didn’t see him in triage. Did he come in later? I know two teams were—”
“He didn’t come back. He’s gone.”
Hamilton stared at her, trying to put what she was saying together. “Gone?”
“Ash,” she said, and walked away.
Hamilton remembered Jackson as a smiling young man, and she knew at the DEO, it was usually the young ones who died. The old ones had learned not to make the rookie mistakes. But it was still damned depressing.
An older man was walking toward her, and she remembered asking Jonas to call him. “Doctor Schulz,” she said. “How did your surgeries go?”
“I saved the leg of one but not the entire hand of the other. It was very bad, Jane. I’m sorry. I’m glad you called in Dr. Torres. Her grafts have been making a huge difference to my colleagues and me lately. They will definitely help your Agent Chen as well.”
“Wait, that was Chen? Oh, right, he was face down. Wow, I am out of it.”
“It’s almost midnight, I think?” He shook his head. “I’ve done the best I can for you, Doctor. If you could find an agent to lead me out?”
She did that, went to her office and typed up her surgical report feeling like an automaton. Then she wandered tiredly up to the command center.
Agent Vasquez sat in the command center in what had to be fresh black tacticals. Her hair was damp from the contamination shower, but she still had some of that stink on her. She turned. “Doctor. Report?”
“Agent Chen and Roberts will probably be fine after some recovery and PT. Agent Lee lost the last two fingers of his left hand and might still lose the middle finger.” She shrugged tiredly. “Flip a coin.”
Vasquez turned away for a moment, hit her ear and said, “Agent Finn, have you debriefed? Excellent. Then can I ask you to give Doctor Hamilton a ride back to Callie’s? Thank you.”
Finn hurried into the command center and his hair was also a bit damp, but he didn’t smell as bad. Probably stayed in the helo the whole time. Lucky him. Well, no. She knew that agents hated being there and being unable to help. She knew the feeling.
They were quiet on the drive. Finn was good that way. As he pulled up to the building, he simply said, “You did what you could, ma’am.”
“I know, Finn. But I would really prefer a better than fifty percent save rate. Good night.”
She made her way slowly up the stairs, let herself in, and immediately went to the liquor cabinet where she poured herself a stiff scotch and drank it down. She needed a shower.
She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked exactly as haggard as she felt. Those poor boys, and Jackson, and Jonas who had been friends with him. How do you wrap your mind around your friend being turned to ash? And she thought about Edward, buried far from home in Nevada absent a wake or a funeral or anyone to mourn him, even her.
First one tear came down, then another. Pretty soon she was sobbing uncontrollably. She crouched on the bathroom rug, hugging herself tightly, trying not to have all her broken pieces fly away.
///
After... that... revelation. James had thought the game was over. He had thought that they would joke about it, say, oh, he didn’t know, maybe that it was the pink K coming back and it didn’t mean anything, and he would crash alone in Winn’s spare room and Winn would...
Well, James was thinking very, very fast after Winn sat down back in his chair stark naked, and yes, of course, he had a very clear idea of what Winn was probably going to do all alone and stark naked in his own bedroom, but—
Winn said, “I think it’s my turn to deal.”
“Wait, what? Game’s over. I think... I think I won?”
Winn pointed at his boner. “This. This is what make you think you won?”
“Er, well, yeah. Isn’t that how his works?”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“But you don’t have any more clothes to take off if you lose.”
“So the rules of the game shift. You win, maybe I kiss you. You win again, maybe I touch you. You win again—”
“Yeah, man. I get the idea—”
“—maybe I jack you off. Most of my body is weaker than it used to be, but my hands are still strong.”
“Yeah,” said James shakily. “From playing Texas Hold’em for six months?”
“From thinking of you for six months.”
James tried to swallow but he didn’t have any saliva left.
Chapter 70: Mad Skills, Part 3
Notes:
For all those who labor and are heavy burdened, here's an extra chapter. Happy Labor Day.
Chapter Text
It was 12:20 by the time Callie finally got home. She had stopped by the DEO at eleven and taken DNA from the three surviving agents and brought it back to her lab at the Luthor Alien Clinic to start the tissue engineering that would grow the skin grafts that would hopefully not be rejected by the agents’ bodies. Then she clocked out.
When she opened the apartment’s front door and the lights were on, she called, “Hey, Jane. You still awake?”
But then she saw the scotch bottle and its cap and the empty glass on the kitchen counter. Hamilton usually drank wine, but Callie knew about the dead agents, so she wasn’t terribly surprised. It was hard to lose so many in one night. She went to Jane’s room and knocked softly. When she heard nothing, she quietly opened the door a bit and looked in, but the bed was empty and unslept in.
Down the hall, light was coming from the bathroom, so she kicked off her shoes and padded down the hall and peered in to see Hamilton asleep on the bathroom rug, her mascara smeared by tears.
Callie Torres was a big, strong woman. You pretty much had to be to work in osteo. She picked the other woman up and carried her to her bed, laying her down on it. She took off the woman’s shoes and pulled a blanket over her. Then she went out and shut the door, put the scotch away, turned off all the lights and threw herself down on her own bed still in her scrubs. On a night like this, it made sense to be able to head back to work at a moment’s notice.
///
James was just downright rattled. He couldn’t stop looking at Winn’s enormous boner—the guy was only five foot nine, for crying out loud—and thinking about how that boner was for him, James, because of him, because Winn had been thinking about jacking him, James Olsen, off. For six months.
They played another four games. James lost all of them. Into the pile went:
James’s pen.
James’s watch
James’s leg brace.
James’s pants.
He was sitting there in his boxers, so at least his own... physiological reactions were not immediately apparent under the loose fabric.
But when James won the next game and Winn had a slow grin, Winn leaned over the table to kiss him.
And the next time he won, Winn came over and leaned down to kiss him.
And the third time, Winn straddled James’s lap and pushed himself forward so that Winn’s boner was right up against James’s six pack and he was sort of sitting on... well.
And the kiss—
Women had always appreciated James. He had been kissed by women who were good kissers. He had never, though, been kissed by somebody who had been lying in bed naked jacking himself off to thoughts of kissing James.
For six straight months.
Or, well, for six months in a row.
It turned out that made a huge difference. So to speak.
Holy mackerel.
Winn kept kissing him for... a while. Finally, he pulled back. “You know, Olsen, that was exactly as satisfying as I thought it might be. And I have thought about being naked and kissing you quite a lot these last few months.” He ran his fingertips up James muscled back and slowly backed away and went to sit down sighing deeply. “Is it my turn to deal?”
James wasn’t sure he was even going to be able to hold his cards.
///
Maybe it was a coincidence that Alex had been dreaming about Seattle Grace Mercy Death when her phone woke her up at two in the morning. Maybe more like a premonition. She tended to dream of her Seattle friends when things were about to get very bad for the DEO, like somehow, she often just knew a little in advance. But when Vasquez had called her around ten to say they were being called out to a fire, she had immediately gone to bed in her clothes, the way she would have back then, to get some sleep just in case she was called out in the middle of the night. Like this.
“Danvers.”
“Lexie, it’s Callie. I’m worried about Jane. I came home and she was asleep on the bathroom floor. I think she’d been drinking a little and crying and I know you lost some agents tonight, but—”
That made Alex sit up, which woke Vasquez.
“Wait, we lost agents? Which ones?”
“I don’t know the names, sorry. I do know that at least three who are injured are expected to survive, but—”
Vasquez rubbed her eyes.
Alex said, “I’m going to put you on speaker.”
“It’s just I put her to bed, but she woke up screaming and then went back to sleep but I’m pretty sure she’s having nightmares, and I know since Edward died—”
Alex looked confused. Vasquez said, “Her husband. Covid. With Lucy.”
--which very quickly explained a lot and none of it good—
“But I’m just concerned. I’m not saying this is a mental break, but—”
“You think we should get her evaluated?”
“If she were at Seattle and might be operating like this, I would. What you guys do is even more important, especially lately.”
Vasquez nodded. “Noted,” she said. “Can you take care of her for tonight, make sure she’s okay?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks, Callie,” said Alex. “Could you bring her by the DEO in the morning too?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right. Good night.”
Alex turned off her phone, put it back on its charger. “Okay, Vas. Please tell me you have a scenario for this?”
Vasquez nodded tiredly. “I had one that I wrote at Christmas when we had to send him to Lucy, and I revised when he got sick, and again when he died. But tonight, I was so busy dealing with all the details of deceased agents and liaising with NCFD that Hamilton was just not on my radar, although in retrospect, this makes a lot of sense.”
“Vas, you can’t think of everything.”
“No, I can’t. But I really like Doc. She’s saved all of us so many times. She’s always seemed unflappable.”
“Sounds like she is well and duly flapped.”
“Yeah. As if we didn’t already have our work cut out for us.”
///
James was an utter disaster, so there was no way he should have won the next game. He was pretty sure that Winn must have thrown the game on purpose. And then he came over and put his chilly hands over the cloth covering James’s penis and started to rub, using the friction of the cloth to...
And James had thought that he was hard before, but Winn hadn’t been lying about his strong hands, and the idea that he had been fantasizing about doing this to, for James for six months of nights, fantasizing about stroking and rubbing James’s big, hard penis for him, making it bigger, and harder and--
And Winn was standing up to do it, reaching down to rub and stroke James’s increasingly bigger and harder penis with his right hand, while tickling James’s naked back with his other hand, and James was looking the entire time at Winn’s enormous erection that was for and because of him.
///
That next game, Winn didn’t even bother to ask for cards and when James called it, Winn had five cards that had no relation to each other at all. And he grinned and came over and stood in front of James’s chair and said, “You know how the girls are always talking about how sexy consent is?” He stroked his own penis absently and James followed his hand with his eyes.
“Um, no? I mean, yeah, Lucy and I talked about consent a few times but... when on Earth? You didn’t sleep with Kara, did you?”
“Alas, no. But I have conversations with women that, well, they tend to consider me an honorary woman. But you learn a lot that way.”
“And you learned what now?”
Winn grinned. “This. Ahem.”
“James,” said Winn teasingly. “I would very much like your consent to let me unbutton your boxers and take out that big hard penis of yours and put it in my mouth and lick it and suck on it until you come, preferably in a screaming mess of ecstasy. Possibly several times. Maybe all night.”
“I, I.”
“Pretty please let me suck your dick, James? I will beg if you want me to. Oh, please, James, let me suck that enormous, muscular cock of yours!”
“Oh, God, do it. Do it.”
“Wait, sorry, consent needs to be very specific. Do what?”
“You know, touch me and you know!”
Winn stroked his hand over James’s boxers. “Is that what you want? Touching you? Oh my, that’s nice and hard. I like a big hard dick in my hands. Or my mouth. Your choice.”
“Do it! Do it!”
“Do what, James? Stroke your penis under your shorts? Your big hard penis? Sure. Or inside your shorts if you want me to, with my strong hands stroking and tugging, caressing, squeezing.... You just have to say: Winn, get your strong hands inside my shorts on my big hard penis. Then I will totally take care of you that way. You just have to say.”
“God, yes! Yes!”
“Yes? Yes, what, James? Do you want my strong hands to grip your big hard penis? Or maybe you want me to kneel down and take your big hard penis in my mouth. Actually, I am very good with my tongue...”
“Suck my dick, Winn. Please! Suck my dick!”
Winn grinned and popped James’s boxers open to see the large hidden prize inside. “Your wish is my command.”
And he knelt and his head went down, and James thought he was going to cry from wanting it all so much.
///
Supergirl flew fast, trying to get the smell of burning flesh out of her mind. Normally, she liked flying at night over National City, listening for trouble, yes, but mostly drifting near the warehouse district, where trouble so often happened, keeping an eye on Lena’s clinic, drifting over the neighborhoods where her friends worked, like Dollywood, or lived, like Winn over near National City University. Occasionally, she would reach out to listen to their heartbeats and be soothed by the—
Wait. Was that Winn’s heartbeat? And was that James with him? And James was on crutches. There was no way that he was in any shape to protect them both and Winn was still so new to hand-to-hand fighting—
Supergirl flew like the wind to Winn’s building, counted three flights up and five windows over, popped the lock with her fist and stepped into his living room. They were in the kitchen, making distressed noises. She supersped—
And what has been seen cannot be unseen.
Unfortunately.
James was sitting, stark naked, in a kitchen chair with Winn on his knees in front of him, also stark naked, sucking on his penis. They both turned toward her, and Winn shot to his feet. Supergirl made two observations before her brain shut down.
1. They were both sporting enormous erections.
2. As they took in her looking at their enormous erections, both men’s penises seemed to... get bigger? Move higher?
Kara turned and fled back out the window.
///
After Supergirl had supersped out through the window, Winn turned to James. Their boners were still huge, maybe even bigger from Supergirl’s accidental voyeurism. They didn’t even need to say it. They just looked guiltily, first at each other’s faces and then at each other’s erections, which shouldn’t have, couldn’t have gotten bigger.
But they had. And they were both sure that she had seen that too.
Supergirl, the woman they both worshiped and loved and had desperately wanted to have sex with, had seen their enormous penises. And that shit was hot. Wrong. Deeply wrong. They knew that.
But hot.
They ended up all over each other on the kitchen floor and then Winn had helped James into the living room, and they had ended up on the couch 69ing madly and eventually, somehow had fallen asleep.
For a little while.
A lot more happened that night. And the next day. And the next night.
James lay there naked in Winn’s bed around three in the morning on... was it Sunday?
They had done... more and James had done... things. And James couldn’t stand up for some of the things because of his leg, but at one point a very naked Winn had smiled and pushed a very naked James gently to his knees with a pillow under the knee of his bad leg. And he had pushed James gently to lean over the big ottoman in front of the armchair.
And in that hyperspecific way of his, Winn had asked for James’s consent, stroking James’s naked ass while he asked whether James wanted him to touch him in specific places with his hand or his mouth or his penis--
Several times, saying, “Oh, I can’t hear you. You’re muffled from the ottoman. You need to speak up about what you want me to do for you with my hands, and my mouth--”
And similar. And when James gave him consent to touch him all over with his hands but still hadn’t given consent for what Winn really wanted to do, Winn had stopped and sat naked in the armchair and they had talked about it. At length. And then Winn and he had gone back to the other things they had done before, and he hadn’t pushed, and he didn’t seem upset and, after they had worn each other out—
Again,
--they had curled up together in Winn’s bed and Winn had allowed James to be the big spoon.
But what Winn had suggested, that really just scared James. Did men? Could men? Real men? Do... that?
And then James’s mind, in his sleep, had... gone there, to what Winn had asked to do for James. And he woke up ejaculating.
Again.
Now he lay there with his hand on... Winn. And he was in a daze. He loved Lucy and sex with her had been amazing. It had. But this was...
He didn’t know.
And then he had a memory of a half-overheard conversation at a game night the previous year which, in retrospect, he was pretty sure he had heard wrong.
What was it Maggie had said with a laugh to Alex and Lucy in Kara’s kitchen? Maggie had claimed that they had been talking about a problem with her apartment’s kitchen sink that kept getting clogged, but in retrospect, he had been a little distracted by Callie’s cleavage, so he hadn’t really been paying attention.
“It helps to be intimately familiar with the plumbing.”
Yeah, no kidding.
Chapter 71: Recovering, Part 1
Chapter Text
Supergirl flew as fast as she could away from Winn’s neighborhood. There was no way she could go home to Lena’s, not smelling the way she did and certainly not feeling the way she did.
She flew down to street level, changed into street clothes with superspeed, and walked back to her loft, sweating in the chill air. On the way there, she contacted the DEO and told Vasquez she was too tired to finish the night’s patrol.
“Are you all right, Supergirl? You sound traumatized.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Maggie said you couldn’t have saved those firefighters.”
“I just need to sleep, Vasquez. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She let herself into her apartment, closing the door behind her and locking it.
Then she went and sat down on her couch.
She had never slept with either of them, although both had wanted her to. She thought of Winn like a brother and although she could appreciate James with his shirt off with the muscled arms and abs, somehow that just hadn’t worked out. And then had she met Lena and pretty much hadn’t given them a single thought since.
And she understood now that the brief mistake that was Mon-El was her displacing her increasing romantic and sexual attraction for Lena (whom, laughably in retrospect, Kara had assumed was straight) onto him as a more acceptable target. And Kara didn’t have a whole lot of experience with different men, but his penis, she supposed, had been average. He was great at the hammering-away-at-her part and terrible at the foreplay, but at least she hadn’t been able to break any of his bones, which had once or twice happened in college.
In comparison, James was, well, it, she.
And she had expected that because he was 6’3” and those things were generally proportional.
But Winn.
And she hadn’t ever really gotten much out of any of the penises that she had made the acquaintance of, so to speak, but thinking about them had occasionally, well, done the trick on her lonelier nights. Once, after a particularly flirty dinner with Lena, Kara had come home and Googled for images of naked men, and apparently there were millions of pictures out there of naked men; one she particularly remembered showed four of them wandering down a rural road with their arms over each other’s shoulders (and one had to wonder who had taken the picture). That had turned her on in maybe two minutes. So then she had erased her cookies and gone about her day, certain that she was in fact still straight.
And eventually Maggie had explained bisexuality, which was definitely one of the most important conversations she had ever had in her life. Maggie had said that Kara sounded like she was 75/25, women in the lead.
But suddenly, Kara was terrified that she wasn’t even 50/50 anymore. She couldn’t get the picture of two of her best friends naked and aroused out of her brain. And she wanted to go masturbate, but she knew she would only feel guilty, and who does that while thinking about her friends that way? Surely that was just all kinds of wrong.
And she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Winn was pretty out about being bi, but James?
Kara had been certain he was straight.
But then, there had been the pink K two years before. She had noticed them being a little awkward around each other after that, but later, she had thought she had been imagining things.
Maybe not.
And what was worse was their reactions, their very physical reactions to her looking at their penises. How was that even possible? And also, ew, gross.
She looked at her shaking hands. She had to do something. She couldn’t tell Alex. Or Vasquez. She absolutely couldn’t tell Lena. Rao, why was this so hard?
Ack. Difficult. Why was this so difficult?
She thought of Maggie. It was only 9:30. That wasn’t too late to call, was it?
///
Maggie raised her hand to knock on Kara’s door, but Kara pulled the door open and pulled her into the apartment, looking frantic, which was precisely how she had sounded on the phone.
“Hey, Little Danvers. You look upset. How can I help?”
“Oh, Maggie, thank you so much. I have a, a problem? And I don’t even know how to think about it, and I can’t talk about it because it isn’t my story to tell and I really can’t talk to Alex, because DEO, and I really, really can’t talk to Lena, but I don’t know what to do.”
Maggie pushed her gently to sit down on the couch, then turned and went to Kara’s kitchen cabinets, pulled down a bottle of Aldabaran rum and a glass. She poured two fingers into the glass, considered, then poured two more. She brought it over to Kara and sat down beside her on the couch. “First, drink.”
“No, I can’t. I—”
“Kara, I love you, you know that, but just now your eyes got red, and I want to live long enough to help you and I’m pretty sure your landlord doesn’t need laser holes in your walls.”
“Oh.” Kara gulped the booze down.
Maggie waited until Kara’s shoulders visibly relaxed. Then she said, “You don’t need to tell me any of the details. Just let me think out loud and see if that helps. Okay?”
Meekly, Kara said, “Okay.”
Maggie took a moment to think. “The only things that put the Danvers girls into this state is either each other’s physical safety or sex.”
Kara nodded, blushing.
“Sex it is. Okay, well, I’ve seen you around Lena, and I know how much you adore her. So the problem is not there.” She thought some more. “And I’ve experienced the DEO’s decontamination showers before and I know that Rosie doesn’t give a shit if agents are shy about being naked together, so I have to think that maybe you were in there with someone and, I don’t know, had a physical reaction to seeing them that you didn’t expect.”
Kara stared.
“And I know that at the very least Rosie doesn’t mix sexes if possible, so I’m assuming you saw a female agent in... a new way, and it is upsetting you.”
Kara opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Am I close?”
“Well, yeah, very in the general and not at all in the particular...”
Maggie took that in. “Okay, let me try again. Alex told me about how grossed out you were when you caught Mon-El and Eve in the supply closet together, and I know at Alex’s old job in Seattle things like that happened a lot. Did you catch a couple doing it at the DEO?”
“Close enough.”
“And you’re upset because it turned you on?”
“I’m not a voyeur! They sounded distressed and their hearts were pounding!”
“And you burst in to save them.”
Kara nodded sadly.
“So it was an honest mistake.”
“Yes, I know that, but I mean, I’ve burst in on Alex and Vasquez, just the once, and you know her apartment with that bed, and yuck, but yay for her that Vasquez loves her so much, but this was different. I’m madly in love with Lena and just a few days ago I was with her in her office and I—”
Maggie’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t have to—”
Quietly, Kara said, “I may have bitten the buttons off her blouse.”
Maggie’s eyebrows rose higher. “Girl’s got game!”
“Well, it wasn’t me, it was Supergirl. I think it’s the cape.”
“So you basically ravished your fiancée on her couch.”
“Um. The desk.”
Maggie’s head quietly took that image and filed it away for later. In the now, she said, “Okay. So if you know that about your, well, selves, why is this thing bothering you so much?”
“Because I love Lena and her breasts and the things I can do for her with my fingers, and I’ve never really gotten much out of a penis even when I thought I was straight, but now I can’t stop thinking about what it looked like, well, they, but then when they saw me seeing them—”
Maggie nodding. “Well, speaking as a gold star lesbian here, that sounds traumatizing.” She stopped and went over Kara’s sentence in her head. “Wait. They?”
“Um. Yeah.”
And Maggie was a detective; she detected. She knew that Supergirl memorized her friends’ heartbeats. She had a pretty good idea who she had seen, and if she were right, well, no wonder she was traumatized by being turned on by seeing them together.
“Okay, Little Danvers. Here’s the thing. You can’t judge your feelings. You really can’t judge your body’s automatic reaction to things, even if society and religion and patriarchy really want you to do that so that they can control you. That is not on you.”
“But Lena will be so disappointed!”
“But she knows you’re bi, right? You’ve talked about that?”
“Actually, I can’t remember if we ever talked about it.”
“Well, that is the first thing I would do, if I were you. Have that conversation. See how that goes. I’m pretty sure she’s a gold star too, but I am also sure that she has dated bi girls, because I did live in Metropolis for a while when she still lived there, and I’ve lived here since she’s been here, and she’s a lesbian icon, and queers talk. And you are right not to tell someone else’s story, especially when it comes to this stuff. But, yeah, she’s dated bi girls. That’s on record.”
“What’s a gold star? I’ve heard her say that about herself.”
“We’ve never slept with a guy.”
“Oh. Lucky you.”
Maggie smiled. “Now that, Little Danvers, is a sign that you don’t have to worry about you. Do you want to sleep with either one of those guys?”
“What? No! Of course not.”
“And you don’t want to have a threesome? Say, with one of their penises in each of your hands, rubbing and squeezing them?”
“Maggie!” Kara looked shocked.
“What? I read fanfic. Doesn’t mean I want to do that myself, but if one of my favorite authors is going to go there once in a while, I don’t necessarily skip that chapter.”
“I only want to sleep with Lena.” She paused. “Although Lena said Wonder Woman was my hall pass, but only if I gave her a blow for blow afterwards, possibly acted out with her.”
Maggie closed her eyes and tried not to laugh. “Okay, Little Danvers. I am going to do you the favor of pretending that you did not just say that, and I did not just hear it.”
“Lucy didn’t give you a hall pass?”
“Yeah, but we don’t aim so high. More Gal Gadot than Wonder Woman.”
“But she’s straight. Wonder Woman is bi.”
“What about not telling other people’s stories?”
“Oh, I met her once. She told me to tell anybody who would listen. She wants to normalize it.”
Maggie shook her head. “There’s a reason we all love her. But here’s the thing, Kara. Talk to Lena, and tell her what you saw, although probably not who. Lena loves you and she is an engineer, and engineers love to solve problems. I am pretty sure that she is well equipped to solve this one. Okay?”
Kara nodded, sighing. “Thank you, Maggie. You are a great friend. How do you take an unsolvable, terrible, horrible problem and make it okay? And how did you figure it out so fast.”
“Kara, I’m a detective; I detect. Also, I’ve been queer for a million years and I have a lot of experience mentoring the baby queers.” She shrugged. “You do anything enough, you tend to get better at it.”
“Huh. That’s what Lena said...”
And Maggie worked very hard not to laugh at that, although this was the one tiny thing that she was going to just have to tell Lucy. “Bit off the buttons? Really?”
Kara nodded. “Black satin.”
Maggie smiled gently. “If you can do that, you can do this.”
“Should I put my cape on to talk to her?” She was absolutely serious.
“Is it harder for Lena to take your supersuit off than your street clothes?”
“Rao, yes. I usually do it myself.”
“Then, in my humble opinion, go in your street clothes. Because it would not surprise me at all if Lena’s response to this conversation that you’re going to have with her is that you end up in bed together. And she strikes me as a hands-on sort of person.”
Kara smiled. “She really is.”
And Maggie thought to herself, Did I actually just say that out loud. Oops.
Kara hugged Maggie very carefully. “Thanks, Maggie.”
“Any time, Little Danvers.”
Chapter 72: Recovering, Part 2
Chapter Text
Lena got home from LCorp late and Kara wasn’t home yet, although this might be one of her late patrol nights. Lena changed and poured herself a glass of scotch and pulled a folding chair out to her balcony. Pretty soon it would be too cool at night to come out to watch the stars.
She couldn’t stop thinking of those buttons. She had had some lovers who were a little rough—
And suddenly she remembered the woman in the hotel, who she had figured out a while back had been Kara on red K. So seeing this side of Kara was only sort of a surprise. A nice surprise. Not every day, no.
But now and again? Sure.
She heard the door open and she turned and waved Kara to come out. She looked tired and small in her grey slacks and flats and the pale pink shirt and grey blazer. Pink was usually a sign that Kara was upset. A blazer meant business. Interesting.
Kara came out and sat down on the floor of the balcony, leaning against the wall and facing Lena.
“Why so serious, love?” asked Lena.
Without preamble, Kara said, “Did we ever talk about me being bi?”
Uh oh. “No, but I assumed that you and Mon-El...”
“Yeah, we did. Wasn’t great, though.”
“Selfish people don’t tend to be good at lovemaking.”
“I guess. The one advantage was that he was indestructible.”
“Unlike me or all my headboards.”
“Yeah, or my college boyfriends.”
Lena waited.
“So something happened this evening,” said Kara. “I made a mistake.”
And Lena thought, how do you make a sexual mistake? Because that was what that sounded like. Carefully, she asked, “What kind of mistake?”
“I heard some people who sounded like they were in distress and I sped in to save them and they... didn’t exactly need saving.”
“Okay...”
“Um, they were. Well, um. Having sex.”
“Okay... And that’s never happened before?”
“Well, once. Maybe twice. But never people I—”
“Knew.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Lena thought about how she had led with the bi thing. “And one of those people was a man?”
“Both were.”
And Lena thought, huh. Winn finally got James to admit he’s gay. Good for Winn. But not, she supposed, good for Kara.
“And I just talked to Maggie. Well, no, I guess she talked to me, because I couldn’t tell her what happened, but she figured out the shape of the problem.”
“I’m a detective; I detect?”
“Yeah. She’s really good at it.”
“She is.”
“And she said I should tell you what happened. She said that you really love me, even if I’m not as gay as you, and that as an engineer, you really love solving problems, and that she thought you were well equipped to solve this one.”
Lena laughed. “She’s not wrong. What does she drink, Kara? I’m going to have to send her a bottle of something mind-numbingly expensive.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounds to me that you just saw, quite likely, two big penises and now you are wanting penis.”
“I didn’t mean to! And how could that be good?”
“Because she is right about me. C’mon, Kara. Let’s turn off the lights and go to bed.”
“But—And how did she know you were going to say that?”
“Because her girlfriend is bi too. And Maggie and I think the same way.”
Kara followed her through the condo as she turned off the lights, then took Kara by the hand and led her into their bedroom. “Hm. I need to take off my makeup, but can you pull the toolbox out from under the bed?”
Kara pulled out the big red toolbox that she had seen under the bed before. She didn’t think most people kept their tools under the bed, but then Lena was an engineer after all.
Lena came back looking a little less glam, but she was smirking. Kara frowned in confusion.
“Maggie was absolutely right about me,” said Lena, with a shit-eating grin. “I am absolutely equipped to solve this problem.”
“With... tools?”
“In a way.” She unlatched the box and opened it. Inside, in a row in rainbow colors, ranging from pink (very small) through red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple (enormous), there lay eight... penises?
Cautiously, Kara touched the little pink one. “Is it rubber?”
“Silicone. It stands up to both wear and sterilizing in boiling water.” And Lena knew she shouldn’t ask, but she also knew she had to know. “So, these, um, that you saw. How big would you say they were? In comparison to these?”
“Yellow when I first burst in. Green when they realized I was looking at them.”
“Both of them? And they got... bigger?”
“And sort of stood up more?”
“I have heard about that phenomenon. I would take it as a huge compliment and then immediately forget about it. Forever. And Mon-El?”
“Between red and orange, more or less.”
Lena filed that away in a compartment labeled “Things This Lesbian Doesn’t Need to Know, But I’m Glad I Asked.” There was a wide variety of trivia living there in her head.
“So do you want to start with the orange? Or pink?”
“Wait, I don’t understand. So you are going to, well, fuck me with that instead of your fingers?”
“If you like.”
Kara’s eyes got big. “So... do I stand up while you push and pull it?”
“Actually, I have a rainbow-colored harness for it.”
“You mean you would wear it?”
Lena nodded, watching the excitement grow in Kara’s eyes. She started to unbutton Kara’s shirt murmuring, “So Kara, do you want me to fuck you with my rainbow assortment of dicks?”
“Yes, please. Maybe let’s start with the pink one.” She reached up and started to unbutton Lena’s flannel shirt. “And then see where we go from there.”
Lena grinned. She suspected she was not going to get much sleep that night.
///
On Saturday morning, the sun shone a line of light over Jane’s face as she lay on her side away from the window. She had been dreaming of Edward, from back when they were newlyweds, so at first that didn’t particularly surprise her. Then she started remembering her other dreams, the blood all over the DEO’s OR floor, the screams.
Those lance blasters the Daxamites had shot their agents with were no joke. But then she remembered the agents who had been shot by Reign’s laser eyes, and those were bad but targeted and normally cauterized themselves, which had made the damage somewhat less traumatic, and they had kept the infection rate close to zero.
But remembering the night before, the deep burns, the agent apparently turned to ash—
Wait. Was someone in her bed? Edward had died. But an arm was thrown over her. She opened her eyes wider to see that the hand was female with very short nails. The hand of a surgeon. Or possibly a lesbian. Callie.
Why was Callie in her bed?
She had been upset last night, sure, but she was pretty sure she had not had hospital trauma sex with Callie Torres.
And Jane had done that once or twice before she had married Edward. Maybe four or five times. But not in a long damn time.
For one thing, she was too dry most of the time these days. And who would she have slept with? The only man close to her age at the DEO was a 300-year-old Martian who was reportedly in love with everybody’s favorite Martian bartender.
But maybe Callie had developed... feelings for her? Wasn’t she bisexual?
Jane’s internal clock told her it was just past eight or so. Gently, she lifted Callie’s hand and pulled out from under her arm and then returned her arm to the bed.
And that’s when she realized that both she and Callie were still wearing scrubs. Odd.
She padded down the hall to the bathroom and saw the rug askew and remembered lying there crying. She did not remember going to bed. Had Callie somehow carried her there? She peed for a long time and felt a little head-achy and cotton-mouthed. That’s what she got for downing four fingers of scotch when her usual drink was a single glass of white wine. But she had really needed the sleep, so she’d take some Tylenol and chalk the hangover up to experience.
At the kitchen island she realized that Callie must have put the scotch away and washed her glass. Maybe she had simply been worried about her. That tracked.
God, what a horrible night. And she just had no psychological reserves these days, after Edward and Covid and all the agents injured by these domestic terrorists.
And then she thought, what would Edward have done if he’d found her drunk asleep on the bathroom floor? She was pretty sure that would not have ended well.
She heard the toilet flush. Callie looked exhausted as she came into the kitchen and said, “Do you want me to make eggs?”
“Do you have the energy to make eggs?”
“Not really.”
“Then no. Thanks. I can pick something up on my way to the DEO. And btw, you look wrecked. Long night at the Luthor Clinic?”
Callie just looked at her before saying, “I got home a little after midnight.”
“Was I a wreck?”
“Yup.”
“Did you put me to bed?”
“Yup.”
“Ouch. Thanks. You didn’t have to stay.”
“I didn’t at first. I went to my bed and crashed. But around one, you started to have screaming nightmares. And even when you sort of woke up, you weren’t entirely awake, and I was worried about you, so I stayed.”
Jane watched her carefully. She wasn’t meeting her eyes. “And?”
“And I might have called Alex. Because, chica, you are not okay. And we are both surgeons, and we deal with a shit-ton of trauma. And up to a point, you just push it down and keep going. In my judgment, last night, you passed that point. So I made the call.”
“And what’s going to happen?”
“Probably a medical and psych eval. Maybe a little mandatory time off, counseling. Isn’t that what you would recommend?”
Jane nodded slowly. “Shit. I knew I wasn’t 100%. I mean, who is these days? Not just the DEO, just fucking everybody.”
Callie looked a little surprised at hearing Hamilton swear, but she just said, “Yup.”
Jane sighed. “So do I have until Monday or do they want me in today?”
“What do you think?”
“Right. So let’s go get dressed. We can pick up coffee and some of those egg and bacon croissant diet disasters to go.”
///
The following day, Kara flew to the DEO and stood on the balcony, looking out on the city and trying to figure out how she was going to face James and Winn. She was pretty sure James was going to be the harder—
Ack. Just no. More difficult.
She wasn’t wrong.
He came out on the balcony. She turned and said, very formally. “James, I apologize for bursting in last night. I should have known that you were completely safe and that no one was going to attack you in Winn’s apartment.”
He smiled. “You’re forgiven. I’d like to think that if we had been in danger, you would have saved us. It matters to both of us that you are there to protect us.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“But, can I just ask? How did you like what you saw?” he had a, yeah, cocky grin. Now she knew what that meant.
“Actually,” she said very seriously, “Lena’s dick is way bigger than yours. And it’s purple.”
Then she took off into the sky, leaving him standing there, gaping.
///
Lucy Lane, visiting from Nevada, saw and heard the whole thing. Maggie, without giving anything away, had called her the night before and told her in no uncertain terms to get her ass to National City immediately and deal with James. And now she understood why. She had worn her combat fatigues, knowing that they put James off. She was very glad she had.
She stepped out onto the balcony. “Agent Olsen.”
He turned. “Lucy, when did you get in?”
“Sorry, James, but for the next five minutes, I need you to think of me as your former commanding officer.”
He stood to attention. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I heard what you just said to Supergirl, and it pretty much constituted sexual harassment. And if you EVER risk this city, this country, and this planet by creating a hostile work environment for that superhero, you could get people killed.”
He blanched.
“So I am ordering you to go downstairs to Pam in HR and ask her to give you the links to redo the training on sexual harassment and relationships in the workplace. She may also have paperwork for you and Winn to fill out.”
“Wait, Winn?”
“From what I just heard the two of you saying, Supergirl flew into Winn’s apartment to rescue you and she saw the two of you in flagrante delicto, probably with your pants down around your knees while Winn sucked you off.”
James gaped, “I, we.”
“Oh, both of you sucked each other off. Interesting. I wondered how long that would take.”
“You wondered?”
“He’s been madly in love with you since you met, and I know you were on duty during the pink K mission. It was only a matter of time.”
And then, because she knew James very, very well she glanced down at his crotch and saw that his pants were not fitting the way they had when she had started this conversation.
She sighed. “That was me speaking as your former commanding officer giving you an order. This is me speaking as your ex. That?” she said, pointing at his crotch. “That is not going to help you do your job this morning, particularly if you get called out. Your typical four-hour boner is only going to get in the way. And I know you want to go down to his lab, but I’m pretty sure Holtzman works down there too, and we don’t need two traumatized women at the DEO.”
“Wait, traumatized?”
“James you are such an idiot. Of course Supergirl is traumatized. But, yes, speaking as your ex, after you talk to Pam, go find Winn. The men’s bathroom on the seventeenth floor has a lock on the inside of the door. But do not make a habit of it.”
She turned on her heel and left, thinking: Good old Maggie, taking care of their superhero.
///
When James showed up in Pam’s office, she handed him two paper forms, on top of which was a sticky with two web links on it.
“Um, hi, Pam. I, uh, need—”
“To redo the training on sexual harassment and workplace relationships? I’m aware. Get it done by tomorrow.”
“Wait, Lucy told you?”
“She didn’t need to. I tend to... learn about such interactions... organically.”
He took the forms. “Can I have a cookie?”
She looked at him sternly. “Agents who have to be ordered by a superior officer to show up for this kind of training don’t deserve cookies. You are dismissed.”
///
Winn was humming songs from Pippin under his breath all morning. Holtzy rather thought he was in love, which was great from her perspective, since that hopefully meant that he would no longer be pining over her girlfriend.
And when James came in, looking dazed, Holtzy was pretty sure she knew why.
When James’s eyes focused on the half-eaten chocolate chip oatmeal cookie on the papers on Winn’s desk, he said, “Wait, she gave you a cookie?”
“Yeah, I was waiting outside her office when she came in at eight.” He glanced down at James’s crotch. “Oh man, tell me you did not walk into her office looking like that. No wonder you didn’t get a cookie.” He shook his head. “You need me to help you out with that?”
“Yeah, thanks. Apparently, the seventeenth—”
“Oh, hey, yeah. Good call. Let’s go.” Winn turned back to Holtzy, and she winked at him, mouthing Have fun! even as James was hurrying out the door. Winn winked back.
Chapter 73: Picking Up the Broken Pieces: Monday
Chapter Text
In the week after the bank fire, everybody was busy at and around the DEO, top to bottom. Alex signed five letters of condolence to the families of the “FBI” special agents killed in action, while the DEO psychologist interviewed Dr. Hamilton, the medbay staff and all of the agents who had been on the last few missions, particularly the one at the mountain base and the bank fire. If 2020 and Covid-19 hadn’t been enough (and it really had), discovering one rookie was a mole, having another rookie need to give his life to take him out, having three junior agents die, one with a completely unrecoverable body, a dozen agents on the injured list, and their resident superhero being volatile and jumpy—well, they were all handling a lot.
Unfortunately, in the nationwide DEO, such traumas had been common during the year from hell, and nobody had resources, even just trauma teams, to spare from one region to another. They just had to power through. Dr. Hamilton had been given a short leave of absence; the psychologist judged her mental capacity to be fine but said that the combination of treating the agents with Covid, getting and recovering from Covid herself, and losing her marriage and her husband had taken a toll on her body and mind and she simply needed to rest for a while.
And everybody at the DEO sent her cards and flowers, and fruit baskets, and she was pretty sure the manilla envelope full of coupons for local takeout (subcategorized in business-size envelopes marked Healthy, Vegetarian, Vegan, Asian, Mexican, European, Alien and Decadent) probably came from Supergirl. Callie agreed.
James came in every day for physical therapy for his leg and usually went out with Winn for lunch before Winn came back alone looking very happy. And there was talk, but it was good-natured because everybody loved Winn, and James really had been quite brave back at the underground base. Winn and Holtzy shared his old lab and worked on different projects both together (the Black Body Field Generator) and apart, with Holtzy taking apart and cataloguing every plasma weapon they confiscated from what Vasquez had started referring to as Neo-Cadmus, and Winn writing algorithms to hijack the NCPD surveillance feed so they could respond to alien or anti-alien shenanigans sooner.
They were keeping busy, but it didn’t feel like the good busy the agents were used to. It felt tense and forced and sad and exhausted. Vasquez wasn’t describing the duty rosters as skeleton crews anymore, and their infection rate had slowed considerably, in part because everybody had finally got the hang of proper mask wearing and social distancing, in part because so many of them now presumably had antibodies. Or, hell, maybe they were just having a lucky couple of weeks. It didn’t feel lucky. It felt strained, like a rubber band pulled to its extremes, or a calm before a storm.
And they didn’t even have Krypto around acting as Morale Dog because Supergirl was doing special training with him off in Metropolis with Superman.
As one agent said of that first week in October, “It’s like 2020 has been compressed into seven days.”
///
Alex was sitting in her office, okaying the duty rosters that Vasquez had given her, feeling glum. She had written the half-standard, half-personalized condolence letters the way J’onn had taught her, but she hated it. There was a knock on her open door. She looked up to see Lucy Lane in camos standing in her doorway with a camo mask.
“Colonel,” she said with surprise. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Did we have a meeting?”
“Not officially, no.” She sat in front of Alex’s desk. “We have... a situation that has not exactly escalated, and I think I intervened in time so that it won’t.”
“Go on,” said Alex, frowning.
Lucy chose her words carefully. “A DEO agent had recent personal life circumstances change which led to an inadvertent encounter with another DEO operative. I was made aware of the possibility that something was wrong and took the liberty to come out and address it myself, since I thought I had... specialized knowledge that would allow me to nip the problem in the bud and I believe I have.”
Calmly, Alex said, “Skipping the protocol for chain of command?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Alex could, off the top of her head, easily notice the choice of words that Lucy used: agent and operative. That was telling. “I see,” she said, in a way to let Lucy know that she really did see. “Colonel, you get one. Just one. So I hope this was worth it.”
“I hope so too, Director.”
“We do not play favorites and if an agent or operative of the DEO is behaving in ways not conducive to our mission operations, there is a protocol in place for a reason.”
“I also referred both individuals to Pam in HR.”
“That is good to hear. Anything else?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Very well. You are dismissed, Colonel.”
“Ma’am.”
Alex sat staring off into space. Something happened between James and Supergirl. Pam was in the mix. Well, she had always trusted Lucy’s judgment. Hopefully, she had chosen the best path forward.
///
Agent Finn was in the DEO gym working on the salmon ladder when Holtzman came in looking glum. Rather rarely for her, she was wearing black tacticals and went through a series of exercises with the fifteen-pound weights, but Finn could tell her mind was not involved in the process. Her form was good, but she kept losing count of her reps.
He let himself drop to the floor and reached for his towel, water bottle and a dry black mask. “Hey, Holtzy. You know if you’re not doing the same number of reps on both sides, your development will be uneven.”
“Hm? Oh, true. Well, shit. I can’t even do this right.”
“Do you want me to count for you?”
“Finn, if I can’t count to five consistently, it’s probably time to go home.”
“We’ve all had a rough year this week.”
She gave a sharp laugh but didn’t look amused.
“You want to talk?”
She considered him. Then she sat down on the weight bench and tears were in her eyes. “Does it get easier? The missions that go wrong?”
He sat across from her. He thought back to his participation in the army initiative back in Sunnydale, all the monsters in containment cells, the enhancement of human soldiers with monster adrenaline. “No, not really. But there is a difference between a mission that goes wrong because you were given wrong or insufficient intel, the one that goes wrong because of human error, or greed, or evil, and the one that goes wrong because, say, of an act of nature.”
“How does that help me? How can you ever know why it went wrong?”
“Why do you think Vasquez insists on mission reports and debriefs? The DEO analyzes those. And Vasquez reads them herself. They figure out what went wrong on one mission so that they can plan better for the next, or train us differently, or get better weapons or armor or vehicles.”
“I knew Agent Logan. He was a nice guy. And I met Jackson a couple times and we geeked out about the old Star Treks. And now they’re both dead.”
“It’s true. That part never is going to be easy, but it can sometimes be less bad. Logan fucking saved us all from Kenerak’s betrayal. I was with Vasquez when we were cataloguing the haul we took in, and the particular crate he was prying open was rigged to blow, probably to destroy the cache of weapons rather than let us get our hands on it. Kenerak was functionally a suicide bomber, radicalized and embedded with us to protect whatever we might find.”
“And by protect, you mean destroy?” asked Holtzy.
Finn shrugged. “Different mission objectives change how you use the language.”
“And you’re going to tell me that Jackson dying in that explosion was just, what, bad luck because of the high winds that day?”
“Not at all. I think all three arsons were planned for days when the weather report had predicted high winds three days before each attack. That was planned. That was evil. And we fight evil, and we try to protect people from it. Doesn’t mean that we might not be casualties.”
Holtzy sighed. “I’m an engineer, Finn, not a warrior like you.”
“Warriors also need armorers, weapon-makers. Maybe the field isn’t where you belong.”
“But that would mean I had failed.”
“Don’t engineers fail all the time? Do you ever get it right the first time?”
She nodded slowly, then picked up her towel and water bottle. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Finn. Thanks.” She headed toward the door.
“Hey, Holtzy,” said Finn.
She turned.
“Any time you want to talk, you know where to find me. We’re cohort buddies, right?”
She smiled. “You betcha, Finn. Thanks again.”
///
Eliza threw her suitcase on her bed and started packing. Since the conference “at” Midvale University was going to be digital, she did not in fact have to be in Midvale to attend. She packed three pairs of comfortable pants, six dress shirts/blouses, flannel pajamas, a t-shirt, yoga pants and the Stanford sweatshirt Alex had given her that she had since worn down to the softest cotton. Then she tossed in sneakers and an assortment of masks: floral, polka dot, plaid. She emailed Alex and Kara, telling Alex that she had some preliminary results she wanted to show her and asking Kara if she could crash at her loft since she wasn’t generally using it now that she had functionally moved in with Lena.
To be honest, she just missed her girls.
///
M’gann watched J’onn mix a pitcher of margaritas with a small smile on her face. When her alien clientele had reported not feeling much safer with the human Crow’s security guards in place—and she could understand why—J’onn had volunteered to come work for her, since he was known to almost everybody and could also serve as an extra bouncer if she needed him to. Since he had retired the previous summer, he had spent much of his time in study and meditation, and he enjoyed it, but just like everybody else the stifled social interaction during lockdown had left him feeling isolated.
He was also good with tools and had helped her install the Plexiglass partitions between booths and between tables. She provided straws so folks could drink with their masks on and, during the hours when she served food, 6-8 pm, the number of people allowed in the bar was cut in half. It wasn’t perfect, but since most of her clientele were aliens, it seemed to be working. As she pointed out, aliens of mixed species had been known to get the disease, although it presented differently in them, so it made sense to take as few chances as possible.
At 8:00, when the kitchen closed, a few more people came in, and M’gann saw Jess and Lena rack balls on one of the pool tables and Lena tried to teach Jess better angles. Jess seemed annoyed from the look of her eyes over her mask, but M’gann sensed it had nothing to do with the game, or even with Lena. M’gann tried to stay out of people’s heads as a rule, but she felt an intuition that maybe there was more going on than she could see at a glance. She moved behind the bar to help J’onn as the drink orders increased, moving easily to build cocktails while keeping an eye out for bad behavior.
“Hey, J’onn. How are things going at your old work?”
He sighed. “They’ve had some losses recently, and some serious injuries. Covid infections are down but so is morale.”
“Wasn’t Krypto helping out with that?”
“I think he’s in Metropolis this week, doing some training. I’m not as in the loop as I used to be.”
“Hard to believe National City Bank is now a crater in the ground.”
“Every week brings a new disaster. The global death toll just hit one million, with 35 million infected. And the Cheeto-in-Chief is encouraging that group with the plasma weapons that keeps hitting postal facilities, saying, ‘Maybe they have the right idea.’”
“And your girls?” This was their shorthand for not just the Danvers sisters, but also Lucy, Maggie, Lena and the boys.
“Alex has asked if I would step in as part-time trauma and grief counsellor. The national group is strapped for resources.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I might have to. The city relies on them.”
“I would have thought the country.”
“That too, often enough. And you know what our people said— I mean, my people. The cloth that frays too far, dissolves.”
A voice behind him commented. “Gosh, J’onn, you’re making us sound like a sock that needs darning.”
They turned to see Winn and James grinning together. “Two beers,” said James, putting his card down for M’gann to start a tab.
M’gann turned away to the cash register, trying not to show her reaction. She didn’t have to be Maggie’s cop friend Joe to smell the testosterone, sweat, aftershave and semen. And she had heard the talk about Winn, although previously she had only seen him with Lyra or Jess. But James? He gave off a sense of Alpha-Male-And-It-Matters, although she had once or twice heard Lucy describe to Maggie the way he would fangirl about his best friend, Superman. Well, that was nothing major; humans often had sexual fantasies about super-heroes. Less so about the kind of people Cat Grant might refer to as hobbits.
M’gann schooled her face and gave James his card back. J’onn slid their beer glasses over to them. She turned and caught his eye and saw the micro-nod. Okay, so she wasn’t imagining it. Over Winn’s shoulder, she could see Lena and Jess leaving, both of them radiating anger. She glanced back at their table where they had abandoned their game in the middle. Well, that was interesting.
Chapter 74: Picking Up the Broken Pieces: Tuesday
Chapter Text
Joe typed slowly with two fingers, so it took him longer than even some of the older human officers to type up his reports. Luckily, Maggie had flown out to Metropolis the day before to interview a Daily Planet reporter, so he had a little extra time to explain about the warehouse and the interviews with Kate Kane, Sophie Moore and all the other people he had talked to about the accelerant. He reread the report on the computer before printing it out to reread again, following Maggie’s explanation of the Reynolds Effect: typos that don’t show up on the computer will always become immensely obvious once a document is printed out. He had not believed her at first, because she had poked her partner, Reynolds, in the ribs as she had said it, which was apparently a human body language sign for a joke, but he had tested it out himself and it was actually one hundred percent true. Fascinating.
He was learning a lot of interesting things here on Earth. He was going to a meeting after lunch at National City University with a chemist he had been introduced to through Maggie’s friend Winn (they were both video gamers, apparently). Winn had explained mass spectrometry to Joe at Dollywood’s and Joe thought such technology might help him make his olfactory portfolio more accurate and efficient, which would enable him to do his job better. He was new on Earth still, yes. But Joe had been a “cop” for a very long time, and he wanted to be what they called on Earth a good cop.
///
The moment Maggie walked into the Kent apartment, she heard the barks and was bombarded by Krypto. “Whoa, Krypto! Down, boy!”
And he sat, but his tail was still wagging practically at superspeed. Maggie had to laugh. She scritched his ears and told him what a good boy he was, while also looking around for Kara.
Lois said, “She’s off with Clark. Maybe helping him with a story. It wasn’t clear. They were both scarfing down a huge breakfast that she had cooked for them—I offered to, but, no, she said she didn’t want to put me out.”
“Wait, Little Danvers can cook?”
Lois see-sawed her hand. “Most things, no, but apparently she excels at breakfast.”
“So why is Krypto here?”
“I don’t know, when she called and asked if she could come by, there was something about more agility training and, yeah, I didn’t follow that either. Is there something going on there? She seemed like she is trying to, I don’t know, get away from something?”
Maggie considered her “only tell your own story” policy, but she realized that if the problem remained unsolved (and how could Lena not have been okay with it??), then Lois might be in a perfect position to help. “Yeah, you’re going to want to sit down for this.”
Lois sat attentively.
“So, Friday night, Kara was on patrol. And I don’t know if you know this, or if Clark does it too, but she memorizes people’s heartbeats. Her friends, Alex, Lena.”
“How? No, never mind. That’s immaterial.”
“So sometimes when she’s on patrol, she’ll check in on us, I guess you’d say?”
“That seems intrusive—”
“Honestly, I consider it an honor and a relief. I’m a cop. The odds that I might be in danger in the middle of the night are high.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure when my sister is in town—”
“You see the problem.”
“So...”
“James.”
Lois nodded. “So?”
“Jimmy Olsen?”
“Okay, if she’s with Lena, why would it bother her to hear him having sex.”
“Lois, you had the shape of this about four sentences back.”
Lois thought a bit, then said, “Wait, she thought he was in trouble and, what, flew into his apartment?”
“Not his, no.”
“His girlfriend’s?”
Maggie sighed. “You’re getting closer.”
“So he’s dating one of her friends? ‘Cuz it couldn’t possibly be Lena. She’s a gold star. Everybody knows that. Hell, I’m straight and I can’t imagine her with a man. And especially not somebody like Jimmy.”
“You were at Kara’s Christmas party last year, when Kara wanted to give Clark this one.”
Krypto sat up to attention.
Maggie patted his head. “You are too intelligent for your own good.”
He barked his agreement.
“Did you meet Winn Schott?”
“Yeah, James’s best friend out there, the one with the ugly Hannukah sweater?”
“The very same.”
“So?”
“Lois. You are a woman of the world. Seriously?”
“Wait, Jimmy and Winn?”
Maggie could tell she was trying to make the picture fit inside her head and failing.
“Somehow, I cannot ever see Jimmy in bed with another man. And certainly not... Sorry, I know he’s your friend, but I just don’t see it.”
Maggie nodded. “Probably because you have never seen Winn pining after his best friend. Winn is bisexual. He has mainly dated women since I’ve known him, but apparently there were one or two men in his past. But the girls all say that the moment he saw James, there were major heart eyes. James has largely been oblivious. But two years ago, during the pink Kryptonite, well, nobody really knows what happened, but Alex said they were hella awkward around each other for about a week, so...”
“So you think Jimmy is gay now?”
“He could be bi. There’s a lot of that at the DEO, especially since the pink K fiasco.”
Lois still looked incapable of wrapping her head around the idea. “So Kara flies into Winn’s apartment to save him and Jimmy because both their heartrates were fast...”
“I’m guessing there may have been noises as well.”
“And flies into the bedroom to catch them under the covers together?”
“If that had happened, she would not be this traumatized, wouldn’t you say?”
“True, but—”
Maggie shook her head. “The impression that I got was that she saw them with at the VERY least their pants down, although I think that also would have been less traumatic than she is showing us, and when they saw her seeing them, they got... much more excited about what they were doing.”
“They got hard?”
“Harder. I’m guessing a lot harder. And she seemed very upset by that.”
“Yeah, there are women who would take that in stride or even like it but none of them are Kara.”
“And I’m only telling you this because she’s here and that tells me that either Lena was way less okay with the idea of Kara being turned on by a pair of big penises or something else happened, because when she left me Friday night or Saturday morning or whatever—”
“Wait, she came straight to you afterwards.”
“More or less. I tend to be her go-to for these kinds of things.”
“Not Alex?”
“Both James and Winn work for Alex. She couldn’t really.”
“Oh. And you think Lena didn’t—”
“I cannot imagine that Lena would do anything except, I don’t know, pull out her favorite dildo in that situation. So maybe it was something else. I would think running into either of them at work after that might have been... complicated.”
“Yeah. Poor Kara.”
“And the fact that she came here suggests that the problem might actually be James.”
“So she used Krypto here as a perfectly acceptable excuse to come talk to Clark.”
Maggie just shrugged.
“Okay, if she brings it up, I will listen and give her my best sister-in-law-ish advice. Poor kid. Now, you said you wanted to talk about Lex?”
“If that’s okay. Lucy told me the things she remembered, but she wasn’t always stationed in Metropolis when he was most active, so she recommended I come out here and talk to you.”
“Can I ask why? Or why now?”
“There have been some signs that he might be back.”
Lois looked at her watch and pushed a button. “Huh, October. The last time he took one of us would have been about a year before Supergirl came out to the world. He took Jimmy that time. But back then the police tried him on all those bombs and then after they had him in custody the DA charged him with all the kidnappings and my lawyer had made me write everything down after the first one, so after every single one after that, I just automatically came home and pulled up the file and added to it. I printed it out for you last night.”
Lois got up and when to the dining room table and picked up a hard notebook that looked like it ran to three or four hundred pages. She handed it to Maggie, whose eyes had gotten very big.
“What? How many times did Lex—”
“Thirty-nine. And Jimmy once. Perry White a few times. These are just mine and my bystander perspective on Jimmy’s.”
“So I can take this with me?”
“Yup. On the first page I’ve written my DEO-approved secure email if you have questions about any of it. Do not, and I cannot emphasize this too much, call or email or text or use anything to discuss this shit with me except that email. Lex can never get ahold of all the things I remember about what happened, much of which we didn’t use in court for, well, reasons. My lawyers.” She shrugged.
“Lois, this is—Wow. So what is the protocol for my using this for police business?”
“Mm. I think Lucy is going to have to be your point person on that. She’s got both the DEO and the JD, so I am assuming I will back any call she makes, but she’s also spoken at great length many times with my lawyers, so they already know her if she needs to liaise for you.”
And Maggie had a thought that shot straight through her brain like a laser and left her dizzy. She put her head down between her knees.
“Maggie? Are you all right?”
“Sorry, I just felt a little faint all of a sudden.” Her head still down, her voice sounded muffled even to her.
“What just happened?”
“I. I just. Um. Don’t tell anybody I said this. But I think I need to marry your sister.”
Lois stared at her for a moment. When the fog cleared and Maggie slowly sat up, Lois was still staring. Then she came over and sat on the couch next to the detective and gathered her into her arms and hugged her. Suddenly they were both crying on each other.
When the waterworks slowed to a stop, Maggie dug into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a black bandana. She stared at it for a second, shaking her head. “Do you know, the first time I ever met Supergirl, she had to fly down into a sewer and I offered her this to mask the smell and she said it wouldn’t help, and then when she came back up, she stank to high heaven and threw up on my shoes.”
“Clark hates the sewers. Their sense of smell is so strong, it really messes with them.”
“Yeah, so I lent her this, to wipe her mouth off and she went home and washed and fucking even ironed it and gave it to Alex to give back to me.” She handed it to Lois, who wiped her tears away and gave it back. Maggie wiped her face and put it back in her pocket. “And if I hadn’t started working with those two, I would never have met your sister. And I just love her so much, but she doesn’t want to leave Nevada.”
Lois said, “Alex asked her to come back to lead the training at the DEO, but if Lucy is going to be in the regional center for the DEO, she would want to be in charge. And I asked her if she thought she could do that job better than Alex and she thought about it—well, you know that look she gets when she is considering something you said from absolutely every single angle—”
“The lawyer look or the soldier look?”
“Pretty sure it’s the same look, isn’t it?”
“No, the lawyer is usually thinking about the language somebody uses about something and the soldier is thinking more physically strategically: does this bar have a back exit? If we infiltrate, how will we exfiltrate? What are acceptable casualties in this situation?”
“Huh. You understand her better than I do.”
Maggie stared. “Pretty sure that is not possible.”
“I’m not saying you know her better. But I’ve never really understood her. And you do.”
Maggie stared out the window sadly, not really daring to hope.
“Maggie, all I’m saying is that I think you will get the girl eventually. You are the longest relationship she’s ever had.”
“Not longer than James.”
“Mm. See, though, they were on again and off again, so the total time from when they met to when they broke up in National City? No. But if you take out all the off again time, yeah. Ask him.”
“Yeah, as a gold star, I think I am going to have difficulty looking him in the eye anytime soon...”
Lois laughed. “Now that you mention it... Well, thank God he’s in National City. Clark really doesn’t need a work wife now that he has an actual wife.”
Maggie stood up and hefted the notebook into the black backpack she was carrying. “Thanks for this, Lois. If Lex is out there, this might just save lives.”
“No problem, Detective. And thank you for being there for Kara. She’s lucky to have you. And so is Lucy.”
And Maggie left, thinking, Huh. Lois isn’t nearly as bad as Lucy makes her out to be.
///
When Lucy returned to Maggie’s apartment from the DEO in midafternoon, Maggie was still off in Metropolis, or, more likely, on a plane on her way back. They had barely had time to swap pleasantries and Maggie’s keys before Maggie shouldered the backpack she always took on day trips with the emergency change of clothes, toiletries and her travel tablet and earphones.
And these days, extra masks.
Lucy had given her a tired used paperback of an old lesbian detective novel for the plane ride there and back again and she’d gotten that brilliant thousand-Watt smile and the dimples in return. More than worth the four bucks and change it had cost Lucy at the used bookstore down the street from Maggie’s apartment.
She always tried to bring some small token of affection with her whenever she came, but she had been too busy and hadn’t been planning on coming today before she got Maggie’s call and she had practically been living in the underground base since the new construction had started several months before.
When they had first started this long-distance relationship, Lucy had been cautious and unhopeful that they could make it work, in part because most people didn’t like to date active-duty soldiers, in part because Maggie knew Lucy’s ex socially, and in part because after her DEO friends in Nevada found out about Maggie, they had told her about Alex.
But Lucy had not seen anything in the friendly banter around the pool table at the bar that night that suggested they were anything but friends. So she didn’t set much store by the gossip. And every time she did find a reason to come to National City, the sex they had together was absolutely fantastic. And Lucy would go on at length about how amazing Maggie was at making her absolutely come apart at the seams every damn time and she would say the same thing with a shrug: “It helps to be intimately familiar with the plumbing.”
It was charmingly annoying, like the whole “I’m a detective; I detect.”
And being far apart was working for them, Lucy thought. It forced them to communicate clearly, and it made them value their time together more than they might if they got used to each other’s constant presence. So it was working for them, or at least for Lucy. She wasn’t so sure it was still working for Maggie. Sometimes when they talked on the phone, she sounded sad. She’d say she was just tired, and c’mon, they were in the middle of a freaking endless pandemic. Everybody was tired.
But when she had found out that Lucy had turned down Alex’s job offer to train her particular recruits for the Western regional headquarters rather than all the general recruits of the whole region, Maggie had seemed disappointed, though Lucy had thought the offer was functionally a potential demotion, even though she rather thought Alex had been thinking at least as much about Maggie’s needs as Lucy’s girlfriend as about her own needs as a Director.
The doorbell rang and Lucy grinned. She had Maggie’s keys, so she would have to let her in. She hit the stairs and came this close to sliding down the bannister for joy.
But when she got to the lobby door, some guy in the uniform of a local personal delivery service (and matching mask) stood there with a package and one of those electronic versions of a clipboard for her to sign for the package.
“Margaret Sawyer?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
She signed and he gave her the package wishing her a good day. Huh. There was no name on the package, just an address on Cordova Street. And it looked like a woman’s handwriting. What was that about?
Chapter 75: Picking Up the Broken Pieces: Wednesday
Chapter Text
Kara went with Clark in street clothes to interview the police who had tried to handle the most recent postal attack, telling them that she was trying to do a wider ranging story, more national in scope than she could do sitting at home in National City. It had the virtue of being true. (She also intended to try some of Metropolis’s best alien restaurants; working freelance meant multi-tasking when she traveled.)
Federal agents, whom the police identified as the FBI, had been involved, of course, because the post office was federal, but when they closed their notebooks and sauntered off to Metropolis’s Alien Alley for lunch, Clark had confirmed that they weren’t actually FBI.
“So DEO?” asked Kara.
“No, the Metropolis DEO has been decimated by the pandemic. The eastern regional director, er, wore a red hat in his spare time? So he assumed the disease was a hoax. They had six times more infections than central and west combined, and two and a half times the deaths, including him. They are still on a skeleton crew footing. SHIELD stepped in to take up the slack.”
“Who is the local director?”
“Alphonse Mackensie. His friends call him Mack.”
“I’ll ask Vasquez if she knows him. If so, she might be able to get us in to talk to him.”
“I’d appreciate that. The only hero they seem to work with these days is Cap, and they are working him ragged, but they won’t let me help.”
“Yeah, that’s the usual DC/Marvel problem. I’ll talk to Vasquez.”
They reached Saturn’s Rings just as the Wednesday all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch was starting. Clark asked in a whisper, “Is this fair to them?”
Kara murmured, “I always tip about forty percent. More if the food is good. And if it is good, and I give them a good review, they’ll get more business. Trust me, Clark, I’ve done the math on this.”
They worked their way from Vulcan plomeek soup, heart of targ on what looked like little wheels of Bajmanian cheese, and a few things Kara had never seen or tried, and she had asked to speak to the chef, who was a fan of her food reviews and had been thrilled to talk to her. After she had taken careful notes of all of the eight entrees they had tried, the finished with zilm’kach, a fruit dessert. The whole meal had cost them twenty-one dollars each and they each put down a hundred.
“Cheap at twice the price,” commented Clark on their way out. “Well, our work is done for the day, Kara. And I’ve had the feeling since you showed up last night that you wanted to talk. What’s up?”
“Let’s walk to the park with our crest. Um, so. Have you ever, uh, thought you heard people in danger and ended up, um, crashing into, well, people having sex?”
He laughed. “More times than I can count. Human excitement and fear sound exactly the same to me.”
She sighed heavily. “And what do you do about that?”
“Apologize profusely and promise not to say a word about it to anyone.”
“And have you ever... known the people beforehand?”
“What do you mean? Have I ever crashed in on friends or acquaintances?”
“Yeah.”
“Thankfully, no. Why? Have you?”
“Friday night.”
“Ouch. People you know well?”
“Yeah.”
“Not Alex and Vasquez.”
“Oh, that. Just the once. I’ve learned since then the difference in how they sound and because they’re both badasses, my first thought is they won’t need me, but I X-ray vision the apartment just in case. So I’ve embarrassed myself a few times, but them only once.”
“But this was different.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Can’t you talk about it with these friends? Or do they only know you as Kara, not as Supergirl?”
“That would potentially be easier. At least then I could pretend it hadn’t been me. But no. They’re both DEO agents.”
“Can’t you just avoid them?”
“Why do you think I’m here, Clark?”
“How frequently do you see them at work.”
“Often. Sometimes every day.”
“So is the problem your embarrassment or theirs?”
“I had thought it would be mutual, which would be easier. But no. I ran into one of them Monday morning and I apologized and was forgiven, but then it got bad.”
“How so?”
“He asked me how I’d liked what I’d seen.”
“As in his...”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s rude.”
“Ya think? I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I’m still amazed I didn’t crash through the window in my attempt to get away from there instantly that night.”
“Well, I know human men have this weird sexual pride and maybe if he thinks he can impress a woman who is kind of like a god on this planet...? I mean, most people don’t think of us the way they think of other humans.”
Kara stopped in front of the concrete statue of their house’s crest that the city had rebuilt after Cadmus’s minions had destroyed it two years back.
Clark continued, “He’s probably just clueless the way humans so often are. It would probably shock him to realize we have feelings like they have.”
She looked at him with sadness and disgust and betrayal. “It’s James, Clark. James said that to me.”
“Agent James? Do I know him?”
Kara wanted to punch him. “Your James. Jimmy Olsen said that to me.”
Clark’s jaw dropped. “But he... James, Jimmy, he—”
“That was pretty much my thought as well.”
“Lois would have punched him. Did you punch him? Did you get in trouble for punching him?”
“I told him that Lena had a way bigger dick and it’s purple. Which is true. Maggie told me that Lena would be equipped to solve my problem, but I didn’t think literally.”
She saw Clark working his way through her sentences and just give up.
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“Would that even help?” she asked helplessly.
Clark looked at the statue, reached out and let his fingers follow the apparent S from start to finish. Finally, he said—and he sounded less like Clark and more like Superman as he said it—“Do you want me to threaten him?”
She sighed gustily. “Normally, I don’t want you to fight my battles. But this shouldn’t be a battle and it kind of feels like it. So... maybe?”
Slowly, Clark said, “I know he really liked you, was very disappointed when it didn’t work out between you.”
“So this is my fault?” snapped Kara.
“No! No, that’s not what I meant. I just thought maybe he was being petty, because his girlfriend got to see you, um, seeing him and he would think that she would be impressed that you were impressed with him? If that makes sense? And you sort of, from his point of view, saw what you could have had?”
“Oh, that last part feels right on target, but the first part, just no.”
“Wouldn’t a human woman think more of her man if Supergirl was impressed by him?”
“Maybe. That doesn’t apply here.”
Clark was confused. “How could it not?”
“Because he wasn’t having sex with a woman.”
Clark’s face went through a series of clear emotions: disbelief, shock, confusion, blankness. Then: “The wedding. He danced with Winn at the wedding. But I was sure they were just clowning around because it had turned into the Big Gay Wedding. J’onn said that when queer things happened, the DEO showed up; or vice versa.”
Kara thought about that. “Actually, that’s true. Yeah. Both ways.”
“So they were together that far back?”
“I really don’t think so. No. Winn was probably clowning around so he could get James to dance with him, but when we went to Metropolis Pride the next day, Alex and Lena and Lucy and I gave him the shovel talk for leading on Winn and he looked pole-axed, like it had never occurred to him that Winn might take it seriously, or even be interested.”
“Is Winn out? He’s gay?”
“Bi, yeah. Wore a blue, pink and purple boa at the drag show. But James. I have to think something sudden happened because I would have thought that, at best, Winn might be able to get him to realize he’s been in the closet for a while, but not be thrilled about it. But when I busted into Winn’s kitchen and Winn was sucking on his penis, he looked ecstatic.”
“Um, Kara, maybe don’t—”
“Paint you a picture? The picture of James stark naked on a chair in Winn’s kitchen with ecstasy all over his face and Winn kneeling below James and gripping James’s legs so hard I could see the indentations and sucking so loudly I could hear it and when they turned and saw me, Winn jumped to his feet, and there they both were!” She gestured.
Clark winced.
“Huge enormous hard dicks and that white stuff on James’s penis and Winn’s mouth and Winn also looked ecstatic. And then I realized that Winn, who is five nine at absolute most, had just as big of a hard dick as James did and James is what? Six four?”
“I thought six three...”
“Whatever. A split second for me to take that in, and then in the next split second it was very clear on their faces that they were seeing me, their friend, Kara, or maybe Supergirl, whatever, looking at their big enormous hard dicks and then a split second later, both their dicks got even huger.”
“Holy—”
“And that next split second found me on the other side of National City retching. And then I went back to my apartment and called Maggie and thank Rao I did. That woman is a national treasure and a true friend. And she helped me figure out that I had to tell Lena that I had seen my two best friends’ enormous dicks and it had turned me on and made me feel guilty and dirty and just—”
Clark opened his arms and Kara stepped in and just cried, and he held her and patted her on the back. Finally, Kara pulled back and wiped her eyes.
Clark asked, “So what did Maggie say?”
“She told me to tell Lena what had happened, that Lena would know what to do. And she was right.”
“I’ve always liked Lena. Lois and I are looking forward to your wedding, whenever it is.”
“Thanks,” Kara said absently, wiping her eyes with Clark’s handkerchief. “So are we. Um. Obviously. She’s the best.”
“Okay, it sounds to me like I do need to talk to him, and I will consider with Lois what sort of threat I could convey that he would hear because she says he can be pretty oblivious.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Clark.”
“And I think you should talk to Alex.”
“I can’t. She’s his boss. He’ll get in trouble.”
“Maybe he should get in trouble, Kara. You said that he said this to you on Monday?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Were you at work?”
“Yeah, so?”
“And his comment, implicitly referencing his, uh, enormous hard penis to you at work caused you to make excuses to your workplace to come all the way across the country to get away from what I think your HR people would term a hostile work environment. That’s sexual harassment, Kara, even if it wasn’t his intent. It impacted you. You don’t have to deal with that.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. He’s my friend. Well, he was. I don’t know what he is now.”
“I learned a few lessons on this from Lex, if you’ll recall.”
“But he tried to kill you, this is just—”
“Kara, you can’t compare pain. When people let us down, people we’ve cared for, it hurts a lot more than strangers attacking us. Talk to Alex. I will talk to James.”
“Thanks, Clark. I’m glad I came to see you.”
“Me, too, Kara. Me, too.”
Chapter 76: Picking Up the Broken Pieces: Thursday
Chapter Text
On Thursday morning, James heard his phone ping while he was monitoring the feeds in the command center with Finn. He looked down and muttered, “Oh, shit. I didn’t even think of that.”
“Forget your dry cleaning?” joked Finn.
“No, I forgot I might have a date tonight.” He shrugged. “It was tentative depending on her schedule.”
“You don’t sound too excited about it.”
“Yeah, it’s complicated.”
“How’s your leg? Looks like you’re getting better on those crutches.”
“Takes practice. The PT is helping. I still get tired by the end of the day.”
But he was distracted until he got to take a break for lunch and go down and see Winn. Winn took one look at him and said, “Hey, Holtzy, it’s your turn to grab us lunch. Here’s a twenty. Maybe sandwiches?”
She plucked the bill out of his hand. “Your sandwish is my command, Agent Schotzy!”
After she left, Winn said, “Okay, James. What’s wrong?”
“Why should anything be wrong?”
Winn rolled his eyes.
James sighed and handed him the text from Callie.
Winn read it, frowning. “This kind of sounds like a booty call.”
“We had been sort of seeing each other on the rare moments when my crazy schedule and her crazy schedule actually overlapped.”
“And by seeing each other...?”
James opened his mouth and closed again. “It’s a booty call.”
Winn considered that. “Well, Callie does have a very nice booty.”
“But I think I’m with you now, aren’t I?”
“Do you want to be exclusive?” asked Winn.
“Do you not?” asked James.
Winn sat down behind his bench. “On the one hand, sure. I’ve wanted to be with you for like forever. But I get still hearing the call of the wild. Women are nice too. I mean, you’ve heard about ethical polyamory, right?”
“You mean like I could see both of you?”
“Sure, as long as she’s okay with it.”
“But that means Callie has to know—”
“That would be the ethical part.”
“Man, I’m not exactly ready to be out.”
“Then for now, tell Callie your leg is really hurting you and it is exhausting hauling your ass around on crutches at the DEO. She’s osteo. She knows about crutches. Then either just do a friends thing or just don’t go at all. Then you’ve got some time to think about things.”
“Thanks, man. This helps.”
///
At the airport, Lillian’s chauffeur picked Cat up on Thursday morning, with Lillian already dressed in all black sitting in the back seat with a travel mug of coffee in her hand and another in the cup holder on Cat’s side of the car. Cat put on her seatbelt and flipped the cap protector of the cup and inhaled its heady scent.
“Mm. Mrs. Luthor, you are a life saver. Traffic in National City has been backed up again with the mayor’s infrastructure improvement plan, so I was late getting to the airport. Thankfully, my flight was delayed because—Well, I’m here now. This smells delightful.”
“Stressful mornings are one thing I don’t miss about LuthorCorp.”
Cat and Lillian lunched at one of Lillian’s favorite places, an Asian fusion place, and then they walked through the park talking about their husbands, their children, their goals in life, why Lillian almost always wore black and Cat wore couture. Neither one of them had pets. Cat had an embarrassing shoe collection; Lillian favored weapons, historical and modern.
They had nothing in common.
Eventually, they wandered to Midtown East, mere blocks from one of the real estate holdings of the current resident of the White House, not far from the largest public park in Metropolis.
One of the oldest antiquarian bookstores in the city was The Argo, over a hundred years old, with books from recent years on the first floor, and antiquarian books and maps on the floors above. Lillian and Cat worked their way back through time as they moved from the first to second to third floor. Lillian found an antique map of California with National City only a small settlement. Cat found a lovely set of essays by a Cambridge don from the 1880s.
As they left the store, Lillian said, “I believe I read that a long time ago. It’s basically a love poem to his bookshelves.”
Cat murmured, “Well, back then, they were expected to be celibate, after all.”
Lillian smirked. “I have to say I am of two minds about that. Since my husband died, I will admit I have been more single-minded in my pursuits—”
“World domination? Kidnapping your daughter’s friends and dragging them in a pink K rainstorm to underground bases? Those pursuits?” asked Cat.
Lillian’s eyes crinkled above her mask. “Precisely.”
“The ones that got you thrown into prison for a few years?”
“Mm. But I also got a date with you out of it.”
“This is a date?”
“What did you think it was?”
“I am a renowned writer and, famously, the editor-in-chief of one of the country’s most important newspapers.”
“So?”
“So I’d assumed it was foreplay.”
At that, Lillian threw her head back and laughed, genuine, big loud laughter. People on the street turned to see her, and of course everyone was all masked up, which was a shame, thought Cat, because Lillian was a beautiful woman, more beautiful now than she had been when they had met all those years ago. Cat would give much to see what she looked like when she laughed.
“Well,” said Cat coquettishly. “Am I wrong?”
Lillian pulled out a black handkerchief and wiped her eyes from the tears that had formed there, turned away from Cat, lifted her mask and blew her nose. She turned back and there were crinkles at the sides of her eyes again that suggested she might still be smiling. “Maybe it is. Do you want it to be?”
“I keep thinking to myself: Cat, what on Earth are you thinking, taking time away from rebuilding your media empire in the middle of a global pandemic only to dance and make love and go book shopping with a supervillain and, to be fair, the mother of a supervillain and a superhero—”
“Wait—”
“I ask myself that. I spent the last few days asking myself that question. And I thought about your eyes, and I remembered something Kara muttered once when she thought I wasn’t listening, about wishing she could figure out the precise, exact word for the green of your daughter’s eyes, and I never understood that. And suddenly, I find myself feeling like it is a perfectly reasonable conundrum to find oneself in. And then I ask myself, why am I wanting to spend quality time with the supervillain who kidnapped me and my employees and colleagues and friend—"
“Kara,” sneered Lillian.
“Oh, she was my employee at the time. I was speaking of Lena.”
Lillian looked surprised.
“I think you would have to agree that she was a trooper in that situation you put us in.” Cat considered that. “Actually, so was Snapper. He surprised me. She didn’t.”
“And Kara?”
Cat gave her a pitying look. “I think you know the answer to that.”
“She’s Supergirl. She was never in much danger, except for the inadequate food. Sorry about that, by the way.”
Cat smiled and waved a hand. “Lillian, no one will ever hear from me that you make an exquisite grilled cheese sandwich. Your reputation will remain unsullied.”
And again, Lillian stopped short, threw her head back and laughed.
“Mm. You are worrying me here, Mrs. Luthor. I have it on the highest authority that you only show genuine amusement when there is the potential for mass chaos on the near horizon. I remember how happy you looked in court that time, when John Corben shot green kryptonite about the courtroom. I was terrified that you might giggle. Possibly even chortle, although, to be fair, in a completely evil way.”
Lillian patted Cat’s shoulder as they resumed their walk. “I can assure you, Cat, that I have not giggled since approximately 1978.”
“Our loss, I’m sure.” Cat considered that. “So I am assuming that means you are not ticklish?”
Lillian frowned. “Ms. Grant, are you in the habit of asking the supervillains you interview whether or not they are ticklish?”
“This isn’t an interview, and I am not in the habit of speaking with supervillains candidly or, I suppose, at all. You are... an outlier.”
“Well, I do appreciate being special, after all.”
Throatily, Cat murmured, “Oh, you’re special, all right.”
Something about the timbre of Cat’s voice cut through to something low in Lillian’s body. “Let’s go back to the house. I’ll call my driver to meet us.”
///
Vasquez ambled into the command center, texting as she walked and nearly walked into Alex. “Hey, Vasquez. Look up and live. What’s wrong?”
“Supergirl is asking about the Metropolis Director of SHIELD, says she and um, want to go interview him. Why is she in Metropolis?”
“Krypto, I think. She sounded like she’d been doing espresso shots. I didn’t catch it all. Do you know this person?”
“Mack Mackensie. Yeah, he’s good people, but he isn’t wholly comfortable with powered individuals. You’d like him. He carries a shotgun axe.”
Alex’s eyes got big. “That’s kinda badass.”
“That’s Mack. Listen, I have to go see the crime scene analysts about Lex’s base and she said it might go long. I know I said I’d cook tonight but—”
“I am more than capable of roasting tomatoes, blending them with onion, adding broth to the slow cooker and putting my feet up while it cooks. We’re good.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later then.”
Vasquez turned and went down to the CSAs’ domain. The senior analyst, Vanessa, had blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and what Vasquez privately thought of as Clark Kent glasses, which she tended to fidget with as much as his cousin did.
“What have you got for me, Ness?”
“Um, well, most of what we found throughout the base is exactly what you’d expect: human DNA with that weird marker that we don’t know how to explain, and I don’t know who to put on that—”
“We’ve got a trusted contractor working on it. What else?”
“Well, um, the K’Hund, of course, and then the human DNA from the containment cells and, um, well, you are probably going to want to look at this.” Fidget.
She led Vasquez over to three white boards which had rows of what were probably driver’s license photos, next to each of which was a page of paper with columns of numbers.
“Okay, Ness, what am I looking at here?”
“All of the pre-Greenies left skin and hair samples, as you would imagine, like I said. But the containment cells had... other samples. The recent ones were skin, hair, sweat and blood.”
Vasquez frowned. “That doesn’t bode well.”
“No, if you go to the medbay, they’ll tell you they were testing on those people and it wasn’t pretty at all. But these three cells, the special ones—”
“Wait, what makes them special?”
“Uh, they’re lead-lined?”
Understanding dawned on Vasquez. Finally, she was going to get proof about what she privately thought of as her Perfume Hypothesis.
She stopped frowning, which Ness knew was a bad sign for somebody. She said, “Er, ma’am, we have DNA from, um, people we know.”
“Let me guess: Supergirl, Lena Luthor, Snapper Carr, Cyborg Superman, Cat Grant and Lena’s mother.”
“Um, we, uh. Yes. And most of those samples appear to be skin and hair, just as you might expect.”
“Okay.” And Vasquez saw how incredibly awkward the very straight Vanessa Hudgins, PhD etc. etc. was feeling about this, so she simply said, “So I’m guessing that you are going to tell me that in addition to skin and hair—as we might expect—the samples for Cat Grant and Lillian Luthor perhaps also included, say, saliva? Or vaginal fluid? Possibly mixed?”
Vanessa’s jaw dropped and her face was suffused with red. “H-How did you know?”
Internally, Vasquez answered, Because I’m a freaking lesbian and pink K happened.
Externally, quietly and with a very small smile (terrifying, she knew), Vasquez said, “Because, Dr. Hudgins, two women who have just spent all day walking in a torrential thunderstorm don’t end up wearing the same perfume by accident. Might I take the results for those two?”
Vanessa handed it over wordlessly.
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Vasquez. “You’ve been most helpful.”
///
Nelson let them in, showing none of the surprise Lillian suspected he was quite likely experiencing. He had no doubt heard from Cook what Lillian had asked her to make for their intimate dinner (those two being thick as thieves and devoted to her). And she had handed him her coat and gloves and asked him to bring wine and the hors d’oeuvres to the study and then give them an hour before calling them for dinner. He took Cat’s things and left them to stroll upstairs together.
Lillian opened the door to the study with a smirk and gestured for Cat to precede her. Standing near the study sofa was an antique mahogany drinks trolley with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot sparkling wine, opened and resting on ice in a silver bucket. On a silver plate beside that was—oysters. Cat laughed.
“I thought you’d appreciate that,” said Lillian. “I tend to go with the classics.”
“Basic black, pearls, Cartier, Givenchy,” murmured Cat. “I agree. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Lillian poured. “What are we toasting tonight? Tight APA format?”
Cat raised her glass thoughtfully. “Autumn romance?”
Lillian raised one eyebrow. They clicked glasses lightly. “It’s true, we’re not what we used to be.”
“I think you’re even better than you used to be,” Cat said honestly. “You’re fully formed now, not the way you were when I first met you.”
“Are you saying I’ve finally stopped baking?”
“I’m saying you’re tempered steel.”
Lillian felt the compliment down in her gut. She knew when someone was trying to use flattery and when someone was speaking from the heart. Cat meant what she said. “Shall we sit?”
Cat sat, picked up an oyster and quietly sucked it into her mouth.
Lillian said, “You know, I’ve spent the last year reading the Tribune.”
“I wouldn’t have thought it was your type of paper.”
“It’s not, but for an active mind, trashy romance novels... Let’s just say the reading available to me in the women’s prison was not particularly varied.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It makes me appreciate my liberty and my home even more.” She also took an oyster and watched Cat watch her eat it. “Mm. And while I think we can agree to disagree about the immigrant situation—”
“Children in cages? That immigrant situation?”
“I was more thinking about alien deportation. But I will say that your reporting on the pandemic was balanced and informed by good science, and I appreciated that, being in a situation where getting the virus seemed almost a certainty. During the first spike, I broke a guard’s jaw just to get put into solitary for a month.”
“Bold.”
“Desperate. And your reporters covered both nursing homes and prisons in the same way, which you know the other... outlets weren’t doing.”
Cat fake-coughed, “Fox news.”
“I just thought you should know. I did very much appreciate the Tribune at times. It reminded me of you. In solitary, more than once, I imagined arguing with you about the immigration issue.”
“Did you convince me of anything?”
“No, because every argument I made, you countered with Supergirl.”
“As exemplary cases go, she is outstanding.”
“As long as she is not exposed to red kryptonite.”
“Forty stories is a long way to fall,” said Cat philosophically.
“Yet you forgave her. The city forgave her.”
“Mm. Have you ever been drugged? Accidentally or intentionally? I will agree that impact is much more important than intent, but when another individual robs you of your ability to intend, then what? And she has more than made it up to me and the city many times, as you well know.”
“As has my daughter.”
“And the two of them together.”
“Yes, and now I understand they are engaged.”
“Yes. How do you feel about that, Mrs. Luthor?”
“Please. We’ve been... whatever this is. Call me Lillian.” Lillian stood with her wine glass and paced across the room and back, restless. “I am not used to not knowing what I think.”
“Shall I tell you what I think?”
“You are all for it, of course.”
Cat nodded her head back and forth. “I’ve got mixed feelings, to be honest. I think marrying Lena will put a target on Kara’s back. Lex won’t be in prison forever. And I know for a fact that when two people who always put their careers first wed, there is a great deal of stress and strain. It’s going to be hard work for both of them.” Cat carefully slurped another oyster out of its shell, then sipped her wine. “This is lovely, by the way.”
“One of my favorites. I thought if you were going to come all the way back here just to go book shopping with me, I should at least make it worth your while.”
Cat smiled and patted the sofa next to her. “By all means. Come join me and make it worth my while.”
Lillian startled, but that was more or less what she had been thinking the day before. It was just that thinking in this way was new and confusing.
“I don’t bite,” said Cat. She thought about that. “Well. Not unless you want me to.”
And Lillian thought, What the hell? This week couldn’t get any stranger.
///
Finn was in the command center when J’onn came by to speak with Alex. Finn hopped up and said, “I need to ask Rosie a question” and hurried out. Vasquez thought that was odd, so she followed him and he did not go down to decontamination. He went down to the gym and stood there in the middle of the floor amid the equipment, leaning on a stationary bike and sweating. Vasquez walked up behind him.
“Agent Finn.”
He jumped and yelped.
“Ma’am!” he came to attention.
“Riley. You are a member of a black budget operation with the fate of the world frequently in our hands. We deal in secrecy and lies. I know you are aware of this.”
“Ma’am. Yes, Ma’am!”
“So I find myself asking myself why you, Agent Finn, suddenly decided to flee the command center when an individual you know to be psychic walked in.”
“Ah. Was it—”
“That obvious? Good heavens, yes.”
“Well, ma’am, it’s just that I think, but I might be wrong, but I didn’t want him to think that I was sure, because it’s none of my business and I know him a little by now and he is really not ready for this to be out there.”
“Secrecy and lies, Mr. Finn. Spit it out.”
“Um, I think James is gay.”
Vasquez stared. “That’s... interesting. Why do you think that?”
“Ma’am, I don’t—”
Vasquez stepped closer to him. She was seven inches shorter than he was, but—
“Agent.”
He let out a sigh. “He and Winn have been acting funny. And everybody knows that Winn has been madly in love with him forever. I mean I never saw them meet, but you only have to watch them interact, and James has been an oblivious idiot, and he’s got toxic masculinity issues, and I get that, I’ve done some, but the point is just. Um. I think that. Well. Ma’am. I mean you’re a lesbian but—”
And Vasquez put one finger up to halt him and thought about it.
She thought about the way, while James had been off duty for the days while he was getting off his pain meds and getting used to his crutches, he would come in for his physical therapy, go out to lunch with Winn, and Winn would come back looking, in retrospect, blissful and relaxed.
And now that James was back on light duty, he kept his chair pulled tightly under his command station almost as if he were hiding—
“A big boner for Winn. You can’t really hide that, can you.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Huh. And in every scenario that I posited about those two having a one-night stand, James broke Winn’s heart.”
“Well, if you ask me, he still might. I can’t imagine he would want to be out, not at the DEO, and certainly not to any of the Lanes.”
Vasquez clapped him on the shoulder. “You are wise, Finn. Not particularly sneaky, but wise.”
“I know soldiers, ma’am.”
“And I know Marines. You’re not wrong. Okay, well, I hate to tell you, but J’onn probably heard your thoughts before you got out of the command center. Fortunately, he has a strict don’t tell policy, so I think you and James are safe. And I don’t out anyone without their permission. But Finn, you know this place. If you’ve figured it out and I’ve figured it out, the likelihood is that the only people who don’t know are Winn, James, and probably Kara.”
With her hands on her hips, she thought about her options. Then realizing they were still in the gym. “Back to your post. Oh, and Agent Finn, if anyone asks, Rosie said that the rash on your wrist is probably from letting Krypto lick you.”
Finn blinked. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She shrugged, “I’ve been undercover. Now, git.”
And he fled.
///
Nelson had set the dining table himself, including the silver candlesticks that she had not asked for. When Lionel Luthor had ruled over this house, they had often had formal dinners, crony-style networking events, shareholder cocktails and the like. In all his years working for the Luthors, he had never been asked or implied to set the stage for romance.
In his opinion it was about damn time. So he lit the candles, served them shrimp scampi with scallops for dinner, with another French white wine, and after, chocolate mousse and port. Then, as anticipated, he had left them to themselves and returned to the house on the back of the estate.
At one point late in the evening, his wife looked out their side window and commented that a couple seemed to be dancing in the Luthor ballroom. He just grunted.
“You’re not even curious?” she asked him.
“In service, that sort of curiosity… does not serve, as it were.”
“Oh, Nellie, you’re so stuffy,” she said fondly.
He just grunted again and returned to the magazine article about the mRNA vaccines those companies were working on. Of course, he was stuffy, thought Nelson. That was part of the job.
Chapter 77: Picking Up the Broken Pieces: Thursday Night
Chapter Text
James pushed the doorbell. He waited. He was pretty sure that Winn had said he would be back from working part-time by now. But maybe he had fallen asleep?
He heard footsteps in the stairway and Winn popped through the side door and opened the elevator door for James to crutch himself through. But Winn’s eyes were red, as if he’d been crying.
“What’s wrong, bro?” asked James.
“We missed it.” Winn looked near tears. “Sure, because of light duty—fuck Covid and bullets anyway!—but we got... distracted. We spent the same time they spent dying and we were fucking each other like life was some stupid game and we got to play and they... they didn’t make it out.”
James stood there, leaning on his crutches, staring. Then the elevator rose and deposited them on Winn’s floor. Shaking his head, Winn led James into his apartment.
Winn threw himself down on the couch, waving his hands. “And then the whole thing with Supergirl. I saw what went through her head: all of it, the really good and the really awful, of course I did, and I’m pretty sure you did too. But it felt so amazing for her to finally, finally see us! And you felt so amazing, and it wasn’t until I got to work that I realized that her seeing you and me? Like that? God! That must have been so hard for her.”
“Man, you gotta unpack that for me. Dude, she looked at our enormous boners and she was freakin’ amazed!”
“A deer in the headlights about to get shot probably looks that way too. Don’t you get it? Outside of relationship contexts, penises are just trouble, or a threat, to women. Sure, she’s from another planet and has superstrength here? But what if she had barged into something like this as a young girl on Krypton? Would she have been safe there? Maybe? I don’t know. I sure as hell hope so. But if a female on Earth walks into a room with a bunch of naked men—”
“Wouldn’t they all be gay?”
“Have you even heard of fraternities???”
“But we’re her friends...”
“Would you... feel comfortable... and safe if we... say, walked in on Alex and Vasquez naked? Or Lex Luthor’s sister and Superman’s cousin? Dude. Contextualize.”
James stared off into space, his brow furrowed. “I never thought of it like that...”
“I always think of things like that.”
“That might be why they treat you like an honorary woman,” James joked.
“Yes,” said Winn. “It is. And I’m honored by it. That is a freaking privilege.”
James stared. He rubbed his eyes. There were just so many things he had not understood until recently, like this. He did not understand them now. But at least he finally, finally had figured out just how very much he did not in fact understand.
///
Cat Grant’s mother was a Jewish intellectual and her father had been an Episcopalian financier, so yes, of course Cat had been trained in ballroom dance from a tender age. She rather thought that Lillian had a similar background, minus, of course, the Jewish heritage. And while Cat herself might have leaned more toward Frank Sinatra ballads, or maybe Charles Aznavour, if she were in charge of the playlist, she could appreciate ballroom classics with the best of them.
She could just barely imagine Lillian voluntarily listening to or dancing to swing music. That was fine. Cat was pretty sure this was just going to be one night, and she wasn’t even sure why Lillian was giving it to her, but she felt it was a precious thing and she would follow Lillian’s lead for as long as Lillian chose to lead.
And when it came to dancing, that was largely literal, and probably because Lillian had undoubtedly always been the tallest girl in her dance class and quite likely almost always had to take the male role.
But when they had turned off the music and the lights and quietly went, well, not hand-in-hand, exactly, but side by side with the backs of their hands occasionally brushing—
And again, Lillian had opened her bedroom door and gestured for Cat to proceed her, although this time her face was vulnerable and contained absolutely no traces of a smirk—
Then Cat knew that she would in fact, quite likely, have to lead. And Cat being Cat, she was equipped for this.
Lillian kicked off her shoes and sat on the edge of the bed. There was none of the smirky bravado left over from the… Saturday night? Sunday morning? after the Daily Planet gala. Cat suspected her own tuxedo had helped with that, making Lillian feel less gay.
Well, that was okay, too. Cat would eschew labels for the night and just be Cat. So she said, “You know, I did a set of interviews at women’s prisons back in the day.”
Lillian sneered, “And did you ask them what kinds of sexual antics they got up to?”
Cat waved that way. “Immaterial. Animals, human and otherwise, will always get up to those things. I was more interested in how the beds were. Wellesley was a good school, and my parents paid a lot for it, but institutional bedding is almost never good. How did your back hold up?”
“Wretchedly, thanks for asking.”
“And I imagine your feet hung off the end?”
Lillian gave a tired laugh. “I have over the years found that most of the time, my height has been an enormous asset.”
“But?”
“But.”
“Well, it’s just that, since I had the opportunity to spend time in my condo for a few days between, you know, Sunday morning and tonight, I thought I might pack a few essentials.”
Lillian raised one eyebrow.
Cat reached into her suitcase and pulled out—apparently—a Dopp kit. Its leather looked old and worn, but soft and well cared for. “My grandfather’s, from Korea. So much more capacious than those ridiculous makeup bags they sell for women.” She pulled out a small bottle with a purple label. “I noticed that you favored lavender.” She handed it to Lillian, who opened and sniffed it, looking pleased.
“Wait, are you offering to give me a massage?”
“The thing about being a reporter for so long is that you learn all kinds of actually fairly useful things, both facts and skills.”
“I get the skills, but what facts?”
“That people who are taller than average for their sex tend to have bad backs. Take off your clothes and lie on your stomach.”
Lillian squinted at her for a moment, as if trying to see the trick, but then she unbuttoned her black shirt, shucked her black trousers and said, “Well, Cat, I do seem to remember you had a fairly... interesting way of dealing with bras...”
Cat wasn’t sure what to make of Lillian seesawing between shyness and brazen interest, so she said calmly, “The part where I kissed your breasts over the bra to make sure they would be warm enough when I popped the clasp? Or the hands.”
“Both, I’d say. Should we turn off the light?”
“Not if you want me using the oil later. I want to be able to see how much I’m using so I don’t spill it on your blankets. Maybe turn off the overhead and turn on the bedside lamp?”
They made those changes and Cat lay down on top of Lillian, her hands caressing her breasts while Lillian watched her with those grey-blue eyes. Cat kissed her way up Lillian’s chest and throat to the base below her ears. “You’re wearing my perfume.”
“It’s a lovely scent,” said Lillian, but her voice was a little shaky.
“I’d like to kiss you,” said Cat. “If you’d like.”
“I suppose.”
“Well, I don’t want to impose. Maybe I should just move back d—”
“Kiss me, Cat!” Lillian barked a small, confused laugh. “Dammit, that sounds like a musical.”
Cat laughed and kissed her, and it got heated. Finally, she came up for air. “Oh, yes, I forgot what I was doing.” She reached around for the clasp of Lillian’s bra. “May I?”
“Yes.”
Cat had spent Sunday night through Wednesday night naked and horny in her bed in National City, imagining stroking and caressing and kissing Lillian’s breasts but now that she was again doing it, her hands shook a little. She hoped Lillian couldn’t tell. Finally, she murmured, “Do you want to roll over so I can work on your back?”
“Do you really intend to do that? I’d just assumed—”
“I say what I mean,” said Cat.
“Well,” said Lillian, sounding a little surprised and dazed, watching Cat stroke her own breasts over her blouse. “That’s refreshing.”
Then she rolled over and Cat poured a little of the oil in one palm and she rubbed her palms together to warm the oil and then she began to rub it into Lillian’s tensed shoulders and down her tense back, circling her hands, stroking her thumbs into stiff muscles. She squeezed the stiff muscles just above Lillian’s hips. Then she quickly took off her shirt and bra and lay down on Lillian to keep her warm as she leaned on her elbows to get a little more oil and think about how she wanted to frame this.
“How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly good. No one has ever—I feel good.”
“You’re awfully tense...”
A snort. “World domination does that to you.”
“So, supervillain badass, do you want me to massage your ass as well? I’m quite good at it.”
Lillian reached down and pushed her underwear down off her (very fine) ass. Clearly the woman still worked out.
Cat hopped off the bed and shucked her pants and underpants, climbed back up and straddled Lillian’s hips facing her ass, worked the warmed oil into the stiff gluteus muscles as she had been taught—
--well, the naked part had not been part of that lesson. Neither had her damp center making contact with Lillian’s naked back. But if you couldn’t make your education your own and improvise a bit, what was the point?
She worked her hands from Lillian’s ass down the backs of her thighs, that were also tight. Finally, she turned herself around and lay back down on top of Lillian’s back.
Lillian sighed. “Well, that was... Thank you.” She sounded two steps away from tears.
Cat murmured, “You want me to do your front too?”
///
Krypto had liked seeing Kal again, though he was strange, and terrible at Language. His mate was nice and gave Krypto biscuits and bellyrubs, especially when she sent Kal out for snacks and talked very seriously with Kara. Then, Kal came back, and they played fetch for a while before going to sleep.
Kara had said that they would be going home the next day and that made him happy. He wanted to see Soft-Hands-and-Beautiful-Voice, who gave the bestest bellyrubs, and Scruffy who gave him peanabuttrcrakkrz, and Salty who was a good guard dog for Whistler, always watching her to see whether she needed Salty to bite somebody.
He missed his pack.
///
Cat rolled over to breathe for a few seconds and let their sweat cool down. Lillian was once again in shock.
When she first saw Cat pull the massage oil out of the Dopp kit, it hadn’t occurred to her that Cat, also being a bit older, might occasionally, or all the damn time, have difficulties getting wet enough to get anywhere with herself during what Lionel had annoyingly called Lillian’s sexy times. And Lionel had never introduced lube into their relationship, but he had been sick and then died when Lillian was young enough that it didn’t matter. These days, it mattered.
A lot.
And the other thing that Cat had pulled out of her Magic Carpet Bag of Orgasms was a, one of those things, the silicon things. She knew that Lena had had one in college, as well as some elaborate harness thing. They never spoke of it, mainly because Lillian had found it when she was looking for Lena’s journal, but Lena had figured out that Lillian was reading her journal, so she had left that ... equipment there as a rebuke, Lillian had been sure.
This one was smaller and not really shaped like a penis and when Lillian had asked, “Um don’t you need a harness for—”
Cat had laughed. “Dear, I am a divorcee taking care of herself, not some lesbian trying to prove something—” She paused, wincing. “Ouch, sorry, that wasn’t politically correct, was it?”
“You might be preaching to the choir here...”
“Anyway, I just thought I would start by doing for you what I would normally do for myself and you tell me what’s good and what’s not.”
“The other times, you used your fingers.”
“Mm. Forgive me Lillian. You are much taller than I am, and you were married for decades. My fingers can only do so much. This is bigger. I think you’ll probably like it.”
And, oh, Lillian had liked it. Lillian had had a screaming orgasm that she thought people in the next county had probably heard.
What (as Lex sometimes said when an experiment went wrong) the Actual Fuck?
“Um,” she said—and when in the last thirty years had that syllable escaped her lips?—“Should I, do you want me to use—”
“If you want to help a gal out, I wouldn’t say no, but you’re going to have to use your fingers. It’s not good to use something on two people without sterilizing first.”
“Makes sense. Will you tell me what to do? I mean, what you like?”
“Follow your instincts like you did at the mountain base. Then I can guide you along as we go.”
And the in-and-out bit had made sense, but when Cat had asked her to curl her finger a bit and then when she had done it and Cat had shouted, “Holy Fuck! Mother of Fucks! Oh, Luthor!” and... shuddered... at length... gripping Lillian’s arms with hands like iron claws...
And Lionel had always made what she had always thought of as happy noises and grunts. But this.
But—
But—
But she was Lilian Luthor. WASP. Mother. Patriot. Conservative. Married to a man for decades—
Admittedly, a man who had cheated on her and then forced her to raise his daughter by another woman—
But she was straight, dammit. So how could she be offering to, and then doing, and then making another woman shudder and sweat and yell obscenities? And why did it make her feel a surge of exhilaration that she could do this for another woman? Because what did men do but take?
Cat Grant had given her this, at the mountain, and after her release from prison, and after the gala on Saturday, and tonight, and not just sex tonight, but the witty conversation and the necking in the study, and the witty conversation over dinner and the dancing and the romance, and then a fucking massage and then she had given her the orgasm of her life and yes, Lillian had gotten money and power and prestige and her darling Lex from Lionel, but she had also had Lena foisted off on her too, and she had made the best of that and together they had saved the fucking planet from the fucking aliens that Lillian had spent at least two fucking decades warning people about and when it finally fucking happened it had been Lillian and Lena who had saved the day not fucking Superman or Supergirl!
And she had done all those things why? Because fucking Lex had wanted to mess with Superman and then fucking Max Lord had wanted to fuck with Supergirl, and then she herself had wanted to fuck with Cat and Lena and Supergirl and those fucking alien entrepreneurs.
And Lex had failed. Superman came out as an ally. And Batman too, and now she had a pretty good idea of why that had happened around the same time.
And Max had failed. Lillian had been forced to look at a side of herself that she had never imagined existed.
And she had failed. Lillian Luthor had failed because Cat Grant was smart and beautiful and had gone to one of those women’s schools and had made the most of her liberal arts education, and some lessons learned early never went away, even if you didn’t use them for decades. And at some level, Cat seemed to feel, what had she said at the gala, that the feelings they had for each other were real: attraction, distrust, respect, excitement?
Lillian Luthor did not want to feel attraction or excitement for another woman. Or anybody. If she hadn’t gotten that from her marriage, then she had proved she could live without it. She hadn’t been lying when she had told Cat that she thought celibacy could make you more focused.
She had a goal, a mission to achieve, to save the fucking planet.
Again.
Lust diminished focus. She could not afford to have her focus diminished.
Her voice hard, she said, “Cat, you have to go.”
“Wait, what?”
“You need to go now, or I don’t know what I might do to you!”
Lillian pulled a robe off a hook and threw it on, running to her study and locking the door behind her. Twenty minutes later, through the window of the dark study, she saw Cat exit the front door with her suitcase and get into a towncar that had pulled up in front of the mansion. Good riddance, thought Lillian sadly. Now she could get on with her mission without distractions.
Chapter 78: Picking Up the Broken Pieces: Friday
Chapter Text
On Friday morning, Pill piled all the things she had accumulated in six months at LCorp into a file box and took the elevator five stories up to join her new research group, the one working on the fairly top-secret research that Lena had personally signed off on, that only she, Lena, and the five members of the group, were allowed to know about.
There had been NDAs. The only time Pill had been made to sign NDAs before had been (inconveniently) related to the (probably stolen) pill that she had smuggled out of her former employer’s building between her toes. The wording on these NDAs—
--because Pill always read the fine print—
Was much more... threatening. And there was decidedly no end date to them, even if the company itself dissolved, which was a lot less likely to happen with LCorp than with the last two companies she had worked for.
She wandered onto the twenty-seventh floor with her box in her arms and her lanyard and ID around her neck, unsurprised when a pair of security guards, one LCorp and one Crows, stopped her, checked her ID, dug through her box, and let her go, pointing her to room 19D, which, apparently was going to be her office from then on.
She was sorting her files and putting her little cactus in the window to get some sun when a familiar voice shouted, “PILL!”
She turned to see Chaya hurriedly setting down her coffee cup on Pill’s (currently empty) file cabinet, yelling from behind her LCorp mask, “Bring it in, honey! You’re here! This is great!”
She had not been hugged in, what? Ten months? She didn’t even know. So it was a shock. And then another blonde, who looked highly annoyed had stepped in and said, “Chaya, people are working here you know!”
But Chaya was unapologetic. “Eve, this is Pill! I told you about Pill! She’s brilliant!”
Pill winced and held out her hand to shake Eve’s. “Are you the Principal Investigator, ma’am?”
Eve shook her head. “Lena is the PI. I will maybe be the first author if we ever getting enough results to write this up, but that’s all up in the air until we can figure out what even a few good hypotheses might be.”
“I’m really looking forward to working on this. Ms. Luthor made it sound really cutting edge.”
And Eve said, “The sharpest. We’ve got a meeting at 10:30 in the conference room. Chaya, can you bring her? This place can be a maze.” Then she’d shot Pill her brightest Blonde Smile and sauntered off.
Chaya said, “You’re going to love Eve. She is the best boss!”
///
Krypto didn’t know what to think. Kara had been sad for days and although Kal and his mate had talked to her and now she seemed a little less sad, he knew she wasn’t back to normal yet. But on the other paw, they were heading back home on the big Earth flyer, with people from Soft-Hands’s place, the place with the soft carpet and Very Serious. Apparently, they were bringing something important back there very carefully. And because of Soft-Hands, the people on the flyer who Kara didn’t know had said that she and Krypto could come with them.
But Kara said he was not allowed to beg for bellyrubs, and she was in no mood to give them either, so he just lay down at her feet and rested his head between his paws.
///
On the chartered flight from Metropolis to National City, Cat Grant finally slept.
...
Getting kicked out of the Luthor mansion in the middle of the night had been a trifle traumatic, but she had a smart phone and a gold card and had just called a car service and it had driven her around the city while she called one hotel after another to find a room for the rest of the night. Finally, she called the Royal Etude a second time and asked to speak to Sebastien, the concierge, only to be told he was not there. So she called Kara, but kept getting sent to voicemail, and she was basically desperate, for a given value of desperation, so she had called Jess Huang.
“Hello?” said a sleepy voice.
“Jess Huang? Cat Grant. I’m in a situation. I’m in Metropolis and I’ve just gotten unceremoniously booted from the place I was supposed to stay tonight, and I can’t find a room. Do you know Sebastien Dejardin—”
“Concierge at the Royale Etude?”
“The same.”
“Hang on.” After a moment, she read out his number.
“You are a lifesaver, Ms. Huang.”
“Good night, Ms. Grant.”
Cat wondered what Jess drank. She would have to ask Lena. Then Cat called Sebastien directly, explained the problem and had her driver take her to the hotel.
The fawning porter and night concierge were falling all over themselves to escort her up to the penthouse wedding suite, with flowers and a bottle of good whiskey, assuring her that the night was completely comped and they were so sorry for the little misunderstanding.
Cat turned off the lights that the porter had turned on, and just left the bathroom light on. She sat in the armchair that gave her a view through the glass doors to the balcony and the city beyond. A view like that always made her think of what Supergirl told her that time after the red K incident about all the little lights reminding her of the people she had saved.
Cat sipped her whiskey and thought about that: the people Cat had saved, the ones who in their own way had saved her over the years.
She thought about Kara and James, Winn and Eve, Lena. Hell, even Snapper had served now and then over the years. She thought about her ex-husbands, her sons. Clark Kent and Lois and Perry. Max. Olivia Marsden.
Cat had never in all her years met anyone like Lillian Luthor. Tall and commanding, strong and passionate, with those beautiful blue eyes.
And it was true, Lillian was passionate about all the wrong things. She preferred purity over diversity, genius over empathy, tyranny over persuasion.
She had tried more than once to commit alien genocide.
She had spent Lena’s childhood ignoring her, her teenage years denigrating her. She had lost the chance to really have a daughter, something Cat had always wanted. Cat loved her sons, but they would never really be like her, never take their place in the world as a strong woman. She supposed that was why Lillian spent so much of her energy on Lex, to make him the man she should have been in a world that hadn’t been ready for a woman like that back then.
The closest thing Cat had to a daughter was Kara. And now Kara had Lena and the two of them had saved the world before and Cat was sure that they would do it again, because that was what real love was capable of.
And Cat had to admit it: she had wanted to save Lillian.
She hadn’t lied to Lillian, not one word. When she said that they both felt true things: attraction, distrust, lust, curiosity, excitement, well, she had been speaking for herself, but she was sure she had seen those things mirrored in Lillian’s eyes. And she had thought that those things might be enough to turn Lillian away from destruction, from such a black and white way of viewing the world.
She had hoped to turn Lillian toward herself, to Cat, whose marriages had failed because it was hard for a man to accept a woman as his equal or superior, because she, Cat, was a handful. She knew it. She liked it about herself and refused to change for anyone.
And maybe she could have bent more, for her older son. She did think she was doing better with his younger brother. And she did a good job with Kara. Maybe at the wedding, Cat would get to meet Kara’s adoptive mother; she’d like that.
The wedding. Why were such rituals always so fraught? She’d gotten married four times, four times had promised the future to someone. Four times she had failed.
Lillian had said the words “‘til death do us part” just the once, but Cat thought it’s hard to part what isn’t entirely together. Cat had met Lionel, interviewed him several times, and had never thought much of him.
Had she just given Lillian possibly her first or, at the very least, quite likely her biggest orgasm ever? Well, that was no surprise. Most men couldn’t find the clitoris with a compass and a detailed map. But had he never shown Lillian tenderness? Because that’s what Cat had gotten from Lillian’s emotional response to the massage.
And apparently, the combination had simply been too much for her.
Cat had not cried in years. She had better things to do, and a lot of them. Of course, she processed her emotions, understood the emotions behind the emotions, as she had taught Kara. She worked through her problems, overcame or went around her obstacles, and got shit done.
So, no, Cat did not cry. She had cried a bit when her first marriage had failed, but not after the second, the third, or the fourth. She had pulled herself together and moved on. If they could not accept the wondrous Amazon that Cat Grant was, they didn’t deserve her, and they certainly did not deserve her tears.
Cat did not cry. She was not crying now.
She tossed off another two fingers of whiskey, stripped off her shirt and pants, leaving herself as naked as she had been when she had jumped out of Lillian’s bed and hurriedly packed and fled. Then she went into the lit bathroom, turned on the shower, waited until the water was acceptably warm, and stepped under the spray.
Cat was not crying. The water on her face was from the shower.
...
When the flight attendant woke her, Cat yawned and stretched, feeling something closer to human from the few hours of sleep. She had to get back to CatCo, throw herself into her work rebuilding her empire.
She wasn’t Supergirl or Wonder Woman, someone with steel on her outsides to protect her soft heart. She wasn’t someone who could save a supervillain from herself.
She was Cat Grant and humans pretending to be aliens were running around her country melting down postal facilities to steal a presidential election. Her country needed her to report the news, fairly, factually, accurately.
She needed to get back to work.
///
Brendan knocked on his boss’s door nervously.
“Come.”
Brendan entered and handed Mr. Lord a file. “The information you asked for, about the tanker/bus investigation.”
“Summary.”
“They think you are involved in this new iteration of Cadmus, sir.”
Max’s eyes focused on Brendan for the first time in weeks. Normally, he was multi-tasking, but suddenly Brendan had all his attention. It wasn’t as good as he had hoped it would be.
“New iteration?”
“Yes, sir. Lillian Luthor seems to no longer be in charge. Apparently, she gave up names, addresses, bank account numbers, for early release. It’s all in there.”
“Then who do they think is in charge?”
“Your name was mentioned in passing, sir, but only as, um, well, sir—”
“As a dupe?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Max waved that away. “No, that’s fine. They might not be wrong about that.”
“But sir, you are a genius!”
“So are the Luthors. And they are better at deviousness and deception. I’m just an engineer, not a criminal mastermind.”
Brendan kept has hands behind his back so that he would not wring them.
“Anything else?”
“They still haven’t figured out the identity of the bus driver. They are currently assuming he didn’t choose to drive into the bus but that someone hacked, er, your tech.”
“They’re probably right. I’ve got Department H looking into that, seeing if we can avoid that in the future. But first, of course, we’ll have to figure out how they did it. All right. Thank you.”
Brendan left, feeling flushed, as he always did whenever his boss deigned to notice him.
Chapter 79: Picking Up the Broken Pieces and Putting Them Away
Chapter Text
The weekend after game night, Callie was true to her word and showed Jane the Ellen episode with Melissa Etheridge and the toaster oven. They watched it twice through and Jane got very serious. “So that, that’s a thing?”
“We don’t actually give out toasters...” said Callie carefully.
“No, of course not. I get that. I just meant, is that how it usually happens, that somebody makes you feel things and question who you think you are?”
“That’s how it worked for me. Remember the Toyman copycat a while back?”
“That woman. They said she had been a cardiac surgeon at Seattle Grace when you and Alex were there.”
“Seattle Grace Mercy Death. Yeah, and she was super competent, so she respected me, and we had a connection and then she came out as ridiculously gay, and I got into such a straight panic that I went back to Sloane and asked him to fuck me very thoroughly, but I still wanted her although he was very, very good at it. So, yeah, metaphorical toasters all around.”
Jane nodded thoughtfully. “I do remember what Alex was like two years ago, wandering around with a huge smile on her face. Terrified everybody. And then a few months later, Vasquez started wandering around with a huge smile, and I had agents asking me if I thought they were okay...”
“Were they?”
“Well, apparently they were in love, so chemically, no, but in all other ways they were fine.”
And Callie wondered why Jane was taking all of this so seriously, but with the pink kryptonite apparently making a comeback, along with brain-dominance switching, she put it down to the DEO agents apparently going at it like bunnies in the DEO restrooms lately. Unlike Seattle Grace and the other hospitals she had worked at, black budget organizations didn’t usually experience... rabbit-like behavior from their employees. So she didn’t think much more about it.
///
After giving her keynote speech on Zoom for the Astroxenobiology Association conference, and answering many questions, Eliza Danvers happily closed her laptop, stretched, changed from the blue silk blouse to a denim shirt with pockets and grabbed her briefcase and caught a Lyft to the DEO. She had her consultant’s lanyard, but the security team knew her and waved her upstairs, which was a little unusual, but she was the Director’s mother, after all. It paid to have connections.
She headed to Alex’s lab, where Alex and Dr. Hamilton were taking turns looking through two microscopes and scribbling calculations on a whiteboard behind them.
“Hey, Sw—Alex. Dr. Hamilton.”
“Mrs. Danvers, good to see you again.”
“And you, Doctor. Alex tells me you found something.”
“Quite possibly. At first, I thought it was a mistake, and then a coincidence, and then an artifact from the X-rays, so then I had them take more blood samples from the volunteers, and that’s when I asked Alex to send you those first samples, and then we kept seeing it, so I had her send you the second samples.”
Eliza nodded. “I’m glad you did. I think you are right that something similar is going on. I’d guess a genetic mutation has been triggered in the second but not first of each set of three. It’s the third ones that I don’t know how to read. What was I looking at?”
“I didn’t want you to be primed to see things my way. The first set were from three DEO agents. One who was exposed to the mosquitoes carrying the brain-dominance-changing virus but didn’t change, one who was exposed and changed permanently, and one who was exposed and changed temporarily back then, but recently had a serious case of Covid and high fever and has, so far, apparently changed permanently.”
Alex said, “We’re trying to figure out what Covid, or the fever, or something did to make that second shift in them. We have dozens of agents this has happened to, and friends at hospitals across the city and country are reporting the same phenomenon.”
Eliza frowned. “Okay, but why bring me in?”
Hamilton said, “I’ve been looking at the human agents’ samples. We sent you samples of alien agents and friends of the DEO. I had a short conversation with Kara and Lena right before you arrived the other night. I know that most aliens have a metal in their blood that is roughly equivalent to the iron in human blood.”
“That’s right,” said Eliza. “Often it’s copper.”
“Exactly. The binding site seems to be the metal. So humans and those aliens are experiencing the mutating gene similarly.”
“Show me.”
Alex gestured to the first microscope, “Three Fourians, with copper.”
Eliza pushed her glasses up on her head and looked down. “Okay.”
Alex gestured to the second. “Three humans.”
Eliza looked at that, went back to the first set and went back to the second. Then she stood, looking blank and thoughtful. “This could have... startling implications for alien medicine... If we could use that to inform the alien SSRIs and ACE inhibitors...”
“It could go in the other direction, too,” suggested Hamilton. “We could harness alien medicine for humans.”
Alex looked from one to the other, nodding. “I’ll just leave you to it then, shall I?”
///
Lena came down to the lab when Pill texted her about the metallic binding sites and what Jane Hamilton had said to her on game night immediately came to mind. Like the DEO, LCorp had started looking at the brain-dominance changes when their respective workers, all recovering from rough bouts of Covid, showed signs of having switched more permanently. And Lena had wondered whether pink kryptonite might be similar, especially after what she heard about James. It had started with an inkling in her brain when Jess came out to her as being newly confused about how she felt about Holtzy, but Lena had always thought that the last person on the planet to come out as, in any way, anything but 110% heterosexual would have been James Olsen. Sure, he’d had a crush on Superman all those years in Metropolis. But so had Lena, and she was practically the definition of a gold star lesbian.
(Although, to be fair, Trevor Noah did have a joke about everybody crushing on Clark Kent because he looked like Rachel Maddow...)
But what Kara had eventually told her (when her memory had recovered from the trauma) about the playing cards and chips on the table and all the clothes under it had told a story that Lena decided not to tell her super-speeding gir-- lov-- fiancée about.
Because Lena Luthor had played strip poker two or three times.
Okay, maybe four or five.
Six, tops.
And, if you did it right? And were a good poker player?
And you started with a lot of clothes on?
Getting two people naked took time.
And sure, you could cheat and throw a game or two to get naked faster, but usually only one person was willing (or possibly eager) to do that, and it was almost always obvious, and most people she knew who had an opinion on the matter felt that it was wrong.
Unless you were really close to the end and horny as hell. Because, let’s face it, that did happen. But still.
And she could imagine Winn really getting off on watching James’s boner... do what men’s bits did. But the reverse? The James who had castigated her for being a Luthor for two years and then suddenly developed a crush on her, conveniently forgetting that she was a diehard, lifelong, woman-loving-woman, what-are-men-for-anyway, freaking lesbian?
Yeah, no.
And yet.
Kara had been very clear about the size of both of them. Yellow, then green? Respect.
Pill said, “Um, ma’am?”
“What? Oh, sorry, Dr. Isley. I’m easily distracted these days.”
“Understandable, ma’am. The pandemic is making everyone’s brain mush or, well, in your case, mush-adjacent. But I thought you should see this.”
“Which volunteer is this sample from?” asked Lena.
“Um, 1482.”
Lena was the only one who had the list of volunteers, and as with most lists she read, she had memorized it. And 1482 was Jess Huang, who had started right-handed, been infected with the virus, and stayed right-handed. On the other, huh, hand, she had also started out straight, and had not obviously been affected in that way until after she had Covid and recovered.
And then Jillian Holtzman had happened. And Lena had interacted with Holtzy both professionally and personally, and she was, everyone agreed a real hoot and a genius, so Lena could totally see the appeal, but she also knew Jess very well, and wondered a bit at Jess dating someone who was probably more... sexually complex and out there than Jess was ever likely to want to be.
But this. This was science and it was something that had been niggling in the back of Lena’s mind when she had seen so many people who had been affected by the brain-dominance virus and just shrug it off and then pink K had happened, and she had wondered if she could find a way for Kara and Clark to just shrug off kryptonite.
Because Lena knew that her marrying Kara was likely... to bring the green out in her mother and brother’s eyes, so to speak. And Lena was proactive. So.
“Fascinating” she said. “Do you have any other samples like this?”
“No, ma’am, not yet. But we should be getting samples from volunteers at the Opal City and Chicago offices couriered to us tomorrow.”
“Well, keep an eye out. It might just be an anomaly, but if it’s not...”
“Roger that, ma’am.”
Lena left smiling. She liked Pill. It had been a lucky day when she had applied for the job at LCorp.
///
Normally, Maggie didn’t go into work on a Saturday, unless there was a high-profile case, or a large protest planned, and the PD would simply need bodies patrolling on the ground. But something had been bothering her about the tanker/bus case and she had been dreaming about the alien from that movie about the aliens who used that video game to recruit humans to be space pilots for them and there was that joke about how you drove a spacecraft the way you would drive a bus and then the alien said, “Wait. What’s a bus?”
She came in on Saturday morning, around 9:15 and stood there in front of all their whiteboards, grinding her teeth because they had not been able to solve any of these cases and it bothered her on a bone-marrow level because she felt that they were missing something ridiculously obvious. And then she had a brain fart. And then she had texted Alex.
HuckFinn: Do your agents get their info wiped?
AlexTGreat: What do you mean?
HuckFinn: From NCIC.
AlexTGreat: Prob. Let me check.
And that is when Maggie thought to send her info request directly to Winn, so he could check the DNA of the tanker driver against the DEO registry.
Why hadn’t she thought of that six, nine, twelve months earlier?
///
The night before, Kara had had a dream about Lex, but when she woke, she couldn’t remember it. Lena was not in bed and her side of the bed was cold. Kara turned and saw a small note on Lena’s bedside table: Sorry, love, breakthrough at work, need to go in. -L.
And the L was surrounded by a pentagon. Kara felt a rush of love. Krypto was sitting next to the bed quivering. Kara put her glasses on out of habit.
“Krypto, Friend, what’s wrong? Do you want to jump to me on the bed?”
Krypto barked. Joe’s lessons were progressing slowly, but Kara thought the bark meant “immediately.”
“Come hither.”
He jumped up and sniffed her all over, whining a little.
“What’s wrong, Friend?”
He barked a bit. She thought he was saying, “You chased rabbits in your sleep,” but again, her vocabulary was still minimal. Was he saying he knew she had a nightmare?
“Yes, I fear for Soft-Hands.”
He barked again, and he said he would be willing to be what Salty was for Whistler, which she was pretty sure meant Vasquez and Alex, respectively, and that seemed strange. “Um, what?”
And he barked a word she did not know. He was struggling with the sort of creole alien-canine-Earth-human language Joe had taught him, and it sounded sort of Kryptonese, so she wrote it down phonetically and sent an interplanetary “text” to Astra, asking what the word meant.
A few minutes later, after Kara had drunk a half gallon of milk, dressed and brushed her teeth, Astra’s text came back.
GAIZ: That is the Old Speech, that no one uses anymore. Where did you see this?
KZE: Krypto... said it.
GAIZ: That is... Well. It means, I think you would say guard dog, but it has the honorific you would use for the Chief of the Guard for the Judiciary, a high honor.
KZE: That makes a surprising amount of sense. I’ll explain later, when I know more.
She put her phone in her pocket and looked at Krypto, who was sitting at her feet quivering. He barked the short form of his name for Lena: Soft-Hands? Soft-Hands? Krypto can!
“Okay, Friend. Yes, I will drop you off at LCorp and you can guard Lena. Can I tell Salty what you said about her?”
“Treats! Loyalty!”
“Okay... I will take that as a yes...”
Chapter 80: New Developments
Chapter Text
Tuesdays were Winn’s day to buy the coffee for the command center and he stood in a socially distanced line wearing one of the Marvin the Martian masks that Lena had given him. Apparently, M’gann had made hundreds of them during the first and second lockdowns to supplement her nonexistent income from Dollywood, and Lena, being Lena, had bought most of them for her employees.
And apparently, Lena was as busy as the rest of their friends had been lately because he hadn’t seen her much before game night on Friday. He knew that Kara had been doing her part in watching for more election shenanigans and he thought that Lena might be working overtime to support her. And that was great, but it meant he still hadn’t been able to show Lena the innovations that Holtzy was coming up with for the problem he had given her. That woman was an utter genius.
“Oh, wait!” said a woman behind him. “Does the back of that head belong to Winn Schott?”
He turned, saw the masked blonde and searched his memory. “Eve? Tessmacher? From CatCo? Or wait, LCorp? Okay, now I’m just confused.”
“Not at all. I worked at CatCo before you left and then I got promoted to be Cat’s assistant, and then James’s assistant, and then again, Cat’s.”
“And how long did that last? A month?”
“Six.”
“Respect.” He saluted. “You are second after Kara Danvers. She lasted more than a year.”
“Hey, weren’t you at Dollywood last week?”
“Yeah, that was fun. I mean, in a I probably had one too many beers kinda way. But yeah, I was there. Why?”
Eve looked at her shoes then up at him. “Oh, no reason. I just, it looked like Jess knew you and I kinda wanted her to introduce me to you, but I, I was too shy to ask.”
“You were... Yeah, um, Jess is my ex, so probably she would have done it, but. Well, but anyway, I’m actually in a relationship.”
“Oh! Well, that’s great. For you. Who’s the lucky gal? Anybody I know?”
“Um, I. It’s actually a guy. I’m bisexual. You know, it’s the hearts, not the parts!”
“Oh, that’s fantastic. I don’t have nearly enough gay guys in my life. You can help me understand men!”
“Yeah, bi, not gay. But, oh, this is my order. See you around!”
And he got his order and fled. Why could people not make that distinction? Bi was queer, sure, but it wasn’t gay. It wasn’t straight either. It was its own thing.
Frustrated, he brought the coffee back to the DEO where he was hailed (rightly) as a hero.
///
Winn dressed up a little, wearing a cloth tie instead of a knit tie, and a blazer instead of a cardigan. Lena had finally invited him over to LCorp and he wanted to be seen as a professional. Jess had told him to bring his consultant lanyard and ID and meet the team on the twenty-seventh floor, because they wanted his input on a different project than the generator, and there would be more NDAs involved, so be ready to stay after.
“The Team,” minus Lena, were Eve and her coworkers, Dr. “Pill” Isley, Dr. Chaya Rand, and two men who were absent, having just tested positive for Covid.
“I understand you had that, Dr. Schott,” said Eve.
“Yeah, it was horrible, and I was in... the hospital for almost a month and it turns out I’m a long-hauler. Your colleagues have my complete sympathy. Also, I’m not a doctor. A few master’s degrees but that’s all.”
“So should we call you master?” asked Eve, with a gleam in her eye over her LCorp mask.
Pill snorted.
Winn shook his head. “So what is it we are working on?”
The door opened and Lena strode in with Krypto wearing his lightweight black working vest trotting behind her, with the patches that said on his left side, WORKING DOG, and on his right side, the one he never wore when he was on morale duty at the DEO, Do Not Pet. And that seemed a little odd, but then Lena said, “Good morning, Mr. Schott. I imagine you remember two years ago, when Cat Grant, Kara Danvers and I, and a few other people—”
“Were kidnapped by Cadmus? Hard to forget. I don’t think any of us slept for a week.”
“Precisely. That... incident is what we are looking into. I could understand if you wouldn’t want to investigate something that had such a traumatic effect on our lives, and if you do, Pill can take you down to HR to sign the NDAs, but if you don’t, there will still be a teeny tiny NDA for you to sign. I’m sure you understand.”
Winn frowned, then rubbed his eyes. “Um, I don’t suppose you have coffee around here? Eight in the morning is not normally when I start a new project and the last few weeks have been....”
Eve said, “I can get some. Who else wants?” Everyone raised their hand. She hurried out.
Winn thought, Wait, they’re experimenting with pink K? Why? To reverse it? To make it commercially available? “Um, Lena, I have to say, I’ve got some serious quest—”
An enormous explosion sounded, along with a terrible symphony of breaking glass. Winn tapped his ear. “Vasquez, I’m at LCorp and I think we’re under attack! An explosion just—”
“We’re on it, Winn! Is it in the building, do you know?”
He opened the conference room door about an inch, checking for intruders.
“Don’t know. Windows are absolutely gone, glass everywhere, bleeding employees. We’re going to need the flyers we prepared last month. Mass casualty!”
Krypto barked wildly.
Lena pushed herself off the floor. “Winn, do you have First Aid training?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
She pulled a panel from the wall and passed him, Pill, and Jess First Aid kits and took one for herself. “Let’s go.”
///
Eve had just stepped into the coffee room when the explosion rocked the building, so she missed the rain of breaking glass from the windows. Picking herself up off the floor, she scrambled to open the panel in the wall that all shared spaces at LCorp had for just this sort of situation. Pulling out a First Aid kit, she stopped, poured a slosh of coffee into a paper cup and drank it down—caffeine was good for shock and she could already feel her heartrate becoming erratic—and she ran out of the room to the bullpen where administrative staff was bleeding all over the place from the spray of glass. Triage, she thought, triage.
///
Callie Torres met the ambulances in a trauma gown, but it was mostly the general surgeons who dealt with the first of the injured. Inevitably, she and her people had to wait until the jaws of life or whatever had dug her patients out from the rubble that had broken their bones. LCorp was known to employ aliens, so they had sort of been waiting for something like this for a while, and she was grateful that they had had almost two years of experience before they had to deal with a mass casualty event of this magnitude. She knew she could recognize on sight the different species that they would need red sunlight to cut into or lasers to fuse their bones. In a situation like this, time was of the essence, and that knowledge today was saving lives.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Brian and his partner push a gurney toward cardiac. MCEs meant everybody got put to work. She was glad she had worked things out with Jane over the weekend.
///
Lena instinctively went to the reddest part of the floor, instructed less injured employees to use direct pressure on the bleeders, raise feet, use coats to warm them, all the basics. Krypto went with her from person to person, sniffing the employees worriedly and whining quietly. Lena did not have time to comfort him, too busy trying to keep her employees from bleeding out. She always had several maxi menstrual pads included in the First Aid kits, since they were by definition sanitary and good at absorbing blood and helping it to stop. First responders, search & rescue dog handlers and the like had been using them in this way for years.
She knew she could have done that sort of work. She had the mind and the reflexes for it. Lionel had hoped she would be a surgeon, like her mother, but Lena had wanted to follow Lex’s path. But after all the pain Lex had caused, when she had taken over then-LuthorCorp, she had instituted some new protocols: First Aid training as a part of the onboarding process for new employees, with regular CPR certification built into the promotion process, etc. etc.
The old LuthorCorp had had an actual annual mortality rate. LCorp did not. Lena was why. And she held herself to an even higher standard than her employees and even the Board of Directors were paid in part based on whether they participated in these activities or not.
Huh. Cox and Wilson never had. Claire always did. No surprise there.
It didn’t take long for people in black tacticals marked “FBI” to show up, in addition to the NCPD and the ambulance folks. Lena thought she recognized Brian at one point, but by that time, she was being questioned by Detective Sawyer and she had her own micro-recorder in her purse, so she had recorded the interview and given Maggie the tape. The woman’s dimply grin was payment enough.
And although she was across the room, she had seen a blood-soaked Eve weeping in front of Winn and Winn was calm and kind and Eve kissed him, and then looked appalled at herself and ran away.
Lena wanted to put herself out there and say that this shit was traumatic for everybody, but she recognized that that might possibly be stating the obvious.
///
Joe heard the explosion from ten blocks away, where he and Detective Reynolds had bought sandwiches and were eating them in Reynolds’ car. Immediately, the radio called all units to respond to an explosion at LCorp. Reynolds handed Joe his tuna sandwich to wrap up while he pulled a U-turn, saying, “What do you think the odds are that it’s just some experiment gone wrong?”
Joe shook his head. “Reynolds is optimist. Sawyer said Big Luthor is back, maybe leading Cadmus now.”
“Bloody hell. That’s the last thing we need.”
“Joe agree.”
By the time they arrived, the Bomb Squad was heading in wearing their heavy suits and NCFD, NCPD and two different FBI groups (one that Joe thought was actually the DEO) had each set up their own command posts around the LCorp skyscraper.
Cautiously, Joe and Reynolds joined their captain at the police command post. He was talking on his radio while a stream of LCorp employees were hurrying out of the emergency exits. The air was full of alarms and sirens coming from all directions.
Joe looked up at the ragged hole that was blown out about halfway up the building. He looked down at the piles of shattered glass all over the sidewalks and street. It reminded him of the Blood Dunes of Wafira, a desert of glass crystals inhabited by species that he had tried to describe to Maggie as a cross between a rhino and an armadillo (because Joe visited the National City Zoo sometimes on his day off).
Joe stood there amidst the chaos and closed his eyes and turned down his hearing and turned up his sense of smell.
Panic. Chaos. Human sweat and hormones. Human blood, with the tang of iron. Fourian blood, with the tang of copper. Ammonium nitrate. Fuel oil. Foam suppressant. Fur. Canine saliva. Canine hormones. Kryptonian canine hormones. Krypto, whose sense of smell rivaled Joe’s.
Joe opened his eyes and slowly turned his hearing up to gradually acclimate to the noisy scene. He walked over to his captain and had a murmured conversation with him. The captain knew better than to argue with Joe about anything scent related. He waved to one of the “FBI” agents who had taken point on all the organizations: Director Danvers, then pointed at Joe with his thumb. Danvers nodded for Joe to come join her and someone handed him an extra helmet. As the Bomb Squad was coming out with their evidence, Danvers led her team (eight agents in black tactical uniforms and body armor, and one alien in a tweed jacket and bowtie) into the building.
With Danvers’ permission, Joe peeled off and took the stairs up to the twenty-fifth floor. He went slowly, in part to give himself time to process different smells on different floors—and on the twentieth, he called Agent Danvers and his captain to let them know that there might still be UXO (unexploded ordnance) on that floor. Then he kept going up.
On the twenty-seventh floor, he saw Lena, Winn and several women he did not know giving First Aid to injured employees. The smell of human blood was almost overwhelming, but this was not Joe’s first Mass Casualty Event during his time on Earth, so he knew how to shut that down and scanned the room for Krypto.
He heard the whines before he saw the white tail sticking out from behind a desk. Cautiously stepping around bandaged people, Joe went to where Krypto was standing guard over Lena, who was bandaging a young man in a bloody lab coat.
Joe barked. Krypto turned and answered him. Lena glanced their way and said to Krypto. “Honorable Guard Dog. I am unharmed and safe. The Great Nose requires your assistance, and I cannot be distracted. Go over there to converse. Good Boy.”
Joe was impressed. Winn and Kara had been trying to learn the canine language from him, and Kara had been trying to teach Joe some Kryptonese, but he was never going to be nearly as fluent as this woman was. He saluted her and went into a small room smelling of coffee and dish detergent with a very under-cleaned microwave smelling of months of disparate lunches.
Joe said, “Krypto tell Joe what Krypto smell here, before big boom and after.”
And Krypto described all the usual smells, but also female human hormones and worry sweat and a scent that Krypto himself did not recognize, but from his description, Joe thought might be battery acid.
Joe took notes in his notebook, read it back to Krypto and the dog didn’t have anything to add. Joe said, “Krypto come to station later to sign statement. Also, Joe might have more questions.”
Krypto yipped his agreement. They went back out to the shattered and bloody open-plan office just as NCPD uniforms and EMTs entered to clear the floor of victims and the LCorp staff who had been acting as first responders. Joe said, “Krypto keep nose on Soft-Hands.”
And Krypto replied, “Immediately.”
///
Maggie sat typing up her notes and interviews well into the evening. She had sent Reynolds home at six and when Joe had asked to go liaise with the NCFD, she had taken him into their conference room and closed the door behind them, because the janitor was emptying their wastebaskets into his cleaning cart’s larger barrel and she didn’t want to be overheard.
“Joe, I read your preliminary report and what you got from Krypto. Battery acid?”
Joe nodded. “Krypto come tomorrow, and Joe will have him identify from lineup. But Joe think battery might be detonator.”
Maggie rubbed her finger under her bottom lip. “But if Krypto smelled it on that floor—”
“LCorp employee detonate bomb?” asked Joe. “Many employees hurt on floor. Some employees not hurt. Not hurt employees bring bandages to hurt employees. Soft— Joe mean, Little Luthor have plan.”
“Yeah, Lena told me about the First Aid kits. Thank God for Lena’s chess-master mind, always thinking seven steps ahead. Sometimes I’m surprised she’s not dating Vasquez... What about what you smelled on the twentieth floor?”
“Joe see what Fire Persons tell him. Not expect much. Chief Short dislike aliens.”
“Yeah, that fits what we know about him. Well, be careful and don’t antagonize him or give anything away.”
Joe snorted. “This not Joe first horse chase.”
“Right, I always forget you’ve been a cop far longer than I have. Okay, Joe, you know I trust your judgment, but just be careful. You’re my ace in the hole.”
Joe frowned but nodded and left. Maggie looked down at the list of names: the two dead, the thirty-eight injured, some quite badly, and the seven men and women who had been unscathed, including Lena and Winn. Forty-seven people on just that floor alone. They were going to have to sort out which were intended victims, which were incidental casualties, and which might have been a perpetrator.
She looked up at the four white boards on the west side of the room, taking up pretty much that entire wall. She turned to the east side of the room and started moving desks. Then she called down to Maintenance and asked for more white boards.
///
Tricia Rodriguez was six foot two and 180 pounds of solid muscle. As one of NCFD’s very few female firefighters, nobody thought it odd that she kept her fingernails short and wore no makeup to work, but she kept an old photo of her wearing a bridesmaid dress with her college buddy wearing a tux in her locker so that the boys at her station didn’t bother her, although given that she was at least as big as most of them and bigger than some, nobody was going to ask her out anytime soon, which was just as well. She didn’t roll that way.
When she had finally made Captain and gotten her two stripes and her two crossed gold bugles, she had taken the tape off the picture and slid it into one of those cheap picture frames and set it on the desk in her office. Teddy was also as queer as a three-dollar bill and was one of her oldest friends. Sometimes when she was working out a problem, she talked to his picture. Lately she had been talking to him more than usual.
Today, she drove the red SUV up to the main Fire Department Operations building to meet with Chief Short and the other captains who had responded to the recent domestic terrorist events. The mayor was pushing police and fire to work together to put a stop to the ravaging of National City to no clear end. And in other towns that Rodriguez had worked in, fire and police got along well. Not here--and not because the police weren’t willing.
There were seventeen of them around the big conference table, with Chief Martin Short at the head, seven human males (all white) on one side, her, three Infernians, one Asian American woman and two African American women, on the second side, and the two cops, Detectives Reynolds and Joe at the bottom, as far away from Short as possible. Rodriquez knew that Short put up with the Infernians because they were just too damn useful not to use, but he didn’t have to like it and when it came to aliens who did not have that sort of usefulness, Short wouldn’t give them the time of day.
Short went through the findings of the arson investigators on the most recent fire at National City Bank and said that the apparent attack on LCorp seemed to have nothing to do with the arson and he basically kicked the cops out after that. Rodriguez and the other women made their reports after the men did and then they were finally free to go. As it was the end of a very long day, Rodriguez chose not to go back to the fire station for the last fifteen minutes of her shift and instead went straight to the NCPD station that housed the Science Division and asked to speak with Detective Joe. She was still in her blue service uniform, so they gave her a visitor’s lanyard and directions through the maze to the back stairs that led to the Domestic Terrorism Task Force.
She knocked on the doorframe and stood taking in the room as a short Latina, Reynolds, Joe and two other women also in skinny jeans and leather jackets turned in her direction. She thought the white woman looked like the FBI lead agent, but she couldn’t place the frowning Latina who stood next to her.
“Hi, didn’t mean to interrupt. I came to talk to Joe? I’m Captain Tricia Rodriquez, NCFD. I thought you might need some information that our... chief... may have forgotten to give you at the meeting today...”
The three women gave each other significant looks. Joe sniffed. Reynolds just grabbed his coat and waved goodbye. He looked exhausted.
Joe said, “Captain was at LCorp today.”
“Yes, I was, coordinating our people.”
“Did Captain’s people find battery detonator?”
Rodriguez frowned, startled. “Yes...”
“Come on in, Captain. I’m Detective Maggie Sawyer. These are my FBI colleagues, Special Agents Alex Danvers and Susan Vasquez. I am up to my ears in domestic terror investigations.” She waved a hand at the white boards that lined two sides of the room, all bearing photographs of victims, crime scenes, charts.
Rodriguez came and set her briefcase on the woman’s messy desk, opened it and took out a folder. “I took the liberty to make copies of our arson investigator’s report and the bomb squad’s report for the last two incidents, so you didn’t have to go to the trouble of requesting them. I know our channels have been moving slowly lately...”
Vasquez’s eyebrow rose. “Because Covid?”
Rodriquez nearly laughed, but instead she said, “Sure. Covid. Right. Anyway, I think you will notice that a similar tactic was used as in the Luthor Alien Hospital, but a different detonator was used.” She turned to Joe. “We’re pretty sure the Clinic bomb was detonated by a radio signal, suggesting a perpetrator acting from a distance. But at LCorp, we found a mangled Yuasa 12-volt, 2.1-amp lead acid battery at the scene, the kind you can get for twenty bucks.”
Sawyer nodded at Joe, who pulled up the picture of the five batteries they had shown Krypto when he came by with Lena that afternoon. The fourth, a Yuasa 12-volt, was circled in red and there was an ink pawprint at the bottom of the page. “Our olfactory witness identified that this afternoon.”
Rodriguez opened her mouth and closed it. “Your...” Her eyes flickered across the women’s faces and they all were deadly serious. “I see.”
Sawyer said, “Thank you for choosing to liaise with us, Captain. I am familiar with slow channels. I did work in Gotham for several years.”
“Ah, I’m glad we understand each other, Detective. Here is my card. Don’t hesitate to call me if there is anything else I can do for you.”
Joe led her out. As he held the back door to the parking lot open for her, he said, “Captain trust Short?”
Rodriguez frowned. “I’m not sure how to put this. The man... loves his job. He gets very... excited when he is actually called out to a fire.”
“Ah. Understood.”
He went back into his building and Rodriguez got into her SUV, resting her briefcase on the passenger seat and wondering how an alien from another planet understood one of the classic signs of an arsonist.
Chapter 81: Developing Protocols
Summary:
In honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day, despite the fact that I only have maybe 17 chapters written ahead of this, I offer you a new chapter. Enjoy.
Chapter Text
Lois Lane had never visited the National City DEO, although she had heard about it from Clark. But when she had texted Alex about possibly conveying Clark’s... thoughts about recent... events, Alex had assured her that there would be an agent waiting for her with a visitor’s lanyard when her Lyft brought her to their door. Alex had also recommended the room with the powdered concrete that Supergirl had pummeled the week before, after all the... well, as Lois had said, recent... events. And call her cynical, but Lois really liked the way Alex Danvers’s mind worked. Clearly that woman had a PhD in male psychology or something.
So, when James walked in, Lois was wearing a black pantsuit and a crisp white shirt and a narrow Supergirl-blue necktie and three-inch black heels, sitting on one of the few concrete blocks that the hero had not destroyed with her hands or her eyes the previous week. And she had a secret weapon in the pocket of her black blazer. The white cuffs of her shirt were folded back over the cuffs of that blazer.
James entered, wearing his black tacticals and looking unafraid and easy-going. And Lois had mixed feelings about James, her husband’s former work wife. Mostly she liked him, but she did think he could be, like most men, at times a bit of an idiot. Probably it was the testosterone and social conditioning. But she was pretty sure that at heart he was a good guy, trying to be a feminist in a patriarchal culture. So she and Clark had decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He looked surprised to see her. “Lois? Hey. Vasquez said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Mm. James. Sit dow—Oh, I guess you can’t. Well.” She turned away from him to where a big pile of concrete dust sat. She knelt and sifted it through her fingers. She sighed and stood. “Clark does this too sometimes.”
He looked confused. “Does what?”
“Pummels concrete. Apparently, there is something viscerally satisfying about the way it explodes under his hands and sprays everywhere. And they can inhale that without it affecting their lungs, which is just an extra bonus, because you or I for sure couldn’t do that. But he hasn’t done damage like this in a long while. Probably not since that time Lex kidnapped you, right before you left National City.”
And James looked at the dust warily. “So...”
“I had asked Vasquez if she had a place for me to speak with you in an uninterrupted way, and she said this was the best she could do for us and she apologized for there not being really any places to sit, since Supergirl took the place apart last week. I understand she was a trifle upset.”
“I, yes. She.”
“Mm. You know she visited us last week.”
“Right,” he said, visibly relaxing. “For Krypto’s agility training.”
“What? No, Krypto stayed in the condo with me, while I typed up my notes on the latest postal disaster and what legal experts were saying about the administration’s apparent approval of domestic terrorists. I kept throwing the ball across the living room and he would bring it back. About a million times. It was exhausting, really. He has endless stamina.”
“Yeah...”
“As, apparently, do you.”
“Wait, what now?”
“Sorry, that was me reasoning beyond my evidence. Although I do have a little experience with strip poker.” She gave a little smile. “And endless stamina.”
James looked nauseous.
“As a woman in journalism, I also have experience with male colleagues with exaggerated opinions of their sexual prowess and lack of professional boundaries. What do they call that toxic mix? Sexual harassment?”
James looked more nauseous. “I—”
“I’m sure. But here is the thing, James. Clark, well, Superman, he... hasn’t always been there for his cousin. And that eats away at him. And when she came to us and told us... what happened... Both at the time... And a few days later...”
James swallowed.
Lois shook her head sadly. “Yeah, well, on the other hand, you know I’ve wanted to renovate the bathroom for a while. You know that old door with the chipped paint, and he keeps saying the next vacation he gets, by which you and I both know he means when he has more than twenty-four hours when he doesn’t need to punch villains into puddles of guts, then surely, he will repaint that door...”
“Lois, I’m confused.”
She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a three-inch-wide shard of wood, painted white on one side and pale blue on the other. She handed it to him.
“He wanted to be the one to... come out here and... talk to you. But after he put his fist through the bathroom door, I thought maybe it would be better if it was me who came to tell you just how terribly, terribly disappointed he is in you...”
James’s eyes got big.
“You can understand, I’m sure, how he might feel about all this, given that he was hoping you would keep an eye out for her here.”
“I, I—”
“Have you apologized to her yet?”
“I—”
“Mm. We didn’t think so. Sooner, James. Rather than later. And you might want to keep that at your desk, or in your locker, or wherever DEO agents keep their war mementos.”
“But—”
She came up to him and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “You made a mistake and then compounded it. And you hurt your friend. Well, friends. And you need to make it right, don’t you think?”
“Well, of co—”
“Because if you don’t? You know how fast he is. You know I could never stop him.”
James opened his mouth and closed it again.
Lois looked at her watch. “Oh, look, I have just enough time to catch my flight back to Metropolis. I’m glad we had this talk.”
James looked at the piece of wood in his hand and he recognized the chipped paint. Really? Clark had—
Clearly, James needed to write Kara a very carefully worded letter of abject apology. And he might need to forward copies of it to Pam and Lois. Possibly in triplicate...
///
The first thing Pam did when she got back from the Denver workshop was bake a new batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and bring them into her office. She was a firm believer in incentivizing agents.
The second thing she did was read her backlogged emails, including the extremely upset one from the Director (who had used the word “very” twice in one sentence, if you could imagine it) about the situation regarding Agent Olsen and Supergirl, and Lt. Col. Lane’s handling of that situation.
The third thing she did came directly from observing Agent Vasquez for so many years.
As director, the actual human Hank Henshaw had not given a rat’s ass for the HR department. And his idea of diversity and inclusion was collecting as many different kinds of aliens as he could and tossing them into containment indefinitely. There hadn’t been a whole lot of women agents either back then, out in the field or in administration. Pam had been the first. Then Rosie and Vasquez. The rest came later, after the (at the time) unexpected personality shift that Director Henshaw had experienced after losing Agent Jeremiah Danvers down in South America. Then the DEO saw major changes from top to bottom.
And the new Henshaw (well, actually J’onn J’onzz) had been an able director in many ways. But for Pam’s money, there was always room for improvement, so she had taken a page, so to speak, out of Vasquez’s playbook, and had started a list of protocols that she, Pam, thought should change, not just to be in alignment with government regulations but because it was the right or more efficient way of doing things or just better for morale.
So the third thing she did was print out that file, punch holes in the side of the document and throw it into a DEO notebook and personally deliver it to the office of Director Alexandra Danvers.
With a cookie.
///
Maxwell Lord sat in his office, reading reports, not his favorite part of the job, but necessary. Brendan had gotten him more information about the tanker investigation and one of his many useful Irish-American cousins, a beat cop with the NCPD, had heard that the Science Division was going to question their federal opposite numbers about the driver’s identity.
Federal. So DEO? FBI?
Hadn’t Lillian managed to turn some fibbies and DEO agents? Hm. But after seeing her at the Daily Planet gala and watching her dance with Cat Grant, Max wasn’t entirely sure that Lillian was still the woman he had thought she was.
But what about her daughter? Max had heard about her abduction back around Thanksgiving last year, and it had made him have Brendan double check his own emergency protocols for just such a situation. It didn’t trouble Max overmuch, since he never let his Board members have too much power in the first place and the way he had structured his company, if he died of anything but old age, LordTech would become a non-profit. He had heard that Lena might even have been tortured, but he had been working with her for months and she only seemed to have two gears, disdain for him and inventing quasi-mania. She didn’t strike him as a woman who had been tortured.
But he had seen her press conference the evening before, talking about working with city authorities to find the perpetrator of the bombing of her building, setting up funds to pay for the medical expenses of her injured employees, etc. She had done something similar after her alien clinic was bombed, and back a year ago when that happened, she had looked annoyed. Last night she looked angry.
Well, Max didn’t blame her. His company was his baby and if anybody tried to bomb his building, he’d be enraged. He had watched the video of the press conference seven times on the Channel 7 website, enraptured by those flashing green eyes.
Then he had called Brendan and told him to send her a bouquet of flowers. Tech CEOs had to have each other’s backs.
And he’d seen... quite a bit of Lena Luthor’s back that one time at that gala where she’d worn that off-the-shoulders little black dress with the v in front and back. Just thinking about it made him feel uncomfortably warm. He called Brendan back and told him to make sure the bouquet was suitably impressive.
///
Eliza Danvers normally enjoyed working with Jane Hamilton, who was quiet, professional and very thorough, with a light wit. She was a good person to share lab space with and she did not resent Eliza being brought in as a consultant once in a while (as some of the other institutions sometimes did, *cough Midvale PD cough*). Although to be fair, those were often the domains of men who didn’t exactly have skin in the game. Jane clearly knew that keeping Supergirl and the agents healthy and whole was for the good of the city, the country and the world, and she took her job very seriously.
But lately there was a heaviness to the doctor, like she was bone weary even early in the morning. And on this Wednesday morning, as they examined the new samples from the agents in other cities, they started noticing geographic patterns and when Vasquez had ambled in to see how things were going, as she often did, she was the one who had asked, “Did those cities experience rainfall during that week? As much rain as we got?”
“I don’t remember the rain,” said Hamilton frowning.
“In the mountains where Lillian had our people, they were hiking through a massive thunderstorm. I think we had rain most of the day here but not like that. Pretty sure DC had squalls.”
And they all paused to try not to think of the pictures of Ivanka and Betsy DeVos, which had been among the videos and photos that the news media had actually been able to share. Word of mouth quoted in other sources said that other rooms of the White House had been scenes of utter debauchery among the ultra-conservative GOP sycophants, most of whom had presented themselves for years as anti-gay.
“Anyway,” said Vasquez as she hurried out. “Winn will know how to access the weather service’s records for the period. I’ll get back to you.”
Jane rubbed her eyes. “Why can’t I remember? I feel like since Covid, my brain is solid mud.”
Eliza went and poured her coffee, added two creams the way she knew Jane liked it and brought it over. “I’ve been hearing that from my colleagues in Midvale too. We’ll be seeing the dregs of this for years.” She offered Jane the paper cup.
Jane focused her eyes on the cup in Eliza’s hands. “What?”
“Coffee. For you. To help.”
Instantly, Jane’s eyes filled up with tears. “Oh. You didn’t have to.”
“Jane, are you menopausal? Because I have days like that too. It might not all be Covid-related.”
“No, it’s probably that too. Hell, all of the above. So many things to blame this hellish year for.”
And then she was just crying, and ugly crying at that. Eliza set the cup down on the lab table and reached out to pull Jane into a hug.
The door opened and Vasquez hurried in with her tablet, followed by Supergirl and Director Danvers. Hurriedly, Jane pulled away and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her lab coat.
Vasquez pulled up the map of the rainfall for the day Lillian had led her abductees up the mountain to Lex’s fortress. “This looks like the answer. If we turn these both into heat maps, I’m convince we are going to get almost perfect overlap between the amount of rain in a region and the strength of the pink K effect in that region!”
Alex looked at her mother, “Mom, there’s something—”
But Eliza put a hand on Jane’s shoulder, simply saying, “Drink some coffee. It’ll help. Also, eat tofu at least once a week.”
Vasquez said, “Most of the cities we have data on the pink K for—”
Supergirl said, “Eliza, you need to listen to Alex—”
Jane said, “Thank you, Dr. Danvers.”
“Jane, we’ve known each other for a few years now. Call me Eliza.”
“—and that correlates well with your samples—”
“Mom,” said Alex. “It’s about Dad.”
“Also, HRT is, wait, what?”
Vasquez turned, her mouth open.
Supergirl said, “We just talked to Maggie.”
And Eliza knew her daughters. She knew their playful voices, their business voices, their science-nerd voices, and their trauma voices. And Supergirl was using her trauma voice. Eliza turned to Alex, “What?”
“Remember us telling you about the school bus and the tanker?”
“Yes, back in, when was that August? September last year?”
“Right after school started up,” said Alex. “Yes. And we thought that someone had hacked the smart prosthetic in the arm of the driver of the tanker.”
“Right, because of Max Lord?” said Eliza.
“We’re pretty sure it was Cadmus,” said Vasquez, not putting any of it together.
Dr. Hamilton shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t process those bodies. I only do our agents.”
Quietly, Alex said, “NCPD had teeth left over from the explosion and has spent the past year trying to match dental records to get an ID, but they got nothing.”
“Was he an alien?” asked Eliza.
“He was a DEO agent,” said Alex calmly.
“But—”
“Mom. He was Jeremiah. It was Dad.”
Everyone stared except for Supergirl, who studied the toes of her red boots.
Alex continued, “We knew that Cadmus had sought out survivors from the Battle of National City who had been given smart prosthetics by LordTech. We knew that Cadmus had radicalized dozens if not hundreds of those people. But we also knew that that particular generation of LordTech’s smart prosthetics didn’t have the vulnerability that earlier generations had, of being hackable by radio waves from short distances.”
Eliza shook her head, confused.
Alex said, “We were looking at the wrong people. We should have been looking for people who got that tech in the year before the battle.”
Supergirl muttered, “People like Jeremiah.”
Eliza opened her mouth and closed it again. Jane handed her the cup still half full of coffee and she gulped it down.
Alex explained, “Maggie asked me if our agents were wiped from the NCIC database, and of course we are. Then I asked her why and she came over with the... dental evidence and we scanned our internal database. And we got a positive hit. Dad.”
Eliza looked at Jane and frowned. Jane put her arms around Eliza, who leaned her head against Jane’s shoulder as tears trickled down her face and onto Jane’s lab coat.
She could see Vasquez’s face go blank as she most likely started reviewing her predictions, searching for flaws. “That’s it? That’s him? We can finally bury him?”
“There’s not much left,” muttered Supergirl darkly. And they all knew how much she hated fire.
“Well,” said Eliza with tears still dripping down her face. “At least we won’t have to pay to have him cremated.”
And they all knew that grief hit people in weird ways and made them say odd things. And that was a weird thing to say, for sure. But it was also true.
Chapter 82: Testing Hypotheses
Chapter Text
Max Lord was not a long-hauler. His Covid had been mild and brief, with just a few days of high fever and weird dreams which, when he recalled them, confused him mightily. But he still had days when, out of nowhere, he got to just past lunch and found himself exhausted and distracted and out of sorts. He considered himself lucky that, some years before, he had managed to find Brendan, his young, stylish MBA who was content, for now, to work as Personal Assistant to one of the country’s top tech CEOs (Max) for the experience. The young man also had a personal and professional network that was widespread and impressive, including at least one DEO agent who had an unfortunately expensive cocaine habit, although he was low-level enough that he rarely had any information that was worth paying much for.
This information, thought Max? Might be worth paying for.
“Wait, Brendan, are you saying Cadmus was using our tech before the Battle of National City?”
“Yes, sir. We stopped production on that one maybe two months before the city exploded.”
“So this was stolen tech. That is excellent news. This can’t be our fault.”
“Even though our tech was faulty?”
“But we knew it was faulty and we stopped producing it.” Max thought for a moment and frowned. “How did she get ahold of it though?”
“She, sir?”
And Max thought, what is that intoxicating scent? He searched his mind for any women employees he had spoken with that day and couldn’t think of one. Then he realized it was coming from Brendan.
“Oh, Brendan, is that your cologne?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. My aftershave.”
“Hm. Nice. Does it help you get dates?”
Brendan coughed. “Yes, sir. I would have to say yes.”
“Write down the brand for me.”
Then Max went back to his computer to look at the device’s schematics again. How had this piece gotten from R&D into a Cadmus agent? And when he finally discovered the inevitable connection to the Luthors, how might he go about leveraging Cat’s... relationship with Lillian Luthor... to...
And then he started fantasizing about Cat, lovely Cat, begging Lillian, terrifyingly beautiful Lillian, to take off her blouse and bra and skirt and panties.
But not the four-inch heels...
And then Lillian begging Cat to take a riding crop and whip Lillian for having tried to blow up her own daughter’s buildings, but Cat insisting that she couldn’t do that until Lillian took off her dress and bra and panties and bent down with her backside to Cat and let Cat slide her hands...
At that point, Max just called for his car to take him home where he could finish those thoughts in private and possibly make some noise in his sound-proofed condo.
He clearly wasn’t going to get anymore work done that day.
///
Snapper Carr rued the day he had accepted the job as Editor-in-Chief at CatCo. First, he’d had to take rookie reporter Ponytail Danvers through her paces. That had been bad enough, though he’d done a decent job. Then he’d been kidnapped by That Woman and dragged by the ankles up a mountain in a thunderstorm, like Winnie the Pooh being dragged up and downstairs by the ankles, his head bouncing against the stairs both ways. Then six months of boredom during his medical leave, and even now, he got headaches if he looked at screens for more than an hour at a time, which was pretty much his job.
And that was bad, but during those times, largely the puffed-up photographer had been acting CEO, so Snapper could simply get on with his work. And for a while, after Cat’s return, nothing too much changed about that, although Reign and Supergirl having the mother of all fistfights during the Christmas party last year had been yet one more example of how he preferred to write about the news rather than live it. But, since she had returned from the gala back in Metropolis, Cat Grant had been... different.
She was... more like he had known her when he first started out as a reporter:
More hard-nosed,
More hands-on,
More snarky and snide,
More demanding,
And harder on her employees.
Harder on herself.
Hard. That was precisely the word. Hard and cold and subtly, mildly, dangerous: like a snake that you don’t know whether it’s poisonous, a gun that you don’t know whether it’s loaded. And in his experience of reporting the news in far-flung places and war-torn cities, it was best to assume that all snakes were poisonous and all guns were loaded, and treat them accordingly.
Because neither snakes nor guns inevitably had to be deadly. Stressful to encounter, sure. But if you treated them with the respect they required, you could very likely leave the encounter alive.
He sighed tiredly, looking at the crumbs of his too-small Danish and wondering if it was just time for him to retire.
///
Clark Kent stood in a socially distanced line waiting for the cashier at Metropolis Home Depot, so he could pay for the new bathroom door with the hinges and doorknob that Lois had picked out. He still couldn’t figure out why she had asked him to put his fist through their old bathroom door, or what she was planning to do with the piece she had picked up from the rubble and tucked into her purse.
He hadn’t bothered asking her. She had that look in her eye that said she wasn’t going to tell him.
Maybe it was something that had come from growing up with a father and sister who were both passionate about national security. He didn’t know.
But Lois was a firm believer in plausible deniability.
///
At exactly 6:01 on the day of the explosion, Jess’s phone had pinged with a text from Holtzy.
NoGhost4U: We’v been running around all day. ArU ok?
SuperJess: I’m fine. I was up on Lena’s floor and the explosion was much lower and the other explosives didn’t work. Thankfully, the physical cleanup
NoGhost4U: I was so worried.
SuperJess: isn’t my department. I’ve been liaising with
NoGhost4U: bc Winn said he hadn’t seen U and dint know if
SuperJess: Finance to set up accounts for med expenses for the injured
NoGhost4U: were all right.
SuperJess: I’m fine. But exhausted, as I bet you are. I saw some of the footage on
NoGhost4U: supercharged but fine. Alex is taking this personally.
SuperJess: Alex is? Not her sister?
NoGhost4U: She was in Gotham following up on arson stuff.
SuperJess: Hungry? I was thinking Caprese salad or possibly
NoGhost4U: More thirsty...
SuperJess: Infernian barb
SuperJess: Oh. Well. Lena gave me a 10-year anniversary
NoGhost4U: I like both Caprese and IB.
SuperJess: present, a book. I thought we might look at together if
NoGhost4U: I could bring wine, white for salad, red for bbq
SuperJess: okay 7?
NoGhost4U: soon!
Jess went into the food app and ordered the sweet lava barbecue that she knew was Holtzy’s favorite, then looked around her condo and realized that the cats had been racing around all day, as they often did when she had had a stressful day. It was almost like they could sense it even from a distance. Of course, this time, they might actually have heard the explosion...
She picked up their toys and tossed them into the child’s toy-chest she had found on Etsy the year before. Then she washed the kitchen counter of the juice and coffee she had spilled getting ready for work when Tigger had suddenly jumped up onto the counter (which was expressly forbidden, but he sometimes did it anyway, unlike Roo who was a well-behaved little lady).
Then she chopped up two tomatoes and some mozzarella and mixed them with balsamic vinaigrette. She reached into the back of the refrigerator and pulled out what should have been a plastic box full of Spring Mix, but was, in fact, a box full of greenish mush.
Plan B. Pasta?
///
Maggie and Lucy sat on Maggie’s couch with Lois’s abduction notebook. Opening the three rings, Maggie lifted out the paper and split it in half, giving Lucy the chronological first half since she had been posted in Metropolis when Lex was first active and giving herself the second half, since she had worked in Metropolis more recently, between her time in Gotham and National City, and remembered reading about those events in the Daily Planet. (And Lois had included scanned versions of Clark’s articles about Lex’s depredations.)
And it was strange rereading them now, knowing that Clark was actually Superman. She often wondered at the Supers’ human personae having to write about themselves in third person. If it were her, that would drive her to drink.
Actually...
Lucy looked up as Maggie headed toward the liquor shelf. “Oh, not a bad idea. What are you making?”
Maggie shrugged. “I’d thought just scotch, the fancy stuff that Lena sent me for helping Kara, but I recognize you might want me to make a pitcher of martinis...”
“Oh, well, only if you actually have olives...”
“Sweetie. The first thing I did was text you. The second thing I did was go out and buy a big jar of the fancy cocktail olives you love.”
And Lucy badass-soldier-extraordinaire Lane batted her eyelashes at Maggie, who blushed and set about pulling down the vodka and vermouth.
Behind her, Lucy was muttering to herself. She looked up. “Do you have a paper calendar?”
“If you are okay with puppies and kittens.”
Lucy gave her a look. “You...Detective Sawyer...bought a calendar with puppies and kittens? Really?”
“Of course not, idiot. I donate to the NCSPCA. They send me a calendar.” She dug around the pile of papers on her desk and handed it to Lucy. “Anything else?”
“Colored pens? Or markers?”
Obediently, Maggie kept digging and came up with a not-entirely-full plastic case of colored markers. “Is that enough?”
“Should be. I’m not sure how many categories we’ll need. Monetary gain is clearly green, political statement is red, I think. Anti-alien is pink.”
“Pink?”
“Well, strictly speaking, the pink K thing was targeted to Kryptonians, i.e., Superman, but others were affected, both aliens with similar biochemistry, like Infernians, and also a small subset of humans.”
“That didn’t get into the news,” remarked Maggie.
“Yeah, they didn’t want people panicking and having anti-gay backlash.”
Maggie thought about that. She remembered Superman wearing the rainbow striped cape the following week after the debacle while he gave his pro-LGTB ally press conference. She remembered Batman standing behind him on the podium...
Maggie’s jaw dropped, “Wait, are you saying Batman—”
“Yep. Lois is not the only person who has experienced a wild night with a horny Kryptonian.”
“Or, well, I guess there’s also Lena.”
“True.”
“What other categories are you considering?” asked Maggie as she brought over the pitcher and two glasses.
Lucy flipped through the pages. “Well, he also used the abductions to cover high-end thefts, mostly of technology or materials he could convert into energy for some of his more sciencey schemes. Maybe black for that?”
Maggie brought skewers and the jar of olives and they each poured a drink, and then toasted. “To finally nailing the bastard.”
“Here, here.” Lucy sipped. “Mmm. You’ve been practicing.” Eyelashes.
“Keep it in your pants, Lane, we have work to do.” But she was smiling when she said it.
///
Like everyone else who worked in or near the tech district of National City and were on their way into work around eight on that terrible morning, Cat Grant had heard the explosion. Turning on a dime, she got back into the towncar and called upstairs to find out the location and when she heard it had been at LCorp, ice water had washed through her body. “LCorp, George,” she said to her driver, “Cordova Street.”
He got them closer than she had expected, and she used her phone to take pictures of the devastation. The building looked a lot like CatCo had after Red K Supergirl and the Martian Manhunter had had their epic and fairly vertical battle up the walls of her building. Window glass lay in piles all over the sidewalks and street. EMTs were standing in wait with their packs and gurneys at the ready while the Bomb Squad cleared the building. She could see that blue fellow, Brendan, was it? He was shifting from one foot to the other, eager to get in there and save the lives that might easily be lost if the Bomb Squad took too much time. But a forty-story building was no joke to clear, Cat knew.
The NCPD showed up, and Cat recognized Detective Sawyer and her tall partner, whatshisname. Two different groups of “FBI” showed up, and Kara’s sister and her frowning second in command were setting up a much more organized command post than their other federal counterparts. No surprise there.
Cat found her hands trembling as she typed the who, what, when etc. into her phone. Was Lena in there? Was she the target?
And who would do this? Lex?
Lillian?
Cat felt like she was going to throw up, but once the Bomb Squad finally cleared and allowed the other first responders in, Cat swallowed hard and went to interview their captain, who she knew well. Personal considerations would have to wait.
Chapter 83: Experimental Setup
Chapter Text
Alex parked her bike in front of Kara’s building and took the elevator up. She had changed from her DEO black mask to the Marvin the Martian one that Lena had given her that morning at LCorp when the smell of the chemicals had made her sneeze into her black mask. It was sort of ironic but also sort of appropriate, as Lena also acknowledged with a sigh. Oh, they had had their beautiful ka-boom, all right.
At 4A, Alex reached for her keys but, no surprise, Kara yanked open the door and pulled Alex inside before she could even get her hand fully in her pants pocket. “Tell me she’s okay! Because I texted her when I saw it on the TV at Kate’s bar, and she makes a fanTAStic alien alcohol Cosmo, but Lena said she was okay, but I’m pretty sure she would say that even if she wasn’t entirely okay when she knows I’m on a mission out of town and Jess said—"
Alex pulled her sister into a tight bear hug, then pushed her away before she returned it and cracked some of Alex’s bones. “She’s okay. She was a hero today, saved at least a dozen of her employee’s lives personally and at least fifty more because of her mad Vasquez skills—”
“Planning ahead?”
“Damn, I still can’t wrap my head around that. But yes, did you know she keeps First Aid—”
“Kits in the walls of all shared spaces? Yeah, she’s pretty amazing like that. Apparently LuthorCorp had an annual mortality rate. Sure, the DEO has that, the army has that. I would think that IBM and such don’t.”
“Krypto stayed by her the entire time and didn’t like even letting the cops near her. He knew us, so he was a bit kinder with us, but he was being cautious.”
In Kryptonese, Kara said distractedly, “He is a Good Boy.”
Alex squinted, thought, then nodded. “Yes, he is. And he talked to Joe about what he smelled before and after the explosion and we have a lead on the type of detonator used—”
“Another radio wave, like the clinic?”
“A battery, which means they were probably on the same floor as Lena.”
Kara’s eyes got wide. “So she was the target? And it was an employee who set it off?”
“Maybe, maybe not. The kind of damage the bomb that went off did was mostly property damage and secondarily injuries because of flying glass. The second bomb, the one that didn’t go off, was bigger and right up against a load-bearing wall. Vasquez and Maggie had a long discussion about that. They think the first one was meant to cause mild chaos and confusion and the second to do serious, irreversible damage and cause major casualties. But something went wrong. The NCPD Bomb Squad is looking at it.”
Kara threw herself down on her couch, sighing. There was a bottle of red wine and two empty glasses on the coffee table. Alex looked around but saw no sign of pizza boxes or other takeout. “Aren’t you hungry, Kara?”
“What? No. Do you have any suspects?”
“Cadmus? That seems the most likely. But we’ll look at the evidence the Bomb Squad collected and we’ll... interview? Krypto again, with Joe’s help.” She sat next to her sister and threw her arms around her shoulders. “Starting tomorrow morning. Right now, we need to have a sister night. When was the last time?”
“Rao, I don’t know. Feels like a million years.”
“So why aren’t you over at Lena’s condo?”
“She’s not there. She said she needed to fly to Metropolis to check with her people there on something. I think I just missed her. And she took Krypto, in his flak vest, so I feel a little less worried, but still.”
Alex leaned forward and poured them both generous glasses of wine. Then she went to Kara’s kitchen, poured a shot glass full of Aldabaran rum and went and added it to Kara’s wine.
“Um, yuck?”
“Drink it. You are wound tight as a drum, and I really don’t need you putting laser holes through me. Mom would kill me.”
Kara drank it down, grimacing. “Next time, let me drink them separately, okay?”
“Oh, huh. I didn’t think of that. I keep forgetting that the wine doesn’t do anything at all for you.” She rubbed her eyes tiredly.
Kara shook her head.
Alex stood up and looked around the apartment. Most of Kara’s clothes, that had been on hangers near the windows, were gone. “Hey, why are you still renting this place if you are pretty much living at Lena’s now?”
Kara said, “It’s the light. And the rent control. I can paint here. Come see what I’ve been working on.”
Alex followed her to the back of the living room which got light from south and west sides. On an easel was a portrait—
“Wait, Kara, this is—”
“I know, I’ve mostly only ever done landscapes, to remember home and to find my home here on Earth. But Winn, when he was down and out with Covid, he had these long, detailed dreams about us all out in the Wild West, like maybe 150 years ago? You were a blacksmith. You were married to Vasquez and the two of you had an alpaca ranch.”
“We, wait, alpacas?”
“Lucy and Maggie too. I was the editor of the San Paso Guardian. Lena was, well, the villain at first.”
“I would have expected that more from James than Winn.”
“Well, James was the sheriff and didn’t trust any of the Luthors and was trying to push me to do investigative journalism on their business practices. But Lena had a mining company and she had discovered pink kryptonite and was using it at first as bullets, and she went to shoot James, but Winn jumped in front of him, I think, but I pushed him away, jumping in front of James, and James and I both got shot with these bullets.”
“Did they make you guys gay?”
“I was already moving in that direction in the dream, even though I guess I had been asexual before I met her? But James, oh yeah. He and Winn, who was a gambler—”
“Kara, just stop for a minute. This outfit that you have put Lena in is not Wild West. A winged helmet and a silver and pink spear?”
“Pink K for the spear tip, yeah. It was my fever dream after I got shot, apparently. I dreamed I was in the Union Army and had gotten shot by rebels and I was waiting for Eliza and you to turn back time to save me but then this, this Valkyrie came and asked me if I thought I was worthy to sup at Frigg’s table in Valhalla...”
“Please tell me you said yes. ‘Cuz I know that Lena is yours and I am Director Dansquez forever, but if this Valkyrie wanted me to share a saddle with her?”
“Alex! But yeah, that was the point of painting this. To sort of say... that.”
“So is this going to be your wedding present to her?”
Kara looked surprised at the thought. “You think it would be good enough?”
“Kara, you have mad skills at painting. She would adore this.”
Kara suddenly rubbed her eyes and turned and gave Alex what she thought of as a Sister Look. “So. Eliza.”
“Oh, God, what now.”
“She left me something when she went back to Midvale.”
“Do I want to ask?”
“No, not really. But it’s not like I’m giving you a choice.” Kara gave her the Little Sister Smirk.
“Fine, but do you have something stronger than Merlot for a human? Mom Shenanigans usually require a much higher proof...”
Kara poured her a glass of scotch and then pulled out the sloped package wrapped in pastel floral paper with pale rainbows.
“You didn’t unwrap the Down with the Gays paper?”
“X-ray vision. Didn’t have to. I wanted you to get the full experience.”
“Oh, God, Mom.... Wait, do you think this is displacement because of Dad?”
“Well, yes and no. She obviously packed it before she left Midvale. But I suspect Jeremiah maybe was why she left it instead of giving it to me directly. I think she still hoped he’d be found in time to ‘give me away’ or some such Earth idiocy—whoops. Sorry.”
“No, you’re not wrong. Well, let’s rip the Band-Aid off, so to speak.”
Kara tore off the paper to show a royal blue hard three-ring binder. “That’s... thick.” She opened it and flipped through the first few pages with an assortment of wedding dresses on very feminine and highly made-up women. “Huh.”
“Well,” said Alex. “It’s been almost a year. She’s had... a lot of time.”
“Always assuming she only started this after we told her.”
“Oh. Yeah. Wow.”
They flipped through the pages, alternately laughing and groaning. And it was a very good thing, thought Alex, that Krypto was in another city. Who knew what kind of mess he might make of Kara’s apartment if he heard them and thought the two of them were in distress?
///
Eliza drove back to Midvale in a bit of a daze. If Jeremiah were truly dead, there were things she was going to have to put in motion, finally deal with. When the DEO had reported him presumed dead years ago, she and the girls had kept hoping. They had refused to hold a funeral or read his will, and Hank (well, in retrospect J’onn) had helped them with the legal hassles connected to those decisions. But now that she had looked at the DNA evidence for herself, Eliza knew it was time to face the facts.
So she drove home, called her lawyer and one of Jeremiah’s old DEO friends, several years now retired, and they all got together to start setting the wheels in motion. Eliza and Jeremiah had long ago bought places for themselves at the columbarium at Midvale Cemetery, but finding a time at the little chapel on the property so that the girls could come home and several of Jeremiah’s old friends and coworkers could come, and then planning the interment of the ashes—
It was just all so overwhelming. Eliza wished she could just get back to National City, keep working on the genetic problem. But instead, she had to take time off from her work to make decisions about a man who had functionally been dead to her for years.
Chapter 84: Where We Came From, Where We’re Going, Part 1
Chapter Text
Alex walked into the DEO the next morning, wearing her regulation black mask, but thinking about LCorp’s unfortunate Ka-Boom the day before. She had a lot to think about.
J’onn and Vasquez had taught her about munitions. That was how they had taken down Cadmus’s building with less than a dozen small bombs two years before. Placement was everything. When Lena had told her about the second bomb’s placement, she had said that someone had to have gotten access to the building’s plans, which were unavailable on any server. Even in the building’s safe, she had a copy of faked plans that hid the actual weak spots. Lena seemed shaken by that. And Alex knew it took a lot to shake Little Luthor.
Supergirl had liaised with the Gotham police and the Crows, trying to find out more about Firefly. Lucy had offered parole to the ice aliens at the Basement if they agreed to be deputized as special firefighters for the DEO. Only one took the offer, not an alien but a metahuman named Leo Snart, who had a cold gun and a penchant for high-stakes theft. Lucy told Alex that he probably wasn’t rehabilitated, but he was bored out of his mind and afraid of nothing hot. Good enough. She’d take it. She’d had too many of her agents suffer horrible burns in the last few months. Vasquez had asked her about finding a project for James to keep him occupied which, originally, she had meant because of his injuries but lately had become more about his tendency to get... overheated.
She had heard muttering the last time she went down to the gym to beat on the big bag. Stallion One and Stallion Two were not the call signals that she wanted to hear for any of her agents, but particularly not for ones she mostly considered friends.
And thinking more about friends made her think of tired, overworked Maggie the day before and the ever-increasing number of white boards that her task force was adding to, day by day, and Joe’s revelations from Krypto and that hot firefighter who had ambled in and taken the information about Joe’s “olfactory witness” with barely a blink of those brown eyes. How was it that Alex was surrounded by hot Latina dykes?
Alex caught herself there. Sure, the woman had short hair, short nails, but then so did Al—Okay, that wasn’t really an argument, although for several years it sort of had been. Joe said that she had hinted that Chief Short might be an arsonist. Well, they pretty much knew that. The question was how to catch him. Captain Rodriguez might be an ally there. Alex thought she would let Maggie be the point person on that. The fewer people who learned about the DEO, the better.
Alex watched the feed over Chen’s head, Winn having called in not sick exactly, but exhausted, and not in the sexy way (well, not in her opinion, obviously) that she had seen in him in recent weeks. She had talked to Dr. Hamilton about long-Covid and knew it could go like that. And of course, Jane herself had had a light dose, as those things went, but she was also fairly fragile these days. Eliza had talked about her own menopause, and Alex had called up an old OBGYN friend up in Seattle and Addison had told her what a wide range of symptoms women had and how stress could make them all worse, because what did stress ever make better? And Eliza hadn’t gotten Covid (yet or ever, Alex prayed to God and maybe just a little bit to Rao to be on the safe side), but both she and Jane were also mourning the tragic loss of their husbands, and the betrayals that both men had perpetrated: Jeremiah for choosing to go back to Cadmus and Edward Caine for not accepting that his wife had been serving her country and protecting him. So much for in sickness and in health et al.
And that, of course, led Alex to ponder Vasquez, her warm, loving, sad girlfriend, whom she herself had betrayed.
The night before, Kara had told Alex about a... conversation? That she had had with Krypto, who was worried about Lena in part because Kara was worried about Lena and in part because Lena was clearly one of Krypto’s favorite people. And he had offered to be for Lena “Soft-Hands-and-Beautiful-Voice” Luthor what Susan “Salty” Vasquez was for Alex “Whistler” Danvers. And at first Kara had had a moment, but then she asked him what he meant, and he had described Vasquez as Alex’s Most Honorable Guard Dog, a term that had surprised Astra, who a) didn’t much care for dogs, b) had no idea they understood more than the basic Kryptonese commands she had written down phonetically for Vasquez two years before, and c) had conveyed to Kara that the words Krypto had used were easily a thousand years old and practically dead on Krypton.
And while that clearly would have some kind of cultural implications for Krypton, or at least Argo, that wasn’t what Alex had gotten from that interaction.
It sounded like Krypto saw Vasquez watching Alex very carefully, maybe afraid that Alex would betray her again. And his name for Vasquez was Salty.
Alex had figured out that he called Alex Whistler because when she had realized it was a dog in the Kryptonian pod two years before, she had automatically whistled for him to come to her, and he had. Somehow, she had remembered something Kara said when they were kids and were trying to convince Eliza to let them get a pet and had showed them how they trained dogs to respond to whistles. And she’d only heard it once, but Alex had remembered. And Krypto obeyed her better than anybody except Kara and Lena, who were fluent in Kryptonese, even better than Winn, who Krypto clearly adored. But Kara had taught Alex all the different whistles and kept correcting her stilted Kryptonese and giving her lists of vocabulary for talking to the dog. And they got on great.
And apparently Krypto called Winn Scruffy, but when he first came, they had been working all out and Winn didn’t always shave when he was working back-to-back shifts. Lately, he was always clean shaven, yet Krypto still called him Scruffy.
So Alex thought maybe he had decided on names for them based on how they were when he first met them.
And he first met them just before Alex went to that damn wedding.
And didn’t get back on time.
And worried people.
And then got back.
And worried Vasquez a very great deal.
Alex Danvers had never seen Agent Susan Vasquez cry. Never.
But she was pretty sure that Krypto had.
///
Supergirl flew high above National City, listening to the noises of the city, the Crinkle firmly in place. Despite what she had said to Alex at Sister Night, she was appalled that anyone had put Lena and her beloved company in danger while she was out of town. And she knew that Lena always said that Supergirl had to be a hero for everyone, not just for Lena, but well, there were hundreds of people who had been in the LCorp building and Supergirl had let them down too. And it galled her.
She should have let Maggie and her task force take care of the things in Gotham. Vasquez was always after Alex to delegate. But Supergirl had been working with Joe on training her nose better and she had used the scratch ‘n sniff cards and she wanted to go to the source that the GCPD had secured, the (of course) abandoned warehouse and smell it for herself. And as far as she could tell, it was the same thing.
Okay, so maybe she had some control issues. She was super, not perfect.
But now, as she flew over the skyscraper that still had blue canvas covering hundreds of blown-out windows and all the skyscrapers that did not, she kept an ear out for the steady march of Lena’s heartbeat. It pulsed in the back of her mind as she flew over Alien Alley, mostly rebuilt, but not the same by far. It hammered away as she flew over the Luthor Alien Clinic with its renovations, and over the Luthor Children’s Hospital that evil people had just better not mess with. It purred as Supergirl used superspeed to land on the condo balcony and let herself in to see Lena standing in the kitchen pouring Kara’s favorite chicken pot pie filling into three pie plates, two and a half of which would be Kara’s dinner and the rest would be Lena’s dinner tonight and her lunch at work the following day.
Lena turned at the windy sound that was Supergirl changing into Kara’s clothes. Lena stepped toward her and kissed the Crinkle away.
///
DEO Agent Jillian Holtzman came in early that morning, in part because the one place she consistently felt capable and intelligent and in control and, well, herself, was in the lab. And it wasn’t exactly her lab; it was really Winn’s lab. But something had gotten into that boy lately—
--she rather thought James, in fact—
Because Winn was more often taking... breaks. Bathroom breaks, actually. And unless you worked at Amazon and were forced to pee in bottles (well, the guys; heaven only knew how the women managed), your employer couldn’t complain about bathroom breaks, right?
So, lately, the lab had functionally been hers more and more: her happy place, her safe haven.
So when she had woken up in Jess’s narrow bed, with Jess’s face between Holtzy’s breasts and her hand between Holtzy’s legs, stroking Holtzy in her, Jess’s, sleep, and murmuring the most—
Well.
Holtzy considered herself pansexual. But she felt like some sort of weird tectonic shift was taking place inside her somewhere. Her gizzard maybe? Like she was becoming, what? Jess-sexual?
Was this what falling in love was like?
And Holtzy knew that fear and adrenaline could have an... aphrodisiac effect on people, sure. She understood the science of it. She’d experienced it after Ghostbuster raids from time to time. But back then, she had always been the one... pursuing the other person, male or female or in between.
This was... different?
She had shown up at Jess’s apartment with two bottles of wine, one white and one red, and Jess had been chattering a mile a minute about the explosion, the emergency protocols, how she just happened to be getting coffee for Lena’s ridiculously early appointment and hadn’t been near any windows, but then had pulled out a First Aid kit and did what all LCorp employees were trained to do in an event like that: TRACE.
Triage. Rescue. Alarm. Confine. Evacuate.
And her first victim had been the early appointment, who had suffered multiple lacerations to the face and hands from broken window glass. And once Jess had him stabilized, she worked her way down, one floor at a time, providing first aid to the injured, leadership to the uninjured, and unflinching calm to the panicking.
Ten floors down, she heard Lena in her ear asking her to bring Krypto’s flak vest down to twenty-seven and to use the stairs because they still weren’t sure—
And all the while that Jess had been telling Holtzy this very long one-sentence story of the explosion, she had been building a Caprese pasta salad, tossing it, portioning it into two bowls and pulling out a pair of forks and wine glasses. She handed one of each to Holtzy. “Bon appetit!”
Holtzy just stood there in a bit of a daze. Then, tentatively, she said, “Um, okay, that looks great. Do you have a wine opener?”
And Jess had stared at her with complete incomprehension.
Holtzy opened her black DEO backpack and withdrew the wine bottles. “For opening the wine?”
And Jess had frowned and looked around the kitchen blankly.
And then she burst into tears.
Holtzy set the bottles on the counter and opened her arms and Jess stepped into them, sobbing incoherently about the young man from the CDC whom she had bandaged and left resting in the waiting area outside of Lena’s office, about how, when she had hurried upstairs to retrieve Krypto’s armored vest, the man had been lying there, pale and inert, and Jess had almost just walked past him to go into Lena’s office, but instead she leaned down to make sure he was still breathing.
He wasn’t.
She immediately started CPR and time had lost meaning and Lena had eventually snapped into her ear about maybe now would be a good time, but Jess had sobbed that she needed EMTs because she couldn’t keep up the CPR and by the time they had arrived on the fortieth floor, winded, it was clear that Jess had never had a chance of reviving the man.
Holtzy held her tightly, thinking about how calm Jess had been when they had texted at six. Had she been forced to hold it together for what? Ten hours at LCorp? feeling that Lena needed her to be Night Owl Two, the woman who held Lena’s company together with her bare hands?
Had Jess needed to show her apparently invulnerable boss that she was also invulnerable?
But then, practically the moment she saw Holtzy, Jess had told her just how amazing she had been all day and then let herself fall completely apart.
That was...
Holtzy held her tightly, feeling surprised and sad for Jess and honored by her trust.
They had eventually abandoned the food, but not the wine and had sat talking about life and death and fear and heroism for hours and eventually, Jess had lent Holtzy some plaid flannel pajamas and they had both collapsed in Jess’s bed and slept like rocks until about three in the morning, when Jess had awoken horny and needy, teary and apologetic and begged Holtzy to take care of her, and yes, it had taken time, just like last time, but Holtzy cared deeply for Jess Huang and Holtzy had mad skills, and she had eventually gotten Jess where she needed to go.
Or possibly come, depending on your point of view.
But in the morning, she had woken up, turned off Jess’s alarm, texted Lena that Jess was utterly exhausted and needed the morning off—because Holtzy was pretty sure that her girlfriend was categorically incapable of taking an entire day off without something like global Covid-19 as an excuse. Then she wrote Jess a note, explaining her need to get into work early, because the DEO was absolutely all over this mess and they would find whoever was responsible and deal with them with extreme prejudice and Jess was beautiful and sexy and at some point, Holtzy really wanted to eat Jess’s Caprese.
And even pre-caffeinated, Holtzy knew there was something deeply wrong with that sentence, but for the life of her she could not figure out what it was, so she added that she had taken care of Jess’s kitties.
And then she fed and watered Tigger and Roo and cleaned the litter boxes and gone off to work.
Wait, had she—
And Holtzy was just sitting in the lab, thinking, Please, God, I used kitties not--
And that was when James hurried in, thankfully NOT sporting a boner this time, to tell her that Winn was exhausted and not coming in and Vasquez needed an estimate of the prototype’s revised timeline. But she thought he was distracted and maybe not in a sexy way. Maybe in a worried way.
Huh. Actually, that was helpful. Agent Holtzman was much, much more likely to get shit done that day if she was only distracted by Agent Olsen’s love life rather than her own.
///
Lena sat at her desk in her white office, which was one of roughly 182 offices in her building that had not suffered broken windows. Well, they wouldn’t. She made sure that all her most sensitive labs and offices were functionally bomb proof. Suddenly, she wondered why she hadn’t made all the windows bomb proof. Were her less skilled workers and her administrative staff less important than her and her lead scientists? What hubris.
Then she remembered the long, drawn-out arguments with her Board, who hadn’t even wanted to pay for the windows she had insisted were the bare minimum and she had gone over their heads. And yes, it had been expensive at the time. But with the employees she had now in NCGH, St. Olaf’s and the Luthor Alien Clinic, she thought perhaps expensive was relative. She shuddered to think of the numbers of injured if her building had been as full as it had been before Covid. Small mercies.
Lena was exhausted. The explosion, the fight or flight response, the police interviews, the press conferences, first when they didn’t really know the numbers of hurt or dead and then hours later, when they did. She had of course foregrounded the heroism of her employees and the great good fortune that her company was still running on the ground with, functionally, a skeleton crew, with as many of her employees who could work from home doing so; that had limited the human/alien damage. The physical infrastructure damage, they could fix with time and money. It was the irreplaceable people that mattered to her.
Late in the day, the insurance people had called, and she and Jess had worked with them. They had worked with Finance to set up medical funds for the injured employees. They had talked to Maintenance about cleanup, to Construction about fixing the most important bits first—probably windows because of the high winds National City sometimes experienced. They had talked to Security about first securing the building and secondly working with police and the feds and thirdly how the fuck had this happened and what the fuck were they going to do so it never happened again.
And those had not in fact been questions.
Then, at six, Jess’s phone had pinged with Agent Holtzman sounding frantic with worry for Jess, so Lena had sent her home and taken herself home just long enough to pack an overnight bag and write a note for Kara (and order six pizzas for her, duh) and get back out to the airfield and take one of LCorp’s jets (after waiting an hour for them to double and triple check absolutely everything before takeoff) to get back to Metropolis to the old headquarters and also to stop by the Luthor mansion and have a conversation with her mother.
And even thinking about all that was starting to bring back her headache. Alex had texted Lena, asking her to call Kara and reassure her, and Lena knew that Alex didn’t suggest things like that unless they were really needed. And she was also pretty sure that the only reason Kara was not, huh, super-frantic was that Alex had administered a strong dose of Aldabaran rum to Lena’s gir—lov—fiancée. Probably early and often. Good old Alex.
Lena stood up and stretched, looked at her Cartier watch: 2:21. Surely the sun was over the yardarm somewhere... She strode over and poured herself a glass of scotch. Turning, she looked at her office, trying to see it clearly.
The pristine white might be (and had been by some journalists) taken as overkill, as Lena trying desperately to disassociate herself from her family. The modernist furniture helped her focus on the future rather than the past. The balcony where Supergirl frequently landed: that had been one of her better renovation ideas in her first year at National City, although she still had nightmares about being shoved over the wall to fall screaming into Supergirl’s safe arms of steel.
The door: how many people had walked through that door?
Jess. Thank God for Jess.
Clark Kent and Kara Danvers. One of the best days of her life when those two walked in.
Kate and Ron. Too late, too late.
Agent Alex Danvers, to plead for her help.
Director Henshaw, to thank her for her help.
Winslow Schott, Jr., when his psychotic father came back.
Lillian Luthor, to trap her.
That Daxamite bitch, to trick her.
Jack Spheer, to tease her.
Detective Maggie Sawyer, to arrest her.
Kara Danvers, to ask for her help, thank her, feed her, comfort her.
Supergirl, to bite her satin buttons off and fuck her to within an inch of her life.
Jess, to pick up the buttons, clear her schedule, hold her company together, ask for advice, try to save a man’s life and then weep when she failed.
So yes, Lena was exhausted. She drank down the scotch, poured another, sat on the white couch and looked around the room from the other side, automatically looking at the balcony, hoping to hear the sound of boots, her favorite sound in the world.
Well, one of them.
She glanced at her desk and thought about Supergirl’s commanding voice, closed her eyes and imagined Kara in their bed at home, her whimpers.
--and Lena suddenly realized that she still considered the love of her life as two separate people, which actually kind of made sense, given how different the two of them—the two of her?—were when they were having sex...
And suddenly, Lena felt like she had gotten her second wind. Swallowing the last of her scotch, she scooped up the green Moleskine notebook off her desk, pulled three different colored pens from her drawer and took the stairs down to the newly equipped lab on the thirtieth floor, where the Special Projects team had relocated.
Lena had been exhausted, and she was still tired, but mostly, she was restless. The DEO and the NCPD would solve the ka-boom problem. She, Lena Luthor, had more important things to figure out.
///
When it came to holidays, M’gann and Kara were a team: SuperTender? BarGirl? They didn’t really have a good name for themselves, but they knew that with the election coming up in mere days, their overworking friends were going to be on edge and exhausted, and that was no way to go into their mission to prevent a coup d’etat. So they put their heads together to plan a Halloween party for the ages.
M'gann was behind the bar putting together a Lena Luthor for Kara, including the sprig of mint as a garnish, because she had noticed that Kara inhaled the mint and seemed calmer. Well, part of bartending was Aroma Therapy 101, plus alcohol, whether alien or human.
“I mean it’s one thing for J’onn and me,” M’gann said. “We can just be whatever we want and since we’re alien, we don’t need masks to protect from Covid. But we’ll have a lot of humans, and a lot of cold-blooded aliens and hybrids who are still at risk, and people aren’t going to want to wear masks with their costumes.”
Kara sipped her drink. “What if we make it a rule that their costume has to include a mask and if we can recognize the wearer, they don’t get considered for the prize?”
“Hm. I like that. But what will the prize be?”
“Something cheap and fun for first through third. Marvin masks for honorable mentions. Let me think about it.”
“I could make up some new drinks...”
“Yeah, like the 2020 could be a Long Island Iced Tea and we make sure nobody drinks more than one of them! I remember Alex’s hangover that one time...”
“And the Vaccination could be one, and maybe something about the election?”
“Nah, let’s not get political. We don’t need fights breaking out. Save that for next week.” Kara dug around the internet on her phone. “Hey, look at this. A black Marvin the Martian sweatshirt with him flipping the bird. We could get three of those and print something like F@K 2020.”
“Or maybe the sweatshirt for first, the t-shirt for second and the little bendy guy for third?”
“I can order them for you,” offered Kara.
“No, it’s a legitimate business expense,” sighed M’gann. “My job is weird.”
But after that, it was just all about balloons and streamers and buying more of those paper straws so people could drink without taking their masks off, and planning the posters, and that was the easy part.
Chapter 85: Where We Came From, Where We’re Going, Part 2
Chapter Text
Lena strode into the small lab like a whirlwind, dressed in a demure black pantsuit with a crisp white shirt and a black vest. On her face was a green LCorp mask that brought out her emerald eyes. A few seconds later, a tired-looking Jess in a white flowered dress hurried in. Both were carrying Moleskine notebooks.
“So,” said Lena. “Ladies.”
They all turned toward her.
“How familiar are you with metahumans?”
Eve said, “Aren’t those people like the Flash and Livewire, humans who had some sort of event trigger superpowers?”
“Precisely. It turns out that select members of the human race have a biological variant, or a metagene, if you will, which often lies dormant until an instant of extraordinary physical and emotional stress activates it, at which point a spontaneous chromosomal combustion then takes place, as the metagene takes the source of the biostress--be it chemical, radioactive or whatever--and turns the potential catastrophe into a catalyst for genetic change, resulting in metahuman abilities, such as superspeed or electricity for the two you just mentioned, although the range of powers and abilities is far from completely catalogued, and how the metagene does what it does is poorly understood.”
Pill just stared. Eve and Chaya nodded wearily.
Lena continued, “So I have some friends researching this phenomenon and doing studies of such people’s blood to see if they can target where the metagene appears in the gene sequence, in case for example it always appears in the same place, which personally, I doubt, because then I would expect the powers to be more similar and really, when you look at someone like Spiderman getting bitten by a radioactive spider and now sticking to buildings, well that just doesn’t seem particularly equivalent to speed or electricity, although the strength might be on that axis—”
Jess gave a small sigh. “Ms. Luthor...”
“Oh! Right! Well—” And then she coughed. “Mm. Do you have water?”
“There’s a pot of coffee,” said Pill.
Jess, Eve, and Chaya said, “Not coffee!”
Lena rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Pill, but they’re right. If I drink coffee today, I’ll probably shoot off into outer space.”
Jess nodded seriously. “She really will.”
“So they were looking at how the people who were exposed to the mosquitoes carrying the brain-dominance-changing virus reacted to it, either not changing, changing but shrugging it off, or changing permanently, and there are some similarities there to the pink Kryptonite that had been seeded into the clouds of major cities and again they see differences in people exposed to it, some not changing their sexual orientation, some changing temporarily and some changing, apparently, permanently, and whatever either rejected the effects of those two things or accepted it seems to be happening on a genetic level, or at least due to something in the genetic makeup, so it seems very possible to me, depending on what—”
Jess cleared her throat. “Ms. Luthor...”
“Oh, yes. Sorry! Maybe you, Jess, should—”
Jess turned to the women. “We think they nailed it. And they are willing to share their research with us.”
“For science?” laughed Chaya.
“For Supergirl,” said Lena fiercely.
///
Dr. Hamilton usually ate salads for lunch. She had gained weight during the months of lockdown, and although she had lost some of it when she had been sick, she was still not back to what she knew Vasquez would call her fighting weight. But lately, she had found herself too hungry at one o’clock to rely on leafy greens and tomatoes. She wanted a sandwich: thick roast beef, tomato and cheese on sourdough bread with horseradish sauce. And maybe sauteed onions. Maybe some roasted tomato. Something thick to sink her teeth into.
She suspected it was the menopause talking, but surely, once in a while, it couldn’t hurt to splurge, right? These days she needed to keep her energy up.
So she got her sandwich and a glass of water and carried her tray to the table where Eliza sat, chatting with James who had an empty tray, laughing and waving him away as his phone pinged. Jane took a seat opposite Eliza, slipped off her mask and took a huge bite of her sandwich. Heavenly.
Eliza chuckled. “You want to get a room with that?”
Jane chewed and swallowed unapologetically. “This is exactly what I’ve needed all morning. So what were you and James giggling about?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I just said that he seemed to have extra pep in his step today and he thought that was funny for some reason. Did it sound old-fashioned? Am I old-fashioned?”
“Who knows what a thirty-year-old thinks is old-fashioned,” said Jane. “But if any of the gossip about James is true, he wasn’t thinking about your choice of words.”
“What do you mean?”
Fortunately, Jane was chewing an ill-advisedly big bite of her sandwich, so she had a little time to think how to frame this. Swallowing and drinking some water to wash it down, she said, “Oh, just that apparently he’s seeing someone recently...”
“Oh, isn’t that nice. He hasn’t had a girlfriend now for at least two years, not since the whole thing with Kara got disrupted by Myriad.”
Privately, Jane thought that he still didn’t have a girlfriend, but she didn’t out people, so she just nodded and kept enjoying her sandwich.
///
As soon as she could, Eliza drove back to National City. Conveniently, Detective Sawyer had called, asking her when she could come into the precinct, and Eliza’s chair had approved her TAs covering her classes for a week.
Eliza was liked in her department, by both those above and below her on the academic totem pole, and for once in her life she was taking full advantage of that.
The drive down the coast was restful, the weather sunny and breezy, the sky bright blue.
What a strange life she had had. It had started out normal: school, an interest in biochemistry, a wedding, a few years trying to have a child and then eventually the miracle that was Alex.
And even as a toddler, Alex had wanted a sister, and they had tried but it just wasn’t ever going to happen. Eliza had argued with Jeremiah against accepting the place at the DEO, but he had never been happy as an army scientist, and although he had thought Director Henshaw was a hothead, Jeremiah had agreed that they needed to keep the world safe from aliens.
Then he had met Clark Kent, who interviewed him after a mission. Clark had seen through the FBI façade immediately but had taken months of nurturing the relationship before he had “introduced” Jeremiah to Superman.
Then they had worked together fruitfully for years, Superman helping Jeremiah scale back the worst of Henshaw’s plans, Jeremiah giving Superman a heads-up for his alien friends.
And then Kara’s ship had come to Earth, and Superman had not known what to do with a functionally thirteen-year-old Kryptonian who quickly developed superpowers but only slowly learned English.
Clark had a job and a small apartment and a super-mission that took a lot of his time and potentially put him and the people he loved in danger.
And that was how Alex got the little sister she had wanted for so long, not realizing that Kara might cramp her style in high school. Still, that had worked out for the best.
Eliza still wasn’t sure how she and Alex would have survived Jeremiah’s disappearance without the hard-nosed optimism and good cheer, the big heart and solid Kryptonian hugs of Kara Zor-El Danvers.
Eliza’s life had gotten awfully quiet though, when Alex had gone off to Seattle and Kara had done that internship in Switzerland.
Then Alex’s horrifying plane crash, and then going back for her PhD.
And then the partying.
And then Hank, or really, J’onn.
And Vasquez, in retrospect.
And Alex’s flight to Geneva. And Kara outing herself to save her big sister. And then Supergirl.
Eliza flipped on the radio and had to laugh, even if that laugh was perilously close to tears. The station was playing The Grateful Dead’s song, “Truckin’.” Eliza couldn’t help but sing along.
“Lately, it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Chapter 86: Reconnecting with Our Old Collaborators
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
All her life, people had assumed that because of her name, Lillian must love lilies. She did not. Lilies, those white, funereal flowers, were boring. During his lifetime, her own husband had insisted that the Luthor property have lilies pretty much everywhere on the grounds. Three months after his death, she had their gardener pull them all up and replace them with daffodils and tulips, which Lionel had insisted were common. Lillian didn’t care about that. She just wanted some brightness after the long northern winters.
But lately she had found herself wanting more. When she first got home from prison, she had talked to John, the gardener, about building a small, semi-enclosed garden at the back of what Lena had always called the quad, although Lionel had called it the back yard. At her behest, John had gone out and found a few hundred Nantucket paver granite stones and had the pallet delivered to behind Nelson’s house near the back of the property—the northeast corner, which was flat, as opposed to the southeast corner, which dipped down about eight feet, and was where Lillian wanted the garden to be built.
And they had sat in Lillian’s study, drawing different sketches of what it might look like. John had brought her several books and magazines to pore over, and they had only recently decided on a pattern for the circular three-quarter low wall and they had worked together to create a mechanical drawing of it and John had started on the base of the wall and purchased more stones.
Lillian thought about all this as she was digging through her everyday closet (not the Cadmus closet with the assortment of black shirts, trousers, skirts, blazers, shoes, etc., or the Event closet with mostly dresses of different lengths, some of them, like the blue one she had worn to the Daily Planet gala, that were actually in colors that were not in fact black).
The pandemic year had been bizarre. She had started in prison, shifted to solitary confinement in fear for her health, and then been paroled. But Cat. And damn that Max Lord anyway for playing God and changing people’s brains and hormones. So here she was adding to the Luthor property and throwing out clothes that she had worn because Lionel had liked them, whatever her feelings on them had been. They no longer worked for her. She would throw together a few bags and pass them on to Nelson to do with what he thought best, as they had done with Lionel’s clothes not long after his death.
She found herself humming a song that had been in her head for a while, until she’d gone all millennial and Googled the lyrics.
Maybe this time, I'll be lucky
Maybe this time, he'll stay
Maybe this time
For the first time
Love won´t hurry away
It was odd how she hadn’t really pursued any of the men in her social circle after Lionel’s death. It was true that Cadmus had taken up most of her attention. Hank Henshaw, or that ridiculous moniker, Cyborg Superman, that he insisted on being called, was a handsome man and useful in his own way. Jeremiah Danvers was also useful, but so patently a Danvers that even if she had thought to pursue him, it wouldn’t have worked. What did Lionel say that one time to Lex, “Never sleep with your minions”? Good advice. She thought about Max twirling Cat about the dance floor. He had his charms but mostly he was an arrogant idiot, assuming (like most men) that his charms were more impressive than they actually were.
He will hold me fast
I'll be home at last
Not a loser anymore
Like the last time...
And the time before
She thought about the ballroom classes she’d been forced by her parents to take in high school and the fellows in the Ballroom Club at college, her first forays into sleeping with men. So graceful on the dancefloor, such fumblers in bed.
Everybody loves a winner
So nobody loves me
'Lady Peaceful', 'Lady Happy, '
That's what I long to be
Then she thought about dancing with Cat, snarky, tender Cat.
All the odds are in my favor
Something's bound to give in,
It's got to happen, happen sometime
Maybe this time I'll win
She sat back on her haunches as a hot flash shot up the back of her neck and suffused her scalp. Maybe she needed to get outdoors, give John a hand with planting the flowers he had just gotten in. Surely Lena still had a pair of jeans and some sneakers in her room. Lillian needed to get outside and into the sun.
///
When Lena arrived at the house, she texted Nelson rather than ringing the bell as they had agreed. He let her in and led her back into the kitchen, where Lillian rarely went, and they sat at the table with a pot of hot tea and a little pitcher of milk and the ginger cookies she had always loved as a girl, just like they had sat talking so many times in her youth.
Nelson shook his head. “Maybe it’s menopause? That’s what my wife thinks.”
Lena shrugged. “Could be. I have a few older women friends and the symptoms vary so widely, it’s hard to tell. And of course, because it’s women’s health, naturally it’s understudied.”
Nelson sighed. “The clothes thing I actually expected. Everybody’s been gaining weight in lockdown, and I imagined that prison would make that harder for her. But the garden. That’s... recent.”
“Mm. So... post-Daily Planet gala recent?”
“How did you—” He looked genuinely upset. “Was it something I said?”
“No, Nelson, you didn’t out my mother. You've heard me speak about Cat Grant, CEO of CatCo? She's a friend of mine really, after a fashion. Well, Maxwell Lord, the CEO of LordTech, was apparently Cat's date and she apparently ditched him for Lillian. And Max Lord put photos of the two of them dancing on his Instagram account, probably just to be a little bitch about it. Whoops, sorry.”
“If he outed her then that is the absolute least of what I’d want to call him.” His face was dark.
“Well, back when she kidnapped us, and we hiked up to one of Lex’s bases in the mountains—”
“Wait, what?”
Lena waved a hand. “Unimportant. We’ve worked past it. I visited her in prison several times. We played chess, talked. Our relationship is still fraught, but it’s a bit better. This time when I was kidnapped, she actually helped my friends save me.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Long story. I’m over it. The point is, Max Lord had seeded the clouds in several regions across the United States with pink kryptonite, which he had tuned to make people gay, mostly temporarily, but I know a lot of people in the past two years who have come out as bi and, given that we were walking through a thunderstorm of pink K, it’s surprising to me that Mother took so long to come out.”
“I don’t think she is though,” said Nelson.
“For reasons,” said Lena gently.
“Yes. There were a few days when she was laughing, but then she was back to business as usual—”
“Wearing all black, complaining about aliens, feeling sorry for Lex ad nauseum?”
“Yes. But this past week, I don’t know. Right now, she’s out back, planting flowers. Once John showed her how she dismissed him. And... I think she’s been singing. Possibly Broadway showtunes?”
“I’ll go talk to her,” said Lena, standing and then stealing one more cookie. She winked at Nelson on the way out the back door. “For strength.”
///
Lena tugged her little leather jacket tight against the October breeze. It was still relatively warm for the time of year, but the cold would be back soon along with grey skies. And if the election went badly, they were looking at four more years of depression and anxiety across the nation... She paused halfway across the quad as the breeze tacked and brought with it a woman’s deep voice. Chewing on the ginger biscuit, Lena strolled closer.
Maybe this time, I'll be lucky
Maybe this time, she'll stay
Maybe this time
For the first time
Love won´t hurry away
She will hold me fast
I'll be home at last
Not a loser anymore
Like the last time
And the time before
She? Huh, thought Lena, thinking of the pictures that her Director of Social Media had showed her with a bit of embarrassment. Kaley was the captain of the Luthor Lesbians, one of LCorp’s softball teams, so the embarrassment wasn’t about the decidedly Sapphic looks Cat and Lillian were giving each other as they danced with perfect form. She had said to Lena, “I’m so sorry, Ms. Luthor. Of course, I tagged it immediately and was about to write you a memo about it, but then when the explosion happened—”
“Kaley, it’s fine. We’ve all been disrupted lately. And damn, Cat looks hot in a tux.”
“Well, ma’am, your mother sure seems to think so, and I would have put down good money against that ever happening.”
“Mm, you and me both. But we were out in the pink K storm, literally, not just Kara and me, but mother and Cat and—” She’d paused, recalling a conversation in passing with Vasquez that had never made sense. “Oh. That’s why Lillian changed her perfume. That’s Cat’s signature scent.”
“What do you want me to do about Max putting this on his Instagram?”
“Nothing. Ignore it. But do find the best of the shots and get it printed out, high quality. At least two copies. No. Three. I want to put that in a frame!”
And when she came back from Metropolis, Lena already knew where in her study she would hang it, on her lesbian wall, along with the Victor/Victoria poster, the photo of Abby Wambach holding up the American flag, the pen and ink of Suranne Jones playing Anne Lister, and Alphonse Mucha’s four seasons of women draped in pastels.
Returning to the present strolling across the grass, Lena could hear her mother singing more loudly, really belting it out.
Everybody loves a winner
So nobody loves me
'Lady Peaceful', 'Lady Happy, '
That's what I long to be...
All the odds are in my favor!
Something's bound to give in!
It's got to happen, happen sometime!
Maybe this time I'll win!
Everybody loves a winner!
So nobody loves me!
'Lady Peaceful', 'Lady Happy, '
That's what I long to be...
All the odds are in my favor!
Something's bound to give in!
It's got to happen, happen sometime!
Maybe this time...
Maybe this time!
I'll win!
And as Lena looked down into the dip where stone pavers outlined the garden, Lillian stood there with her arms out above her head, finishing the song like a pro. Lena applauded and Lillian spun around, shocked. She was wearing faded jeans and a cranberry MIT sweatshirt over Lionel’s old charcoal grey wool turtleneck.
“Brava!” teased Lena. “How did I not know that my mother had a Broadway quality voice?”
Lillian snorted, but did not deny the compliment. “You never asked.”
Lena climbed down the low hill. “I didn’t think you owned jeans, Mother.”
“I don’t. These are yours.”
“And my sneakers, now that I see them up close.”
“You weren’t using them.”
“True. Although,” said Lena, frown-smiling, “I do remember hearing a voice quite like that about two years ago.”
“Really.”
“At a fund-raiser for the alien bar in National City, the same one that your Cadmus mates first poisoned and then raided. Feeling remorse, Mother?”
“Of course I feel remorse, Lena. That’s how one gets parole.”
“And you sang that beautiful ballad from, of all the possible shows, Victor/Victoria.”
“’Crazy World.’ Yes, a favorite and it sits in a good place for my voice.”
“A movie starring a drag queen and a female impersonator?”
“Spare me. Even a supervillain is allowed to adore Dame Julie Andrews.”
“Oh, so you identify as a supervillain now? What are your superpowers? Seducing Cat Grant?”
Lillian’s face went white.
Lena raised her hands. “No, Nelson would never out you, Mother. He’s too much of an ally and he is deeply loyal to you, for whatever misguided reasons. No, Nelson called to ask me about your mother and whatever I knew about how she went through menopause, said you were out here with John building a stone wall and was that normal? I said I’d come by the next time I was in Metropolis, and I’m sure you heard about the recent explosion at my National City headquarters?”
Lillian started. “Explosion?”
“Blew out several hundred windows. Injured dozens of employees. Thankfully we’re only staffing a skeleton crew these days. So, of course, I had questions for the architect who renovated that building and where the blueprints (that he was not legally allowed to still have per his NDA) might have gotten to.”
Lillian sat down on the broad stack of pavers and gestured for Lena to join her. “That doesn’t explain how you know anything about Cat.”
“Well, Cat is a friend, but no. My assumption was that this might be a ruse,” she gestured at the garden, “probably to distract from whatever Cadmus chicanery you might be planning. So I went down to Marketing and spoke with Kaley about what she might be seeing in the world of social media, and Max, well, he does have an ego, you know. But it turns out he takes good portrait shots.”
Lillian rolled her eyes and picked up her water bottle and drank. “Perhaps I wasn’t thinking too clearly that night. He isn’t the best person to cross. Thankfully, he’s more petty than dangerous. I wonder if he’s realized yet that it was his own damn fault.”
“We were out in that storm for a very long time,” Lena said philosophically. “But then back in the cells... was that your first time with a woman?”
Lillian looked at her daughter over her glasses. “Yes, if you must know. But Cat went to Wellesley.”
“Ah. So she knew what she was doing. Lucky you. And I had noticed, when we were building the device to make those bloody Daxamites go away, that you had changed your perfume. I just didn’t recognize it.”
“Well, you were a little distracted.” She set down her water bottle and stood up. “Now, if you’re satisfied that I’m not crazy...”
“No more than usual.”
“And if you’re not going to help—”
Lena looked at the packets of seeds: pansies and petunias, lily of the valley, and the trowel, and the pavers with the notebook outlining how they were to be laid. “Actually, I would like to help, but not in these clothes.” She was dressed in a deep purple suit and vest with a black shirt.
“You have more of your play clothes in your room,” said Lillian mildly.
“Then I’ll be right back.”
Notes:
“Maybe This Time” by Fred Ebb and John Kander
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGROi4dwqU8
Chapter 87: Superheroes and Muppets and Villains, Oh My! (Part 1)
Notes:
Watch the video first for the choreography. I can write fight scenes, not dance scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRoWiTcO7dk
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When J’onn came in that evening to work his shift at Dollywood, M’gann showed him the posters and told him about the prizes. He laughed. “Maybe I should rent a Roman soldier’s uniform,” he suggested.
“Somehow I sort of expected you to come as Columbo.”
“I’ll give it some thought. What about you?”
“I got a white coat and yeoman purser shoulder boards and a bowtie. I’m going as Isaac Washington from The Love Boat.”
J’onn nodded appreciatively. “None of the kids will know who you are.”
She shrugged. “The older ones will.” She shook her head. “Funny to think about fifty-year-olds as old.”
He took his place behind the bar and looked at the list of possible new drinks, approving of 2020 and the Vaccination, and suggested, “Maybe a Vampire Bite? Werewolf’s Howl? We could have some fun with this.”
“It should be fun seeing what costumes our friends come up with. Kara got her sneaky look, so I’m assuming she’s coming as Wonder Woman.”
“Somehow I have a hard time seeing Lena as Steve Trevor, although she would totally rock the 1940s army uniform, as the children would say.”
“Gosh, Space Dad, are you hip now?”
He laughed. “Never!”
///
Winn took at least four naps a day, but in between he was earning a little money on the side helping his friends build their costumes for the Dollywood extravaganza. For the cost of materials and ten bucks an hour (so that they would appreciate the work he was putting in and he could then more easily buy the materials for his own costume), Winn had his sewing machine going at least three and a half hours a day.
The Xena and Gabrielle costumes practically made themselves. Well, of course he had had those patterns for years, just because.
And the Batman and Robin were things he had been piecing together during lockdown to keep himself busy, so now they were fairly easy to finish.
And the conversation he had... had... with Kara and Krypto, showing Krypto pictures of cartoon dogs... had been... unusual. But it wasn’t so hard to make a pilot’s helmet with holes for ears and a small white silk scarf, and Krypto had licked his face and wagged his tail hard, so that was very satisfying. Weird, but still. If any time Winn had spent this week had made that adorable, loving dog happier, then Winn had spent the time well.
And most people didn’t need whole costumes made. Eve consulted on her shoes (and Winn wasn’t sure, but he thought she might have been low-grade flirting with him?). He had sourced an obvious gunslinger’s holster and toy gun, a 19th century style fencing sword, two Star Wars style toy blasters, and a golden lasso and gold cuffs.
So, clearly, easy stuff.
///
Yeoman Purser Isaac Washington and Marvin the Martian stood behind the bar making pitchers of the specialty drinks that they had come up with and tied colored ribbons on the handles of the pitchers so the extra bartenders M’gann had hired for the evening could match the color with the dot in front of the name of the drink on the menus taped to the bar. The customers simply had to point and pay, and the bartenders simply had to pour.
White. The White Canary: Rum, Kahlua, cream
Rainbow. The Vaccine: Whiskey, Lillet, blood orange liqueur, vodka, pink grapefruit juice
Red. The Batwoman: Vodka, cranberry juice, maraschino liqueur, brandied cherry, lime
Orange. The Ernie: Cognac, orange liqueur, lemon juice, orange bitters
Yellow. The Bert: Gin, maraschino liqueur, pineapple juice
Green. The Vampire Bite: Gin, vermouth, Campari, cranberry juice
Brown. The Werewolf Howl: Whiskey, absinthe, lemonade, lemon peel
Black. The 2020: Vodka, rum, tequila, gin, triple sec, lemon juice, Cola
In addition, they had the house red and white wines, two beers, and club soda. The doors were opening at 7 pm on the dot. They looked around at the black and orange streamers and balloons adorning the bar and shrugged.
They were as ready as they were ever going to be.
///
When Xena Warrior Princess and Season 6 Gabrielle had walked in with brown and cranberry face masks, respectively, and gauzy veils over their eyes, Batman and Robin had immediately high-fived them. The girls got a Vampire and a Werewolf, and the boys ordered the Ernie and Bert, because of course they did. They took their drinks over to one of the pool tables and Xena wiped the floor with the boys, with a little help from Gabrielle and some resistance from Batman. But it was one of those games that nobody with half a brain would bother to bet on, so at least nobody lost their drinks money.
Yeoman Washington was very clear on priorities like that.
The regular aliens came in dressed less convincingly as Mickey Mouse and Bruce Lee, and more convincingly as Oscar the Grouch and several different Pokemon characters. Their creativity was impressive.
Then two human women came in, one shorter with a bright orange toy Glock and the taller with two, all on thigh holsters. Both wore skinny black jeans, black scoop-necked tops and little black leather jackets, with two-inch heeled black boots.
When Han Solo (green) and Luke Skywalker (blue) walked up next to them at the bar and ordered a Batwoman and a Bert, respectively, Luke asked the women, “Hey, guys! Who are you supposed to be?”
The taller woman, with her hair down, turned and said, “Call me Root, bitch.”
The shorter woman, with her hair in a ponytail, just said, “Shaw.”
They paid for their drinks, picked them up and walked away to go watch the next game of pool.
Luke turned to Washington, “Was it something I said?”
“Nah, you’re fine, Mr. Skywalker. They’re just deep in character.”
Han adjusted his bright green plastic blaster in his own thigh holster and said, “Come, Luke and Han find table.”
///
A Gunslinger came in, her face covered with a black bandana. Somehow, she had found black cowboy boots and actual spurs to go with her black jeans and shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Behind her, tucking VW keys into the pocket of her tight black pants with her right hand, Zorro came in with her left resting loosely on the hilt of her rapier.
It was normal for Marvin to see Zorro and the Gunslinger all in black. Their eyes were dancing more than usual. They were clearly happy, and that made Marvin happy.
The Gunslinger ordered a Batwoman and her friend ordered a White Canary.
The Gunslinger said, “Um, Zorro. You sure about that?”
“What?” said Zorro. “I don’t hold grudges. And I really like Kahlua.”
Marvin the Martian kept making up pitchers--green, brown, black, rainbow--ad infinitum, but one of the advantages of being over three hundred years old was that it was very difficult for him to get bored, and he was a very precise person, so he enjoyed the work.
It was also a bit of a rest to be listening to the cacophony of minds that somehow tended to be even louder than that of voices, but at least they were all thinking about how nobody was recognizing the people underneath their actually fairly impressive costumes. Robin in particular was practically shrieking pride at his own mad skills, and everybody clapped him on the shoulder and told him how great he was.
Unfortunately, Batman seemed to agree, because his codpiece was straining and Marvin saw Washington reach under the bar for a telepathic blocker, which was why he had suggested the custom drinks to begin with, so she wouldn’t have to listen for orders. He would keep his mind clear for the evening for safety’s sake; if he could listen to the hormonal stew that was the DEO for as many years as he had, he could put up with a crowd of stressed out, drunk agents and their friends acting like hormonal teenagers for one night. But his boss here shouldn’t have to listen to the dynamic duo going at it in the men’s room.
Thankfully, they were both professional agents and certainly weren’t doing that at the DEO.
And if he were in fact wrong about that, at least the Gunslinger, Zorro and the Battling Bard of Potidaea weren’t psychic. Lucky them.
///
Xena and Gabrielle had watched Batman and Robin catch each other’s eyes and head off “separately” to the men’s room.
“So it’s true,” muttered Gabrielle. “I’ve heard people saying that, around, um Athens.”
Xena sighed, “Men. Let’s find a table.”
As they passed the bar to freshen their drinks, they saw... well, in theory, they saw a dark-haired Ghostbuster and a blonde Wonder Woman come in together and wave to them.
Gabrielle said, “Didn’t M’gann say couple costumes could be a separate prize? Why didn’t they coordinate their--”
Xena smirked. “Don’t you see, dear? They came as each other.”
They grabbed the table that Luke and Han were abandoning now that the pool table was clear. Gabrielle gave them two thumbs up for their costumes. “It’s kind of like last Christmas when Winn was telling J’onn’s dad about Star Wars.”
“Very meta,” murmured Xena.
The place was crowded, but everyone had made either partial or full masks an integral part of their costumes and the windows were open for all the Stormtroopers and X-Wing pilots who were probably dying in their helmets and gear. Luckily, the Warrior Princess and the Queen of the Amazons were showing a lot of skin and so heat management at least in one sense was not a problem for them.
In another sense--
Gabrielle kept catching herself glancing at what Lena always laughingly called the “Macedonian pocket” where Xena kept her breast dagger. And Xena kept catching Gabrielle catch herself.
“Very meta,” she repeated.
Gabrielle just rolled her eyes.
“Too bad Batman and Robin didn’t want to come as Autolycus and Joxer,” murmured Xena.
“Yeah, pretty sure Autolycus never, um, lured Joxer into a men’s room for shenanigans.” Gabrielle reached up for glasses to fidget with, but they weren’t there.
“True.”
The Ghostbuster and Wonder Woman joined them at the table.
“You’re not practicing your pool moves, Holtzman?” Xena asked the woman in the khaki jumpsuit and goggles.
“No, Zorro and her buddy are taking Han and Luke to the cleaners. We figured we’d just sit and drink.”
They heard a familiar happy bark and turned toward the door, where Prince Charming and the Flash stood on either side of the fuzzy little World War One Fighter Pilot, who was wearing his Morale Officer black vest, sniffing up a storm and wagging his tail very fast.
“Wait, so did Callie and Jane fix Leslie’s bone problem?” asked Xena.
Wonder Woman said, “Yeah, they did. Callie had been working on that bone marrow regeneration project for a while, and I had written a paper a few years back on starfish, you know, just as an intellectual exercise, and we got talking and I visited her lab at the Luthor clinic, and we figured out a way to seed the DNA—”
Xena laughed. “I will absolutely want to hear all about it, but you may be about to out yourself as just possibly not being Diana Prince.”
The Flash got a drink and went to watch the pool game, but the Prince and the Pilot came over to their table.
“Nice epaulettes,” said Gabrielle. “Save me a dance later?”
The Prince eyed Xena cautiously, “Um, maybe?”
Xena said, “I’m not worried about you, your highness, especially because my date is wearing boots, which are very hard to lose even during a hearty polka, much less a waltz.”
“You know,” he said, “I’m always nervous about Halloween parties. I had some friends that got turned into their costumes once...”
Xena gestured to herself and the three other women. “Well, your highness, we promise to protect you if that happens.”
“Um, yeah, but to be on the safe side? Because you know the Disney artists who drew Cinderella were totally basing my character’s costume on the uniforms of British royalty? This is basically Prince Harry’s formal uniform as a captain in the army. He flew Blackhawks too, so I would be keeping my own skillset. It seemed the easiest.”
A hand dropped on the Prince’s shoulder and he turned to see Zorro in all black with a dangerous grin, say, “Un hombre que conoce su propio valor es una perla rara.” Zorro bowed elaborately, always keeping her left palm loosely on the hilt of her rapier. “A man who knows his own worth is a rare pearl.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you say so.”
The Gunslinger came up with two drinks, one red and one white and she handed the white one to the vigilante swordswoman. Music came on—it was the Monster Mash, but it was music—and Wonder Woman gulped down the last of her drink and grabbed the Ghostbuster and dragged her out to the dance floor. Krypto jumped up and sat in the corner of the booth. The Gunslinger pushed in after him, followed by Zorro.
“Thanks for looking after him, your highness,” said the Gunslinger. “I know it was tough for Gabrielle here to try to pull her costume together with him sniffing all the things.”
“It was a pleasure, ma’am. I worked with K-9 groups when I was in South America, but I never worked with such a well-trained dog before.”
The Pilot barked. The Prince squinted, thought about it, said, “You’re welcome? I think?”
“Go get a drink, your highness,” laughed Zorro.
The Pilot barked some more.
Xena said, “Actually, National City has one of the more impressive Army/Navy stores that I’ve been to, although to be fair, I think the fetish community is bigger here than it was in Metropolis, Lex notwithstanding.”
A questioning bark.
“I don’t think it translates, dear. Sorry. But you are a Good Dog.”
A bark of agreement.
Marvin the Martian came over with a stainless-steel dog bowl filled with water and a small plate stacked with peanut butter crackers. The women stared at him. “What?” he said, laughing. “You know my boss insists on us being full-service bartenders!”
Gabrielle said, “Don’t make too much of a mess, Lieutenant Snoopy. You don’t want to give your secret identity away.”
A canine snort. Daintily, he picked up one cracker sandwich in his mouth and chewed very carefully.
Zorro asked, “Have you considered him being part of your eventual event when it finally...”
“Eventuates?” said Xena. “Oh, yes, he and Ruby will have their work cut out for them as flower creatures.”
The music stopped, and the dancers drifted away from the dance floor. Then over the sound system, there was a drum roll. The women stared at each other, stood to strain to see the bar, where Washington and Marvin were grinning at each other.
There was a pause and the door to the bar blew open. A familiar disco beat and women singing drifted down from the sound system, as a short blonde strutted in wearing a man’s grey suit, black shirt and red necktie. She strolled around the edge of the dance floor, snapping her fingers to the beat.
Friday night and the lights are low...
Looking out for a place to go...
Where they play the right music,
Getting in the swing,
You come to look for a king...
As she finished the circuit, she stopped and faced the door, still snapping in time.
Three tall women, two blondes and one brunette, their hair teased and hair-sprayed to within an inch of these 1970s bombshells’ lives, strutted in one after the other into the bar, wearing tight black leather pants, tight black t-shirts and black boots with seriously solid four-inch heels. And they could seriously dance.
Anybody could be that guy...
Night is young and the music's high...
With a bit of rock music,
Everything is fine.
You're in the mood for a dance.
And when you get the chance--
The Gunslinger turned to Gabrielle, “Wait, that’s not Mo—"
You are the dancing queen!
Young and sweet,
Only seventeen!
Dancing queen,
Feel the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah--
Zorro said, “Is that Doc—”
You can dance!
You can jive!
Having the time of your life!
Ooh, see that girl,
Watch that scene,
Digging the dancing queen!
Xena, her green eyes big, said, “Isn’t that your friend from Seatt—"
You're a teaser, you turn 'em on...
Leave 'em burning and then you're gone...
Looking out for another,
Anyone will do.
You're in the mood for a dance--
Gabrielle turned to the Gunslinger. “Did you know she could dance like that?”
And when you get the chance--
You are the dancing queen!
Young and sweet!
Only seventeen!
Dancing queen!
Feel the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah--
Gabrielle was turning to stare with huge blue eyes at the woman in the suit. “Wait, but Miz—”
You can dance!
You can jive!
Having the time of your life!
Ooh, see that girl!
Watch that scene!
Digging the dancing queen!
Digging the dancing queen!
There was a roar of applause that drowned out the song as the three taller women struck the classic Charlie’s Angels’ poses, while the other woman—Bosley?—looked calculatingly bored by the adoration.
A bit, Gabrielle thought, like she was expecting someone to intuit her desire for a lettuce wrap and a soy latte...
The four women in the booth just dropped back into their seats, minds appropriately boggled.
A minute later, Marvin the Martian came by with a tray of 2020s for everyone. They suspected that they looked—and psychically sounded—like they needed them.
Notes:
“Dancing Queen” by Stig Erik Leopold Anderson, Benny Goran Bror Andersson, Buddy Mccluskey, Mary Mccluskey and Bjoern K. Ulvaeus
Chapter 88: Superheroes and Muppets and Villains, Oh My! (Part 2)
Chapter Text
Charlie’s Angels got drinks from the bar and dragged chairs over to Xena and company’s booth.
Gabrielle said, “You never told us you could dance like that!”
“Darling, I don’t limit myself to swing dancing to Journey songs in the kitchen with—” The older blue-eyed blonde faltered, then finished. “I had a life before I met him, you know.”
The Gunslinger said, “Yeah, but seriously, in those boots? I’m surprised you all didn’t break your necks!”
“Says the woman who came into the DEO wearing fuck-me heels and glitter in her hair!” said Zorro, who then slapped her hand over her black-masked mouth, eyes growing wide.
The Gunslinger found herself busily asking Krypto what he thought of the crackers.
The brunette raised her Vaccine in a toast, just as the suited blonde came over and leaned on the back of her chair. “To Bosley!”
“Bosley!” They all drank the toast.
Bosley waved that away. “Yes, yes, fine. And will one of you, and I don’t care who, whether the Lone Ranger or Antonio Banderas here, explain to me why there is a dog in this bar?”
A startled bark.
Xena laughed and Gabrielle looked nervous. Xena said, “He’s going by Lieutenant Snoopy for the evening, Bosley, and he would very much prefer if you spoke to him directly if you have something to say.”
A decisive bark. And then an inquisitive one.
Xena looked at Gabrielle and said something in another language. Gabrielle apologized. “It’s all Greek to me, but I think it’s the muse of dance.”
Xena turned and said, “Snoopy wants to know why you weren’t dancing with your friends.”
One finely shaped eyebrow rose as Bosley turned to the dog. “I do ballroom, thank you very much, not disco.”
Xena translated, smirking, then she turned to Cat. “So I saw. In fact, Max Lord’s Instagram account made that very clear a few weeks ago...”
Cat rolled her eyes. “Lillian is actually a much better dancer than Max is. It probably helps that she’s so much taller.”
“Also,” said Xena philosophically, “Max dances to impress others. Lillian only ever bothers to impress herself, and she is much, much harder to impress.” The green eyes flashed with amusement. “I have to say, she was impressed by you.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Bosley in a bored voice.
“Have you seen the pictures he took of you two?”
“I—Why, no. It never occurred to me. I have a Social Media Director for CatCo issues. I don’t bother to follow anyone except my sons.”
Xena flipped through her phone and handed it to Bosley, whose brown eyes above the grey pinstripe mask... changed. Softened. Then the fleeting impression was gone. “Well, no publicity is bad publicity, after all.” Then she lifted her glass to them and walked away.
This led of course to all the women and Krypto insisting on seeing the pictures.
“Holy shit, that’s gay!” said Zorro.
“Wait, Cat? I mean, Bosley?” said Gabrielle, her blue eyes wide.
Krypto barked. Xena coughed up 2020 through her nose. Gabrielle hurriedly answered him.
The blue-eyed Charlie’s Angel pulled an extra mask out of her pocket and handed it to Xena. “What? I’m a mom. You learn to come prepared.”
The Gunslinger said, “Wait. Did he ask if they were mates?”
“More or less,” said Xena as she wiped her face off with the Dollywood napkin and put on the fresh mask.
The brunette muttered, “Dios mio! They do look... friendly.”
Xena muttered, “Oh, they were--Yeah, anyway. So who choreographed your dance, ladies?”
The brown-eyed blonde raised her hand, wincing with embarrassment. “I was in Disco Inferno in college... Hey, just because I was premed didn’t mean I couldn’t do theater.”
“She’s a good teacher, too,” said the brunette. “And full transparency here, I was in Spamelot. I played the Lady of the Lake.”
Gabrielle was clearly still trying to wrap her brain around the whole thing. “So how on Earth did you manage to get... Bosley... on board with this? It really isn’t her thing.”
The brown-eyed blonde raised her hand. “That was me. When my roommate here first suggested we do something, and I remembered hearing this one here singing in the lab and then caught her dancing around as she dictated her report to her hand-held recorder, I realized we had three and then I remembered that time that Gabrielle here had had to babysit for her younger son and hearing stories about that...”
“I’m not following,” said Zorro, frowning.
“Well, I’m old friends with the school nurse at his school and had an interesting chat with her about him and his mother. Yes, yes. HIPAA, I know, Ca—I mean, I have no excuse. But he has asthma and often ends up in the nurse’s office during his class’s gym class. And sometimes Cat has to pick him up and take him home? And my friend tends to run out of PPE during the school day?”
Zorro’s eyes narrowed. “Doc—I mean. Well. Have you ever thought of going into covert espionage?”
She sighed. “I did something very much like that for almost the entirety of my marriage, Vas—Zorro. I’m, well, for a long time I was very good at it.”
///
Sun Tzu, the 5th century BCE Chinese general who had written the classic strategic manual, The Art of War, had been a firm believer in reconnaissance, spying, and general subterfuge. The sort of people who hung out at Dollywood these days had probably been introduced to the work at West Point or maybe the Harvard Business School. Alien Charlie Brown had discovered it when he was much younger.
His father had always been a student of Terran history and encouraged his son to read the classic works of the great Earth thinkers: Sun Tzu, Napoleon, von Clausewitz; Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli. He had always said that if they wanted to make this planet their own, they needed to do their homework. Some of that meant reading. Some of that meant, as Sun Tzu had pointed out, well, spying, basically.
Alien Charlie Brown stood with a half-empty beer (he had poured it out into the sink of the men’s room), watching the two Star Wars aliens play pool very badly against the humans dressed as a Spanish vigilante and a cowgirl. When the blue alien came up to him and introduced himself as Luke, Alien Charlie Brown had said, “My friends call me Chuck.”
They had shared small talk for a while and then “Chuck” asked, “So, what do you think about Proposition 51? Have you decided how you’re going to vote on that?”
“Proposition 51? I haven’t heard of that.”
“It’s trying to let people like us run for public office in California, as long as we can document living on Earth for ten years.”
“Really? Huh. That’s great, I guess. Is there a catch?”
“Well, a lot of the humans really don’t like the idea, and running so publicly would put us in the gunsights of the red hat crowd.”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t run, of course,” said Luke. “You have to be really smart for that sort of job. But it would be nice to be represented.”
His blue partner handed him his pool cue and took his place. Chuck asked him the same question. Han said, “Mm. Han saw this proposal, but numbers aren’t there for it. Maybe Massachusetts could pull that off. Not California.”
Chuck smiled to himself. With his enormous mouth and all the sharp teeth, he imagined this would be terrifying to most people, but the green alien showed no fear. He was paying more attention to his pool partner once again failing to sink a ball, and sighed. “Han and Luke never win against Earth women at Earth game. Probably, proposition will be same, at least for now.”
Chuck thought that was an interesting take on it. And he wasn’t wrong. The Earth women wiped the floor with their alien friends.
///
After Luke completely failed to make even a single shot at the pool table, Han took back their cue frowning. Quite likely the human wearing the alien suit with the yellow t-shirt probably thought that he was annoyed at his partner for being such a bad pool player, but really, who cared about that? What really annoyed Han Solo, who had been a detective about as long as Maggie Sawyer had been alive, more or less, was why a human would dress up as an alien—and more importantly, as a Db’narian, one of the few aliens known to be immune to the psychic senses of Martians.
Because the species was conveniently just enough bigger than a typical human male to perhaps be wearing a psychic blocker under the costume, but the Martians looking at him would not wonder why they couldn’t read his mind, right? And why would that human be asking obvious aliens like himself about Proposition 51? And when he saw Brian/Luke talking about it favorably, why would that human in the costume of an alien smell as if he were disgusted at this response?
///
Eve had given a great deal of thought to her costume. She knew everyone would be wearing masks and that the Martians would be strictly enforcing that. She also knew this would be a very popular and crowded event. But she conveniently still had—and fit into—her high school prom dress, and a hoop skirt was very useful for social distancing. It wasn’t fun in the bathroom, but what else was new about women’s formal wear? She had a friend who was good with a needle and she had taken the high school neckline and made it a bit Less Safe For Prom.
And after consulting with Winn (and maybe showing him a picture on her phone from when she had tried it on, after—only so he would get an idea of what the shoes were going to go with, for sure...), she had bought the two pairs of shoes, one pink and one transparent, the exact same height (and that had taken days to find). So she walked into Dollywood, as Winn had suggested, wearing one of each, with the second pink one in the bag on her wrist. Her blonde hair with extensions was in an elaborate updo.
And just like Cinderella herself, the moment she walked into the room, she caught everyone’s attention. The crowd parted to let her through. She started a tab and got herself a Vampire Bite.
Well, of course she did. If anyone in this room full of alien Americans, cops and black budget agents should be acting the vamp, it was totally going to be her.
///
At ten o’clock, Washington announced the acting part of the costume contest. This one was for the partner costumes, above and beyond simply the first through third prizes, and to enter the contest all partners had to put ten dollars into the pot. Half of the pot would go to the top set of partners and the other half Dollywood would donate to the recently opened Shelter for Homeless Aliens, because the pandemic had put a lot of aliens out of work and rent in National City was notoriously high, just as it was in so many American cities.
Most of the skits were barely a minute long, such as Luke running around the dancefloor chased by Stormtroopers being chased by X-Wing pilots and Han shooting all the Stormtroopers away off the dancefloor and then shouting, “Okay, Luke blow this thing so all can go home!”
The next one was even shorter as Zorro strutted to one side of the dancefloor, drawing her sword and swinging it in dramatic figure eights around her body until the Gunslinger drew her toy Smith & Wesson and shot her. (And they had asked for the dancefloor to be scrubbed a bit extra before the party so Zorro wouldn’t... stick to it.)
The World War One Fighter Pilot had chased a young woman dressed as a red cat around barking, and they all assumed this was sort of Sopwith Camel vs. Red Baron. Right?
Everybody agreed that Charlie’s Angels and Bosley had already functionally done theirs.
Two aliens in tricorn hats and knickers and shoes with buckles chased Root and Shaw who shot them down.
(Washington was not totally surprised that so many of these had ended up with folks shooting each other. Humans. Well, Earthlings. Well, sapient creatures? Oh, never mind.)
Xena and Gabrielle had stood back-to-back with their weapons drawn and yelled, “I would totally die for you because we’re just really, really, really good friends! Gal pals!” (And the humans had ended up practically on the ground in tears laughing and the aliens stood around looking at each other, very confused.)
Out of the crowd, Cinderella came running, her hoop skirt raised so onlookers could see that she was only wearing one shoe, sort of. Prince Charming came after her waving the other pink shoe and he put it on her and (of course) it fit. Then they danced away together.
A giggling ice alien stood in the middle of the dance floor getting frosty while Batman and Robin tied him up with rope and dragged him away. (To be fair, Winn had spent most of his time working on costumes for everyone and had not given much thought to their act.)
Then a big fuzzy blue... thing... with big googly eyes and a small bucket of actual chocolate chip cookies galumphed around handing a cookie each to the Gunslinger, Zorro, Gabrielle (but not Xena), Batman, Robin, Charlie’s Angels (but not Bosley), and Prince Charming (but not Cinderella). Then it... galumphed away, its bucket empty.
A lot of aliens did their things and, not entirely unlike the Warrior Princess’s act, the aliens had found their acts absolutely hysterical, and the humans hadn’t had a clue what they were watching.
Then a green-skinned alien wearing a big yellow t-shirt with a black zig-zag around his torso stepped onto the dancefloor and whistled, and the World War One Fighter Pilot came running, barking in great confusion. And Alien Charlie Brown patted him on the head and walked away.
Finally, a tall woman with an elaborate blonde updo stepped onto the dancefloor. Her dress appeared to be made from thousands of black feathers, as did her mask. She stepped over to where an Infernian was dressed as an Apple laptop, took her by the hand and stepped over to Cinderella and made them clasp hands.
Cinderella looked at the two of them, burst out laughing, clutched her throat dramatically and carefully threw herself down onto a chair in an artful swoon.
It was clear to everybody that this last one had not been planned in advance and the whole bar cheered for this weird little piece of improvisation.
In the end, the third prize (bendy Marvin the Martian) went to an alien who had come as that terrifying clown from that Stephen King movie. Second prize (black F@K 2020 Marvin the Martian t-shirt) went to the Cookie Monster. And first prize (black F@K 2020 Marvin the Martian sweatshirt) went to Alien Charlie Brown.
And all of that because nobody but the Martians had a clue who they were.
Queen Ravenna (from Snow White and the Huntsman), the Apple laptop, and Cinderella got the partners prize (a wine, cheese and chocolate basket, plus the $970 half pot to split).
And Charlie’s Angels and Bosley each got a bottle of champagne from Yeoman Purser Isaac Washington for being good sports and really getting the show started.
And after the prizes had been given out, they put “Dancing Queen” on again and the whole crazy lot of them, humans and aliens, had gotten their disco on.
It was goofy and wild, masked and social distanced, and everyone agreed:
It was the best thing yet to come out of annus horribilus, 2020.
///
Everybody pushed out of the bar around one, laughing and taking off bits of their costumes, pulling masks away and wiping their faces before putting them on again. A big black SUV was out front, with the Cookie Monster standing in front of it.
Aliens kept going, on their way home. Lucy and Maggie got into the Lyft they had called, waving goodbye to their friends.
But Alex, Vasquez, Kara, Lena, James, Winn, Eliza, Jane, Callie and Krypto stopped and looked at the Cookie Monster. (Not Finn. He had gone home with Eve, looking bemused and possibly a little... ready. James and Winn saluted him when he passed them and he actually blushed. But then, he was an Iowa boy.)
Cookie Monster took off the head of her large blue costume.
“Pam,” said Alex. “I did wonder.”
“Yes, well, we have an election to protect in a few days, and it is my job, although people in my field are not exactly known for it, to be humane and resourceful. And you, ladies and gentlemen (not you Krypto) have been drinking rather a lot for the last six hours, so I have appointed myself your designated driver and I will totally get you all home.”
Cat Grant exited the bar, loosening her necktie and looking thoughtful. “So,” she said to no one in particular. “What did we think about Queen Ravenna?”
Alex said, “Who was that?”
And they all chattered about it.
Lena said, “That was very strange. I don’t think we’ve ever seen her in here.”
Cat looked surprised. “Lena. I thought you were a certified genius. I’m disappointed.”
“Wait, why? What does—”
“Seriously? The woman was easily six feet tall and dressed as an Evil Queen.”
“Uh, so?”
“Are you telling me that you did not even recognize your own mother?” Cat sighed and walked over to where her towncar was waiting, got in and it drove away.
The agents stood staring at each other.
Pam slid open the side door. “Get in, folks. We can argue about that little oddity on the morrow.”
They piled in. Krypto barked.
Lena said, “For the last time, she and Cat are not mates! They’re just—”
Alex said quietly, “Just really, really good friends?”
Vasquez fought her grin. “Gal pals?”
In the driver’s seat, Pam, still wearing the bottom three quarters of her costume, just gave an exaggerated sigh. She knew that once the booze wore off, Vasquez would be scribbling scenarios in her ubiquitous notebooks and Alex and Kara would be having worried talks in Alex’s office, of course she did.
But first things first. She would get the agents and agent-adjacent people (human and Kryptonian) home safely.
Then she would get herself home safely. And then she would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Chapter 89: Once More unto the Breach, Superfriends, Nov. 2, 2020
Chapter Text
On Monday morning, Alex walked into the conference room scowling. Around the table, the superfriends exchanged looks and sat up. Winn, on the far end of the table, chewed on the inside of his lip. He had known, they had all known, for months, since the attacks on the post office had started, that this election might go down to the wire, and Winn was grateful that he was still too weak to go out in the field. It was one thing to risk his life for his country, but he really didn’t want to die because of a whiny-ass overgrown Cheeto.
But he also didn’t want scowling Alex, or blank-faced James near him or blank-faced Supergirl, near Alex, or the two green Martians in their alien personae, or, staring at their fingernails, Holtzy and Finn, or calm Rosie or tired Dr. Hamilton or—
Dear God. Vasquez was... not frowning.
That undoubtedly meant trouble for somebody.
He loved these people. He didn’t want them to die.
Alex said, “Winn, report!”
He stood and took the clicker for the projector. “As you know at the end of last spring when we faced the Worldkiller, I had just prototyped personal wearable forcefields. The two we made, the first and second edition prototypes saved my and Agent Vasquez’s lives. After all the shouting, former Director Henshaw had me further refine them and make more. We were just about ready to test the most recent version when the lockdown order came, forcing our department to social distance or work from home, which slowed the process almost to a halt. We were still tweaking the design. But then I became ill, and then half my department became ill, and then as you know, we were down to a skeleton crew and the only active-duty people were the field agents. It’s only been two months since we’ve been able to restart the project and build the first three dozen to be tested in the field. They have been highly successful in absorbing one to five blows before shorting out. We are still working on that, but we are also still building them. We had hoped to deploy them for five hundred agents tomorrow. For technical reasons, we only have 155.”
He brought up the pictures and specifications, explained briefly how they worked and went and sat down.
Alex said, “Agent Vasquez has identified 150 essential personnel who will receive the prototypes to take into the field, which include the command team here. Five will be held back as emergency replacements. Agent Vasquez.”
Vasquez took the clicker and brought up a map of the greater National City area. Red and blue stars littered the map, along with a few larger green stars closer to city center.
“Blue stars indicate voting locations that we think may be targeted, either because aliens or people of color live in those areas, or because they are close to facilities typically targeted during an attempted coup d’etat: TV and radio stations, internet providers, the major cell towers. Green stars represent municipal, state and national administrative locations, such as the office of the mayor, etc.”
She put down the clicker. M’gann asked, “What are the red stars, because that one in the corner—”
“Is Dollywood. Correct. The red stars show where major anti-alien violence has happened in the last two years, roughly since the deportation and the comments from the current administration about how corrupt the election was going to be both started happening at the same time. We think that’s not a coincidence.”
Agent Finn raised his hand. “We don’t have nearly enough field agents on their feet to handle this.”
Alex said, “You’re right. We don’t. Thankfully, however, we have the full cooperation of the NCPD and SHIELD. We are focusing on Blue and Green. SHIELD will patrol Red. The police will just keep doing what they are always tasked to do during an election, having a police presence at voting locations and protests. We need to take up the slack that they don’t have the officer-power to handle.”
James looked disbelieving. “We’ve never not had a peaceful transfer of power. Why do you think he would actually—”
J’onn growled, “You’ve come close a few times. The Civil War—”
Alex cut in. “There is always a first time. But it will not be on our watch. Y2K didn’t happen because tens of thousands of IT folks all over the country and all over the world made sure that it didn’t. It might have been an unmitigated disaster, but they prepared for it. That is what we are doing here.” She clicked the slide forward to Mission Support. “Dr. Hamilton. Welcome back, by the way. We’ve missed you.”
“Thank you, Director. I have liaised with NCGH, St. Olaf’s, Luthor Alien and Luthor Children’s and they are all going to be on high alert for the entire week. Agents injured in any action will come back here, but flyers have been given quadrants and civilians will each have an Emergency Action Center in that quadrant.” She nodded at M’gann, J’onn, Finn and James. “Let’s hope we don’t have to use them.”
Supergirl spoke up. “What’s my role?”
“To be visible. With any luck they won’t have to see any of us, but if they know you’re watching it might keep troublemakers honest. Visit polling sites, stop to talk to TV reporters, let the city know that its hero is on the job.”
Supergirl nodded. Winn thought she had been awfully serious this past month and he felt horrible for any part he had played in making her so sad.
He had felt a little better about that on Halloween at Dollywood when Lena and Kara had come to the party as Xena and Gabrielle and he was pretty sure that Lena knew how to use that sword on her back and Kara knew how to use the sai in each of her boots. In comparison, he had been walking around with, functionally, his underwear on the outside of his leotards, because James had insisted on old Robin instead of new, buff Robin, and pre-Covid, Winn might have just built the damn buff suit, but he didn’t feel buff and he didn’t think he would for months if not, hell, a year or two, and if James got turned on by Twink Robin? And Winn got more action because of it? Yeah, he could make that work.
“Winn, in addition to the new devices, I want you in the command center with Vasquez and Chen, Jordan, and Holtzman to direct our forces on the ground.”
Winn nodded quickly to show he had almost been paying attention. Although it occurred to him that if they did a similar costume party next year? After everyone had been vaccinated? Oh, he was so going to build a seriously Kevlar Robin costume for himself. Then James would see who was going to top him. And then Winn drifted for at least half a minute, thinking about James in all the glory God gave him, standing in Winn’s kitchen...
///
James could see Winn drift off into that Covid haze he sometimes dropped into and kicked him under the table.
Alex continued, “You four will each be QB-ing one quadrant and Vasquez is Mission Operations Director. Bring your questions, problems, whatever, to her. She has my authority to make all the calls. Remember, people, if they appear to be human, use minimal force. If we escalate, they might well escalate.”
“Ma’am?” asked James loudly, to bring Winn back to the present. “Do we know who they are?”
“Hard to say. Red Hats? Greenies who have been radicalized? Neo-Cadmus? We still don’t know. Rosie.”
“Okay, folks. You know enough to keep away from the plasma weapons and pretty much any fire that shows up at a federal building or alien-connected site. I’ve gotten that NCPD Science Detective Joe to create, well, basically scratch ‘n sniff packets for you to learn. One is the accelerant, one is the chemical signature of plasma weapons, and there’s a few more. Learn the smells. If you smell them, evacuate the area and get the hell out and, the moment you can, get back here, get your ass in my decontamination shower. Clear?”
They all murmured, “Clear,” even J’onn and Alex. Nobody messed with Rosie. She had saved them all too many times.
Alex asked, “Questions?”
Holtzman asked, “Do we really think we can keep a lid on this city with so few agents?”
Alex and Vasquez shared a look. Alex said, “Vas? Would you like to do the honors?”
And James thought, wait, what?
And Vasquez stood up and frowned. She said quietly,
“We few, we happy few, we band of sisters;
for she today that sheds her blood with me
shall be my sister; be she never so vile,
this day shall gentle her condition:
and gentlewomen in America now abed
shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
and hold their womanhoods cheap whilst any speaks
that fought with us upon Election Day.”
The Martians smiled. Alex patted her Assistant Director on the back fondly. Rosie and Dr. Hamilton left the conference shaking their heads. In the end, Finn, Holtzman, James and Winn were the only ones left looking troubled.
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t how that went,” muttered James.
“Nope,” said Finn. “Pretty sure it’s supposed to go, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of buggered.’”
///
Dollywood was packed. M’gann was not surprised. Generally, any time aliens were being targeted in National City, Dollywood was packed with aliens. Usually, they showed up after the fact because most attacks weren’t predictable. Not this time.
The fact that her bar was also packed with humans? Well, same thing. A lot of them were DEO, some were SHIELD agents who had discovered the place when they were there to help clean up after the Battle of National City and the mess with the Daxamites. And a few were from LCorp. And several of them had also been there at Halloween wearing the costumes with masks, drinking the expensive special cocktails she and J’onn had devised, dancing to the disco music.
There had been some... revelations that night. There had also been some mysteries. Toward the end of the night when J’onn had asked her to take off the psychic blocker and listen to what she might be able to tell about the psychically unrecognizable individuals, one who had a haze of hormonal signals and the other who was probably using a blocker...
But he had probably asked her too late, right before the party scattered, right before most of the bar’s clientele hurried off to their own or each other’s beds... Because they hadn’t been able to see/hear/figure out who those individuals were and what they had wanted.
Damn the dynamic duo anyway. If they had been better able to keep things in their own pants, M’gann might have caught what J’onn had, they would have been more prepared for what was about to come. M’gann sighed. She was three hundred (and change) years old. She had long since given up worrying about things she couldn’t fix, however much it bugged her. But she could recenter herself and focus on the present.
And in the present, Lena and Jess were playing pool across the room when Maggie and Lucy showed up and challenged them to a game. Alex, Vasquez and Kara were holding one table and when James and Winn ambled over, they explained that they were waiting for Callie and Jane, and it took M’gann a moment to remember that Dr. Hamilton’s first name was not in fact Doctor.
James and Winn made their way to the other end of the bar and were murmuring things to each other. Normally, M’gann listened to the top level of psychic noise for her clients’ drink preferences and to keep ahead of fistfights, but she had learned NOT to listen to those two. Thankfully, J’onn was a gentle and considerate lover and old enough to not need to act like an adolescent just because he was aroused. Humans. Sigh.
Eve came in and joined Lena and Jess, then they waved to Alex’s table and then batted their eyelashes at Brian and Joe, who good-naturedly gave up their table for them. M’gann sent drinks over to all five, knowing that Lena would pay the tab. She had seen Lena do this before and the guys (it was always males) were happy to help for a few free drinks. Worked for M’gann.
///
At their booth in the back, Jess asked Eve, “Weren’t Chaya and Pill coming?”
Eve nodded. “Pill had to go water her plants first. She’s got some very delicate hybrids she’s working on. Chaya was tired, said she’d catch us next time.”
Lena sighed. “I hate to be pushing you so hard.”
Eve said, “It’s important work. The sooner we figure out—”
Jess said, “So can I ask you something, Lena?”
“Of course, Jess.”
“Did Cat Grant ask you what I drink?”
Lena smirked. “A couple of weeks ago. Why?”
Eve asked, “Why would Cat Grant want to know what you drink? That’s weird.”
“It’s not, really,” said Jess. “Back at the end of September, Cat called me in the middle of the night for some information that she knew I would have on hand. It was sort of a crisis. And I helped. I didn’t think more about it, barely even remembered the call, I was that half asleep.”
“So she sent you wine or whiskey or something?”
Jess shook her head. “That’s what this one would have done.” She nodded at their smirking boss. “No, she subscribed me to a local, organic meat box. And subscribed my parents as well.”
“That’s...”
“Quite lovely,” said Jess, accusingly frowning at their boss. “Who told her about my cooking club?”
“Haven’t the slightest,” said Lena thoroughly unconvincingly. “How would I know that you teach Chinese cooking at the local adult education place? And if I didn’t know that, why would I have told Cat? Especially if she expressly asked about your drink of choice?”
Eve frowned. “You don’t drink?”
One of M’gann’s waiters brought a Cosmo for Lena, a Manhattan for Eve and a hard cider for Jess.
“I’m a lightweight.”
Winn wandered over to their table. “Hi, guys! Um, Lena, when this week’s shenanigans are over, I think Holtzy has some workable ideas for the Big Bad Friggin’ Gadget!”
Lena frowned while still smiling. “Um, okay, Winn. So, first, how much have you had to drink?”
“I had an iced tea!”
Lena nodded. “Was Long Island ever mentioned when you were ordering that?”
“How’d you know?”
“Okay, so second: The what now? Big Bad...?”
“Sorry, that’s what she calls it. The Black Body Field Generator.”
Comprehension dawned. Lena said, “Ah, great. Yes. But, um, third, go tell your date that I expressly recommended that you two split a pitcher of water. Got that?”
“Aw,” said Winn. “Always looking out for me!”
And he wandered off.
Lena said, “Well, at least he’s been happier lately...”
“Yeah,” said Jess. “That makes it easier with Holtzy. I just wish his boyfriend wouldn’t let him drink so much. He’s a good guy, but he could easily get in trouble. I mean, he’s as much a lightweight as I am since he was sick.”
Lena sighed. “Everybody’s on edge. Hopefully, by this time tomorrow, Biden will have been elected and we can all go back to some kind of normal.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” muttered Jess, sticking the straw under her mask to drink.
Lena frown-smiled again. “Jess, I thought you were an atheist...”
Jess said, “For this election, and maybe never again, to regain some semblance of normalcy and a healthy democracy, I will believe in Jesus, Moses, Zeus, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the Pink Panther.”
Eve asked, “What about Buddha?”
“Oh, I already follow Buddha. But that’s not necessarily religion. It’s more philosophy.”
///
When Callie and Jane arrived, Vasquez and Alex switched to Kara’s side of the booth. They were used to sharing space with a very solid Kryptonian and each other. The waiter brought a scotch and a glass of white wine.
Dr. Hamilton shook her head. “I will never get used to that.”
Vasquez said, “To be fair, I worked in a bar for a while back in college. A good bartender remembers the go-to drinks of regulars. M’gann is just a few steps past that.”
Callie said, “You were a bartender?”
“Piano player. Both rinky-dink and posh. For whoever would pay. Got me through college.”
Jane said, “Um, Director—”
“When we’re out, it’s just Alex, Doctor.”
“Then, I guess, Jane?”
“Jane it is.”
“Just, why did you invite us out? Shouldn’t we all be getting our heads down?”
“Could you sleep easily tonight? Because I don’t think I will. Yeah, sure, I learned to sleep on command back at Seattle Grace Mercy Death, but when the weight of the world is literally on our shoulders, not just a few lives? Yeah, just no.”
“Wait, Seattle Grace—”
Callie patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll explain it later.” She turned to Kara. “Hey, babe, you doing any better?”
Kara shrugged. “Well, tomorrow there’s a really good chance I might get to pummel someone. So that’s a positive.”
Callie said, “I know that feeling.”
Alex raised her glass. “To pummeling!” They all clinked. “Cheers.”
///
In the only dark-ish corner of Dollywood, where a light bulb had apparently burnt out, although James knew it was also possible to simply mostly unscrew a healthy bulb to let its light fail to fall on two men who had mostly been straight and now were sort of out as not entirely straight and who were looking toward potential mob violence the next day, which was terrifying, it was, but it was also kind of hot in an I’m-probably-getting-laid-tonight kind of way that was sort of, along with their Long Island iced teas, helping numb his icy fear that there was also a 40% chance of light precipitation and possibly dying.
In the face of that, massaging his bi boyfriend’s very full khaki-clad crotch while kissing him madly in public seemed, in the moment, an entirely reasonable thing to do.
Chapter 90: But When the Blast of War Blows in Our Ears, Nov. 3, 2020
Chapter Text
Finn never went anywhere quickly these days. He got up early on Election Day and went through putting on his body armor and checking his weapons with great thoroughness before going up to the roof to do his pre-flight checklist for his Blackhawk. Being methodical meant he never had to rush. Never having to rush meant he never got out of breath. Well, at least not at work, anyway.
The weekend had been... an entirely different story.
He had been very deliberate about choosing his Halloween costume, just in case, and had been more than happy to take Krypto for the afternoon before the party. But when he had walked into Dollywood and turned the dog over to the Danvers women, and then gone to get a drink, he had been surprised when a little blonde in a big dress had expressed great enthusiasm for his costume. She had raised the hem of her dress to show off one pink shoe and one transparent shoe and he had realized that she was Cinderella. And she bought him a 2020 and convinced him to join her in the acting part of the awards as costume partners.
And Finn had never been a heavy drinker in the first place, but since having Covid, he had found that his alcohol tolerance had, well, plummeted. So he was metaphorical putty in her hands.
And then after the party, she had murmured interesting suggestions about how she might help him out of his dress uniform so he could be... not-putty... in her hands.
Several times that night and the next day and the next night. At length.
As it were.
And Eve Tessmacher was not his first sex-romp rodeo. He still remembered (both fondly and nervously) that endless day and night back at the frat house that had been poisoned by the sex-starved poltergeist when he and Buffy had nearly died from too much endless sex.
This wasn’t entirely like that. Eve did stop for bathroom breaks, hydration and snacks.
But post-Covid, it felt... a lot like that had.
He had insisted on going to work on Monday morning, despite her pleas, just to get some rest. And, of course, the briefing had been important. Everybody took it very seriously.
Although Winn had gotten that dazed look on his face at one point before James had apparently kicked him under the table. And Winn was a long-hauler, much more than Finn. How the hell did he have the stamina to keep hurrying off to the bathroom at odd times of the day when he got a text, presumably from a very horny James? James, the man whom Finn would have bet good money was the straightest man in the DEO.
Apparently not.
Finn sat in the pilot’s seat and watched Holtzy and her team trot toward his helo. Good. There was work to be done, a city to keep safe.
Since when was working for a black budget organization during a contested election that might end in a violent coup an easier option than sex with a voracious straight woman?
///
Eliza entered Dr. Hamilton’s lab, gratefully reaching for her lab coat. She had spent a sleepless night trying to figure out how she and Jeremiah had come to be so far apart. And she knew that Lillian Luthor was a supervillain, of course she did. And Jeremiah would have done anything to protect the girls. But the first rule when a soldier was captured was to escape. Shouldn’t he have at least tried?
And now she was the one who had to write his obituary, and what was there to say about the last fifteen years of his life?
And now she had to plan his funeral, or interment, really, and invite all his old friends and colleagues and they would probably have questions. Well, come to think of it, maybe she could use the pandemic to avoid that. Say it was necessary to have as few as possible people, all masked and socially distanced since they were still months out from having a vaccine? Hmm. That might work.
They had talked about it once, a few years before the South American mission, what would she do if he died in action. And she had shushed him, convinced him that they would grow old and grey together. And she had honestly believed that they would, until they didn’t. And then he had come back, so briefly, and then been swept away again. He had chosen to be swept away. He had chosen to not grow old and grey with her. And he could claim that he had done it to protect their daughters and during the day she did in fact believe that.
But at two--or three or four--in the morning, belief was hard to come by.
The door to the lab opened and Jane Hamilton walked in looking at her clipboard.
She walked vaguely toward the coffee maker, presumably guided by the smell, given that she didn’t look up from her clipboard. But then she walked into the rolling chair that Eliza had been sitting in before she had an idea and had jumped up to run a simulation on the computer.
“Ow! Damn!” Like a sleepwalker waking suddenly she looked around her, surprised.
Eliza waved. “Sorry about that. I had an idea—”
Jane poured herself a cup of coffee and stared at it.
Eliza said, “Half and half is in the fridge...”
“Right, right. I knew that.” Jane added the white stuff and sipped her coffee, exhaling with great feeling. “There is a god...”
“Yeah,” said Eliza, “Gotta say I’m less convinced about that by the day.”
Jane pulled the Supergirl mug out of the sink and poured coffee and half and half into it and brought it over to Eliza. “Drink up. Experience what Vasquez calls the Javalogical Proof of the Existence of God.”
Eliza drank, and yes, the hot liquid laved her throat with existential pleasure that she was woefully needy for, but it wasn’t enough to make her believe in God again. She sighed, but tears leaked out of her eyes, and suddenly she was sobbing and spilling hot coffee on herself. Jane took the mug from her and grabbed tissues and was blotting her lab coat and then Eliza looked up with gratitude and suddenly they were kissing, hard and earnestly. And then Jane pulled away, eyes wide with shock.
“Oh my G—You—I. I’m not. You’re absolutely not. How the fuck did I? Because that would never! I’m SO sorry!”
And before Eliza could do so much as take a breath to say... What? It’s okay?
I like you but not like that?
Consent is important?
You kiss better than my dead husband did?...
Jane was racing out the door.
///
To the surprise of no one, especially not Detective Reynolds, the captain had tasked Detective Sargent Maggie Sawyer with liaising for the NCPD with what he termed the Federal Agents of Alphabet Soup, while he made appearances on television with the mayor and Supergirl encouraging voters to wear masks and social distance and encouraging the Black Lives Matter activists protesting in front of City Hall and on the campus of NCU to remain peaceful.
All across Chinatown and Alien Alley, DEO agents patrolled on foot while Blackhawks kept aerial surveillance of the city from above.
At schools and churches, MAGA protesters harried Biden/Harris voters and the NCPD intervened.
Outside of the decimated postal distribution center, anti-alien protesters made a big show of blaming voter fraud on aliens and SHIELD agents ringed them to keep it from getting out of hand.
At one point the city experienced an earthquake of 4.7 magnitude, which had the news forecasters scratching their heads as the epicenter had been near the postal facility, which seemed remarkably specific and unlikely. When Reynolds mentioned this to Maggie, she just grumbled about SHIELD agents, which made no sense to Reynolds, but he had learned to keep his mouth shut and get on with the job.
///
All day, Winn sat under the feeds at the DEO, watching the protests, listening for his agents on the comms and, every once in a while, daydreaming about spending the weekend in James’s bed. He realized that it had been about a year since James’s motorcycle accident had led to the tequila-caused blackout-drunk sex and all of that awkwardness, followed soon after by Lena’s abduction and their decision to diligently work to remain friends. At the time, Winn had been philosophical about the whole friendzone thing, because he knew that James considered being straight a huge part of his masculinity, something Winn had never particularly cared about.
So Winn had tried to focus on his work. It hadn’t worked out with Kara or Jess and then it hadn’t worked out with James, but he had to have hope. It was hard, of course, because he no longer even knew how to picture himself happy with anyone.
So, in that way, at least, the Covid pandemic had been sort of a blessing. Being out of his head with fever had allowed him to dream about his friends and coworkers and see them in a new light. Athletes and musicians always talked about visualizing their performance ahead of time so that they could sort of live into the vision. Maybe it was like that. Imagining James being affected by pink K and actually wanting Winn and wanting to marry him... Wild.
And then during the six months of recovery, Winn had visualized James wanting to have sex with Winn, and some of those visualizations had been extremely detailed and specific. And now here he was, sitting in the DEO a little awkwardly, amazed that in all of his crazy fantasies none of them had been of him and James both wearing the top halves of their Batman and Robin costumes and... taking turns railing each other.
Well, Winn might have--just once or twice--imagined James in the top half of the Guardian suit.... doing...
Three times, tops.
But none of his scenarios had included Winn jacking off James in the men’s room at the DEO, or James jacking Winn off in every room in his apartment over the course of a weekend.
Above his head, the feeds showed the SHIELD agents responding to anti-alien violence near that postal center that the greenies had destroyed. And a few minutes later, an earthquake shook National City.
Hmm. Interesting. Vasquez had mentioned that Daisy Johnson would be in town with her department. He had met her briefly at Lois and Clark's wedding, but with all the Groundhog repeated-day shenanigans, he didn't really remember much about their interactions. He couldn’t wait to get a look at her suit. The technology for constraining vibrations might be precisely the thing he needed to finish the miniature Black Body Field Generator. Maybe she would be at Dollywood later on...
///
J’onn and M’gann had worked out a grid pattern for the parts of the city where helicopters would have a hard time landing. They spent the day flying patrols, occasionally landing when the NCPD was having a hard time handling aliens, but most of the day was relatively peaceful. School kids out at recess waved up to them and they waved back. Occasionally, Supergirl joined them to check in. As the day wore on, they checked in at the DEO and then M’gann did one more sweep before heading over to Dollywood for the election watch party. J’onn kept vigil over his adopted city until the polls closed at eight and then dropped down to join her. All the aliens and a lot of the DEO, and some of their SHIELD friends would be watching the bar’s one flat-screen TV with great trepidation, praying to whatever gods they favored that the map would not hemorrhage red again, as it had four years previously, praying that Biden would get a landslide victory, to put to rest the MAGA claim of election fraud. Aliens had been living at tiptoe stance for the past four years. It was long past time to get back to a normal America.
///
Lex Luthor was a work in progress.
He knew it. His remaining family knew it. The men and the occasional woman who served as his minions pretty much knew it but would never actually admit it. Well, minions wouldn’t.
But his mother, his sister, his ex-best friend, and that friend’s cousin: they all knew it. And he was pretty sure that his ex-best-friend’s-cousin’s sister and her entire black budget operation were in on the joke.
Some of the media knew it and some did not. Cat Grant, yes. Clark Kent and Kara Danvers, yes. CNN, sure.
Fox News? Not so much.
Lex didn’t let it bother him. He knew he was a household name, as a hashtag both for envious tech-geek wanna-be evil geniuses and overly cautious superheroes. No publicity was bad publicity, after all.
But his powerful friends who were helping fund his rebooted organization had been very clear that the timing had to be right. His 2020... contributions to some campaign strategies could not, down the line, be connected to his 2021 job prospects. It shocked him just how precious those people were being, considering some of their more brazen political... choices. Who on Earth did they think didn’t know how political tit-for-tat went?
That was immaterial. He had always believed in a multipronged approach to his overarching mission of taking his planet back for his species. You had to think about your opponents first in terms of their leaders. Change the leaders, change the led. Well, he had been working on that one for months, keeping the orange moron in charge of the money machine. And Lex was a big fan of contingency planning, so even if he actually lost the election, there were... plans in place for dealing with that.
But you had to think of your opponents also as bodies and minds. Get their bodies and minds to work against each other, and you functionally had no opponents at all.
Divide and conquer. There was a reason it was a classic.
///
Pill started Election Day the way she started most days: watering some of her plants, feeding others, pruning some, and talking to them all enthusiastically about her plans for the day: voting at the local high school, picking up coffee and a danish at Noonan’s, arriving to their temporary lab early to start getting work done before Chaya came in and started gossiping, or Eve came in and started ordering them around. Since the two men in their group were still out with Covid, the lab would be quiet. Undoubtedly Lena Luthor would be there already, but she also appreciated the early morning serenity and wouldn’t bother Pill.
And that was good, because Pill was pretty sure Lena was onto something. She had accidentally dropped one of the test tablets of the proto-kryptonite that had been irradiated with their third attempt to make pink K into the pocket of her lab coat. And Pill knew herself well enough to recognize that this had probably been one of those Freudian slip type accidents, where somewhere in the back of her mind she had meant to do it. Fine. She could make that work. When she took off her parka when she arrived home that evening to discover that she had not taken her lab coat off before leaving LCorp, she had sneezed and put her hand in the pocket of the lab coat, hoping for a tissue, since she had snot all over her face.
But instead, she pulled out a pale pink rectangle, a bit wider and shorter than a domino, and stared at it with great interest. Lena had suggested using the red sunlamps and epsilon radiation in combination, knowing that Max Lord had experimented with E-rays for their ability to increase the permissivity of a material, or to increase the rate of photosynthesis in plants. After the group had extensively studied proto-kryptonite, Lena had posited that it was a Schroedinger’s-cat material, sharing properties of both inanimate and agricultural materials.
Lena was a freaking genius to figure that out. Pill was pretty sure that she had nailed the protocol for creating pink K. She went to the window and held it up to the fading light of day. It was just lovely, a tiny bit pinker than rose quartz. She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out two thin rubber bands and turned them into an elaborate cat’s cradle for the stone, then pulled out a piece of string that she then looped around the window lock and tied the other end to the cat’s cradle so that the stone could hang in the window collecting light and shining on her beloved plants: the blue ivy, the Venus azalea, the hybrid cactus, the hybrid rose. Perfect.
Then Pill changed into jeans and an old Elton John t-shirt and dug into the freezer for something to microwave for dinner. Damn, she was tired.
///
Dr. Hamilton fled blindly through the DEO, her brain awash with confusion and embarrassment. She found herself at the gym and thought her subconscious had led her well. Maybe she just needed a workout. She was tired. She had been working around the clock all year, interspersed in the middle with being very sick. She was surrounded by agents who had been exposed to pink K two years back, and the high fever from Covid seemed to be bringing those effects back. Maybe the same thing was happening to her?
She changed in the locker room and grabbed a towel and her water bottle and got on the elliptical. Just a short time, maybe twenty minutes, would help clear her head without making her any tired-er. Was that even a word?
She had never thought about Eliza Danvers in any way except intellectually, mostly because she only saw the heroes’ mother when she was dragged in to help with a major scientific problem. Did Jane have feelings for her? She didn’t know.
After all, she was a handsome woman, sure, but she was no Callie Torres, with those flashing dark eyes and quick snarky humor. It was probably no big deal. She would go to Eliza and apologize, and they could ask Lena Luthor if she had had any more luck than the DEO had in their research into pink K. Maybe she could come up with an antidote? It wasn’t like the pink K effect was real, after all, any more than the red K effects on Supergirl had been real. Kryptonite turned people against their true nature, right?
After a while, Jane settled into a rhythm on the elliptical, letting go all her anxieties but one: what if, God forbid, the current resident of the White House ended up... staying on there?
There were always worse outcomes than becoming temporarily gay, after all.
Chapter 91: Then Imitate the Action of the Tiger, Nov. 3, 2020, Evening, Part 1
Chapter Text
Dollywood was closed until sundown on Election Day, since J’onn and M’gann were flying aerial surveillance all day, but also so that M’gann’s trusted bartenders and servers could set up the parking lot out back with socially distanced picnic tables rented for the night. She had also rented and hired someone to put up fairy lights and a second flat screen TV so that the folks in the parking lot could watch the election returns too. Her liquor guy delivered extra boxes of booze. This election would probably go down to the wire and folks were likely to get absolutely blitzed whichever way it ended up going. She’d also gotten permission from the city to set up a temporary taxi stand outside the bar, even though most of her patrons used Uber or Lyft if they were planning to drink heavily. She was as prepared as she knew how to be.
She and J’onn had discussed the issue of the psychic blockers and she agreed that tonight might be a dangerous time to not know what was going on with her customers (despite the problem of #Scholsen). Well, she’d been living in America for almost three hundred years and considered herself an Alien American. She could make some sacrifices for her adopted country.
///
Supergirl landed on the balcony of the DEO, wrote up her report and got changed. Kara Danvers walked out of the electrical closet to see a young, half-Asian woman with long hair and a little leather jacket, clearly excited.
“You’re her!” the woman exclaimed. “May and Coulson told me so much about you!”
Kara shook her head. “For secret agents, they’re not very good at keeping a secret. And anyway, didn't we meet at Lois and Clark's wedding? I think you started out as Vasquez's date? It's fuzzy. But welcome! Sorry, I should have led with that.”
“No, it’s okay. I don't remember much about the wedding either. I think I ended up playing Texas Hold'em with a surgeon? That was weird. But this! Today was fun! And you don't have to worry. The first thing I did when I got here was get the NDAs out of the way. We’re cool. And your HR woman gave me a cookie...”
“Yeah, that’s Pam. I’m sorry. I don’t think I know who you are. You’re SHIELD, but...”
“Oh! Sorry! Daisy Johnson.” They shook hands enthusiastically.
“Wait, you’re Quake? That’s so cool!” said Kara. “So that tremblor earlier today... Was that your work?”
“Yeah, things were getting out of hand. I just... changed the story.”
“Well, I’m on my way to our bar for the election watch. You want to come?”
“Is this that Dollywood place? Absolutely.”
Vasquez drove, with Alex in front, and Daisy, Winn and Kara squeezed together in back. When they got to the bar, it was already fairly full of humans and aliens wearing political masks: Biden/Harris was a favorite, but so were the Stars and Stripes Raybans, Purple Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, Alien Rights Are Sentient Rights, Marvin Martian Ka-Boom! and others like them.
They made their way to their usual booth, currently being held for them by Brian, Joe and a pair of Infernians. Brian and Joe stood up for them and the Infernians frowned.
“Wait, you’re just giving our table to humans?”
But then M’gann was there with a tray of drinks for the aliens, saying, “Vasquez paid your tab until eleven. These ladies have been keeping the city safe all day. They could use a place to sit.”
Appeased, the aliens left.
“Thanks, M’gann,” said Vasquez.
“Hey, it’s your bank account.”
“Yeah, I just like win-win situations.”
M’gann left them and was replaced by Winn and James, who dragged chairs to the end of the booth. “Did I hear my name?” asked Winn. He was sucking beer from a bottle with a straw behind his Marvin mask.
“Winn,” said Kara, rolling her eyes.
Daisy looked excited. “Wait, you’re Winn Schott, Jr.?”
“Um, yes?”
“I have two friends who wanted me to ask for your autograph.”
“Me? Who are these friends?”
“Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz.”
“Wait, are you Daisy Johnson??? Oh, we totally have to talk about your powers and about the gloves they made for you. I’m working on a similar problem of controlling vibrations and—”
James laughed easily. “Okay, you two are going to need to go get a room.”
Winn and Daisy got up and went to the bar together.
Vasquez said, “Mm. James, speaking of which. You and Winn last night...”
Kara jumped up and said, “I’ll go get us drinks. M’gann must be slammed!” And she didn’t use superspeed, but she did move fast.
Alex sighed. “James, you are an agent. You need to keep your personal activities... a little less public.”
James opened his mouth and closed it again.
“Also,” said Vasquez, “post-Covid, Long Island Iced Teas might not be the wisest drink of choice...”
He stood up and said, “Yeah, clearly. Beer only. Yes, ma’am.” And hurried away.
“Hey, sweetie,” said Eliza as she slid in next to Alex. “Um, can I ask you... a question. Um, so Dr. Hamilton...”
Alex and Vasquez looked attentive.
“Was she ever exposed to that pink kryptonite when the rest of you were?”
They looked at each other, surprised. Vasquez said, “I don’t think so. I mean, I was working pretty much 24/7 in the building during that, so I wasn’t. But most of our non-mission critical people did go home every night, so they easily could have been out in the rain. You’d have to ask her.”
Alex frowned. “If she was exposed, I imagine she would have kept it to herself. I can’t imagine her late husband would have taken kindly to her noticing the ladies.” She considered her mother. “Should we ask why?”
“It’s not important. I’ve just noticed so many of the lab people have been very different this visit... But then her husband... And God knows, menopause isn’t for the faint of heart!”
And she changed the topic, but Alex noted Vasquez frowning: Number 43: Make a note of that.
///
James was often glad that he was tall and had long arms. It made getting served at a crowded bar much easier. J’onn handed him his Sam Adams lager with a straw already in the bottle. James tucked the straw under his Superman mask and sipped, amused at how normal all these crazy pandemic-related changes now seemed so many months later. He liked how creative people were about their masks: the ones clearly made out of men’s dress shirt material, the ones with cartoon characters, or flowers or sports teams’ logos. He saw a small gaggle of white women wearing M’gann’s Marvin the Martian masks talking to Winn (who was more of an Invader Zim man himself) and James squeezed his way through the crowd to join them.
Winn introduced him to a blonde named Chaya and an auburn-haired woman possibly named Pill. With the masks and the music and all the loud laughter, it was a little hard to tell. Winn explained that the women worked with him and Eve at LCorp on one of Lena’s special projects. They talked about working for Lena as if she were some kind of employer-goddess, and James considered himself a full-blooded American man able to see the assets of a woman like that, which were many, but he doubted that she could really be as great as all that.
Luckily everyone’s attention shifted to the flat screen TV across the room where the states that had completed their voter count were shifting from white to red or blue. The commentators kept repeating that it was going to be too soon to tell the winner, possibly for a few days, since so many people had done early voting and/or voting by mail and they had not been allowed to start counting those votes before that day. Still, the map was looking bluer than it had four years before at about this same time of night.
He was just thinking to get another beer when the woman, Pill stumbled against him. He caught her, somehow without dropping his empty bottle, and she said, “Sorry, it’s just so warm in here. I just felt light-headed for a moment.”
James handed the empty to Winn and said, “Let’s get you outside where it’s cooler. You’re right. It’s stuffy in here.”
When they got outside the front door where a few other people had stepped outside to slip off their masks and smoke, James said, “Is this better?”
“Yes, thank you, James.”
“Um, so did I catch your name right? It sounded like Winn said Pill, but...”
“I’m in pharmaceuticals. My friends share a stupid sense of humor. The nickname stuck.”
“Oh! Okay. So why does everybody love Lena so much? I mean, she’s great, yeah, but...”
Very seriously, Pill said, “She knows everybody in the company by name. Everybody. We update her on our labs’ achievements at least once a month, and she insists that we have our data down by heart and then she engages with us on an impressively deep level as a scientist and engineer. I’ve worked at a slew of bio companies over the years. The CEO very rarely understands any of the shit we do in the labs. And if they have a background in one thing, like chemistry, they usually know nothing about biology or materials science or whatever else the company does. Mostly they just worry about the numbers. Lena Luthor is a breath of fresh air to a scuba diver with the bends!”
James nodded, more impressed than he wanted to be.
///
Pill moved from group to group, trying to make a connection with somebody. When she stopped thinking about her paid work or her free-time botany projects, she had to admit that she was lonely, chronically lonely, and she hated it. But she would come to events like this, with lots of cool people, smart people, even queer people and just... fail to make a connection. She had first dates. She had colleagues. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had shown even the slightest romantic interest in her.
And then, every once in a while, at these events, the music would either seem really loud or really quiet and she would find herself in a small space between all the people and recognize that she was, in fact, existentially alone. So why did she even bother coming to them?
She had given up on the flirting thing and gone back to the LCorp group and they had been shooting the shit with Winn and then his friend, James something, had joined them. She had seen him at the Halloween Party, dressed as Batman. Of course, she had. And she liked the idea of a black Batman. What she had not realized, because of the over the top costume that Winn had apparently made for him, was that those muscles? The chest and the abs and the arms? That was all real. James was standing there in a grey-blue dress shirt and a black and purple striped tie and she could tell. Those ridiculous muscles were real.
And Pill was bi, basically. But muscles were hot on anybody. It was just that with the testosterone, men had an easier time building them. She looked at James lustily and felt overly warm suddenly. She stumbled against him, and he caught her and led her out to the sidewalk in front of the bar where the air was cooler.
She felt the heat rising up her back and up her neck to her head, and she remembered her mother describing hot flashes, but she was way too young for that. This was something else.
He asked her questions about her name, about Lena, but she was imagining him taking off her clothes and when was the last time she’d had a fantasy about someone she had only just met?
But then he had said that he needed to get Winn and go home, and she realized that those two were maybe together? Or roommates? Or gay? Or... just... James wasn’t into her.
It figured. Didn’t really matter. Men or women: nobody ever was.
///
J’onn had watched the shenanigans, he had watched the bar, and he had watched the election reporting. It was clear to him that the people (human and alien) waiting in an impatient, socially distanced line for both the men’s and women’s restrooms were in fact in line waiting to have semi-public sex. All of them. It was clear that this was not necessarily because they were drunk off their gourds, since fewer people seemed to be drinking than usual. It was also clear that although Biden looked to be ahead, a winner wouldn’t be declared that night. When he suggested to M’gann telepathically that they close early, she agreed.
Taxi cabs, Ubers and Lyfts picked up their loose and amorous customers with the civilians first and their friends and colleagues last. Then they spent an hour cleaning up, gathering the empties, washing the glasses and tables, and sweeping up.
And they had gone back to M’gann’s place afterwards and it had been a big surprise to them both that they had both wanted to share in the bond immediately upon entering M’gann’s apartment. In the tiny part of J’onn’s mind that was constantly scanning the city for psychic trouble, he got the sense that people he might know and a whole lot of people he did not know were fumbling into their houses, apartments and condos with their significant others, leaving a trail of dropped clothing between their front doors and their bedrooms.
Thankfully, with Martians, those things were simpler.
And less messy.
Chapter 92: Then Imitate the Action of the Tiger, Nov. 3, 2020, Evening, Part 2
Chapter Text
Lillian Luthor had been irritable all day. She had voted by mail two weeks earlier and she had voted irritably for science and against idiocy, but that did not mean she was happy about it. She was pretty sure that her son had voted against her and her daughter had voted with her. Cat Grant for sure was true blue, and Lillian had mixed feelings about that.
Last time around she had voted for the Cheeto because it was clear he would give people in her tax bracket money and even clearer that he was for alien deportation. But this pandemic was no joke and having spent months in a crowded prison during a global pandemic had... shifted her priorities. But only slightly. Enough to make her vote against her other interests, sure. Enough to cancel out her son’s vote. But it wasn’t like she was going to donate to any of these absurd liberals’ campaigns. Of course not.
But science was important.
She spent the morning doom-scrolling in her office, ate a tuna sandwich for lunch and then went out to the new garden that was slowly taking shape at the back of the property. John the gardener had built up more of the semi-circular granite wall, and beneath the grass lay the seeds and bulbs that she and Lena had planted together on that strange day when Lena had caught her singing about Cat Grant and called her on it.
Called her out, as it were. Lillian shook her head in amazement.
When Lena had come back to her dressed in faded and torn jeans, a baseball shirt with Peppermint Patty and Marcie on the front and a lavender bandana tied around her neck, Lillian had felt a shock of surprise. Why would Lena want to help her plant flowers on the estate? She only ever came back to it when emergencies loomed.
But as Lena knelt next to her and taken up the trowel to dig small holes in the places marked with small red plastic spikes, she had said, “So, Mother. You finally decided to come over to the Sapphic Dark Side. What did Cat do, offer you cookies?”
“I believe a toaster oven might have been mentioned.”
“No, she gets the toaster oven. You get the cookies.”
“Or possibly oysters?”
Lena flashed her a grin. “Oysters? Well, now. Let it never be said that Lillian Luthor acclimates to change slowly.”
Lillian had actually been referring to actual oysters, but she was not going to say that in front of her daughter of all people. “Cat is...”
Lena smiled. “A force of nature? True. She’s going to be one of my bridesmaids, if you can believe it.”
“And will I be invited to this... event?”
Lena’s eyes went wide. “Do you want to be?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Well, let’s wait on that decision. You might decide to go all genocidal again and that might really kill the vibe. Among other things.”
“Ye of little faith. Your father always pointed out that ceasefires have been part of warfare for more than a thousand years.”
“Mm. And yet, for someone who could potentially have the Latin phrase ‘a woman has the right to change her mind’ in her heraldry...” Lena reached for more bulbs.
Lillian huffed a laugh. “Wait, those are the yellow tulips. This bag has the orange ones for the next row.”
“What? Are you planting a rainbow flag in your garden, Mother? That seems quite gay.”
“I just want a riot of color. All the green and grey is boring. I had hoped to grow some birds of paradise, but apparently our climate is too cold in Metropolis.”
“This from the woman who barely ever wears colors that aren’t either black or white.”
Lillian shrugged. “Showing up to board meetings clearly in control of the proceedings is one thing. Relaxing in your own back yard is another.”
“Oh, so you relax now?” Lena frowned. “So maybe it’s true after all. An alien has come and taken my mother’s brain.”
“Most amusing. But why do you say that about my wanting some colors in my life if you don’t say it about the whole... situation with Cat?”
Lena raised an eyebrow in thought. “Well, it makes sense, your attraction to Cat. She’s much more your type than Father ever was.”
And looking back on the conversation, Lillian was most surprised about that last thought, that perhaps Lillian had been in the closet all her life, unknowingly. She thought about her close lifelong relationship with Adelle DeWitt. Ever since boarding school, Lillian had always turned to Adelle for support, for advice, for moments of closeness stolen from their increasingly fraught lives. Adelle had never married. Was she gay too?
Too? Was Lillian admitting to herself that she was... what? A lesbian?
Lena had joked about the Sapphic Dark Side, and something about that sounded right to Lillian. It felt like she had stepped away from her complicated but orderly life and walked into a dark forest with fog covering the ground, making her way forward difficult and dangerous. And yet...
She was also spending so much more of her time outside in the sunshine, planning for colors, thinking about the exact shade of brown that Cat’s eyes were, like those old A&W root beer floats... And remembering her day shopping with Cat, and Cat talking about how Kara Danvers muttered about finding the exact right word for the color of Lena’s eyes. What had she said? “And suddenly I find myself thinking that that is a completely reasonable conundrum to find oneself in.”
And it shouldn’t matter. The exact color of another person’s eyes, another woman’s eyes, shouldn’t matter.
And maybe that was the real conundrum: if she had stepped into the Sapphic Dark Side, was that because all these feelings and uncontrollable thoughts were a kind of Force?
Lillian didn’t know. And Lillian Lutessa Luthor did NOT like not-knowing.
She glanced up at the pale pink and purple display over the heads of the trees as the sun set. In a few days, they would probably have a new, saner president, even if he was deluded about the ability of aliens to fit in on Earth and not endanger humanity. Lex would not be happy about that. He would probably take Cadmus in a much more dangerous direction than Lillian had attempted. How could she protect him? More importantly, how could she protect Lena from him? Because, yes, Lillian loved her son, her one biological child, relentlessly. But when he finally found out about Lena’s engagement to Kara Danvers, he was going to go ballistic. And Lillian knew a thing or two about spreading one’s pain around; she was very good at it herself. But maybe this time...
And that damn song came back into her head. She murmured, “Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky. Maybe this time, she’ll stay...”
But that was ridiculous. She and Cat had nothing in common. The woman had quite strategically nurtured an alien into a position of incredible power and popularity, had served on that liberal President Marsden’s staff, had left her organization to be gutted by a photographer. She was not the sort of woman to conduct a permanent relationship with an ex-convict who really wanted to deport all the aliens.
Except that lately, Lillian had found her freedom to be... restful.
She had expected prison to mean that she would be sharing showers with towering, tattooed women gangbangers, but instead most of the people she had been forced to interact with had been more like Martha Stewart: women convicted for insider trading, Ponzi schemes or killing their abusive CEO husbands. So yes, the terrible beds and food and the shared showers and nothing decent to read and no one intelligent to talk to for months. The whole time she either had not a single moment alone, or when she got tossed into solitary, no human connection at all.
In comparison, being able to live in her own home, walk in the sunshine, invite friends and colleagues over for dinner...
And oysters...
Well, it had taken Lillian’s eye off the goal and she knew that she should get back to work, not just indirectly through people like Roulette and Ping-yi, but go back to Cadmus and try to keep Lex from being the wrecking ball she expected him to become if someone didn’t get in there and stop him.
And she would do it. She would. But just... not this week. Autumn was her favorite season, and she was tired and wanted to enjoy it in peace. Wintertime, when all the world either died or hibernated, would be soon enough to get back to work.
Chapter 93: Stiffen the Sinews, Summon Up the Blood, Nov. 4, 2020, Morning
Chapter Text
Across the United States, the day after the 2020 presidential election dawned differently than the 1,461 previous mornings. A fragile hope fluttered in the air like a new butterfly with its wings still damp from the cocoon. The pandemic was still running largely unchecked, of course, but people whispered about... perhaps... a return to civility? Competence? Leadership?
In many cities across the nation, people awoke cautious, nervous and, yes, hopeful.
This was not entirely the case in National City.
///
Eve woke up in an empty hotel room with a splitting headache and precious little memory of how she had gotten there. She opened her eyes to see cruel sunlight piercing her through a gap in the curtains. She turned to look at the clock and saw a piece of paper set in front of it with a note in unfamiliar handwriting that read, “Hey Beautiful! That was great! I figured I’d let you sleep in after that workout!!!” It was unsigned. She had a weird feeling like she might have actually slept with an alien. Moving the note, she realized that she had an hour to get home, get dressed and turn around and get to work at LCorp. Talk about a walk of shame.
On the other hand, if the person had been an alien, she probably wouldn’t get pregnant even though she was pretty sure they hadn’t used protection.
Eve prided herself on looking at the bright side.
///
Kara woke up in their enormous bed at Lena’s wearing only Lena’s buttonless black silk shirt. She rolled over and realized that Lena had covered them both with the Supergirl cape, in part, it seemed, because all of their sheets and blankets were on the floor around the bed. Lena was snoring gently, which Kara usually thought was cute and it was, but it was usually a sign of Lena being exhausted, usually because she had worked an eighteen-hour day.
Not an eight-hour night.
Lena rolled over and the cape slipped off Kara’s body. Kara sat up, stretched and yawned and when she looked down at Lena again, those green eyes were open wide at the sight.
“Lena, you’ve seen my boobs before.”
“Y-yes, I have. And they’re lovely...” Her Irish accent was very pronounced for some reason.
“What’s wrong?”
Lena rubbed her eyes, and Kara realized that her sleeve was blue...
“Um, Lena, are you wearing my suit?”
“I think so.” She sat up and they both looked down at the crest adorning her chest.
Kara reached out to pull her close and slid her hand down Lena’s side and down to the small red skirt, and then slid her hand under the skirt. “Ah, yes,” she said, blushing slightly. “So maybe not all of the suit... And, oh my. You know I have heard people say that Supergirl must be well hung. Is that the purple one?”
“I’m not recalling clearly, but I think you begged.” Lena also looked a bit abashed.
“Yeah, that sounds about right. But this makes no sense. I had one Aldabaran rum all night. Just in case there were overnight election shenanigans.”
“And I only had three of M’gann’s cocktails, and you know I can normally drink even your sister under the table.”
“Um, well, we should probably shower, because I feel kind of sticky, but then I’m going to need my suit back. I have a feeling we’re going to have a busy day one way or another.”
“Okay, but I’m going to need help getting it off.” Lena grinned.
And that did happen, of course it did. They showered and dressed and went off to their different workplaces and proved themselves productive citizens.
Eventually.
///
Callie had had a few drinks at the party, but she was a big woman with a pretty high tolerance for alcohol, so when she woke up at three to get up and pee and heard... noises... coming from her guest room... decidedly male and female noises... she had done her business and gone back to bed, digging out some earplugs and going back to sleep. What the widowed Jane Hamilton did in her own bed was none of Callie’s business.
Absolutely none, she told herself repeatedly as she tried to get back to sleep.
Even if--and perhaps especially if--what it sounded like Jane was doing was Riley Finn.
///
James and Winn woke up naked in the back seat of Winn’s Mini Cooper. They opened their eyes to see an NCPD uniform standing next to the driver’s side window and scrambled to get their extremely damp shorts on before Winn rolled down the window.
“Um, Officer! I am so sorry! We were on our way home and I realized maybe I’d had more to drink than I thought, so I pulled over and figured I’d take a nap in the back seat—”
The young man looked at the two of them and shook his head, writing on his ticket pad. “Don’t even. But here’s the thing. We’re just writing up these up as parking violations today. Mayor says there’s something in the water again. Have a nice day.” He handed Winn the piece of paper and walked away still shaking his head.
Winn looked at James. “Dude, we need to go get our tacticals and head into work.”
///
Pam woke refreshed and jumped out of bed, turned on the coffee maker she had set up the night before, jumped in the shower, washed her hair, threw on her purple terrycloth bathrobe, poured herself a steaming cup of expensive coffee and turned on the television, expecting to see more news about the election.
That was not, to her surprise, the top story.
She flipped from one channel to the next until she hit on Channel Seven. CatCo’s reporters were fighting to keep straight faces as they reported on scenes of orgies taking place across the city overnight. Footage of multiple clinics, including National City University’s student medical center, showed long lines of masked women standing in line for the “morning after pill,” all with their faces technologically blurred out for privacy reasons.
The mayor had declared leniency for anyone facing public indecency charges that day as he had been told by federal and municipal authorities that there was something in the water again, and people recalled that strange week two years previously when Max Lord had apparently laced the National City water supply with Law-Abiding Serum.
LordTech said that Mr. Lord was unavailable for comment.
Pam snorted. Of course he was. Idiot.
Pam thought about the party the night before, and how Alex and Vasquez had encouraged agents to space out their drinking with water in case they had to spring into action. If the mayor was right, that might not have been their best option. Pam only drank Perrier at these kinds of things, which probably explained why she was in the minority in having woken up alone in her own bed.
She turned off the TV and sipped her coffee thoughtfully. If the DEO had been affected even a fraction as much as the city, she was still going to have a lot of traumatized agents on her hands.
This was going to require a lot of cookies.
///
When Alex’s quiet watch alarm went off at six, she had slipped out of bed, changed into her running clothes, turned on the coffee machine and trotted out into the dark morning streets still lit by streetlights. She started at a slow jog, heading toward the park, took the small incline at a slightly brisker pace before slowing for the hill up Archer Street.
She heard the noises coming from behind the bushes in the park before she registered what they might actually be and, at first, she assumed someone was hurt. She rushed through the park entrance and ran past the water fountain only to find—
A pile of writhing naked bodies. She stopped short, went through her options, decided not to call the police, turned around and ran out of the park and down the other side of Archer Street, took the turn at Selkirk past the parking lot behind the liquor store and this time at least there were peals of drunken laughter that made her slow her pace. She took this path every morning. No one was ever awake and certainly not groups.
So, when she saw the maybe college-age naked young men taking turns kneeling down in front of the extremely well built naked possible football player, she thought immediately of Lena Luthor’s truncated version of the movement from coincidence to pattern, and she turned toward her apartment and sped home.
///
Vasquez woke when she heard Alex coming in and thought it odd that she was early. She bolted out of bed and was buttoning her black shirt when Alex came in looking freaked out.
Immediately, Vasquez said, “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. I’ll pour a thermos of coffee. You just get dressed.”
Vasquez turned on the television and saw what the early news was reporting. Yeah, that tracked. She turned it off, poured the coffee and the cream into their large thermos, grabbed her VW keys and was waiting by the door when Alex came over pulling on her black jacket.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Channel Seven is already blaming Max. Let’s go.”
And on the short drive to the DEO, they got a few eyefuls of the citizens of National City, definitely not abiding by the law.
Chapter 94: Disguise Fair Nature with Hard-favour'd Rage, Nov. 5, 2020
Chapter Text
Maggie arrived at her precinct of the NCPD Science Division on the morning after the election expecting to process the few dozen people who had been arrested for threatening aliens or similar. That... was not what she had had to deal with. Luckily, few aliens seemed to have been affected by whatever had caused post-election orgiastic misdemeanors, but several had been caught filming humans in flagrante delicto and that was something the mayor and her own captain were absolutely not granting leniency for, and she was pretty sure she knew why, but was smart enough not to say anything about it.
Relationship therapists and divorce lawyers were going to clean up on this one.
Lucy and she had had an interesting night together after the party, but in the privacy of Maggie’s apartment, and when Lucy had been urgently called back to Nevada at dawn, they both assumed it had to do with some breach in containment and they had showered together, kissed goodbye and gotten on with their jobs.
Joe came in looking like he had a hangover, but when Maggie quietly asked him about it, he had basically communicated in his own unique way that the whole damn city smelled of sex and he really wanted to just throw up. And there wasn’t a thing she could do for him.
Lucy texted briefly that containment had not, in fact, been the problem and that Lt. Col. Lane was going to need “a whole lot of cookies to deal with this shit.” And Maggie couldn’t help her either.
And then, around 5 pm, just as she had been preparing to go home, the captain had called her in and ordered her to take on this case as another incident of domestic terrorism and she had lost her shit, arguing that she already had way too much on her hands and his and the mayor’s embarrassment, and that of many other prominent citizens, was not a case of terrorism but something much more akin to a prank, even if it was Max Lord’s fault. Again.
And that had shut him up fast, which had surprised her, so she just took the win and went home.
And it wasn’t until she was back on the sixth floor the following day that she realized that she hadn’t seen Reynolds at all, but by that time, she was finally getting to read through the arson reports that Captain Rodriguez had brought them, so she didn’t think much about it. There had been a partial print on the remains of the battery found at LCorp and it really, really looked like it might have belonged to Lex Luthor.
And that led her back to the DEO.
///
The former assassin worked in his “lab” trying to come up with a way to get rid of his boss’s most recent annoyance, but he wasn’t having much luck. He tried the Necronomicon, The Book of Solomon, and even one of those old 1970s Dungeons and Dragons manuals, but none of them had what he was looking for. Part of the problem was that the Dominion Voting Machines had lots of steel components, and steel was made in part from iron, and iron was resistant to magic, but he had seen ways to get around that in the past.
He paced back and forth, considering his options. His boss was... impatient about failure, but hell, really, weren’t they all?
Supervillains, demons, dark lords, tech CEOs: they were all cut from the same cloth, with the same tendency to monologue at just the wrong moment. He had worked very hard to root those same characteristics out of himself. True villainy required patience, hard work and a little self-care. You couldn’t burn the world to the ground if you skipped steps or failed to hydrate, after all.
He flipped on the television to watch footage of Stop the Steal protests taking place across the country, but he had told his boss from the beginning. You couldn’t rely on humans to not thwart your evil plan. Humans thwarted. That was just human nature. You could immerse a kingdom in evil for a few years, sure, but then they would just rise up against you en masse and thwart. You couldn’t rely on protests. You needed a solid plan.
Well, he had a plan. He just hadn’t yet found a way to bring it to fruition. If he couldn’t hack the voting machines, he was going to need a really strong summoning spell. And he knew where to find one, though it would take a lot of digging. His boss hadn’t wanted him to leave the base because of all the surveillance cameras that were everywhere these days, but before moving in here all those months ago, he had planned ahead and brought with him a broadbrimmed hat, glasses and a bushy fake beard. Because, sure, everybody knew that glasses were a great disguise, but when you had his chiseled good looks, you couldn’t be too careful about staying off the radar.
///
Dr. Vanessa Hudgins, DEO Crime Scene Senior Analyst, didn’t get angry. She was famous for it. She had a front-row seat, so to speak, on the human predicament and what sorts of things were left over when humans got angry.
Blood, sweat, hair. Semen. Venom. Poison.
Adipocere, also known as corpse wax, the organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat, such as the body fat of corpses.
Like that.
So, two days after the election, when the agents who had presumably been compromised by whatever-fresh-hell-this-was kept coming by her office and asking her if she had figured it out yet, she had gone to the computer and printed out a sign that said that she was out of the office collecting samples in regard to the post-election citywide public health threat and would not be reachable until Friday at the earliest. She had taped it to her door and gone back inside and locked the door.
The agents, she knew, were worried about all the crazy public sex that many of them had had and what might have caused it and who they could tear limb from limb. She should have such problems.
Instead, she had 325 water samples from the reservoir, Town Hall, Dollywood etc., etc. that she was going to have to test quickly and accurately, and if her early testing was anything to go by, the mayor was in fact wrong about there having been something in the water.
Hydrogen, sure. Oxygen, definitely. Regular pollutants, traces of lead etc., of course.
But no substance of Earth that was known to cause decreased inhibition or increased blood circulation or adrenaline, the classic biomarkers for things considered to have aphrodisiacal properties. But she knew that there were professors at National University who might know about substances from other planets that she might not know how to test for.
She peeled off her lab coat and threw on her overcoat, stuffed a few folders into her briefcase and pulled out a broad red marker. She stepped out of the lab, closed the door, and locked it and then underlined all the all-caps, bolded words on her sign, tucked the marker into her pocket and stomped off to the parking garage.
Dr. Hudgins did not get angry. But she was known for her very clear signage.
///
The day of the election, Max had had a brainstorm and had spent the day in his personal lab testing some hypotheses. He had voted by mail weeks earlier and didn’t want to think about what was happening in National City or in the country as a whole. He had more important things to think about.
It had started with the file that Brendan had shown him about how the FBI (and presumably the DEO) apparently considered him an unwitting dupe for Cadmus. Although Max was known for his inflated self-regard and passion for sick tech, he also tried hard to learn from his mistakes. Hadn’t he halted building the hackable prosthetics immediately? And danced with Cat Grant even though the woman had shown up to the Metropolis Gala in butch drag?
And he knew that his own... experiences with Lillian (although presumably not nearly as interesting as Cat’s probably were) had perhaps been the product of her immense mind applying his technology in ways he had never dreamed. He thought back to the riot in National City when Cadmus had teamed up with the Ku Klux Klan to make an anti-alien statement with some of those National City residents who had gotten prosthetics from him after the Battle of National City. He had watched the footage of some of those citizens executing flying kicks that had a lot more than just hang time, and he had been pretty sure that was just impossible without some way to counteract Earth’s gravity.
And that had given him two ideas.
The first had been a way to counteract gravity in brief, seconds-long spurts, just enough to extend hang time similarly to what Lillian and her Cadmus scientists had possibly figured out but, crucially, had not patented, being a domestic terrorist organization after all.
The second thought was about that knockout drug she had given him that had made him feel... things. For Lillian. And even after those initial feelings had faded and she had stopped giving him those annoyed looks he still had found that he didn’t want to leave. He had chosen to ignore his own company for a few months before he finally shook himself and talked her into letting him go back to his own offices and keep working on her project from there.
Lately, the weird fantasies he had been having about Cat and Lillian felt a bit like that. He remembered one of the failures when they had been trying to make pink kryptonite two years back, the ones that seemed to make his lab workers... take extra breaks together, before he confiscated those test samples and locked them away in his safe.
And in the days after the election, it would eventually occur to him that asking Brendan to make sure that the samples were still in the safe and bring one of them to him at his condo had possibly been a little... under-thought-through.
On the other hand, he had a pretty good alibi that helped to convince National City that Max Lord had also been a victim of whatever the hell had happened to so many people on the night after the election. And a new appreciation for yet more of Brendan’s very fine assets.
///
Cat Grant interviewed Mayor Tucker personally. She had known the man in different capacities for years as he had worked his way up the political ladder of National City, first as an alderman and later as a councilman, etc. And he was generally a very straightforward man, a husband and father of two middle-schoolers, pro-alien, pro-Supergirl, big on small business, but also willing to help big businesses that made their home in National City (CatCo, LCorp, EdgeTech, LordTech, etc.) as long as they paid their fair share via a mix of taxes and philanthropy, employment and sustainability programs.
And he had always interviewed well, with solid sound bites that she could use, with wit and pragmatism and a hard-nosed kindness that she had always approved of. The alien foodways program had been his idea, and although it had gotten derailed by the pandemic, Cat thought that, once they could vaccinate everybody, it would gain traction.
This man that she saw before her on Thursday afternoon after the election, this stuttering, exhausted heap of a man who had apparently not shaved for two days? This man she did not recognize. The moment she and her videographer had walked into his office, she had told Mick? Mike? The cameraman. She had told him to go back to CatCo.
And she had asked questions that the mayor evaded or only partially answered, and she knew that there was definitely a story there, but it was not in the interest of National City that she tell it, unless she first managed it. She gave him one of the cards that she always kept in her card case and told him that she would give Ms. Morgan a heads-up so that she would be expecting his call.
Then she went back to CatCo, told Eve’s replacement to supply her with a double espresso latte every hour on the hour until five and sat down at her laptop and began to write.
///
Lex paced in his underground lab, annoyed with himself and half-seriously wishing he smoked so he could have something to do with his hands but also to have something better to feel guilty about than what he had done on election night. It was petty and unworthy of him, taking advantage of his own species to prove himself superior once again. Surely, such antics were beneath him.
On the other hand, it had worked quite well as a proof of concept. When people who knew you well didn’t recognize you when you were right in front of them wearing an image inducer, you knew the prototype worked. It had even worked for the small battalion of greenies he’d sent to election parties across the city. No one had recognized them.
And having CatCo and much of the city blaming Maxwell Lord for his device’s rather awkward side effects on people who came within range of its frequencies? Icing on the cake.
///
Lt. Col. Lucy Lane stood in the command center at the Basement in Nevada watching the news play out.
In Detroit, more than two hundred protesters, many without masks and some armed with pistols, rallied outside the tally room at TCF Center as Biden and Harris took the lead in the vote count for the state. Phil Robinson, founder of Michigan Liberty Militia, which had been deemed an "extreme anti-government group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he was at the rally to fight tyranny and fraud. In Youngstown, Ohio, fifty pro-Trump protesters rallied outside the WKBN TV news station. Protect the Results Mahoning Valley called the pro-Trump protests "violent" and said they were organized at the request of the president. Pro-Trump protests were held in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. In Arizona, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones called on protesters to "surround the White House and support the President."
Lucy Lane growled low in her throat, causing nearby agents to suddenly find other places they needed to be, but mainly that was because she had had to write up almost a hundred agents for the post-election fraternizing, yeah, let’s call it that, which had happened in her absence. All over the base. The two agents forced to watch the surveillance, who called her in after realizing it wasn’t just a few people acting up, had volunteered to go to National City to have former Director J’onzz erase their memory of the night. She was considering emailing J’onn to ask if that was something he could do.
And that was bad. It was. But then her provost in charge of all the prisoners came to her complaining about a glitch. He had computer and paper records for 343 prisoners: 237 non-volatile aliens, 14 volatile aliens, and 92 humans or unknown species. But during the morning roll call, they had counted 344 prisoners.
She stared at him. “We have... an extra?”
“Um, yes, ma’am, it seems that way.”
“And you have no paperwork on them?”
“No, ma’am. Nothing.”
“So who? And how...?”
“We asked him, ma’am, who he is. He said and I quote, ‘I’m in your custody, sonny. If you don’t know who I am, I’m surely not going to tell you.’”
“Sonny? He’s older?”
“That’s the thing, ma’am. I’d gauge him at early thirties.”
“Take a picture and do face recognition. Where is he?”
“In solitary.”
“How do you accidentally lose someone in solitary, Tailor?”
“We didn’t lose him, ma’am. Technically, we found him.”
She growled again.
He said, “Yes, Colonel. I’m on it, ma’am!”
Lucy Lane felt a headache coming on. It was not her first since Tuesday.
Chapter 95: And Teach Them How to War
Chapter Text
Gideon waited patiently as the team, wearing Barnes Family Vacation baseball shirts boarded the Waverider, still on a high after having returned Tricky Dick Nixon to his lying ways in 1973. They were high-fiving and joking around, although Ray’s phone pinged and when he read his text, he frowned.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “Nora is in trouble in 2019. Could you drop me off there before you do whatever is your next mission?”
Sara caught Gideon’s eye and said, “Okay, G, you look like you already know our next mission. Are we going to need the Atom for this one?”
“Surprisingly, no. And 2019 is, strictly speaking on our way to our next mission, which is in 2020.”
Nate joked, “Didn’t the doctor warn Marty McFly not to go to 2020?”
“He did,” said Gideon. “Primarily because the film’s director, Bob Zemeckis, and Rip Hunter went on a drinking binge in 1984. And you did not hear that from me.”
“Wait, so 2020 is—” stuttered Nate.
“Bad,” said Gideon. “But it is about to get so much worse. Someone has managed to open up a rift in time and slide some bad actors into the mix. And I don’t mean William Shatner.”
“Okay, Gideon, let’s drop Ray off in 2019 and set off to 2020. At least we won’t need to replicate new clothes for this one.”
“Mm. Clothes, no. Masks and vaccinations? Oh, yes.”
///
Sara Lance had to make a call, and she was absolutely not going to make it from the bridge under the prying eyes of the people who called her captain. She went to the jumpship with a cup of Ray’s chamomile tea, schooled her face and called the DEO in 2020. To her complete lack of surprise, the person who answered the call was Alex’s girlfriend/ex-girlfriend that Sara had met at Lois and Clark’s wedding.
“Agent Vasquez, is Director Danvers available?” Sara asked. “I have some bad news from the Waverider.”
The woman frowned. Then Alex Danvers stepped into the screen next to her. “Captain Lance, to what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Nothing good. We’ve tracked a time rift in Nevada, where our AI tells us you have a hidden containment facility. We’re pretty sure some bad actors from the timestream have infiltrated it.”
“I see.” She turned to look at Vasquez who shrugged, bent down and then stood back up and handed her a brown folder. “Gimme a sec.” Alex flipped through the folder, nodding to herself. Then she said, “You and Director Sharpe have already signed the NDAs, but if the rest of the team is going to be in on the DEO’s secrets, they’re going to have go talk to Pam before you go talk to Lucy.”
Sara was impressed. Neither woman had batted an eye. “And how is Major Lane these days?”
“Well, first, a lieutenant colonel and second, overworked, and third, probably pissed that this happened, but it’s not like we didn’t know something like this was a possibility.”
“Perhaps you could give her a call, soften her up for us? Also, would it be possible to land the Waverider on your roof?”
Vasquez turned away and said, “Finn and Olsen, go take the Blackhawks over the city in Pattern 6-Alpha. Take Chen and Jordan as spotters. I’ll let you know when we get your landing space back.”
Alex smiled. “Done and done. Give them ten minutes to get out and our roof is your roof.”
///
Pam had taken time off on Wednesday morning to bake ten dozen chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, these with orange zest and orange juice because special traumas required special cookies. She would make more in the evening, but this was what she could do with what she had on hand. She pulled out all her Christmas tins and packed the cookies up, only stealing one for herself.
Well, she had to taste test them, didn’t she? And she had expended a lot of calories baking them.
When she got to the DEO, she spent half an hour putting a tin in every breakroom, planning on collecting the empty tins in about an hour and a half.
She had done that every day all week. Now on Friday, every time she ran into agents, they grinned and thanked her. Much better than the hangdog expressions that had been rampant on Wednesday. She brought the last of the tins directly to the command center just in time to see the director and assistant director carrying stacks of Vasquez’s ubiquitous brown folders into the director’s office. Well, she could come back later, drop them off when she was picking up empties in an hour or two.
In the meantime, she returned to her office and read the email from Vasquez and then excitedly readied the usual NDAs for the Time Bureau’s resident historian, hacker, master of the dark arts and former Fate. Then she got out her autograph book.
Yes, Pam was a consummate HR professional, but she was also a nerd and her position at the DEO gave her the perfect opportunity to get the John Hancocks of a wide assortment of superheroes.
///
Vasquez closed the eighth folder and dropped it onto the pile on the floor in front of Alex’s desk. Predicting contemporaneous threats was one thing. Trying to predict who of everyone from the past, present and future might suddenly want to horn in on the 2020 pandemic-election-total-social-breakdown of their country was quite another. She was starting to get a headache.
Alex’s phone ran with Lucy’s ringtone. Alex picked up and winced, and Vasquez couldn’t make out all the words as Alex quickly shifted to plugging the phone into her Bose headphones, but it didn’t sound good. Normally, Lucy Lane was a good soldier, and good soldiers didn’t, as a rule, yell at their commanding officers, so Vasquez suspected something extreme, so she picked up the discarded folders and made herself scarce.
She carried them back to the command center and filed them alphabetically in the file cabinet under her workstation, idly noticing Supergirl pacing awkwardly.
And Supergirl could be socially awkward sure, although that was much more likely to be Kara doing that, but the superhero? No.
She almost seemed physically uncomfortable, like simply walking was—
Oh. Citywide orgy.
Red sun lamps?
Well, not that Supergirl would ever sleep with anyone but Lena, of course.
But what had James muttered about Lena’s purple dick? Because Vasquez had thought he was being metaphorical. But maybe not.
She wondered if Lena had... equipment from the same Good Vibes set that Alex and Vasquez used. They had only ever gone up to yellow... Oh. Okay.
Vasquez closed and locked the file drawer and went over to Supergirl. “Ma’am? Walk with me?”
Together they turned and ambled down the hall. Vasquez gestured to the elevator and hit the button for the training room that Supergirl used when she needed to blow off steam. Surely, maintenance had brought in new concrete blocks, cleaned out the dust? Or had the election gotten in the way of that schedule?
They walked in and Vasquez saw that they had cleared out the broken pieces but not replaced them. Fair enough. As the door closed behind them, Vasquez said, “Hey, Supergirl, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Supergirl wrang her hands, huffed, walked over to the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor. Vasquez came and sat next to her, saying nothing, just waiting.
Finally, Supergirl said, “Being three different people. It’s not hard, not really, as long as I can keep them separate.”
“Three?”
“Kara Danvers, Supergirl and Kara Zor-El.”
“I don’t know that I’ve met Kara Zor-El.”
“I don’t imagine you have. Eliza and Alex know her well. Kal—Well, Clark sort of knew her once... Lena’s been getting to know her. And sometimes I feel like Maggie sort of intuits her instinctively.”
“I’m a detective; I detect.”
“Mm. Kara Zor-El’s got so much the others take for granted and so much the others are forced to hide. And that’s an exhausting way to live.”
“Okay.”
Supergirl was quiet for a while. Finally, she said, “Something happened last night, something I don’t remember too clearly...”
“Something sexual?”
Supergirl sighed. “I woke up in Lena’s blouse. She was wearing my suit. Well. Most of my suit.”
Vasquez’s mind filled in the missing pieces of that particular Gestalt. “Ah. How do you feel about that?”
“Kinda weird? Like was that one of those bizarre power things that humans do, mock-controlling each other for kicks?”
Vasquez thought about it very seriously. “Well, Lena has a great deal of control at LCorp, both institutionally and in terms of her very intentionally nurtured human social capital. And I think she has worked hard to achieve that to make up for how her family (while she was growing up) and how Lex (since his break) have made her feel not in control of her life and bodily safety. But even so, her mother has twisted that in ways that made her feel unsafe again lately—in the prison, at Haystack Mountain, all the Cadmus shenanigans. And when those things happened, it was Supergirl who saved her. Every time. At great risk to hers—yourself.”
Kara shrugged. Vasquez knew she would do it again, over and over, for the rest of their lives, willingly and without counting the cost, possibly because she could not take the cost to herself seriously when she set that against the risk of her losing Lena. Vasquez thought some more and then tried again. “Maybe... she wants to be the strong one. Not just to save herself, but to save you, both you. All of you. Wow, you’re right. This is hard to talk about.”
“Yeah. But does that mean she wants me to be the weak one?”
“Is that how you think about her? That she’s the ‘weak one’?”
“Oh, gosh! Rao, no! Of course not!” She thought about that. “Then why did I say it?”
“Well, I did say the strong one. You’re used to human binaries. I don’t think you can judge yourself for that.”
“Do you think she wants our relationship to change?”
Vasquez opened her mouth to say probably not, but she forced herself to stop and think about it. “I think... I think Lena is her own kind of superhero. Very human, yes. But she seemed, seems... When I knew her as Lee, she always seemed comfortable with ambiguities, amused by them even. Very willing to embrace them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t really know how to talk about this with you. It’s hard enough with Alex...”
“After Midvale, Lena had me watch that first episode of The L Word, the one where Alice explains the chart and the problem of small populations. She told me that you had saved her from a guy who she had turned down, even though you were limping slowly on your cane, were in a lot of pain, but you just took him out with extreme prejudice like the badass that I know you are but she wasn’t really prepared for.”
“Yeah, a cane is a very sneaky weapon. People are never prepared for that.”
“You’ve done that more than once?”
Vasquez sighed. “People are shit. I’m a Marine.” She shrugged.
“Okay. I also understand Lena may have thanked you very thoroughly. I think a Persian rug may have come up in the conversation but let me make it very clear that I NEVER want to hear the details.” Kara gave her a weak smile.
“Yeah, that rug... So yeah, on one level, I suppose you could say I saved her. But it would be... I don’t know. More true? More accurate? To say she saved me. You’ve seen my scar, ten years on, pale and not scary looking, not new. What it looked like back then? I hated it. I hated the cane. I hated myself. I hated aliens. But Lee, she kissed the scar and said she was grateful for it because it had brought me to London, to her. And the cane is what I used to protect her. And she just...”
Vasquez felt the hot tears slide down her cheeks at the memory.
Quietly, Supergirl said, “Back in Midvale, you said she gave you back to yourself.”
“That’s... what it feels like.”
“So maybe... that’s what she needs from me. I can save her and protect her or catch her when she falls, but she needs more than that. I just... don’t know how to do that.”
“I doubt she did either. She just followed her instincts.”
“Followed her heart?”
“Lee, Lena has an awfully big heart. So do you, Little Danvers.”
“So do you, Big Sister Vasquez. You do know that you are one of my favorite humans, right? And that I really want to be in the wedding when you marry my sister? And also, when are you going to get around to that?”
“You, I. We? But. Um. Can we get through this election first?”
///
Back at his People’s playdatespace the other night, Krypto had found himself answering an authoritative Kryptonian whistle, only to be patted on the head by someone who looked like a non-Terran but didn’t smell like one, and not long after that he had been hurried in to one of the big people-carrying things and Kara and Soft-Hands had brought him home. And he kept shaking his head and pawing at his ears because it felt like there was a high-pitched whine happening, but Kara and Soft-Hands had traded fur and then there was mating, and they had gone back to the Room and started making mating noises again and he just couldn’t. He went out to the balcony and stood with his paws on the edge looking out at the lights.
There was something he had been thinking about for a long time. Scruffy always gave him peanabttrkrkrz when he could pause in the middle of a jump, more crkkrz for a longer pause and so when no one was around, he had practiced. Also, he had watched that funny documentary about Kal-El and that really bad TV show about Kara and he was beginning to think that flying was just a really extended and controlled pause, except while moving.
And he really needed to get away from that whine.
So he nosed the door further open, went back through the living room and galloped through the door, kicked off from the balcony and sailed over it.
And he had a moment when he thought that might have been a really terrible idea, but the thought galvanized him to pump his legs like that Rudolph fellow and he stabilized into a graceful, slow fall and landed running into one of the parks of National City.
After that, he just followed the sounds of Terran hounds howling into the night. Some of those howls sounded female and in need of a Good Dog. He bounded off in their direction.
///
Sammy St. Germaine was attending National City University to be a vet tech, and he volunteered in one of the city’s bigger no-kill shelters on evenings and weekends. He loved furry people and was cool with green and purple people, especially after a short toke. So he was friends, after a fashion, with Brian whatsisname, who had worked there for a while before he got his big break working as an EMT. When the dog-catchers came in on Thursday with a batch of stray dogs who had been doing, well, the same thing apparently the humans had been doing, except a lot more loudly, they had hosed the dogs down and separated them.
But the catchers told of a middle-sized white dog that was just hella fast and maybe impervious to the sedatives they had tried shooting it with. Somebody wondered out loud, jokingly, if the dog might be an alien.
Sammy had a small brain fart and dialed Brian, told him the sitch, asked him for advice.
And by the time Brian got there, they had the crazy doggo in a net and the net wasn’t holding, but he said the dog was his friend’s and he would get him home. Cool.
///
Agent Chen worked hard to keep his jaw from dropping when the timeship appeared out of nowhere just long enough to land, disgorge its passengers and disappear again. He did his best to remain nonchalant as he greeted Captain Lance and her crew and led them down to Pam in Human Resources, after which he went down to the men’s locker room off the training gym and completely lost his cool.
Time travel too? The world was much weirder than he had thought, and he had seen some truly weird things over the last few years. Sometimes he thought his head was going to explode.
Not a lot. But a little bit, yeah.
Chapter 96: Tears of Relief, Nov. 7, 2020
Chapter Text
Jess didn’t know how she had made it to Saturday morning. Election night, she had gone home with Holtzy for the first time, and they had made it from the door to Holtzy’s queen-size bed, but only just, and only after leaving bits and pieces of their clothes tossed over prototypes, stacks of engineering journals and some actually very nice furniture. Jess had surprised herself at just how much she wanted to be naked all over her girlfriend. At one point, Holtzy had done something with her tongue that had turned Jess on at the same time as it had made her ridiculously embarrassed, but Holtzy didn’t seem to care that Jess couldn’t bring herself to return the favor, at least not that way.
And of course, the next morning, they realized that the intensity of their lovemaking maybe had not been strictly about their strong feelings for each other.
Later that day, Brian had called to let Lena know that he had Krypto, and should he drop the dog off at LCorp? So then Jess had had a very tired-looking alien dog underfoot for the rest of the day, when Lena had returned from a meeting to see him and found out that he had jumped off the balcony of her condo and possibly flown, and then apparently found a pack of dogs mating...
Krypto spend the rest of that day under Jess’s desk, hiding his eyes with his paws. That’s where he was when Kara came to bring him home, Lena listening to engineer reports well into the evening.
And Krypto wasn’t the only one to look a bit under the weather. When Jess saw Winn briefly on Thursday afternoon, when she went down to Lena’s group’s lab to get Lena’s signature on something, he had mentioned getting a parking ticket on Wednesday, and it had taken her until Friday to figure out what he really meant and then only because some HR people were snickering in the elevators about employees having “moving violations.” As if the entire DEO gossiping about what Winn and James got up to in the men’s room shouldn’t have been embarrassing enough. Men.
///
Alex was in her office on a Zoom call Friday evening with her regional assistant directors and their HR people when her phone buzzed, and she glanced down at the text.
AgentGreen: Krypto can fly.
She stared at the phone, forwarded the text to Vasquez and replied to the question. “Yes, of course, that has made everything more complicated, Agent Miller. Well, the prime suspect, Max Lord, is claiming that he didn’t do it and that in fact he also found himself in an embarrassing situation with an employee and for once, I’m inclined to believe him. That embarrassment looked real. He looked horrified at himself.”
Miller snorted. “He’s a player. He’s never been accused of sexual harassment before, but we know he gets all the ladies.”
“Mm. Yes, the ladies. That doesn’t seem to be at issue here. My point is that our Crime Scene Senior Analyst has tested hundreds of samples for any Earth compounds that might have caused those kinds of symptoms. She has been liaising with astroxenobiologists all over the country for alien compounds. But all those conversations take time.”
Her phone buzzed again.
AgentGreen: We found out because he jumped off the balcony to go mate.
She forwarded it to Vasquez before the ramifications hit her. Frowning, she said, “Most of the affected citizens we’ve talked to have been human. We’re still waiting to see if any aliens have also been affected. We know that Lex used pink kryptonite years ago to attempt to embarrass Superman. I’m wondering if we have a similar prank happening here, something targeted to one person or group that went astray somehow. The point remains. The DEO has to have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment, and it should be fairly uniform. I’ve sent you our HR specialist’s recommendations. I want proposals.”
Her phone buzzed again.
AgentGreen: He might know what was affecting us.
Alex said, “Finally! Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we may have a lead. I want to jump on this witness immediately. Thank you for your time.”
///
When Vasquez called Winn and told him to come in on Saturday morning, at first, he was cranky. He had planned to relax, play some video games, maybe watch a football game. But when he got to the DEO and heard about Krypto, his mood rose considerably. He met them all down in the training room where all the agility equipment was set up. Kara and Lena were already there with Krypto, Alex and Vasquez.
Krypto was lying on the floor, looking absolutely dejected, whimpering what sounded to Winn like a six-year-old howling, “But I didn’t meeeean to!”
Lena looked embarrassed. She spoke in fluent Kryptonese, something about her fear for him when she realized he had gotten lost, and she hadn’t known because she and Kara had both thought the other had had him with her—something like that. And Kara had muttered something about the balcony, and he thought it was the subjunctive, maybe what if it hadn’t worked? And Krypto just looked like he wanted to shrink down small and disappear, so Winn sat down next to him and offered him a treat, but he wouldn’t take it. Winn pulled out the peanut butter crackers, but Krypto just got up and plodded behind one of the walls he routinely walked along. He probably didn’t realize that his white tail was sticking out, still visible. Alex looked at Vasquez and it almost looked like those two were reading each other’s minds. Vasquez said, “Guys, let’s go up to the conference room and put our heads together. Krypto needs some time to process all your feelings. C’mon. Let’s go.” And she herded them out, but Winn realized that Alex was staying behind.
///
Krypto was sad. He had made Soft-Hands sad and Kara afraid and Scruffy didn’t know that Krypto had been bad, so he was still being nice because he thought Krypto was a Good Dog, but Krypto was pretty sure he was a Bad Dog. And he couldn’t bear the idea of letting down his Pack.
He heard them all leave him behind and that made him even sadder. He sat up, lifted his head and howled his agony in the big room.
In response, he heard a whistle calling him. He peered around the wall and saw Whistler sitting on the floor, flipping through her talking device. She glanced over at him and patted the floor next to her, still flipping through her phone. Slowly, he came and sat down next to her. She did something to the device and turned it toward him. It was a very small likeness of Kara, dripping wet.
He barked, “Kara?”
“Kara. Friend Krypto know Earth-Kara and Krypt-Kara. This day, Earth-Kara grew Krypt-Kara. Whistler feared. Earth humans feared Krypt-Kara. Whistler feared Earth humans hurt Krypt-Kara. Understand?”
“Immediately.”
“Friend Krypto gone time, Pack fear. Maybe Earth humans hurt Friend Krypto. Understand?”
“Immediately. Sad.”
“Fear from love. Pack love Friend Krypto, like Whistler love Krypt-Kara. Understand?”
“Krypto love Krypt-Kara! Krypto love Pack! Krypto love Soft-Hands! Krypto love Whistler!”
“Whistler understand. Whistler love Friend Krypto.”
Krypto looked at the door and then back at Whistler. “Scruffy think Krypto Good Boy. Krypto not Good Boy.”
Whistler snorted. “Scruffy also feel urge to mate. Scruffy understand Friend Krypto.”
“Scruffy fly also?”
“Negative. Just mate. But not understand why, not understand cause.”
“Cause?”
“Feeling?”
“Buzz, very loud. Krypto need to go.”
“Buzz? Meaning?”
Krypto pawed at his ears and shook his head.
“Buzz a sound?” asked Whistler.
“Loud sound. Very bad. Krypto need to go.”
“Whistler tomorrow search for sound, for bzz. Whistler tomorrow find cause. Cause-found time, Kara and Soft-Hands tomorrow know Friend Krypto Good Boy.”
“Whistler help Krypto?”
“Immediately.”
Krypto put his paws on Whistler ’s shoulders and licked her face very thoroughly.
///
As Vasquez herded them all up to the conference room off the command center, she contemplated human nature; in this circumstance, she categorized Kara as human, because it was just too difficult to figure out whether all sentient creatures dealt with the so-called less evolved species similarly: they brought the worst out of bad people and the best out of good people. And as Vasquez’s girlfriend’s sister, and girlfriend’s sister’s fiancée and former best friend took their places around the long table, Vasquez looked around at a small, dear bunch of good people, who had lashed out at a non-human animal out of fear and guilt and love and were feeling horrible about it.
Lena said, “I can’t believe we didn’t realize he was gone.” She sounded distraught. It brought her Irish accent out.
Kara said, “I left first, thinking you would walk him, and you thought I’d brought him into the DEO. He’s never done anything anywhere close to flying, has he, Winn?”
“Three-point-eight seconds hang time in the longest jump I’ve seen him do. I would never have expected flight based on that.”
“And I’ve never seen him sleep-fly or even sleep-levitate,” said Kara. “So I figured he wasn’t like me.”
Winn and Vasquez stared at her and then turned and stared at Lena, who just shook her head. “Don’t ask. It doesn’t happen very often, thankfully.”
“The weighted blankets help,” said Kara, “but anyway, he gave us no signs of this.”
“He described hearing something,” said Lena quickly, “that made him want to get out of the apartment. We had left the door to the balcony open after... Well, he said something about ‘pinaburkas’? I don’t know that word. It doesn’t sound like Kryptonese.”
Kara shook her head.
Winn frowned and then laughed and then pulled the package of peanut butter crackers out of his sweater pocket, shrugging guiltily. “It’s his favorite treat. I give it to him when he does something really good.”
“Like long hang time?” asked Vasquez.
“Er, yes?”
“Okay, so now we have motive, means and opportunity. This hearing something. Did he say what?”
Lena said, “Loud bad sound. He pawed at his ears even thinking about it.”
“The word he used, I’m not sure what the English equivalent would be. Chirp? Buzz?”
“Like an insect?” asked Winn.
“Maybe? Honestly, I don’t remember what Kryptonian insects sounded like. I mean we had them, but I lived in the city, and it’s been so long...” She looked a little lost at the thought.
“Okay, people. We’ll see what Alex manages to get out of him—”
Lena frowned. “You talk like she’s conducting a prisoner interrogation...”
“Lena, no, I—”
Just then Alex came in, looking thoughtful. “Lena, maybe it’s because cops always take you for a Luthor, so when you’ve been interrogated, they always go at you as Bad Cops. I happen to be a very Good Cop.”
“Did he talk?” asked Winn.
“A bit. At some point, we might want to get Joe to talk to him, maybe get more nuance out of him, find out if there was a smell involved too? But we have a buzz, probably high pitched since it bothered his ears. I’m thinking we should go over your condo and rule out any mechanical sounds there and after that get Doc Hamilton to do a hearing test on him, find out what frequency bothers him, see if he can tell us what the frequency was, go from there.” She stood up. Noticing the crackers on the table, she said, “And you know, Winn, you might want to share your own experience with him, so he knows he’s not the only one.”
“Wait, you told Krypto that I—”
“Went over a balcony to go mate? And apparently got a ‘parking ticket’ for it? Yes, I did. You have a problem with that? Who is he going to tell? We’re the only ones who can talk to him besides Joe and we all know what you’ve been doing for the past several weeks in the men’s room or, hell, in a dark corner of Dollywood. The whole DEO knows what you guys have been doing. This is the part you’re going to be embarrassed about? That a dog knows?”
Winn opened his mouth and closed it again. Supergirl stood up and left the room. Lena raised the Eyebrow at him, saying nothing she hadn’t already said on Game Night.
Winn picked up the crackers and tucked them into his pocket. “Well, now. I guess I’ll go have the talk with a dog.”
He walked out with his shoulders still a little scrunched up defensively.
Vasquez looked at Lena and Alex. “Well, it’s a start.”
///
Supergirl flew to the Fortress of Solitude and scoured the computer there for information on Kryptonian insects, but there wasn’t much there, just names, pictures and whether or not the species stung. There was no information on the noises they might make. Sighing in frustration, she pulled her phone out of her boot and texted Astra. Then she waved at the icy sculptures of her ancestors and flew back to National City.
She landed at the DEO and let Alex know about her lack of success, then changed and headed out to pick up groceries. As she got off the bus outside Trader Joe’s, she saw families with signs that said, “HONK 4 BIDEN” and “LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL.” Cars kept passing and the honking was deafening. She stood there listening to the symphony of honks and she felt herself tearing up, fogging her glasses and sniffling into her mask. She sat down suddenly on a park bench and just found herself sobbing uncontrollably.
A small voice said, “Ma’am? Are you okay, ma’am?”
Kara looked up to see a little girl in a Girl Scout uniform shirt and pink pants with Supergirl sneakers. “I’m, I’m okay. I’m okay now. We got through it.”
The girl nodded. “My mom says that we’re going to be safe now. The new president is going to make the Covid go away and we’re going to get shots to protect us.”
Kara sniffed and took off her glasses and wiped them on her shirt tail. “We are. Doctors have been working hard on that all year.”
The little girl patted Kara on the shoulder. “We’re going to be okay.”
Kara said, “I like your sneakers.”
The girl grinned. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a superhero.”
“Are you going to have a cape?”
“I don’t think presidents wear capes. Maybe I’ll just wear it on the weekend.” She waved to Kara and rejoined her family, waving to the people driving by and honking.
For the first time in the better part of the last four years, Kara felt a lightening of something heavy and a loosening of something tight that had been constricting her heart. The little girl was right. They were finally going to be okay.
Chapter 97: Relieved of Command
Chapter Text
Astra sat in her late sister’s house, tired and annoyed by the Council. She much preferred spending time with soldiers rather than politicians. Soldiers did as they were told.
Argo was much as she had remembered it, for both the better and the worse. The architecture was much more beautiful than the majority of what she had seen in her travels on Earth, but there was no one as stubborn as an educated Kryptonian for digging their heels in. Astra was weary of having to argue her side all the time. She felt out of place. After having lived on Earth for so long, first in hiding and then at war along with Non and their followers, and then having come back from the dead and been forced to fight as a gladiator, and then reuniting with her beloved niece, to then come to Argo to spend the last two years in meeting after meeting, she was ready to just throw it all away and go back to Earth. Argo would live or die on its own without her to try to save them. Good riddance.
She went to the food dispenser and programmed it for Earth coffee, one of her favorite things about Earth, if one didn’t count flying. Just as a steaming mug appeared, her personal communication device pinged with a text from Kara.
KZE: Hey, do you know much about Kryptonian insects? Krypto said he heard something like a buzz on a night when an awful lot of people were strongly... behaviorally affected.
A number of thoughts went through Astra’s head as she read and reread the message.
Insects?
Krypto said?
Behaviorally affected?
What was that phrase that Non had picked up from the humans? Fuck it? Astra took a long swallow of coffee and then went to sit and write out her resignation from Argo Council. Argo wasn’t home. Family was home. Astra really needed to go back home.
///
Winn sat in the command center of the DEO on Sunday, having pulled more overtime because of other long-haulers calling in exhausted. Well, he’d done that himself once or twice, so he would take the hit for the team. But watching the feeds from across the country was just depressing. In Phoenix, Arizona, hundreds of Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, protested Biden's victory, claiming that the Democratic Party had stolen the election. There were also small groups of counter-protesters. In Austintown, Ohio, hundreds of pro-Trump protesters rallied outside local businesses with the intention of marching towards the local Walmart. Ridiculous.
But at least aliens were not involved, which meant that the DEO didn’t need to get involved, at least not this time. Winn thought about Wednesday morning, waking up naked in the cramped back seat of his car with James and then that cop...
And they had scrambled to get their shorts on at least before the cop gave him a ticket, but then he’d driven them back home and they had hurried in the back way with their clothes in their arms and got changed at his place, but not before James, excited by the whole situation, had asked for Winn’s help...
And Winn couldn’t decide whether that was hot or weird. Maybe both? Thank God the cop hadn’t been a woman!
///
Pam was just about to leave for the day when she saw one last new email in her inbox and opened it to find a job application and a resume. The applicant was Astra In-Ze and the address she used was Kara’s loft. She had several decades of experience leading an army, a block of years when she had been imprisoned for treason, several years working as a gladiator on a very far-off planet, one year working as a collaborator with the DEO and then two years working as the prime adjuticator on Argo and head of the Argo City Council.
Well, then.
Under skills, she listed several Earth and alien military weapons, self-powered flight, and freeze breath.
Okay...
In her cover letter she described having burned out from politics and diplomacy. She called herself a woman of action, who needed new challenges in her life. For recommendations, she listed Director Danvers, former Director J’onzz, Kara Zor-El and Marine Sargent Vasquez.
Huh.
Pam thought, well, yes, it’s the end of the day, but it wasn’t every day that she got an alien former supervillain looking for a job with the DEO. Still, she liked to be on the safe side. She emailed the possible recommenders, just in case they had not known that they were going to be asked for recommendations, and in fact they had not. They agreed to meet with Pam the next day to discuss the application.
Pam went home, put her feet up and watched Netflix while her Lean Cuisine dinner twirled slowly in the microwave. At least, now that the election had been called for Biden and Harris, she didn’t have to make cookies every night. Pam deserved an evening off.
///
On Friday, November 13, Eliza told her extended family that the next day they were going to inter Jeremiah’s ashes in Midvale. Alex was standing looking at the feeds of Washington, DC, where protests were expected over the weekend.
“Mom, what were you thinking? I can’t leave right—”
Vasquez leaned down, pulled open the file cabinet under her station and handed her a brown manilla folder.
Alex flipped through the contents, frowning, but gradually her expression cleared. “Since when has Midvale University had a helicopter pad?”
“Last year,” said Vasquez. “Long story. I’ve got permission to land two Blackhawks in the morning as long as we’re in the air again by 2 pm.”
Alex turned to her mother, who looked worn out. “Will that be enough time, Mom?”
“It should be. It’s just us, two of his old friends and the family.”
“Wait, so just five of us?”
Eliza looked surprised. “Us, Vasquez, Lena, J’onn, Winn, Lois, Clark and Jane if she still wants to come.”
Vasquez and Alex traded looks but said nothing.
“All right,” Alex said finally. “Vas, if you can confirm, we’ll do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Vasquez marched off.
Eliza gave her daughter a perplexed look. “Is she really still so formal with you?”
Winn turned from his feeds and smiled at Dr. Danvers, Sr. “You hear Vasquez say ‘ma’am,’ Eliza. The rest of us hear her saying, ‘As you wish.’”
Alex blushed and hurried off.
Eliza frowned. “Wait, The Princess Bride?”
“Duh,” said Winn kindly.
///
Ted picked up Lena and Krypto at LCorp and drove them to the DEO, where they took the elevator up to the roof and joined the rest of the Danvers crew in one helicopter. Agent Finn flew. Lena noticed that Finn had greeted his fellow agents with grave courtesy and for some reason couldn’t meet Dr. Hamilton’s eyes. The feeling appeared to be mutual. Lena filed that away under “That’s Interesting” and spent the rest of the flight trying not to be terrified of flying when Supergirl wasn’t actually the pilot. Krypto sniffed curiously at Jane and Eliza and Lena nervously made a mental note to ask what he was sniffing for, once they came back to National City and were back on the blessed ground again.
///
The funeral director met them with two black limos as they walked quickly away from the Blackhawk. Alex and Kara went with Eliza, Lena and Krypto. Vasquez, J’onn, Winn and Dr. Hamilton went in the second. Jeremiah’s old friends, Lois, and Clark would meet them at Midvale Cemetery.
It was weird for Alex to be back in Midvale, watching the changed landscape pass them by as they drove down familiar streets with unfamiliar shops. She thought about her Saturdays spent at the shooting range when she was growing up, Jeremiah’s way to show her more attention on the days that Clark came down to help Kara learn to use her power. The smell of cordite always brought back the smell of her father’s aftershave. That used to be happy memory. She did not know what to make of it now.
They approached the small square hole, currently covered with a white cloth and bouquets of flowers. Next to it on a small table was the triangular, folded American flag. Two Army sergeants in service dress blues and white gloves stood next to it. Fifty feet behind them, three more soldiers stood holding the rifles for the salute.
Facing the flag were a dozen folding chairs in two rows of six. The funeral director invited Eliza to sit front and center, and her daughters automatically sat on either side of her, with Lena next to Kara and Vasquez next to Alex. The rest of their friends took seats behind them. Krypto sat, quivering with attention in his flak vest in front of Lena, looking all around him, alert for trouble.
Alex couldn’t take her eyes off the dog, not only because she couldn’t bear to look at the wooden box on the table in front of the taller table for the flag. She thought about what Kara had said about Krypto wanting to be like Vasquez, an honorable guard dog.
When they had finally ID’d Jeremiah’s remains, Alex had insisted that they tell Eliza immediately, but then she had gotten on with her job. The last time she had seen her father, she had nearly gotten blown all the way across the galaxy, and when he hadn’t turned up among the arrested, she had first assumed he hadn’t survived the explosions that she had set off in that building, but when no remains had been found, she had been surprised that he hadn’t gotten back in contact. But somehow, he had stayed with Cadmus even after Lillian Luthor had been arrested. She couldn’t forgive him. Now she didn’t know how to grieve him.
Vasquez’s warm tan hand slid into hers and she turned to see a frown that she hadn’t seen on Vasquez’s face in years, not since before Alex had figured out the whole gay thing and worked through her compulsory heteronormativity and her deep crush on Maggie Sawyer.
Alex mentally flipped through what she thought of as the 49 Frowns of Susan Vasquez. She knew this one. She did. She just couldn’t—
The two soldiers saluted each other, turned, and saluted the flag, then very carefully, one step at a time unfolded it and held it for the mourners to see. Then, very carefully, they folded it back into a triangle, one handed it to the other, and saluted. Then the other turned and knelt in front of Eliza.
Alex couldn’t tell if he said anything as he handed it to her. Eliza said something about Jeremiah loving his country. Alex looked back at Vasquez.
Oh, wait.
Number 45: Fiercely yearning protectiveness.
Oh.
///
Kara kept her eyes on the flag. That piece of Earth material was much closer to being her Earth father’s remains than the small jar of ashes inside the wooden box. Tears poured down her cheeks, pooled in the bottom corners of her glasses, splashed on the navy shirt under her dark coat. She startled when the rifles went off three times, even though she had known it was going to happen. Afterwards, as the deacon from their old church was praying something from a book, she watched as, in the background, the soldiers had looked around in the grass to retrieve the spent shells. After the prayers were over, there was a silence. Finally, Eliza stood, walked over to the box and laid her hand on it for a long minute. Alex followed suit. Then Kara stood and went and laid her hand on it, committing her adoptive father to Rao’s eternal light.
She stepped away from them then, so she didn’t see how the rest might have communicated their farewells. Her mind was numb with grief. She kept thinking about her father on Krypton, also dying and turning into ash along with most of her planet. She knew in her head that he had survived and died of overwork on Argo, but she had had this picture in her mind for too many years to let it go that easily. She heard the tiniest whine near her feet, and she felt Lena come up behind her and wrap her arms around her, laying her face against Kara’s.
All of them had lost so much, it was true, but they still had each other.
///
When Finn saw the black limos pulling into the parking lot, he went through his preflight checks, so that by the time his friends climbed into the Blackhawk, he was ready to go. His eyes accidently met Doc Hamilton’s and he blushed furiously and got them into the air as quickly and efficiently as he could.
She was younger than his mother. She was. Just not by all that much.
///
When Director Danvers and Assistant Director Vasquez returned from Midvale, Agent Chen made his report and then headed home.
Out in DC, protesters claiming that the Orange Moron had won the election had had violent protests, and Black Lives Matters and other counter-protesters had remained tense but functionally peaceful. In National City, the streets had mostly been quiet.
After nightfall, violence broke out between demonstrators and counter-protesters. Anti-Trump demonstrators began stealing MAGA hats and flags and proceeded to light them on fire. As the unrest continued to unfold, Trump apparel vendors’ tables were overturned, and fireworks were set off. The disturbances culminated when violence broke out five blocks east of the White House, between the counter-protesters and the president's supporters, who wielded batons. As the groups approached, they charged each other, brawling for several minutes before police arrived and cleared the intersection. During the melee, a District fire official said a man was stabbed in the back and taken to a hospital.
Chen was grateful that he hadn’t taken the Eastern Division post he had been offered seven years before. Better to stay in safe and sane California.
///
The crew of the Waverider scattered across National City, looking up old friends, indulging in Big Belly Burgers, laying in some emergency video games, history books, and spell components, and basically filling the time it took for Pam to process their NDAs. Apparently, Zari and Charlie were the real problems, as having been born in the future or come out of a prison dimension played havoc with a system that wasn’t built to manage multi-dimensional issues. So they hung out in the city and waited. There may also have been some super-non-competitive bowling, which of course no one was allowed to bet on.
The fact that Charlie totally cleaned up on the crew was purely incidental.
Chapter 98: Or Just Plain Relieved
Chapter Text
On Tuesday morning, Lena checked in on her special lab group in between her meeting with Max Lord and her meeting with Winn at the DEO. She was a firm believer in getting the Brussels sprouts out of the way, metaphorically, and ending with dessert. Well, that was probably how Kara would have described it. Personally, Lena was quite fond of Brussels sprouts with bacon, grilled and drizzled with Balsamic vinaigrette.
Regardless.
Pill was convinced that fine-tuning the proto-kryptonite with the epsilon radiation was the key to achieving pink K or an equivalent. Eve, in contrast, had moved on to a more biochemical solution, which Lena vaguely thought Lex had tried back in the day, but she couldn’t find it in his notes, so she gave Eve permission to continue. Maybe she would discover something new. The two men who had been sick for so long with Covid-19 had returned to work, but they were so far behind the women at that point that they had asked for transfers to other projects.
At LordTech, Lena took blood samples from Max and his personal assistant, Brendan, because Max said he trusted her discretion. Max was keeping his face very carefully blank throughout the five-minute ordeal, even as the PA looked smitten. And Lena thought, Ah. So this is what Max Lord looks like when he’s actually telling the truth. Fascinating. She took the samples back to LCorp and entrusted them to Chaya and then turned around to get back in the towncar and head back across town to the DEO.
Winn’s lab felt more crowded that afternoon, since in addition to him, Lena and Holtzy, Eliza Danvers and a seemingly familiar half-Asian woman in black leather gear were standing between the lab tables looking at a black leather gauntlet under a microscope.
Winn said, “Oh, Lena, great! This is brilliant! My opposite numbers at SHEILD figured out the answer to the vibration problem!”
Holtzy’s eyes were bright with excitement. “And not only can we reverse engineer it to make it work for the field generator, I think I can use the reverse power to emit vibrations much more efficiently than we can currently do mechanically. I think this would be a natural accompaniment to the proposal that I have been planning to give you when we actually had time away from these problems or election shenanigans or—”
The woman held out her hand to Lena. “Dr. Luthor? A pleasure to meet you again. You probably don't remember meeting me at Lois and Clark's wedding. It was... confusing. But I’ve been hearing so much about you lately. Daisy Johnson.”
Lena shook the woman’s hand, saying, “Wait, Quake? Really? Wow, I have so many questions that I do not have the security clearance to ask you, but surely this one is okay: is it fun?”
Daisy laughed in surprise. “Nobody has ever! Okay, so at first, it was super scary, but once I got control of it, and then once Jemma made these to keep my bones from vibrating apart... yeah, it is.”
“Excellent. So, Winn, what can you tell us about the mechanism?”
“Nanofibers.”
“But we tried copper—”
“Too soft. Vibranium.”
Lena frowned. “Wakanda stopped selling—”
“Artificial vibranium,” Winn cut in. “We can make it ourselves. It’s not as strong, doesn’t last as long, but we could make it work.”
Lena contemplated him with The Eyebrow raised. “It’s worth a shot, I suppose...” She turned to Eliza. “Well, Dr. Danvers, I’m curious about your interest in this conversation.”
“After we spoke—” she frowned and shook her head slightly, “—with Krypto about the sound he heard, it occurred to me that acoustic vibrations and geophysical or mechanical vibrations aren’t all that different. If the thing that affected National City was some sort of sonic vibration, I thought we might find ways to dampen it, similarly to the psionic blockers Winn created a few years ago. But the problems are all similar—”
“Just different in scale,” Lena said quickly. “So if we can use all of the different mechanisms and test them against each other for the different frequency vibrations—”
Holtzy grinned, “Then Bob’s your uncle! Which is actually very funny, because I do have an uncle named Robert. I’ve always assumed that that has played an important role in my many tech discoveries.”
Lena laughed. “Yeah, I can’t imagine a Luthor ever being named Bob. Whatever. We’re going to have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.”
Eliza’s face, formerly wreathed in smiles, abruptly fell.
Winn said, “Hey, yeah. Who’s hosting this year?”
Eliza muttered, “Nobody. There’s still a pandemic going on, you know.”
Lena saw the pain and wondered if Lillian ever wished that both her children could be with her for a holiday, rather than just Lex. Probably not. A switch flipped in her head. “Winn,” she said slowly, forcing her supersonic inventing brain to move in slow motion, “do you think, if we had a space big enough, we could social distance and mask and eat in pods, sort of what you were planning eventually for the wedding? How many people would you normally have expected for dinner this year? Twelve?”
Winn counted on his fingers. “Dansquez and SuperCorp, four. Scholsen and Joltzy, eight. Lt. Col. Dimples and My Favorite Martians, twelve. You, Doc Hamilton and Callie, fifteen.”
“And Astra and Krypto and Cat, so eighteen,” added Lena. “And I think Kara wanted to invite Lois and Clark, so twenty.”
“And hey, this might be a great time to try out some of the appetizers for the wedding that you guys weren’t sure would fly, but wait, we can’t invite Millie and then expect her to work. That wouldn’t be fair.”
Lena allowed herself a small smirk. “Leave that to me. But while we are speaking about it, Winn, Eliza, why don’t you come with me and take a look at the space I’m thinking of.”
Holtzy turned to Daisy and said, “Do you have an Icer I could look at? Your fellow agents couldn’t stop singing FitzSimmons’ praises when they were here...”
Lena left them to it.
///
As a rule, Mick Rory didn’t like regulations, rules or even suggestions and pretty much abhorred the institutions that insisted on them. So, under normal circumstances, he would have spent as little time at the DEO as he could while they waited for permission to consult with (save the asses of) the DEO’s black site prison.
But the little blonde in HR with the purple nails that perfectly matched her tight-fitting purple dress and heels had intrigued him. She had promised him more cookies if he would come by and chat with her, and he wasn’t sure whether “chat” was a euphemism for sex or picking his brain about the future, but he also wasn’t a man to turn down perfectly good cookies. He brought his heat gun with him but also condoms. He had made that mistake once and he wasn’t going to make it again. So he considered himself prepared.
He was not prepared for Pam from HR.
He met her at her office at five sharp and she had handed him a big tin of orange chocolate oatmeal cookies as she locked her door behind her and gestured for him to follow her to the garage, where she unlocked an old and very well-kept Volvo and drove him to the bar that Alex Danvers had mentioned with all the aliens.
Then Pam and he had knocked back one scotch after another while he ate the cookies and regaled her with stories about Heat Wave and Captain Cold knocking off banks and museums: the good old days.
He woke up when the Lyft stopped outside the DEO. Nate was waiting for him with Zari and together they had carried him back up to his room on the ship where he passed out and slept like a log.
///
Ted picked up Ms. Luthor and Dr. Danvers, Sr. and drove them to Lena’s condo building, and then returned to LCorp to write up his report and call it a day. The reports were for Lena’s eyes only and included people or vehicles he had seen on their travels, anyone apparently loitering when he parked to wait for her, anything. Two or three times his reports had alerted them to people with malicious intentions. He wrote them meticulously. Lena was a sweet, young, gorgeous genius who literally paid him to drive a Mercedes Benz around National City, and gave him a Christmas bonus, health and dental, a pension and retirement for doing it. It was the least he could do.
///
Eliza looked at the common room with awe. It would have plenty of space for twenty people keeping reasonable distance from each other when they had their masks off to eat. She grinned at Lena, who seemed strangely shy all of a sudden.
“The kitchen part is quite spacious and up-to-date,” Lena said somewhat breathlessly. “Even with five cooks! I mean I know Kara usually takes care of the turkey and the gang will bring potluck, but Kara has told me so much about the chocolate pecan pie you make, and I know that—”
“Lena, it’s perfect. Are you sure it will be okay with the other tenants?”
“Oh! Most of them travel for the holidays. I did double check with the manager that no one has signed up for it, so—”
“Lena, this is fantastic. Thank you. I’m sure we can make it work. We might even put together a few decorations, maybe flowers?”
“I’ve already got some ideas about that, but yes, sure, absolutely.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Lena. It’ll be nice to spend time with the girls, and with you too, since suddenly I’m going to be your mother-in-law and I feel like I only know you by reputation.”
“Yes, the Luthor family reputation.” Lena’s voice went flat.
“Well, yes, that. But also the way the girls rave about what a genius you are and what a badass you are. And how kind you are.”
Lena shrugged awkwardly. “It’s been a long time since I could celebrate a holiday like this with people I enjoy...”
Eliza took her by the arm and led her out. Lena had already invited her up to the condo for dinner with Kara. “That’s one way to build family. Find people you enjoy and eat meals with them.” She smiled.
Lena laughed. “Yes, you are definitely Kara Danver’s mother!”
///
Sara landed the Waverider outside the bunker entrance and immediately cloaked the ship. Through the viewscreen, she could see the hot woman she had met during Clark’s wedding standing there wearing camos and looking unutterably bored, which Sara suspected was a façade to hide how much the lieutenant colonel was probably geeking out about the timeship. Right?
The whole team wanted to go down into the base, but Sara decided to only take Nate and John for the first contact with the time aberration. If he was someone from history, Nate might recognize him. And if he had been released from hell, John was the one who would have to send him back.
///
Lucy Lane stood with her hands on her hips as she watched the time-ship materialize, land, and disappear even as three people marched down a ramp that also disappeared. Sara Lance, of course, she had met at the wedding in Metropolis. Word at the DEO was that this was the woman who had seduced Alex Danvers when they had been off at another wedding on another Earth, which made no sense, but Lucy was getting used to that simply being the way things worked. Behind the woman in the white supersuit walked a scruffy man in black pants, white shirt, a mostly untied red necktie and a trench coat, and a much neater young man in brown pants and turtleneck and a tweed blazer. Apparently, one was a necromancer and the other a history professor.
Just great.
Sara smiled in greeting. “Lt. Colonel, let me offer my congratulations on your promotion! Well deserved, from all I’ve heard.”
“Thank you, Captain Lance. And who do we have here?”
“John Constantine and Nate Heywood, meet Lt. Col. Lucy Lane, the director of this facility.”
Nate and Lucy shook hands. John was looking at the bunker with interest. “So, this is where you keep the ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night, eh? Lead on!”
“Has he talked yet?” asked Sara as Lucy led them inside.
“We have a name. No idea if it’s real, and it’s ordinary enough: William Walker.”
Nate tapped at his tablet and a British woman’s voice came out of the tablet. “William Walker, born May 8, 1824.”
Nate handed the picture Gideon pulled up and showed Lucy.
“Yeah, that’s him. Who is he? Or was he?”
“Gideon?”
Gideon answered, “Walker was a physician, lawyer, journalist and mercenary who established English-speaking colonies first in Mexico and then in Nicaragua. He served as president of each of these colonies for a few months before being ousted. He was eventually convicted by the Honduran authorities and executed by firing squad in September 1860, aged thirty-six.”
“Well, he’s not dead now,” muttered Lucy. She tapped her ear. “What? You’re kidding.” She turned back to the Legends. “My assistant will escort you to his cell. I’ve got a small administrative fire to put out.”
///
William Walker still wasn’t sure how his boss had managed it. A “get out of hell free” card and some kind of portal had been mentioned, but he figured that being alive and back on Earth was worth solitary confinement. The food wasn’t bad either. The trick was getting back into business. He had been shocked to find a woman in charge, but apparently the 21st century was just chock full of surprises. No wonder his boss wanted to prevent a female Vice President.
So when his cell opened and a guard marched him to the interrogation room where another woman, this one in a strange white leather suit sat across from him and two men stood behind her (no uniforms), he wondered what that meant.
The woman spoke. “Mr. Walker, it has been brought to my attention that you have managed to trespass on federal property.”
“You could look at it that way,” he responded, “if you could prove it. Otherwise, I believe I am being illegally detained.”
He thought the one with the five o’clock shadow muttered, “Tosser!”
The woman, on the other hand, nodded affably. “Well, we surely wouldn’t want that. After all, it’s probably considered cruel and unusual punishment to keep a 197-year-old man in solitary confinement. You look pretty spry for your age, by the way.”
He smirked. “I work out. Isn’t that what they say these days?”
“Excellent. My colleague, Dr. Heywood here, is a historian. He would very much like to interview you. We thought if you wouldn’t mind spending some time on our ship before we send you on your merry way, you might teach us a lot about our past.”
He considered that. His boss had been clear about the need for information about their foes. “That is a generous offer. I haven’t been aboard a ship in a long while.”
“Mm. It’s not that kind of ship.”
Chapter 99: Relieving Your Fear
Chapter Text
Eliza Danvers spent the weeks between Election Day and Thanksgiving driving back and forth between Midvale and National City, but then two things happened that, as she told Jane Hamilton, were beginning to damage her calm.
The first thing was professional and therefore of course relatively minor. Barry Allen told her that the pink K research he had heard about on Earth 1 was not being done in National City as he had assumed, but in Gotham at Wayne Enterprises, and his friend Cisco was pretty sure that the researcher’s Earth 38 doppelganger would also be there, presumably working with Batman?
Except that Eliza knew that Batman had gone into semi-retirement on her Earth; there had been sightings from time to time, but he wasn’t exactly swinging from one skyscraper to the next...
And that was the other thing, and it was personal. And for Eliza “personal” generally meant family. She had overheard Agents Chen and Jordan joking about the lack of “excitement” during the election, and how they apparently meant that the Director hadn’t in fact jumped out of a skyscraper lately.
Damaged calm, indeed.
Eliza, back in Midvale mopping up a series of experiments botched by her undergraduate research assistants, merely emailed Jane. “So. Tell me about Alex and jumping off buildings?”
Then she had simply waited.
///
Callie got home just around dinner time and even before she unlocked the door, she could smell garlicky spaghetti sauce wafting through the keyhole. The smell was even better when she opened the door and came inside.
To her surprise, Jane wasn’t only making spaghetti with onions, peppers and shrimp. She had also made garlic bread and an enormous mixed salad and had opened two bottles of wine, one red and one white. Three places were set at the table. A flicker of thought had Agent Riley Finn in one of those three chairs, but she immediately set that ridiculous idea aside.
“Hey, Jane. Cookin’ up a feast there. What’s the occasion?”
“Eliza finally got around to asking about Alex jumping off skyscrapers.”
Callie opened her mouth to ask what that had to do with comfort food, but again, she immediately filed that question under R for ridiculous. That particular mental file was getting surprisingly full lately.
“O-kay... And?”
“I borrowed the tape from Pam. She made me sign it out with my id and thumb print.”
“The tape?”
“The body-cam and command center footage. The stuff they show the rookies. Officially, it’s Training Video #2.23.16, but the agents call it The Adventures of Butch Vasquez and the SunDanvers Kids.”
Callie stared. “Wait, what?”
The doorbell rang, just as the pasta pot started to boil over. Jane yelped, “Can you get that while I deal with this? Then pour her a glass immediately!”
And Callie thought that those two ideas were really not ridiculous at all.
///
In the week and a half leading up to Thanksgiving, citizens of National City watched on their televisions and internet feeds as protests supporting the lame duck president went on in San Antonio, Atlanta, Sacramento, and Charlotte, many of them ending with fights breaking out. National City was relatively quiet.
The arsonist who had used that infernal accelerant from Gotham was lying low, possibly because they had blocked his access to it, possibly for other reasons. Maggie, Reynolds and Joe followed all the leads they could. Captain Tricia Rodriguez had brought them copies of arson reports that were still open, but that had similar MOs and she said she suspected Chief Short of being involved with them.
Joe was following up on the battery that triggered the LCorp bomb and had gone to liaise with Metropolis police on some of the crimes they had not been able to charge Lex Luthor with, though everybody pretty much was sure he had done them.
Reynolds had told Maggie in private why he had been out sick the day after the election. Although his bad back meant that he was on desk duty for the next few weeks, apparently his wife was very happy. Life was full of such tradeoffs.
The DEO was looking more like it had in the past. Administrative staff were still largely working from home, if possible, to keep the building density low, but since so many agents had already had Covid, they were running on the (fingers crossed) hope that they would be immune if they had to interact with ill citizens. Masks and social distancing were still in force, but since the government had announced successful clinical trials for at least two vaccines, everybody was feeling somewhat more hopeful.
And in their time off, the superfriends were all plotting about what dishes they would bring to the very big Thanksgiving dinner Kara and Lena were hosting in Lena’s condo’s event space, which was much bigger than any of their apartments. Kara had invited everyone who was going to be in their wedding, including Sam and Ruby, who still weren’t sure if they would be able to make it. Alex thought that Kara was planning to announce their betrothal, which, if she remembered what Alura’s construct had told her, was different from the engagement.
Alex and Vasquez had been experimenting with a mushroom and apricot stuffing for the turkey. Eliza had promised chocolate pecan pies—plural—to the excitement of Kara and the people who often didn’t get enough pie because SOMEbody had eaten more than her fair share. Maggie promised baked apples. Millie and her wife couldn’t make it, but were sending them a Kryptonian version of something like spanakopita, if spinach were red. M’gann and J’onn were going to set up a small wet bar. Jess was going to teach Holtzy how to make pork dumplings and a dipping sauce. James was teaching Winn his mother’s recipe for collard greens.
In the midst of these preparations, Alex had interviewed Astra for a job at the DEO. She sat behind her desk, listening intently as Astra explained her rationale, wanting to do some good, but be active rather than sit around arguing with politicians. That was fine. The strange thing was that Astra wasn’t wearing the body suit that Alex had gotten used to. She was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, black trousers, and short black boots. Honestly, she looked a lot like Lillian Luthor, which was putting Alex off a bit.
Astra fell silent and sipped the coffee that Alex’s new assistant had brought them.
Alex said, “Well, Astra, we’d love to have you. Two things. There is a six-week boot camp that you have to get through before regular training starts. And once you’ve gotten through boot camp, there is an oath. I can send you a copy, so you can think about it.”
Astra nodded. “I expected as much. The boot camp will be helpful. I’ve gotten out of shape in the last two years on Argo. I look forward to honing myself.”
Which was a very Astra kind of thing to say, thought Alex.
The other interview went about the same. The former detainee that Lucy had sent her, Leo Snart, was a former thief with a cold gun and an attitude. He also looked at boot camp as an opportunity to get back into shape, so she introduced him to Astra and sent them both back to Nevada for orientation. They would start boot camp on December 1, so Astra would be back in National City for Thanksgiving, along with Lucy.
As far as the West Coast Division of the DEO was concerned, November was turning out to be far less fraught than anybody had felt they had any reason to expect.
///
Eliza brushed her teeth, flossed, went through her skincare regimen, all the while replaying the video Jane and Callie had played (and replayed a few times) for her. Hypothetically, theoretically, she had known that her elder daughter was exceptional and fearless. She knew that Alex’s and Kara’s trust in each other was absolute.
But that knowledge had been untested, unproven and, from her rather (she had to admit) naïve perspective, therefore not particularly risky.
Now…
She locked up Kara’s loft and turned off the lights. She lay down, sighing, knowing that her dreams henceforth would be fraught with knowledge supported by evidence.
As if menopause wasn’t bad enough.
///
After the bank burned to the ground, National City Security had given Stanley a paid week off and his choice of cushy jobs. Well, it helped that he had seniority, which mainly meant that after the past three years of Super Mayhem, he had been one of the few guards who had been present at more than one UVE (Unprecedented Violent Event) and had a) survived and b) not quit, unlike most of his previous colleagues.
It also didn’t hurt that some high-muckity-mucks from NCPD, NCFD and apparently the FBI had put in a good word about his “heroic behavior” or some-such and the company was scrambling to retain personnel in a city where a security guard’s biggest fear was no longer witless boredom, but containment of neighborhood-leveling threats.
Or, you know, dying.
So he took a job at the National City Museum of the Arts, figuring, sure, people went after banks all the time, but museums were safe. Right?
///
When Lena had mentioned in passing the plan for this year’s Thanksgiving, with the Danvers/Luthor-hosted dinner, Jess had set aside her LCorp work long enough to work out a table assignment map, scan it and email it to Dr. Danvers (Sr.).
Then she went back to work, reading requests for specialized materials from the special working groups. She had the authority to sign off on all but the most volatile or expensive materials in Lena’s name, but it was rare for the scientists to request such things since it attracted Lena’s scrutiny. Lena was always on the lookout for budding Lex-wanna-bes. Anytime that anyone proposed a project which even distantly had the potential to be a Lextastrophe, Lena nipped that shit in the bud. She not only rejected the proposal, in most cases, she fired the individual(s) responsible and had high-profile business lunches with the other tech CEOs in town, after which the individual(s) might find getting another job in their field to be… tricky.
Jess’s attention was broken by an email from Dr. Danvers.
DrED: Hi, Jess. Thanks for the seating suggestions. But don’t you think that Winn and James should be closer to Kara and Alex’s table? They’re family, after all.
And Jess thought, oh, they’re family, all right, in SO many ways: CatCo family, DEO family, LGBTQ+ family, with all the good and bad of all those identities. She composed herself and tried to find a diplomatic way of conveying how, if Scholsen got too close to SuperCorp or Dansquez anytime soon, blood might just be shed.
JHuang: The betrothal ceremony necessitates that the couple and their Best People are front and center, along with parental actors and the officiant/minister (i.e., J’onn).
(This part was true.)
JHuang: I had a long discussion with Alura’s construct last week
(This part was a complete lie.)
JHuang: and she explained about “ritual proximity.”
(Jess was on a roll now.)
JHuang: and how the individuals who have undertaken in the past to support the ritual actors are bound to similar duty in the future based on the closeness to the ritual actors when the vows are said.
There were, Jess mused, little white lies and big black lies. Thankfully, LCorp’s trademark L was always reproduced in bright green.
Chapter 100: Doing Things in Order
Chapter Text
Kara Danvers, working as a reporter, didn’t make much money. If anything, these days she made less as a rookie reporter than she had made as one of the top CEO personal assistants in the western half of the US. But because her loft was rent-controlled and she ate at Alex’s two days out of three, she had managed to put a little aside every month since she had met Lena Luthor and felt that thrilling surge that was attraction maybe reciprocated.
And that was a very good thing, since Lena was a millionaire, and you can’t exactly marry a woman like that with a beaded friendship bracelet. The pattern of interlocking emerald and sapphire waves on a platinum band had been in Kara’s mind since early on in their relationship, definitely at least since Supergirl had scooped up Lena and hurtled into the night sky as the kryptonite exploded on Haystack Mountain. When she had flown to York, England and described what she wanted to the jeweler, Stefan, his eyes had sparkled. He looked at the post-it on which she’d drawn the design and nodded happily.
Well, of course he was happy, thought Kara. Good artists like to make good art. And Kara had been assured by Cat Grant that this man was indeed a good artist.
Kara ran her thumb over the gemstones as they twinkled in the early morning light. She had slept lightly, waking when the first birds began chirping at first light in the trees across the street. Uncharacteristically, she was unable to eat anything, even after suiting up and flying over the city, listening for danger. Later that day, she knew that family feuds and drunk drivers would bring their own chaos to National City, but for the time being, things were quiet. She flew back to her loft and faced a much bigger problem.
Her closet.
Onto her bed, she threw skirts, dresses, pants, shirts, vests and blazers. Why had she not thought of this until now? She couldn’t get betrothed to Lena-fucking-Luthor in rookie reporter clothes. Lena would be dressed up, right? Well, to be fair, Lena could show up wearing sack cloth and she’d still look better than all of National City’s elite. Kara didn’t have a chance.
Her apartment’s buzzer buzzed. Kara frowned. Who on Earth would be ringing her buzzer on Thanksgiving morning? Surely, all her friends would either still be in bed or maybe would be up and fretting away at the food they were making for the midday dinner. Wouldn’t they?
Kara super-sped to her door, automatically X-raying through it to see Alex and Vasquez carrying a box of donuts and a garment bag. She opened the door. “Guys!”
Vasquez grinned. “Alex said you’d be a mess, not knowing what to wear today—”
“Alex!”
Alex shrugged. “So I went to Astra and she put us right and before you say anything, she’s taken Holtzy and they’re helping Lena get ready.”
“But—” Tears dripped down Kara’s face.
Quietly, Vasquez said, “Family always has your back, Little Danvers.” She unzipped the garment bag and laid it on Kara’s couch.
Alex pulled out a navy blue three-piece suit, a midnight blue French-cuff shirt and a sapphire blue necktie. The shoes and socks were black.
“Guys!” Kara breathed.
Alex bit her lip, glanced at Vasquez who nodded, and pulled a small, cloth-wrapped package out of her pocket. Shyly, she handed it to Kara.
The cloth was adorned with a small, apparently, hand-painted shield, white with a red stripe from the left corner to the right bottom side, and on it three green birds, and under it: D’Anvers. Kara unwrapped it to reveal a small rosewood box with tiny silver hinges and an ornate little silver clasp.
Alex said softly, “I made this in shop class. Dad told me about the Kryptonian traditions, and back then, well, you weren’t good at doing finicky little things, so I made it for you…”
Kara turned it over in her hands. “Alex… It’s beautiful… You did this for me way back then?”
Alex shrugged awkwardly. Vasquez looked at her fondly. It was almost the polar opposite of the frown she generally wore going into battle. Kara reached out and hugged them both.
Alex wiped away a stray tear, grunting, “Go get dressed.”
///
Jess stood in the festively decorated common room on the third floor of Lena’s condo, glancing from her checklist to the view of National City out her window: blue skies, 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and (currently) no alien shenanigans occurring, although she knew better than to hold her breath on that count.
Nine tables were arranged in the shape of Kara’s crest, two people per table: Lena and Kara up front, with Dansquez on one side and Cat and Eliza on the other, then Lois and Clark, the Martians in their human forms, Scholsen, Joltzy, Jane, and Callie. Cat had offered Astra her seat, but after a whispered conversation in the small kitchen, Astra had taken the seat at the point of the pentagon, looking far more self-satisfied than any field marshal should when taking the seat of lowest honor.
Jess shrugged. Kryptonians. That seat would put Astra closer to the kitchen, after all.
Her checklist, thorough as always, was complete, every little box checked off. In the center of the pentagon were three tables set up in a zig-zag formation, which might, if you were say, viewing them from the high ceiling, look a little like an abstract S, the top and bottom tables filling up with bottles and glasses, and the middle table being laid out with bite-sized desserts from Earth and beyond. The Martians were carting in the last box of liquor bottles and Winn and James were draping the last window with a swath of gold and cranberry jacquard fabric. The scents of roasting turkey and baking pecan pie vied with each other. Jess nodded to herself, satisfied. She had added several fire extinguishers to those already stowed in the kitchen and had attached first aid kits from LCorp to the underside of each table.
They were as ready as they were likely to be.
///
Astra stood at one side of the entrance, in a suit much like Kara’s with—to everyone’s surprise—a Scottish bagpiper beside her. On the other side of the door stood Cat and Jess, both in green dresses. The pipes skirled loudly and cheerfully as the guests processed in: first the minor guests: Jane Hamilton, Callie Torres, Jillian Holtzman, Winn Schott, Jr. and James Olsen. As they moved to their places at the back of the room and stood respectfully with their hands at rest on their seatbacks, looking at the entrance (Jess had forwarded Astra’s email), there was a transitional drone and the piper shifted to a more solemn skirl, still upbeat, but somehow (Astra thought) more reflective.
Normally, Astra knew, the guests would be more clearly divided, the tablecloths and fittings differing by the colors of the two officiants’ house colors, in this case navy blue for the House of El and a dark emerald green for the House of Luthor. When Kara had told her that they were going to share both colors on their bracelets as a clear sign of the two Houses being connected, Astra had at first been… well, vexed, and had muttered something to Director Danvers, who apparently had delegated the problem to her Assistant Director, the small, frowning Marine, and next thing Astra knew, the ever-efficient Ms. Huang of LCorp had shared with Astra her Pinterest account, which had included many examples of color schemes, and some, what were they called? Meems? Of messages like “Bride and Bride: We don’t take sides,” “Alloys are some of the strongest materials” and the like. After studying them, she and Agent Schott had decided all the tables should be arrayed in both Houses’ colors.
She had to admit, it felt far less antagonistic as a decorative scheme than her own betrothal to the House of In-Ze. And maybe that was a sign?
A good sign. Yes.
///
Cat watched the cascade of thoughts going behind Astra’s face. The general was undoubtedly a closed book to most people, presenting an attentive but perhaps bored façade. Cat wasn’t fooled. She saw Astra’s eyes cut away to the colors that draped the tables, her hand rise to fuss with her own red pocket square, a clarion call against the rest of her otherwise navy and black attire. Cat had been to a lot of weddings as a guest and a reporter, been to four as a bride. Astra was thinking about how the two families would get along.
Cat had no worries on that front. Oh, Eliza Danvers had been fretting about it by text to Cat for a week, but Cat suspected that had more to do with the late Jeremiah than with the two formidable women about to trade bracelets and promises here today. Cat had held back on her instinctive acerbic replies, knowing that Eliza’s fears weren’t unfounded. The woman was a scientist, after all. She prized objectivity.
Cat mollified, counseled, calmed and encouraged. Eliza would see for herself what the DEO and LCorp folks knew for a solid fact: El Mayarah. These two would save the world. Always.
Together.
Chapter 101: Out of Order
Notes:
Sorry for the long delay between chapters. Up until Dec. 2021, I had the vast majority of this written beforehand. Now I have too many students, many of whom are quarantining and my school is discontinuing mandatory weekly testing, its Covid dashboard and is thinking about discontinuing its mask mandate--Three weeks before spring break. I've been a little distracted. I will try to post more regularly, but for now, just on Sundays.
Chapter Text
Lois stood in the processional line, behind the two Martians both in their human form and ahead of Cat Grant, Eliza Danvers, and the dynamic duo known as Dansquez, at whose feet sitting upright wearing his light working vest, the white dog Krypto was watching everybody at once, his tail a blur of excitement.
Lois raised an eyebrow. She knew her sister and Detective Sawyer had, with much chagrin and much stubborn determination, chosen to decline the invitation in order to protect the celebration from outside forces and, what was it Lucy had said, “and any who would attempt to do them harm.”
Lois texted Maggie asking did she expect trouble, and National City’s finest had texted back, “Sum deprehensus. Deprehendo,” which was answer enough for the Daily Planet’s ace reporter.
But Krypto, who undoubtedly could sense the mix of emotions around him, was also wearing a light Kevlar vest: not the unarmored (and therefore more huggable) one he wore for Morale Officer duty, and not the heavier one suited for Bomb Squad/Search & Rescue. Hopefully, they had chosen wisely.
Lois thought about the guest list. They had:
5 superheroes
5 DEO field agents
3 physicians trained in trauma response and
4 ace reporters, two of whom were also superheroes, so there was overlap.
And if all they’d had were the first fifteen narrowly trained experts, Lois might have been a little nervous. But they also had Jess and Krypto. With at least two generalists in the mix—and fiercely loyal at that? They’d be ready for anything.
///
Lena Luthor’s hard little heart fluttered inside her chest. She was hyperaware that the color she wore was just a darker hue of the green that normal kryptonite exuded, to the detriment of individuals from her one true love’s home planet, at least three of whom had come to join them to support her and Kara. It was a grave responsibility.
Lena Luthor did not like thinking about graves. What she really liked to do (aside from inventing, trouncing the patriarchy, and, well, Kara Zor-El Danvers) was liaise.
Lena Luthor liaised with the DEO, the NCPD, Dollywood, her own LCorp experts, old friends from the Daily Planet, and newer friends at CatCo Worldwide Media. She had a quiet and somewhat formal conversation with her favorite Canine-Kryptonian-American.
Lena was a firm believer that if you could reasonably expect an otherwise ordinary holiday celebration might erupt in terrorism, family feuds, intergalactic warfare, or even (her birth mother was Irish, after all) shenanigans?
Well, clearly everybody needed to be on the same page.
///
M’gann and J’onn, side by side, led in the major guests and took their seats. They were fairly tightly in tune with each other these days (and M’gann tried not to think about all the hormone surges they’d been sensing all month that had led to that). She had watched Astra and Cat do the duty of family, sort of emceeing the event, introducing Kara and Lena, emoting very seriously about their love and devotion, blah, blah, blah.
M’gann shook herself in a miniscule way, but she knew that J’onn sensed her thought, knew that White Martian dialect had no words for love, much less devotion or the rest of it. She could feel the warmth of his understanding, the staunchness of him deciding that she would learn what those words actually meant, not from a dictionary, but from her experiencing him exhibiting them, living them out for her.
And that was one of the odder parts of this human form, the way her face heated up when she was knew he was thinking of her. White Martians weren’t known for blushing.
They ate the appetizers Millie Bernetti had sent, both the spanakopita-like ones and potstickers filled with goose meat and sage, the closest equivalents she could find for the celebratory dish.
Clark gave a speech about his gratitude for all that Kara had taught him about Krypton. Jess spoke of meeting Lena at Harvard Business School and how she had watched Lena think rings around some of the best business minds in the world. J’onn spoke of the bond he sensed between Lena and Kara, stronger than the bond between the molecules of iron.
Then Cat’s phone beeped. She stood up, saying, “Sorry, I have to take this,” and hurried out.
Kara and Lena looked shocked.
Eliza looked ready to kill her daughter’s former boss.
Alex put her hand on her table knife, but Vasquez set a quieting hand on Alex’s hand and whispered something in her ear.
M’gann sensed confusion and annoyance from everyone in the room except Vasquez. Winn and James were particularly incensed. Astra looked blank and unreadable; M’gann couldn’t tell whether she trusted Cat or was about to murder her.
The door opened and Cat walked in—
She was followed by Lillian Luthor, wearing a deep green three-piece suit with a black shirt, necktie and pocket square.
Everyone was on their feet yelling, except for Dansquez and Astra.
Cat led Lillian to the head of the room, turned and raised a finger for quiet. Voices subsided. Bodies sank warily into their seats.
Cat spoke. “Now we are moving toward the winter solstice, when our yellow sun turns from Earth and stands apart, when the day is short and the night long. Such times are cold. Such times are dark. But even in the cold and dark, we stand in Rao’s light and warmth: our families, our friends our kin and our chosen houses all serve as the rays of Rao’s love.”
(M’gann caught the spark of a thought from Astra: “She memorized it!” Interesting.)
Cat continued, “As tradition demands, the House that proposes speaks first, and so we have heard from the House of El and the House of Danvers.” She bowed to Eliza. “Now, I ask your permission to hear from the House of Luthor.”
Lena’s face had gone unreadable. Kara’s forehead had the Crinkle. Vasquez still had her hand over Alex’s over the table knife. M’gann could feel the room vibrate with worry.
Lillian gave the slightest of bows to the front table, enough (thought M’gann) to satisfy the ritual, but no more than that.
She said, “As the matriarch of the House of Luthor, I did not approve of this match when I first learned of it. I doubt that surprises anyone here. I thought that no alien could possibly deserve Lena, who has one of the finest minds of her generation of humanity.”
(And M’gann’s eyes cut across to Scholsen’s table. Were they… growling?)
“That was, I have to admit it now, hubris on my part. I’ve had some time to reflect these past two months—”
(M’gann felt a wash of affection for Cat Grant. From Lillian Luthor. Wait, what? And Cat was… reciprocating? Well, now.)
“Kara Zor-El Danvers grew up on her home planet without any superpowers except for, I am reliably informed, a fine and eager mind and, apparently a fine and eager heart. I have become convinced that these two qualities are what drew her to my daughter. I am further convinced that they and my daughter will keep her humble, careful and honorable so that she remains only a protector for Earth and not a menace. For these reasons, I approve of this match and I request permission from my daughter and from the Houses of Zor-El and Danvers to stay to witness the betrothal.”
M’gann felt the rage before she could pinpoint its source.
Eliza Danvers stood up. “You killed Jeremiah.”
Silence creaked and groaned as Lillian turned her head and one pair of ice blue eyes regarded another.
“I recruited your late husband to Cadmus—”
“Kidnapped!” snapped Eliza.
“Semantics. I threatened you and your daughters if he refused to work for me. And yes, I have killed Cadmus agents in the past, lackeys who would have endangered our mission, and I served time in prison for it. But I do not condone the killing of children and I did not run Cadmus when Jeremiah was sent on that reckless suicide mission.”
Eliza opened her mouth to protest, but Lena just said, “Lex.”
Lillian sighed. “Quite likely.”
Kara stood, frowning.
Eliza said, “Astra, surely you agree—”
Astra shrugged. “I am of the House of In-Ze. Kara is the head of the House of El.”
M’gann saw and felt the shock coming from the humans.
Kara said, “The House of El recognizes the objections of the House of Danvers. It is true that the Houses of Danvers and El have suffered from the actions of the House of Luthor.”
Lena looked sad, M’gann thought. She could feel the young woman’s deep disappointment. She could feel the bottom drop out of Lena’s heart as she thought she was losing Kara for good. But that is not what M’gann felt from Kara.
“In my lifetime,” Kara began slowly, “Krypton was at peace, having long since liberated its colonies across the galaxy and sworn peace with our former enemies. Centuries ago, the historian J’niar’hok of Dartan called Krypton the pearl of the galaxy for its enlightened ways. But he was looking at us through the viewport of a spaceship. From outside, we looked like a pearl, but humans know how pearls are made from sand annoying an oyster. And nobody bickers like Kryptonians. Yes, we historically feuded with other houses. It was not unusual even in my lifetime for members of one house to harm and even kill members of another. The Law of Houses takes this into consideration. So Lillian, I ask you: Did Lena Kieran Luthor ever aid you in your depredations against the House of Danvers or the House of El?”
Quite clearly, Lillian said, “She did not.”
“Then, as head of the House of El, I accept your request to witness this betrothal on behalf of the House of Luthor.”
Eliza nodded and sat. M’gann could feel her affection for Lena overcoming her mixed feelings about her late husband.
Kara said, “Will you all rise?”
Everyone stood. Cat moved to stand next to Lillian as Astra came forward to stand with Eliza. Alex and Jess moved to stand behind Kara and Lena.
It was odd for M’gann, who had been a guest at a great many human weddings over the centuries, to see the mix of human and Kryptonian customs. Take the clothes for example. Kara, Alex, Eliza and Astra all wore dark blue. Lena, Jess and Lillian wore dark green. Cat wore a blue-green dress that clung in all the right places. (M’gann was straight, not blind, and she could feel the reactions of Scholsen, Callie and Lillian as they found their eyes drifting away from the main event. Beside her, J’onn gave a dry chuckle.)
Kara picked up the small rosewood box she had been fidgeting with earlier, in the hallway before entering. She said, “On Krypton, a wedding proposal is a private matter, an understanding between two people that they might spend the rest of their lives together. In contrast, a betrothal is a public—”
A deep rumble cut her off, the floor vibrating with it and Krypto barking wildly. Kara sighed. “An earthquake. Of course. After we prepared for—”
But Lena spoke quickly to Krypto as the company headed for doorways. Silverware rattled on the plates. Krypto barked sharply. Lena turned to Kara and Clark. “Up, up, and away, you two. Krypto doesn’t think this is natural.”
A sudden wind forced Lena to step back suddenly as the Supers stood caped and booted, nodded to her and then supersped away. Lena glanced out the window as two red and blue blurs flew past. Astra strode out the door.
M’gann and J’onn morphed into their Martian forms. M’gann said, “Lena, he’s right. This is malicious. We need to be out there.”
Lena wearily waved them off and they morphed through the ceiling.
Chapter 102: Against the Natural Order
Chapter Text
When Stanley the security guard exited the men’s room on the first floor of the National City Museum, he looked down to pull a piece of toilet paper from his shoe and then looked up—
To see an enormous dinosaur—stegosaurus? It wasn’t a triceratops, for sure. His niece would know—
Wait, what?
The thing was charging down the main hall of the East Wing, its enormous feet leaving huge dents in the white marble floor as it went. The building shook.
Stanley grabbed his official walkie-talkie and hit the panic button. “All security alert. Code—We don’t have a code for dinosaurs! There’s a big metal dinosaur moving west down the East Wing, headed for the main entrance! Dinosaur alert!”
Then the thing was out of sight, and its brutal pounding gait got less and less loud as it got farther away. Stanley looked at his hand holding the walkie-talkie. It was shaking uncontrollably. On the plus side, at least the creature had come by right after Stanley had used the men’s room and not before.
National City was a crazy place. You either ran screaming to a saner city or you learned to take the glass-half-full point of view.
///
Superman and Supergirl flew toward the epicenter of the quakes and just as they arrived above the National City Museum, they saw a silver dinosaur crash through the glass double doors and race heavily across the front walk, veer away at the towering water fountain.
Superman said, “Is that a Stego—”
Supergirl groaned, “Heading toward Warehouse—”
They were gone in a flash.
//
J’onn and M’gann didn’t follow the physical vibrations shaking the city. They followed the psychic waves throbbing inside their skulls
At the port, an enormous sea creature strode out of the sea and up the jetty where the tankers offloaded. It was covered in grey-green scales, had a tale fifty feet long and an enormous lizard-like face. It roared, showing teeth longer than a man’s hand and its eyes flashed dark red. Longshoremen and -women tough as nails ran screaming away.
J’onn yelled to M’gann, “Is that a dragon?”
“More like Godzilla, I’d say. Didn’t know he could swim.”
“And he’s pissed!”
The creature reached down one clawed hand and picked up a tugboat by its smokestack, shook it and threw it over its shoulder.
M’gann raced after the boat as it fell, but she couldn’t get there before it crashed into the water. J’onn flew down a second later and they pulled the boat up to right it on the water. Sailors scrambled topside, many of them bleeding from gashed wounds or holding their half-conscious fellows.
M’gann yelled, “Go get him! I got this!”
J’onn saw her dive down to pick up the wounded sailors, and he turned and zipped through the air to follow the creature pass over the concrete sidewalk of the Harborwalk, its enormous tail sweeping back and forth, knocking down streetlights, a mailbox, two park benches and a fire hydrant. Water shot up into the air, hitting J’onn in the face. He dived away circling above the enormous lizard.
The creature reared its head back and roared again.
J’onn tried to reach out to it psychically, sending a mental thread expressing curiosity and respect.
The next roar was colored with the demand for vengeance.
///
Like her niece and nephew, Astra’s instinct was to follow the largest noise, but she was slower to get up in the air so she lagged behind them but heard Kara mention warehouses, and Astra had been around the DEO agents long enough to know that the city’s warehouse district was functionally the tar pits of ancient Argo when it came to criminal activity.
And that thought slowed her flight a bit. The noises they heard sounded natural. The dog and Martians claimed there was something else, maybe something malevolent. But the warehouse district said maybe crime. And criminals weren’t generally malevolent so much as greedy, cocky or desperate. Something didn’t add up.
///
Krypto watched as the four ex-patriates zoomed off, leaving him in charge of protecting the Earthlings. There were enough doorways for them to huddle in and Soft-Hands had explained that her building was designed to withstand much more serious tremblors. Krypto acknowledged her assurances, but his fur still stood on end where his vest didn’t cover it. Krypton’s solid crust had roiled like this his whole life before they sent him to Earth. And though he knew logically that Earth’s crust wasn’t tearing itself apart, still he hated the feeling.
Surprisingly, the humans did not seem similarly worried.
Krypto remembered the explosion at the tall place where Soft-Hands had tended the fallen and the Honorable Nose had questioned what Krypto had heard and smelled. Then the Earthlings had squealed in distress. These Earthlings, his friends, did not squeal or run away. He supposed they were used to having to hero through bad things, just as he was.
Nevertheless, he trotted back and forth between doorways, sniffing for upset or maybe for the strange scent he had smelled before what Scruffy called the Ka-Boom at the tall place. The hard vibrations rattled louder and the Earthlings gripped the doorframes harder.
///
Supergirl saw the strange dinosaur creature racing directly toward a construction crane, looking like it was planning to ram it head on. What was it with villains in this town always making her have to catch enormous cranes? She aimed her laser vision a hundred yards ahead of the creature and quickly burned a crater into the street’s tarmac, causing the thing to fall in and flounder and then struggle out, its head turning to find her.
She flew down closer and it tried to jump up and bite her out of the air, but she stayed just a few feet from its grasp. Superman started to fly around them in superspeeded circles, creating a cyclone that picked it up in the air and then dropped it to the ground when he stopped suddenly.
Astra finally caught up to them, and she was flying much higher than they were. Through the coms, she snapped, “You have incoming!”
The Supers’ heads snapped up and they looked in all directions before seeing the green and red of the Martians’ suits as they chased—
“Wait, what?” said Superman. “Is that—”
“Godzilla,” said M’gann.
Supergirl said, “The enemy of my enemy—”
Instantly, the three Supers started blowing their freezebreath to push their creature toward the other. The moment the Godzilla thing saw the shiny dinosaur, it lunged forward, all teeth and claws and lashing tail, and tore into the smaller creature.
Sirens sounded from all directions. Flashing red and blue lights reflected off the dinosaur’s strange hide. And what kind of creature had reflective hide?
Kara and her cousin shot their laser eyes at it, but Astra dove down close to its strange glittering hide and grabbed at it. She got a handful of something hard—scales?—and flew back up above it to examine what she held; it made no sense to try an attack that might endanger them all if she didn’t know what they were fighting. But even as she started to open her hand the silvery material reformed itself to become some kind of fine mesh covering her hand.
This was not nature. This was technology.
And neither beast was going down. Astra stuffed the strange material in her pocket and dove down to join the fight.
///
Krypto barked an encouraging bark to the peoples. The vibration stopped. Everyone looked around hopefully, still gripping the doorframes.
There was a familiar distant rumble, like the sound of superheroes throwing down with enemies at the center of the city. Soft-Hands let go of the doorframe and sauntered over to the place with all the glass bottles he wasn’t allowed to wag his tail near. She poured liquid from a bottle into a glass, drank it down, poured more and then sauntered back to her seat at the head table.
The Many-Smells-of-the-Tree woman and her friend that no one trusted came forward and did the same. Eventually Scruffy and his friend did the same, but their paws were shaking.
A bright light flashed outside. Whistler and Salty consulted with Very Serious and the DEO agent who always twirled her chair when she was playing tug of war with him and Purple Shark. (Krypto liked her. So did Very Serious.) The peoples put a paw to their ears to hear better, but Krypto recognized Kara’s voice just fine.
“Well, that was a first! Yes, Colonel Lane, can you take the… remains, I guess, back to the DEO for further examination? NCPD is handling witness statements. And Agent In-Ze got a handful of… whatever that was.”
Krypto turned away from the window and barked the all-clear to his Earthlings. Lena translated, and the rest of them immediately headed toward all the bottles. Krypto trotted up to Whistler, barking.
She replied, “Greetings, Canine Agent. The pack returns. Danger recedes. You are a Good Boy.”
She was still oddly stilted when she spoke to him, but he always knew what she meant, and that was what mattered, after all.
Chapter 103: Trickle-Down Economics: It Starts at the Top
Notes:
The semester is SO close to being over that I've actually had time to write a bit. My goal for May is to post on Sundays until (if?) I can write enough in advance to post twice a week again. Sorry for the hiatus. They're.... back!
Chapter Text
December of 2020 was a mixed time for American cities, and National City was no exception. While liberals were sighing with relief, both because of the election behind them and the news of at least two different Covid vaccines on the horizon, extreme conservative pundits were spouting QAnon conspiracy theories on Fox news, among others the Big Lie that Biden had not in fact won, and certainly not by a landslide.
Pam in HR forced herself to watch at least twenty minutes of Fox news six days a week, to keep ahead of potential morale problems at work. She hadn’t always worked at the National City division of the DEO. If she were still in Dallas, she would quite likely be spending her time writing up agents for fistfights rather than decorating the common areas with mistletoe, dreidls and miniature Stonehenges.
She was pleased this year that Vasquez had once again joined her and Winn in taking point on decorating, setting up the Secret Santa pairings, and generally helping Pam foster a festive mood. At the command center, Pam delivered cookies and said, “Thank you so much for your help, Assistant Director.”
Privately, she wondered how much of Vasquez’s improved mood had to do with the fact that she and the Director had both resumed wearing the silver claddagh rings that had not been seen for over a year.
///
Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor hadn’t been sleeping well since the betrothal. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Kara was sleeping great. The problem was that she was sleep-levitating almost every night and taking the weighted blankets with her, leaving Lena chilly under just a sheet. That in itself wasn’t too bad, as Lena generally preferred to sleep in a slightly colder room. It was good for the sinuses, after all.
The problem was when Kara rolled over in her sleep, dropping the weighted blankets on a dozing Lena.
Now, Lena pretty much took for granted the odd bruise now and then. Beyond broken headboards, sleeping with a Kryptonian did occasionally include Kara grabbing Lena tightly if she was having a nightmare. But this was becoming annoying.
///
Jess got to work as always at 7:55 on the dot, but Lena had gotten there first, which Jess knew could mean something good (if Lena were inventing) or bad (if Lena hadn’t slept well). Looking at the scrawled list left on her chair, Jess felt her stomach sink. Lena wanted her to pull up the bioengineering department’s financials going back five years ASAP, and set up sit-downs with the department heads and their admin, Ernie (LCorp’s internal auditor), Eve Tessmacher, and Ralph from the facilities staff. Also, someone called Larry? Or Lauren? Jess couldn’t tell. And Jess had worked with Lena for years. She could always read Lena’s handwriting.
Got it, Jess thought with foreboding. Insomnia it is.
///
Ralph Fitzhugh rode up the executive elevator from floor 30 to 40, something he had never done since he had joined LCorp four years before. He was the Lab Safety Officer in the facilities department. Most of his time he spent in his office or in the labs or attending conferences or trainings on the hazards of using or even storing biological, chemical, nuclear, etc. materials: the executive floors might have people with volatile personalities, but they weren’t known to keep volatile materials.
When he’d gotten the email from Night Owl Two that Night Owl One wanted to speak with him, Ralph, on a matter of some urgency, he had stripped off the green LCorp facilities sweatshirt that he usually wore over a white collared shirt, took down the navy blazer that he kept on a hanger on the back of his door, put it on and headed up, knees shaking a bit beneath his khaki trousers.
Night Owl Two was not at her desk outside of Ms. Luthor’s office when he stepped out of the elevator. A grey-haired woman in a charcoal power pantsuit sat in the waiting area typing away at her laptop. She looked vaguely familiar. Maybe an LCorp lawyer? Ralph racked his brain for anything he could possibly have done that would merit any legal stuff. He was stumped and realized his hands were shaking. He sat across from the woman, crossing his arms to hide his nervousness, but she didn’t seem to notice he was there.
Then Jess Huang appeared pushing a little trolley with a carafe of steaming coffee and three LCorp mugs. At the same moment, Ms. Luthor’s door opened and three white-faced, wide-eyed engineers—Brad, Matt and Eve—trooped out. Ms. Luthor stepped out behind them, wearing a black pantsuit and heels. Her black hair was tied in a knot at the nape of her neck.
Her stern expression didn’t change as she said, “Ah, Jess. Just in time as always. Ms. Murray, Mr. Fitzhugh, won’t you join me?”
Ralph swallowed as the lawyer lady calmly stood and nodded to Lena. Then he followed them in.
///
Eve felt like a zombie as she rode the elevator down with Brad and Matt. Typical of their personalities, Brad looked like he was contemplating his golf game and Matt looked like he was about to shit his pants. Eve felt her blood run cold throughout her body. Dizzy, she managed to walk back to her lab without falling down. She thought someone said her name, but her heart was pounding in her ears. She unlocked her office with one of the keys on her keyring, unlocked her desk drawer with another and used the handprint scan on the lockbox in the drawer to open it and take out another set of keys. She closed the box and the drawer, drew a shaky breath and left her office, heading for the lab’s vault, which required simultaneous hand and retina scans to open the thick door to get to all the smaller key-locked mini-vaults. She stepped in front of her team’s box and opened it. Inside were two small boxes. In the first, she could easily see the eighteen milk-white tablets a bit smaller than a domino: proto-kryptonite, untreated. She snapped the lid closed and relocked it. She unlocked the other box, lifted the lid, removed the thin sheet of lead, and immediately saw what Lena had seen.
Seventeen pale pink tablets.
There should have been eighteen.
Well, shit.
///
Petra Papatonis, Deputy Chief of Security for LCorp, stared at the email from Night Owl Two, all her muscles tensing abruptly. She had been acting chief for barely five minutes—
Well. She looked at her watch. Eight and a half days—
It certainly didn’t feel that long since her boss had tested positive for Covid. Definitely not long enough for her to need to mobilize her entire department to conduct a lockdown and do a floor-to-floor sweep of the entire building, in search of something the size of a domino, which might have gone missing days, if not weeks, ago and which might not even still be in the building at all. The only possible metric of success would be finding it. Not finding it would mean nothing.
A ping sounded in her in-box, this one from legal.
Oh joy. Strip searches had been okayed.
Petra rubbed her eyes. As a security professional, she had read through ALL of the fine print of her contract before signing it, and knew that she had agreed to that clause—even initializing it after she read it. She knew most employees just whipped through the several pages of their contracts, scrawling initials in every red box without scrutinizing the details.
Boy, were they in for a surprise.
///
In the command center of the DEO, Krypto lay heavily on Winn’s right foot, which, like the dog, was falling asleep. Winn tried to wiggle his toes. Pins and needles shot through his foot, but then the dog, heavy as a bag of bricks, sighed and rolled over. Winn pulled his foot back and the pain shot through his lower leg.
“Agent Schott!” barked Vasquez, frowning at her phone. “Are your kryptonite sensors sensitive enough to pick up trace amounts?”
“Of course,” he replied, surreptitiously kneading feeling back into his calf. “Green kryptonite’s signature is specific enough to allow sub-micron—"
“Not green. Pink.”
///
Ron stood in the men’s room, stripping down one piece of clothing at a time in front of three bored straight male security guards: one who kept his eyes on Ron and two who were examining his clothing, turning out pockets and feeling seams.
When he’d come in from lunch, he had seen other security guards working with Lena’s friend from the DEO using a strange device with a wand. It looked like a repurposed Geiger counter, but if they were worried about radiation, they all would have been wearing Hazmat suits.
Once he was allowed to get dressed again, Ron put it out of his mind. Whatever was going on that day at LCorp, it was clearly way above his paygrade.
Chapter 104: Trickle-Down Economics: It Keeps on Giving
Chapter Text
As the sun set, Supergirl took one more sweep over National City, keeping an ear out for trouble. It was too early to go home to Lena’s—to home. She had called Lena at noon to see if she wanted her to bring lunch over, but Lena had sounded distracted and annoyed, saying she didn’t have time for lunch and would most likely not be home until late.
And sure, Kara could watch whatever Hallmark Christmas rom-com was on Netflix. Lena had previously shown interest in one about a prince or duke or something. But it wasn’t the same watching things alone. Supergirl landed out back behind Dollywood, super-sped to change into her Kara clothes and went in.
M’gann took one look at Kara, with the Crinkle above her glasses, and turned to pull down a bottle of Aldabaran rum (the blue kind) and three shot glasses. She lined them up on the bar and poured.
Kara sat on the stool looking at the shots, eyebrows raised.
M’gann shrugged and gestured to the bar, slightly fuller than usual. And it wasn’t the usual crowd. The aliens were generally not wearing suits and ties or the equivalent and, aside from DEO agents, there usually weren’t so many apparent humans. In one corner booth, Winn was gesturing to James and Joe. In another, a sullen Jess Huang was looking morosely at a glass of hard cider, while Holtzy tried to cheer her up. Kara’s superhearing caught snippets.
“—Owl One went on a ramp—”
“Nothing to do with our depart—”
“I should have seen this—” That was Jess, sounding distraught.
And Winn, “Every single inch of that place, even behind the urinals!”
Kara turned to M’gann, stomach sinking.
M’gann gestured to the first shot glass.
Kara eyed the blue liquid cautiously, then sipped at it. She swallowed the last of it and snapped the glass down, bottom-up, as she had seen Maggie do with tequila. “Well?” she asked.
“LCorp,” said M’gann simply. “I think something went missing.”
Kara thought about that, while an odd warmth suffused her stomach. She looked around.
“Yes, of course I do!” Eve Tessmacher radiated anxiety like a cartoon character. “But I can’t be there every second!”
Wasn’t Eve biochem? Well, that didn’t bode well.
“—course we have protocols! Lena wrote—” Jess again.
Kara picked up the second shot glass and drank it down in one go. So Lena’s absence was due to whatever was stressing out her employees. Some kind of leak? Or industrial sabotage?
“—such thing not criminal. Security check footage?” Joe.
“—a strip search. What? No,…. Very respectful.” One of Lena’s employees. Kara had met the man but couldn’t remember his name.
“Suspended! Indefinitely! ….me on house arrest if she could.” Eve again.
“Night Owl One was furi—”
“—said Night Owl Two looked downright—”
“Shhh! She’s here!”
“Dammit, I’m an accountant!”
“—saw Luthor and she looked—”
“—frowns like a Luthor—”
“But Night Owl One came down on—”
“I’d only ever met her at the Christmas—”
“—terrifies me!”
Kara gulped the third shot down and snapped the glass onto the bar. “But her employees love Lena!”
M’gann looked pained. She glanced at her waiters, hurrying through the crowd with trays crowded with little glasses filled with what looked like a wide variety of colored liquids: the hard stuff, apparently, for a variety of species.
“Sucks for you all, I’m afraid,” said M’gann tiredly. “And I’ve got a splitting headache from all this angst. But it’s great for business.”
A wave of voices swept over Kara.
“Dude, it’s not our… Certainly not our department… like she was going to fire every--…So much for the year-end… hadn’t even been on that floor…. bonuses. Could have used…have three kids!... and it’s none of my…. sweep the damn floors…how I’m going to…she might halt the whole project….just can’t lose this job!...”
Kara turned back to M’gann, who nodded at the three downturned glasses. “Another round?” asked M’gann.
“Oh, Rao, yes.”
///
Lena got up from the white couch and poured herself three fingers of good scotch. All over her office—covering her white desk, her white carpet, white shelves emptied of tech books, everywhere—were file folders, budgets, tax returns, tech specs, legal documents, memos, work orders. Lena had read them all, and was sure that the answer was there, waiting to rise to the surface, once she finally mentally digested it all. And that wasn’t going to happen without a good night’s sleep, which was unlikely to happen whether she went home or stayed here surrounded by all the physical detritus symbolic of the Very Bad Situation she had discovered at six that morning when she had come in early hoping to work on her team’s special project and found things not as they should be.
She didn’t know how she was going to confess to Kara that some of the precious, dangerous, seemingly harmless proto-K was missing. What if Lex, or even Max, or some other villain was even now in the process of weaponizing it against the woman who had just come one giant step closer to becoming that impossible, miraculous thing: her wife.
Worse, what if Lex were doing this precisely because they had taken that step? Anxiety churned her gut. She vaguely recalled Jess forcing her to eat an energy bar at intervals, enough to keep her going. But that wasn’t the same as having eaten actual meals, either during the day charging from meeting to meeting in the building or now, as the amber liquor loosened her limbs and heated her face.
The last meeting of the day with the Chair of the Board had gone better than expected, but then Claire Darrow always had her back. At the end of the meeting, Clair had snapped her briefcase shut, yawning. “Don’t waste any more energy on this, Lena. Whatever ends up happening, we’ll deal with it.”
From the door of the conference room, Claire had headed toward the elevator, waving. Lena returned to her office and slipped off her heels. Now, collapsed on the white couch, Lena felt the scotch burn its way down her throat. She glanced at the balcony, remembering her first tentative kiss with Supergirl, which had startled the Kryptonian so much that she had panicked and flown off, leaving behind Lena’s green silk scarf, the one Lena had just offered to her as a lady might offer her favor to her favorite knight. Lena was left disheartened, embarrassed, frustrated.
Alone.
It amazed her that they’d come so far since then.
Lena finished her drink and texted Ted to bring the car around. It was time to go home.
///
Ted was a practical man, easy going and kind. He very consciously cultivated those virtues (as he saw them) in himself. He’d been in Motor Transportation as a Marine, driving generals around in combat zones, at stateside training facilities, and in DC. When his tour was done, he had driven for LuthorCorp, but he went out of his way to be the most midling driver he could be, lest he catch the attention of the higher-ups back then, about whom he always had mixed feelings. When Lena had taken over the company some years before, he had upped his game: delivering what- or whoever he was driving safely, early and politely, gaining him the notice of his boss’s boss. He took every defensive driving course Metropolis had and doubled down on his karate training. Then he had applied for and received a promotion, driving for LuthorCorp’s acting CTO, and then the new General Counsel, and eventually, two years before the move to National City, for Lena Luthor. He had been her primary driver ever since.
He was on standby on that frantic Thursday at LCorp, sitting in the Mobile Lounge in the basement of LCorp next to the underground garage, reading a detective novel, but also listening to the gossip as people passed through on their way to get their cars and go home.
He knew, of course, that people tended to exaggerate, and some people more than others were likely to describe personal inconvenience to themselves in overly dramatic terms, so when the first trickle of people came through muttering about random security checks, draconian rules and finding another job, he didn’t think much of it.
Then there was louder talk about departmental audits and eventually the words “strip search” were mentioned. And by dinnertime, employees of all levels looked less like they were simply going home and more like they were fleeing.
Then the General Counsel came through, her charcoal suit a bit wrinkled and her short grey hair looking like she’d run her hand through it many times, which he knew she did when stressed.
She caught him looking at her and stopped. “Oh, Ted. Don’t tell me you have the dubious honor of driving Night Owl One home tonight. Some advice? Tread lightly. She’s been on a rampage all day.”
“Thank you, Ms. Murray,” said Ted politely. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
After the dinner hour, the building got quieter. After having a few hours to think about it, just before ten, Ted made an order through GrubHub, which was delivered two minutes before Lena texted him that she was ready to go home.
Then he stood, with his offering in his hands, next to the black towncar polished to a hard shine, preparing himself to take the biggest gamble of his life.
Chapter 105: Trickle-Down Economics: Mop-up on Aisle Three
Chapter Text
On the forty-one-floor journey down to the garage, Lena came surprisingly close to falling asleep on her feet, then snapped awake as the elevator doors finally opened. She saw Ted standing by the car and her first thought was to Luthorize, as Jess called it, to put on the haughty demeanor, but it was Ted after all and she was exhausted, so instead she just offered him a tired smile. Then she saw what he was holding in his hands: two green and gold LCorp travel mugs.
“Hot cocoa, ma’am?” He offered her one of the mugs and opened the passenger door for her. “I heard you’ve had a bit of a day.”
“Thank you, Ted. I see you got one for yourself too.” She got in.
He closed the door for her and went around to get in the driver’s seat. They rolled out into the sparkling city streets of National City at night. “Well, ma’am,” he said slowly, briefly catching her eyes in the rearview mirror as she took her first sip. “It’s like this. An avalanche maybe starts at the top of the mountain, but it doesn’t end there.”
Lena knew that Ted never said anything that he hadn’t thought through a great deal--he generally had all day, after all--so if he wanted her to think about his metaphor, she would. Having been an avid skier in college, and having skied in Colorado and Switzerland, Lena knew a thing or two about avalanche safety. She thought about the causes of avalanches: unstable snow in avalanche terrain (steep connected slopes) and a trigger, like a person moving on unstable snow.
Clearly, Ted was suggesting that LCorp was avalanche terrain, its people a hierarchical steep slope, with all the departments connected horizontally. She wondered what her driver had had to deal with because of a lost piece of potentially hazardous material, but then remembered.
“Oh, ah. Ted. Yes. Sorry about the strip search.”
“No hard feelings, ma’am.”
“I do trust you, of course, but we couldn’t leave anyone out…”
“It’s in my contract, after all, but um… Permission to speak freely, ma’am?”
“Of course, Ted. And you’re not a Marine anymore.”
“Always a Marine, ma’am. But, well, remember when we first all came out here from Metropolis with you and you were doing so much and sometimes, I’d drive you out someplace quiet to think—”
“Oh, that lovely lookout. What was it called? We could see the whole city from there.”
“East Rock, ma’am.”
She gazed out the window and realized they were only a few blocks from the condo. “You think I should go up there tonight?”
“Not necessarily, ma’am. You have had a very long day.”
“Hm. But I did back then, too…” She took a sip of the thick, rich chocolate, clearly not made from powder and microwaved water. It was comforting, much like Ted’s presence. And he had saved her life a few times with fancy driving and meticulous “pre-flight checks” of the car every time he drove her anywhere. “Well, then. Let’s go.”
He executed the most elegant U-turn Lena had ever seen and sped through the busy side streets of the Arts District. As the road rose, Lena thought about the first time he had taken her to the lookout point.
The move to National City had been a perfectly sound business decision, but the logistics of the move had been maddeningly inefficient, with SNAFUs on every level: warehouses not being up to code after all, equipment going missing from moving trucks, employees who had signed leases dealing with landlords who had heard about LuthorCorp and tried to revoke the leases (not two or three of these but dozens), banks holding checks, and even an individual messenger carrying documents getting mugged. And that last one had been the last straw.
Lena Luthor never cried and certainly not in public, but that day it had been a close call. When Ted had pulled round in the half-finished garage in the half-finished building all of which had been supposed to be finished a month prior, Lena got into the towncar and said, “Ted, don’t take me home. Just drive.”
He had taken her around the far edges of National City, pointing out schools (including the high school he had gone to), local businesses, parks, the arena where the Heroes played, the Art and Culture Museum (which was then showing a special exhibit about Krypton-Earth relations), even the small Taza Chocolate Factory, which he said came highly recommended as a place for a second or third date. (Lena had snorted at that.)
Finally, he had taken her up to a sharp, steep ridge on the eastern side of National City, and they had sat on the park bench in front of the towncar, looking across the city to the west where the sun was gradually falling, bathing the city in a warm golden light as the pale blue of the sky slowly darkened at their backs.
That had been spring, late April, she recalled. Across the city, crocuses, daffodils and tulips had been popping up in patches of bright yellows and reds. White dogwood and pink magnolia trees were blooming. And yet she felt like her business was falling apart.
A single tear slipped down her right cheek, where Ted, sitting on her right side could see it. Bloody traitors, her tear ducts.
Quietly, he said, “My sister is an artist, you know.”
He had never offered any personal information before, so rather than feeling annoyed at her train of thought being disrupted, she felt curious. “Oh? What kind?”
“Some watercolors, some oils. But what she likes best, does best, is charcoal. Always did, even as a kid. I don’t think we have a single picture of her from the time she turned twelve to now in which she doesn’t have a smudge of charcoal on her nose or cheek.”
Lena had frowned. How did skyscrapers gilded gold at their edges against a pink and purple sky make him think of black and white drawings?
He glanced at her, nodding. “She quoted Georgia O’Keeffe, I think, saying something about how color had to be earned. First you had to figure out what a thing was in only black and white, only shadow and light. If you didn’t get that, adding color wouldn’t help.”
“Okay. That makes sense, I suppose.”
“Mm. And when I said I could barely draw Charlie Brown, but she had these detailed portraits of celebrities—that’s how she practiced. She loves a good jawbone, a good throat, my sister. But she said I was too much trying to draw what was there and the trick was drawing around what wasn’t there.”
“Negative space,” said Lena. “I’ve heard of that.” She rubbed her eyes tiredly. Constantly having to turn to Plan B on what felt like a war on two fronts, the one leaving Metropolis and the one coming to National City, meant that she wasn’t getting nearly enough sleep. She yawned. “Oh, sorry. Um, would I know your sister’s work? Where does she show?”
“Hm? Oh, Cape Canaveral. She works for NASA to pay the rent. She’s a project manager.”
Thinking back on it at the burning tail end of the banged-up rocketship that was 2020, Lena admired the twisting path of her driver’s mind, much like the randomized routes he took her by, to avoid creating a repeating pattern of her path between places when she was most vulnerable. Her enemies knew her endpoints of course, the bombproof headquarters of her company and her seriously reinforced condominium building. But Ted always made sure that, in the between spaces, she would be safe.
She swallowed the last of her cooling hot chocolate and sighed. “It’s beautiful, Ted. A balm for the soul. Home now?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He drove her home.
When she entered the apartment, it was 11:15 and all the lights were off except for the plastic nightlights (Superman in the living room, Wonder Woman in the bathroom and Supergirl in the bedroom, duh) that gave just enough glow from outlets near the floor that Lena could see her way across the apartment.
Kara was in bed, snoring softly, her body still firmly ensconced on the king-sized mattress. Lena changed in the bathroom and removed her makeup. She climbed into bed next to her extra-warm fiancée and slid into sleep.
She dreamed of Jungfrau, that Swiss Alp with the deep snow and long ski runs. She was waxing her skis to the tune of Whitney Houston’s “Wanna Dance with Somebody” and grinning at the thought of playing hooky from LCorp and maybe challenging Lex to a race. He was a talented fencer but only a mediocre skier. She would leave him in her icy spray.
She was moving from the first ski to the second when her phone’s timer pinged to tell her it was time to take her mild sleeping pill if she wanted to get to sleep before midnight, but when she reached into the pocket of her dark green ski jacket, all she could find were some red and yellow oak leaves and a bit of old apple core. She heard Supergirl shouting, “Up, up and away!” and she ran out of the ski chalet and heard the whumpf! of an avalanche--
And woke up. Pushing the blankets off her head, Lena looked at the clock on the bedside table: 4:21. Groggily, Lena got up to pee and noticed Supergirl’s muddy boots standing in the shower. Had it rained that day? Lena had spent the majority of the day in conference rooms or doing walkabout from lab to lab with Winn as he ran the kryptonite scanner over every inch of the building. The only place that had even given off a minor signal was Eve’s lab, particularly outside the vault (they didn’t go in).
These days, she just assumed it would be sunny most of the time. Weather in California was gentler than New York’s, although the pre-Christmas lack of snow could be a downer. She flushed and washed her hands. Her face in the mirror was puffy. Well, surprise, surprise. Three nights in a row with maybe three hours of sleep each could do that, she supposed. She had to start getting more sleep. It was one thing when she was inventing: then, sheer adrenaline kept her going. Now, she was running on fumes.
Ted was right. Going into the office early and spreading the pain around was no way to be a leader.
Leaving the bathroom light on, she went to the living room and found the bright red blanket with the blue and yellow crest, wrapped it around herself, turned off the light, and went back to sleep below her still-levitating fiancée.
She had briefly thought of sleeping on the couch, to make a point, but Kara snored gently when she was happy, and Lena found it soothing. Warm again, she curled up in the blanket and slept.
Chapter 106: A Day in the Life
Chapter Text
Kara felt Streaky batting her nose, encouraging her to wake up and feed him. “Fi’ mo’ minutes, Streak,” she murmured, but the batting continued. She opened her eyes to find herself rising to bump the ceiling of Lena’s—their—bedroom. Huh. Not the cat after all. Yawning, she lowered herself to the floor and guiltily took in Lena’s peaceful face peeking out from the bright red blanket. One alabaster arm hung down the side of the bed, the shoulder covered in the pale green sleeve of the Grumpy t-shirt that Winn had given her after one of their creative disagreements in the lab. Kara smiled as she folded the weighted blanket and set it on the end of the bed. Then she used superspeed to eat and dress, leave a “Sorry. Love you” note for Lena and zoom off the balcony to begin her first patrol over National City.
The day dawned gently, the cold rain of the previous day having subsided sometime in the night. The sun was still low in the sky but a pale yellow glow limned the buildings that still stood dark. The quiet reminded her of the eery lack of ambient noise from back in lockdown earlier in the year, except this was peaceful. She found herself hopeful—not the teary, shocked hope of that Saturday after the election when the little Girl Scout had comforted her. No, this hope felt like something to build on.
As she landed on the balcony of the DEO, she felt the bracelet she wore under the left sleeve of her suit. The blue thumbhole kept the sleeve covering it, but she could feel the emeralds and sapphires when she rubbed her arm. At the command center, Agent Vasquez saw the gesture and smiled.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning, Assistant Director!” Supergirl gave her the thousand-Watt smile.
The elevator opened and Winn walked in yawning behind his mask. “Oh, I’ll rise, but I refuse to shine.” He pulled his Airpods out of his ears and deposited himself at his station. “What?”
Supergirl shook her head. “Nothing. Just a gorgeous day after yesterday’s stormy weather. What’ve we got, Vasquez?”
“So far no criminal or alien activity.”
“Good,” grumbled Winn. “Don’t jinx it.”
There was a blur of superspeed and then she was back with two steaming Noonan’s cups and gave one to each of the agents. “Caffeine will help. Where’s Al—the Director?”
“Down training with Krypto,” said Vasquez. “Seeing what his limits are with the flying.”
Supergirl snorted. “I’m surprised she hasn’t got him chasing rockets in the desert.”
Vasquez shrugged. “Hard to catch a rocket with no thumbs. But I’d bet Lucy is doing something like that with your aunt as we speak.”
“Ha. At least I’m not the only one.”
“Well, but you have to admit, that particular skillset has come in handy once or twice, like when Lillian Luthor tried to kill all the nonhuman aliens that time…”
“Hm. Good point. Okay, I won’t interrupt. I’ve got to interview Saturnalia’s owner. He’s doing a grand re-opening in a few weeks and Cassie wants me to figure out a good angle.”
Supergirl waved and got into the elevator, but when it opened on the ground floor near the security desk, it was Kara Danvers who walked out.
///
The late William Walker marveled at the airship Waverider (which was a thing of beauty), its two female captains (who also seemed to be married, if such a thing could be believed), and the woman Gideon (who was the ship? Or its pilot? He must have missed part of that explanation.)
And that wasn’t so surprising, since he’d been sitting in the library with Professor Haywood, who had probably read every single book in the room, and the rough-and-tumble Mick, who, well, William wasn’t sure if Mick could read at all.
What Mick could do, and do very well, apparently, was drink liquor. The professor had cracked open what was to them a ninety-year-old bottle of whiskey and they’d been trading tales with William (who they insisted on calling Will) about the doings of the nineteenth century that he had lived through or they had visited, which made no sense, but tall tales went with whiskey like, well, cards did.
They were an excellent audience, and he explained the different ways you could have (oh, okay, pull off) a coup d’etat.
And he fuzzily remembered that maybe he wasn’t supposed to talk about that, but the stunning Gideon had asked if they were up for something stronger than whiskey, and the next thing he knew, they were all drinking some colorless liquid that someone named John had cooked up. (They had a still on the ship? Well, that was modern.) Anyway, by the time they were all falling-down drunk, he had told them the entire plan.
Of course, he didn’t remember any of that the following day. And he wasn’t sure what was worse, the splitting headache, the sour gut, or the spinning down a fiery vortex back to his old place in hell.
Oh well. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, he supposed.
///
Sara Lance grinned and clapped Nate and Mick on the shoulders. Even though the last few rounds they both had been drinking water, they looked worse for wear. “Way to take one for the team, boys. This is good news!”
Nate said, “Um, actually… this is very bad news, Captain. You know, the part where our democracy hangs in the balance? You caught that, right?”
“Of course I did. But terrible news we know in advance is infinitely better than terrible news that takes us by surprise in the moment.”
“Oh, well, when you put it like that.”
“Now, I have to give our opposite numbers the news.”
These days, she always used the jumpship whenever she had to contact the DEO. She was pretty sure that Alex Danvers and Vasquez were over the lovely but unfortunate hookup that Sara had had with Alex on that other Earth, but it never hurt to be discrete.
The comm screen in the jumpship filled with Vasquez’s frowning face. “Captain Lance. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
It didn’t look like pleasure, but Sara said, “I have some good news that the Director and you will want to hear. We’ll it’s bad news, but it’s good intel. Is she around?”
“She’s on her way up.” Vasquez stared at her, unblinking.
Well, thought Sara, two could play that game. The League of Assassins training on such things had proven useful on far more fraught occasions than this.
When Alex came into view, she obviously took in the staring contest and clearly decided to ignore it. “So, Captain Lance. You have intel?”
“I do. Long story short: you’re going to need to save the date: January sixth.”
“Because…?”
“Lex Luthor is running Cadmus and his dance card for that day is rapidly filling up.”
Sara watched Alex take in the implications of Sara’s words. Then a warning claxon went off at the DEO. In the background, an agent in a plaid shirt said something that sounded like a pterodactyl small downtown?
Sara blinked in confusion. “Wait, a pterodactyl?”
Alex barked, “Winn, call in Supergirl and our other flyers! Finn, you’re with me. Prep a helo and check the harness, in case I need to shoot this thing out of the sky.”
Vasquez started, “Director—”
“Not now, Vas. I planned for this. You have command while I’m gone.”
And she hurried out after Agent Finn.
Vasquez sighed and turned back to Sara.
“Pterodactyl?” Sara asked. “Did I hear right?” She turned away and said, “Gideon, do we have a time aberration in National City 2020?”
“Negative, Captain,” said the ship’s British voice.
“It’s probably not a real pterodactyl,” said Vasquez wearily, and then huffed a laugh. “And that is not a sentence I would have ever expected to say.”
“Our lives are not like other people’s lives,” said Sara philosophically.
“Oh, you got that right.”
///
From the air above, National City’s new supermall looked like a diamond with octagons branching out from each of the four corners. Supergirl knew that each octagon was a multistory department store and that all the other shops that lined the outside of the diamond left the central shaft empty and available for colorful shapes to hang at the different levels, suspended by long steel cords from the ceiling. Instinctively, she felt sure that the dinosaur bird would use the hanging shapes to make havoc and when she flew in the entrance on the first floor, she found herself having to superspeed around, catching each as it fell. Even so, she missed one of the highest ones, which bounced off the hip-high glass walls that allowed customers to see down and up at the shops on the different floors.
Crashing, shattering and screaming filled the air. A flash of black and green sped past Supergirl, M’gann yelling, “You get the bird! I’ll do casualties!”
Supergirl banked and came around behind the pterodactyl as it flapped its metallic wings, aiming for a stylized Christmas tree hanging from a steel cord. Supergirl zipped up and grabbed it by its tail, swinging it around to disorient it, then losing her grip. It sped toward the Macy’s in the north corner, with Supergirl right behind it.
This was not going to be fun.
///
Of all his Santa gigs each Christmas—from ringing bells on cold street corners to doing the ho-ho-ho thing in cold car showlots to this sort of thing: small children peeing from fear or excitement in his lap as he sat on a gilded throne in a warm departments store—getting peed on was the best.
Well, it was most years.
Maybe not in 2020 when everybody wore surgical masks and then, just as he had gotten a timid little boy to admit (in front of surprised parents) that he wanted a dump truck and a Garbage Barbie to drive it, an enormous metallic dragon creature came pounding through the children’s section, followed by a red-caped Supergirl who plowed into the creature when it came to a sudden halt. They skidded fifty feet into the women’s section.
Crashing, screaming and three uses of laser eyes later, the thing was bound in a tightly knotted net of… well, brassieres to be honest.
Probably those underwire ones his wife Beryl always complained about.
Beryl had been a teller at National City Bank’s main branch and thought (and said, repeatedly) that her presence at the conflagration there that Supergirl had only barely put out was far more traumatic than his experience the year before, when that devil Reign had nearly killed Supergirl in the middle of Cordova Street right in front of him.
Huh.
Now he had ammunition for a counterargument.
///
Maggie and Reynolds drove back to the precinct from the supermall, jaded and quiet. Dinosaurs in a mall? Really, at this point, after policing in (Super)National City for six and eleven years, respectively, the partners had pretty much seen everything.
But Reynolds had said that a maybe-mechanical dinosaur restrained with (the evidence techs said) 139 underwire brassieres (because of course, men Reynolds’ age were apparently incapable of calling them bras) was, well, new.
Privately, Maggie thought, “No shit, Sherlock.”
But Reynolds’ back was still giving him trouble in the wake of his Election Night sex marathon with his wife, so Maggie kept her opinion to herself.
Sometimes, as a partner, you simply needed to hold your tongue.
Chapter 107: Double, Double
Chapter Text
Between his black wig, his black KN95 mask, and his—it had to be said—tres bon chapeau noir—the self-styled sorcerer had no trouble leaving Lex’s base and driving his very old but reliable battered blue Volvo upstate to his destination.
Having read The Book of Seven Universes (seven being a euphemism for infinite), he knew that on at least one Earth in one reality of the multiverse, this town had imploded and was nothing but an enormous town-sized crater in the ground. Luckily, on this Earth, it was not.
That was not to say that resting (wrong word, he knew) on top of a Hellmouth had left the town unscarred. The burnt-out old high school building remained on its grassy campus, an ashen heap, somehow shadowy even in strong sunlight, a cautionary tale against ageless mayors and schoolchildren armed with medieval weapons.
The sorcerer grinned behind his mask. All the better for his nefarious purposes. He parked two blocks away and ambled onto the school grounds, stepped through a shattered door and was lost to the sight of any prying eyes.
///
Since That Horrible Thursday, Chaya had been saying affirmations to herself as she put her makeup on at home each morning, and again, anytime she passed the restroom mirror at LCorp, reminding herself that she was worthy and responsible, totally not the person who lost the proto-kryptonite and not currently working with supervillains out to hurt Supergirl, or possibly corporate spies. She hoped it was true.
With Eve suspended (with pay) for the duration of the investigation, Chaya was the person with the most seniority in the lab, which she found mildly terrifying, given that if anything else went wrong anytime soon, hers would be the next head to roll.
Lena came down to meet with her and Pill and the techs the following Tuesday and everybody was on edge. Lena was still wearing all black, which the women of LCorp knew was probably a bad sign for somebody. Pill and the techs had gathered around the lab’s makeshift meeting table, still masked and socially distanced while Chaya followed Lena into the storage vault. She had heard muttering that one of the techs had spilled coffee on Pill’s white lab coat out of sheer nervousness. Well, Chaya knew better than to drink anything except water when she was under this kind of strain.
Lena walked up to their mini-vault and opened it, saying, “Chaya, can you enter on the chart that I am taking three of the pink-K tablets today and note the time?”
Chaya went to the table that held six clipboards and picked up the one for their lab and reached for a pen—
And something very small clattered to the floor and bounced onto her shoe. She looked down. Huh.
“Um, Ms. Luthor?”
Lena turned and looked down to where Chaya was looking. “Oh, shite.”
///
Kara Danvers looked at the text on her phone and sighed. “Sorry, Mr. Senndg’v, it turns out that I do have a lunch meeting after all. Have you ever heard of a restaurant called Garden Goddess?”
The blue mannish creature snorted softly. “If you want real Plutonian cuisine, you should go to the Dog’s Breakfast—yes, I know, an unfortunate name. Grzalt wasn’t as good at English idioms back then—”
“No, I know about the Gar Ten Goddess restaurant. This one is a human-run place, maybe with rice or quinoa bowls? It’s for Lena Luthor.”
The Saturnian’s annoyed frown turned into a surprised smile. “Oh! Well, in that case. Yes, I think it’s in between the arts district and the court district, maybe across from the Mr. Donut? I think there’s a small gas station down the block.”
“Gosh, thanks. I hate to cut this short, but she’s been having…”
“Issues,” said Senndg’v. “It is a kinder-sounding word than problems or crises, no?”
Kara sighed. “Yeah… I like that you think about words the way you think about food.”
The alien laughed. “Taste is taste. Doesn’t matter what you apply it to, no?”
And that gave Kara something to think about as she bought the Buddha bowl and the Cowpoke bowl and walked to LCorp, took the elevator up to Lena’s office. Jess took one look at her and said, “Um, Ms. Danvers—”
“Please, Ms. Huang, call me Kara.”
“Yes, ma’am, except that she’s on a bit of a tear again…”
“Oh Rao, don’t tell me something else has gone missing…”
“More like something turned up, but for some reason I can’t follow, that’s not a good thing?”
“Ah. Mm. Got it. Thanks for the heads up.”
And Kara braced herself as Jess opened Lena’s door and stepped back as she went in.
“Oh, thank God, you got it,” said Lena breathlessly, “because I am so in need of some kale and quinoa after the day I’ve had, after the week I had last week, and we looked absolutely everywhere and I had Winn bring his kryptonite-finding doohickey and we went over absolutely every square inch of LCorp, even maintenance, even the restrooms, every corner, every bookshelf, every lab bench and there was no sign of it, not a blip, except right outside the storage vault, you know the one where we keep any potentially unstable materials, because we have enough threats from outside the company and the last thing we need is for our own work to undo us, but Winn said the only K reaction his device noted was right outside the door to the vault, so we—”
“Outside?” blurted Kara.
“What? Yes, we went through Eve’s lab and then went to the vault and the K-signature was faint but very clear so we—”
“Wait, did you not go into the vault with Winn?”
“Well, no, of course not. There’s only one box of treated proto-- If we were getting a K-signature from this side of the door what would be the point of going in?”
“Um. To see whether there was a signature at the box and one someplace else in the space?”
Lena opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Shite. That’s the answer. It was there all along. Misfiled, I guess you’d say.”
She looked wrecked. Kara lifted up her lunch offerings. “Buddha bowl?”
///
Jack Chen had run the Joy Energy apothecary in National City for twenty years, since his parents had retired from the business, and he knew his customers. Mrs. Liu came in on Thursdays for the tea to regulate her bowels (about which he knew far more than he wanted; she was nice, but talkative and had no boundaries to speak of). There was Sam Tang, who was in a long-distance relationship with a stewardess—wait, no, flight attendant—for China Air. When she was scheduled for a layover in National City, Sam came in looking embarrassed, to purchase the concoction that Jack’s father had devised. The Chinese name he’d given it translated to Exuberant Joy, but privately, the family called it Little Blue Pill. Then there were the “FBI” agents who came in for dit da jao and tiger balm a day after any alien or supervillain shenanigans had ensued. Jack’s friend Bridgett, who ran the Long Shamrock down the street, said that she’d heard rumors of a black-budget organization tasked with dealing with aliens, and that sounded about right to Jack.
So yes, Jack knew his clientele, but for the life of him, he could not recollect ever having seen the man who had just come in to buy some very odd herbs and … other oddments that he had previously ordered by phone. A white man, anyway, with—well, he really couldn’t remember the color of his eyes and the blue surgical mask made everybody look alike anyway. He remembered a baseball hat. Maybe the Yankees?
And the herbs weren’t a problem, but finding a snake spine with all vertebrae intact had taken a long time.
///
When Millie Bernetti and her alien wife walked into Dollywood, M’gann took notice. She had been hearing things about Millie from Kara, of course, all year, since Lena had helped Kara get the job writing about alien food. With a quick, upper-level psychic scan, she pulled down the booze and extras to make a Lena Luthor and poured the wife an Aldabaran rum on the rocks, with a sprig of mint. She took the drinks over herself.
“Welcome to Dollywood, Mrs. Bernettis. Is this your first time?” she asked.
Millie looked surprised. “Do I know you?”
“I’m M’gann Morzz. This is my bar. I’m friends with Kara Danvers.” M’gann looked at the wife. “I think you have been here before, but I don’t remember your name.”
“Audrey. Morzz is a Martian name, isn’t it? I came in year a few years back, but since that awful bomb, well, I was afraid to, I guess.”
“We lost a lot of custom that day, but if you look around, you will see a good portion of our clientele are human. The vast majority of them are... FBI or NCPD Science Division. And when people mess with a cops’ bar? Cops get a trifle... testy. You should be safe here.”
Millie said, “I was more worrying about the virus, but Kara insisted that you were being very cautious, and we haven’t had a night out since, gosh, New Year last year?”
Audrey nodded. “Couldn’t do that party now. With all the social distancing, you’d need the convention center and a very small guest list.”
Millie looked at M’gann, and M’gann felt the bolt of lightning that went through the chef’s entrepreneurial brain. “Shit,” M’gann said. “You’re right. If you do the food and I do the booze—but, damn, that would be expensive to rent, so yeah, I guess we can’t. Oh well. Never mind.”
“Oh,” said Audrey to her wife. “Martians are psychic.”
“Sorry,” said M’gann. “Normally, I don’t listen in, but when somebody has an idea like that, well, you have the amplifier turned up to eleven.”
Audrey laughed. “This one does not know the meaning of the word can’t, do you, dear?”
“The Small Business Administration is giving out grants,” said Millie slowly. “If we follow the health guidelines as strictly as you do here... And serve lower alcohol versions of the drinks... with an all-liquid menu...and straws to go under masks… Ms. Morzz, I think we could make this work. And maybe do it as a fundraiser for the museum, after the terrible damage from Thanksgiving. Oh, and Audrey—”
“Yes, I have you on the flowers.”
“Ms. Morzz, let me consult my business manager and get back to you on this. What do you think? Formal? That attracts the money, but it limits the attendance.”
“Forgive me, ma’am, but it’s not the elite who really need a party right now, and my clientele is mostly aliens, who tend not to be the elite, former President Marsden notwithstanding.”
“You are absolutely right. Okay. Let me think about this.”
Chapter 108: Sometimes Consequences Don’t Suck
Chapter Text
On Wednesday morning, Eve Tessmacher woke up with the hangover from hell. It was the second worse hangover of her entire life.
(Well, it would be very difficult for a hangover to be worse than one combined with waking up to an empty bottle of tequila. Completely empty. Even the worm was gone.)
Vodka was a slightly kinder S&M-style mistress.
By a very narrow margin.
Food was necessary and two pieces of stale toast and three spoonfuls of lite cottage cheese only barely constituted food, but it would have to do. Thus fortified, she opened her laptop, thinking to look for a new job that would not require recommendations from a previous employer.
But she looked at her email first.
When she read it, and then looked at the signature at the bottom—Lena Luthor—she immediately realized that the text of it had been written by lawyers whose brains generally kept to the speed limit and not by Lena whose brain… generally did not.
But the gist of it was that Eve was reinstated in her lab and no charges would be filed. A course of training with that Ralph fellow, the lab safety guy, was in all of their near futures, etc., etc.
But if Eve read between the lines and squinted really hard, the email was basically… an apology?
Adrenaline flooded her system with relief. Or possibly vice versa.
Fuck it, Eve thought. Call it a win. She still had her job.
///
Beth Breen had spent her first year incarcerated at Albatross Bay Prison feeling resentful. How often did a female CFO of her caliber have the chance to save the world from itself? The nerve of that pesky superhero. And Lena’s entire lack of vision! Beth had long ago looked at the mess the world was and concluded that the only way to save the planet was to eradicate human free will. Jack Spheer’s nanobots had seemed like the perfect tool for that.
Jack himself had been a perfect tool.
Lena would have been better.
Thwarted, tried and convicted, Beth had appealed, but her lawyers weren’t having any luck. So when the guard had come to get her for an unexpected visit with her lawyer one day last spring, Beth had naturally assumed they had had a break. And that was… not precisely untrue.
The man sitting in the interview room had an utterly forgettable face and a Yankees hat. Then the guard left and the man tapped something on his watch and it was like Beth’s vision had cleared. The man removed his hat and mask to reveal a face that had been on Time’s man-of-the-year issue some years back: Lex Luthor.
“Hello, Ms. Breen,” he said with a small knowing smile.
“You’re not my lawyer.”
“Definitely not. I prefer to think of myself as a rainmaker.”
Beth ironically glanced out the window. It had been a warm and wet early June, right after the 2020 lockdown. “Great job you’re doing.”
“Touche,” he said, nodding his bald head. “But surely you can see that someone with my… history… might prefer not to be called a headhunter. Too many superheroes flying around. They take things quite literally.”
“Fair enough. What do you want with me?”
“Well, access to your head, really. Or your mind, I suppose. I’ve been working on a nanobot project, and I could use someone who is capable of thinking very big and building very, very small.”
That’s how it had begun.
The prison’s new warden had arranged for Beth to meet with an apparently court-ordered therapist. Annoyed, she’d followed the guard to the east wing where medical was located, but instead of a desk, some chairs, and some Rorschach blot on the wall, what she found was a miniature—in every sense—lab. Now Beth was a businesswoman first, but her bachelor’s in engineering had stood her in good stead when she had worked with Jack Spheer. She knew enough to explain to Lex what Jack had explained to her. Lex was a genius. He could fill in the blanks.
What he wanted was not a body made of bots, but a network of bots that could fully cover—and apparently animate—a form.
A really, really large form.
What was he working with? she wondered. An elephant?
It took half a year for Beth to find out the answer to that question. Then on Thanksgiving Day, the entire prison had been abuzz with the news of the marauding dinosaur and sea monster. Beth had watched the news in the rec room with bored eyes. It was a look she’d first cultivated at Harvard Business School, but it came in plenty handy in a medium-security prison.
She took in the spectacle of Supers and Martians doing battle in downtown National City, nodding to herself. Then she turned, went back to her cell, and stuffed part of her flat pillow into her mouth.
And laughed and laughed and laughed.
///
Stan the security guard drove his 2015 Honda Civic into the parking garage under the National City Museum of Art and Culture, prepared, he thought, for anything. There was a greater than 99% chance that his day would be boring: clock in, put on his radio, lanyard and key ring, do walkabout for the morning rounds, grab lunch at the canteen (if it’s Wednesday, it must be mac and cheese), do early afternoon rounds, take his break and put his feet up, switch off with Josie so she walked the afternoon and he watched the camera feeds, do one more round and go home.
Because it was midweek, he reckoned that his 99% chance was closer to 99.99998%. On Tuesdays and Sundays, it was closer to 97% unless it was early December or May, when, for some reason, supervillains tended to show up expectedly; he didn’t eat heavy lunches then. One really needed to be on one’s toes and able to run, just in case.
He was mildly surprised, when he got to the camera room to pour himself half a cup of coffee (never more than that at any time; fear and caffeine didn’t mix well, at least as far as his bladder was concerned) to find Josie looking less bored than usual.
“Boss wants to see you.”
“Me?” said Stan. “Why?”
“Dunno.”
Thoughtfully, Stan took off his surgical mask and put on his blue and red “Feel the Wonder!” NCMAC face mask and went down the hall to Mr. Preston’s office.
Preston’s office door opened and a dark-haired tall and rather stout woman stepped out, followed by Mr. Preston, beaming.
“—fantastic idea, Ms. Bernetti. Time we got back to normal around here!”
The woman nodded. “Well, normal. Hm. Not that, any time soon, I’m afraid. But at least a little festivity to break the doom and gloom.”
But Preston was in Personable Mode and shook her hand enthusiastically. “Precisely! Ah, Stan! Mrs. Bernetti, I’d like you to meet Stan, our resident hero! He has just been promoted to Deputy Chief of Security, and he’ll be in charge of the security of our New Year’s Eve Gala!”
Stan shook the chef’s hand, recognizing her finally, said to her, “Ma’am, a pleasure,” then turned to his boss and said, “And will that be coming with a raise? Because the cost of living has gone up more than last year’s raise, so you’ve been fundamentally paying me less since about September.”
Preston’s glib smile froze, “Er, well, we can discuss that—”
Stan pushed. “Because of course my friend Henry over at CatCo has been asking me when I’m going to go work for them, and Cat Grant is well known for generous pay and benefits for employees with what I believe she refers to as ‘combat experience.’ LCorp too.”
There was a twinkle in Bernetti’s eye as she turned to Preston. “Very well known for how they treat their employees, are Grant and Luthor. Clearly, Mr. Preston, we have to compensate our best workers competitively if we want to keep them.”
“We pay fair wages and—”
Bernetti tutted. “Fair keeps the rent paid. Competitive breeds loyalty.”
Preston sagged, “Yes, well, I will have a word with HR.”
Bernetti turned back to Stan with what he would have sworn was a quick wink. “Well, Stan, I do look forward to working with you in the coming weeks. We should put together our heads to create a plan for the space, say, Monday evening?” She pulled out a card case and handed him her card. “Come over and have dinner with me and my wife. And you can tell us all about your new contract!”
Stan looked at the card and recognized the address as the one of the upscale neighborhoods just outside of the city center. “Yes, ma’am,” he said sincerely. “I look forward to it.”
As they watched her march down the hall, Preston growled, “Well, you might as well come in.”
Stan stood up straighter, feeling like a man who was moving up in the world. “Thank you, Mr. Preston. Now, what can I do for you, sir?”
///
Winn handed off the video-feed watch to Finn and ambled to the break room, where his teal Aquaman lunch bag sat in the refrigerator waiting for him. The night before, James had thrown some chicken thighs and a bunch of vegetables and spices into his crockpot, so that when they got up this morning, they would be able to pack a solid lunch for themselves. He was currently on a Keto kick, so carbs were out the window, but Winn reflected that dating James “My Other Six-Pack is in the Fridge” Olsen was going to mean upping his game and probably his time in the DEO gym, so he might as well eat to support that lifestyle change, which he was going to start doing very soon. Maybe even next week.
As he watched the bowl spin in slow motion in the microwave, he felt a wave of tiredness. Damn long Covid anyway. It had been almost a year and he still wasn’t back to what Cat Grant had called his chipper hobbit self.
He heard a quiet step behind him and turned to see Supergirl frowning at her phone. Her bright red cape radiated power. He was very proud of that cape.
“Winn! Are you listening?”
“Hm, what now?”
“I said, would you be willing to help me with a problem?”
“Oh. Probably. What kind?”
“I’ve been sleep-levitating a lot lately.” She sighed, with a faraway look in her eyes.
“O-kay. So the weighted blankets aren’t helping?”
“Sure, right until I roll over a few inches from the ceiling and they fall on Lena.”
“Ouch. Wow, that’s gotta be—”
“Exactly. And I’ve tried watching sad movies before bed, drinking less caffeine during the day, all kinds of things. So I was wondering about red sunlight.”
Winn blushed. He had worked very hard on that red sunlight emitter for Kara and Lena, and half the work had been not thinking about how they were going to use it. “But you already have—”
“Yes, but that takes me all the way down very fast and it takes a few hours away from it, preferably in the yellow sun, to get back to normal. I was thinking what about a smaller dose? Maybe a nightlight? Just to take the edge off, so I don’t levitate but if they need me here, I can be up to full power more quickly.”
“Hmm.” The microwave dinged and he pulled out his not-exactly-soup lunch. He stuck his forefinger in it. “Still cold. How is it that the DEO with all its—”
Kara took it from his hands and used her laser eyes to heat it evenly, then handed it back to him. “Not peanut butter and Fluff today?”
“We’re on a health kick,” muttered Winn. “High fat, low carbs. Thanks.” He gestured to the small round table next to the fridge.
Supergirl gathered her cape and held it to the side as she sat. “Well, what do you think?”
Winn blushed again, then pulled a small Moleskine notebook out of his back pocket. “Yeah, yeah. Anybody who works with Vasquez for more than two minutes ends up using one of these.” He pulled out a pencil and did some calculations. “Um, I hate to ask this, but there were three settings. Do you have a sense of whether the recovery time is shorter with the lower settings?”
Kara sighed and pulled a file card out of her boot. “Lena said you’d ask that. And I didn’t know, but she did.”
Winn studied the numbers as he ate the, what was it? Moroccan tomato something? Or was that Monday’s lunch? He looked at the numbers: 1—weak, 2 hrs; 2—middle, 4-5 hrs; 3—wow; 10-12 hours.
Yeah, he did not need to know that. A glance at Kara told him that he was the only embarrassed person in the room. “Yes, let me see what I can do. Oh, did they ever find the proto-K at LCorp?”
“Yes, in the vault, just not where it should have been. I’ve never seen Lena look so pissed off, mostly at herself.”
Winn’s jaw dropped. “Um, you know they did strip searches…”
“Oh, I heard all about that day. Apparently, Jess earned herself a raise, although Lena refers to it as Combat Pay.”
“It was pretty intense,” said Winn. “In the vault the whole time? How very 2020.”
Chapter 109: Toil and Trouble
Chapter Text
On Saturday December 12, the National Park Service granted a permit allowing a conservative organization, Women for America First, to host a gathering in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, with a projected attendance of 5,000. On the day of the event, about 200 members of the Proud Boys joined a march near the Plaza (and the lame-duck ex-president’s hotel) while dressed in combat fatigues and ballistic vests, and carrying helmets. Self-proclaimed Anti-Fascists were also there and the two groups engaged in fights with one another that night. In scuffles between protesters and counter-protesters, four people were stabbed and at least twenty-three were arrested.
All was still not well with the Republic.
///
Since setting up her practice in National City a few years back Tipton Sinclair, DVM, had seen some interesting pets, including that iguana that she could only see outside in the parking lot because when it was nervous, it would pop into its natural form as a dragon, which was hell on the ceilings. But for the most part, the pets Tip cared for were Earth dogs, cats, birds, gerbils, rabbits and the like. There were a few alien species, and she consulted with the Luthor Alien Clinic down the street, so she could handle them, but they were rare. What she hadn’t seen, although she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised, was an Earth animal and an alien mating and successfully having young.
As the white German Shepherd lay on her side on the floor of Tip’s waiting room, Tip realized that the crucial word there was successful. Tip knelt and felt the dog’s swollen belly gently, trying to ignore the nattering of her owner, Mrs. Philippa Dennis, breeder.
“—on election day! Fortunately, I was out of town that day, but she got loose! I swear I don’t know how! And she’s my prize dam, too, Regina Von Clauster-Steuben, Priestess of Anubis, though the children will insist on calling her Ginny—”
Tip looked up at her strong young vet tech. “Sammy, would you mind carrying her to the exam room?” She turned to Mrs. Dennis. “I will see what’s what and give you a call. I’m sorry but we’re not using the waiting room, since it’s too small to social distance, but there’s a lovely café across the street—”
The flow of speech cut short as the front door closed, Tip went into the exam room and helped Sammy lay the dog on the exam table. “Now, Ginny,” she said gently. “Let’s see what we can do for you, love.”
///
As the weeks after Thanksgiving rolled past, life in National City got, if possible, even weirder. Another set of dinosaur bones was stolen from the museum and animated by nanobots. Winn hypothesized and Lena confirmed that the bots had originated in the old LuthorCorp, leading them to the further hypothesis that Lex was back in charge of Cadmus or just committing these shenanigans on his own. Lena’s vote was for Cadmus.
She stood with the DEO crew around the computer table in the command center, wearing a deep purple three-piece suit and a black shirt, looking (Alex thought) quite commanding until one noticed that Lena kept rubbing the platinum bracelet on her right wrist.
“He could program them himself,” said Lena, “but for a form as complex as a kentrosaurus, with the plates all down its back and the spikes sticking out above the main joints of the legs—let’s just say the bots would have a difficult time figuring out how to cover all that on their own without leaving the odd gap at crucial places.”
“Like Smaug,” said Winn helpfully, “With the patch of his armor missing.”
Lena gave him her Annoyed Eyebrow and continued, “So I would say he’s got more than just a few loyal minions working on this, especially now that we’re getting an attack once a week—”
“Mm,” grunted Vasquez. “About that, Director. I had a word with the head of the museum, and she has agreed to lock their dinosaur exhibit in the basement for the foreseeable future. They have to repair those sections of the museum anyway. The Thanksgiving one damaged a lot of flooring, apparently.”
“Good call,” said Alex forcing herself to remain standing with her hands on her hips. Everybody was stressed out, but Lena’s nervous gesture reminded her of her own, rubbing the bump above her heart that was the plastic rainbow ring under her armor. These agents knew her well enough to read her tells. She would not show them weakness. “I had less luck with Owen Matthison at the zoo. He refused our offer of extra agents to protect the big animals.”
Winn laughed, but then realized she was serious. “Wait, but wouldn’t being entirely covered in nanobots kill the animals?”
“Quite likely,” Lena said tiredly. “At the very least they wouldn’t like it much and might be very hard to control. Not that either of those things would necessarily stop Lex.”
“What I don’t like is the timing of it,” said Vasquez. “Why Thanksgiving? Why so randomly ever since?”
“Well, at least we’re not in DC,” said Winn. “Much easier to fight nanobots than your fellow citiz--”
The alarm claxon went off. Winn hurried to his feed. “Well, you called it, Director. Looks like one rhino is getting very pissed off.”
Alex groaned and Vasquez said, “I’ll take this one, Alex.” She tapped her ear comm. “Agents Jordan and Chen, you’re with me. Agent Holtzman, you’re on standby in case we need backup.”
And she trotted out of the room.
Lena turned to Alex. “Wait, the zoo. Isn’t that near Franklin Park? Isn’t there some kind of community center, a place that does computer lessons for kids after school?”
Alex said, “Winn—”
But he was already typing. “Yes, there it is about a block away. You think that’s the target?”
“No, I think that’s the Cadmus hideout my mother brought me to the night we were unleashing Medusa. That may be where the bots are coming from.”
“Shit!” said Alex, hitting her ear comm as she hurried out. “Finn and Holtzman, meet me on the roof. Finn, you’re flying.” Still walking, she turned back and shouted. “Winn, send us the coordinates. You’re in charge. QB the other team and let them know we’re coming!”
Then she hustled up to the armory, unlocked her personal weapons locker with her handprint, pulled on the lightweight backpack she had readied for just this eventuality with a little bit of help, grabbed her alien pistol and the magnetic pistol, stuck them in her holsters, grabbed her sniper rifle and headed up to the roof.
Now she was going to be able to put a theory she’d been chewing on to the test.
///
Maggie stood in the alley between a burned-out two-family home that was boarded up and wrapped with old yellow tape and a tired brick building, with boarded windows and a broken front door now festooned with brand new yellow tape. Same sad song, second verse, she thought sourly.
The petite coroner swabbed the deceased’s nostrils and sniffed carefully at the tip before handing it to the evidence tech to bag. She stripped off her latex gloves and looked over the body at Maggie. “Well, Detective, I can’t say for sure before I’ve done the autopsy, but it looks like another BabyZoom overdose. Self- or other-administered is yet to be determined.”
Maggie frowned at the body, detecting the faint whiff of baby powder that was the signature of the drug that was said to split vision into two-dozen tile-like pieces as the high kicked in and before vertigo, nausea--and, more often these days, death—set in.
She looked up to see Reynolds finishing up his scribbled notes while the witness, a man with purple gills along an otherwise human-looking neck, stood looking sorrowful and nervous. He had seen the Infernian stumble into the alley, apparently whining (and that was not a noise anyone who knew anything about Infernians expected them to make), and then fall down, writhe a bit, and abruptly go still.
Reynolds stepped away from him as Maggie used her pen to poke the dead fellow’s wallet out of his pocket. ‘’Expired drivers. Library card. Gym membership card.”
Reynolds grunted. “The wife just signed us up to that gym. Wants me to get back in shape.”
Maggie deposited the wallet in an evidence bag, signed it and wrote the date and time on it.
“Says she wants to go to the fancy New Year’s party at the museum.”
Maggie handed the bag to the evidence tech.
“Says I have to wear a suit and tie.”
Sighing, Maggie said, “You know I can’t comment on any of that, right? I’m Switzerland when it comes to your wife.”
“Coward.”
“Hardly. This is me, buddy, the woman who took a shotgun to an alien takeover of her city. But there’s three types I don’t go up against: anybody in the cape crew, or who turns green suddenly, or is married to you. Recipe for a comparatively quiet life.”
“She bought me a gold bowtie with little black champagne bottles on it. The kind of tie you have to actually tie yourself.”
Maggie took pity on him. “Fine. That I can help you with. It’s not as hard as it looks. But you’re going to have to practice.”
“Thanks, partner. Knew I could count on you. Aren’t you glad you’re not saddled with a wife?”
Maggie looked off into scraggly shrubs next to the building, imagining her and Lucy butching it up together in the same city at the same time at an actual party with actual people, many of whom they actually did not know…
Right. In the middle of a global pandemic. Not bloody likely.
///
Holtzman was in the cafeteria washing down a bear claw with strong coffee when the call to deploy the team came. She had been contemplating what Jess had told her about Lena’s theory of optimized brain efficiency: an engineer set her front brain a problem and they worked the problem together until the engineer got called away, after which the front brain switched to the new situation while the hind brain took over working on the original problem. When the engineer was finally free to get back to the Real Work, rather than having difficulty remembering where the problem had been before she was called away, the engineer simply had to wait and then the hind brain would pass the answer on to the front brain. All this was based on what researchers studying productivity called “incubation.” It seemed far-fetched to Holtzy, that someone could just expect their brain to deliver like that, but she had nothing to lose from trying to make it work.
That’s what she told herself as she hurried up to the helo on the roof, trotted past Director Danvers giving last-minute instructions through her earbud while Finn finished his pre-flight checks. She boarded and strapped in, followed by Danvers. Then they were in the sky.
The problem Holtzy had set before her immense brain was not DEO standard issue, although it was, scientifically speaking, closely related to the problem that Winn had been trying to solve for months and months, the problem of vibration: the Black Body Field Generator that could neutralize large plasma weapons was portable but not powerful enough to neutralize more than a few weapons at a time. But when scaled up to sufficient size, its parts vibrated enough to shake parts loose and compromise the pulse-point.
Well, one look at SHIELD Agent Daisy Johnson’s dampening sleeves had just about solved that problem. Soon they would be able to vastly decrease the BBFG’s vibrations. That was great, but it wasn’t the problem that Holtzy was interested in. She didn’t want to decrease the vibrations in something very big; she wanted to increase the vibrations in something very small, roughly the diameter of her thumb or a bit more and somewhere between three and nine inches long.
///
Per Director Danvers’ orders, Agent Finn circled the community center to give them all a good sense of the situation. One neighborhood away, another Blackhawk rode the sky as Supergirl engaged in a punch fest with another of those pterodactyl-like creatures, and Assistant Director Vasquez hung in the sniper’s harness trying to get a shot off. Below, the citizens of National City looked up and gaped.
They were known for it. In fact, they’d gone head-to-head against the citizens of Metropolis on America’s Got Talent and—to the shock of Simon Cowell—won hands-down for their awed, amazed, energetic and sincere gaping. (Gotham residents, too jaded by far, hadn’t competed in years.) The trick, of course, was that Metropolis residents were used to gaping at their resident hero handling epic threats all by himself, which was one way to magnetize eyeballs and inspire the requisite oohs and aahs. In contrast, National City residents had become accustomed to gaping at between one and five heroes at a time, gracefully working with (“interfacing,” thought Finn) the DEO or other agencies providing backup.
It was an aerial ballet, one team offering, the other accepting just the right amount of help at just the right moments. Finn was proud to be a part of it.
Now, as Danvers and Holtzman prepared to rappel down to the roof of the community center, Finn kept an eye out for obstructions and held the helo steady so they could leap to the roof, clear the ropes and pull up to standing back-to-back, weapons at the ready, set to engage.
With a satisfied smile, Finn pulled up and away to be out of the line of fire, ready to exfiltrate at a moment’s notice.
///
It had taken Otis a long time to find his place on the team. As hench-people went, he wasn’t literate enough to pass on messages or sneaky enough to spy on People of Unrest. He was too clumsy to be trusted storing chemicals or munitions and too easily bored to simply be a guard (he tended to wander off). In the end, Covid solved the problem for them when Harvey, the old guy in the mailroom who signed for packages, got sick. Since Evil Macking Nations Paused Not for Plague or Postulants (Otis thought that’s what Lex had said), Otis filled in, signing his illegible scrawl when FedEx or Prime or the Evil Society of Evil etc. sent packages for the Director himself or for the organization more broadly. Otis did the job so well that Lex even gave him a five dollar an hour raise, and who could remember the last time that had happened?
So later, when all the concrete had been swept up and the broken glass cleared, the misunderstanding would turn out to be obvious: laughable even, Lex would say, a Tasty Mint to how Conch and Henchness Otis had been.
Or something like that.
It wasn’t his fault that the security guard he ate lunch with had his radio on when a message came through about a package being dropped on the roof.
Otis was nothing if not Conch and Henchness. He pulled out his best pen and hurried upstairs to the roof.
Chapter 110: Penny Dreadful
Chapter Text
It can be imagined: a white page broken irregularly with squares of varying sizes and colors along the top left side.
Square One (top left corner): Bright blue background. A Blackhawk seen from below, with two long black lines dripping down with two figures black hanging on those lines.
Square Two (just below): Bright green background, with grey oblong buildings rising at different heights. The one in the center, lower than the others, with two dark figures dropping to the rooftop back-to-back, the long black lines rising away from them with the helicopter.
Square Three (smaller, below the previous): Grey background with a black outline of an oblong a little askew, like a door beginning to open.
Rectangle One (down the right side of the page): A shaded dark red background. Stepping forward holding a pen, a youngish man with an older man’s hairline, a pudgy fellow in a badly fitted brown suit. His mouth is open, his eyes wide.
Inset Stars: (purple) BAM! (pink) KAPOW! (lime green) CRUNCH!
Rectangle Two (along the bottom of the page): Bright blue background. One figure in black has the man in the brown suit on his face on the rooftop. The bubble over their head reads, “Drop the &@#%$ pen!” The bubble above the man’s head reads, “—package! Gotta sign for the package!”
Square Four (inset over the meeting of the two rectangles): The other figure in black, clearly female, with her finger and thumb pinching her eyes. The bubble over her head reads, “’Become the director,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fun!’ he said…”
///
After years of working for the Luthors, under first Lionel and then Lex at LuthorCorp, then under Lillian at Cadmus, then free-range for Lex again, and now back at Neo-Cadmus with Lex, this crack team was ready for anything.
Among themselves they argued about an appropriate name. The current options pretty much divided along the lines of Saturday morning entertainment.
GI Joe fans insisted on the Grack Berets, because their berets were both green and black, Lex’s colors. Despicable Me fans called themselves Minions. Sci-fi fans dejectedly muttered, “Red Shirts” whenever the topic came up. But whenever the DEO became involved, they all agreed, on a temporary basis, on Brown Pants.
To understand why, one would only have to watch the two dozen of them hurry up the narrow back stairs to the roof, hear the slam of a door above and the clanka-clanka-clanka of a cannister bouncing down the steps, the hiss of its contents and the crumple of bodies falling insensible in a pile on the landing.
Watching the two women in black leap over the bodies and burst into the control room where the last six of the Poop Patrol waited to get their asses handed to them, their faces filled with distress, one would understand why the agent with the wisps of blonde hair peaking from under her helmet scrunched her nose as she zip-tied the unfortunates and said, “Um, Director? Do you smell--?”
“Yeah,” grunted the other. “The last ones are always the desk jockeys. Don’t tie them too tight. Dealing with you and me? That’s above their paygrade.”
///
Lex was impressed. He had calculated an eight-minute window for escape if the capeless crusaders came in the front door or twelve if they came in by the roof, not four minutes and fifty-seven seconds from breach to clear. His head just barely slipped into his cellar escape chute, sliding feet-first seven meters down and then leveling off to a ten-degree angle to end feet-first in the escape pod, which closed behind him, the door hissing as it sealed.
He shook his head to clear it of the disorientation inevitable with such a rapid escape mode, then glanced at the mini-submarine’s camera feed. The two black-clad agents took off their helmets: Director Danvers and that ghostbuster woman.
Ah, well. That explained it. Back in the good old days, J’onn J’onzz never led missions himself. He had mostly sent his own garden-variety minions to do his dirty work.
Well, no matter. Lex Luthor was a man who planned for all sorts of eventualities. He spun his command module to face a small glass dome covering a red button. Above it, a bright red sticker read, In Case of Emergency, Break Glass. Hanging on the wall was a small but heavy clown-type hammer.
Two elite agents had just cleared his four-story hiding-in-plain-sight command center and whupped twenty-seven of his minions. Lex brought the hammer down.
///
Alex had calculated two minutes to let Holtzy download what she could from the Cadmus computer. The numbers on her watch whizzed by. “C’mon, Holtzy. Time to jump.”
“Yes, Director!” Holtzy pulled the thumb-drive out and they ran out the front door just as a heavy thwump! sounded below them. The concussion threw them into the street and Alex watched dispassionately as a large chunk of concrete fell almost in slow motion and hit her directly in the chest.
She heard the crack before she felt the pain.
///
It took Supergirl no time at all after she threw down the latest Lex-o-saurus to superspeed to her sister and fly her to the DEO medbay. She used her laser eyes to cut her sister out of her vibranium-reinforced tactical shirt, since clearly no surgical scissors were going to work on that.
Alex’s white sleeveless T was bloody where the shattered rainbow ring had dug into her skin, but that was minor compared to the ugly purple that was her skin from her collarbones down to her lower ribs. Vibranium could absorb a lot of force—and Supergirl had ascertained through x-ray vision that Alex had suffered no breaks or even cracks—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to hurt.
Dr. Hamilton said, “She’s going to be okay.”
“Sure. She is. But all of Lex’s men? They’re all buried in the rubble. Only that guy on the roof survived by some extraordinary good luck. He got thrown into those bushes on the edge of the park. But the rest—”
Alex groaned and opened her eyes. With difficulty, she said, “At least they were all unconscious, Supergirl. So they probably didn’t feel anything.”
Supergirl’s frown deepened. “How can we limit casualties when a villain doesn’t even try to protect his own men? If everybody is expendable?”
Alex coughed and grimaced. “Everybody but him. That’s a datapoint, Supergirl. Tell Vasquez. She’s in charge. For now.”
“For a while,” growled Dr. Hamilton.
Supergirl sped off.
///
Cat Grant sat at her desk, finishing her Christmas shopping for her sons in the relative quiet of the building at night. One floor down, the night desk was still active, but there on the top floor, the peace and quiet were almost palpable.
Cat rose and poured herself a glass of scotch, shaking her head at the irony. Down on the streets of National City, Search & Rescue dogs and their handlers were scrambling over the broken ruins of the old community center, but no one expected them to find any of Lex Luthor’s hench-people alive. Word was that Supergirl had heard no heartbeats. Still, they had to try.
Across the city, malls were crawling with last-minute shoppers bundled up and masked, probably starting fistfights over whatever newest gaming console was all the rage this year.
This year, thought Cat, peace and quiet were two words no one would associate with their lives. Ah, 2020, the year of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. At least the election had gone well, so they had less than a month to go before Biden took over and then maybe just four or five months until the new vaccines were approved for adults.
There would certainly be More Fresh Hell in 2021, Cat knew, and undoubtedly, even in the moment as she gazed out the window at the stars, crime was going on, Lex was planning new shenanigans, and Lex’s mother was probably regretting taking part in Lena and Kara’s betrothal.
Cat had first learned about the Kryptonian ritual the previous year when she had visited the Krypton Alive! Exhibit at the Metropolis Museum of Art and Culture. Cat had taken notes, never dreaming that it would be Kara who asked Lena and so much sooner than Cat had expected, or that Cat would know Lillian Luthor—
Wrong word, she thought.
Well enough or care enough to contact her on Thanksgiving morning, explain the ritual, ask if she wanted to be part of it, give her the script to memorize, as Cat had on the off chance that maybe, just maybe…
So. That had happened.
A month later, no one had spoken to Cat about it, but she had been so busy—
She had kept herself so busy, she admitted to herself, not giving anyone the chance to pin her down with so much as a baleful glare.
She stood by her choice. If one of her sons had needed her to stand up for the family, she would want to be there. Still, she wasn’t delusional. She never thought the bridal party would be happy about it.
Chapter 111: Counting Down to Midnight
Chapter Text
James had asked what Winn wanted for Christmas, and Winn had shyly showed him Kara’s article on alien aphrodisiacs that also worked on humans, and James had grinned and kissed him and said yes. So then Winn asked James what he wanted and James had hemmed and hawed for a while and finally shown him the announcement for the New Year’s party being hosted by Dollywood and Millie Bernetti at the National City Museum: a New Year Fete, with Shareez and the Vulcans playing.
Winn frowned. “I thought you wanted us to not be out together.”
“Yeah, I have spent the last two months thinking about this, and last week I took Finn’s advice and I started in the basement and I walked around the DEO, every single fucking floor, from the parking garage to the command center to the helo pad. And I counted.”
“Counted what?”
“Congratulations that I got from other agents. For landing you.”
Winn blushed. “For me? ‘Cuz I get why they’re congratulating me for landing you.”
“I think they see that we’re happy. And you know how incredibly gay, I mean, queer the DEO is. Even J’onn said so.”
“So are you saying you’re out?”
“Maybe not to National City. Or, say, General Lane. But if everybody in our building knows and the folks at Dollywood have seen us together...”
“Okay, but we were pretty drunk at the election party and necking in the back booth was not, in retrospect—”
“Yeah, I talked to the DEO shrink about that...”
“Freudian slip?”
“Possibly the very definition of it. But man, there’s going to be dancing and I know you are a primo dancer.”
“And you know that dancing with you makes me hot and bothered.”
“And I really, really like when you are hot and bothered.”
Winn looked away and then instantly his grin was back.
James sighed. “Sorry, Dude, I love you but I’m not ready to have my dick up your ass or yours up mine.”
“And I totally get that. These things are not automatic, and some people never want that. I get it. The other things we do are fun.”
And James kissed him, grateful that he understood.
///
In the week between a quiet Christmas and what promised to be a hopping New Year for National City, Brian found a number of completely harmless (no, really) side gigs to make a little extra money, and when Brian got opportunities, he passed them on to his friends. So he and Sammy got a crash course in waitering. At first, they had planned for Sammy to work the Saturnalia grand reopening and Brian to work the New Year’s Eve party at the museum, to limit Sammy’s exposure to Covid, but he found that memorizing the names of alien ingredients was way harder than memorizing the names of dogs’ and cats’ bones or the chemicals in the typical pharmaceuticals for small animals. So Brian ended up wearing the gold lame long tunic that signaled Saturnian waitstaff, while Sammy wore black pants, shirt and tie to fade into the background at the museum.
National City’s alien population came to the newly rebuilt, expanded and renovated Saturnalia dressed in all the colors of the Earth’s visible spectrum and some colors that only the diners with bird-like eyes could see. Food and drink flowed freely, as well as some sort of dry ice type mist with a faint purple sheen, the smell of high-end pickles, and a vaguely euphoric after-feeling.
Brian slung trays with the best of them, feeling no pain, even after having to tell human guests for the twelfth time that, no, vomitoriums were not, emphatically not, a part of a Saturnian feast, while strongly implying, without actually saying it, that the idea was an offensive speciesist stereotype.
In comparison, Sammy spent half his time passing liquid apps, liquid salads, liquid entrees, as well as cocktails and harder drinks. From the way the people were acting, though, hanging onto each other and getting increasingly friendly as the night passed, he wondered if he had mixed up the two menus.
///
Audrey Bernetti (nee XGrVlstrx’tlv) adored watching her wife at work. Millie was always happiest in a hot kitchen ordering people around, adding flourishes to her most classic dishes. Audrey’s floral arrangements had been attracting attention all evening and she had at least seven names of potential clients, including the Royale Etude, whose previous florist had unfortunately died of Covid just weeks before. Audrey hated to profit from other people’s pain, but she also knew she couldn’t change their past. She’d take the business.
///
Pill worked until 4:30 on New Year’s Eve, staying behind her lab bench at least an hour longer than her colleagues, some of whom had plans to quietly party that night and others plans to drink themselves into oblivion in an attempt to put the Year from Hell: 2020! far, far behind them.
Chaya was one of the former, with plans for a game night with her roommate’s friends. Eve… was one of the latter.
Eve had not been herself since The Day Lena Lost Her Shit. Whereas before, she had always been light-hearted and a little bossy, these last few weeks after her reprieve from her suspension (with pay), she had begun to seem like a whole different person—moody, jumpy, prone to sexual innuendo when the bosses weren’t around, and generally just always on edge. Pill and Chaya had agreed to only brew decaf but to use the red-coded coffee pitcher for it. Eve had not seemed to notice the difference, and they saw no improvement in her, but they agreed that it was like Y2K had been: probably they had averted a meltdown, even if they couldn’t prove it.
///
Maggie sat in the passenger seat of Reynolds’ tired old Volvo, flipping through her social media on her phone and occasionally switching over to her texting app, only to see an entire lack of response from Lucy to the picture she had sent of the police barricade outside the red carpet that led up to the museum’s grand double doors. The invitation (because Kara had forwarded one to her) had said semi-formal/office attire, but National City’s elite had ignored that, using the first party many people had been to in a year as an opportunity to dust off their finery: so evening gowns and tuxedos mixed with short dresses and suits.
Reynolds grunted. He had come into the station in a charcoal suit, with a black shirt and gold bowtie that Maggie had taught him how to tie. When the captain ordered them to be part of the cordon around the venue, his shoulders had sagged with relief, but Maggie had overheard the harangue his wife had treated him to over the phone in the parking lot. So now he looked doubly miserable. Mrs. Reynolds had said she would go to the party without him and just see who wanted to dance with a fit woman of a certain age. (Apparently, she had been using the gym membership that Reynolds had complained about.)
Maggie watched her partner, knowing which micro-expressions meant which emotions. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. She couldn’t fix everything, but she was pretty sure that she could improve Reynolds’ evening.
“Hm,” she muttered. “Hadn’t thought of that…”
“What?”
“Nothing… It’s… I mean, who would…”
“You talking to yourself, Mags?”
“What? Oh, yeah. You know what Gandalf said: you want to talk to the smartest person in the room…”
“Smartass, you mean. Talk about what?”
“Just that if I were going to mess with an event like this, I’d do it from the inside, you know? A legit invite, no need to push through our security cordon. Set up a bomb in the men’s room, maybe…”
“Shit! You think?”
“Nah, it’s probably nothing. I’m still ten bucks in the pool that if something goes down tonight, it’ll be at Saturnalia, not here.”
Reynolds grunted again, but this time it was his thinking grunt, not his misery grunt. “Sure, yeah. Of course. Just… didn’t you say that Supergirl would be over there tonight?”
“That’s what Alex said.”
“So who do we have on this event?”
“Well, us. Out here.”
“We don’t have a single person on the inside?”
“No, the captain said--
“Fuck what the captain said,” Reynolds growled, straightening his bowtie. “I’m going to make sure that she—that they’re okay in there.” He slammed the door and marched to the museum entrance, showed his badge and was let in.
Maggie settled back in her seat, smiling. She couldn’t make Lucy answer her texts, but she could take the marital heat off her partner for a bit. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
Chapter 112: The Stroke of Midnight
Chapter Text
On the night of the New Year’s Eve party, Winn dressed in his best blue-grey suit with a black shirt and a purple tie with martini glasses all over it. He couldn’t find one with champagne flutes. He brought three masks for himself and three for James, because when they got damp from breath, they worked less well. Then he hopped into his MiniCooper and drove to the ball, feeling like Cinderella.
When he arrived, his phone pinged.
KingJames: Dude, postal trouble.
ForTheWinn: Do I need to come in?
KingJames: You’re still light duty. No.
ForTheWinn: So
KingJames: Doesn’t look like I’ll get there. Maybe ask Eve
And Winn looked at that, wondering if James really meant it, since he had really wanted to go to this, and wasn’t all that keen, Winn thought, about the possibility of bringing Eve into their relationship. On the other hand, Winn was dressed up for the first time in nine months and he felt quite fine and really wanted to dance. She might say no, after all.
ForTheWinn: Hey, I got 2 tickets to the Dollywood do. Interested?
EveryDay: You got tickets?!?!?!
ForTheWinn: My friend had to cancel last minute, for work. Got a nice dress?
EveryDay: I’m 20 minutes away.
Winn went to get the hors d’oeuvres... soup? And drank it with a straw without needing to take his mask off. Apparently, there were aliens whose mouths were strawlike and didn’t precisely have teeth, so Millie had prepared a menu based on their cuisine but with Earth substitutes. Wasn’t half bad.
By the time Eve showed up, resplendent in a scarlet dress, her hair pulled up in a complicated do and more makeup than Winn had ever seen any of his women friends wear in a year, Winn had also had a few drinks.
They danced, geeked out about Star Wars, drank their dinner in more ways than one, and danced some more.
///
At the New Year’s Fete, Pill flirted with handsome men with wild abandon, but they all had (or claimed to have) girlfriends somewhere on the floor, at the bartenders’ tables, or in the ladies’ room. At least two were clearly gay. After a while she turned to a red-headed woman who was stroking the stiff blue-green leaves of a riotous plant with yellow and pink flowers all over it that took up the space between the ice sculpture of National City and the servers’ passageway back to the kitchens.
Pill chugged back her Long Island iced tea, deposited the glass on a tray as a waiter passed, and ambled over to the woman. “You don’t see anything like that on Earth,” she commented. “Not even in the Amazon.”
The woman eyed her cautiously. “You think?”
“Pretty sure if Saturn had Rhododendrons, this would be that.”
“Interesting. You have an eye for plants.”
Pill shrugged. “Everybody has to have a hobby. Some party, huh?”
The woman cocked her head. “Mmm. Oh, look, more of those Kryptonian potstickers. I’ll get one if you do.”
Pill smiled and they both reached out for the waiter’s tray hungrily, both taking one for each hand. She took a bite and chewed lazily. “I’m not drunk, you know.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Maybe later…”
“You and a lot of other people, I’d say.”
They both tried not to stare as more and more couples seemed to be kissing as they danced to the slow music and there might have been a few wandering hands here and there as well. One such couple backed into them and didn’t so much as say sorry.
Pill snorted. “I don’t mind when strangers misbehave in public, but when it’s people you know, just, yuck.” A waiter came past, taking their empty sticks and handing them each a cocktail napkin with the museum’s logo on it. She offered her right hand. “I’m Pill,” she said.
The woman shook it. “Audrey.”
Pill chuckled. “Did your love of plants come first or was it your name?”
Audrey startled. “Do you know that no one has commented on that in years?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t help it. One of my favorite musicals.” In a light-hearted voice, she sang, “Feed me, Seymour! Feed me all night long!” Even to her ears the line, meant for a bass singer, sounded odd in her mild soprano.
Audrey said, “I’m more ‘Son, be a dentist’ myself.”
They talked of horticulture for the last half hour before midnight, only pausing to relieve a waiter of two champagne flutes right before the band started the drumroll and led the crowd in the countdown from ten to one.
When the crowd was yelling, “Three!” Pill noticed that the woman wore a pair of rings on her left hand, and sighed. Another year, and still no kiss at midnight.
///
Caroline Reynolds was a cop’s wife through and through (for her sins, she thought). When her husband had hurried up looking dapper if a little winded two hours before the countdown, muttering about double-checking the men’s room if she wouldn’t mind checking the ladies? Because domestic terrorists, yes, of course. Caroline hadn’t spent much time with Maggie Sawyer, her husband’s lesbian work wife, but she could see her hand in the mix. So she had diligently checked all the stalls and under the sink and reported back and then dragged her husband to the center of the dance floor where he would have a complete 360-degree view, as she told him.
And when the ball had dropped, the glasses clinked, and kisses were going on at much greater length than usually happened at such an event—surely—she was thinking that she could have to get Detective Sargent Sawyer a nice bottle of—
And then a dark-haired young man and a blonde woman in a slinky red dress pushed past them in a hurry, their faces flushed with alcohol and lust, and Caroline Reynolds felt old and tired, but her husband looked satisfied.
“We kept it safe, you and me. Home?”
“Home.”
///
At midnight, they shouted the countdown with everybody else and did the Quarantine Elbow Bump at the final number, which to be fair, was a bit of a letdown. Winn had hoped for a kiss, originally with James, but yeah, Eve was not half bad as consolation prizes went. They drank their champagne toast through straws and as the party wound down, got their coats from the coat check.
Eve was looking at her phone.
“Got a hot date?” asked Winn.
“No, trying to get a Lyft at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Maybe not my best choice.”
“Oh, well, I have my car. I can drive you home.”
As they walked back to his car, she gave him her address and he put it in his phone’s GPS and stuck his phone in the holder attached to the window. He explained that his GPS was British and that he had named him Nigel. Eve laughed and turned hers on; it had a French accent and she had named him Pierre. Winn was amazed. He didn’t know anybody else who did that.
He pulled up at her door and said, “The pumpkin carriage has arrived and is about to turn back into a pumpkin.”
She laughed, “Oh, Winn, this was lovely. Thank you so much for thinking of me when James couldn’t make it. I had so much fun, and you are so sweet. It’s such a shame you’re gay, because I could totally—"
“I’m bi, not gay.”
“Really...Oh, I do remember you saying that. I just assumed.”
“Well, actually James and I had an interesting conversation a while back about ethical polyamory, you know, when people have an open relationship and maybe see, or you know, sleep with, um, other people.”
“Does that ever work? It sounds like it could get dicey, maybe lead to drama.”
“It can work if everybody is honest about their feelings and boundaries.”
Eve got quiet, but then she said in a rough voice, “So you’ve tested negative to Covid recently?”
“I’ve tested negative for everything recently.”
“Do you want to come upstairs and have some, well, you know, naked fun with me, Winn?”
Winn could feel the heat pulsing between his legs. “Yes, please.”
///
Alex was out for the count on New Year’s Eve, staying home, drinking scotch and flipping through New Year’s related rom-coms on Netflix like it was going out of style. She didn’t know what to do.
On the coffee table in front of her was one of her Marvin the Martian facemasks, tied up in a small bundle with the side ties. Inside were the pieces of her rainbow ring that had been crushed by the concrete and driven through her skin in three places. The local anesthetic had worn off days ago, leaving a constant sting in her physical chest and a more powerful cut to her more metaphorical heart.
It felt like an omen.
She had fucked up on that other Earth and had come back to a broken-looking Vasquez not wanting to even look at her and they had slowly worked their way back to each other and then just before Metropolis Pride, Vasquez had offered her this peace offering.
Now, a piece offering.
A tear slipped out of one eye. She brushed it away, taking another gulp of scotch. She set her glass down and unwrapped the strings, opening the face mask to see the rainbow split in half and the ring part broken in five pieces. She rubbed the sore spot on her sternum, almost like poking her tongue in the spot where a tooth had once been, testing the pain.
It felt strange not to be wearing this. She had no idea where the chain had gone. Probably in the pile of her cut-apart supersuit which was probably on Winn’s desk in his lab. Could he fix the suit? Did he have the technology? Would he even notice the small chain?
Did it matter?
Before she fell for Maggie Sawyer and figured out all of that, New Year’s Eve had always been a misery she had tried not to feel. Certainly, most of the New Years between leaving Seattle and starting at the DEO had been drunken blurs. As an Agent she had asked to pull such holidays to keep the city safe from all the weird creatures who would seek to do it harm. More recently there were snuggle-fests in front of the fire with Vasquez. The little plastic rainbow had been a sign.
Of redemption? Forgiveness? The possibility of love in her life? She didn’t know. But now that it lay in these pathetic little pieces, these brave colors, she didn’t know what to do.
So she drank her scotch and let first one tear and then another slide unnoticed down her cheeks. This did not bode well for 2021.
///
The elevator in Eve’s building was out of order, and she said she lived on the seventh floor. So they went into the stairway and started climbing. On the third-floor landing, she turned and pushed him against the wall and whispered, “Kiss me?”
And he kissed her first gently, and then as his pants got fuller, he kissed her harder, but then she pulled back. “Oh, I don’t know that I want, um, you know, tongue.”
“That’s fine,” he said and kissed her jawline and her throat and started down her neck, and she stopped him again.
“Oh, what if other people use the stairs because of the elevator? We, we should keep, you know, going. Up.”
Winn smiled and took her by the hand, and they went up another two flights, and she picked up his hand and kissed it. “You have long fingers for an average-height kinda guy.”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“Do you—” She turned away, hand over her mouth, and hurried up some more stairs.
Winn followed, asking teasingly, “Do I... what?”
She stepped through to the next floor and pulled out her keys. “You know.”
And she was trying to find the right key and he said, “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
And her eyes got big. “You mean?”
“Touch me,” he said huskily.
And her mouth opened and closed. He unbuttoned his topcoat so she could see his excitement. With her left hand she pushed him up against her door and biting her lip she laid her right hand delicately over the bulge in his pants. “Oh. Oh my.”
And then she was squeezing him and kissing him, and they were both moaning and then they heard the door unlock and when it opened, Winn nearly fell in. An older man in pajamas stared at them.
“What do you think you’re doing at my door at one in the morning?”
“Oh, sir, we are so, so sorry,” said Winn.
“Wrong floor!” called Eve as they hurried down the hall to the stairs.
One flight up, at the actual seventh floor, they hurried down to the middle of the hall and Eve fumbled to unlock it and then pull Winn in with her. They were pulling each other’s coats off and Eve pushed off Winn’s suitcoat and dragged him toward her couch where she threw herself down, kicked off her shoes and pulled Winn down on top of her, grabbing the bulge in his trousers with her right and his ass with her left. They kissed roughly and he moaned at the way her hand was working him.
“Oh, Winn, this is amazing. But the bi thing is just confusing. How could you like being with a guy like James and then be like this for me?”
He kissed his way down her throat and between her breasts and then gently massaged her breasts as he husked, “Hearts, not parts.”
“Um, but this feels,” and she grabbed him harder, “like parts to me. And I really like guy parts.”
“They, oh God, have their, uh, uses.”
“You want to show me?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
She rolled out from under him and stood. With agonizing slowness, she started at the top of her dress and unbuttoned—he counted—eleven small buttons and then shrugged so that the dress drifted down off her shoulders to the floor. Her bra and lace panties were also scarlet. “Maybe we should take this into my bedroom. We don’t want to be doing this out here when my roommate gets home.”
“Wait, you have a roommate?” He leaned down to pick up her dress.
“No, leave it. Much clearer communication than a sock on my doorknob. You should probably leave your shoes and pants too, so she knows I didn’t suddenly decide to shower before bed.”
And Winn knew on some level that that did not make sense, but most of the blood that normally resided in his brain was, at that moment, much, much farther south. So he pulled off his shoes and shucked his pants and followed her in shirt, tie, underwear (straining) and socks into her bedroom.
Chapter 113: After Midnight
Notes:
We're back at New Year's 2021. Time for a little nostalgia.
Chapter Text
Supergirl flew her patrol on New Year’s Eve, taking care to fly frequently over Alien Alley where Saturnalia’s New Year’s party was in full swing. As she flew, she x-rayed the buildings, both there and in nearby Chinatown. If domestic terrorists decided to crash the party, it was going to be an alien slaughter. She had wanted to cover the museum’s fête as well, but Vasquez had assured her that the NCPD had that job well in hand. If Lena had decided to attend the museum’s event, nothing would have kept Supergirl away from it, but Lena said she always worked on her taxes on New Year’s Eve, to Kara’s shock and consternation. Privately, Kara had really wanted to see Lena dressed up, but she also respected her gir—her fiancée’s occasional introversion.
When she heard the countdown at parties all over town, she paused hovering over Saturnalia, her heart pummeling, but when the cheers went off, nothing else—say, bombs, for example—did. She was about to fly home when she heard shouting below and she hit her earbud and let James know to deploy agents to the fistfight between aliens and red-hat wearing civilians. Vasquez always told her to let the human agents handle that kind of problem, but she grit her teeth waiting for the squealing wheels of the DEO’s black vans.
And Vasquez was at her apartment quarantining. She had been in contact with some agents who had tested positive for Covid-19, and although she said she felt fine, Dr. Hamilton had insisted, pointing out that if the director-level officers didn’t follow the rules, which followed science, then how could they expect ordinary agents to do it? Vasquez had grumbled about it, but gave in.
Supergirl flew one more round of the city before landing at the DEO, writing up her mission report, changing in the electrical closet and going home to Lena’s. It still felt a bit odd, nodding to the security guard at the front desk, taking the elevator up to the penthouse, using her key and her hand on the scanner to unlock the door.
Lena was in faded jeans and a cranberry MIT sweatshirt, with Krypto lying with his head in her lap. She looked up from the mechanical drawing that she’d been reading and greeted Kara with a smile.
“That doesn’t look like your taxes,” said Kara.
“No, I got as much of that done as I can without my W2 and 1099 forms. This is something else, a Holtzman project.”
Kara sat on the opposite side of Lena and looked at the drawing in her hands. “The Device? Oh! It’s a—” She turned a delicate shade of pink.
Lena laughed. “It’s something she promised she’d work on for Jess.”
“Lucky Jess.”
“Don’t worry. When we prototype it, you and I will be two of the beta testers.”
Kara turned a deeper shade of pink. Lena just laughed.
///
James covered the command center that night. While they weren’t still on a skeleton crew basis, they had a lot of folks out with Covid, recovering from Covid, or recovering from their injuries sustained over the last few months of traumatic ops. James had hoped that for one night, just one night, he would get some romantic sexy times with his boyfriend—
--and that phrase still tasted strange in his mouth, even when he only said it in his head—
But no. On the last night of 2020, the Year from Hell just couldn’t go quietly. So a mugging of alien party-goers early in the evening, which looked like it was probably an anti-alien hate crime that had led to a melee between red-hat wearing thugs and DEO agents. Agent Jordan had taken a serious blow to the head, Shaw had been shot twice, and Charleston, a rookie, had tried to take the assailants out himself. He was still in surgery.
Which left James in charge of the DEO, but clearly, not of his life.
When his shift ended at six and the sky was still dark, he had tiredly driven back to Winn’s, where they had planned, well, romantic sexy times for after the party. He entered quietly, so as not to wake Winn and had stripped off his shoes, socks, tacticals, and underwear and silently crawled into Winn’s bed to join—
But Winn was not in his bed.
Wait. They had agreed on Winn’s place. He was sure of it. He texted Winn.
KingJames: I thought we agreed on your place tonight?
No response. Was Winn passed out at James’s place? Hurriedly, James put all his clothes back on and was just grabbing his motorcycle keys when he heard the ping.
ForTheWinn: Yeah, change of plans. Sorry about that.
KingJames: Where are you?
ForTheWinn: OMW
KingJames: But from where
ForTheWinn: Now that’s a story.
///
Eve Tessmacher woke up alone. There was a handwritten note on her bedside table.
Hey Eve,
That was great. You are amazing and beautiful and a brilliant dancer. I need to get home, but we should definitely get together this week if you want to. Or not if you don’t. I get that sometimes new year things are sorta one-offs. But I’d like to. If you would. HNY!
--Winn
She smiled. He was just as awkward in writing as he was in other aspects of life.
Not in bed, no. But other aspects.
///
By the time Winn got back to his apartment, James was gone. He’d left a note on Winn’s refrigerator that said he’d been called back to the DEO. So Winn showered and put on his DEO plaid and cardigan and headed back to work.
He went to the command center, but James wasn’t there. Finn said, “I think he’s down in the gym. Did something happen?”
Winn opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Maybe? I hadn’t thought so... I might be an idiot...”
Down in the gym, James was wearing his tactical pants and a black sleeveless t-shirt and boxing gloves and was killing the big bag. Winn looked at his own hands, which were shaking.
“Uh, James?”
Frowning, James stilled the bag. “You slept with Eve.”
“Um, yes? We talked about this? You’re out now, so you’re with Callie, and—”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
“I didn’t know how to have that conversation with her, so I just said I’m with you.”
Winn stared. “Dude, I know you want to tap that.”
James shrugged. “So Eve. How was that?”
“She’s sweet. Enthusiastic, but kinda vanilla.”
“And you like that?”
“Mm. I prefer chocolate with big nuts.” Immediately, Winn slapped his hand over his mouth. “Oh, my God! James! I am so sorry! That was horribly racist! Oh, I am so, so sorry!”
And he ran out of the room with James laughing behind him.
///
Pam was in her office reading performance reviews when Winn came running in. She looked up calmly to see him looking absolutely appalled.
She sighed. “What have you done now?”
“I am a terrible horrible racist. Do you have training that can help me not be a horrible racist? I want to be a good person!”
She took a sticky and wrote down two weblinks and handed it to him. “The first one is diversity and inclusion, the second is anti-racism. And you get a cookie.”
“I am not worth a cookie. I am a terrible racist person.”
She snapped the cookie in half. “Yes, Winn, but you know that about yourself. That is always where change has to start.” She handed him the half cookie.
He left, looking like a whipped puppy.
Pam ate the other half of the cookie. Well, she couldn’t let it go to waste.
Chapter 114: Between the Celebration and the Insurrection
Chapter Text
When Holtzy dragged herself into the shared lab at the DEO, she found Winn asleep at his desk with a thick five o’clock shadow. Quietly, she turned to the drawing board next to the coffee machine, where coffee had burned in the bottom of the glass carafe. She turned the machine off, but left the thing there. It would be way too hot to touch or try to clean. In any case, the DEO coffee generally sucked. Since recent budget cuts, Alex had had to trim out the foreign medicinal supplements (Columbian caffeine) and a few other line items to be able to afford the artificial vibranium for the BBFG (and a replacement for the front of her super suit that had been destroyed when they’d had to cut her out of it after a chunk of a building had fallen on her. Winn had looked like he was going to weep. He still hadn’t girded his loins to figure out how much of it would be salvageable. Holtzy couldn’t really blame him). But the loss of the suit would be bearable if the files Holtzman had copied off Lex’s computer gave them any useful intel.
She sat on the stool in front of the drawing board, looking at the the pages of the mechanical drawings she had made for the Device, as she had called it when she had proposed the project to Lena, though together they had come up with another name for it, that they weren’t going to leak to anybody, but even thinking of it made Holtzy smirk a little.
Pulling out the mechanical pencil in rainbow colors, Holtzy twisted the thin lead out more and added where she thought a charger might conveniently go. She’d seen devices like this before, between two inches to a foot, but she wanted something mid-sized, easy to travel with, easy to charge, but powerful. She had been spending hours in the DEO’s library reading up on different kinds of batteries and charging stations: the DEO had things that were charged on the micro-scale and things that tapped into their nuclear power in the Basement, things made by Earth engineers and other things made by engineers from Very Far Away.
That hadn’t gotten her very far. Then she’d asked Kara to show her the Kryptonian pod she had come to Earth in and Krypto’s. Winn had come with them and geeked out over the fusion engine that was self-sustaining indefinitely. Seriously sick tech, but not helpful for this project. She sighed gustily.
Winn sat up slowly, yawning and rubbing his eyes. He turned to see her at the board.
“You know we’re not supposed to work on our LCorp projects here,” he said.
“Yeah, but I was trying to figure out how to decrypt the files we got from Lex all night. I needed a distraction.”
“Well, I had a brainwave around one in the morning and jumped up and wrote an algorithm that I think might help. So then of course I couldn’t sleep either and had to drag my sorry ass in here to start it on the laptop in the Faraday cage. With any luck, by maybe nine o’clock we should be able to tell if it’s working.”
Holtzy looked at her ghostbuster’s watch with the no-ghost red line across the ghost whose arms told the time. “It’s 8:20.”
“Good enough. Let’s go down and see.”
///
The tiny lab in the basement was warm, and Winn unlocked it with a retinal scan. Inside on the lab table the laptop sat. Half of the zip document icons were unzipped and showed actual documents. The doc titles were numbers, probably not dates, but who knew? He tapped one open. The symbols on the page weren’t English, but at least they weren’t Kryptonese.
“Cyrillic,” said Winn. “Any chance you speak Russian?”
“No, but I think Lena does.” She tapped the next, which was in fact Kryptonese, with all the boxes and diamonds that their writing style favored. She tapped another. “German? Pretty sure Lena speaks German. Actually, Kara might also; didn’t she spend time in Switzerland?”
“Yeah, but I think she’s better at speaking than reading and writing. And it was a long time ago. Lena, with her memory, is probably a much better bet. I’ll text her, see if she has time to come in this week.” He sighed. “This is taking freaking forever.”
Holtzy patted him kindly on the shoulder. “We’re another step forward.”
///
Lena saw the flash of the text on her phone. “Oh, excuse me, Jess. This might be important.” She read the text with a smile and a frown.
“Ma’am?”
“Progress, but I may need to bone up on my German. Can you check the executive library? I think Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is there, with all my marginal comments. That should bring it back to me.”
“You got it. Oh! Also, I just emailed you the setlists from Shareez’s band. They do fifties classics, big band, and an assortment of contemporary rock. I think you’ll like it.”
“Yeah. And that band has the added benefit of having proven to manage a superhero battle and not stop playing, so that’s a plus.”
“The show must go on,” sighed Jess.
///
By the time Lena got to the DEO, Winn had shaven, worked on four different DEO projects, grabbed lunch with James, and was playing with his yoyo in the Faraday cage, once again with a five o’clock shadow. He thought it might be dinnertime but couldn’t be certain.
Lena strode in wearing a loose pale green blouse and black slacks with lower heels than he usually ever saw her wear at work. He immediately clicked open the document in German and enlarged it.
Lena read the German quietly to herself. “Repentance? That’s doesn’t make sense. And the spelling… It’s like chunks of something but whoever wrote this…”
“Chunks?” asked Winn. “Like a running key cipher? How are we ever going to identify the text they’re using? It could be anything.”
Lena looked at the German again and read the nonsense sentence again. “Wait. I mean, while of course none of that actually makes any sense on the sentence level, there is something odd here. Something I should know…”
Winn handed her his yoyo and she paced slowly back and forth spinning it out, around her body and back again.
“Scheisse! Naturlich!”
They stared at her.
“Das ist Altdeutsch! Natürlich würde er Luther benutzen!”
“Um, Lena?” said Winn. “You’re talking in German but we’re listening in English…”
“Ach du Lieber Himmel! I mean, sorry. I had to shift over to figure out what was different. This is old German. This is not what people speak these days. I would bet the farm that this is the Theses of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, you know the other Luther, the one who nailed that document to the church door? I’d bet almost anything that is the text he used for this.”
“Um, I’m not really up on religion,” said Holtzy, “but if Luther was the one who started the Protestant Reformation, which had the effect of people writing theology and bible stuff in vernacular languages, wouldn’t the starting shot have been written in Latin?”
Lena waved her hand. “Of course it was, which Lex always thought was wrong for some reason. He had a poster in his dorm room as an undergrad, heaven only knows where he got it, of the thing translated into the language he thought Luther should have used.”
“Okay, then!” Winn stood up and tapped at the computer and the small printer that they had brought into the Faraday cage started humming and then spitting out paper. “I will get this up to our code breakers. Oh, and here’s a copy of the Kryptonese document for Kara when you see her.”
///
Krypto had been sleeping on a pile of clean laundry, dreaming of Krypton’s red light shimmering on the tall skyscrapers and all the flying cars. His tail pounded against a cranberry MIT sweatshirt, leaving loose white hairs behind. Then in his sleep, he heard Kara’s heartbeat nearby and he jumped up, barking happily before he had even quite woken up.
She entered the condo, saying, “Hey there, buddy. We’ve got a mission from Vasquez.”
He trotted over to where his three vests hung on hooks beneath Kara and Lena’s coats. She picked the medium security vest and buckled it on him with difficulty, given that he was squirming with excitement.
“Hold still!”
He whined apologetically, letting her finish. Then they were out the door.
It wasn’t even dinner time, but the city was already dark and still quite cold. He was on high alert as they hurried through the streets.
The neighborhood seemed familiar, although he couldn’t recall being there before.
He barked at Kara, “Honorable Salty tell Kara scent?”
“Uh…no. Just that you should come.”
He snorted. How was he supposed to do his job with no information?
They reached a row of glass doors and windows with printing on them, and Kara’s footsteps slowed. “Oh…” She looked at her phone. “Oh, dear.”
They entered a place that smelled like cats and dogs, and two humans in those pajamas like Cures-the-Broken wore. The female looked up at Kara and then down at Krypto.
“Ah, the father presumably. Come with me.”
The male came with them to the back room, saying, “I told you my friend would know.”
In the back were large cages. In the one closest to the door lay a large female Earth dog who smelled awfully familiar and wore a soft Cone of Shame. She looked up tiredly while a white puppy nursed contentedly.
“So,” said the woman to Kara. “What planet is he from?”
///
Vasquez entered Alex’s apartment quietly, in case Alex was napping, and started unloading groceries and setting up the pots and the lasagna pan.
Alex came out of the bathroom in a robe, looking ready for a shower. “Hey, Vas. Did you pick up the conditioner?
Vasquez pulled a green plastic bottle from the brown paper bag. “Natch’,” she said, tossing it. “Catch.”
Alex caught it and returned to the bathroom.
Vasquez started the meat sauce and started layering the no-cook noodles and ricotta. By the time dinner was in the oven, Vasquez’s day had caught up with her. Alex was still in the shower, so Vasquez went to her—their—the king-size bed and collapsed on it. Immediately she felt something sticking into her back and sat up. Sitting invisibly on the navy covers was a small navy bag attached to a necklace-length cord.
Vasquez frowned, opened the bag, and shook its contents out into her hand: pieces of the plastic rainbow ring. Her heart sank even as she realized the inevitability of this damage. She had read Agent Holtzman’s post-op report. That chunk of concrete had hit Alex directly in the chest.
The sound of water stopped.
Vasquez hurriedly dropped the pieces back in the bag and returned it to its place on the bed. When Alex was ready, she would tell her.
Hopefully.
When Alex came out of the bathroom toweling her hair dry, Vasquez was setting the table. “You still on those pain killers?” she asked.
“What? No, that was only for the first night, so I could sleep.”
“Okay, then, merlot or cab?”
“Merlot. I’m not feeling all sophisticated tonight.”
Vasquez smiled and opened a wine bottle so it could breathe and pulled down two wine glasses.
Alex returned to the kitchen in Stanford sweatpants and a Wonder Woman t-shirt, her hair still damp and the dark purple bruise peeking out from the loose shirt collar to show where Alex’s battered body still bore the marks of Lex’s depredations. Vasquez frowned.
“It’s okay, Vas. We’ll get him. Talk to me about your day.”
“Holtzy and Winn are still trying to crack the inscription on the thumb drive you copied Lex’s computer on. Lena recommended they build a Faraday cage and download it onto an empty, unconnected laptop just to be on the safe side. I actually had a relatively quiet day. No nanobot monster attacks.”
“What do you expect to find? His masterplan for world domination?”
Vasquez poured them both a glass of wine. “Wouldn’t that be nice. Cheers.” They clinked glasses. “I’m hoping there’ll be something about the bots. Astra is working with Lena on taking them apart and seeing how they tick.”
“I still don’t get the point of those things. They destroy a small part of the city. We destroy them. It’s pointless.”
“Pretty sure Lex never does anything pointless, love.”
Alex blushed and took a sip.
Vasquez internally cursed herself. They had to go slow or they would break each other’s hearts. “Oh, the other thing. Brian got in touch through M’gann. Apparently, a local vet had a pregnant female dog in great distress. They x-rayed her and found an extremely solid pup. White fur. They had to do a C-section.”
“Wait, you mean Krypto--?”
“Looks like it.” The oven timer beeped. Vasquez pulled on Alex’s Invader Zim kitchen mitts and pulled out the lasagna.
“Well,” said Alex optimistically as she set the table. “Maybe we can start a DEO K-9 unit.”
///
Winn and Holtzy had been working for weeks, trying to apply the artificial vibranium that Lena’s R&D people had provided them with in their attempt to stabilize the prototype of the miniaturized Black Body Field Generator. They took a break from trying to decode the Lex thumb drive and went back to the earlier project, fitting the newly manufactured induction coil that had always rattled when they turned the generator on. It was finicky work, so Holtzy finished the last steps.
Winn said, “I guess sometimes it can be convenient to have smaller hands.”
“Yeah, it’s come in handy quite a few times over the years.” She winked.
Winn wracked his brain trying to figure out what sort of innuendo he had just missed, then shrugged.
She finished settling the coil and then said, “Okay, Agent Schottzy, give it a go.”
He flipped the switch and the machine immediately revved up and shot a hard blue light at the wall. The low-pitched hum was smooth: no vibrations.
They high fived.
///
Lena was eating dinner at her desk when the agents called to report their success.
“Congratulations to you both!” she said. “Any chance you could drop off the prototype and a copy of your plans here at LCorp before you go home? I’ve already retrofitted one of my smaller factories to start producing them.”
“Wow,” said Winn. “Do you think they’ll be ready for your wedding? I think we’re going to need at least a dozen.”
Lena sighed. “Good point. I’ll ask my foreman. Between that and the vaccine roll-out, we haven’t even chosen a date yet.”
“Okay. I’ve already started thinking Vasquez-style about what other protective tech we might need, some of which we may have to invent. I’ve got some lists…”
“Good thinking. Any chance you’d be free Friday night to brainstorm? Maybe 7 pm at Dollywood?”
“Absolutely. First round is on me!”
“Thanks, Winn.”
Lena hung up thoughtfully and took another bite of the quinoa salad Supergirl had dropped off for Lena before heading out on her evening rounds. What kind of bride needed to plan to take out plasma weapons at her wedding?
Chapter 115: Operation Epiphany
Chapter Text
On Wednesday, January 6, the National City DEO and the NCPD were both on high alert. In major cities across the US, large nanobot-covered monsters were wreaking havoc, especially in Metropolis, Gotham and other cities protected by caped crusaders. Nobody thought this was a coincidence. The news was filled with video of Superman, Captain America, Batwoman, Hulk, She-Hulk and Wonder Woman leaping into battle with the shiny scaled brontosauruses, rhinos, pterodactyls and sea monsters. Iron Man and Spiderman, even Aquaman got involved. The cities of America were exploding with violence.
At the DEO, Alex and Vasquez stood side by side under the computer feeds at eight a.m. PST, watching as hundreds of “Stop the Steal” protesters started to surround the US Capitol at noon EST. Alex was in civies, as Dr. Hamilton had emphasized that in no way was she ready to return to duty in any situation short of apocalypse. Vasquez was Acting Director.
Vasquez frowned, grunting. “Naturally, Lex brings out the big guns to keep the superheroes away from DC when they’re counting the votes. I should have seen this coming.”
Alex rubbed the slight bump over her heart where Vasquez thought there might be a small navy bag hanging under her shirt and leather jacket. Sighing, she nodded. “Brilliant really. We can’t shoot them down with aerial vehicles without risking casualties. If there were such a thing as a narrow range EMP—”
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
“Now you sound like Eliza.”
“Sorry. Anyway, I’ve got all our flyers on patrol, the same as we did for Election Day. If they see signs of anything even vaguely Lex-like, they’ll call it in and converge.”
“Okay, and off-duty or not, I’ve put some… plans in place, so make sure all our precision helo pilots are available with at least one sniper per unit.”
“Alex, we can’t afford to shoot these things down. The damage—”
“Pfft.” She pulled one of her magnetic gloves out of her pocket and put it on. She squeezed it and five agents and Vasquez all got dragged toward her. She squeezed again and the pull stopped. “Sorry, agents. Needed proof of concept.” She looked innocently into Vasquez’s eyes. “Winn should be finished retrofitting our weapons in about half an hour. Give or take.”
Vasquez’s eyes went wide. She murmured, “Oh, fuck. That’s just. I do love you.”
Alex smiled sweetly.
///
At her desk at the NCPD, Maggie was grateful to be Science Division on a day like this. Around ten o’clock, a group of one hundred Proud Boys and Oath Keepers converged in front of City Hall to stage a rally, but they were surrounded by at least a thousand counter-protesters, with a thin blue line in between, struggling to keep them apart. Even in riot gear, a small person like her could be trampled in a crowd like that. Sitting in the bullpen, she watched real-time videos of unrest in other cities: Metropolis and Gotham, sure, but the real trouble was in DC, where the electoral votes were being counted in the Capitol Building.
Reynolds came up behind her and grunted at the video. He said, “Chief wants us to join the patrol between Dollywood, the Alien District and Chinatown. A lot of those red hats are also Earth Firsters. He wants us to be proactive.”
Maggie grabbed her gun and followed him out.
///
Metropolis was, theoretically, one of the best protected cities in the US, with Superman, Ironman, Spiderman, blah, blah, blah. From Lex Luthor’s perspective it was the Metropolis capes that were the real problem: there were too many of them and they were far too close to Washington, DC for comfort.
But Lex (from Damian’s point of view) was also an out-of-the-box thinker at least some of the time and, for a day as important as this one, he also wasn’t against asking for help. Damian stood, dressed appropriately in all black, in Governor’s Island Park and, at the stroke of noon, began to chant in Latin.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
///
At CatCo, it was all hands on deck with reporters typing away, phones ringing, the video screens in Cat’s office showing the chaos in DC, the chaos in cities across the country. Cat herself had three pairs of glasses on and was writing an OpEd for the ages, hyped up on way too much caffeine.
She yelled, “Kyra!” Then she remembered. “Eve Tessmacher!” Then she remembered. At times like this, it occurred to her that she really needed to poach Jess Huang.
///
James sat in the command center watching the feeds. Finn and Holtzy, Chen and Jordan had all been called to suit up and help deal with the nanobot-covered rhino tearing up the street near City Hall, sending protesters and counter-protesters running, while the cops tried hopelessly to contain things. James was a decent shot but didn’t have nearly the amount of experience or field time that those four had. So instead, he was quarterbacking, passing on information to agents in the field.
In moments between all the kerfuffle, he tried to decide how he felt about Winn’s choices on New Year’s. James had been the one to tell him to ask Eve to the gala, so to some degree, it was at least partly his own fault, even if he had expected Winn and Eve to do all their dancing… standing up. He saw the appeal of course. He was bi, not gay. Eve was no Lucy, certainly, if what Winn said about her moves were true.
Oh, shit. What if Winn wanted them to have a threesome?
Suddenly this American insurrection got way more interesting.
///
Aquaman had not been too happy when the super avengers had contacted him and asked him to get his people to be on watch along the east coast of the United States for January 6. What were they expecting anyway? Submarines?
But he owed Wonder Woman a favor and she had always been very persuasive, so he asked his people to make a strategic line up and down the coast from Maine to Florida, with special attention to the inlets of the Hudson and Potomac.
By evening, he was glad he had, when honest-to-goodness sea monsters came out of nowhere and started to roil the waters. These weren’t natural creatures. They were less like giant squid and more like Cthulhu. He hefted his trident. Looked like it was going to be a long night.
///
Supergirl got the call from Astra who was flying in the quarter with the City Hall, so when they realized the monster was actually a live rhino covered in the nanobots, they shifted to plan B, which was having J’onn and M’gann psychically calm the beast while the human snipers in the helos shot retractable magnets to gather swaths of nanobots and tear them off its skin. The process was slow. It was all Supergirl could do to keep the police and civilians from attacking the terrified animal. Once they finally got it free enough to tranquilize, she flew it back to the zoo and had a few words with the director of the zoo who hadn’t taken Alex’s warning seriously enough. Then she tiredly flew back to the DEO and hit the sunbeds.
///
At the end of the day, Vasquez fielded a call from the Director of the East Coast Regional DEO for Director Danvers. When she hung up, it was with a tired smile. Wait until Alex found out that the man had actually admitted that she had warned him.
///
Supergirl stumbled onto Lena’s balcony, even after having spent an hour with the sunlamps. Her phone beeped as she went through the doorway to Lena’s—to their—living room. A text:
SuperMom: You never did say whether you’ve had time to read the scrapbook I made for your wedding planning.
Supergirl texted back.
SpecialK: Alex and I started a while back, around the time of Jeremiah’s interment? But things got busy, I think?
And she looked at the texts and thought that Eliza had asked a question with a statement, and she had made a statement with questions. That was classic Danvers family communication, she thought.
By the time Lena got home from LCorp, Kara had changed into faded jeans and an old pink Oxford cloth shirt and was sitting barefoot on the couch, flipping through the scrapbook.
“What’ve you got there?” Lena asked, slipping gratefully out of her high heels.
“Hey! Fiancée! I just dug out Eliza’s scrapbook that I told you about.”
Lena sat down next to Kara, who handed the book to her and pulled Lena’s feet into her lap, gently massaging them.
“Oh, you’re wonderful, Kara.” Lena flipped through the pages. “Hm. A lot of long white dresses here. And a lot of long dresses in shades of purple and blue and… Not seeing any suits here. Not a single tux.”
Kara sighed. “That was my thought too. When Alex saw this, she got a little grim. And some of the pictures are from wedding magazines. They date to both before and after Clark’s wedding. Guess it didn’t make much of an impact on her.”
“Well, you all did make it out to be a bit of a joke on Clark, and it really was in some ways. He looked so bewildered. And that made it easier for James and Winn to go together…”
“I know, it’s just Eliza—”
“Darling, it’s our wedding. We can wear what we want.”
“She’s going to have Opinions.”
“Most mothers do.”
Chapter 116: Operation Forward Planning
Chapter Text
Winn got to Dollywood by 6:30 that Friday, ordered mozzarella sticks and beer and unpacked the go-bag he had prepared for the meeting. The bar was surprisingly empty, but then people had partied extensively Wednesday night after all the rioting and Thursday had been pretty busy too. Aliens and humans alike were uniformly relieved, for the most part, that the fascists hadn’t won—this time. Probably people were just tired. It had been a brutal four years.
Jess joined him a bit later, saying that Lena had to finish up something but would be along shortly. She sat watching him scribbling a long list on the back of an envelope, surrounded by maps, Moleskine notebooks and computer printouts.
“What’s the list?” she asked eventually.
Just then Lena hurried up. “Sorry I’m late.”
Winn said, “Well, Vasquez always says that known dangers are the easiest to plan for, so I thought I’d make a list of all the dangers we’ve dealt with in the past few years.” He turned the envelope so they could read it.
Livewire
Silver Banshee (cf. Purity)
earthquake
Fort Rozz aliens
runaway train: Max Lord
red K: Max Lord
Myriad: Astra and Non
drones: Cadmus
Psi
flying cats
law-abiding serum: Max Lord
Medusa: Cadmus
alien weapons: Cadmus
nanodrones: Beth Breen; Lex
alien invasion
Purity’s voice (cf. Banshee)
Pestilence
tsunami
pink K: Max Lord
5th Dimensional imp
arson: Cadmus? Lex? Chief Short?
Kidnapping: Stott
Covid-19
Godzilla, pterodactyl, sea monster, rhino: Lex
Lena turned and signaled Violet at the bar. “I’m going to need a drink for this.”
Winn said, “No, the length of the list is good. These are largely problems we’ve solved. We have some seriously sick tech for this.” He circled Silver Banshee, Purity’s voice, Covid-19, arson, alien weapons, and 5th Dimensional imp. “I thought if we could make enough sound dampeners, psychic inhibitors, BBFGs (now that we finished miniaturization), and we bring those two 5D doohickeys with us, we could get out ahead of at least five of these. And the Covid vaccinations should be ready to roll out by March, they’re saying now. So that’s six.”
Jess nodded, surprised. “And Max Lord has been in Africa lately, back at work on the malaria problem, at least for now. And Livewire is on our side now. Holtzy said she’s applied to train as an agent, if you can believe it. And Lillian, well, I mean, I’ve never trusted her and I really don’t understand the way she acted at Thanksgiving…”
They stared at Lena. Violet brought her a Cosmo and she sipped it, appearing to savor the flavor. Jess and Winn caught each other’s eyes. Lena enjoying a drink was… surprisingly hot. Jess shook herself.
Lena didn’t appear to notice. She said, “If you recall, my mother was caught out in the rain for just as long as we were back during the pink K fiasco.”
Jess frowned. “So was Cat…”
Winn stared. “Wait, do you mean—”
“Really, we should only tell our own stories, don’t you agree, Agent Schott?”
“I, er, yes. Clearly. Absolutely. Anyway! Fire extinguishers will help. But for accurate forward planning, we really need to see your finalized guest list. Are we planning for fifty guests? A hundred? Social distancing is going to be hard if there are a lot of people.”
“I believe Kara and I came down to fifty people, not counting Millie’s people or Shareez’s band.”
“And snipers,” added Winn, jotting a note on the side of the envelope. “Say, maybe fifty at the party and fifty working or protecting the party? I could make that work.”
“What kind of a bride brings snipers to her wedding?”
Quite reasonably, Jess said, “What kind of brides need to bring psychic inhibitors and 5D doohickeys to their wedding? At least we have them if we need them.”
“True.” Lena shook her head. “I’ll talk to Kara, get you a finalized list by Sunday night. Will that do?”
“Perfect,” said Winn. “Now the issue with, er, the venue? I figured that out. The DEO will transport the entire wedding party. Apparently, we have vehicles with no windows. That way only the drivers, us, Alex, Vasquez, and Kara will know where we’re going until they get there.”
“Mmm.” Lena took another long sip. “What if Cat decides to bring my mother along as her plus one?”
Winn stared. “That would be…”
“Awkward?” asked Jess. “Maybe dangerous? Lena, do you really think she would?”
“Cat Grant got my mother to, one, come to the betrothal, two, memorize the ritual, three, approve of my marrying an alien, and a Kryptonian no less. Now maybe it is an elaborate ruse on Lillian’s part. But it occurs to me that if this comes up, the DEO has in its… not archive. Menagerie? A Truth Seeker. Could come in handy.”
Now it was Jess’s turn to stare. “Wait, those are real?”
“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” Lena finished her drink and signaled Violet for another.
“Yeah,” sighed Winn. “Our lives aren’t like other people’s lives.”
///
Eve, Chaya and Pill worked late that Friday night, and they talked about maybe hitting a bar, but Pill was tired and just wanted to go home, so she made her excuses. She had been spending more time at home lately, tending all the plants, especially the genetic crosses, even more especially the Venus rose that she had started during lockdown and had nurtured with pink K up until the fiasco at LCorp when Lena went Neanderthal because a single tablet of the stuff had gone missing.
Fortunately, it hadn’t been hard to bring it back the following day and make it look like a misfiling or something, like it had been mislocated in the vault. Rumor was that Lena was kicking herself over the strip searches. Served her right, thought Pill. Knowledge needed to be disseminated.
Pill read every day about the mountaintop removal mining, the decrease in species diversity, the fires all over California, the superstorms on the East coast.
Breeding new kinds of plants that were hardier, could grow without the need of the fertilization offered by the bees dying from colony collapse: what Pill was doing in her tiny apartment (most of its beige walls now covered in green vines) was huge.
///
Winn sat alone in the lab late Monday afternoon, contemplating the mechanical drawing Holtzy had left on the drawing board when she was called out on an op to apprehend a rogue K’hund. The drawing looked like a very compact cattle prod, which Winn thought made sense, given that Alex had been encouraging agents to be more cautious when taking down people who might well not be as alien as they looked (*cough greenies cough*). Holtzy had marked four buttons near the base: lo, med, hi, xtra. What he thought was odd was that the thing was only maybe seven inches long, and that didn’t make sense, right, because surely if you wanted to take down a combatant with a shock, you’d want to do it from a greater distance. Right? Also, it seemed less sturdy than he would have expected a weapon to be, with not even the circumference of an ear of corn. For a moment, he thought maybe this was a different project, because he knew that Holtzy was working with Lena on something else, but there on the end of the hilt were the letters D.E.O. so apparently not.
His email pinged. Eddy the codebreaker from upstairs had decoded the German document they had found on Lex’s computer. Apparently, it was the tech specs for Italian midget submarines, the MG 120 and 130, which ran on closed-circuit diesel fueled by liquid oxygen, whatever that meant. There were also some sketches and equations they hadn’t figured out yet, maybe Lex’s upgrades. Huh.
His phone buzzed with a text from Vasquez.
ADV: Plaid Shirt, can you meet Sat a.m. to plan for Event?
AgtWS: Sure, what time? And Jess should be there.
ADV: Already texted her. 11:00. LCorp board room. Bring all your plans.
AgtWS: You got it.
AgtWS: Ma’am.
Then he turned from Holtzy’s drawing board and pulled the green Moleskine from the cargo pocket of his black tacticals. He flipped through the different plans he had made for both the wedding itself and the reception. Lately it had been reported on the news that the Covid-19 vaccines would start rolling out in March. With any luck, they wouldn’t have to social distance after all.
///
Lucy Lane looked at the text from Vasquez and sighed. She stood in the command center of the underground base in Nevada, staring up at the computer feeds without really seeing them, thinking through a variety of possible scenarios, remembering what Maggie had told her about Jess Huang’s philosophy for her job working for Lena: “Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Prepare for the blast.” Something like that, anyway.
Finally, she texted back.
LtCLane: I recommend Finn, Holtzman, Chen and Jordan. And they’ll each need a spotter. Also, I think we should deputize some… special agents.
Lucy sighed again, knowing that Vasquez might have… opinions about the special agents Lucy had in mind.
///
Vasquez knew exactly who Lucy probably wanted to deputize, and although she had mixed feelings about them personally, from a professional standpoint, she knew Lucy was right. She thought about Lois and Clark’s wedding shenanigans and how much the Legends had helped them contain Root and Shaw and their friends. She thought about the Globe-Eagle-Anchor tattooed on Shaw’s forearm, and remembered that she had been the best sniper in their unit… Now if Vasquez could just find her number…
Chapter 117: Operation Consequences
Chapter Text
Since his promotion to Senior Security Officer, Stan spent less time on his feet patrolling the National City Museum of Art and Culture and more time training the young officers, and although his boss had recommended holding an emergency drill soon to test the newbies, Stan had known that it wouldn’t be necessary.
The following Tuesday proved him right.
At ten that morning all the alarms went off in the West Wing where the museum had its Aliens of National City exhibit with the enormous black starchart on one wall, mannequins showing the physiology and clothing of a variety of aliens, including one of Supergirl’s old capes, and several personal space pods. These were all on loan from local aliens as part of the museum’s new diversity and inclusion initiative.
Stan had been on the other side of the museum when the first alarm went off, but eventually, after all the commotion, surviving security camera footage showed rookie Officers Lynn and Henry walking up to a tall man in a black body suit and mask (and weird black wings) and firmly asking him to leave. When he raised his gloved fist and shot fire at them, they jumped away and Lynn grabbed the red cape from the exhibit and beat Henry’s chest, even as he screamed and threw himself to the floor, Lynn helping him roll in the cape until the fire was out, but his screaming went on even as Lynn raised the alarms and called for backup.
The footage showed a flare of fire on the floor and Henry rolling away just in time and there was a flash of red and blue and Supergirl landed, shot freeze breath at the villain and then at Henry as her old cape fell away and showed the terrible third degree burns on his chest. A squad of people in black tacticals rushed in and secured the villain, tearing off his mask and gloves and binding his hands. At some point amid that kerfuffle, Supergirl must have flown Henry away, probably to NC General. They were a blur on the video.
Stan arrived a bit winded, thanked the agents, sighed about the burn on the marble floor, and returned to his new (tiny) office to write an Incident Report and an email recommending the museum give Officer Lynn a commendation for her quick thinking that probably saved Henry’s life. Then he went out to the Kryptonite food truck for lunch. Millie’s potstickers were practically addictive.
///
It was the screaming that got her, the high-pitched shriek of agony coming from a man who was probably, under normal circumstances, a baritone. Supergirl landed on the roof of the Luther Alien Hospital, since they were still taking in the non-Covid human emergencies and since they had the best burn unit in the city. She landed and laid the man on the gurney and watched while the waiting gowned surgeons sped him into the hospital. His chest was covered in a thin layer of ice, but he was still screaming.
Supergirl stood frozen on the helo-pad, hearing that horrible sound, knowing that even without her super-hearing she would have heard it like a siren trapped in a cave.
“Supergirl? Supergirl?”
She turned to see Callie in an emergency paper gown.
“We may need you to freeze his chest again while the team scrubs in.”
Stoically, Supergirl followed Callie down hallways. At the door to the OR, Supergirl overheated to sterilize herself before heading in, wincing at the screaming.
Callie said, “It’ll be worse if he stops. You know that, right?”
And yes, in theory Supergirl knew that as long as the man was in pain that meant his nerve endings hadn’t been destroyed, but spending the next hour flash-freezing his chest every five minutes while the surgeons debrided and cleaned the wound was one of the hardest things she had done since coming out as a superhero. A nurse replenished the bag of IV fluid.
Supergirl held onto the picture of Callie taking the man’s DNA sample, pictured her hurrying into her lab, setting the sample into several Petrie dishes and then setting them into the little glass drawers in the incubation thingy—
Kara had watched her do this process after that terrible riot when those NCPD officers had lost their shield arms when the Cadmus dupes had shot the shields with plasma weapons. She had watched Callie, taken notes in her reporter’s notebook, telling Callie it was for a Tribune article—and it was—but mostly it was for Supergirl, for moments exactly like this one, so she could distract herself from the screaming, from the fatty smell of burnt flesh, from the sudden silence and shift from a gentle regular beeping of the monitors to a long quiet beep that went on uninterrupted while the lead surgeon said, “Time of death: twelve-ten.”
The surgeons stripped off their gowns and masks and quietly left the room.
Supergirl was left alone with the body. She slid down the wall to sit, tears streaming from her eyes, sobbing quietly, “…commit… Rao’s light… why… so horrible…”
She was still there when a tech and a nurse in scrubs entered, followed by Lena Luthor, who pulled Supergirl to her feet, put the hero’s arm over her shoulders, and walked her back to her office. Supergirl was vaguely aware that conversations stopped as they passed knots of doctors or patients in the halls, but the tears continued to flow.
///
Pam in HR was just finishing the onboarding process for half a dozen rookies just transferred from Nevada when her DEO smartphone pinged.
And kept pinging.
The nervous rookies looked scared. One said, “Um, ma’am? Do you need to take that?”
“No,” said Pam, picking up the phone, and then “Holy shi— Er, yes. Thank you. Dismissed!”
As they left, she slipped her feet out of her black heels and into white sneakers.
Then she took off for the command center at a dead run.
///
Otis was sitting in the underground bunker eating a baloney and cheese sandwich and scrolling through his phone when the pings started.
“Huh.” He wandered down the hall to into Lex’s lab. “Hey, Boss,” he said. “Check this out. Supergirl’s having some kind of breakdown.”
Lex looked up and took the phone, scrolling with one thumb past the images of Supergirl in a hospital— “Wait, a green person in scrubs. Is that Luthor Alien—”
“Looks like it,” said Otis helpfully.
“She’s bawling like a baby!”
“Is this one of those Four-twos Opportunities you were telling me about?”
“Hm? Oh. Yes. This might be a very fortuitous opportunity indeed…”
///
Vasquez was standing behind Winn under the feeds when Pam from HR came running in and practically skidded to a stop. She said, “Turn on Channel 5, quick!”
The reporter was signing off, but behind him video of Supergirl bawling her eyes out, leaning on Lena Luthor, while humans and aliens in scrubs and lab coats gaped was just ending. The next screen was the weather.
“What the—” Vasquez turned to Pam.
“Holy smokes!” Winn was goggle-eyed.
“Ma’am, I think it was the Firefly attack at the museum. The guard who tried to stop him got that horrible fire shot at him and didn’t make it.”
And Vasquez knew the freeze breath protocol and could practically see the whole scene in her head. “Winn, alert the trauma team. Also, call in J’onn and M’gann. They’re going to need to cover her patrols.”
“On it.” He sent some texts from his tablet, then tapped his earbud. “Um, ma’am. The non-super agents have just returned from the mission. The Director asked if you could debrief them yourself?”
“Tell her I’m on my way down.”
Vasquez took the four minutes to mentally prepare herself for the onslaught of her agents’ trauma that was in her immediate future. Then she got to work.
Agent Holtzman was the last to debrief with Vasquez, who had already texted the good news to Maggie. The now-former fire Chief had been screaming about being Firefly, the pyromaniac from Gotham who had given Batman so much trouble some years back. She knew that it had galled Maggie that even though they had circumstantial evidence that he was behind the fires at the alien district and the bank, she hadn’t been able to put him away.
Well, check one thing off the list.
Holtzy looked drained. Well, it made sense. She had gone from one op northwest of town capturing a K’hund with those weighted nets, got him settled (heavily sedated) on the heavy-duty ground transport and then had had to turn on a dime to help with the fire. Exhaustion plus trauma rarely led to cheeriness in the most cheerful of agents, which in fact Holtzy had generally been before that mountain lair op she had led. Lately she seemed permanently sobered.
“Agent Holtzman,” said Vasquez gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Dully, Holtzy said, “I just did. Ma’am.”
“Not report about the factual details, Holtzy. Talk like humans.”
The agent sighed and wiped soot off her face with a handkerchief that had once been white. “I hate fire. If that security guard hadn’t had the good sense, and the speed, to grab that cape, or if they had been in absolutely any other exhibit—” She shuddered. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m really cut out for this side of the job.”
“Fieldwork?” asked Vasquez.
“Well, not all of them. I mean the post office with the Greenies was easy. Our teams worked together smoothly, all of the moving parts were people, so it was pretty much just psychology and muscle memory. And I’m good at that. But fire…”
Vasquez nodded seriously. “Everybody hates fire, and now especially with that accelerant from Gotham… But actually, I am hoping that you will be okay for the other kind of fieldwork. You’ve always done extremely well with marksmanship. When you were training out in Nevada, you impressed Lt. Colonel Lane, which isn’t easy to do.”
Holtzy nodded cautiously. “Ma’am.”
“I’m looking to retrain a small squad of snipers with some new windspeed tech Winn threw together in his spare time back when he was recovering from Covid. After reviewing the video from your uniform cams when you were using the magnetic bullets on January 6, Lt. Colonel Lane recommended you in particular. She’ll be conducting the training for you and seven other agents.”
“Snipers? Who do we kill from a distance? I mean, sure Alex shot at Reign from the helicopter and Supergirl said that was also how she was… recruited way back when…”
“You’ll be doing ground training. Who do we shoot? Hostage takers. Villains acting out on rooftops. But also guarding major events like visits of the president. But more pertinently this year, the upcoming… festivities are going to need some… specialized protection.”
Vasquez saw Holtzy’s face shift from blankness to recognition. “Oh! That. Do we have a date yet? Ma’am?”
“Not yet, which is why I want to get you all trained ASAP. Are you in?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Excellent. Lt. Colonel Lane said she expects you to arrive Friday at noon.”
“Perfect,” said Holtzy with weary smile. “By then we should have all the prototypes of the device I designed with Lena ready for testing. Ma’am. You know, Assistant Director, we’re still looking for volunteers for the beta tests. Can I put you on the list?”
“What? Oh, sure. It’d be nice to have some experience with the alien tech before we need to use it out in the field. Okay, great. I have to talk to Dr. Hamilton. Dismissed.”
And Vasquez couldn’t figure out what she had said that had made Holtzy chuckle.
///
Within ten minutes of the DEO’s call, M’gann left Violet in charge of Dollywood, changed into her Green Martian persona and was up, up, and away. She loved the bar, but she also loved being a hero rather than the villain she had always seen herself as. And it wasn’t that her friends didn’t know exactly what she was. They did. They just figured who she’d been for the last three centuries kind of blotted those old sins out.
Sin. It was an Earth word, a human word. White Martians had words like duty and betrayal, but nothing for love, beauty, tenderness. No words for laughter, tears, virtue, sin. She supposed one could tell a lot about a culture based on its vocabulary.
Shrugging off that thought, she zoomed across the sky, reveling in the cold air against her hot face. She listened telepathically to the low roar that was National City in the early evening. Most folks were winding down from their long day. Some were waking to do their jobs in the darkness: janitors, criminals, heroes, villains.
Sirens went off north of the city, but it was just a fender bender.
She hoped Kara was okay. As a friend, a bartender, even a hero, there really wasn’t much she could do for the traumatized Kryptonian. You couldn’t save everybody. The longer she lived away from Mars, the more she thought what a miracle it was that she had been able to save a single soul…
And there were a few more words White Martians would never comprehend.
///
Maggie Sawyer got the text from Vasquez and turned the news on. Yep. Fire Chief Martin Short had been arrested at the National City Museum of Art and Culture for damage to property and attempted murder. The newscaster stood there talking to the camera while behind him the tall firefighter wearing what appeared to be some kind of hero suit with wings was screaming that Firefly would take down “the aliens and the Supers and the Greenies and the libtards.” He drowned out the reporter, screaming, “I’m going to wipe my (beep!) with the Alien Immigration Act and burn it on the museum’s lawn!”
When the NCPD and FBI (DEO) had dragged the man away, the newscaster said, “In addition to today’s crimes, Short is expected to be charged with several other crimes of arson in National City, including the September 2019 Alien Alley fires, which destroyed five alien-owned restaurants and killed several neighborhood residents; the St. Vincent elementary school fire in July 2020; the National City Main Post Office in August 2020; and National City Bank in September 2020. All these incidents involved extreme destruction to property and numerous people either injured or killed.”
Maggie sighed, then jumped a little as Joe stepped up to her side silently. “Joe! Make some noise, will you?”
The alien shrugged. “Joe is sorry, but Slaver’s Moon is place where treading silently keeps Joe alive.”
Maggie sighed again. “Yeah, I get it. And you were undercover there for years.” She pointed to the split screen between the reporter still talking and old footage of the crimes he had just listed. “What do you think of that?”
“Pretty sure Post Office is not Fire Chief. That belong on list with big facilities attacked because election.”
“I agree.” She turned to the first of the murder boards, the one for the Alien Ally fires. “Well, at least we can take this down.” She started pulling photos off the board and depositing them into a cardboard box.
Joe moved down the space between desks and started to pull down the pictures of the school’s principal and janitor and the question mark that had Martin Short? as a footnote.
Reynolds stepped into the room saying, “Guys, you’ll never guess—”
They turned to look at him and he closed his mouth, then headed to the back of the room where the bank board had several pictures of dead and injured bankers and bank customers, the photo Chen had taken and an old wanted poster from the GPD for Firefly. Soon the quiet room was filled with the sighs of tape being pulled from whiteboards.
Chapter 118: Operation Recovery
Chapter Text
The day Supergirl broke down at the Luthor Alien Clinic, Lena had Ted drive them to the DEO and the resident therapist talked with her for three hours before she could pull herself together enough to go home in a pair of Alex’s black tacticals.
In the car, she apologized to Lena for making her wait so long.
Lena scoffed. “Darling, if I didn’t get bored when I was being held in an empty room for a week, I’m hardly going to get bored hanging around Winn and Holtzy and their seriously sick tech.”
“I guess.”
“I got a text from J’onn. He said that he and M’gann will take your patrols for a few days while you get some rest. You’ve been going all out for a while now.”
“I guess.”
She said nothing more as the car moved smoothly through the evening streets of National City and Ted let them out in front of the condo. Lena hurried Kara through the doors. They went upstairs to the penthouse. Lena slipped off her extreme heels and padded barefoot into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a small green tube and handed it to Kara. “Apply liberally,” she said.
Kara stared at the Japanese characters. “Wasabi?”
“Good for what ails you. I also got some alien vodka from Kate Kane, so I can make you her version of a Cosmo.”
Looking confused but trusting, Kara twisted the cap off the tube and squeezed the pale green paste onto her tongue. She swallowed, wincing, and then her eyes went wide.
“Inhale through your nose and feel the burn,” said Lena. “Like follow-through in hitting a softball. Feel everything.”
Kara squeezed her eyes shut and then gasped out loud.
“How do you feel?” asked Lena.
“Gah, that, wow. Why would you do that? My tongue!”
“Not your tongue, love. Your heart. Your feelings.”
Kara stared at her, inhaling sharply. “I feel—Um, less?”
“Exactly. Think of it as a soft reset. Now, how about I make us some drinks?” Lena took the tube put it back in the fridge with the other condiments. She pulled out the Absolut Gay Edition and the Saturnian Devil Weed, cranberry juice, Cointreau and limes, and two pitchers, one clear and one blue. “I had a friend in boarding school who used jalapeños, but she was raised in South America and was used to them. I find this is more my speed for short-circuiting emotional overwhelm.”
“Huh. I think Alex and Vasquez use it for shutting down their noses on stinky ops.”
“It’s versatile. Now, come talk to me.” She handed Kara the two pitchers, pulled her over to the white couch and wrapped her arms around her.
For a while they sat like that listening to each other’s breathing. Finally, Kara sighed deeply, picked up a glass and poured from the blue pitcher. She took a long sip and said quietly, “I hate that you guys are so fragile.”
Lena nodded.
“That security guard was just doing his job and he never stood a chance. Even though his partner acted fast to get my old cape over him and roll out the fire, he was a dead man in all but name. That accelerant is demonic. But he felt everything for at least five minutes before the heat burned through his nerves and his heart stopped. I kept flash freezing his chest and he’d be able to gasp a breath just to start screaming again. It would have been more humane to kill him at the museum. And it never occurred to me, and I would never have done it even if it had, but Lena… Nobody should ever suffer that way.”
“I agree.”
“And Jeremiah’s tanker, did Maggie ever say what it was carrying?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt anyone would transport something that dangerous through the middle of a city by day. When the military is transporting nukes and other super dangerous materials, they do it by night, usually on remote road.”
“Cadmus isn’t the US military. Lex makes me like General Lane.”
“Mmm.”
“How can we fight people who don’t have a single shred of honor or humanity?”
“Well, we start by working very hard not to lose ours. I do understand what you’re saying, Kara. It kills me that my big brother and people with similar ideas are out there targeting aliens and the people who try to help them.”
“And that’s why I’ve been pushing myself again. I know I shouldn’t, that I’ve got to have balance in my life and be there for you more too. But then there are these huge crimes and downright evil criminals, and how can I not try to fight them 24/7?”
“Mmm. Never fight a land war in Asia, love.”
“What?”
“Napoleon, a military genius, took one of the best armies the world had ever seen, and it wasn’t really even the Russians who beat the crap out of him. It was the geography. The weather. Tin buttons. Things he couldn’t control. You can flank and pincer and pin down with cannonballs all you want. But there will always be things you can’t control.”
“Vasquez calls that the X Factor, I think. The grandmother who wakes up in the middle of the night to hear the secret op going on next door.”
“Maybe you should talk to Vasquez. Because yes, I think that labyrinth brain of hers is always spewing out scenarios, practically 24/7—”
“Alex says she keeps a notepad and pen on the bedside table just like you do.”
“If our brains give us the answers in our sleep, we might as well take them. But if we don’t sleep, our brains can’t give us anything.”
“I guess.”
“And I think that the other person you might want to have a conversation with—”
“M’gann and J’onn?”
“Oh, sure, you could. But I would have thought you already had those conversations with them.”
“Here and there. Then who—”
“Millie.”
“Bernetti?”
“Mm hmm. She’s a force to be reckoned with and is highly philosophical. You might learn a few things.”
Kara stretched. “Thanks, Lena. You’re good at putting things in perspective.” She drank more of her Cosmo, losing some of her stiffness.
Lena winked. “What use is trauma if you can’t get anything out of it?”
///
The night of Fire Chief Short’s arrest, Maggie had slept better than she had in months. She no longer had to dream of that ghastly fire. She got up early and arrived at the precinct an hour before her shift started and went upstairs to the task force’s office and pulled the remaining murder boards together on one side of the room so they could get a new sense of what the big picture now looked like.
So: Alien hospital and LCorp bombings: 2 dead, 38 injured; another 7 unscathed: Lena Luthor, Jess Huang, Winn Schott, Jr., Eve Tessmacher, Chaya Stone, Pamela Isley, and Dave Berg: suspects?) Both detonated by batteries. Cadmus?
The ongoing BabyZoom overdose outbreak. They had taken down some of the suppliers, but had not managed to shut down the pipeline, probably coming out of Gotham.
The post-election citywide orgy. They were pretty sure Max Lord had not done it (this time).
The school bus was Cadmus—solved but not litigated. She peeled the photos off the board and slid it over near the door for Maintenance to pick up with the other three. Maybe she was being optimistic, assuming that no more fresh hell might suddenly pop up the moment she got down to just the three boards, but Valentine’s Day was coming, and she wanted to believe that she and Lucy would have a little time off for their own personal shenanigans.
///
General Sam Lane wasn’t necessarily well liked at the Pentagon, but he was generally respected. The more liberal defense directors considered him rash, paranoid and authoritarian; he considered this a compliment. The more conservative didn’t like what the president called his innovations.
Luckily, the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Director for Advanced Capabilities were of a similar age and had also grown up during the Red Scare, Vietnam, etc. and had also moved from considering foreign terrorism as the greatest existential threat to the US. Admittedly, they were split between domestic terrorism, climate change and supers (both heroes and villains) for who/what they should target, but they all agreed that a little paranoid innovation was fine, given that somebody was always out to get them.
Someone on the Senate Subcommittee had slipped him a copy of the DEO’s budgetary asks, and he saw the line item for electromagnetic munitions, and he was pretty sure Director Danvers had been using those on the Cadmus beasts that had been roaming America’s cities during the certification of the election. Well, if the DEO had found a useful weapon against Cadmus, the US Army was going to use it too.
///
Just as she was leaving CatCo for the day, Cat Grant looked up at the media feed and saw that Channel 5 had scooped everybody with Supergirl’s public breakdown at the Lionel Luthor Alien Clinic, and she was livid. She didn’t act immediately. She took a breath, went home, ate dinner with her son, made a lengthy list and went to bed.
But the next morning, she immediately called an editorial meeting to manage the story and swing it around to something more positive. She sent reporters out to interview workers at the museum, the clinic, and the NCPD. She herself called Director Danvers at the DEO and they made an appointment for a late lunch as they were both running themselves ragged that interminable morning.
“Er, yes, Ms. Grant, I’m not sure how the FBI can help you with—”
“Director Danvers. Your… branch of the FBI is well known to provide logistical support for National City’s own superhero, who has, I think you can agree, just found herself with a branding problem. Now, it’s not terrible, we got Tony Stark through his breakdown and the big green man through his ongoing, well, breaking of things. Surely, we can get the Girl of Steel back on track.”
“Um, well, yes of course, while the FBI would appreciate your help in an advising or consulting capacity, but we have our own—”
“Director Danvers. Alex, is it? How can I put this? I suspect there is a stack of Non-Disclosure Agreements in my near future. How about you set up an appointment with your HR person or whoever handles your high-level security peccadillos, say, twenty minutes before our lunch meeting?”
“Ms. Grant, I’m going to have to get back to you, but my guess is that we can schedule you in. Should I contact you or go through your PA?”
“Shoot me an email. I have no idea where she is this morning.”
And it hurt Cat to have to admit that to anyone, but she was pretty sure that Alexandra Danvers was quite used to keeping people’s secrets.
///
Lex hadn’t gotten where he was—released from prison by friends and still uncaptured—by not being cautious. So he threw on the baseball hat with the identity inhibitor and hopped on the National City subway to meet his business-partner-to-be in Jefferson Park.
The woman had told him to look for a thin woman with long brown hair and a purple overcoat, black boots and a black beret. She was sitting on a park bench as promised, scrolling absently through her phone. He pulled out his own phone and cloned hers before making his approach and turning off the hat’s device.
“Ms. Ellison, is it? Looks like the rain is holding off for now.”
“Mr. Martin?” She gestured for him to sit. “It should be dry for a while.”
“Did you receive the package?”
“Your courier was efficient.”
“I believe in hiring competent people.”
“And you said there was a bit of a clock on this project?” she asked.
“If you can solve this in the short term, I don’t have to plan for the long.”
“Understood.” Her phone buzzed. “And the first third has shown up. Time for me to get to work.”
Lex stood and turned the inhibitor back on, walking away smiling. He tapped the notes app on his phone to open his current to-do list:
research contractors √
elicit bids √
meet with lowest bidder
get Mother on board for project management stage 3
send shirts out for ironing
He put a checkmark next to the third thing. It was looking to be a good week. He was getting shit done.
Chapter 119: Interlude
Chapter Text
Halfway through January, Winn was playing pool with Jess and Holtzy at Dollywood, penny a ball and losing badly when Eve came by with a dirty martini to watch. Jess thought the look Eve was giving Winn was... interesting. Or maybe interested? Either way, it wasn’t helping his game. He kept shooting the cue ball into a hole. Holtzy, on the other hand, took out at least three balls per turn. Winn and Jess just kept handing her pennies.
Eve put her arm around a dejected Winn’s shoulders, saying, “Don’t worry, Winn. You have skills in... other areas.”
He laughed and sipped from his beer, but Jess thought that he might be blushing. Okay.
Jess bent over the table to line up her shot.
Eve said to Winn, “You know, Winn, if you want to have another New Year’s Eve Party at my place, I would be up for it...”
“Yeah, I’d like to have an Eve, but I’m not sure my boyfriend will approve.”
Jess shot the cue ball across the room. It hit the dart board right in the middle, dropped and rolled away. People clapped for her.
“Great shot! Ten points! Bull’s eye!”
Jess blushed crimson but took a bow. Winn was typing away at this phone. A moment later he got a ping.
“Oh. Oh my! He says, quote, yes, but only if you tell me about it later so I can punish you for it. LOL, end quote.”
“You guys are into kinky stuff?” Eve sounded intrigued.
“Never have been before...”
Eve smiled and grabbed him by the necktie, “Sorry, girls, I need to borrow your pool boy.”
Jess stared at them as Eve pulled him through the crowd. Even Holtzy looked surprised.
///
Winn had difficulties following Nigel’s directions to Eve’s building, distracted by what was happening between his legs. Eve was squirming in the passenger seat and he really wanted her to be squirming on him. When they finally got there, he managed a quick and messy parallel parking job and then they both hurried inside. The moment they stepped into the elevator, Eve grabbed him and started kissing and groping him. The elevator rose and stopped and pinged. The doors opened and they stepped out—
Right into the guy from New Year’s Eve morning.
“You again!” He stepped past them into the elevator and pushed the down button, so they ran to the stairs and hurried up to Eve’s floor.
///
Eve unlocked the door and pulled Winn, pulling his tie knot and throwing his tie on the couch while Winn unbuttoned her blouse, revealing a lacey black bra, she got his shirt off just before they pushed into her room and she kicked the door closed, while she pulled on his belt buckle and unbuttoned his trousers. He pulled her toward him and fumbled with the zipper on the back of her skirt, but then she reached into his dropping pants and grabbed him, and his brain went completely blank and he pushed himself into her hand.
She laughed and pushed him back onto her bed while she bent down to untie his shoes and pull them off. He kicked off his pants while she dropped her skirt. Her lacy panties matched her bra.
He reached up to unclasp the bra, but she took his hands into her left hand, pushed him back and held his hands above his head and lay down on him and rubbed her crotch hard over his bulge and he made noises he had not made in years.
“Mm. You like that, do you?” She leaned down and kissed him hard and kept rubbing while he moaned. “I’m pretty sure you could be harder.”
“I’d be harder if I could see you with your clothes off. That worked really well a couple weeks ago.”
She kept humping him, murmuring, “Tell me what you want to do to me.”
“I, er. Well, your breasts are pretty nice and you seemed to like it last time when I licked them.”
“That was okay.”
“W-why don’t you tell what you w-w-whoa! Want me to, ah, oh, that—”
“Really, she purred. “And you’ll do it? Anything?”
“Well, within reason. And oh shit, I don’t have condoms!”
“I do.” She jumped up and pulled a packet out of her bedside table ripped it open as he scrambled to push his briefs down.
“Ooooh,” she said putting her hand into her underwear and stroking herself while he struggled to get the condom on. “Oh, you like what you see...”
And of course, getting harder made it more difficult to get the condom on but then—
She helped. At great length.
“So, so what d-did you have in mind?”
She pushed her panties off, stepped out of them, and went and knelt on her bed with her backside facing the room. “Do me from behind.”
“Y-you mean, like, in the ass?”
“Don’t be silly, just the regular entrance, just from behind. It’s so much better.”
And Winn had a moment of thinking of Jess, sweet, quiet Jess. She was the kind of girl he usually dated. This was... well, even though they were now well into 2021, this all seemed very 2020. But in a good way?
Unprecedented.
///
Winn left at midnight and went back to his place, needing to think before he spoke with James. He thought perhaps he had bitten off more than he could chew with Eve.
His brain skittered away from thinking about what she had asked from him and how much it had turned him on. And James wanted him to give him a blow for blow? Because, yes, towards the end, there had been blowing. Maybe he would focus on that.
Numbly, he went to his dining room table and dug through the papers to find his laptop. Opening his browser, he Googled “riding equipment” and then in Dover’s search box, he typed crop. It turned out that he could get a 23-inch purple rainbow glitter riding crop for less than ten dollars, plus shipping and handling. And oh, look. They would gift wrap it.
///
For a few days after that, James and Winn kept pulling opposite shifts. Well, it happened that way sometimes. And at one point, Winn had said that the moment they had the same shifts, they should schedule a date night, and that didn’t sound like he was trying to put distance between him and James. And the one time they had texted about Eve, James had simply texted:
KingJames: Was she good?
ForTheWinn: Sure, but your mouth is bigger.
And that did make James feel better… sort of? And a few days later, a long package had come to James’s apartment from someplace called Dover Saddlery, which was just weird, but it did have his name and address on the front, so he opened it to find something long and thin and wrapped in wrapping paper with horses all over it. Perplexed, he slid his fingers under the tape to find—
A riding crop with a sparkly purple shaft?
And he remembered joking about punishing Winn after sleeping with Eve because he needed to make it a joke, but he also needed to say yes when he didn’t really want to say yes. Had Winn taken it seriously? Or was this also a joke?
Experimentally, James rolled up his left sleeve and slapped his forearm. It did sting.
But James didn’t want to hurt him, he just wanted to know what it was she did for Winn that James didn’t do.
///
Ping-Yi paced behind the long foldout table, covered with an LCorp-green cloth and piles of brochures for the company’s different divisions. Caroline, the volunteer from IT, had been on time, but Chaya from R&D (Life Sciences) was twenty minutes late. Ping-Yi didn’t like to stereotype, of course not, but people did say that those alphabet soup people, well, the women anyway, were always late. Well, not Ms. Luthor, of course. But most of them. Ping-Yi fussed with the brochures, lining them up exactly parallel to the table’s edge.
Caroline gently touched her shoulder. “Ms. Zhao, they’re fine. Also, she just walked in.” She nodded toward the side door of the wide room, where the blonde scientist was hurrying in wearing a dripping trench coat and carrying a collapsed umbrella that left a second trail of water behind her.
Ping-Yi nodded gratefully and stood straighter, squaring her thin shoulders and frowning. “Doctor,” she said, helping remove the woman’s coat. “You made it! The students have already started coming in.”
“What? Oh, yes. Sorry. Traffic, you know, and the rain. Glad I made the move with Ms. Luthor. In Metropolis they’ve been having ice storms all week.”
Ping-Yi folded the coat over a folding chair behind them. “Yes, Doctor, but this is National City, and these students are going to want to grill you on the Life Sciences department. NCU has three times as many science majors as CS. No offense, Ms. Tierney.”
Caroline smiled. “None taken,” she said easily. “Here they come.”
Instantly, Chaya shifted from Elitist Employee to Eager Scientist, clipping her name tag to her blazer and answering the college students’ questions with wit and technical detail. Ping-Yi sighed. She’d take what she could get.
Chapter 120: Operation Personnel
Chapter Text
On January 20, the day of the new president’s inauguration, Lillian Luthor found herself at home in Metropolis, watching the spectacle with a sense of annoyed relief. On the one hand, she was all for fiscal policies that benefited the wealthy and big business—in other words, her, the Luthor family and, in its current incarnation, LCorp. She didn’t care about the US southern border nearly as much as the Earth’s stratosphere, and the outgoing administration had done nothing to regulate that. At first, she had thought, back in 2016, well, at least the new POTUS was a proven human.
She’d been feeling optimistic.
But as the following exhausting years passed, rife with inarticulate and obscenely posturing incompetence and embarrassingly blatant corruption, she had contacted some of Lionel’s old friends who had worked or were still working at the FBI, CIA, CDC and NASA. Together this network conducted a thorough investigation, stealing DNA from the entire administration, from the top actors all the way down to the janitorial staff and interns.
It was a monumental task. It took two years. And the results had devastated Lillian. Every single soul was 100% human.
She had thought, surely aliens had infiltrated the halls of power. Surely.
Alas, no.
Another annoying thought wandered through her head: Even Olivia Marsden would have been preferable to—
It shook her.
Because even before the Pink K fiasco, Lillian had valued competence (and competent people like Cat Grant) as one of her highest values.
And thinking of Cat invariably led her to think of her daughter’s superfriends. Despite herself, she had been impressed back at Thanksgiving when they had turned on a dime to respond mid-ceremony to the aliens rampaging through National City. Or that’s what she had thought at the time. After January 6, she realized that her son was the one to blame, that he had created those rampaging beasts in support of the former administration and did a test drive of them in National City on that particular November day to—
Wait. Had he known about the betrothal?
Lillian looked at her smartphone. Had Lex bugged Cat’s phone and heard her tell Lillian about the event, ask her to come participate?
Had he bugged Lillian’s phone?
Lillian looked back at the television as Amanda Gorman began to perform her poem—such hopeful words—flawlessly.
As flawlessly as the Supers and the Martians had put down the alien—no, Lex’s attack—without breaking a sweat, and returned to finish the ritual. Flawlessly.
Back when Lex had set off all those bombs in Metropolis in a vain attempt to kill Superman, Lillian had blamed Superman for pushing him beyond his normal limits. But if now Lex was working to keep the inept losing administration in office?
Maybe her poor boy was more damaged than she had thought.
///
At 8 am on January 21, Winn relieved Finn of the watch at the command center of the DEO. One of the upsides of long Covid was that he never pulled the night shift anymore. Finn, being in that grey area between the long-suffering and the mostly healed, had re-entered the ranks of those who got scheduled according to the DEO’s needs rather than Dr. Hamilton’s orders, poor guy.
As for Winn, he watched the feeds with a practiced eye, occasionally checking on his algorithms that searched for kryptonite, large quantities of lead, or those nanobots. The last really bothered him, so much so that it had even gotten into his dreams recently. Just that morning, he had woken from a nightmare in which Lex Luthor had laid out a map on the viewscreen: National City at night with all its little lights converging into the shape of a gigantic whale. (And he remembered how Lillian had attacked the Parks & Rec gala the previous year, with fireworks that had initially hidden Cadmus’s drones and Lillian in the K-suit, which had then brought their own sort of deadly fireworks to the party.) And just as his dream-self thought, “Oh, sh—” the whale breached lava all over his city.
He woke in a whole-body cold sweat, almost as if he’d been feverish, but he knew better. The combination of pink K and Covid (Alex had hypothesized) had brought certain people one or both of two kinds of dreams: wish fulfillment, probably from the right side of the brain, and something closer to premonition, probably from the left.
Supergirl flew into the command center neither beaming nor frowning, but carrying coffee from Noonan’s for Alex, Vasquez and Winn. He took his gratefully.
Just as she said, “Hey, Winn, where are--” Alex walked in. Or rather, Director Danvers. She was wearing one of those black pantsuits with low black heels and scowling lightly. Somebody was in for a rough meeting.
Even Supergirl apparently recognized the signs. She handed Alex her coffee and asked, “Director. Where’s—”
“Assistant Director Vasquez is liaising with the FBI. I get the joy of liaising with Max Lord.” She grimaced. “Agent Schott, once your watch here is done, I’d like you to work with Agent Holtzman down in your lab. She… texted me early this morning about some ideas she had, and by the time your watch is up, the permissions should have come through.”
Winn noticed that other agents were hurrying in to relieve command center agents (several minutes late, Winn noted, seeing Alex’s eyebrow rise, and practically smelling the agents’ sweat). So he didn’t ask about the permissions. Need to know, he figured. It could wait.
Alex asked, “Any call-outs last night?”
Supergirl sipped at her coffee. Crinkle. “Just two. A successful sting of the NCPD of some BabyZoom drug runners—even caught two of the ringleaders. But there was also a disturbance at the zoo. That rhino Lex commandeered during the coup attempt was bashing his head against the wall of his enclosure. I called in M’gann and she telepathically calmed him, but he hurt himself.” She growled, “When I find Lex—” She crushed her coffee cup in one fist, spilling coffee all over the floor. She looked down. “Oh, sh—sherbert.”
But Winn was already running for a mop.
Alex handed Supergirl her coffee, putting a consoling hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to get him. Holtzy had some… ideas last night.”
Winn sensed extreme understatement. He looked at the time above the feeds: 08:58:27. One hour down. Three to go.
///
Max Lord was three years older than he had been when he had met Agent Alexandra Danvers for the first time. And given that the last three years had included an alien invasion, a stint in prison, and work for Lill—for Cadmus, not to mention a run-in with pink K, and oh yeah, a global pandemic—he hoped to high heavens that he was wiser.
At the very least he did not try to feed the new regional director of the DEO caviar off his spoon.
Or, well, at all.
Whereas the younger agent had tended to stride into LordTech like a warhorse, Director Danvers now ambled into his office like a lion on the Serengeti.
No. Correction. Like a lioness. The females were much more dangerous.
He stood and buttoned his $5000 sport coat. “Director Danvers. To what do I owe the pleasure? Seat?”
Danvers sat, idly crossing her legs, her eyes never once leaving his. “Well, Max,” she said kindly. “You know that phenomenon where you think of something and then you start seeing it everywhere? Like the model of car that you’re considering buying?”
“Baader-Meinhof effect. Of course.” Sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
She sat very still, watching him. “Mmm. Your name has recently started coming up. At the DEO. In a number of very different departments.”
He waited, expecting a short list, but she said nothing. He waited. She looked at him… sweetly? The sweat dripped down his back.
“So, R&D,” he said.
“Yes, indeed.”
“And somehow, I suspect Legal.”
“Oh, yes. Among others.” She smiled.
He sat down at his desk so she wouldn’t see his legs starting to shake.
“Those nanobots. The ones we confiscated to make sure that no alien tech was in them, you know, just in case they showed LordTech to be in breach of the Act for the Limitation of Import/Export of Non-Terran Materials and Technology, which of course would be a felony.”
“Yes, yes. ALIENMAT. But your people returned my—”
“We did, yes. But not before we discovered the attenuator to be made of surprisingly pure, and regulated, Martian quartz.”
“But—”
“Which, we assume, three years later, you will have used to better effect.”
“Well—”
“And of course, such contraband materials being used for private gain—because of course you, Mr. Lord, hold the majority share in LordTech.”
“I—”
“Whereas a government-funded organization has authorization to use a much wider range of materials, according to ALIENMAT.”
“Of cour—”
“And if such a firm had ideas, theoretical of course, that might lead to a potentially fruitful collaboration with such a government organization, that firm would be covered by the latter part of the Act.”
“I see—”
“Rather than the former.”
“You know, actually, some of our engineers have recently posited… a potential collaboration—”
Danvers stood again, smiling sweetly, offering her hand. “I look forward to reading their proposal.”
Max stood and shook her hand, not wincing as she applied her vice grip without any seeming effort.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Lord.”
He watched her go. Three years, he thought. Who would have believed three years could have changed so much?
///
The DEO lab was quiet with Holtzy having taken a day off to work with Lena on their project, and it was weird how much Winn had gotten used to her muttering to herself or singing along with (and occasionally dancing to) disco music as she worked. He wasn’t sure he had ever had that much energy even before Covid. It had been a long day. He had just come up from the cage in the basement and had taken some notes on what he had noticed.
He still wasn’t convinced that they might not be dealing with a computer virus. They had a few of the texts translated but still didn’t know what Lex might have used the running key ciphers to code. Worse still somehow the files were bigger than that written text accounted for, suggesting there might be some kind of security keeping parts of them from being shown. Maybe figures? Diagrams? Photos?
If the German documents had been the specs for an Italian midget submarine, what might the ones in Kryptonese be? Martian technology? Winn printed out the Kryptonese document, folded it into quarters and stuck it into the cargo pocket of his black tacticals (because since January 6, Alex and Vasquez had required all agents be prepared to go out into the field on a moment’s notice if necessary). Now he just had to catch Kara between call-outs and give it to her.
///
Jess had gotten to work an hour early, suspecting that Lena might be about to go on another inventing rampage and wanting to get out in front of it. She had a box of croissants from Fleur’s in the executive kitchen, the big Invader Zim water bottle filled with water and waiting in the refrigerator, and she had worn pristine white running shoes with her pantsuit for the day. She was as prepared as she was likely to be.
So when the elevator pinged at 7:50, she thought, Hah! Gotcha! and stood waiting at the doors with two agendas: one if Lena was doing the manic genius thing today and one if she wasn’t. Jess was not expecting the person to step out of the elevator to be Holtzy.
She was dressed… more conservatively than usual, in brown skinny jeans, a dark green shirt with a collar, and a brown tweed vest. Combat boots. Lots of pens in her pockets.
“Hey,” she said with a shit-eating grin as she strode toward Jess. She had a battered army green messenger bag hanging from the strap crossing her chest from shoulder to hip. “How’s my bestest girl? You look lovely today. And Our Beloved Leader? Is she here yet?”
“Not yet,” Jess said faintly, remembering suddenly that on the days when Lena was NOT allowed caffeine, Jess needed it most. “Coffee?”
Chapter Text
On getting the text from Winn down in the lab, Alex and Vasquez made their way down, not entirely knowing what to expect. On the computer screen at the side of the room was a pattern of hexagons in different colors: blue, green, yellow and pink.
Winn was staring between the screen and a triumphant-looking Holtzy. He said, “Ma’am, you asked me to look at Agent Holtzman’s ideas to gauge feasibility. I’m more IT than mechanical engineering, but if I understand it, it’s feasible.”
Alex said, “Okay, Agent Holtzman, tell me what I’m seeing. Because that kind of looks like… a pattern for someone’s floor tiles.”
“Exactly, Director. If I were to show you the actual nanobot configurations, even wildly magnified, it wouldn’t really tell you what you need to know. So I’ve abstracted it down.”
She pointed to one of the smaller bits, six green hexagons surrounding a yellow one. “The first time we encountered Neo-Cadmus’s nanobot-covered beasts, one was a dinosaur skeleton covered with a canvas faux-skin, covered with these things. The green betabots carry code that manages locomotion, and the yellow gamabots provides energy that allows this small network to hold together. Later, with the pterodactyl, these smaller networks were connected with those blue lines of hexagons, alphabots, which allow all the little networks to work together as one larger network. The more bots in a micro-network, the more power. The more micro-networks are connected, the stronger the code that can be implemented. So that beast could fly, deal with pitch and yaw as well as simple forward locomotion.”
Her audience nodded.
She flipped to a new slide that showed the Lego Supergirl fighting a plastic pterodactyl. “Supergirl kept hitting the thing, breaking these connections or shorting them out—well, melting, really with her laser eyes. The fewer networks were connected, the less the beast could do.”
“Makes sense,” murmured Vasquez.
“Right. Now, the rhino at Thanksgiving had this, again more complicated, pattern: twelve green code-carriers surrounding six yellow power-carriers, which surrounded that pink hex, the deltabot, which I believe carries a much higher level of code, enabling much more complex functions.”
Winn said, “Um, Holtzy, maybe give them the payoff before explaining how it all works.”
“Right.” She hit the clicker again and the screen showed dozens of smaller and larger “flowers” connected by lines and nodes of blue hexes. “This is the pattern from the beasts at the Epiphany Insurrection: much more complex and not only does each level of the hierarchy have different functions, now each also carry a different electromagnetic charge: blue is weak, green is very strong, yellow is surprisingly weaker possibly due to the energy it carries. Pink is very strong, which makes sense, since it’s carrying a much higher level of code, guiding the beast as a whole, rather than just the parts—a wing, a claw, a tail.” She grinned.
Alex said, “Okay. And?”
“Well, Director, when you tasked me with coming up with electromagnetic nets to grab chunks of these bots off a beast rather than shooting the beast itself, I hypothesized that tuning them to grab the yellow bots would disconnect the pink deltabots from the green betabots, leaving them to have only lose control of locomotion, but no high-level instructions.”
Finally, Alex nodded. “Your hypothesis was correct, which saved us from a lot of potential explosions.”
“Yeah, I didn’t foresee that they’d be even more weaponized, but I do see it, now that Vasquez showed me her file on Lex. Anyway, yay, great for us, but Lex keeps iterating and I figure that he knows we’ve been keeping up with him and he’s soon going to change his tactics. Because the electromagnetic nets grabbing the bots worked very well for when the network of bots was covering immense live animals or forms. If you shoot something at a rhino, you’re probably going to hit it.”
Vasquez shook her head. “He’s going to start miniaturizing?”
“Wouldn’t you? Ma’am? Much harder to hit a football or a golf ball than a rhino. Or, in this case, a cannon ball or grenade.”
Winn sighed. “Smaller surface area, quicker trajectory…”
Alex crossed her arms. “Okay, I buy your take on the problem. Do you have a solve?”
“In theory, we need to find a way to short out the gamma bits without necessarily making physical contact. Ideally just close proximity, so even a close miss is a hit.”
Alex and Winn both said, “But EMPs aren’t—”
“Legal?” said Holtzy. “Technically feasible? I know. So I have the beginnings of a Plan… where are we now? C? D? But we’re going to need to bring in Lena Luthor.”
Winn said, “Holtzy, am I not genius enough for you anymore?”
“It’s not that, Agent Schott. She has Lex’s notebooks. If we have a better idea what materials he might be using, we’ll be better able to counter him.”
Alex nodded, mentally shifting gears to the next problem on her list. “Permission granted. Good work, guys.”
///
Lena hadn’t seen much of Kara for a few days, as she said she was hunting down a story, and at first Lena had thought she had meant an alien food story, but then she got a text from Maggie, asking if Kara had turned her phone off and how did she expect to get any information if she wasn’t keeping her phone charged. Well, Lena had her own work going on, and going from R&D to Materials to IT and back again with Jess hurrying to keep up behind her, she kept her mind from dwelling on it. She was pretty sure that Kara was taking her alien SSRIs, sleeping like the dead wrapped around Lena each night, and maintaining better boundaries with her Supergirl work. They were probably all right for now. Let them both work long hours: they were trying to save the world after all. Again.
Hopefully, proactively this time.
So when Lena got home that evening, she saw Krypto stretched out on the white couch snoring peacefully, and although she knew he was going to make the couch much less white being there, she let him sleep. From what Kara had said the other day, he had been a bit traumatized from finding out he had a son. She understood that kind of thing. It felt, she thought, a little like how she had felt in that prison with Lillian telling her that she was in fact a Luthor by blood as well as by nurturance. Suddenly, a person realizes their identity and sense of self weren’t what they thought they were.
That sort of thing was never easy.
Supergirl had texted that she was doing some sort of reconnaissance thing related to one of Maggie’s cases and might be home a little late, but she promised to bring pizza, and when she said that, Lena realized she meant Chicago deep-dish.
How the hell was she going to keep her girlish figure married to a Kryptonian?
///
When the DEO duty rosters came out on Friday for the following week, the changes were noticeable. Or at least they were if one cultivated a certain kind of bird’s eye view of the organization, as Pam from HR did, so as to be prepared for anything.
Hey, just because she wasn’t a field agent didn’t mean she hadn’t been paying attention.
Many agents who had been on the injured or recovering list shifted to desk duty. All of the desk duty agents shifted to active duty. But that meant different things depending on the agents’ ratings.
Agents Jordan, Chen, Finn, Olsen, and Holtzy were seconded from National City to Nevada, to undergo special training in the desert facility under Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane.
All the agents whom Astra had trained with the Daxamite lance blasters (except the four above) were re-formed as the First Alien Lance Platoon.
Agent In-Ze returned from the desert facility having been promoted to Lieutenant and took command of the platoon. Some of the agents who had been in the same rookie cohort as Jordan and Chen eight years previously had muttered about the sudden promotion, but Chen had gently pointed out that Astra In-Ze had served as a general for years both on Krypton and on Earth and so was taking a huge demotion for tactical reasons and could also take out most Marine platoons solo while on her lunch break. The muttering stopped immediately.
Rosie from Decontamination, Krypto from Alien Support, and Krypto’s son Astro (junior agent on probation) were seconded to Nevada for their own special training.
Finally, Agent Schott was seconded to LCorp.
Pam had in fact been unofficially consulted by the Assistant Director and had strongly agreed with the planned changes. Personally, she was a fan of highly skilled individuals and teams working at the height of their capabilities, being challenged, growing and getting shit done. Professionally, she could smell, even in February, that spring was in the air. She thought her superior officers were wise to be so unexpectedly proactive.
Chapter 122: Operation Cupid
Chapter Text
Friday evening after work, Eve found herself at loose ends and horny as hell. She went to hang out at Dollywood, hoping that Winn would be free and interested in a booty call. She played pool with Chaya and had a few martinis and after enough liquid courage, she texted Winn.
EveryDay: Free for a booty call? My booty misses yours.
ForTheWinn: Sorry. Date night with the boyfriend. Last weekend until he’s redeployed.
EveryDay: Well, have fun.
ForTheWinn: Oh, we will. (wink emoji)
Eve went home and eventually went to bed, but couldn’t stop thinking about them together, doing things to each other with their big hard penises, touching and stroking. Finally, she gave up, slid out of her pajamas, and pulled the box with her orange dildo out of her bedside table. She wasn’t going to need lube for sure.
It didn’t take her long to come, but she thought might need to get the next size up, as this one that she’d had since college just wasn’t really doing it for her anymore.
///
For date night, Winn made chicken cacciatore and James brought a sixpack of wheat beer. Afterwards they played Call of Duty for a while, but finally James had to ask.
“So, Dude, it’s been a week. You did promise to give me the play by play.”
“Well, we met up at Dollywood and got your text back, so I had to drive to her place with an increasing boner. You ever do that?”
“Yup,” said James with a grin. “It’s hard.”
“Oh, you did not just go there. So yes, it was. And then she kept sort of squirming in the passenger seat and that made it har—more diff—well, both, really. And then we ran into the building and got into the elevator and she immediately started kissing me and grabbing my boner and then the elevator door opened and there was this guy and so we ran out but we were on the wrong floor, so we went up to her floor and hurried in and were trying to get our clothes off each other and into her room and then I was trying to get my pants off, but my shoes were still tied, so she untied them and pulled them off and I kicked off my pants.”
“So she really wanted you.”
“Or she was just generally horny? I feel like anybody could have taken my place as long as she was getting some.”
“So how long did it take you to get her naked?”
“Well, I got her down to her underwear pretty fast, but when I reached around for her bra, she grabbed my hands and pushed them above my head and started humping my boner.”
“So you were naked?”
“No, I still had my underwear on, and she did that for a while and we were necking and I said I didn’t have any condoms, but she pulled one out and helped me get it on.”
“Helped?”
“Very much so. And then she begged me to do her, and I did and then afterwards, she gave me a very nice thank you, since I was still hard. She must have been at it for, I dunno, fifteen minutes. Time didn’t have much meaning.”
“That’s all?”
“After that I was out like a light. I left at midnight.”
“You didn’t want to stay for a second course?”
“Maybe I’m getting old. I just wanted to sleep in my own bed.”
“But you really like her?”
“I like how much she likes my boner.”
“Well, there’s a lot there to like.”
Winn kissed him, thinking how amazing it had felt to take her from behind with his hands squeezing her ass and her moaning and talking dirty and yelling, “More! Deeper! Fuck me, Winn!”
And how her roommate had barged in wearing pajamas and complaining about the noise. And basically, kicking him out with his clothes in his arms. So, okay, that part wasn’t so good.
///
Alex looked at her schedule for that Monday, yawning and sipping at the Noonan’s coffee her sister had brought her. Vasquez was out in the command center, temporarily filling in for Winn watching the feeds, since he was at LCorp, while James, Holtzy and the eight other agents were onboard a small troop transport east to the Nevada facility.
Alex brushed the bump under her uniform shirt with her fingertips. She had been going back and forth about it in her mind for three weeks now. Increasingly, she thought she needed to tell Vasquez about the plastic ring’s demise. She felt uneasy. Surely Susan wouldn’t understand why Alex was so cut up about losing it. But Alex had learned the hard way that keeping things from her, well, her girlfriend, even things she was sure that Vasquez wouldn’t be at all bothered about, never ended well.
It was such a silly thing, just a little piece of plastic.
But Alex had never experienced the breakage of a material thing feel so much like the breakage of part of herself.
And on the one hand, Alex was afraid that Vasquez would think she was being overemotional or childish or focused on the wrong things when she should be focusing on Lex’s Neo-Cadmus and planning security for Kara and Lena’s wedding and figuring out what the K-9 parameters should be. And should they ask the NCPD for Joe to act as a consultant for that? Alex dropped the schedule on her desk and rummaged around for a note pad to scribble that idea on and date and time it for context (because over the last year, her memory hadn’t been great).
And on the other hand—
Wait, what had she been thinking about?
///
Jess missed Holtzy since she had been temporarily transferred to Nevada for special training. It had only been three days, but their usual two-hour Facetime conversations from 7 pm to 9 had turned into a brief text exchange right before midnight when Holtzy fell asleep between one text and the next. Lt. Col. Lane was keeping the agents… busy.
On the fourth day, Jess got an email from [email protected] with an attachment that had a list of names of the women in their friend group and a note that they needed to get the forms for being beta testers for a new device. As always, tight NDAs were also part of the package that they all needed to fill out with LCorp’s HR as witness to the signatures. Lena was playing this one close to the vest. Jess hadn’t heard either one of them mention this project except in passing terms, almost as if it had simply been an idea that hadn’t gotten traction. Apparently not.
Jess’s name was also on the list, which also surprised her. She couldn’t remember either one of them asking her to act as a beta tester for anything. Winn had said something about a cattle prod, but when in her fairly staid life (alien invasions etc. notwithstanding) would she use a thing like that? She texted back.
NightOwl2: Hey, did I miss something? I’m on the beta list.
Several hours later, Holtzy texted back.
GhostBust1: Yeah, trust me. You are the reason I came up with this in the first place. I absolutely need you to be one of the betas. You are, to me, the AlphaBeta.
Laughter and rainbow emojis followed.
Jess sighed. Exhausted Holtzy’s sense of humor was… different from her normal one.
///
Sarge had thought that he had seen it all, especially in the last seven years since he had left his combat posting in Metropolis to train wet-behind-the-ears rookies in the desert. Some of those wet-eared rookies were of the bipedal type and many were quadrupeds. Well, it made sense. They usually tried to start training the dogs when they were still puppies. The early training was meant to teach them to play games with their human handlers: hide and seek, find the scented object in a pile of unscented toys, find the body. First, food and clickers were used as approval feedback and then gradually just the clicker. They started agility training when the dog turned one and had relatively fully developed joints. He had never seen a dog only a few months old be brought out to train with him, but this dog was… exceptional.
First of all, he had come along with his sire, who was the primary trainee, with the puppy on the sidelines watching fervently. And the sire was an adult who had started training in agility the year before and was not here with his primary handler, Agent Schott, but with another DEO staff member, Agent Rose Schwartz, the National City DEO’s Decontamination Response Director, oddly enough. And Sarge knew his boss well enough to keep his opinions to himself until she had been proven wrong.
She wasn’t proven wrong.
In part because, apparently, Agent Schwartz and Agent Krypto could communicate with each other relatively well. They seemed to… talk to each other? Well, that was new…
///
Lena wandered through the DEO wearing her consultant’s lanyard and ID, thoughtful. She had long thought that Agent Holtzman’s two great qualities were meticulousness and pattern recognition, qualities essential for engineers. Lex had the second but not the first: he often would grasp the answer to a problem intuitively and didn’t always record it carefully or test it to make sure that the parts worked. He had always said that there were two kinds of inventors/engineers/scientists: the geniuses and the workhorses. Lena rather thought that people like Holtzman and herself were the former because they were the latter. Ego had no place at the lab bench.
Lena found herself in the corridor that led to the command center and recognized that her subconscious mind had led her there, though she couldn’t think why. She hesitated, watching Alex, Vasquez and Winn interacting under Winn’s computer feed. Winn was playing with the dinosaur figures that Kara had gotten him for his recent birthday, making them fight and muttering, “Curse you for your sudden and inevitable betrayal!”
Sunlight burst in Lena’s head like Supergirl’s sun grenade. Lena marched forward. “Director Danvers? Might I have a word with you? I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Alex turned with one eyebrow raised, but immediately gestured toward her office.
Lena entered and sat in front of Alex’s desk while Alex closed the door behind them and then went to sit behind her desk.
“Okay, Lena. Should I ask in what capacity you want to talk to me?”
Lena smiled at the woman’s directness. “Future sisters-in-law, actually.”
Alex again applied the eyebrow.
Lena was proud to see how well it was coming along. Any day now it would deserve the capital E.
“It’s been in the back of my head for a while now. I’ve had Winn and Jess planning for the wedding and all eventualities that those two can come up with, and I know that Vasquez has been planning for a Lextastrophe, based on everything she and the DEO know about him and my mother. I was hoping for your help.”
“Not sure what I can add to that.”
“Did you know that Winn had a very detailed, practically historical-novel-length dream during Covid?”
“I’ve heard about it. Apparently, he dreamed that Kara dreamed about you as a Valkyrie.”
Lena blushed, but nodded. “Mm. And he dreamed that in the past you had thrown dynamite into the outhouse of Maxwell Lord, a corrupt judge, blowing it to high heavens and calling it some of your finest work.”
Alex laughed. “That’s hardly something that I would do.”
“And you know who else has told me interesting things about you?”
“Well, if it’s not Kara, then… O God. Callie.”
“Mm. And while illicitly gathering corpses for you and your fellow interns to practice on at, what do you call it? Seattle Grace Mercy Death? was not exactly…”
“My best work,” groaned Alex.
“No. Not ethically anyway. And yet, those two datapoints made me realize that I need one more planner for the wedding. You.”
“I don’t see what I can do that the others can’t.”
“They are planning for things they can see coming. I would like to ask you to plan for something they, well, we—can’t.”
“How?”
“Remember the time you had us all over to your place for game night? I might have read the titles on your bookshelves. Sun Tzu, Napoleon, von Clausewitz, Patton…”
“It was required reading for the DEO.”
“I had required reading in school for all my degrees, and even with my eidetic memory, I annotated all of them. You, in addition to that, wrote out a comprehensive battle plan for protecting your mother’s house in Midvale—land, sea and air—while you were in high school, and then, yes, updated it during your DEO training.”
“Oh, I, er. Well, if you don’t practice a skill—”
“Yes, Alex, you are a delightful nerd. And I’d like to ask you to come up with, first, a battle plan for attacking Grant Island, and then one for defending against that attack. In both cases, it isn’t Lex attacking or defending. It’ll be you. What Would Alex Danvers Do?”
“But Vasquez is already planning for a few dozen DEO agents to protect—”
“They’re not part of your defense plan. Everybody else is.”
Alex stared at Lena, and then slowly smiled.
Chapter 123: Operation Tumbleweed
Chapter Text
Krypto was dead tired. In the mornings around sunrise, they did agility training in the underground place, sometimes with the human who smelled like Clark’s mate watching from a distance, often with his pup Astro by her side. Around noon, when the DEO humans came in from the desert smelling bad and complaining, everybody ate in the same big eating place. The human who always washed peoples back at the other DEO, who Kara said was called Rose of the Desert, always brought him a bowl of food and put it on the table next to her bowl and they ate together, him standing on the bench with his front paws on the table. Sometimes they ate with Throws the Ball, Chair Twirler and Scruffy’s friend, but sometimes they ate on their own. That was okay. Rose of the Desert practiced language with him and, like all the other Earth peoples, she had a funny way of talking, but when they got back to work, they always more or less understood each other.
After that, this DEO’s humans took turns hiding and Rose of the Desert let him sniff something of theirs and then followed him as he led her through the caverns, bounding down halls and dodging humans until he found the peoples whose smells Rose had showed him. Then they got all excited and he got treats.
He missed Kara and Scruffy and Soft Hands and Whistler and Salty, of course he did. And in any moments when he wasn’t working or eating or drinking, he was throwing himself down for a nap.
But he was having the time of his life.
///
It had surprised James a bit, when he was packing for desert duty, that Finn recommended he add to the usual camo uniforms, his oldest and most worn one. But every evening, after spending a whole day on the firing line trading off with “Scooter” Benson on the M2010 and the spotting scope, he sat with the rest of the trainees around long tables in the resource room… sewing.
Sargent Carter, a good-humored black woman with sharp eyebrows, had started their training with a demonstration on the long field. All the trainees had their scopes trained on the silhouette targets “marching” back and forth above a lip of earth—actually they were carried by soldiers in a trench below the sightline—1100 meters away, the longest distance snipers were ever called on to use.
Lt. Col. Lane had acted as her spotter; they had murmured numbers to each other, and Lucy did some math on a calculator and gave Carter two numbers. Carter adjusted her sights and
crack! a hole in the head of one marching west.
The spent shell flew to Carter’s elbow and was replaced by a new round and
crack! a hole in the head of one marching east.
The spent shell flew to Carter’s elbow and was replaced by a new round and
crack! a hole through—
two chests as the targets had passed one another?
The spent shell popped and rolled away.
Carter stood and nodded to acknowledge their applause. “By the end of this course, you will be able to do this too. The values we were calling out were about distance and wind speed and direction. Those values, based in mills, are based on what you should be holding left and right of the target as it moves across the range. You need to get an accurate hold in front of the target, so that, as it moves towards the center of your reticle, you will then fire preemptively so that the bullet will meet with the target as it moves across the range.”
And James knew that the reticle was the pattern of crosshairs in the rifle’s sight, but some of the rest of what she had just said went over his head. He glanced at Finn, who gave him an encouraging nod.
Carter went on. “Now I know that a lot of you are looking pretty happy about this course because it’s going to mean a lot of hours clocked on the shooting range, ‘cause who doesn’t like shooting things?”
They laughed.
“But that is not the only thing snipers do. One of the most important non-shooting-things is collecting battlefield info undetected. This will mean training in fieldcraft skills, which starts with how to properly construct your ghillie suit.”
Finn already had his own impressively creature-from-the-brown-lagoon ghillie suit, but he welcomed the chance to work on it further and gave his fellow trainees tips on where to sew the nets—shoulders, neck—and where to weave strands of jute, a fibrous plant, to effectively blur their silhouette.
He also told them in advance about Week Three, when they would leave the firing line and get trucked out to the forest where they would put their ghillie suits to the test.
Week Three came far too soon and almost immediately, James thought that Finn’s use of the word “test” was an example of his Midwestern gift of understatement. Sure, he thought, let’s call… all this… a test…
This was: the dozen trainees crawling in their suits across pavement, gravel, and dirt; crawling on their chest and on their back through muddy trenches, filled to varying depths with rushing water; getting hit by firehoses and then carrying each other firemen style through the forest while being timed, all while both wore the sodden and much heavier suits.
And don’t get him started on the chain pushups, when a row of five soldiers, each with their booted feet on the shoulders of the soldier behind them, pressed (UP! “One shot! DOWN! “One kill!) over and over until they were all ready to die.
At the end of Week Three, James gently laid himself down on his cot back at the base. Sure, he thought, trying not to move his screaming muscles. Let’s pretend it’s the suit we’re testing.
///
Dennis had worked in the LCorp mailroom since the move to National City, and occasionally helped Jess Huang with logistics, as he had back then when they had needed to find dozens of their employees temporary housing back when a lot of leases had fallen through, probably due to Lex’s interventions. (They still hadn’t proven it, but it was petty enough to fit Lex’s MO.) This time, Jess had arranged for Dennis to work a half day of overtime on Saturday morning, just hand-delivering prototypes to the list of beta testers, all oddly enough women.
The boxes weren’t large, about 12x3x3, and he had to hand it to the tester personally, look at her picture ID and have her sign for it, with his signature attesting to hers. Speculation among the R&D engineers who had not worked on the project said that it was a “lady-sized” personal weapon, but a few years back Dennis had seen the photo of Lena Luthor shooting John whatshisname, Lillian’s goon, with her .38, and there was nothing small about that.
Like so many of the things that happened at LCorp, it was above his paygrade.
He looked at his list.
Danvers, Alex
Grant, Cat
Hamilton, Jane
Huang, Jess
Sawyer, Maggie
Templeton, Kate
Torres, Callie
Vasquez, Susan
Willis, Lesley
It wasn’t the full list. He had heard that Jillian Holtzman had taken some with her on her trip to Nevada and Ms. Luthor had another set to hand out. Never mind. Four hours at time and a half meant that he would actually be able to buy his girlfriend a dozen roses for Valentine’s Day, and he knew that flowers made her happy.
///
A few days after Valentine’s Day, a major winter storm hit the US, moving from the west to the northeast over the course of the week, with two feet of snow dropping in Denver, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston, and random tornados tearing through Southern California, Arizona, Kansas, Ohio, and West Virginia. CatCo lost power for three days, which led to a scathing op-ed piece from Cat in the Tribune about the inefficiency and lack of resilience to climate change of National City’s power grid.
The NCPD Science Division and the local DEO discovered that there were some types of aliens whose behaviors turned more violent in the cold, like how humans often struck out in extreme heat. Fights broke out in bars, yes—and Dollywood had lost power, so it missed that particular piece of destruction, much to M’gann’s relief—but also at people’s places of work, so construction sites, tech companies, the post office… And the more aliens went postal, the more anti-alien violence hit the city. The DEO’s brig was packed tight with aliens and the NCPD holding cells were at capacity.
And even though Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson were finally sending out the first of the vaccines to first responders across the country, they hadn’t arrived in National City yet, which was, as it turned out, a really bad thing, because Covid was still out there taking people down.
///
Alex sat in her office, studying her computer’s 3D rendering of Grant Island. She knew the tidal charts by heart now, although she understood that climate change, glacial melting and sea-level rise could mess with past patterns. Didn’t matter. Her old surfing instructor had always said that anyone who had the audacity to think they could trust the sea was a fool waiting to drown.
On one side of the island, the one facing the California coast, was a tiny port with local fishing boats, the pier for the twice daily ferry, the post office, library, coffee shop, two inns and maybe a dozen streets with small houses and shops. This village was protected from the sea by a rising bluff at its back that ran northwest-southeast, functionally splitting the island in half. The western side, where the wedding would take place, held a long two-story house built of granite to withstand hurricane season, a seasonal garden and chicken coop, the gardener’s house and shed, and a tired-looking, weather-worn barn, currently mostly empty. Behind the barn was a meadow, surrounded by some trees and then a rocky path through trees and brush that led down to a pristine white beech.
With the tide coming in, shallow boats could beach and deploy small teams, but that uphill path would be treacherous in the full dark, so sunrise would be the ideal time to attack the wedding party, while they were sitting—or in this case sleeping ducks. It would be easy to slaughter or kidnap two dozen guests and the caterer’s team (the band was slated to come in later that day on the morning ferry), always assuming that those were the two most likely goals Lex had—
Alex leaned back in her seat, remembering what Lena had said. Everybody else was planning for what Lex could be expected to do. Lena wanted to know what Alex Danvers would do.
But Alex couldn’t think of any possible reason she could ever have to want to attack her perpetually sunny little sister or her sister’s ever heroic and philanthropic fiancée. Or Superman, or Lois, or any of the rest of her friends.
With the exception of her goth phase after Jeremiah went missing, or her partying in Stanford after Mark Sloane’s death, Alex had always been a rule-follower, if not a bit of a goody two-shoes. She was pretty sure that there wasn’t a world in the multiverse where Alex Danvers went sociopathic and evil. Couldn’t happen.
And as a recovering perfectionist, Alex felt awful about having to let the little Luthor down.
///
Maggie had tried to get Valentine’s Day weekend off, back in December, but the NCPD was severely understaffed—a trifecta of on-the-job injuries, low morale due to all the protest violence, and the recent uptick of Covid. So Maggie worked the snowstorm, broke up anti-alien protests, and froze her ass off doing it. Seriously, it was like she was back in Gotham. And the precinct’s power was off and on, so she had to do all the intake forms on paper, which meant she’d have to type this stuff into the computer later, doing all the work twice.
At seven, her captain came over and took pity on her. “Go home, Detective. Let the evening shift pick up some of the slack. You look done in.”
And hard-working Detective Sargent Maggie Sawyer did not say no.
Chapter 124: Shots in Arms
Chapter Text
Of course, CatCo.com had scooped the other networks, reporting that the vaccine was finally coming out: first for healthcare workers, first responders and civilians over the age of 65, all of whom were most at risk. In the weeks to come, they would become increasingly available to the middle-aged population, young adults and children. There would be two doses, three to four weeks apart, and it appeared that those doses would convey immunity or at least protection for six to nine months. That was the plan. That was the hope.
Lt. Col. Lucy Lane, Director Alex Danvers and Dr. Jane Hamilton at their respective DEO sites got more nuanced news from DEO-DC. The vaccinations for them would be coming within the week. Alex conferred with Vasquez and then made a very rare all-building announcement:
“Attention agents and personnel. We have good news from DC headquarters. They plan to get us vaccination doses for the entire building within the week. Repeat, we will have and distribute our Covid-19 first dose vaccinations within the week!”
The entire building cheered.
Pausing in her patrol above City Hall, Supergirl heard the commotion at the DEO building and banked, tapping her earbud as she flew to it, calling, “Vasquez, are you all right? I’m hearing sounds of distress from the building!”
“No worries, Supergirl,” answered Vasquez. “We just got word that we’ll be getting our first dose of the Covid vaccination this week. The agents just got a little excited about that.”
Supergirl snorted. “Way to be covert.”
Vasquez sighed. “Well, you have super-hearing and we have sound-dampening technology and a lot of walls lined with lead. We should be okay.”
Even as she said it, Supergirl landed on the balcony and strode toward her. “So you and Alex will be safe? And Winn and James, and Callie and Jane and Pam?”
Vasquez flashed her a rare smile. “Yep. And Finn and Holtzy, Chen and Jordan. The whole building.”
Supergirl strode forward and embraced Vasquez in a very careful hug.
Vasquez smiled again (twice in one conversation!), saying, “That was very controlled. Have you been practicing?”
Supergirl ducked her head, blushing a little. “Well, Lena has been in hug deficit most of her life, so…”
And Vasquez had seen the x-ray taped to the front of Supergirl’s locker, the x-ray of the crack in Alex’s rib that Supergirl had given her when Lena had been abducted, so she just said, “Two birds, one stone. Got it.”
Alex strode in wearing her old black tacticals, since Winn had only just received the homemade vibranium, but had not yet had time to rebuild her suit. She said, “Hey, Sis, when you finish your op report, change and come up to the canteen and have lunch with me.”
In her Kara clothes, she met Alex in the line with the trays and Alex said, “I heard they were making that sweet potato lasagna that you love so much, so I called up to see if they could make some extra for you.”
Kara gave her a one-armed hug. “Alex! You’re the best!”
“Duh. I have to make sure that you don’t eat all the food and leave none for my agents, you know.”
“Like I would do that. Huh.”
Alex got one portion of the orange and white concoction and Kara got five. They sat at one of the free tables.
“So, Kara, I’m asking now because you know mom will in three, two, one, but now that the vaccines will be rolling out, have you given any thought to the timing of the… event?”
“Yeah, I thought of that as I was changing. The problem is that you and the DEO humans will get first shot, but then it goes backwards in age. Eliza should be soon after, but Lena will be one of the last ones, and Ruby and Sam. So we have to plan about six weeks after the last groups gets the second dose. And it’s not like we can just mail out save-the-date postcards.”
Alex chewed and swallowed. “Mm. Thought of that. The vast majority of the guests are within our circle, except maybe Ruby and Sam. So word of mouth should do it, and if we give them a two-week period, I mean, I make the duty rosters, or Vasquez does, so… And you are going to be meeting with Millie and with the band, right?”
“Hmm. You have a point. Except, of course, Cat. And her possible… plus-one…”
Alex swallowed wrong and coughed hard. Kara carefully pounded her on the back.
“Oh, shit, I completely forgot about that! But seriously, do you really think…?”
“Well, she brought her to the betrothal and as far as we can tell there’s been no consequences from that.”
“Which might be intentional. Paving the way to come and kill us all at the… when you… Dammit!”
“We should probably sit down with Vasquez and Lena, think it through. Because if Cat approaches me to ask, I want to have a clear answer.”
“Do you think she will?”
“It’s Cat. Who knows what she’ll do. But I’d like to be prepared.”
///
Lt. Col. Lucy Lane had learned a thing or two from her “initial twin,” businesswoman Lena Luthor, who described herself as a Free-range CEO: she liked to wander from department to department, first at LCorp, for a while back at CatCo, and more recently at the DEO. Her mind was a magnet, and the tiniest things gave her ideas for cost and time savings, or people who deserved promotion (or demotion), or, hell, Lucy didn’t know: how to build a better widget?
So Lucy decided that this spring’s training programs would be an excellent opportunity to try out the technique. She started by watching the sniper class, having recommended half of the trainees herself. She hadn’t been in charge back when Jordan and Chen’s cohort had done their rookie training, but she had read the reports about them from back then. Director Henshaw had seen great promise in Jordan, less so with Chen, but had admitted that Chen never stopped trying. Neither had changed much in eight years, although Chen seemed lately to have more self-confidence. She watched as he and Agent Kevin Something took turns shooting and scoping. They never seemed to agree on the numbers for the scope, with Chen always saying, “No, it can’t be point one. It should be much closer to point four two.” And he was always proved right. Apparently, he was doing the math in his head.
Interesting.
The rest were getting better. Both Finn and Holtzman had had previous training, Finn with the Army and Holtzman with the Ghostbusters. And apparently poltergeists could move much, much faster than humans, so speed really mattered, which meant accurately assessing distance really mattered.
Lucy moved on to the K-9 training. The Kryptonian dogs were highly intelligent and were… communicating with their handlers and with Sarge much more directly than any dogs they had ever worked with. Lucy and Maggie were always cautious about talking business on their rare weekends together, but Lucy had tentatively asked Maggie about asking Joe to come out and do some language training with Sarge and his crew. Maggie had basically said that Joe would undoubtedly love to, but that their Captain was still under pressure from the mayor to solve the bombing cases. No surprise.
Sarge saw her and trotted over, followed by Rosie, Krypto and Astro. The big Belgian Malinois sat in front of her and barked. She knew this one. She pulled her camo handkerchief out of her pocket and held it out. Sarge barked at Rosie, who let Krypto and Astro scent on it and then trotted it back into the underground base. Krypto looked fairly happy, but his son’s tail was wagging a mile a minute. Rosie returned a few minutes later, saying, first in English and then presumably Kryptonese, “Seek! Seek!”
Krypto and Astro tore off toward the bunker, with Lucy, Rosie and Sarge trotting after them. They trotted through the command center and down the corridor toward medical before hitting an intersection where Krypto turned right toward the armory and Astro turned left toward the barracks. When Krypto realized they weren’t following him, he barked demandingly, and even Astro turned to follow him. At the door to the armory, Krypto sat and barked what Rosie said meant “here.” Lucy used her handprint to open the door and Krypto walked in, sniffed around—and the smell of cordite lingered in the air, but Krypto walked straight toward the ammo vault and again sat and barked. Lucy punched in her code and opened the vault to see her handkerchief folded up under a box of ammo.
Krypto took the praise that was his due. Then Astro started barking and pulling at Rosie’s pants to drag her away. Surprised, they followed him. He led them to the barracks door and pawed at it. Krypto barked something that sounded like a disagreement, but Astro wouldn’t budge. Lucy tapped her earbud and said, “Steve, when was the last time we did a spot check of recruits’ lockers in the barracks? Right. So we’re due? Okay, can you come down here with some male MPs?”
Rosie said, “Um, Ma’am? He’s untrained. There’s no telling what—”
An officer followed by two white-helmeted Military Police hurried into the corridor. Lucy explained the situation. The men entered the barracks, leaving the women and dogs outside. They came out with two off-duty men and said, “Colonel, Agents, come in.”
Lucy entered followed by Rosie, Sarge, Krypto and Astro. Everyone looked uncertain, but Astro was smelling the air—and even Lucy knew that 99.9% of scent dogs smelled the ground, not the air—but he went around the cots to a row of lockers and then sat down in front of one and sneezed. Then he barked the same word Krypto had, “Here.”
Krypto barked at him. He barked back. Rosie said, “It’s not an alpha-bitch smell, he says, if you’ll forgive the translation, Colonel. It’s a smell from the take-away-smells place—I’m pretty sure that’s my decontamination office back in National City.”
Lucy said, “That locker belongs to one of the trainees for the sniper program, what’s his name?”
“Agent Kevin Moore?”
She turned to Sarge. “Go get him. And bring his Supervising Officer.”
Sarge barked in reply and one of the MPs let him out of the barracks. The men looked at their commanding officer. “Um, Ma’am? You speak… dog?”
“Not yet, I don’t, but you can damn well bet I’m going to start learning.”
Krypto pulled Rosie aside and whined quietly. She stroked his ears and spoke what sounded like meaningless phrases to Lucy, but then she knew that Clark had never learned much of his home planet’s language, so when would Lucy have ever heard it before? In any case, the dog didn’t look much comforted.
They heard the sound of a dozen agents before the trainees entered the barracks. Sargent Carter entered with them, turning to Lucy and saying, “Am I correct in understanding that you wanted to see myself and Agent Moore, Ma’am?”
“You are. The other trainees can hit the galley for dinner.” They looked like they didn’t want to go. She said, “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. Trainees, you are dismissed to the galley.”
Most of them hurried out the door but Chen looked at Moore and said, “Ma’am, he’s my partner.”
Behind him, Finn and Holtzy also hesitated.
Lucy looked at Steve. Steve looked at Agent Moore. “Agent, would you like your peers to serve as witnesses?”
Moore was shaking in his shoes. “Um, yes? Sir?”
“Very well. Colonel?”
“Agent Moore, would you please open your locker for inspection?”
Moore’s hands shook as he dialed the combination lock and unhooked the lock from the door, leaving it open and stepping away.
The two MPs pulled shirts, tactical pants, books and charging cords out of the locker and set them on the bench behind them. Then they pulled out a toothpaste box, but when they shook it, it rattled. They turned to him. “Agent Moore, would you open and empty this box?”
By this point, Moore tanned face was almost a pale grey. He opened the end of the box and shook out metal mechanical bits on the floor as well as what appeared to be some kind of quartz plates.
Lucy’s intake of breath was a hiss. “Agent Moore, would you like to identify the contents of that box?”
He looked like he was about to throw up. “No, Ma’am, I really wouldn’t.”
“Mmm.” Lucy looked at Steve. “Major, I will need you to have your MPs escort Agent Moore to the brig and then contact JAG. This is serious.”
Chapter 125: Quantum of Thought
Chapter Text
Lena was always pleased when the conference for the Quantum Technology Association was held in Opal City, as she had a soft spot for OC’s Royale Etude’s concierge and bartender, two queer ladies she had first met at Harvard School of Business years before. As with so many tech events, the majority of the attendees were straight white cis-males, although that was changing, thank heavens. Still, it meant that if she had a drink or two at the bar, there was a good chance that she’d be propositioned and/or mansplained possibly by a drunk, which was not something she found relaxing. Quinn always shut that down and occasionally even cut them off and Lena was grateful. She had invented a few very useful tools on OCRE cocktail napkins over the years. It was the ambience.
She sat with her Manhattan on a cocktail napkin, scrolling through her phone, when she caught the glance of a man two stools down, drinking scotch and typing away at his laptop. He looked familiar, dark hair and glasses, but so many of the attendees came every year. She thought about Holtzy’s pair of innovations that came out of their ten-minute talk with Daisy Johnson, the vibranium coil that had fixed the vibration problem for the small black body field generator and a similar rim winding around the inside of the other device, the DEO one, that also had a containment effect for the strong vibrations it emitted. Well, they did say that fortune favored the prepared mind, after all. And now the prototype of the first was being tweaked at the factory she had retooled to make more generators, and the prototype of the second was off to its beta testers. Of course, neither of those were quantum problems, not like the material they were working on, the stuff that had protected her during the assassination attempt that Sam had saved her from. The five bullets that the material had absorbed would quite likely have killed her. And the NCPD ballistics experts thought that the one bullet that had hit Sam had quite likely ricocheted off the fire plug behind the dais.
An email pinged and she saw that Kara had returned the document of Lena’s speech with minimal edits and a message, “You’re going to crush this, Lena!” hearts, happy emoji’s, scientist emojis, etc. Lena chuckled at her gir-, fiancée’s eagerness. She put down her phone to take a drink and found herself rubbing the titanium bracelet with its double helix of emeralds and sapphires. People always thought the design had something to do with DNA, rather than the entwining of two families, two houses, two worlds.
She looked up to see the man noticing the bracelet.
He ducked his head. “That’s quite lovely. Uh, I hope you won’t mind the intrusion,” he said, closing his laptop. “But I am quite looking forward to your talk tomorrow, Ms. Luthor.”
“I’m sorry, I think you have the advantage of me.” Eyebrow™.
He reached out his hand. “Charles Swift from QEA. I’ve been reading about LCorp’s advances in quantum materials. Will there be samples for us to see?”
“I’m afraid it’s still in the developmental stage, so my security people keep it under tight lock and key.”
“Yes, of course. Well, I didn’t mean to bother you.” He tipped his glass back and finished his scotch. “Have a good evening.”
“You, too.” She turned back to her phone, and Googled QEA, Quantum Embrionic Advancements. Apparently, they were experimenting with applying stem cells to fields of quantum entanglement, something that was patently laughable. “Oh well,” she muttered. “We can’t all be geniuses.”
///
Dr. Hamilton walked through the medbay frowning. While the DEO had never not had at least some agents down with Covid since the pandemic started, they had only had that one initial tidal wave a year before. But once again, she was seeing the beds fill up and it was clearly the start of a second wave. She went to the quartermaster and requested more PPE and talked to Rosie’s assistant in Decontamination about the most recent version of best practices.
Agent Preston shrugged. “Yeah, we’re doing way less sanitation theater these days. The consensus currently is that it’s pretty much airborne, so there’s less worry about surfaces. Pretty much K95 facemasks are what they’re recommending. Anyway, the vaccines will be here in a few weeks. How bad could it get?”
Resignedly, Jane Hamilton did not remonstrate him for potentially jinxing the DEO. If she turned out to be right about this, he would see for himself.
///
It was seven-thirty when Jess got Lena’s text asking about the scientist at her conference. Looking at the QEA website, one would think they were on the cutting edge of growing skin grafts from stem cells. Jess quickly texted Callie to see if she’d heard of them. Digging further, she found a bio for the man, which included a two-year stint at LordTech some years back, which wouldn’t tell them much about what he might be working on now, since Lord insisted on some pretty stringent non-compete agreements.
Jess texted the little information back to Lena and threw on her winter coat to go home. In her purse, she had a box she had signed for and she was curious to take a good look at what was inside.
///
Lena woke the next morning feeling energized and refreshed. She had dreamed about playing Othello with Lex. He had the black discs and when she boxed him in with green discs for the twelfth time, he lifted the box top and dumped all the black discs over her head, but she grabbed handfuls and threw them back at him and they all hit him as white discs. Lena rubbed her eyes and glanced at the red numbers on the clock beside the hotel bed: 5:17.
With a sigh, Lena rose, not even daring to turn on a light so that the dream wouldn’t disappear from her mind. She used her phone’s light to make her way to the room’s safe, tap in her passcode and pull out her tablet. She curled up back in the bed, typing away trying to capture the shape of the circuit and remember which of Lex’s journals would have notes on his experiments with super alloys.
When (as Kara would have said) her brain was finally empty, she turned off the tablet, returned it to the safe, and went to shower, wondering what to wear. Maybe the green sheath. It brought out her eyes, after all.
///
Maria pushed her cart out of the elevator and down to the end of the corridor so that she could work her way back. She was a little early. A lot of the conference-goers had been in the bar until late, according to the night supervisor, so she could expect people coming to their door in their underwear asking her to wait to clean their rooms until they could leave. Too bad she didn’t smoke anymore. She had ten minutes to kill before her official eight o’clock start time. She scrolled through her phone.
A door in the middle of the corridor opened to show a tall, elegant woman in a tight but business-like dark green dress and heels. Her black hair was in an elaborate updo and her makeup was understated. She carried a briefcase. Must be one of those scientists, Maria thought.
The woman marched down the hall staring at her phone and just as she reached the elevator, a man with an armful of papers, a laptop and a phone hurried out of his room, apparently trying to put his glasses on while he was answering a text without dropping all of his—
Unsuccessful.
The woman knelt to help him just as the elevator door opened and some early morning joggers pushed past the room service attendant and his cart, causing a snarl. She saw the woman pick up a piece of paper and startle, but then the moment was over and Maria had to question if she’d seen anything at all. The attendant held the elevator door for them as the woman handed the man his papers saying, “Mr. Swift, wasn’t it? We should grab a drink this evening—”
Then the elevator door slid closed and Maria turned around and knocked on her first room door. “Cleaning staff. Good morning?”
///
Herb had been making lattes for National City’s tech and media elite since Noonan’s first opened in the early 2000s, a few months after he’d retired and realized how incredibly boring retirement could be. And he had spent forty years as an insurance adjuster, so he had a pretty high tolerance for boredom. He knew all the morning regulars, like Jess and Kate from LCorp less than a block north and the CatCo folks from two blocks northeast. On the rare occasion when Kara “Cinnamon Buns Are Always Plural” Danvers came anymore, he often noted paparazzi sneaking photos of her (since she was dating the Luthor woman), and of course tourists in National City were always wandering around photographing the shiny buildings including LCorp and CatCo, but also the high-rises in between.
And then there was the perky lady who trudged in that morning, stomping her boots to get rid of the slushy snow on them before ordering her coffee and chattering at him about the cityscape. She said she was an architectural fan and had talked his ear off about Louis H. Sullivan, the “father of the skyscraper,” and he handed her the latte and made change for her five-dollar bill. People were strange, he thought.
///
Lena knew she was a persuasive speaker (Mr. Swift called her “dazzling,” which she would never have said about herself, though he wasn’t far off). When she talked about the tech she loved, she tended to speed up, which Jess had fixed with a bracelet that hid a metronome app, forcing Lena to keep to the steady pace of the pulse against her wrist. Giving the final talk of the conference, her eyes sparkled as she painted a vision of tech that would help address climate change: nanobots that would eat ocean plastic and turn it into green energy, quantum materials to keep melting permafrost frozen to serve as a carbon sink, all of it. Her audience was rapt, and she looked directly into their eyes, drinking in their appreciation. As an ambivert, she would store this energy and use it to fuel her solitary inventing for weeks.
Afterwards, the conference-goers mingled, many coming up to her to ask questions, introduce her to their colleagues, or just rub elbows with the Luthor. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted that Mr. Swift was standing to the side patiently waiting to have dinner with her, as they had agreed that morning after she’d helped him pick up his papers and seen—
Well.
She shook hands with the last of the engineers and made her way over to him. “Mr. Swift.”
“Please. Charles.”
“Charles, then Lena. I was thinking the hotel restaurant might not be the best place for—”
He eyes twinkled. “I quite agree. How do you feel about Indian cuisine? The Tandoor Plate is just a few blocks away. We could get a Lyft?”
“Excellent. Let me get my coat from my room and I’ll meet you at the receptionist’s desk.”
Upstairs in her room, Lena slipped off the four-inch stilettos with a sigh of relief and pulled on shiny black riding boots. They weren’t made for the ice covering Opal City’s sidewalks, but they were a damn sight better than heels. She unlocked the room safe and traded her laptop for her tablet, since her purse was less bulky than her briefcase. Locking up and grabbing her charcoal overcoat, she smiled, thinking about the graphs she had seen in Swift’s paperwork that morning.
By the time she reached the lobby, Swift was standing by the exit and took her arm as they navigated the wet red carpet between the hotel and the Buick with the Lyft sign lit up on the back window. The trip was short and cold, but when they entered the restaurant, the warm atmosphere and spicy aromas welcomed them along with the maître d’. “Mr. Swift and madame, let me know if I can get you anything.”
They took their time ordering and were snacking on pappadum when Swift said, “So, Ms. Luthor—Lena—your presentation was a tour de force. You almost made an old pessimist like me believe we have a fighting chance for the planet.”
“Well, the key to having a fighting chance, Charles, is that we have to fight. And from what I’ve seen about QEA, you are as much interested in building the weapons for it as I am.”
“Well, our European HQ has been looking into employing stem cell technology to deal with pollution related diseases in a much more affordable way, which would open up resources in other areas. Also, given that the world is going to be very grey by 2050…”
“The aging population explosion,” sighed Lena. “Yes, but I was more intrigued by your ideas around epsilon radiation…”
“Ah.” Swift took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his handkerchief.
Lena said, “I’m sorry for looking at your figures when you dropped your papers today, but it seemed that you’ve been exploring the epsilon-stem divide…”
“It’s early days, of course,” he said. “The thought is tuning stem cells to be more receptive to the DNA seeding required for implants…”
“So I gathered. Dr. Callie Torres, a doctor at the Luthor Alien Clinic, sent me a paper about the idea. She didn’t think it had much merit. You disagree?”
“There’s still so much we don’t know about epsilon. People acknowledged its existence years ago and then stopped studying it. I think that’s an oversight. And your interest is?”
“More physics than bio, I’m afraid. I’m interested in how it can relate to tuning mechanical properties of novel materials.”
“Ah.”
Lena said, “Isn’t that the project you were working on at LordTech?”
“I’m sure you are familiar with Maxwell Lord’s love of Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete agreements?”
“I am.”
“Then you know I can’t really continue this conversation.”
Lena sighed as one waiter came by to refill their water glasses and another placed the palak paneer and chicken korma in the center of their table and then set a bowl of rice and a basket of naan on the side. “Well,” she said. “What do you think of the Opal City Miners’ chance for the World Series?”
///
The moment Lena stepped out of the elevator on her floor, she knew from the fluorescent purple ink marks on the carpet that someone had gone into her room, opened the safe and tried to steal her laptop—and come out running down the hall probably covered head to waist purple ink. She immediately turned around and rode the elevator back down to the lobby, where she asked to report a break-in to her room. The concierge was appalled and apologized profusely to Lena as she called the OCPD. When the police came and examined the room, they saw the melted down laptop on the floor below the safe and an outline of purple on the carpet.
“Wait,” said the cop. “Did you have a dye pack in your laptop?”
“Of course,” said Lena. “Triggered by the self-short-out failsafe. My computer is blown and no good to anybody and they are going to be scrubbing the ink off themselves for days.”
Sandy, the concierge, stared at Lena with amazement, clearly thinking that the woman was a badass.
Chapter 126: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 1
Summary:
Note: Alex thinks nothing would ever make her go up against her sister or Lena. Her Covid dreams show her that she might, at least in one version of the multiverse, be wrong about that. It starts a little camp but gradually get darker.
Chapter Text
It was the burning trash bins that started it, Alex was fairly sure. Maybe she drew the connection from old Buffy reruns, but for some reason, Alex always associated burning trash bins with apocalypse.
Superman had come to National City when Supergirl had asked, but Metropolis had greater need of his power-line-warming skills than National City did, so he hadn’t stayed long. And Alex knew that she shouldn’t have been surprised that threat-assessment-officer-extraordinaire Agent Susan Vasquez had predicted ice storms in southern California, but yes, she was surprised about it, and even more surprised to meet the volunteer squad of Infernians who considered the storm a personal affront.
So, up to a certain point, the storms and the city’s mixed response to them weren’t a major problem for the DEO, NCPD, NCFD and local tech companies’ philanthropic efforts to aid the city in its most recent trauma—
--and the fact that Lord Tech’s power-line-warming “gloves” had shorted out the financial district didn’t really faze Alex, and the fact that LCorp was standing ready with a city-utility-sized “defibrillator” didn’t really surprise her either. That was just Max and Lena being Max and Lena.
So she just sent out a 411 to her agents to change to their winter white tactical gear for Improved Inconspicuity, texted Vasquez that she would be staying at the Tower (the new nickname for the DEO skyscraper, based on the acronym Tall Obscure Warrior-Enhancement Residence), and not to wait up for her. They had Lex Luthor and his secret crack troops in their sights now. Until they had the Lextastrophe Gang firmly behind bars, preferably in the basement (BASE for Memory-Extinguishing Ninja Training) in Nevada, neither DEO Director Alexandra Danvers nor any of her minions were going home.
And that was true in part (she only admitted to herself in the Faraday cage surrounding her office) because if they did go home, then President Eliza Danvers was going to… express… Opinions. And nobody wanted that.
///
Supergirl landed on the balcony of the DEO and strode in, her red cape swinging heroically behind her. Winn, under the feeds, looked lovestruck, but she ignored that. There Was Work To Be Done. “Schott! Wake up! Have your Kryptonite scans turned anything up?”
“Same old, same old, I’d say.” He shrugged.
Firmly, she said, “Agent Schott, that is no way to respond to a superior officer!”
“Ma’am! Yes, ma’am. Pink kryptonite emitters are operational at 93% capacity at the Tower, the House of ElCorp and Cougar.com.”
“Only 93%?” growled Supergirl.
“Ma’am. The engines can’t give any more! If we push the QAF quotient any further, we could breach the Supergaiety Event Horizon!”
“Schott, don’t forget that Lena is out there setting up our enemy for the sting of a lifetime. This trap has to catch the Lextrastrophes! I won’t let the love of my life be used as bait unless the Department of Extragay Operations is 120% behind her!”
“Um, ma’am… You realize you can’t actually achieve anything above 100%?”
“Love of My Life, Agent Schott!”
“And… 101…102…103…”
Dr. Hamilton came running in. “Supergirl! Agent Schott! Where is the Director?”
“Bunking down in the Barracks,” said Winn. “Ma’am,” he added, seeing Supergirl’s annoyed look.
“What?” said the Doc, “the Bed-Assisted Rest & Resilience um… Affirmation… CKuarters?”
Winn blinked. “Uh, yeah. Yes. Ma’am. That. Those. Yes.”
“Oh, well, in that case, we probably shouldn’t disturb her.”
The doctor exited before Supergirl even had the breath to tell her she was dismissed, and Winn could tell that she wasn’t too happy about that.
Sure, the red laser eyes were kind of a giveaway…
“Ma’am! Supergirl, ma’am. I can contact Agent Pamela at House Resourcefulness, so that she can check on Agent Doctor Hamilton’s work.”
“Good thinking, Agent Schott,” said Supergirl. “Make it so.”
///
When Jane Hamilton texted Susan Vasquez that the Director was down for the count in the med bay, Vasquez set her scotch glass down on the SHIELD coaster on Alex’s coffee table, murmuring, “Oh, shit. I should totally have seen this coming. My ass is grass.”
Then it took her five minutes to find her socks, boots, Glock and bulletproof vest and call a Lyft. There was no way she was driving to work in the shape she was in. What were the odds that she could sober up in the next fifteen minutes?
///
Lex Luthor always had at least one mole at the NCDEO. They had found the most recent one at the Basement, but they had been hypervigilant screening agents. They had been far less cautious about the janitorial staff, with the Tower’s head of decontamination off training at the Basement. Their mistake. Learning that the Director was down for the count with Covid had only emboldened Lex, their Arch-Nemesis, who now perceived himself to have carte blanche when it came to his primary target, code name Lil Sis.
People always said that Lex had snapped because of something Superman had done, thwarting yet another of Lex’s super-villainous plans, maybe the time that he had exploded one of Lex’s bases by tuning his eyes to shoot anti-nefarious rays. And that had stung, it was true.
Other people still said that Lex was hung up on that reporter Lois Lane, or jealous of her because she was, people said, sleeping with that other reporter Clark Kent, and everybody desired him because he looked like Rachel Maddow. Which he kinda did. And the truth that Lex told no one was that both of those things were true and completely immaterial.
The kicker that no one talked about was how, after the sentence of 37 lifetimes came down with the judge’s hammer, and he went to a supermax prison, the House of LuthorCorp had taken on a new CEO, his queer adoptive little sister, Lena, who rebranded his father’s beloved company and renamed it House of ElCorp, a clear reference to the Kryptonians, which most people didn’t recognize even when the signs were twenty feet high on the side of the building.
That was the thing that had sent him over the edge.
///
With so many Regular Agents swooning or collapsed in the DEO’s medbay, the alternate agents were on call: Agents-in-Training James “Lifeguard” Olsen, Jillian “Duster” Holtzman, Riley “Slayer” Finn and Lexie “Bodysnatcher” Danvers (no relation). Agent Schott sighed as he watched them in their white tactical uniforms go through the M16 drill again blindfolded. The women were fine. Finn was helping James, saying, “See, it’s about rhythm, not speed. That’s another thing I learned from Buffy.”
Winn shook his head. He had been training the recruits for months and they still really weren’t ready to go out into the blizzard to fight off whatever fresh hell Lex sent at them. The turkey-sized velociraptors had sent a dozen agents to the med bay—the very small portion of it not holding Covid patients—with serious bites to their arms and legs. It had been his first time in charge of a mission; he was pretty sure that if it hadn’t been for Covid, it would have been his last. But he was one of the only senior agents who hadn’t contracted the disease. Ironic, he figured. His excellent health was the thing that had caused his promotion to a leadership position.
Winn’s phone buzzed with a text from Jess at ElCorp.
JessIsBest: 911 frozen lobby glass. Plasma weapnsousid EL. Ll down sg hr
Winn set off the DEO’s mission claxon and shouted, “AD Vasquez! We’ve got shots fired at House of ElCorp! And an explosion in the lobby! Lena’s down! Supergirl’s at the scene!”
“Roger that, Winn!” snapped Vasquez. “I’m on it. Two teams, air and ground and you’ll QB from the Command Center! Over!”
“Yes, Ma’am, Acting Director!” said Winn into his comms. To his recruits he said, “Blindfolds off! Finn and Danvers, Blackhawk One, air support for Eagle One and Night Owl One! Olsen, Holtzman, take the Guardmobile and the Ghostduster: Operation Save Lena!”
///
In the weeks to come, when looking back on everything that happened that night, Jess Huang would continue to be amazed about the unexpected thing that went right and the expected thing that went wrong. The former was the terrible weather. Despite Lena’s insistence on holding press conferences outdoors, practically an invitation for assassination attempts, the fact was that absolutely no one in National City was going to attend a press conference outdoors in the middle of a blizzard with power lines frozen and the streets iced over.
But since the Luthor Atomic Recycled Kryptonite Conversion Reactor had sailed through all its trials, Lena saw no point in putting off the good news, especially if it could boost their share prices, which had been lagging, probably due to Lex’s depredations. With the flip of a single switch, every ElCorp property in National City would drop off the city’s utility grid and be resource-independent and carbon-negative. In addition, up on the stage set up in the ElCorp’s newly rebuilt lobby, the mayor and the presidents of NCU and NCGH were all ready to sign contracts to hook up all the city offices, public transportation, schools, research centers etc. onto the LARKC grid.
Inside the lobby, the press was held back by portable bomb-proof barriers, something Jess had been insisting on for years. Up front with Lena and the grinning Board of Directors, Kara Danvers was standing as a proud wife, rather than with the reporters, though Jess saw her occasionally lower her glasses to scan the crowd. And that, Jess thought, after all the concussion, was the other thing.
///
“…and so it is my great privilege to announce the commencement of the citywide CoNNeCt program: Carbon Negative National City!”
The mayor and the city’s and hospital’s elite stepped forward with their green and silver pens to sign the papers. Lena hit an overlarge switch and lights went out in the building and all over the city, and then they came back on again, even brighter. The crowd cheered.
Then, with a sudden screech, the entire curving glass that surrounded the lobby turned to painfully bright white ice.
Lena felt a rush of wind, probably Supergirl rushing out to join the fight.
///
James Olsen raced the Guardmobile through the streets of National City, grinning like a fool. The little battleship-grey super-charged Porcha-adjacent hero car cornered like it was on rails. It came squealing to a halt amid the firefight—or ice fight?—outside ElCorp, though Holtzy had gotten there first on her supercharged bike. She was already on her feet shooting her plasma rifle at the combatants, who were dressed like something out of Gotham like the Cold Miser and Heat Miser from the Rudolph Christmas special, shooting cold guns and heat rays in blue and red at the building like some kind of light show.
James leaped into the middle, using his shield to deflect lasers away from ElCorp and back on the attackers. The heat of the lasers sent the snow on the ground into huge clouds of steam. From high above, James heard the Blackhawk, and just as a pair of Cold Misers ran forward to attack, he heard “Bodysnatcher” Danvers (no relation) yell, “Gotcha!) on the coms, shoot her M16 and take them out. Into his coms, he shouted, “Thanks, Lexie!”
///
Director Alex Danvers lay in the med bay shivering and overheating and throwing off her blankets, shouting, “No, Vas, don’t do it!”
Dr. Hamilton knew the Director’s prodigious strength came from her Kryptonian family and grabbed a hand-held red light to shine so the med tech could inject her with an anti-pyretic and a light muscle relaxant. The last time Alex had been as ill as this, the Danvers Bronchitis of 2017, six med techs had gotten their bones broken. Hamilton didn’t have personnel to spare. She would be proactive.
///
Lena Luthor yelled, “Everybody! Get behind the generator. Cat, call 911. Jess—”
But Jess was already typing into her phone. Guests and spectators scrambled to get behind the tall, wide chrome cylinder with the green and blue lights flashing and the big silver switch pulled down. That thing was massive and though Lena knew they wouldn’t get all 500 of her guests directly behind it, that wouldn’t necessarily matter. Max Lord and several of Cat’s reporters were dragging people behind it or pushing them tight like those Japanese train stuffers with the white gloves. Lena pushed in and slid her hand above head height to reach the red panel on the back and hit the red button. With a whoosh, the generator sent out a wall of blue light left, right and in front of itself.
“Seriously,” said Max. “A force field?”
But then the lobby exploded.
///
The battle was well underway by the time Supergirl flew above the plaza and added her laser eyes to the foggy fight. Behind her, the sound of a powerful gunshot stung the air, and she heard with her super-hearing the snick! of a bullet’s jacket falling away and the sting and then agony of heat piercing her body just under her bottom right rib. The pain was excruciating. She dropped like a boulder onto the snowy concrete, making a six-foot long crater.
And she didn’t get up.
///
Vasquez stood in the Command Center, watching the feed and, it had to be said, panicking.
And the Marine Sargent turned DEO (Badass) Assistant Director never panicked.
But she knew RedK when she saw it, and she knew that the one thing that would kill Supergirl would be to lose her trusted status with the citizens of National City.
And if Supergirl died, Alex would die. And that simply could not happen.
“Chen!” she yelled. “Prep a helo. Jordan, you’re in charge! I’m going to take Lex Luthor out tonight if it’s the last thing I do!”
///
Later on, Winn had looked back and thought, people say things like that. Of course they do. But they don’t really expect their declaration to turn out to be premonition.
Chapter 127: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 2
Chapter Text
A week later, when the damage to the House of ElCorp had mostly been cleaned up and the rebuilding begun, NCPD Captain Tom Arnold invited Jess Huang, DEO Director Lucy Lane and Cougar.com’s Cat Grant to join him in reviewing the footage from the surveillance cameras from Cordova Street and the House of ElCorp. Cat brought video and audio from Leslie Willis’s Eye in the Sky weather report. Director Lane brought the body cam video—what was left of it—from her deceased agents.
Everybody brought their grief.
///
ElCorp Plaza looked peaceful enough as the sun slowly set, the color seeping out of the sky. Limos and town cars lined up outside the House of ElCorp, disgorging the city’s black-tie and ball-gown elite. As the sky darkened, anyone on the sidewalk could more and more easily see inside the green marble lobby, see Lena in a white off-shoulder dress greet the mayor and her wife, the leaders of the hospital and university, and National City’s wealthy pro-sustainability liberals.
If the pedestrians were, say, watching from across the street and across the plaza; if, say, those pedestrians, much like the kind of villain minions one got in Gotham, wore masks and costumes (in this case, of blue Ice Misers and red Heat Misers); and if, say, they were waiting for a sign to begin their attack—
Well, then Lena Luthor pulling down the enormous switch and the sudden blackening and brilliant relighting of the neighborhood would have been a highly convenient and unignorable sign.
The Ice Misers surged forward with what looked in the grainy video like those plasma canons, but if it was plasma they were shooting at the curving glass wall that separated the lobby from the plaza, around the lobby and over its front doors on either side of the revolving door, it had to have been super cooled. The glass immediately turned a painfully bright white.
A few dimwitted formally dressed men and women pushed through the fire door as the fire alarm sounded, but they found themselves slipping and sliding on the ice-slicked concrete and were shot by the Ice Misers, turning them into a frozen, and instantly dead, tableau.
///
The NCPD conference room was silent, but it was not a peaceful silence. It was more like everyone in the room was too horrified to breathe.
Quietly, Captain Arnold said, “Ms. Huang?”
Jess handed him a thumb drive and he plugged it into the room’s computer, waiting for the video to upload.
The first shots caught the gathering from several angles, since the company’s videographer needed to capture images establishing context: the black and white clothing, glittering jewelry, the long green banners with the logos for the House of ElCorp, the LARKC project and the CoNNeCt initiative, and finally, the enormous silver switch and the beautiful Lena Luthor standing next to it, shaking hands with the NCU’s president. Behind them and almost hard to see stood a smiling Kara Danvers Luthor, Lena’s wife. Tom Arnold had met Supergirl just twice and he’d seen pictures of the food reporter, and he had some suspicions about their similar looks. So, as the video panned this way and that and then focused again on Lena, Tom kept his eyes on the woman behind her. Lena pulled the switch down and grinned.
Darkness. Light.
Freeze attack. Behind Lena, Kara Danvers looked over her glasses frowning. The next moment she was gone. Tom paused the video and then hit the toggle to slow it to one-quarter speed, then pressed play. He counted under his breath. One one-thousand, two one-thousand—
There was a flash of red and blue.
Tom stopped the video with Supergirl’s red boots just leaving through the fire door and said, “Director Lane, I think your video is time-stamped from this moment on the outside, is it not.”
Lucy gave him a long look and then handed over her thumb drive.
In split screen, one side of the computer screen showed what the agent getting into the high-tech car saw through their front window. The other showed what the other agent on the motorcycle saw. They both sped through National City, turning onto Cordova Street from opposite directions and meeting in the middle.
The person on the bike got off and hefted a bigger plasma cannon than the Ice Misers were carrying, and she blew four or five away with every green plasma shot she took, but there were too many of them. The other person jumped out of the car and activated an arm shield and used it to deflect the red Heat Misers’ lasers away from ElCorp and back on the attackers. The heat of the lasers sent the snow on the ground into huge clouds of steam. It was hard to see two feet beyond the agents.
Then the agent with the shield looked upward at the sound of helicopter rotors getting closer. He looked backwards to see two Ice Misers racing toward him and ducked and rolled under their plasma shots. Above him two M16 shots fired and the two crumpled to the foggy ground. The agent shouted, “Thanks, Lexie!”
Captain Arnold said, “Wait, Lexie Danvers? But—”
Simultaneously, Lucy and Jess said, “No relation.”
///
Jess sat watching the video and occasionally glancing sideways at the police captain, who she didn’t entirely trust and was pretty sure he had figured out Supergirl’s identity. More troubling was the blank surface of Lucy Lane’s usually tanned face. Today she looked grey. She’d lost her ex-boyfriend and her current girlfriend; she felt responsible for the loss of the other agents and police, though she knew others had made those choices; and she had taken over the job that she had wanted for a very long time in the worst way possible.
Alex Danvers wasn’t dead, although it seemed like she wanted to be. Even as they sat watching the video that might answer the question on all their minds--What the hell had happened?—Jess knew that Dr. Hamilton was back at the DEO trying to save Agent Vasquez’s life. Callie and other experts from around the city had been brought in to help. Because Alex Danvers couldn’t lose Susan Vasquez. Even the junior DEO agents knew that.
Jess would have thought that Supergirl knew that too. But maybe not.
///
Captain Arnold restarted the ElCorp video, and Supergirl’s red boots disappeared. The camera turned back on Lena using the microphone to encourage the guests to hurry and gather behind the tall, fat, cylindrical generator. She looked calm and sounded authoritative, and gradually fewer people were panicking. The huddled men and women held onto each other as red, green and blue lights streaked back and forth outside the opaque white frozen glass. Now and then red lasers came down from above. Max Lord and other men pushed guests behind the generator and then Lena disappeared behind it. It suddenly generated a bright wall of blue right, left and in front of it.
“Lena’s force field,” Jess said quietly.
Raggedly, Lucy said, “Great. At least all the rich people were protected.”
He switched to the original surveillance video which showed the fight decrease in visibility as snow started blowing more heavily. Then he switched to NCPD body cams as a car squealed to a curving stop as the ice made the tires unreliable. Two helmeted cops jumped out of the car and held their shotguns ready as they carefully made their way toward the back of the building. One slipped and fell, and the other gave him her arm and their cameras showed their partner’s name badges on the screen in the conference room: Detective Reynolds and Detective Sargent Sawyer.
They were ten feet away from the still-open fire exit, when the lobby exploded in a rain of diamond shards.
Troubled, the captain paused the video showing Maggie and Reynolds blown away from the building and bleeding out into the ice and snow, their weapons blown yards away from them. The captain rubbed tears out of his tired eyes.
///
Quietly, Jess said, “Now ours again. Fast forward to 16 minutes 11 seconds.”
The captain handed Lucy her thumb drive back and replaced it with Jess’s.
She said, “This is a compilation from cameras at different heights on the outside of the ElCorp building.”
The video showed Supergirl flying up over the melee to get a bird’s-eye view, then shooting her laser eyes down into the snow-covered icy plaza. Bodies fell, red bodies, blue bodies.
Then her head snapped up as something hit Supergirl in the gut. She dropped ten stories in freefall into a six-foot long crater.
///
Lucy said, “Fast forward ours.” She looked at the notes in the brown folder. “To 14 minutes 26 seconds.”
The captain complied and hit Play. The video appeared to be from the two agents in the Blackhawk, Finn shining lights down onto the plaza while Lexie tried desperately to target Lex’s Misers. Blue, down. Two red, down. Another red. Another blue. Then a flash of red and blue. Lexie took the shot—
It bounced off the bullet-proof Kryptonian and ricocheted back into the helicopter.
“Fuck! I’m hit! Finn!”
(Lucy said, “We think it was friendly fire, that our sniper kept shooting red and blue and when Supergirl turned, she got in the way and got shot, that the bullet ricocheted. We think that’s what happened.”)
Finn banked the helicopter as he called back to base. “QB, this is Blackhawk One. Agent Danvers is hit! Repeat! Agent Danvers is hit!”
Winn’s voice came over the speakers. “Blackhawk One, return to base. Abort mission, Blackhawk One. Repeat, return to base.”
An explosion hit them from below, rattling them and shifting them off course. The helo glowed blue. Lexie peered down below. “No more landing gear! What’s the blue? It’s sticking to us!”
“You mean eating its way through ballistically tolerant metal and into our forward rotor flight controls?” snapped Finn. “I’m aware.”
“What about the fuel tanks?”
“That’ll take longer. Switching to autorotation. Pull in and close that door! Strap in for a bumpy landing!”
In the conference room they had a front-seat view of Finn flipping switches and hanging on tight while the helo kept losing altitude. He wrenched the controls to turn but as they hit the concrete plaza covered with snow lasered into ice, they slid toward the car and the motorcycle, hitting their doors open to leap—
Sparks. A ball of flame. One body flew in one direction and the video cut off.
Lucy closed her eyes and opened them again. She dragged the arrow backward on the video’s window, until it showed the helicopter above the ground where two white-suited DEO agents were shooting plasma and using a shield to deflect red lasers. And then the same blue explosion, sudden descent, and one enormous machine sliding into two smaller machines. A loud explosion. Two bodies flying in different directions.
“Turn it off,” rasped Jess. “For the love of God, turn it off.”
She did. They sat there silently.
Finally, Cat Grant said, “Just one more.”
She handed the captain the thumb drive with Leslie’s weather report.
Chapter 128: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 3
Chapter Text
Winn sat under the feeds at the command center, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. His phone had been buzzing all morning, with calls from Jess, Eve, Clark Kent, and one or two other numbers he didn’t recognize, with Metropolis area codes. Some of them left messages. He didn’t listen to them. Maybe later. Or next week.
Seven days was the farthest into the future he could imagine at that point.
///
Jess didn’t do zombie, even if Winn did. She came from a long line of Chinese warriors. The surname Huang had several different meanings, depending on the character used to express it. The most common meaning was yellow after an ancient province, but the character her family used meant flood. That was what Jess felt like in the week after the… Event. She felt like a flood of rage.
It chafed her that just because a few people had made major strategic decisions—right or wrong was still unclear--all on the same mission, the losses had been catastrophic. Their friend group was decimated.
They’d saved Jess, but not Holtzy.
Not James or Finn or Chen or Lexie.
They’d saved Lena, but not Maggie and probably not Vasquez.
The vast unfairness of their losses was tidal under her skin.
///
Agent Jordan knew that Agent Chen had planned, once his DEO tour of duty was over, to become a mercenary with Blackwater. Jordan had never understood that. Mercenaries fought for whoever paid them the most. At the DEO, the mission was almost always protection, a righteous cause. James, Finn, Holtzy and little Lexie Danvers (no relation) had all served with distinction and honor, with creativity and humor. They protected each other, and the other agents, as much as they protected aliens from civilians and vice versa. They were chosen family. The kind that was impossible to replace.
He threw himself into his requalification training. Mistakes had been made, by a few people who knew better. Uncontrollable events had cascaded too quickly for anyone to make them controllable. He would learn, he vowed to himself, to be smarter, better, faster. And he would train the next set of rookies to be even better than him, better than the brothers and sisters he had lost. He vowed it to himself. His dead deserved that from him.
///
Colonel Lucy Lane moved into the Director’s office at the NCDEO with trepidation, firstly in part because Alex Danvers hadn’t died and wouldn’t have retired if she hadn’t been, well, broken by that horrible night. The whole Tower had been. And Lucy knew that she had earned the promotion, not only for her years of service running the increasingly overpopulated Basement, but also for the last twenty-eight minutes of that night, when she had ridden in like the cavalry and kept the remainder of Alex’s agents from dying by knocking out Lex Luthor’s weird little army with a sonic boom that had resonated inside their weird little steel masks and creamed their brains.
It came from having to deal with Psi and the Silver Banshee and everything she had heard about that Worldkiller, Julia.
She didn’t want to change anything about Alex’s old office, except one. She took down the picture of Alex, happy-go-lucky with her sister Kara in high school before Lucy knew them, and replaced with with one of Alex and Lucy laughing together in their camos. Better times.
///
Cat Grant had often stayed working in her office well into the evening, especially during the weeks that her son was with his father. Cougar.com was peaceful in the evening, which usually allowed her to get more work done with less noise and distractions. But tonight, the noise was in her head and most of the distractions were either walking around a skyscraper marked on all the National City maps as being the home to an insurance agency.
Which it wasn’t. Not exactly.
The other distractions would never walk anywhere again. Of all the critically injured and deceased agents, she had known James Olsen best, had had great hopes for him that he had never quite managed to live up to. But over the years, Kara Danvers had told her about most of the others: who was the most badass (Vasquez and Maggie), who was the most fun (Holtzy), who she had learned from (Finn and Vasquez and Maggie and Holtzy). She rarely talked about James. Apparently, she hadn’t met the rookie with the same name as her sister or Detective Reynolds. Well, it was a big organization and a married man wouldn’t go to game night with his partner’s friends.
But she’d heard about the pain the dogs were in, how the bartender and her partner were kicking themselves for not staying in the loop so they could help. Cat felt a little that way herself.
She sighed, thinking about Kara and Lena, Winn and Jess. They had already had plenty of their own trauma, and now there was loads more survivor’s guilt to go around.
///
“Turn it off,” rasped Lucy. “For the love of God, turn it off.”
He did. They sat there silently.
Finally, Cat Grant said, “Just one more.”
She handed the captain the thumb drive with Leslie’s weather report.
The video was practically meaningless at first, just snow and more snow against a grey sky and the occasional red light atop each of the skyscrapers.
Leslie Willis’s voice came over. “Hey there, National City. This is Leslie Willis coming to you live from the Channel 7 weather-copter. I’m here with Reg, my pilot, and we are here to give you the weather and traffic report.”
There was a pause as the copter banked over the harbor, turned down the river and ended up hovering over ElCorp Plaza. The picture wobbled.
“And the news is that it is snowing up a storm with the wind coming down from the northeast and we are getting turbulence for sure and visibility of a quarter mile at best. So, if you managed to make it home alive from your Friday evening commute, stay home! Even if you haven’t picked up the stormer’s bread, eggs, milk and booze, stay home. It is nasty out here with the snow coming down like a motherfucker and the wind—”
A man’s voice broke her off as the helicopter turned to give a slow 360 of the center of the city. All the tall buildings with all their little lights, practically the shadows of giants standing in lazy sleep in the driving snow.
“Oops! Keep forgetting I’m not allowed to say motherfucker on the air. Sorry, folks! Anywho, look at that line of cars going down the block toward the House of ElCorp. That’s right. This was supposed to be the crazy big gala event kicking off Lena Luthor’s new plot to save National City from itself with the Luthor Atomic Recycled Kryptonite Converter, which is supposed to make us carbon negative. That’s right, not carbon neutral, but negative. And hey, look at all those limos. Huh, I guess it’s true that the wealthy aren’t like us—”
Suddenly all the lights went out. Reg swore and he struggled to keep the copter steady. Then all the lights came back on, brighter than before.
And then in the lower corner of the screen bright red and blue lights went off on the ground, and Reg turned the copter toward them. A powerful blue light shot toward the ground level lobby of ElCorp, turning the whole first floor a blinding white.
“Holy shit! Something just hit the ElCorp lobby! Was it a bomb? What on Earth could just, what’d they do, ice the lobby? Wasn’t there that supervillain in Gotham who could turn things to ice? Anybody heard if he broke out of Arkham? But even so, what would he be doing here in National City?”
Suddenly, Cordova Street was the site of a battle: red and blue light against green light, red and blue lasers ricocheting in all directions.
“Looks like some of our home team are fighting Mr. Freeze and his minions. That green looks a lot like those Ghostbuster chicks from Metropolis, but unless Freeze has turned poltergeist without telling us—”
A different male voice came over their radio, “Ground Seven, calling Seven Echo Sierra, come in.”
“Seven Echo Sierra, over.”
“Seven, we have police activity in your airspace. Looks like a SWAT helo, over.”
Reg turned the copter to show a large, armored helicopter moving rapidly toward them. “Roger that, Ground Seven. We are at 500 feet. Request advisory, over.”
“Seven Echo Sierra, we advise moving to a thousand feet, over.”
“Roger that, Ground Seven. Moving to a thousand feet. Over.”
The wind battered them as they rose above where the Blackhawk buzzed down, apparently with a white-clad figure pointing a rifle below?
“What the hell?” said Leslie. “National City, we seem to have a battle going on in ElCorp Plaza. Can’t read the numbers on that Blackhawk, but who the hell is sniping out of a helicopter in the middle of National City? If that is Mr. Freeze down there, then it’s gotta be NCPD? Right? Whoa! Supergirl! My favorite Sapphic Superhero! Okay, and now the light show is getting super serious. It’s like two-dimensional chess, or I dunno LEGO City meets laser pointer making the kitties crazy!”
And then the Blackhawk canted suddenly, then turned away from the plaza and then got hit by an enormous flash of blue light. The force of the explosion sent their copter off course and Reg struggled to keep it from crashing into the ElCorp skyscraper.
“Shiiiiit!” yelled Leslie as they came close enough to the building to see inside the brightly lit offices. Then Reg righted the copter and turned back toward the plaza to show where the body of the Blackhawk had crashed, between a black souped-up car and a motorcycle, both of which were also now in flaming pieces. Blue flames and the regular kind burned that broken amalgam of steel parts. Bodies littered the snowy concrete. More, smaller, bits of flaming metal drifted on the wind or dropped into the snow or onto the bodies. In the distance, police and fire vehicles were tearing up Cordova Street.
“Wait! Where’s Supergirl? She’s supposed to save everybody!”
Reg pointed to the snowy ground halfway between ElCorp and the burning vehicles.
Supergirl lay, unmoving.
The police and fire vehicles were screaming down Cordova Street. Supergirl sat up, rubbing her face and holding on to her side as if she had a stitch.
Leslie’s voice rushed with relief. “She’s okay! Supergirl’s okay!”
Supergirl took off into the air.
But suddenly, Reg said, “Oh, shit! I need to gain altitude.” He pulled them up, just as they flew over another Blackhawk speeding toward the plaza.
The camera shifted back toward Supergirl still rising straight up like a lunar launch.
Supergirl’s eyes glowed red and red lines traced her face. She looked down to see black tanks rolling across the snowy plaza. She shot at them with her eyes, and then flew up into the snow-streaked grey sky and dove down, fists first, and hit Lex’s Lex-o-Tank like a ballistic missile. BOOM.
The ElCorp lobby exploded. As high up as they were, they couldn’t avoid feeling the turbulence.
“Did Supergirl just destroy ElCorp’s first floor? And all those people?”
The first rule in radio is to never have dead air, but it took Leslie a moment to get there.
Dully, she said, “National City, this is Leslie Willis for Channel 7 weather and traffic.”
So many bodies sprawled motionless in the burning snow.
“Just. It’s snowing. And people are shit. Don’t go out tonight. Just. Don’t. Reg, let’s go home.”
Chapter 129: Meanwhile, Back in the Waking World
Chapter Text
Lena came back from the conference with her shorted-out laptop wrapped in newspaper and sealed in two plastic bags to avoid getting the dried purple ink on any of her things. She stopped by IT on her way up to her office to drop it off just in case the cybersecurity people could tell what the hopeful thief might have been looking for. She doubted it. The police had only gotten a partial print when they had dusted it, but it had turned out to be her own thumb. Whoever it was had been careful. She also asked them to look into the other fellow, Charles Swift. Even though she had been the one to ask him out to dinner, it occurred to her that his dropping his papers in front of her that morning could have been staged to intrigue her interest and draw her away from her room. It concerned her that when she’d first seen him at the bar, she thought he’d looked familiar. With her eidetic memory, it seemed odd that she couldn’t place him.
Stepping into the elevator, she put it out of her mind; she’d either remember him or she wouldn’t. Worrying about it wouldn’t help. When she reached the top floor, Jess was there with her agenda for the day; a paper briefing about epsilon energy, including how the DEO thought Max Lord had possibly used it to make red kryptonite; and a folder of proposals for the new energy core that R&D had been begging to build for a few years now.
“Several emails from Winn about the event. I think he’s going to need a stipend to gather all the materials we’re going to need.” She waved an envelope with a handwritten list on the back.
“Aren’t we renting the tent, dancefloor and chairs from that place on the harbor?”
“Yes, and we agreed to an additional security deposit, because Winn and I both agree it’s likely that not all the chairs are going to make it. But it’s the other equipment that he’s going to need to gather, you know, for the unofficial reception…”
“Unofficial?”
“Mm. Uninvited guests?”
“Ah. Lex et al. Let me see what Winn’s thinking.” She took the envelope and turned to go into her office. “And Jess, could you make a pot of—FastClotSand? Seriously? Hydrogel burn bandages? Duct tape, cots and blankets? Brooms, buckets, rakes, shovels? Fire extinguishers, well, I thought of that myself. We’ve now got a dozen big and small in the executive closet.” She handed the list back to Jess and entered her office.
Jess stood in the doorway and checked off fire extinguishers. “Pot of coffee is on, should be done in a minute. I looked into prices for the medical gear. Retail, it’s a lot. Can we ask the DEO to provide some of it? Then maybe we just give Winn a Home Depot credit card and send him off to pick up the non-medical gear?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
///
After her shift was over, Lucy strolled down to her barracks, balancing out the good and bad of the week. Well, the mole had been bad, but it was good that Astro had caught him. And it was good—and interesting—that Astro had taken initiative, applying a general scent from the National City DEO to the desert base in Nevada, insisting on showing his handlers. That sort of thing would never hold up in court; it would take years, if not decades of evidence proving that things like Alien Olfactory Notation were reliable, that alien dogs were just as sentient as other beings on this planet and possibly smarter even than Border Collies, who could remember hundreds of words.
And Sarge! She had known he was smart and well trained, but had not thought him capable of back and forth conversation. She thought about those talking button dog TikTok videos that Maggie kept sending her to cheer her up. Maybe they had been vastly underestimating the so-called “lower creatures” all along.
The boys would be going back to National City in a few days, but Rosie, Krypto and Astro were staying on for a while, so that Rosie could type up the phonetically simplified Kryptonese—well, not commands exactly, or toys. It went far beyond just sit and stay, or stick and treat. There were causal connectors, ways to compare, prioritize, clarify: much more sophisticated linguistic tasks that Lucy had never dreamed in a million years dogs could manage.
So…that was good, right?
At the very least, Lucy had been pleased to hear that the renovations to their containment facilities were on track to be done in two more weeks, which probably meant three to four, but she’d take it. She hadn’t been back to her apartment on the edge of the desert in something like three months, except for a change of civies and to clean out her refrigerator. The news about the vaccines, though, that was an unalloyed good thing, and she texted Maggie immediately.
FastLane: Hey, Mags, hear about the vaccine rollout?
She waited twenty minutes for a reply.
HuckFinn: Hooray. Finally. Although I imagine your workplace will get them before mine.
FastLane: Yeah, sorry about that. Crazy, since you mostly deal with humans.
HuckFinn: Whatever. I’ve been thinking about our research. Maybe we got the wrong end of the stick. Any chance you’ll be coming my way anytime soon? We need to talk.
FastLane: I think I can make it happen. Can’t remember my last R&R.
HuckFinn: See what you can do. Gotta go. Callout. Love.
Lucy stared at their conversation on her phone. Was she really wanting to talk about their Lex research? Or was this about her increasing (Lucy feared) disappointment with the way their relationship was going? She really needed to delegate to Tailor and squeeze a long weekend in National City into her schedule. Maggie deserved better than this.
///
On Monday morning, Jess got to the office at 8:01, missing Holtzy and tired from having to handle Lena’s workload while she was at the Opal City conference. She pulled up Lena’s agenda for the day and sent it to Lena’s tablet. She heard the computer-made swoop sound in Lena’s office. Oh, dear God. Lena had gotten to LCorp before her!
She knocked slightly frantically at Lena’s door.
“Come.”
Jess felt her face warm as she peeked around the door. This was almost as bad as the time Kara got past her so fast when she wanted information from Lena.
“Jess, what can I do for you?”
“Um, I’m sorry, Ms. Luthor, I didn’t mean to be late!”
Lena smiled and shook her head. “You’re not late. I’m early.” She nodded at the white towel with purple blotches that lay on her pristine white desk. It took Jess a full thirty seconds to realize what she was seeing.
“Wait, your laptop? The failsafe?”
“Mm. Worked like a charm. The Opal City PD have partial facial and partial fingerprints to work with.”
“But… your laptop!”
“It was time I upgraded anyway. See if Marty has the time to load a new one with his security doodads. I have my tablet, but it’s not great for doing numbers work, especially when I’m tired, and we have a board meeting coming up in a week or so.”
And Jess was a morning person, as much as anyone was, but she was not a deal-with-catastrophes-in-the-morning person. To her shame.
“Yes, Ms. Luthor. I’ve sent your agenda. Will there be anything else?”
“Mm. What do you expect to be doing in mid-June, Jess?”
“Me? I don’t know. Holtzy talked about us going to NC Pride…”
“Oh, good point. Get me the date for that. We’ll need to work around it.”
“We? What will we be doing?”
“Not you and me, Jess. My fiancée and me.” And she winked.
“Oh! Because the vaccines! Do you need me to securely contact Ms. Arias to let her know?”
“Would you, Jess? I have a lot on my plate today. Thanks.”
“Right away, Ms. Luthor.”
///
At the end of that very long week, James texted Winn.
KingJames: We graduated! We’re coming back in two days!
FortheWinn: heart emojis in rainbow colors
Winn wiped the sweat off his brow and sighed. One of the good things about James being off in Nevada for sniper training was that Winn had finally had several weeks of uninterrupted time (missions aside) to finally finish repairing Alex’s supersuit with the artificial Vibranium they had been able to produce.
And he’d come up with a separate loose Vibranium mesh for an underlayer, inspired by the gambeson, or padded jacket knights wore under their armor for both insulation from the cold and damp or, as in this case, for padding to dull blunt force trauma, say, for instance when a block of concrete building came flying at you…
Thank heavens for second chances.
///
Meanwhile, day after day, Supergirl flew a tight grid over National City, keeping her eyes on traffic patterns, crowds of pedestrians, children horsing around during school recess. But always her ears were listening for two sounds, two sets of heartbeats. One drummed steady as a soldier marching, high above the city, from the top floor of the LCorp building. The other… the other sounded from deep in the DEO high-rise. It beat erratically, sometimes the quick beats of distress, sometimes the slow dragging beats of exhaustion. Alex had been feverish for the first two days, when Lena was in Opal City for her conference. Supergirl had practically paced a groove in the DEO medbay’s floor as Alex lay there sweating and thrashing and sometimes even calling out. Supergirl worried. When the fever broke, Dr. Hamilton insisted that the worst was most likely over.
For lack of any constructive way to help Alex heal faster, Supergirl flew off to guard the city in Alex’s absence. She couldn’t help it. Logically, of course, she knew that she, the Kryptonian in the family, was the mostly indestructible superhero. But in her own heart another truth beat like waves on a beach, that the real superhero was
Chapter 130: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 4
Summary:
Now we're back in Alex's apocalyptic Covid dream.
Chapter Text
Alex had lain in the med bay asleep but keeping her eyes shut and her ears open, hearing sobs among the regular talk, hearing silences instead of teasing.
When Dr. Hamilton had explained how Alex should keep taking her temperature and using anti-pyretics if she was still feverish, Alex reminded her that she had been a doctor not all that long ago and she remembered how to take care of a virus. When Alex had asked Jane for an update on Vasquez and the others, Jane had opened her mouth and closed it again, tears slipping from her eyes, her hands shaking.
But then Callie had appeared in the doorway and said, “Jane, take two hours in the on-call room. You’re exhausted. I got this.”
She sat down in the chair beside Alex’s bed and Jane quietly hurried away.
Alex said in a monotone, “So it’s bad.”
Callie nodded.
“How bad, on a scale of Seattle Grace Mercy Death.”
“The airplane bad.”
“Ah. Who?”
“James and Holtzy.”
Alex winced. “Just them?”
“And Finn and that other Little Lexie, and Chen.”
Alex focused on Callie’s root beer brown eyes, looking for tells.
“And Vasquez?”
“She’s… in a coma, but it doesn’t look good. I’m so sorry, Alex.”
“I finally found someone. We were making it back to each other. We were wearing the Claddagh rings again.” Tears slipped out of her eyes. She took a deep breath and realized that Callie was still very tense. “There’s more?”
“Maggie and her partner Reynolds, but they probably never felt a thing.”
Alex took that in. “So, the others…did?”
Callie shook her head. “Some yes, some no. Most of the damage happened very fast. The whole fight wasn’t even forty minutes start to end.”
Alex nodded. “A lot of pain can happen in forty minutes.”
///
Fire is the first element, from which all the others are derived.
The humans remember the simple truth, that their yellow sun is a ball of fire hanging from the Christmas tree of their solar system, illuminating the other planets and moons that also hang in that dark and icy void. They forget the more complicated truth, that their sun is a star, like so many other twinkling lights viewed from afar.
That must be how they missed Kara Zor-El’s flames.
///
Just as she had during the pandemic, Jess kept ElCorp together.
She called a board meeting in Lena’s name and walked in like she owned the place (just as she had watched Lena do for years). She stood at the head of the table with her tablet and watched as the (dead white) male board members created a ruckus about a “mere secretary” (badass Personal Assistant) having the temerity (uterus) to call a board meeting. Then Claire, the Chair, cleared her throat.
“Gentlemen.”
(Which Jess thought was a vast overstatement.)
“As I am sure you are aware, Ms. Luthor was recently injured when you, and our other guests at the press release and start of the LARKC reactor, pushed her to the ground in your hurry to get out of the close quarters where Ms. Luthor had offered us shelter from the Lextastrophes, the minions of our previous CEO, Lex.”
The grumbling slowed to a stop.
“Ms. Luthor’s Executive Assistant, Jessica Huang, has her unfailing trust. The… organizations that have sometimes been… problematical for ElCorp—the FBI and the NCPD—also hold Ms. Huang in high esteem.”
“You don’t know that,” grumbled one man a few people down the table.
“I absolutely do know that, Mr. Tate. I have spoken with the FBI liaison and the captain of the NCPD Science Division. They have told me in no uncertain terms how much they value Ms. Huang as an intermediary when Ms. Luthor is out of touch.”
Tate shrugged. “I find it hard to believe that they would want to keep in touch with ElCorp, Lena or no Lena.”
“Mm. Despite the fact that Ms. Luthor has helped those organizations save National City and the world at least two or three times?”
Jess calmly looked at the pointy toes of her four-inch heels, channeling her anger toward her pained feet, even while realizing that appearing taller than her usual 5’3” would be an advantage with these Paleozoic-era primate males.
Claire grunted. “Exactly. I say, let us listen to what Ms. Huang has brought us here to learn. Ms. Huang?”
“Thank you, ma’am. Ladies and gentlemen, I am in fact in touch with the FBI and the NCPD, who are keeping Ms. Luthor in protective custody while Lex remains in the wind. I have been in touch with the surgeons and doctors in charge of her care. And I have talked to her myself. She drafted a memo putting me in charge of the day-to-day running of ElCorp affairs for at least the next week, just as she did during lockdown last year.”
She made eye contact with each person going down one side of the table and coming back up the other side.
“She also recommended that I bring up the sliding share prices with you, given that any time she has been injured in the past three years, there has been evidence of insider trading and shorting of ElCorp stock, and she has been, I believe she said, ‘taking names.’ You know who you are. She also said that, unfortunately for ElCorp, while she is under the weather, she won’t be able to make a call to the SEC. So it looks to me like you have a week to reconsider your positions on the company stock.”
Some of the board members found the pages in their folders in front of them absolutely riveting.
Jess continued, “She asked me to bring you up to date, which I have just done. If you have any other communications that you would like me to bring to her, you have only to send them to me by email or by hand. Aside from that, I have no further agenda items. Don’t let me detain you.”
The board trooped out, holding back their grumbling. When it was finally just the two of them left in the conference room, Claire said, “Have a seat, Jess, and for God’s sake, take off those gorgeous, horrible shoes.”
Jess wilted into Lena’s usual chair. She let her shoes drop and they both watched the blood returning to her toes. “Thanks, Claire. God, can you imagine what kind of mess we’d be in if Stott were still Chair?”
“Well, they do say that God works all things together for the good of them that fear her, no?”
Jess huffed a laugh. “Yeah, somehow I doubt that, but okay.”
Claire patted Jess on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. You always have Lena’s back, so I will always have your back. That’s a promise.” She winked at her. “I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to be buying low on ElCorp stock in the next five or six days. Did Lena really say…?”
“Oh yeah. Lena doesn’t miss a trick, even when she’s bleeding or on interesting pain killers. She saves stuff like this for emergencies. And when I said that she hasn’t yet had time to talk to the SEC? That might have been a little white lie…”
Claire grinned. “There’s a reason that Lena adores you, Jess.”
Jess sighed. “I know.”
Claire sobered. “But how are you, Jess? That night was… a lot.”
“I haven’t been sleeping all that well…”
…
Jess had majored in business at college. She often thought that she had not minored in mechanical engineering so much as in understatement. She especially thought that when her mother called every week, often excoriating her for not having found a man and settled down and given her parents grandchildren.
Somehow for the past year or so, Jess had managed to not tell her mother that the “person” she was “dating” was not in fact the Chinese American male mid-level bank manager that her mother had concocted from Jess’s miniscule details each phone call. Somehow, Jess had managed to not tell her mother that she was having uproariously fun date nights and glorious sex with a white female genius engineer working for a black budget government organization.
Although, that also made it harder now for her to tell her mother that she didn’t want to talk about her dating life because the woman she loved had just given her life to protect her city. But when instead she had spewed curse words and existential angst at her mother, well, that… hadn’t gone over well.
And now she was just getting short weekly calls from her dad, just cautiously checking in, while her mother stewed about her ungrateful, crude, and hurtful daughter.
So no. Jess was not sleeping at all well. It was either nightmares about Holtzy’s last ten minutes or hours spent staring at the dark ceiling, while cars outside sent lights across her ceiling as they went down the street.
Or…
Hours remembering how Supergirl had taken Lena away with super-speed and come back to see the crowd behind the generator as no one knew how to safely cross a hundred yards of crushed glass.
Jess had watched the red lines flow over the superhero’s face with dread, but she had called out, “Supergirl! We need help. We can’t get across without—”
Supergirl growled, “Getting hurt like Lena? Fine.”
And Jess had feared that she would try blowing the shiny beach of glass away, killing them all, but even with (probably) red Kryptonite in her system, Supergirl still had a brain.
She used her laser eyes to sweep across the room, melting the glass to a (ha!) red molten lava, and then used her freeze breath to cool and solidify the surface of the floor. Then she turned away with a huff and disappeared into the sky.
Jess had taken a step onto the new icy surface. She had been, years ago, an ice skater, so even in heels, she had managed to get across the lobby and out the—
Well, it’s not like the door was there anymore. But outside. Yes. That.
…
“You’re not wrong,” Jess said, “It was… a lot.”
///
In the days that followed, a lot of people sent Alex flowers but “didn’t have time” to visit. Well, it was a bit like the months after the Battle of National City. Repair took time when it was even feasible at all. So the House of ElCorp, sure. Alex’s missing heart? Yeah, no. Both Vasquez and Maggie: how could the universe do this to her? She didn’t even bother to think in terms of God. No loving God would take…
And she had respected Finn, enjoyed Holtzy, even been coming back around again about James. It was all too much.
But three people did visit her, none of whom she would have expected. Agent Jordan came and told her about his newfound rededication to his training. Cat Grant had come when she was coughing heavily and had immediately turned around, left a note with Dr. Hamilton, and hurried out. And Jess had come and talked about accountability, and she talked quietly, but occasionally her hands would shake until she got them under control. Supergirl had protected Lena with her life, over protecting everybody else including the women that Alex and Jess most loved. And Jess was dedicated to Lena Luthor. She was. She had sacrificed a lot to help Lena, who, to be fair had helped save the world a few times now, along with Supergirl.
But love was different. And late love when you’d been waiting for decades was even more different. And to have that late, short, and precious thing taken away in what? Forty minutes? Accountability was a good way to talk about it, thought Alex. It was neat, cold and abstract, unlike rage, which was messy, hot and very concrete. Accountability was better, safer, for everyone.
///
I slept,
and dreamed of fire,
tongues of fire licking the buildings of my city,
gouges of fire jumping from roof to roof,
sheets of flame taking out whole city blocks,
the buildings,
the trees,
the people.
And I flew to the center of the city,
standing tall,
so tall above the tallest skyscraper,
and my billowing red cape was made of flame.
///
Cat Grant wasn’t one to waste time. The moment she realized that Director Danvers was still in the throes of Covid-19, she had strategically retreated, left a note for Danvers to call her once she was back on her feet, and gone to the non-contagious ward of the DEO’s med bay, where they were treating Lena Luthor. Dr. Hamilton had told her that the CEO was sleeping and not to wake her, but if she woke and was willing to talk, to limit it to half an hour. Maybe less.
Cat Grant was impressed with the absolute authority the doctor’s words rang with, though she could tell that they were also tinged with age, weariness, and grief. So Cat nodded and made her way to a small single room, where a med tech was checking the woman’s vitals. She looked at Cat’s visitor’s badge, nodded and left.
Cat sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair at the foot of Lena’s bed. The woman was asleep chest down, her pale face turned toward Cat. Her lustrous black hair splayed out in the other direction over the pillow. Cat had known Lena casually for years, back in Metropolis, when Cat was first a gossip columnist for a few different papers and a free-lance journalist, and then a beat reporter at the Daily Planet, and when Lena was first an MIT-student intern and later a junior engineer at LuthorCorp. Their paths crossed maybe twice a year: the Luthors supported several Metropolis charities and Lex and Lena back then had been expected to Show Up. As Lena started getting patents, lesbian publications had demanded interviews and Cat had gladly shown up in her own way.
And Cat had never been a fan of Lionel or Lex, had barely noticed Lillian, but Lena? Cat could tell that she was the real thing: a genius, a philanthropist, a beautiful woman: the trifecta. Of course, Cat was in her early thirties when she had thought (and written) that. These days she would say genius, humanitarian, and a genuinely good human.
How we change.
And it occurred to Cat that Lena might not like her being here, seeing her vulnerable. She imagined that the number of people who had seen that could be counted on one hand, and two of them would have been Kara Danvers and her alter ego with the cape. She was just considering getting up and leaving when Lena’s green eyes opened. She frowned. “Cat.”
“Lena. I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I promise I won’t stay long. I imagine that Dr. Hamilton would have me dragged out of here with a billhook.”
Lena smiled, then looked unutterable tired. She sighed. “You… saw what happened.”
And Cat thought that scene would never be wiped from her memory.
…
Lena’s hundreds of guests had squeezed into a space maybe ten feet long and fifty feet wide, protected by that blue shining barrier when the outside lobby exploded in a tsunami of shattered glass. They couldn’t see through it more than to see the outlines of light, like shadows in negative. But Lena had her handy tablet and narrated what the cameras much higher on the building were recording:
The horrible collision of the DEO helicopter and the other two vehicles.
Bodies of friends and foes littering the snowy plaza.
The police, fire department and ambulances arrived. Supergirl strode over to talk with them.
Lena let the force field drop. The floor of the lobby was crusted with broken glass. Guests, just wanting to get out of there, shoved forward, pushing Lena out of the way ahead of them and Cat started internally screaming about two seconds before Lena fell backwards until five seconds before Supergirl picked her up.
And in the seconds in between at least a dozen people trampled Lena into the crushed glass as they scrambled to escape ElCorp. Lena’s agonized screams were lost in the cacophony as the elite of National City ran across a lobby floor crusted with shattered glass, overturned high-top tables and forest green tablecloths. Some of the men picked up the women to carry them out, their shiny black shoes protecting their feet.
Flying in with a stiff, cold wind, Supergirl landed and took in the chaotic scene. Lena’s back, the back of her white dress, and the side of her right leg were crimson with blood.
Her face like thunder, Supergirl gently picked up the screaming CEO. With a stiff wind, the two of them were gone.
…
Cat nodded. “I saw. How are you?”
“In a lot of pain, thanks for asking.” She tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.
Cat paused.
Lena sighed tiredly. “Cat, I’m not giving interviews for the foreseeable future. But I know you. You have two or three specific questions that you think I am uniquely able to answer. Just ask. If I can answer, I will.”
“One. In all the time Supergirl has been active, she has always been just in time. Sure, at the start, there was a learning curve. But it was never about speed. So, what happened?”
“I’ve asked myself that. It’s troubling. There were those plasma weapons and laser weapons and whatever sent her straight down into a crater. Could any of them have hurt her?”
Cat jotted something down in her reporter’s notebook. “That’s probably more a question for the DEO then.”
“Wait, Cat, you’ve signed the NDAs?”
“I was supposed to not long ago and then this new wave of Covid hit. Director Danvers is down for the count.”
“Well, then Agent Vasquez, I mean Assistant Director. Which I suppose means she’ll be Acting Director now…”
Cat took another note.
Lena asked, “Do we know how the agents are, the ones from that collision?”
Cat said, “I hear that Dr. Torres has been assisting Dr. Hamilton and her team in surgery.”
“Okay, that suggests burns.” She paused and looked philosophical. “If I had to go down, at least it was glass and not fire.”
“Good point. I must say the generator was impressive. All your work?”
Lena huffed a laugh and then winced. “Hardly, Cat, any more than the Tribune is all your work. Although I will say that the primary designers besides me were Winn and Holtzy. They may well be able to retire on the money from the patent. And also Jess.”
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Your executive assistant?”
“Mm. Well, Eve has part of her degree in Nuclear Engineering. And of course, Kara Danvers has her own… special skillset.”
“Heroes come in many guises, I suppose.”
Lena agreed sleepily.
“One last thing. I don’t want to tire you, but I keep wondering… How did the DEO get there so quickly after the attack started?”
Lena murmured, “I’m sure I can’t say.”
Cat checked something off and quietly left. She respected Lena too much to force her to pretend to fall asleep.
Chapter 131: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 5
Chapter Text
In her first hours in the DEO medbay, Lena was barely conscious, swimming in a sea of pain and numbness as the pain meds kicked in. She was vaguely aware that her shoulders and legs were going to be heavily scarred, and she was going to have to give up her dresses, especially the off-the-shoulders ones. She’d have to get the tailor to make her some suits…
///
After her release from the DEO med bay, Alex had avoided Dollywood because the absence of James and Holtzy, Maggie and Vasquez…
Well, it just would have been impossibly painful, expecting to see her beloved people racking the balls, laying bets, teasing each other, promising things to their person if she/he won, winking before they took each shot. She’d done it herself.
Honestly, when she remembered the choices that she had made That Night a year or more ago, Pool Tomorrow Night (wouldn’t miss it), when Maggie had chosen Lucy instead of her, she had been resigned. Vasquez (Alex had eventually realized) had been resentful on Alex’s behalf.
Now that all of them were gone--except Vasquez who was fighting a terrible battle in the DEO’s med bay, a battle Alex could tell no one believed she would win--she didn’t know how to do anything but drink.
And she remembered Stanford, how drinking had not been a good answer back then and how it was probably not a good answer now, or even any answer at all. But when you were in a lot of pain—physical, mental, emotional—a little numbness was really appealing.
God, why had she slept with Sara Lance? Why had she put the best thing in her life at risk?
As she walked into Dollywood, she made eye contact with M’gann, knowing the woman would intuit her drinking needs. M’gann nodded but then nodded to her left, Alex’s right. Alex drifted through the crowd of aliens to find that the only open seat was the one next to Cat Grant.
Tiredly, she asked, “Is this seat taken?”
Cat shook her head. M’gann came over with two rocks glasses, each with three fingers of amber liquid. Kentucky bourbon for Director Danvers, 15-year Laphroaigh for Ms. Grant.
The two women sipped their drinks.
Cat said, “Director Danvers.”
Cautiously, Alex said, “Ms. Grant…”
“Pfft. Call me Cat. Between the two of us, we run two out of three of the most important institutions in National City, and with Lena out of action, we should probably be putting together a strategy for dealing with the fallout from That Night.”
Alex could hear the capitals. “Then call me Alex.”
“Alex, do we know what the final number of casualties was?”
“Thirty-seven of Lex’s people and his tank. At least five of our people, with a sixth in a coma. Two NCPD. Lena, as you point out, taken out of action. Two of our Blackhawks and two other special vehicles. The president on my sorry ass for the millions of dollars of damage.”
“And Keira not exactly herself, as I understand it.”
“Wait, what?”
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Your people haven’t told you?”
Alex’s face lost all color. “Told me what?”
“Leslie Willis and her pilot caught footage of your sister looking remarkably… red. Right before she sent your second Blackhawk into the icy river.”
Alex opened her mouth and closed it again, took another drink. “Wait. No. That’s not what—”
Cat hummed. “If I were you, well, if I were either one of us, which I am, I suppose. Just, maybe stay away from open balconies for a while.”
Alex gaped, then pulled her phone out and texted Callie. Normally, she would have hurried straight—well, directly, anyway—back to work to pull the green kryptonite bullets out of the armory and suit up with Finn or Vasquez or Jordan or Chen as her pilot—
She coughed and took another sip of the bourbon. Had Vasquez really left Jordan in charge? But who else did they have with any kind of seniority?
Cat raised a finger and got M’gann’s attention. A few minutes later, a hot steaming plate of mozzarella sticks appeared before them with a stack of napkins. She said, “I texted J’onn, Alex. And he’s going to talk to your Pam from HR.”
“Thanks, M’gann.” The Martian woman walked away. Alex turned to Cat. “Thanks, Cat. I was… lucky, ironically. My Covid wasn’t bad. But I can’t think. And not having Vasquez and the rest, I just don’t know how to do any of this without them.” She could hear the pain in her own voice.
Cat nodded. “Hold onto this: the fact that your Vasquez ditched in the river and ended up with mild hypothermia is, I’ve been reliably informed, the only reason she survived her wounds so far. She does have a chance. But you are going to have to get your sister back and get the red K out of her system if you’re going to have any chance at all of protecting this city from her and Lex.”
Dully, Alex said, “I’ve got no energy, no appetite, no hope. I don’t know how to do any of this.”
Cat pulled three moz sticks from the pile on the plate in front of them and put them on a napkin and slid them in front of Alex. “Eat. Then you’ll get an appetite, and that will give you just enough energy to get back to work. I’ll help you all I can. But here’s the thing I learned from Supergirl about hope. It’s not a passive emotion. It’s not the cause of action. It comes from taking action, whatever action you can manage, however small, and holding on. Just holding on.”
Alex sighed and took a bite of one of the sticks, chewing tiredly and swallowing. “If you say so, Cat.”
“Of course I say so, Alexandra Danvers. I’m the Queen of All Media. And I am an experienced older woman. You and I, we’re going to need to keep this city going while Lena and Vasquez heal. And we have everything we need to do that, however painful it’s going to be.”
“Are you sure?”
Cat ate a moz stick and sipped at her scotch. A moment later, J’onn Jonzz pushed through the crowd to join them. “Of course, I’m sure, Director Danvers,” Cat said. “Do you remember how broken Supergirl was when Lena was being held hostage on that atrocious woman’s spaceship hovering above National City while her infernal soldiers tried to tear us apart? Supergirl was afraid she was being selfish to want to protect Lena more than the city. But that kind of love isn’t selfish. It’s… everything. And it’s pretty much the bit that saved us all.”
Alex sighed, with tears slipping down her face.
J’onn said, “Cat’s right, Alex. And the thing I know about the Danvers sisters is that they love hard. And that kind of love will always save the world.”
///
In The Aftermath, as Lena thought of it when she was less groggy, one of the first things to come to her mind was that they should cancel the wedding, or at least postpone it. How could they celebrate amid all this grief? Some of the best people any of them knew had died, protecting the city, yes, and her, yes, from Lex, it was true. But it all seemed so senseless. Damn, Lex, anyway.
Maggie, Holtzy and Vasquez she had considered friends. Well, proto-friends anyway, along with Alex, who had been going to be her sister-in-law, but who knew what they should do now. Intellectually, Lena was a genius, but emotionally, she was still a fan of putting painful emotions in tiny boxes and packing them away so that she could get on with her life. Apparently, Kara did the same thing.
Lena had heard from Winn that Lucy was bringing in some special trauma counselors from Metropolis, people who had worked with powered people there after the Battle of New York.
But it wasn’t just current DEO staff who were hurting. She knew the Martians were hurting because they hadn’t known about the op at all and could have given a great deal of needed help. And the dogs were soaking up everyone’s pain like sponges.
And Kara was avoiding the DEO, probably Lena thought to avoid seeing everyone’s pain, pain that many of them blamed her for causing, for overworking and refusing to admit that her brilliant plan for catching Lex once and for all had blown up in all their faces.
And Lena was a genius, yes. But even she didn’t know what to do now.
///
I have seen the fiery heart of a planet as it exploded, molten core turned into a trillion tiny stars. They have their angers, yes. Their losses. Their disappointments, slights, betrayals. But their rages are brooks lit by a single insignificant matchstick. My rage fountains and flings itself up and out to burn, burn, burn and flood the world.
I am the fiery heart of that planet. With the crust crumbled, the mantle rent and riven, and the core stripped away, I am the inmost core, the last, brightest part of a world disintegrating across the galaxies. I shine with an inner light that exudes from my skin. I shine and blind my enemies with my shimmering torment.
///
Agent Jordan stood in the command center with his hands on his hips, trying desperately to take up space in his subordinates’ heads the way the Danvers sisters and J’onn Jonzz and Agent Vasquez had always managed to do.
But Chen, his cohort-mate.
But Finn and Holtzy.
But Vasquez.
Younger agents were moving through the DEO with red eyes, avoiding each other’s glances. He couldn’t remember the last time they had lost so many senior agents in a single op. Maybe with the Daxamites?
And he would tell no one that he had gone on YouTube to find Cat Grant’s #RESIST speech and had downloaded it to his phone and was listening to it five or six times a day just to keep upright and working and not breaking down into a million pieces when the DEO desperately needed him to keep it together. Because anyone he might have told looked one tiny piece of bad news away from losing it entirely. And leadership, he had learned, was making sure that they didn’t. And he could do it. He could. He could keep the DEO together with his bare hands because there was no other choice.
But yes. He had one AirPod in his left ear, ready to start Cat’s speech again every hour or two. And he worked very hard minute after minute to not remember his friends who had been there a week ago and now were simply… gone.
///
Captain Tom Arnold stood in the men’s room at the NCPD straightening the black tie of his formal uniform. He had been in contact with Caroline Reynolds and Maggie Sawyer’s father, FBI Directors Lucy Lane and Alex Danvers. The National City Police Gaelic Column of Pipes and Drums were tuning at the entrance to the cemetery, half a mile away, according to Channel 7 news. Meanwhile, he muttered to himself the bits of the eulogies for his best detectives, trying hard to keep the tears from forming.
He knew that no one important would judge him for grieving his best officers. But he had an ego, like most people. And he wanted the people who participated in this funeral to be thinking about the people being honored, Sawyer and Reynolds. Not about him.
///
Every night, my dreams are licked with fire. I dream of a red seed, a bullet shot from afar, piercing my adamantine skin and pushing its way through my rock-solid flesh, only to be refused, turned back, by my impermeable bones.
Chapter 132: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 6
Summary:
More of Alex's Covid weird dream that brings out the dark side she didn't know she had.
Chapter Text
Kara Zor-El remembered the red K incident, and in some part of her rage-fogged mind, she recognized what was happening to her. She had felt the bullet rip through her supersuit and her flesh, to be stopped by her Kryptonian ribcage. But the wound closed on its own. And the pain in her gut was negligible compared to the pain that radiated out through her limbs, the pain that radiated out from her eyes.
On some level, she had known what she was doing after she returned to ElCorp after having deposited Lena at the DEO. She had recognized the DEO’s Blackhawk, sent to get her. She had recognized the heartbeat of the sniper with the green K rifle. She had blown her freeze breath onto the chopper, stilling its rotors and sinking it into the icy river, before turning her attention beyond National City.
Lena’s guests had just about murdered her. That couldn’t stand. But none of that would have happened if Alex, her fragile sister, hadn’t fallen ill just as Lex had upped his military grade weapons to take out his own sister. And Alex wouldn’t have become her beloved but oh-so-weak sister if her own cousin, her last blood relative in the universe, hadn’t dumped her at the Danvers’ house and flown away. And if Lena died, Kara Zor-El would burn the Earth to the ground, starting with National City and everyone Alex loved, but not ending there.
She had scores to settle, but National City could wait.
First things first.
///
Back in Metropolis, Clark Kent never saw it coming.
After all, she had been his best person at his wedding.
He had always had a loose friendship with his cousin. He felt guilty that she had been ripped from her dying planet, a planet that she, unlike him, remembered and mourned. He felt even guiltier that he had not known how to raise her when she arrived still functionally thirteen years old. They didn’t even speak the same language, and her abilities were downright dangerous. He had been ridiculously grateful that the Danvers had been willing and able—speaking better Kryptonese than he did—to take Kara in.
Lois had mentioned, just the once, that Alex was pissed at Clark for basically abandoning the cousin who had been willing to travel hundreds of light years to raise him when she herself was also just a child. But he knew he had done the best thing he could for Kara, so he didn’t take Lois’s comment seriously.
And maybe that had been… a mistake.
Like, one of epic proportions?
And he realized this when he was flying patrol around Metropolis and he heard something or someone break the sound barrier; he super-sped to the guilty party—
Only to find them—her—wearing the House of El crest. And red lines wandered across her uncharacteristically angry face. And she barreled into him at Mach 5, introducing him to pain he had not felt since his fight with General Zod.
///
President Eliza Danvers hurried down to the Situation Room, surrounded by her staff, including SecDef Oliver Queen and SecState Iris Allen. The news from Metropolis was dire: the two supers were throwing down in Central Park and whole stands of trees were being uprooted.
Queen asked, “Do we know what started this? Somebody said red kryptonite. Do we know what that is? Is there an antidote?”
The president watched the computer screen that showed the harrowing super-fight. “Where is Alex? She should be handling this!”
Secretary Allen said, “Ma’am, we’re hearing from Acting Director Lucy Lane. She’s sending out snipers to take down Supergirl.”
“Lucy? But Alex is the director of the NCDEO.”
“Ma’am,” said Secretary Queen. “She’s down for the count with Covid-19.”
The president frowned. “Yes, but her Assistant Director is Vasquez, so she should be acting director—”
Allen and Queen met each other’s eyes and looked away.
///
When Callie saw the Code Orange (Mass Casualty Event) go off at the Luthor Alien Clinic, her first thought was an anti-alien pogrom. She’d heard from the Superfriends that Lex was probably back in National City and probably planning something typically nefarious, but she had been hoping that it would be localized and small, which was in retrospect pretty naïve. But she followed protocol and showed up at the Emergency entrance in the paper gown, not expecting that a DEO vehicle would screech to a halt and throw open a door, shouting, “Dr. Torres! You’re needed!”
She heard running footsteps behind her and looked back to see the ER head arrive with Callie’s graft go-bag. She grabbed it with a nod and jumped into the SUV.
“Agent!” she said, not quite recognizing the driver, although he looked familiar. “Sitrep?”
“It’s bad, Doc. Showdown at ElCorp, probably Lex Luthor. Agents down, Supergirl off the reservation, the director still has Covid. It’s a mess, honestly.”
The agent drove with the same reckless accuracy that Callie had learned to expect when traveling with Alex these days, although with more sliding in the turns, with all the ice on the streets.
“Burns?”
“Not a lot of fire burns, but ice burns? Oh, yeah. It’s bad.”
“So Vasquez is in charge?”
He spared her a millisecond glance before focusing back on the street. “She’s in surgery. She’s one of the ones with ice burns.”
“That’s bad. Who’s in charge then?”
“Ma’am, the fact that she’s still alive means that was good news. Right now, Agent Jordan is in charge until Colonel Lane can get here from Nevada, ETA currently midnight, depending on the winds, but my guess is 2 or 3 am. It’s bad enough driving in this. I wouldn’t want to have to fly in it.”
They reached the DEO subbasement parking garage in record time and Callie took the elevator up to the medbay level. A med tech met her there with the samples from the five agents she was going to have to start grafts for, including Vasquez, Finn, Chen, and two names she didn’t recognize, but by the time she got halfway through the process, word came down that only Vasquez’s was still needed, because the others hadn’t made it.
Callie’s brain didn’t freeze. She was a surgeon and she’d lost patients before, they all had, and she had even lost friends. You couldn’t let it stop you from doing your job, or you’d lose more, and she didn’t know Vasquez well, but she’d seen her with Alex, who was the beating heart of the DEO and Callie knew she had to save Vasquez if she could.
No. She had to save her, period.
///
Dr. Hamilton scrubbed in, her mind a numb mess of grief and hope and pain. Jane ran through the list of Vasquez’s injuries, soft tissue, cracked femur, cold damage, all of it.
They had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, because if they failed, Director Alex Danvers was going to lose her shit or her mind or her life. Jane didn’t know.
They had to put Vasquez back together again. They had to.
///
Fire is primal, like rage, like desire. I feel it all
around me if I choose to: the rages, desires, envies,
desperations: petty emotions fanned by other people’s pain
and greed. I could lie like a dragon on those sparks,
my long body coiled on a mountain of flame.
The humans would see me and despair.
///
In the end, Supergirl had grabbed hold of the tail of the Metropolitan Police Department helicopter and sent it flying into Superman. They both went down with an almighty crash.
Supergirl nodded to herself. The first thing on her to-do list was done.
On to thing two.
///
President Eliza Danvers had watched the Supers fight, her blood turning to ice in her veins. Why on Earth would Kara attack Clark? But then, she remembered the last time Red K had warped her younger daughter, so much that she had tried to kill Alex before being stopped. She had to be stopped again.
“Secretary Queen,” she snapped. “What’s the word from General Lane?”
“Sorry, Madame President, the comms are down in National City because of the storm. We’re out of touch.”
“And AD Lane?”
“Last we heard, she’s in the air between Nevada and National City.”
“So who the hell is in charge?”
Suddenly an alarm went off throughout the White House. The monotone computerized voice stated, “Alert. Restricted Airspace Breach. Lockdown. All personnel shelter in place.”
They could hear the slam of bomb shelter doors automatically closing with a mild boom.
The President grit her teeth. Oliver swore, then toggled the computer screen to show the airspace above the White House. There was a flash of red and blue and there was Supergirl hanging defiantly above the Rose Garden, her face heavily veined in scarlet and her powerful arms crossed over the glyph on her chest.
“Madame President,” said one of the soldiers in the room. “We have a Blackhawk and two F-16 fighter jets scrambling.”
“Queen?” asked the president.
“They won’t get here fast enough! Permission to bring in alternate measures?”
“Granted.” She didn’t ask what the alternate measures would be. Given that it was Oliver Queen, she really didn’t have to.
///
Supergirl hung like hot ash on the cool night breeze above the stately white building, waiting. She had already taken out two Blackhawks in the past few hours. She hoped she might get something different to play with. She hadn’t dealt with a plane in years, and she’d never actually destroyed one. It might be nice to take something like that apart with her bare hands. She was sick of saving the things.
But no.
She heard the sound before she saw what was making it, a narrow roar coming from the northeast, coming from a long way out.
Coming for her.
At first, she thought it might be more red kryptonite, but then she realized that the projectile was red and gold. And it was shooting smaller projectiles—laser bullets?—presumably to clear its way or attempt to take her out without having to go toe to toe with her—
Because that was no rocket. That was Iron Man. She grinned. This was going to be fun.
///
By the time J’onn and Alex reached the DEO, the whole place was deceptively quiet. Agent Jordan was standing in the command center with his arms crossed over his chest, looking calm and serious, though J’onn could tell that underneath, his emotions were roiling. But he looked confident, and that was his training kicking in. He gave him the Nod. Jordan returned it with a rush of invisible gratitude.
Alex looked around, catching the microexpressions of the other agents in the space, then turned to Jordan. “Acting Director Jordan. My office, please?”
J’onn could sense Jordan’s shock at the title, even though the man clearly knew that he was functionally doing the job. With a small swallow, he led the way into her office. She gestured for him to take the chair behind her desk as she and J’onn sank into the chairs in front of it.
“Sitrep, Agent.”
“Yes, Ma’am. You know about the casualties. Agent Vasquez is still in the medbay. She made it through surgery and is currently in a medically induced coma. The skeletal injuries are expected to heal well, but the shock and hypothermia are what Dr. Hamilton is most concerned about. Dr. Torres is working on grafts for the cold burns. But Ma’am…”
“Supergirl is gone red again,” Alex said flatly. J’onn could detect no emotion behind the words and it worried him.
“Yes, Ma’am…”
“Agent, don’t beat around the bush. I need to know what the damage is.”
“Um, she’s taken out Superman, Ma’am. MetroDEO says he’s alive and under their sunlamps, but he solar flared, so it’s going to be a while until he’s back on his feet.” His eyes flickered away and he touched the comms in his ear. “Shit!”
“Agent?”
“She’s at the White House. They’re scrambling air support. So far, she hasn’t attacked.”
“And there is no way I could get there fast enough to shoot her out of the sky.”
She said it calmly, J’onn thought, much like she might comment on Noonan’s not having any coffee left.
“No, Ma’am. I don’t see how we—” He touched his ear again and his eyes went wide. “Um, Secretary of Defense Queen has called in Iron Man.”
Alex turned to J’onn and said wearily. “Can this week get any worse?”
Agent Jordan touched his ear again and winced. “Um, yes? Iron Man’s suit is in pieces in the Potomac. Stark appears to be alive, but—” He jumped up and led the way back to the command center, switched the main computer screen from its National City coverage to DC.
At first it was hard to understand what they were seeing, as it was blurs of red and blue going in one direction and blurs of green going in the other. The red and blue blur was short and slender. The green blur—
“The Hulk?” said Alex, and for the first time since they returned to the DEO, J’onn felt Alex’s surprise and a tiny bit of fear.
Chapter 133: A Time to Discover Your Dark Side (Covid’s Version), Part 7
Summary:
This is the last of Alex's dystopian Covid dream. Things will get back to normal soon.
Chapter Text
Cat Grant had watched the White House fight from seventeen different angles on the screens in her office at Cougar.com. She had watched her girl, Red K Version, take out that arrogant playboy in the gold suit with mixed feelings. She was no fan of Tony Stark, but a lot of people were, and this was just one more thing that Kara would have to come back from eventually. Then she watched the Hulk slam her back and forth in the Rose Garden before she chose the better part of valor and took off, flying north, presumably toward her hidden arctic fortress.
Cat sighed and looked at her watch. Just as well. They could use a moment to manage the next task of grieving.
A woman’s voice behind her said, “Ms. Grant?”
Cat turned to see a young Black woman in a camel pantsuit and brown flats standing in her doorway. “Kelly Olsen, I presume? Right on time. Allons-y.”
They took her executive elevator to the underground parking garage, where Frank had pulled up not her usual towncar but a limousine. They stopped by ElCorp to pick up Jess Huang and Winn, and drove in silence to the other side of town, to a low brick building between the downtown police station and NC General Hospital. Frank parked and they got out and entered the mortuary.
Cat had met Dr. Isles before in the course of her duties as a reporter and she recognized the woman’s tall cop wife, but they murmured no pleasantries. A tearful middle-aged woman and a greying Latino in a rumpled suit stood looking lost. Cat could relate, though she’d never admit it.
A moment later, Kara’s sister and John Jones walked in with a young man Cat had never met. They all nodded to each other quietly.
Dr. Isles said, “If you’d come with me.”
They trailed after her and stepped into the pale grey tiled room with a row of gurneys, seven of them, each of them with a sheet draped over a motionless body.
The first was a young Asian man, the left side of his head covered with lacerations and dark purple contusions. Alex swallowed but nodded. “Yes. That’s Agent Chen.”
The next was a young blond, cornfed, but with the back of his skull missing. “Riley Finn. Yes, that’s him.”
The young man Cat didn’t know moved to sit in one of the plastic chairs on the side, looking like he was going to be sick.
“Lexie Danvers, yes. Jillian Holtzman, yes.” Alex’s voice was robotic.
Dr. Isles turned to J’onn, who nodded in Kelly’s direction. The young woman’s chin rose and she briefly glanced at the ceiling, seemingly to hold back tears as the doctor gently pulled the sheet away from James’ broken nose and jaw. Kelly nodded and stepped away, to join the grieving agent to the side.
The middle-aged woman let out a short sob when the doctor pulled the sheet back from an older white male with a grizzled jaw. His face was untouched but what they could see of his shoulders and upper chest were covered with lacerations, some that looked deep.
Then the Latina police officer, in similar condition. The man who was probably her father took in the difference between her face and shoulders, shaking his head and looking away. Alex stepped up and kissed the dead woman’s forehead, whispering, “I’m so sorry, Maggie.”
Cat saw Mr. Jones’s eyes flash red for just a moment, finally giving Cat the proof that, as she had long suspected, the “FBI” former director was actually an alien. He was frowning at Alex Danvers, whose face was pale and blank.
Very quietly, she said, “Lex Luthor is going to pay for this. And he’s not the only one.”
///
Lucy Lane sat in Al--, in her new office, reading the few mission reports her agents had turned in.
Well, the dead write no mission reports, after all.
It wasn’t about placing blame. It was about finding broken links in the chain of their field operations and doing retraining or some other fix going forward. Because some of That Night had been fluke coincidences and some had been errors, poor choices.
Vasquez should never have sent a rookie into the field. The rookie, Lexi Danvers (no relation), should never have shot Supergirl. Finn, an experienced agent, should have focused on defense even as he was exfiltrating the injured rookie.
Vasquez should not have chosen sniping rather than flying, not in that weather. Chen was an average pilot, and he didn’t stand a chance against Supergirl. Not that they could have predicted that Supergirl would be hit by Red K. They had not known that Lex knew how to make it. Or, wait, had he stolen a sample from Max Lord? Lucy wouldn’t put it past Max to have kept some around for “just in case.” If Lex found out about it, he would want it, and Lex tended to get (or take) what he wanted.
Supergirl should never have gone ballistic (missile) on Lex’s lead tank, not so close to the compromised glass of the ElCorp lobby. Of course, Red K never led to good choices.
Lena should not have let the forcefield go after the lobby glass shattered into a million pieces. She should have waited for it to be cleared, waited for Emergency Services to come and take care of her terrified and shocky guests. Lucy didn’t like to blame the victim, but she was pretty sure that Lena would be kicking herself soon, if she wasn’t already. Those were some nasty wounds.
Nobody could have expected one of the DEO’s helicopters, flown by a highly competent pilot, to crash into Agents Olsen and Holtzman and their vehicles.
And why hadn’t J’onn and M’gann been a part of the plan? Didn’t taking on Lex require the use of all their assets? Having more superstrong fliers might have saved a few lives at least.
And Maggie and her partner. They were wearing riot helmets but not the rest of the riot gear and they apparently had no backup. Lucy was furious about that, or she would be, once she could feel again. She wished she could ask her why, but the dead also can’t be debriefed.
Most of all, Lucy felt, in retrospect, maybe she should have taken the training job, come back to National City, moved in with Maggie, or they could have found a new place together, tried to make it work in the same city. Lucy had told herself it was about ambition, her career. If she was coming back to the National City DEO, it would be to run it. Her father for certain would have seen the training job as a demotion, and her leaving Nevada as just short of treason, since he was convinced nobody else could do that job that was so crucial to national security. It was the first time in her life that she knew for certain that he was proud of her.
Pride, Lucy thought, sighing. Ambition and pride. She now had the job that she had long thought she deserved. She felt hollow.
///
Alex Danvers went home and thought through her options. The wedding would be at the end of the week, but the wedding party had been decimated: just Alex, Cat, Lucy and Winn were left. Dr. Hamilton and Callie would be needed at the DEO to care for the still-comatose Vasquez. Eliza’s Chief of Staff, Sam Arias, had deemed the event too dangerous for the president to attend, given the probability of a Lex attack. Lois was taking care of a solar-flared Clark back in Metropolis and Astra had been called back to Argo for an emergency. J’onn and M’gann would be patrolling National City. Jess had taken a bereavement leave of absence and hadn’t been seen in weeks.
Didn’t matter. Those two wouldn’t cancel.
Those two: Kara Zor-El, who had chosen Lena’s reactor’s debut as bait to catch Lex. Lena Luthor, who had gathered enough of the city’s elite that the DEO and NCPD had sent out their best and brightest to protect them. Because of their arrogance and lack of forethought, seven of the best people in National City were dead, and Vasquez was probably going to make it eight. But Kara had said she could handle Lex, that they didn’t need to “bother” the Martians. Lena had said that she was “equipped” to protect her guests.
If only they had realized just how high the stakes really were.
And it’s not like they had committed crimes, right? In theory, Kara had been criminally negligent, but she was under the influence of Red K at the time, so that would never stick, and even if they could try her and she was found guilty, Eliza would probably just pardon her anyway.
///
Winn was sitting at his station, watching the video of Supergirl grabbing Chen and Vasquez’s helo and throwing it into the river on repeat, sick to his stomach. Neither of the DEO agents were wearing helmets, so their faces were easily recognizable. When he had first heard of how Chen died and Vasquez—
Well, he’d assumed that Supergirl had made a mistake. But the luminescent red veins crawling over Supergirl’s face were very clear on the video. And Vasquez’s face was clear from one angle, and Chen’s was clear from another. Supergirl had thrown a helo containing a DEO agent and her sister’s girlfriend into the icy river.
Intentionally.
Winn felt a presence behind him although he hadn’t heard steps. Then a hand gripped his shoulder and suddenly squeezed.
“Al—Alex. Too tight!”
The woman let go, but not before Winn had whipped his head around to see her face take in the facts that he had just realized. His boss’s sister had all but manslaughtered his boss’s girlfriend.
Wait, was that gross negligence or was that first-degree homicide? Once again, Winn felt super, ha, nauseous. He jumped up, said, “Excuse me, Director, permission to puke in the men’s room?”
She frowned (and it reminded him of Vasquez’s Defcon frowns, pretty sure that Alex had just moved from Defcon 4 up to 3, high alert).
Winn skedaddled.
Chapter 134: Facing Your Dark Side, Part 1
Chapter Text
Alex Danvers woke up in the medbay soaking wet and coughing. She was still blurry, remembered a firefight but couldn’t place which mission she’d been on when they’d fought it.
There was something about Red K Supergirl and haughty Lena, Lex and his oaf of a minion. A Kryptonite dome stood surrounded by a ring of fire, and they were at the center of it. Supergirl’s face was barely recognizable beneath the crawling red and green veins. Lex tore off his suit jacket and tie, sweat flowing freely.
The minion—Otis?—had stripped down to his underwear and was clinging to the dirt as if it was the last or only cool thing under the dome.
Lena was yelling something, but Alex couldn’t hear her over the roar of the flames. Her long-sleeve dress with the white satin rising from her jawline to the back of her head, it was wild. Alex couldn’t decide if it had made her look like a princess or an evil queen. 50/50, she guessed, but maybe that was Lena Luthor for you.
She vaguely remembered having co-opted Lucy and Winn to build the contraption that held the four. What had they done? How on Earth had she decided to torture her sister and her sister’s fiancée? Because, sure, torturing Lex and Otis was a no-brainer. They deserved it. But her sis—
Suddenly she remembered a sight: Supergirl flying straight (maybe directly) up into the air only to turn upside down and come screaming down to hit Lex’s tank like a missile, causing the frozen glass of Lena’s lobby to shatter in all directions.
She remembered blood and bodies everywhere, snow steaming, bits of metal afire. She remembered seeing Maggie in a morgue and Vasquez in a coma.
It occurred to her that her friends had experienced vivid fever dreams that they reported being coherent narratives that touched on themes they hadn’t been able to grasp while healthy and awake. Alex wondered if her dream had been similar.
After all, hadn’t she taken a break from planning to defend SuperCorp’s wedding (as the superfriends called them) because she couldn’t imagine a scenario that would make her attack her sister’s nuptials?
Alex knew that, in the multiverse, anything that could happen, did, somewhere. So, just maybe, there was at least one Earth on which Kara and Lena could make decisions that would lead to devastating unintended consequences that would make Alex turn on them for punishment and vengeance.
Knowing that was sickening, but potentially useful. The DEO had harbored kryptonite on the off chance that one or more of the Kryptonians would go all evil and become superpowered killing machines. Fair enough. So what kinds of systems did it have in place just in case its director, Alex Danvers, questioned her mandate, abandoned her oath to protect country and Constitution, or just plain old had a nervous breakdown or lost her shit?
To the best of her knowledge, they had nothing.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t put one in place.
///
When Lena returned to her office from an early morning board meeting, Jess followed her into the office with file folders and a cardboard box tied with a bright yellow string and the red logo reading MarzipanCart!
“Should I ask?” said Lena with some humor. “Or should I just assume that Kara had something to do with this?”
Normally, Jess would roll her eyes, but instead she said earnestly, “I have never in my life seen a croissant filled with so much marzipan. I don’t know where she finds these things, but she brought me one too, and it was out of this world!”
“Noted. Anything else?”
She sat down behind her desk and glanced at her agenda. “Wait, Jess. These meetings, one with Kara and Alex, then one with Holtzy, Alex and Winn. And one that’s just Alex.”
“It’s mostly event stuff, but different concerns…”
“Jess, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Holtzy said that Alex had Covid dreams, shorter and less complicated than Winn’s but way longer and more complicated than mine. Apparently, a lot of our friends died. Holtzy said that Alex has been down in the gym training their most recent rookies in hand-to-hand.”
“Yes, but she does that. Apparently, it’s fun for her.”
“Mm. Yes and no. You know how inventing is your happy place?”
“Who calls it my—Oh, Kara, of course.”
“So training is Alex’s anxiety place. For when she needs to exert control over her life. She gets a workout, the rookies get thorough and pragmatic training, agents who ‘happen to pass by’ get a reminder that the director is a complete badass. Kara calls it the trifecta.”
“Huh. Too bad that wouldn’t work on junior engineers. Okay, Jess. Got it. Thanks.”
“I’ll just get your coffee.”
As the door closed behind her, Lena recalled how Callie said that the DEO’s HR had video of Alex jumping off the balcony, turning and shooting at the Daxamites as she fell twenty stories, knowing with perfect certainty that Supergirl would catch her. A formidable woman.
Normally, Lena had a cup of yogurt for breakfast with her coffee, but if she was going to be spending up to three hours discussing Alex’s anxieties about the wedding, she was going to need more sustenance than that. She pulled the yellow thread from the red and white box and inhaled deeply. Opening the box, she realized the sweet was practically the size of a nerf football. That had to be a thousand calories at least.
Oh well. Sometimes a gal needed to carb load.
///
Holtzman had originally showed her prototypes to Winn and then asked where in the DEO they would be able to test them, because if they failed in some epic way, it might be bad and effect DEO systems. But it might actually be even worse and more damaging if they succeeded.
And Winn had watched every step of Holtzy’s engineering process and he was pretty sure they were going to succeed in an epic way. So he got Alex to give her permission and special access to the lead-lined file room in the basement above the sub-basement level parking garage. The only electrical things in there were the lights and the shredder. She promised to bring the emergency chemical glow sticks and unplug the shredder before testing the range of prototypes.
One DEO agent with higher security clearance went with her and one was set outside the closed door, just in case.
Just in case what, Winn didn’t know, but he was naturally cautious, and nervous about his morning meeting with Alex and Lena at LCorp at noon. Alex had been…in a mood since recovering from Covid. Rumors were she’d had complex Covid dreams, just as he had, but much less amusing. Winn made it a habit never to cross anyone who had spent that much time…unamused.
///
Vasquez sat at her old station in the command center, watching Winn ignore the feed to scribble in a notebook, possibly the same Moleskine she had given him the year before. She thought he was writing code for something. She unlocked and opened the low file cabinet under her station and pulled out an old brown folder, labeled Danvers, A. She had started it when Alex had joined the DEO years before, sitting in J’onn’s Nevada office looking miserable. She’d been dressed in tight black jeans and four-inch fuck-me heels. Her long black hair looked like she’d just crawled out of bed and there was some kind of glitter in it. Her mascara was smeared under her eyes. She looked tired or maybe just hung over. Her long nails were painted black. Hard to imagine any of that now.
Vasquez’s early notes were pithy comments about how quickly she expected Rookie Danvers to wash out. Between her reliance on book learning, her poor combat abilities, her attitude and her apparent death wish that showed up during war games training, Vasquez really thought Hank was insane to recruit her, and she wondered what the man had on her that would force her to “volunteer” to join the DEO. Susan herself had been recruited by Superman, but she knew many of her cohort had been drawn to the work by less friendly means. Maybe a relative had a problem with drugs or gambling. Some were in the closet. Luckily for Vasquez, the moment she received her Honorable Discharge from the Marines, she had come out to her friends and family. She wasn’t going to let anybody hold her gayness over her head. Better to be out and proud.
Interestingly, in none of the first three years of Alex’s DEO career had Vasquez considered that Alex might be gay. If anything, she wondered if she might be asexual, since she pretty much lived, ate, and slept at the DEO. Well, that was how you ended up with exceptional agents, but it was a lonely way to live. Vasquez would know. In her years as a junior agent, Alex had let almost nothing slip about her family or friends, except that she had an uncomfortable relationship with her mother in Midvale.
A bit of research on Vasquez’s part turned up the presumed-dead father, the adoptive sister who had gone to Switzerland between graduating from NCU and starting work at CatCo. It had turned up the medical training and the plane crash. She always thought that none of those things explained the woman she was training and then leading by example and then following. Vasquez herself couldn’t pinpoint when she had begun to fall in love with her. Maybe it was around the time Supergirl came out…
Anyway, when Alex had come back to her apartment after being discharged from the medbay by Dr. Hamilton, she had been uncharacteristically quiet, even when Susan had asked if she could come over, offered to cook for her.
She had sat on her couch with a glass of white wine on the coffee table that she didn’t touch. Vasquez had made a joke about scotch, but Alex said, “Yeah, you remember what Winn and James were like for months after they recovered? A little alcohol put them both out like a light at the beginning.”
And yes, Vasquez remembered. She asked, “So, um, rumors around the DEO are saying you had some wild dreams while you were feverish. Are we talking llama ranching? Building a time machine with Winn?”
Alex didn’t smile. She seemed to think about it. Finally, she unzipped her long-sleeved black polo and pulled a small navy bag out and slid the cord over her neck and handed it to Vasquez, murmuring, “Remember Metropolis Pride?”
And yes, Vasquez remembered. She had been waiting for Alex to bring it up for over a month. She felt the broken pieces of plastic ring in the bag, slowly opened the bag and poured them out into her palm. Alex looked like she was going to burst into tears.
“Honey,” she said. “It’s just a ring. I can get you another if you’d like.”
Shakily, Alex said, “It was a symbol. Something hopeful, like you could try to believe in us, like maybe we both could. When it broke when my suit saved my life, I was, well, the other kind of crushed.” She couldn’t seem to laugh at her own bad joke. “I was afraid to tell you, but I didn’t know why.”
“I understand why, Al.”
“My dreams. I am going to want to tell you, but right now I just can’t. Most of it’s the Covid. I’m just so tired all the time, and you know me with my emotions: I can do life or I can do emotions. Both at the same time is too much even when I’m healthy.”
Vasquez nodded, considering the truth of that. “Okay, babe. You’re right. You need to focus on getting better first. But here’s the thing. Once Dr. Hamilton gives you her medical seal of approval to go back on missions, you’re going to need to tell me. I can’t have whatever you experienced while you were sick messing with your head when we are out in the field. Okay?”
Alex had nodded very seriously and taken a tiny sip of her wine.
Now it was two weeks later, and Alex had been cleared for desk duty only, taking care of her administrative responsibilities as the director, budgets, staffing, commendations, censures. Vasquez was happy to no longer have to handle those. Alex had also gone back to looking at their wedding planning, but it hadn’t seemed to make her any happier than she seemed while juggling the DEO’s expenses.
Vasquez was pretty sure she understood why. She had gone to Dr. Hamilton and they had had a long, confidential talk about Alex and the things she had muttered, growled or cried out in her sleep. Many of them involved her ordering or begging agents not to do something. Often it was Vasquez she was begging.
And that couldn’t be good.
Chapter 135: Facing Your Dark Side, Part 2
Chapter Text
Supergirl flew over a slowly warming National City, the knot of worry she had been carrying around finally coming loose. She had hated seeing Alex suffering in the medbay, either feverish and muttering or pale and snoring lightly.
When she had heard about Winn’s fun moments from his Covid dreams—Dansquez and MajorDimples as llama ranchers, Alex blowing up “Judge” Lord’s outhouse, and oh my, Mama Reign—she hadn’t thought much about it. She knew that some people often dreamt vividly, and Winn had told her that he was such a one, most of the time. Supergirl usually only dreamed like that in times of great stress, and she wondered if it was the stress that brought it out. She had asked around and Jess had admitted her very gay heroic WWI flying ace dreams and James eventually admitted his very gay French resistance dream.
And then she had asked Winn if he would please tell her his whole story and he thought about it for a minute and then emailed her a pdf where he had written it down as well as he could remember it. And Pink K was a huge theme.
She wondered about the distress that Alex seemed to have experienced. Could there be a connection?
Kara paused and looked at her watch (on her left wrist, covered by her suit sleeve with the thumb hole, just as the bracelet that Lena had given her, titanium inset with sapphires and emeralds spelling out El Mayara in Braille, was on her right, similarly hidden). It was almost 10:00 and she needed to get to LCorp.
Then she looked down to realize that she was hovering just above LCorp, Lena her true north. She could see that Lena was in a meeting with some white-coated engineers, so she waited until they left to touch down on Lena’s balcony.
Lena turned with a big smile and flashing eyes and let her in. “Funny, I was expecting Kara Danvers. Shouldn’t you be apologizing to my security people in the lobby?” she teased.
“Oh, shi—sherbert. You’re right. I’ll just—”
“It’s all right, darling. Actually, it might be better than all right. I’ve been sensing some reticence from Alex lately. The cape might help.”
Supergirl nodded but then frowned. She pulled her cellphone out of her cape shoulder pocket and texted:
AgentPotsticker: Boots or flats?
…
…
…
AgentBlack: Flats. If you don’t mind.
She showed Lena, whose smile fell. “Good thing you asked.”
Supergirl zipped away out the balcony and came back in through the office door wearing red pants, a white button up and a pink sweater (yeah, that pink sweater) with Alex Danvers in a black pantsuit. Jess let them in and followed with a small cart with coffee. She said, “Do you need me to take notes?”
Lena and Kara both deferred to Alex, who said, “Um, not for this first part. We need about fifteen minutes to go over some things.”
Jess left.
Kara bit her lip. She had seen Alex look pale and moodless before, back when Kara had had to postpone leaving for Switzerland after the plane crash when Mark Sloane had died; back when Eliza had taken Kara’s coming out as Supergirl and flayed Alex with it as if it had been her fault; back when Maggie had rejected her. She hadn’t looked as devastated after the Sara Lance things, but she supposed punching Nazis could make up for a lot of personal failings.
“Alex, are you okay?” she asked.
“That…remains to be determined. I’m getting healthier. That’ll help. But I have to ask you guys some hard questions. Please don’t take this the wrong way.”
Lena put her hand on Alex’s just as Kara reached for Alex’s other hand.
Without looking at either one of them, Alex asked, “Are you sure about this? Going ahead with the wedding?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Because Lex hasn’t really reacted to your relationship, but I’m pretty sure Lillian expects the wedding to draw him out and put him at his worst, far worse than the way he reacted to anything Superman—”
Lena said, “Alex, we talked about this. We’ll handle it. We have whole teams of people planning—”
“I know,” Alex said dully. “As you recall, I’m one of the teams.”
“What is it that you’ve found?”
Finally, she looked at them. “Kara, Lena asked me to come up with a plan to attack the island, myself, and then a counterplan to defend it, not by the snipers and on-duty agents, but by the rest of the guests.”
Kara frowned in surprise. She looked questioningly at Lena.
“Kara, you know your sister is an explode-the-box thinker, like Winn.” She turned to Alex. “That…story Callie told me. Did you ever tell Kara?”
Kara looked at Alex.
Dully, Alex said, “In my third year in Seattle, the residents kind of stopped teaching us. I don’t think they meant to, but somehow, they just weren’t letting us join the surgeries. We weren’t getting any practical experience. They made us do paperwork or other things that just weren’t surgery. We had to practice stitches on fucking bananas. And everybody was frustrated, because how were we supposed to learn to save lives and make good fast decisions if we couldn’t watch them do it or do it ourselves under their supervision?”
But Alex didn’t sound frustrated. She sounded tired.
“So I… realized that there were corpses in the mortuary that had been left to the hospital for students to work on, but the paperwork on some of them meant they weren’t being used. So I… borrowed a few.”
Kara carefully kept her eyes from going wide, her jaw from dropping. “Okay…”
“We practiced cutting open, stitching closed. Cutting or sewing a banana is very different from an actual body. But word got out and somebody who was supposed to be in charge of us realized that she had let us down and she had let the residents let us down, more through overwork and inattention than anything. She realized that these people who were in charge of our education had pushed us, me, to decide that we, that I needed to. Well. I guess we were kind of desecrating the dead, and she never let any one of us forget that. But she fixed it, made the residents teach us. I’m pretty sure she didn’t tell them about what I’d done. But our education resumed. I did that. I’m not proud of it.”
Quietly, Lena said, “Callie only told me this recently. But you remember Winn’s story about his dream? How his Alex had thrown dynamite in Judge Lord’s outhouse and proclaimed it some of her finest work? The Alex in Winn’s head and the Alex in Callie’s head… I just thought if Alex put her mind to the problem of defending the wedding…”
Kara nodded slowly. “Vasquez is good at her job, excellent at it. And Winn is too, and I hate to say it, kind of devoted to me, and more recently to you. Pretty sure he’s in love with your brain.”
Tiredly, Alex muttered, “Well, there’s a lot there to love.”
Lena gave her a small smile. “And here I thought you hadn’t noticed.”
“Maggie and Vasquez are badasses in their way. Your way is different. I’m a DEO agent through and through. But I’m also a scientist. And it’s not like I’m blind.”
Another small smile. “Thank you, Alex. I think you’re a badass too. Or I wouldn’t have asked you—But now, I’m afraid my asking you has had… unforeseen…”
“It’s just that, when I started thinking it through, looking at sun- and moonrise and -set times, tidal charts, a wide array of weapons… all I could think was that an attacking force would want to either kidnap or kill you two and/or all your guests. And it wouldn’t be all that hard, even with conventional transport and weapons, not even considering what wild and weird shit Lex might come up with. But surely, I thought, that was exactly the kind of thing that Vasquez and Winn would be positing and trying to prevent.”
She picked up her coffee mug with its LCorp logo and took a long sip, then another. “So then I tried, I really did, I wracked my brain trying to come up with any idea, any sin, any overlooked mistake that could ever make me want to…”
She exhaled. “Well, decimate you both.”
No one really breathed for a hot second.
Alex said, “And I couldn’t think of a single one. And I kinda hated that I was letting you guys down but also it was a relief to know that I didn’t have that sort of Red K thing going on under my skin that I wasn’t aware of. I truly thought I could never, ever hurt you two.”
Lena looked away (as, Kara thought, she often did when she was thinking of Lex). “I think that makes you unique, Alex.”
But Alex shook her head. “That’s what I thought.”
///
At her desk ten feet away from Lena’s sound-proofed office, Jess was typing away at her computer, a small, almost unnoticeable earbud in her left ear. She had bugged Lena’s office a few years back so that she would be able to track dangerous meetings and get security to Lena’s office before a… problem… happened, so they wouldn’t wait until it was too late. She used it maybe once every month or two. She was using it now, although at least now she was feeling very guilty about it because she knew that the danger presenting in this meeting was neither physical nor in the short term.
But information you have early on can help you prevent or reduce danger—physical or other—when the need arises in the long term. So she was typing up the conversation so she could look at it later, analyze what risk factors it revealed and either handle them or destroy the document.
And Jess was a first generation Chinese American with many friends like her, whose parents had insisted on their becoming doctors or engineers, with the emphasis on doctors. So she had heard stories of the kind of problems Alex and her cohort had faced. She had never heard a story about anyone handling the problem in such a… creative… way? Respect.
But honestly, Alex sounded about two minutes away from either bursting into tears or doing something more violently rash. So Jess bit the bullet, picked up her tablet, hit save on her document, exited it, and set her computer to sleep.
Then she entered Lena’s office, as a screenplay might have said, “brightly.”
Chapter 136: Other People Facing Your Darkness
Chapter Text
Lena was unsurprised when Jess knocked and entered the office before the fifteen minutes were up. She had pretty much expected her assistant to listen in, as she did for most conversations that could be anticipated to be heated or even dangerous.
“Oh, Jess, good timing. I think we’re about to get down to brass tacks.”
Kara narrowed her eyes, but Alex seemed oblivious, which was unlike her.
Jess sat next to Lena on the white couch and said, “Director Danvers, you should know that the DEO is rife with rumors and gossip and worry. Agent Holtzman says that the smart money is on your Covid dreams involving the destruction of the DEO and the death of a swath of top agents.”
Alex stared blankly at Jess, then shook herself. “No to the first. Yes to the second.”
Lena asked, “Including us?”
“No, Lena,” Alex said kindly. “Pretty sure there is nowhere in the multiverse where Kara or Supergirl let you die.”
Kara swallowed. “Then… who?”
“Agents Chen, Finn, Olsen, Holtzman. A rookie who was sort of Seattle-me at the DEO. That part got weird.”
“James and Holtzy,” Jess breathed.
Lena asked, “Was it… our fault? Or my fault?”
“Specifically, no. Generally… kind of. You two dreamed up an elaborate trap for Lex and his goons and he didn’t disappoint. So if that hadn’t happened, nobody would have died, but you didn’t drop the helicopter on them.”
And Lena knew that Alex had been friends with James for several years, but that didn’t explain her waxy expression. “Alex, spill. We should know the worst.”
“Red K.” She took a deep breath and looked up at Kara. “It never leads to good decisions.”
“W-what did I do?”
“You rejected my recommendation to bring the Martians and/or Astra on the op, assuming you could handle it alone. You got shot by the rookie and the bullet ricocheted back into her. Finn tried to retreat, but they got shot and dropped on… Agents Olsen and Holtzman who were fighting on foot on the ground. Then you dive-bombed the Lex-O-Tanks, causing the deaths of Maggie Sawyer and her partner, and major injuries to Lena. Then you…”
Alex struggled to keep her face neutral, struggled not to shed any tears. “Vasquez. You put her in a coma. No one expected her to make it.”
Lena saw Kara lose all color from her face. “The Martians would have stopped me. Astra would—”
“Yes, Kara. They would have stopped you.”
Jess and Lena’s phones dinged at the same time. They looked down. Lena saw the text from Kate in R&D. “Suit prototype finished. Quantum material has passed all tests. Delivery bot successful.”
With a small smile, Lena said, “Well, Alex, I may have solved part of the problem of the Supergirl who lives in your head. With my R&D team, I’ve designed and built an anti-kryptonite suit for Supergirl. Wearing it, she’ll deflect kryptonite and if she’s affected and you get the suit on her, the suit will filter it from her system.”
“How would we get it—”
“Never fear. We came up with a novel delivery system.”
Jess stood up and went and opened the balcony door, just as a square metal device, about the size of a DVD player flew in, attached itself to Kara’s chest and nanobots swarmed from it over her body, until she was entirely covered with a blue Supergirl uniform with a helmet with Heads-Up technology, GUIs she could see right in front of her.
“Pants!”
Modestly, Lena said, “Mm. I know my girl. Sorry about the lack of cape. We had to emphasize carrying capacity for the K-filter tech.” She turned to a slightly less devastated Alex. “You know, Alex, it doesn’t take a strategic genius to realize that Lex is quite likely going to come armed to kill Supergirl in as many ways as he can think up. But as Winn mentioned a while back, the good news is that we know the ways he and other villains think and work, and we already have tech to solve a lot of those problems.”
A little muffled from inside the suit, Kara said, “And I know you think I didn’t learn much these last few years, but I’ve learned not to jump in feet first and to always bring backup and work with the team not instead of it.”
Tears slipped from Alex’s eyes. “Okay. We might, just, survive all this.”
Lena grinned.
Supergirl said, “Um, Lena? How do I get this thing off?”
///
Holtzy sat on the floor in the file vault, grinning from ear to ear in the light of several emergency green glow sticks. She had brought three versions (low, medium, and high power) of all seven prototypes of the LTEMPs (Local Temporary Electromagnetic Pulse system). The agent standing by the door with the empty utility cart and looking skeptical at the start of the series of experiments was looking fascinated now, and also grateful that Holtzman had insisted that he leave his phone and tablet outside in the hall with his fellow agent.
For each experiment, Holtzy had plugged in one 15-Watt bulb, one 150-Watt bulb, and one 1500 Watts (this last faced away from them).
Prototype 1: Low, Medium, High. Results: Low turned off 15, failed with the others. Medium turned off all three.
Etc.
In the end most of the low power devices failed. The all mediums turned off the lower Watt lights, and some turned off the highs as well. All high turned off all the lights. So basically, she had a bell curve. In the green halide glow, she circled the most successful mediums. Then she checked her watch. “Oh, shit, I’ve got to get up to the lab to grab Winn and meet with Lena. Can you help me load all these lights back onto the cart?”
The agent helped her pack the cart and then offered to bring them back to maintenance where she’d gotten them.
“Thanks, Frank!”
She slid into the lab just as Winn opened the door. He jumped in surprise but laughed. “Just in the nick of time!”
They hurried to his Mini down in the sub-basement parking garage and sped to LCorp. They were stepping out of the elevator at the top floor just as Kara was about to step in. “Like a well-oiled machine,” quipped Holtzy.
Kara started to wave but suddenly she turned her head with a jerk, like a dog hearing a far-off whistle, there was a rush of wind, and she was gone.
Winn shrugged. “Duty calls, I guess.”
“That is so cool,” murmured Holtzy.
Lena stood in her doorway and waved them inside her office.
Holtzy unpacked her leather carrier bag, handing the clipboard with the experimental results to Lena. “Those three worked, minimal power, maximum effect. I’ll destroy the others when I get back this afternoon. We don’t want to leave those lying around.”
“Excellent work,” said Lena. “I’ll see what I can do to miniaturize them further. Meanwhile, we need some kind of protective shielding for the wedding party. A kryptonite bullet is still a bullet, and I’d rather not have my friends need to wear combat gear to my wedding.”
Alex said, “In my dream, you had a forcefield to protect the recycled kryptonite reactor. A big blue wall from one side of the room to the other.”
Lena shook her head. “Force fields are science fiction, at least if you’re trying to make one with all Earth substances and physical properties.”
Winn wiggled his hand back and forth. They looked at him and he tapped his belt buckle. There was a flash of blue over his body, then he looked as normal as ever.
Alex stood up, looking more cheerful than she had in days. “May I?”
“Have at it,” said Winn.
Alex punched him in the stomach and got thrown back onto Lena’s white couch.
“Okay,” said Lena, “but are you saying that is made of 100% Earth elements?”
“Well, no, the frame of the belt is sort of the Martian version of polyethylene, and the trigger mechanism was based on some Coluan nanobots we salvaged from that blue woman who worked with Non a few years back.”
“Does it protect your arms as well as the torso?” asked Lena.
“Not as well, no. I still haven’t worked that part out.”
“Mm. I have some ideas, but that’s a start. How long does the field last?”
“Indefinitely if you don’t get hit. They can take five or six hits before they break down.”
“They?”
“We manufactured 160 before the election, but a lot of them took a beating. I think we have 37 still in good shape.”
Alex frowned. “Are the others recoverable? Can you make them work again?”
“I think so. I just haven’t had time. The field generator took priority and I’ve also been trying to fix your suit.”
Lena nodded, “You’ve had a lot on your plate. I have some other ideas, more macro. I’ve read a little about nuu’t app ga’hr, that’s what you used from Mars? If we made hexagonal discs of the stuff, we might be able to create a dome to create the optimal distribution of electrons…”
Alex nodded. “Elegant.”
Holtzy grinned, “I think I might have a way to improve ionic containment for the matrix you build.”
“Excellent,” said Lena. “We have the beginnings of a plan.”
///
Pam from HR was impressed by Cat Grant. Well, she was a woman who made a distinct impression. She walked into Pam’s office, given her a firm handshake, told her what she knew about the Danvers sisters, James and “the hobbit in IT,” the black budget organization she assumed they all worked for, and the rising danger of Lex Luthor and his Minions.
Seriously. Pam could hear the capital M. Curiously, Pam asked, “If you think we’re black budget, isn’t it a risk for you to come here and tell us what you think you know? Pretty sure people have been disappeared for much less.”
Cat waved her hand. “Sure, you just do that. Drop me in a black site and in three, two, one, Supergirl will go all RedK on your sorry asses. Been there, done that, practically had the heart attack. It’s… not something I’d recommend."
“Right. NDAs coming right up.”
Chapter 137: The Chapter After That
Chapter Text
That evening, Alex told Vasquez about Kara’s qualms about Cat maybe wanting to bring Lillian to the wedding as her plus-one. Vasquez put down her wine glass and walked into her study, a tiny room with a desk, a laptop and a four-drawer filing cabinet. (Also, a framed glass case on the wall with all her Marine medals. Such a badass.) She came back with a pink folder and handed it to Alex.
“Pink, Vas? Really?”
Vasquez shrugged. “I started running scenarios after Pink K. It was very clear to me that there were going to be… consequences to that. And that was before I smelled Cat’s perfume on Lillian when we were handing her over to NCPD.”
Alex’s jaw dropped. “Cat’s… Huh. I mean, they did share a cell…”
“A lead-lined cell. Yup.”
Alex sat down on the couch and read through five pages of single-spaced analysis, all in Vasquez’s neat print. Then she closed the folder. “That all makes a startling amount of sense. But your two threads?”
“When I first wrote that, I was convinced that Lillian would either have a sweeping homophobic rage on that would devastate our community or a new understanding of her daughter, maybe a new closeness or possibly a renewed resentment. But the more I’ve seen, even before the betrothal, those pictures of them dancing at the Daily Planet Gala. It looked very much like something real there. But I still don’t know. She wasn’t wearing a psionic inhibitor at the betrothal and M’gann and J’onn both said they sensed mutual desire. But they also sensed that the two were wary of each other.”
“Yeah, still seems a little weird to see Cat Grant choosing a domestic terrorist as her plus-one. She can be cynical, sure, but that’s mostly a cover for her big heart. At least, that’s Kara’s estimation. Admittedly, from before all of that. Do we know what Lena thinks?”
“No. We should ask her. Not this weekend. I think she’s at a tech conference. Ask Kara when would be a good time for the four of us to sit down.”
///
On their way into work on the Monday after the returning from the Nevada training, James and Winn went into Noonan’s to pick up Danishes and coffee for the team in the command center. Winn was over at the milk and sugar with a file card with everyone’s order: black for Finn, cream and sugar for Kara and Holtzy, and just cream for everybody else. All of a sudden somebody grabbed Winn’s ass, and he nearly spilled his coffee.
“Hey, beautiful, well aren’t you a handful behind as well as in front.”
Winn froze. That was not James’s voice. He turned to Eve wearing a low-cut green blouse and a tight skirt. The LCorp mask didn’t entirely fit with the ensemble, but he could tell from the crinkles of her eyes that she was smiling as she caressed his butt.
“Um, Eve. I’m pretty sure I don’t want you to do that in public.”
Immediately, she put her hands up. “Sorry, sorry. Working on my impulse control. But does that mean you still want me to do that in private?”
“That is a conversation for another venue.” He looked behind her. “Here, James I’ve got the carton of coffee. Can you take the Danish bag?”
Eve turned. “Oh, hey, James. I was just saying hey to my boyfriend here.”
James opened his mouth and almost closed it, but instead he said, “I think you mean my boyfriend, actually.”
Even behind her mask, they could see that her eyes went wide and her face went pale.
“You’re the. Wait, you didn’t say it was James you were fucking!”
“Didn’t I?” Winn genuinely couldn’t remember.
“Dude, he was my boss!”
“Well, sure, but he’s not now. I would never have agreed to do this if he were.”
“But, you, he. Cat, and now, L, but then, you. Oh my. Oh. Ihavetogonow.” She fled.
“Of course, I did. Didn’t I?”
James took the Danish bag. “Doesn’t matter, bro. Let’s go. We’re going to be late.”
They sat around the conference table at the DEO, with James frowning throughout the meeting. Halfway through, Alex’s phone pinged and glanced down, read the message and looked up at Kara. “Maggie wants to see us. Says it’s urgent. Vas, can you finish the meeting?”
“Of course, Director.”
They left. Vasquez stood, saying, “The only thing left is that we have maybe soured the supplier of the plasma weapons. Good news: they’re probably human. Bad news: they’re probably Russian. What that means for us, we’re not certain, but keep your eyes open. Dismissed.”
Finn and Holtzy left, laughing about some show they were both bingeing. Rosie left, scowling at her tablet. Winn stood up and said, “James? C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”
Winn left and then Vasquez left, pulling a notebook out of one of her cargo pockets and clicking her pen.
Winn returned to watching the feeds until his phone pinged. He looked down.
KingJames: 17th floor. I need help with this.
Winn inhaled sharply.
ForTheWinn: omw
///
At the men’s room door, Winn knocked their agreed upon signal and James let him in. He was bulging in his pants again.
“Dude, not that I’m not a fan, but we’ve got to stop doing this.”
James was hurriedly unbuckling his belt unzipping his pants and dragging his boxers and tactical pants down to give Winn free access. “I didn’t mean to, it just happened.”
“What is it about Infernians burning shit in the town dump gives you a hard-on?”
“It wasn’t the aliens. It was Eve grabbing your ass and making a comment about your cock. I mean she wasn’t wrong about that. Winn, don’t just stand there, man, I need your hands on me.”
Winn grinned. “Not my mouth?”
“Agh, just don’t. Hands are faster and we have to get back to work.”
Winn got to work on James, but he asked, “So you actually liked seeing her touch me? Because you had one grade-A frown in that briefing.”
“Of course, I did, idiot. The moment I sat down, this happened.”
Winn’s hand didn’t slow although his words did. “So... you are saying that watching her appreciate my very fine assets got you... aroused?”
“Apparently.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever had a fantasy of her watching us fuck?”
“No, of course not. I don’t know. It just happened.”
And Winn kept working on James because these “coffee breaks” he had been taking these last few months were a (wet) dream come true. But he wondered if James wasn’t being just a little disingenuous.
///
Jessie had just delivered the five pizzas (one extra-large Veggie Supremo, one small peppers & pepperoni, one Hawai’ian, and two meat-lovers with extra cheese and garlic on Sunday evening when Kara and Lena showed up at Alex’s apartment fifteen minutes later than they had promised. Lena gave Alex an expensive bottle of scotch while Kara muttered to her sister about Sapphic Standard Time and makeup, and Alex had just nodded and grunted.
Lena said, “Kara, I am on time 98% of the time. It’s not like I have superspeed to do the extra three things that sometimes come up all of a sudden.”
Alex took two pieces of her usual peppers and pepperoni and slid them on the plate, “I’ve been reading about lesbian culture in my downtime since Covid. It does seem that Sapphic Standard Time is a real phenomenon.”
Vasquez took two pieces of the Veggie Supremo while Kara was making grabby hands for the box of Hawai’an, and Vasquez slid it over to her with a smirk. “Well, but Al, you’ve been lucky really, since you’ve only dated a first responder and an agent. We’re on time in our sleep. No choice. What have your girlfriends been like, Lena?”
“Andrea was South American, well, still is, so it’s compounded in her case. T plus and hour at best. Veronica never moved quickly as a matter of habit, always keeping people waiting like it was a game. Outside of those, the femmes are usually fifteen minutes late. I never really dated any butches, although from what I’ve seen, they’re usually the ones waiting for their late girlfriends.”
Alex gave Vasquez a significant look as they all took places on the couch and armchairs near the fire in Alex’s apartment. Vasquez sighed. “So, Lena, can we talk about your mother and Cat?”
“Absolutely. I’d love to hear your take on it, Vasquez. You’re the Threat Assessment Officer, aren’t you?”
“More or less. My job has expanded and contracted a lot in the last few weeks.”
“Mm,” said Lena, Eyebrow rising. “You’re hedging. What do you think?”
“I don’t know either one of them, really. This thing with Scholsen, I predicted a version of that pretty much the moment James joined the DEO. I knew Winn because you were close to him, Kara, and he was the first person you told. So I kept an eye on him. And Jimmy, well, James now, had been on my radar for years, because of Clark. But until Supergirl appeared on the scene and Cat branded you, Kara, I wasn’t paying attention to her. And Lillian stayed in the dark a long time with Cadmus. She was very good at not drawing notice to herself. And I try not to reason based on such little knowledge.”
Kara chewed and swallowed. “I was shocked at the betrothal when she brought Lillian in. But thinking back, even before that. The Halloween party at Dollywood. When absolutely none of us dreamed that the evil queen might be Lillian, but Cat saw right through her costume… I still can’t fathom any of that.”
Lena nodded. “I would have bet good money against either one of them showing up to that party, and choosing to independently. They weren’t together. Mother showed up to fuck with us, the way she did at that karaoke night a few years back. And Cat working with Jane and Eliza and Callie… That whole night was very strange.”
“Midlife crisis?” asked Alex. “Because I think something odd might have happened between Jane and Mom.”
“Odd?” asked Kara.
“Mm. Eliza asked if Jane was affected by Pink K that time…”
Kara nearly choked on her pizza. Lena pounded her on the back, and she coughed up some pineapple.
Lena said, “Maybe? I think Lillian has changed. Probably not all for the better and probably not permanently. She did mention that Cat had gone to Wellesley, so at least she knew what she was doing back at Lex’s mountain base.”
This time it was Alex’s turn to spit up beer. Vasquez handed her a paper towel.
“Pink K,” drawled Lena. “The gift that keeps on giving. I did finally get that picture of Cat and Mother dancing at the Daily Planet gala framed. I think I’ll have Jess send them each a copy. That might tell us something.”
Vasquez grinned, a rare sight. “Oooh. Strategic. I like it.”
Kara shook her head. “Somehow, I doubt Cat will add that to the pictures of her boys. But wouldn’t that flip people out if she did…”
Alex shook her head. “Doubt she’s going to want to advertise going on a date with a domestic terrorist who has attempted alien genocide. Sorry, Lena.”
“Oh no, you’re fine, Alex. My mother is who she is. And she did most of her jail time, in the middle of a pandemic, so from her perspective, I suspect she feels she’s paid her debt to society, as much as she would ever admit to having one.”
Vasquez grabbed everybody’s empty crusts and threw them in Alex’s kitchen trash, then got herself another slice of the Veggie. “Well, she also ratted out a great many of her Cadmus connections: names, bank accounts, Lex’s lairs from the bad old days. That made her very popular with Metropolis and National City prosecutors. And she can be very convincing on the stand if they can get her to step that far away from Cadmus.”
Lena shook her head. “I’d think that would be a bridge too far.”
Kara said, “But it might be another data point. I could see Cat pushing her to do the right thing.”
“I can ask Maggie if she knows how those cases are moving forward,” offered Alex.
They agreed to look into it further, then cleaned up and agreed that maybe Steel Magnolias was not the right movie for that particular evening.
Chapter 138: Wild Leaves
Summary:
Okay, I've gotten to the place where I have run out of already-written work that isn't the upcoming wedding, and we have to get through a few months and a few obstacles before we get there.
(And my life these last six months got complicated: mom fell, was in the hospital for two weeks, in rehab for two weeks, got into assisted living (yay), and my siblings and I (and our niblings to some extent) have been using all our vacation/holiday time to scramble to empty the house of the 50 years of things so we can eventually sell it--)
So I am using a combination of this year and last years' Supercorptober prompts to get me through the next few dozen chapters until I find my way and the golden thread again...
Chapter Text
Pill knew that her LCorp colleagues would roll their eyes if they realized that she thought about botany and herbs and plants 24/7, that she spent her Saturdays wandering through the National City Botanical Gardens (and Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary). During more than one visit—
Okay, more than a dozen. Two dozen tops.
--she had carefully stepped into one of the greenhouses, done a quick sweep to make sure that she was alone, flashed a laser at the ubiquitous security cameras to disable them, and taken cuttings of some of the more exotic plants, tucking them away in little plastic freezer bags prepared ahead with damp paper towels and some damp dirt.
That was not what she was doing on this particular visit. She had been planning this one for weeks, ever since the news came out about the Covid-19 vaccine rollout that had started in late February for first responders and the elderly, and had gradually worked through the older generations before it got around to her and her friends.
Well, colleagues. It’s not like she’d had any real friends for years. Certainly, she had none currently, no one she might invite over to her apartment so that they could gush about her menagerie of plants, the normal Earth exotic ones and the hybrids: her lily of the canyon, her prairie bougainvillea, her desert rose.
Well, she couldn’t, really. The United States government had rules about seeds and such from off planet, quarantine regulations and the like. And kryptonite was a schedule VI substance, and while no one expected people to be addicted to it, the knowledge that the handful of Kryptonians on the planet were deathly allergic to it kept it on the government’s watch list. But that was the green version. Strictly speaking, pink kryptonite wasn’t on the schedule.
But some of Pill’s colleagues seemed like the type who would alert the authorities about irregular use of substances and ask questions later. So even if Pill wanted friends or knew how to go about making them and nurturing those relationships the way she nurtured her plants, it just really seemed like an enormous waste of time.
But time was something that could be used well or badly, and Pill had finally (finally!) reached Stage 7 of her project, so this time as she slid into the exotic plant greenhouse, she wasn’t coming in with scissors and empty plastic baggies, oh no.
This time she was coming in with cuttings from her own plants and a small trowel. Because although Pill herself wasn’t a particularly philanthropous, wait, was that a word? Person. That didn’t mean that she didn’t sometimes feel the need… to give back.
///
Jess Huang had a working to-do list on a string of yellow and lavender stickies hanging from the top of the hutch. The yellow ones were reminders of things Jess needed to do for the ongoing works of LCorp: the quarterly audit of the labs, the reminder to check in with the Crows Security agents keeping tabs on the Luthor Alien Clinic, updating the tech for all the employees still working from home, etc. The top lavender sticky had a the last of the department’s people to be vaccinated as of the day before. Jess pulled that one off, crumpled it and tossed into the small blue bin under her desk.
The elevator opened and Lena stepped out, looking thin and elegant in a white linen dress that hugged her figure in all the right places. Jess blushed and busied herself with reorganizing the stickies. She’d been gay for all of five minutes, it felt like. How had she been able to focus on her work before Holtzy opened her eyes to the wonders of women? She’d been blind for decades. The elevator dinged again and the lead scientists from R&D came out. Lena had left her office door open, so Jess just waved them on through. Eve followed last and paused to hand Jess a page of yellow legal paper covered with pink stickies—asks from the lab working on the pink kryptonite project. Jess took them with a sign, rearranging them by what Jess knew to be Lena’s prioritization, which was different from the lab’s.
Jess’s phone binged.
NoGhosts; My turn to cook tonight. How do you feel about kale?
JessIsBest: Not a fan. Maybe spinach?
NoGhosts: Can do! Xxx
There weren’t many things that Kara Danvers and Jess Huang agreed 100% about, but protecting Lena Luthor and avoiding kale, both at all costs, were two.
///
Winn sat at his post in the command center, typing up the protocol he had worked out for the small drones to cover Grant Island for the wedding. Suddenly, he heard barking. “Ah, sh-, sherbert. Finn, can you take my post? Krypto needs to go out.”
Finn looked skeptical, but when a rookie in black tacticals nearly had his arm torn out as Krypto raced into the command center dragging him along, Finn said, “Sure, I guess. Rookie Curtis, is it? Take Winn’s seat and I’ll show you what we do on the morning shift.”
Curtis handed the heavy-duty black leash to Winn and Krypto tried to tear away, but Winn yanked the leash and barked. Krypto whipped around, staring at Winn with jaw wide open.
In Kryptonese, Winn said, “Agent Krypto has need of manners. Until outdoor-going time, Agent Krypto has duty. Combat speed for fun is not manners. Apologies need for Rookie Curtis.” He repeated the last sentence in English.
Krypto closed his mouth, appearing to think, then turned to the Rookie. “Woof?”
Curtis said, “Um, yeah. Well, we all get a little carried away sometimes?”
Winn would take what he could get. He led Krypto to the elevator and hit the button for the subbasement under the indoor parking lot. When the elevator door opened, he kept Krypto on a tight lead while he allowed the guard to do the retina scan that then unlocked the door to the outer corridors. The first was within an airlock and they both closed their eyes and mouths familiar with the short sharp blast of cold air that neutralized their scent. Then they wended their way through the tunnels that led from the DEO’s subbasement, under the police parking garage and up to the narrow closet marked Secondary Maintenance (authorization req’d). It opened out into the maintenance department of the National City Morgue. Winn kind of hated it, but it was the quickest way out of the DEO that didn’t necessarily attract attention.
Krypto carefully didn’t drag him to the center of the nearby park where he relieved himself at length against the trunk of an evergreen pear tree, with its delicate white blooms. Then he shook himself and looked around curiously. Winn followed his gaze to some nearby bushes where a butterfly was flitting from thin branch to thin branch.
“Krypton tree bits! Bits! Krypton! Sun bits!”
And then Krypto did indeed drag Winn around the park chasing butterflies and the best thing that Winn could figure out was that maybe Krypto was a big fan of orange?
Chapter 139: The Courage of the Die-Hard Romantic
Chapter Text
Since Alex had recovered from Covid, she and Vasquez had slept at Alex’s apartment. The king-sized bed had allowed them space when Alex still overheated. Dr. Hamilton had said that they really didn’t know what effects of Covid would be short-term and what might last indefinitely, but it didn’t hurt that Alex could roll away from Vasquez when she needed to.
Vasquez knew she shouldn’t take it personally. If anything, she pretty much expected there to be some distance between them. Vasquez had all but died in Alex’s apocalyptic Covid nightmare, after all. That could cause someone like Alex “I-break-everything-I-touch” Danvers to be… cautious.
That’s what Vasquez told herself. Well, no. Actually, that was what Susan “I-predict-disasters” Vasquez expected. And sure, for the first week that Alex was back on her feet, that was what had happened.
But as the days passed, the (vast) distance between them gradually decreased. Alex still overheated, but instead of rolling away from Vasquez, she simply stripped off the top blanket.
And then the middle blanket.
And then the sheet.
So three weeks after Alex’s recovery, two weeks after the debut of Lena Luthor’s nanobot suit for Supergirl (with pants!), and one week after the Covid vaccine rollout began, Vasquez found herself—in her Captain America t-shirt and Semper Fi sweatpants—the little spoon in the center of the enormous bed with Alex wrapped around her like a koala big spoon, with the sheet and blankets thrown to the floor.
Occasionally, Alex whimpered, and Vasquez thought at first that it was just about how hot her hands were and how cold her feet were tangled with Vasquez’s icy feet. But then Alex’s words became clearer.
“Kara killed Mags… Kara killed Vas… I wish she’d… never have…”
And that was worrying.
“Ring of fire wouldn’t be so… manage with Lena’s… or even Lex… Take ‘em both out... that mother-fuc—”
And Vasquez had read Alex’s memo, marked Director’s Eyes Only, about a protocol for taking out the DEO director with extreme prejudice—as long as the Assistant Director, the Chief of Medicine, and the Chief Decontamination Officer all simultaneously signed off on the action, judging the director to be incapable of fulfilling her/his duties.
At first, Vasquez had been tempted to tear up the paper draft and erase the digital version from the mainframe. But then…
Well, they weren’t so far away from the early days of the pandemic, when the United States president had tried to bullshit his way through a pandemic because he was too stupid, ignorant, reckless, hell, all the things, to realize that his actions could lead to people dying.
Vasquez had read the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which offered a way forward for removing a sitting US president if he/she were found by his/her cabinet members as being unable to fulfill the duties of the office. And sure, the person with the nuclear codes obviously need oversight. The amendment had finally passed in the late 1960s, having been in the works since Eisenhower’s administration, with his illnesses.
Vasquez opened her eyes and watched the lights from passing cars trace pale light against the dark ceiling. Alex let go and rolled over. Vasquez turned and pushed herself up on her elbow, caressed Alex’s hand lying on the pillow next to Alex’s head. Her fingers feathered over Alex’s Claddagh ring, the material representation of their promise to hold each other’s hearts safe with both hands.
Vasquez rolled out of bed and padded past the Wonder Woman nightlight to the bathroom, peeing for a long time and swearing (again) not to drink coffee after three in the afternoon. Then she stood and went to the kitchen, measured out water and coffee grounds, setting up the coffee pot to start at six-thirty. She pulled her DEO laptop to the kitchen island and opened the digital version of Alex’s proposed protocol, tweaked it, saved it.
Then, for the first time since those heady days after the end of the Battle of National City, Vasquez Googled “diamond engagement ring, conflict-free.”
Back when Alex had been a rookie and Vasquez had been her Supervising Officer, Vasquez had worked hard to train Alex not to think of fatal self-sacrifice as a reasonable answer to problematic missions. She had repeated over and over again that commercial air safety chestnut: secure your own oxygen first before turning to secure that of passengers who might need your help; you had to be alive to help others.
But Vasquez had also trained Alex Danvers to be a lethal weapon, a fearless leader, a woman who was, eventually, comfortable with wielding the power of life and death over her subordinates as well as her enemies, willing to go toe-to-toe even with her RedK-poisoned supersister.
Vasquez hadn’t forgotten that absolute power could corrupt. Apparently neither had Alex. And Vasquez loved Alex Danvers. Absolutely.
Alex had come up with a way to protect her subordinates and her city from that dark side of her that she had recently discovered and come to terms with, a way that was measured rather than suicidal, a way that accepted her own power, but refused to let it corrupt her.
Fuck it. Vasquez really needed to marry that woman.
///
Cat Grant felt like death warmed over. The second Covid shot had affected her far worse than the first had. The first one, back in mid-February, had simply made her joints ache and given her a brief fever that was more like an extended hot flash, so basically it had just brought out what Cat felt to be the medium that held her true superpower as a pragmatic journalistic genius: her menopausal body. Being a woman of a certain age had given Cat a perspective that could clearly see, and see her way around, the patriarchal bullshit that underlay the capitalist project that Cat had twisted to her advantage to build her media empire.
The fact that her genius had never really carried over to her personal life no longer left her lying awake at night. Or not much. Not often. Tonight, it was the vaccine that left her lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, remembering wedding number one and her optimism, the pastel flowers and her white dress. Her arm ached. Her head was on fire. She had sweated her way through her flannel winter nightgown and then her spring cotton one. Finally, she found herself in a hot shower at three in the morning.
(And that did not bring on any non-marital memories at all, and certainly not ones from the Covid lockdown.)
She wrapped her head in a towel and her body in a terrycloth robe. Carter was at his father’s place, so Cat allowed herself to turn on a single light in the kitchen, pour herself a glass of scotch and wander over to the glass doors that led out to the balcony overlooking National City.
Her body was not going to let her sleep anytime soon. And her mind was no better, relentlessly reminding her of her second wedding, this one to Carter’s father, the ivory dress, the red and orange flowers, the hope, and the triumph that was her book about love and success having just come out to rave reviews the week before.
In retrospect, had she let the book’s success distract her from the tiny red flags that seemed to have been hiding among the mums? But Carter had come from that marriage, so she refused to regret it. And her vaccine- & scotch-addled brain refused to even recognize the pun of the mums and the red flags. Pour another finger or two and wash it away…
Why she had chosen to get married after the second one was probably more for her therapist to mull over. Certainly, her depression had been a piece. And her mother’s insistence that a woman without a husband was somehow less of a success than a woman who needed one.
Across the city, she thought she saw a swift arc of light. A shooting star? A drone? Supergirl?
Cat had never been tempted to have any of her weddings on the island, almost as if she had known that a failed marriage would ruin that refuge for her. Yet she had offered it to Lena without a second thought. Well, she had seen from Kara’s first article about LCorp that the Sapphic scientist had an outsized effect on the rookie reporter, expanding her mind, widening her already open heart. A series of green flags. A scattering of emeralds.
And maybe it was that image, a scattering of emerald green stones over the back of her turned-over laptop that reminded Cat Grant of the recent discovery by Foster.com (a subsidiary of LCorp) of a small but considerable seam of Brucite gems in Brewster, a small town about an hour north of Metropolis. The discovery had been fortuitous. LCorp had been struggling for years to increase the energy output, efficiency, and smooth, uninterrupted delivery of the multiple prototypes of the Luthor ElectroCore. Lena’s most recent idea, using pyroelectric gems, had seemed promising but prohibitively expensive because of the rarity and small size of the crystal minerals that could generate an electrical potential when heated or cooled, causing positive and negative charges on opposite ends, polarizing it. It didn’t help that most of those gems had been found in Namibia. But the new cache of local Brucite crystals might be a game-changer.
And wasn’t that the nature of courage? To unpack a problem like, say, climate change or a life of chronic loneliness, and have the hope to say a solution is possible, just maybe possible, even if, from a distance, the solution seemed to be highly unfeasible. Not that Cat was positing a Lena-style Sapphic solution to Cat’s history of failed romantic relationships with men, not in general and definitely not with regard to someone like Lillian Luthor.
Well, there was really no one like Lillian Luthor. There was just Lillian: the tall, enigmatic snarky chessmaster; the fundamentally lonely anti-alien supervillain. It said a lot, Cat realized that she was acknowledging Lillian’s forest of red flags without a therapist there to elicit the information from here. That part seemed positive. The other part, the part where she kept defaulting to think about Lillian in a relationship-context, well, maybe that was just the burden of the die-hard romantic.
Chapter 140: Great-Granddad’s Money Garden
Summary:
Sorry for this being a week late. Finals are almost upon us. Peace.
Chapter Text
Back when Alex Danvers and her DEO sidekick had dropped down out of the sky on his National City headquarters and taken out two dozen of his minions, right before he had hit the failsafe that had blown the building to high heaven, Lex Luthor had slid into his personal submarine and zipped down toward the northwestern coast of Mexico to wait out the initial kerfuffle. Well, there was only so far that a small submersible could go, particularly when powered by a diesel engine…
Post-election and post-inauguration, Lex had gone back to the drawing board, digging up a design he and Lena had started right after she got her PhD from MIT. Lex had come to celebrate with her and they had both gotten very drunk. And drunk Lena could be very creative. She had seen the possibilities for the pyroelectric crystals as polarizable batteries even back then, and he’d been smart enough NOT to verbalize his thought that kryptonite might be used for that kind of purpose.
Over the ensuing years, he had tinkered with the regular green kryptonite, loving how—if he could make it work—his krypto-reactor would both run a larger submarine and also provide passive protection from those Kryptonians he so despised. Then, after Maxwell Lord had caused the RedK fiasco in National City, Lex got his hands on some of Max’s stash. (Well, a little corporate espionage was just part of the cost of doing business, after all.) And the RedK was stronger, just… erratic, which was not a characteristic one wanted of an energy source for a submarine…
But in the last few weeks, his spy at LCorp had smuggled out Lena’s vastly improved protocol for making pink K from his tablets of proto K. Previously, Lex had always ruled out using the pink stuff on the submarine project, or any of his energy projects, really. The side effects were fine for Superman and his ilk. Lex didn’t need any of… that.
But pink K was stable, far more stable than any of the versions he had ever worked with. So he donned some serious PPE and strapped on the anti-K tech that Non and the Kryptonian criminals had come up with, and Lex had continued to tinker. But the kryptonite alone wasn’t doing the trick…
Then he had remembered an old family story about great-great-grandfather Leopold Luthor who had been in the China trade between the world wars, and there were rumors of a deal he had made—sold his soul if you believed in such things—for a perfect emerald the size of a child’s fist: the Eye of the Emperor; well, Lex had always been skeptical, but now he had time on his hands and LuthorCorp-Hong Kong had an extensive archive.
He left Otis behind and invited Otis’s sister Mercedes to come with him, figuring that if they had a containment leak of the pink K they would both be safe for the two weeks it took the LexoSub to cross the Pacific Ocean. They parked the sub in Macao with one of Lex’s old boarding school chums for whom Lex had done some favors back in the day, and borrowed his private helicopter to get to Hong Kong, and from LCorp, they took a towncar to Jardine’s lookout, where the old estate still stood.
Surrounded by a high stone wall, the main residence was always locked and guarded by security with rough-looking dogs, but in between the outbuildings peacocks roamed, shrieking whenever they saw a human. Presumably, the guards and their dogs were used to it. Lex smirked when Mercedes heard them for the first time and jumped in shock. Lex quickly used his set of keys to get into the main building, and then a hand scan and retina scan to get into the inner sanctum.
The rooms they passed through were wallpapered with dense Victorian floral patterns. The antique furniture was all covered with white dust sheets, barely identifiable by their lumpy shapes. Mercedes’ eyebrow rose as she undoubtedly started calculating the value of the property, but Lex clicked his tongue and she obediently followed him to a small den with a hidden door that led to stairs winding in a tight circle that was at least three stories down into the rock of the Peak. More keys. More bioscans. A typed in password, hexadecimal, of course. Then they stepped into a vault.
Lex had only ever seen the vault twice: once, as a boy (before Lena came to live with them), he had accompanied his father on a trip to Japan and China, and they had spent a few tense days with Lionel’s father there in Hong Kong. Lionel and his father barely spoke to each other the whole time, but apparently that had not been the point of the side trip. This vault had been the point. Lex’s grandfather had brought him down the winding stairs and showed him the vault door. It hadn’t had the biosensors back then, just a series of keys, which his grandfather had promised would be Lex’s one day. Then Lex had dutifully followed him back up to the ground floor of the residence, somehow knowing never to speak of it with his father.
The second time he had been back at the vault was after his falling out with Superman. He had inherited the estate when his grandfather died (Lionel having been cut from the will years before), but he had been so preoccupied dealing with Superman’s Red K breakdown–
…
Lex walked into his personal lab at LuthorCorp, running his hands through his hair and picturing the servo motor for the LexoSuit prototype. It had come to him in a dream, the way he could miniaturize a dozen servo motors and network them to make the LexoSuits not merely armor for his employees but autonomous robo-soldiers. It had seemed to him for years unfair that Superman had to patrol Metropolis alone. Surely, he could use some super sidekicks, supercharged?
But when he went to place his hand on the biosensor next to the door, it was… gone? Something incredibly strong had ripped it from the wall and ripped the door open. Good God, was General Zod back?
Carefully, Lex pushed the door open. The lights were off. There were no outside windows. The only lights came from the computers at the back of the room and the lights on his electric tools and bright red light twining like ivy above the computer screen of his desktop where Superman sat, typing at superspeed.
“Superman, what are you doing?”
“Alexander Luthor! I have discovered your plans for world domination!”
“O-kaaay. That’s just a side gig, Supes. What seems more important is what is happening to your face? And hands…”
“Professor Gizmo broke out of Arkham Asylum and he brought a deadly poisonous rock with him! I have maybe hours to live! He gave me the password to your network, told me to see for myself!”
“See what?” said Lex, slowly backing toward the door.
Superman slammed him against the wall. The red light climbing all over his face and hands looked even more terrifying close up, as if they were covered with electrified blood. “I have found your plans for your LexoSoldiers.”
“--that were only ever meant as back up for you, buddy!” Lex squeaked out.
“I found your master plan for world domination! Code name MaPlaWoDo?”
“The name was a joke. It sounded so much better than ‘executive summary for my business plan for the robots.’”
“Autonomous flying robo-soldiers with artillery capacity that could take out a city block? And the ubiquitous quantum controller that has satellites pointed at every major city in the United States?”
Lex felt that iron arm against his throat, “To repel aliens!”
The arm pushed further in, Lex felt his larynx being crushed. “Aliens like me?”
“No! Bad– Only the bad–”
Superman pulled his arm away and Lex fell to his knees retching as he tried to breathe.
Suddenly, the building shook and the ceiling exploded, sending Lex and Superman flying across the room amid chunks of concrete and fiberglass. Sunlight flooded the room. Superman pushed himself off Lex, turning toward the bright gash in the building like a heliotropic flower.
The door burst open and a dozen police in helmets ran in, followed by Lois Lane. The police arrested both Superman and Lex. The two of them spent the night in jail yelling at each other, yelling every horrible thought they’d ever had about each other. Eventually, the mayor of Metropolis came down personally to let them both out, after forcing them to shake hands in front of the TV cameras.
But nothing had ever been the same since then.
…
Standing in front of the vault door with Mercedes, Lex ran his hand through– Oh, right. Over his bald scalp. He sighed and pulled out the keys, inserting them one at a time and turning them in different directions. A narrow door slid open to reveal bio scanners: he pressed his hands against two blue glass plates while a laser ran up and down his hands until he was recognized as 100% Lex Luthor, but he still had to do the eye scan before the next steel door slid open. A blue laser ran at knee height between the two sides of the door frame. He carefully stepped over it and said, “Sorry, Mercedes, Luthors only. Be right back.”
He found it in the bottom left drawer of the safe, an antique wooden box with Leopold Luthor’s stylized LL, just the way his grandfather had drawn it in the coded diaries it had taken Lex years to decode. He picked it up, saw the puzzle style lock and set the box in his briefcase, and carefully rejoined Mercedes, relocking the door with the same bio scans that had unlocked.
Mercedes asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I did, thanks for asking.”
“Will it do what you need it to?”
“That remains to be seen,” he said, as he led her back up the many stairs up to the ground floor of the house.
Because of course, first he had to unlock the thing, and the diaries had been characteristically cryptic about how he was supposed to do that. No matter. They had two weeks to get back across the Pacific Ocean. With any luck, by the time the sub docked off Tijuana, he would have solved the puzzle and unlocked the box.
Chapter 141: The Protocol for Dressing Kara
Chapter Text
Lena stepped into the back of the towncar and smiled as Ted closed the door behind her. Jess had cleared her schedule for the day weeks before when she had made this very special appointment for Lena. Ted drove at the speed limit through National City, merged smoothly onto the highway and quickly picked up speed to match the other cars buzzing north out of town. Twenty minutes later, they went through a ghastly clover-leaf exchange and were buzzing northeast toward the mountains. The sun shone brightly, glinting off rearview mirrors of cars ahead of them, but the car’s back windows were tinted, so Lena didn’t need her sunglasses. Snug in her seatbelt, she sat quietly with her tablet in her lap, ready in case she got any design ideas.
Like Winn, Lena found herself thinking about how to protect their superfriends fairly often. The kryptonite-processing suit (with pants! and pockets!) had been in gestation since the day after the explosion on Haystack Mountain when Lillian’s minion Corbin refused to accept Supergirl’s help and died when his kryptonite heart exploded. Lena would never forget how fast Supergirl had flown up, up, and away from the wave of green, breaking the sound barrier and rising up to where the air was cold and thin before remembering that Lena needed to be closer to Earth.
(Ever since then, whenever Lena grew cold in her sleep, her dreams would veer back to that mountain, back to that terror that Supergirl would be caught by the shock wave of kryptonite and they would both drop with the finality of an anvil discovering gravity. Then she would wake, usually with the sheets pushed off the bed, and roll over to cuddle against Kara who would be just as warm in their bedroom as she had been flying them both back down to the DEO.)
For something ordinary like Supergirl’s original suit, a genius of Winn’s level was sufficient. For the K-suit, with its nanobots optimized not only to change mass and volume, but also to filter poisons, Lena’s genius was good enough.
But Lena had been thinking a lot lately.
About Kara, because, duh, but this time less about her favorite Kryptonian saving the world (again) or her (again), and more about, well, the wedding.
Lena had never been like most of the girls she’d met at boarding school, who had, by the age of twelve, planned their weddings fairly microscopically, and then practiced with their Barbie and Ken dolls in the intervening years. Some of them, who had older sisters or younger aunts, had attended weddings and read the bridal magazines, which gave them even more details to plan for, like gifts for the wedding party.
As a small child, Lena hadn’t thought much about weddings, being vaguely aware that her mother hadn’t had one. Later, growing up with the Luthors, the family had attended all the “right” weddings of the people in their “circle,” where the guest lists had been extensive and elite, which had seemed like a contradiction in terms to both Lena and Lex. One of the best things about events like that was that there was usually an open bar and Lex had gotten them both rum and Cokes, and Lex had taught her how to drink just enough to feel a little tipsy but not enough for anyone to notice. That lesson had served her well in boarding school and beyond.
So, no, for most of her life, Lena had not given much thought to ever having a wedding. At first, having come out as gay early (at least to herself, and later to Lex, and eventually to family and friends), she never believed gay marriage would be a possibility. Then Lex had imploded and Lena had lost a lot of friends, much less love interests.
But then Kara Danvers walked in and said she didn’t need her parking validated because she had flown to LCorp “on a bus.” Lena smiled, glancing out the sedan’s window. They were rising as they drove along the side of the mountain on a parkway with evergreens on both sides of the road. Lena pictured Grant Island as she had seen it from Kara’s photographs. She imagined the green of the ocean and the smell of sea air, but she also imagined the smell of cordite and the otherworldly green of kryptonite bullets.
She imagined Kara standing with her, their hands clasped together as J’onn said wise things as they prepared to say their vows. Kara’s blue eyes sparkling, one eyebrow up because she could tell Lena thought she looked sexy as fuck in the white tie and tails.
And then shots fired. And then blood all over Kara’s pristine white vest, electric green veins spreading like a web over her face.
No.
No lesbians were going to die at her wedding. Or any of their gay or straight friends. She hadn’t yet decided about any bald evil masterminds. Time would tell. But for now, she was going to prepare, in the way that they had taught her MIT undergraduates when she had been a teaching assistant for her advisor:
Try the problem with all the tools you know. Cry. Then ask for help.
///
Dressed in his rarely worn khaki tactical uniform, Winn met Alex in the armory, in the restricted section lined with led, a back room that felt more like a vault than simply a place for all the weapon racks. But that’s where the Special Weapons lived, alien plasma rifles, kryptonite rifles, the kryptonite sword Alex had used to kill Astra with, and all of the tools of Operation Sundown. In a repurposed corner, Winn was storing the new tools (that was Alex’s code name for them) that she and he had devised in part with the help of Detective Joe, who had explained how his weapon worked and helped them prototype one like it. But that wasn’t what Alex had come to see.
Winn pulled out two silver suitcases and carried them to the front of the armory where Alex stood, wearing her Winn Schott Jr supersuit and looking fairly deadly. With a nod, she beckoned him to follow her and, as the elevator rose story after story, Winn realized they would be going somewhere in a helicopter.
The door finally opened to show Finn in one of the smaller helicopters, an MH-6 Little Bird. Finn was in the pilot seat preparing for liftoff as Alex got in the co-pilot’s seat and Winn stowed his gear in the back and strapped in. Putting on his radio headphones drowned out the noisy engine starting up and allowed him to hear Finn and Alex talking about the prevailing winds.
They rose above the DEO building and set out southeast, over highways connecting smaller towns, over tree-covered hills, following the silver line of National City River until it parted into two smaller waterways. Then they flew over the edge of a desert and lowered to the ground, loose dirt and pebbles upset as the helicopter blades slowed to a stop. This was nowhere near the DEO HQ in Nevada, but the geography was similar. Well, this was as good a place as any to test the magnetic EMPs he had devised, not to mention the micro-grenades. Winn grinned. This was going to be fun.
///
Ted pulled the black sedan up to the green door of a log cabin that stood backed up to part of the rocky mountainside. This was not the building that Lena had been expecting but she exited the car, walked up to the door and rapped with the brass knocker.
Immediately the door opened to reveal a short woman, not even five feet tall, with a black bob and enormous black glasses. “Lena Luthor. Right on time. Come in, come in. No time to waste, darling.”
Glad that Jess had recommended that Lena wear flats, she hurried down the hall after the woman to a door at the back of the cabin. The woman lay her hand flat against one biosensor and opened her eye wide for a retinal scan, and the door opened to reveal a shiny metal corridor, more like something Lena would have expected on a battleship, but as they hurried down it, she noted its likeness to Lex’s underground bunker and realized that they must be going inside the mountain.
Another door led to a room lined on all four sides with computers. In the center was a low white table with two low white chairs. A green and blue teapot sat steaming on the table.
“Lena Luthor. You are pleased to make my acquaintance, I’m sure. I am Edna Mode. Have a seat and tell me what you are looking for. I warn you, I don’t work for villains anymore. They don’t pay their bills in a timely manner.”
“I’m not a villain–”
“No, dear. Of course not. I was thinking of your brother.” She plopped down in one chair and poured tea into two china cups.
Lena sat in the too-low chair. “He’s the reason I’m here. We believe he is going to attack our wedding–”
“This is you and the Girl of Steel, I presume? Haven’t you already built her a new costume?”
Lena nearly spilled her tea. “I– Yes, you’ve seen it?”
Mode shrugged. “Professional interest. I noted you got rid of that foolish red cape. Excellent choice. And nano-drone delivery. Innovative.”
“Yes, thank you. But I was thinking of something more layered, protective, but also with offensive capabilities.” Lena slid the early boxy prototype of the K-suit across the table and tapped it so that it shot into the air at about Kara’s chest height and deployed itself as a complete suit.
Edna hopped up and started measuring it, muttering to herself. “Yes, yes, many possibilities… I assume you want less Clark Kent and more Fred Astaire, darling, is that right?”
“Y-yes? Yes.”
“Yes! I can do that.” She emptied her tea cup. “And what about a suit for you?”
“Me? Oh no. I’ve got Lex’s Lexo-Suit.”
“Tut tut. Unacceptable. Time of deployment: ten seconds. Too slow! A sniper could squeeze off a shot in half that time.”
“How do you know it’s ten seconds?”
“I watch the news. Professional interest. Ten point three eight seconds, to be exact. Have it messengered to me and I’ll cut off the bloat. Lex Luthor only thinks he’s a great designer. You want an expert.”
“I, yes, Ms. Mode–”
“Edna, darling. No, come along. We both have our jobs to get back to.”
Lena found herself being hurried along the corridor and out through the faux log cabin. Ted hopped out of the car and held the back door open for her.
“Toodle-oo,” said Edna, already back in the cabin with the door slamming shut.
Lena didn’t know what had just happened, but at least she had a pleasant drive back to National City to contemplate it.
Chapter 142: Marooned, Alone, Naturally
Chapter Text
Ms. Madison had been teaching in Metropolis Rembrandt High School for six years, ever since she got her teaching degree. Six years was a long time to teach fourteen-eighteen-year-olds. Sometimes she felt as old as the hills. But at least she’d been smart enough not to teach elementary, where children were feral, or junior high, where they still had mostly child bodies but were starting to feel the wash of hormones without an accompanying maturing brain. High school was better.
She always had loved the freshman civics class that culminated in a field trip to see the museum about American immigrants on Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty on nearby Liberty Island. Most years, the day of the trip was cold enough to keep the exuberant 14-year-olds sleepy and calm, but this year, spring had come roaring in early, and the kids were engaging in “antics” and “high spirits” as her teachers had sometimes called them. Fine. Whatever. As long as they weren’t trying to smoke or drink from a flask, they’d all survive.
The students knew they had to have a partner and be responsible for each other. As they made their way back to the ferry, Ms. Madison called out student names and the kids either called out, “Here!” or gave the student’s excuse. “Danny got sick on the ferry and had to go back.” “Erin got detention for messing with the exhibits. Mr. Roberts took her back to school, and he’s not back yet.” “Ruby’s mom had a work emergency, so she went back with Erin and Mr. Roberts.”
And because it had been a long time since Ms. Madison had dealt with feral children, and had not considered how the Covid lockdown and year doing online school could have messed with the chronologically older children, she took their excuses at face value and told the ferry guide that all were present and accounted for.
///
Unlike her classmates at the high school, Ruby Arrias was mature for her age. Since returning from National City, she had grown two inches, started her period and started developing breasts. She’d lost a lot of the baby fat that she’d always hated, and frequently got mistaken for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old, which she loved.
(Her mother didn’t.)
So, when she had struck up a conversation with one of the National Park Service rangers about her background as a mixed ethnicity kid doing a history project, the ranger had no reason to think that she had not taken the subway to the ferry, no reason to assume she had anything to do with the visiting class from Rembrandt. So, even though she didn’t have a reservation, the ranger (Sally) took her all the way up Lady Liberty’s crown, where they could both look out on Metropolis Harbor and the city.
And up there, 265 feet in the air, they didn’t hear the ruckus that was the Rembrandt group gathering to return by ferry to downtown Metropolis.
///
Sam Arias’s office at LCorp-Metropolis was not pristine white. That sort of thing was all well and good for Lena, who had no children and who had Jess Huang to keep track of her meetings and other responsibilities. Sam also had a personal assistant, but PAs like Jess and Kara didn’t exactly grow on trees. Sam had a lot to do and some things inevitably didn’t get done. Minor events got shifted from one day on her calendar to another, or got dropped altogether. Just that morning Sam had dropped her coffee mug when trying to catch a stack of paper that was sliding off her desk. Coffee everywhere. Papers everywhere. Bits of black ceramic mug under her desk.
It was in moments like this that Sam was grateful for the grey and brown multicolored industrial rug that covered her office floor. Maintenance people had come up and cleared the mess and no one would ever know that the rug was now at least as caffeinated as Sam was.
Another person might have tried to come up with a better filing system for current projects than a pile on her desk, but Sam was too much an adherent of synchronicity to bother with that. Often the spilled piles (if not the spilled coffee) ended up uncovering a to-do list or another buried artifact that served to jog her memory so that she did whatever thing she had apparently forgotten to do.
Today’s buried treasure was the list Ruby had made for her of websites that gave advice on how to write a best man speech, because Jess had told Sam that if Jess had to stand up and give a speech at Lena’s wedding reception, then so did the other bridesmaids. As if Sam didn’t already have enough on her plate.
Ruby’s list included a wedding photographer’s website, a bridal website, several YouTube videos, and a long Reddit conversation about worst wedding toasts ever that Ruby had annotated for “Things to Avoid” and “put down coffee before reading LOL.” Her daughter knew her well.
She looked at her watch. Ruby would be getting home early after her class trip. If Sam got through the rest of her to-do list in an expedited manner, she would leave the office early, pick up a large pizza as a treat, and Ruby could regale her about the trip while they ate, before they both did their homework before bed.
///
When Ruby and the ranger came back down from the crown of Lady Liberty to see the school group just gone, Ruby didn’t panic and she didn’t call her mother for help. She was in high school now, practically an adult, and she had her phone. She asked the ranger if she could charge her phone at the ranger station, and spent the time while it charged looking for the best way to get home.
Ferry to Liberty Landing, ten minutes. Ferry from Liberty Landing to Brookfield Place Terminal, twelve minutes. Walk fourteen minutes from the terminal to Chambers Street. Pick up the C Line to Lafayette Avenue, eleven minutes. She had walked from Lafayette home before, but it had been a while, so she didn’t remember how long it took, but she figured if she got that far, it would probably be fair to call her mom to come get her.
Sure. No sweat.
///
Sam pulled into the driveway with her stomach growling with hunger. She pulled the two large pizzas—veggies with added pineapple and meat lover with added mushrooms—off the passenger seat and locked her car door before turning toward the house and seeing that the lights were not on. She hurried up the path and pulled her house keys out of her coat pocket, juggling the pizza boxes while pulling open the screen door and unlocking the front door.
She entered the dim living room calling, “Ruby? Rubes, did you fall asleep after school today? I thought school trips were supposed to be restful. Rubes?”
She turned on a lamp and hurried toward the empty kitchen, setting the pizzas down on the table and pulling out her phone. No recent calls. She hit Ruby’s number and heard it ring repeatedly. Then a click!
“Rubes, where are you—”
“Hi! This is Ruby. I am not on my phone right now, but if you leave a message at the beep, I will be! Beeep.”
“Hey, Rubes, it’s Mom. Where are you? I just got home with pizzas—”
“Oh, Mom! It’s you! Perfect. Um, I should be getting to Lafayette Avenue in like, a minute. Could you come pick me up? I can wait in front of the CVS.”
“Lafayette? Why aren’t you on a school bus with—”
There was a mechanical screech on the other end of the phone. Ruby said, “Oh, Mom, here’s my stop. See you soon!”
Sam looked at her phone and sighed, grabbing her car keys and heading out the door she’d just come in. She’d been warned that Ruby would become more of a handful as she entered her teenaged years. Alas, being forewarned hadn’t helped.
///
“—so I just recharged my phone, got the directions and came home. Mostly.”
“Rubes, you could have gotten lost, you could have gotten hurt, why didn’t you tell anybody what you were doing or where you were going? Why didn’t you just call me?”
“Mom, I’m not twelve anymore. I can take care of myself. You don’t need to be putting down everything to come rescue me anymore. You have too many important things to do.”
Sam inhaled to argue back but paused. The golden light lit her daughter’s hair like it was lighting an angel and the sight of Ruby scarfing down four pieces of pizza one after the other, she knew, was a sign that Ruby was truly all right. And growing. She would be Sam’s height soon. She wasn’t an adult yet, not by far, but she also wasn’t a little kid anymore.
“Mom! I’m okay!”
Sam sighed. “I see that, babe. But all those important things I have to do? You will always be one of them. The most important one. We’re a team. My life would fall apart if anything ever happened to you.”
“C’mon, Mom. We got through Reign. We can get through anything. Are you gonna finish that?”
Sam passed a half a piece of the veggie and pineapple over to her daughter’s plate. “Fine. You managed it this time. And I am going in and having Words with your teacher and principal tomorrow. But tonight, you don’t have homework so you can help me start working on my speech for the reception.”
And Sam knew that her daughter loved writing more than anything else lately, except maybe research, so although Sam was in no way rewarding her daughter for her successful independent use of New York’s complicated transit system, Ruby would know she was proud of her.
Chapter 143: Heroics at Twilight
Summary:
Another slightly late one. It went in a direction I did not entirely expect.
Chapter Text
Ever since the pandemic, Adelle DeWitt worked from home at least three weeks a month. Most of the Dollhouse’s administrative staff did. The idea during lockdown was to decrease the population density of the building, make it easier to social distance. She had instituted a three-day lag time between receiving the parameters for an engagement and programming and sending out the requested Doll. It wouldn’t do to accidentally infect any of their millionaire clients with Covid, after all.
At her house in Opal City, Adelle could distance herself from the often-sordid nature of her job, recruiting individuals who were throwing their lives away, erasing their pain along with their personalities, giving them the personalities and skillsets and sending them off with their handler to go be somebody’s daydream.
Even before the pandemic, Adelle had been encouraging the more therapeutic engagements, bringing back a dead partner to ask for forgiveness, to recreate the way things should have gone if there were any justice in the world. Adelle was perfectly aware of the irony that such forgiveness or justice, as synthetic as it was, was only achievable by the very rich. She knew she should have gotten out of the job years ago. She had more than enough money. But she would still want to work, use her mind, and her skillset as the director of what she worked very hard not to think of as a very high-tech bordello and well, what kind of job would require those skills?
She sat down at her laptop on the dining room table. The list of dolls who had finally gotten their second Covid vaccine was almost complete at all the North American offices. She heard her phone buzz and jumped up to find her purse, but the phone turned out to be on the charger at her bedside. By the time she pulled it off the charger, it had stopped ringing and there was a short voicemail from a number she didn’t recognize.
She really needed a job that didn’t normalize all her clients calling her from untraceable burner phones.
She hit play and recognized the voice immediately. “Addy, it’s El. I’ll be in Opal City in the next day or two. Would you care for a dinner partner? My treat this time. Say tomorrow, 7:30, at La Petite Porte? Reservation in the name of Rose Calvin. Text me if that won’t work. Otherwise, I’ll see you then.”
Adelle’s eyebrow rose sharply. La Porte was the fanciest restaurant in Opal City. Up until 2015, their menu had always been in French. She’d only ever been there twice (once before the change, once after), and of course she’d never been the one paying. No doubt Lillian would reserve one of the private rooms upstairs, but still it wasn’t like her to dine in public, especially not if they were going to talk about (well, around really) their work.
But at least that probably meant her parole was over.
///
Kara carried the two full paper bags into the offices of Feel the Bern Magazine, her mouth watering at the scent wafting up to her nose. Normally, she didn’t work past four o’clock, but with some of the writers out with Covid, she had volunteered to fill in, and since it was impossible for her to write about food without getting enormously hungry, she decided to feed two birds with one… okay, that didn’t work, but she hated metaphors about killing things.
As she entered the bullpen, Cassie DeWitt (no relation), came out of her office rubbing her hands together with delight. “This should be good. It’s always a great day when Danvers picks up dinner! What have you got for us, kid?”
“Veggie burgers from that new place just down from the newish veterinarian place.”
The other writers gathered around Kara’s desk as she pulled out wrapped sandwiches and handed them out. “Who had cheese? Who had the double? Barbecue and onion? Also, I got a few of their chik’n sandwiches, not sure what that’s going to taste like, and a vegan hot dog. The cheese is plant-based too…”
Cassie pulled envelopes of fries out of the other bag and handed them out. Suddenly, Kara’s head snapped up. “Oh! I forgot to get drinks! Be right back!” She hurried out and ducked behind the building.
Supergirl launched up into the air listening for the alarms going off across town, following their sound down to land outside the front door of Patriot Bank, where she saw black-clad gunmen in black masks holding guns on a guard and half a dozen people lying on the floor. Police sirens were still a few blocks away, so she just pulled open the door and supersped to grab all the guns before the criminals had even registered the blue and red blur. She tied them together with their belts and left them in a pile, then at normal speed, helped up the bank customers and the guard, received the manager’s thanks graciously, and then hurried off to that one place on Main Street that carried liter bottles of birch beer.
The trick, she often thought, was remembering what you had used as your excuse to leave in a hurry.
///
Adelle hurried through the rain from her car to the restaurant, where the maître d’ kindly took her umbrella and sodden trench coat, gave them to the coat check woman and handed her a ticket.
“And does Mademoiselle have a reservation? We are a bit full this evening.”
“Rose Calvin.”
“Ah! Excellent. Follow me, please.”
He led her up a flight of stairs to a short hallway, the walls of which were papered with some textured wallpaper with a complex maroon and navy floral pattern. A single knock on the second mahogany door, and he opened it and gestured for her to enter.
Lillian looked up from her phone and smiled that genuine smile that Adelle had never seen in any of the photos of her. Her ash-blonde hair was up in an elaborate do and the cream turtleneck somehow brought out the blue of her eyes. Lillian half rose, they air-kissed and then the maître d’ seated Adelle and left.
“El, it’s so good to see you. What’s the occasion?”
“I’ve found myself thinking of you quite often lately. I hope you don’t mind. I ordered grilled artichokes and a St. Emillon red for starters.”
Adelle’s eyebrows rose. “My favorites. That sounds lovely.”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d like for the entree. They do a very good striped bass here, and the ribeye melts in your mouth. I haven’t had their lamb myself, but I think Lex used to love it.”
“Well, St. Emillon always goes well with beef.”
A waiter came in and took their order, and then another came in to uncork and serve their wine and leave the bottle.
Adelle watched Lillian swirl the wine in her glass and sniff it delicately. That was one of the things about her friend that she could never understand. Lillian was six feet tall, had a mind like a steel trap and a grip like a pro tennis player, but was always delicate when she was enjoying the finer things of life. Adelle sniffed their wine and took a sip, but she was distracted by another scent.
“El, have you changed your perfume?”
Lillian blushed. (For a moment Adelle couldn’t believe her eyes.) The waiter entered and served the grilled artichokes and left. She said, “Ita dakimasu.”
Adelle smiled and nodded, and they began to eat.
Lillian said, “I’ve been thinking about our programming.”
Glad that she was still chewing, Adelle grunted lightly.
“I remember you said once, a long time ago, that humans were just very complicated computers. Some of us have good code and some have bad code, and some people have better or worse hardware. But beyond those basics, a good programmer could potentially deprogram or reprogram the code for addiction, mental illness, anti-social tendencies, fundamentally erasing many of the problems that are inherent in human nature.”
“I was right about a lot of it. Not psychosis, unfortunately.” She rubbed a pale white scar just above her watch, absently glancing at the closed door. “But most human behavior isn’t rooted as deeply as that, so, yes, we are quite programmable.”
“What about sexuality?”
“Oh, that’s one of the easiest. A psychologist friend has the theory that humans are born basically bisexual and then for most people, socialization makes them stick to opposite sex attraction their entire lives.”
“Hmm. Is it still most people? In the twenty-first century?”
“Yes and no. Socialization these days admits that there are more ways to be. It’s one of the reasons the homophobes don’t want kids to get any information that doesn’t toe the heterosexual line.”
“Mm.” Lillian took another sip of wine, looking deep in thought.
Adelle slowly finished her artichoke, her mind racing. She remembered a news story a few years back about pink kryptonite, and how it had been weaponized against the previous presidential administration to make a lot of very prominent politicians temporarily gay. She was pretty sure that Lillian had always considered herself straight, had never experimented in boarding school as so many of them had. She lifted her wine glass to take a sip just as the waiter came in with their entree and she nearly spilled it on herself, but the black cloth napkin on her lap saved her.
“Bon appetit,” she murmured.
Lillian looked up. “French. I always preferred Japanese.”
“I’m a lover. You’re a fighter. It makes sense.”
Lillian laughed lightly, then picked up her fork and knife and cut into her steak. “Is that why you never married? Still playing the field?”
Adelle laughed so hard she coughed. “Oh, my. Excuse me. No, I’m just married to my job, I suppose.”
“And you… enjoy that?”
“No, of course not. But the pay is good and I keep thinking if I ever left, who would take over? There are a lot of unfortunate opportunities in a job like this, and if someone didn’t have a sense of ethics, or well, caretaking…”
Lillian kept chewing, her eyes on her plate. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely?” she murmured.
“Well, it has before. Your son…”
“Lex,” sighed Lillian. “He should have been my greatest accomplishment.”
They were silent after that, eating the steak and green beans (whoops, no: haricots verts), lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Adelle steeled her courage, took a sip of her wine, and asked, “So what brought up this line of questions, El?”
Lillian finished chewing, swallowed, took a sip of her wine, blotted her lips with her black cloth napkin. “Cat Grant.”
“As in CatCo? Queen of all media?”
“The same. We have…” She took another sip of wine.
It was the closest Adelle had ever seen Lillian come to showing nervousness. Lightly, Adelle finished for her, “… been getting to know one another?”
“Precisely. She’s a remarkable woman.”
“Really. She always struck me as rather snarky.”
“Oh, she can be a bitch, yes, but so can we, Addy. That’s not necessarily a bad quality.”
Then what, thought Adelle, does she have that I don’t have? Aside from a job she can discuss in public. And since when was that an issue for a Luthor?
“Anyway, she’s made me rethink some parts of my life I’d always assumed were set in concrete.”
“Things like alien deportation? Or things like pink kryptonite?”
Lillian shrugged, looking uncharacteristically lost. They finished their meal without talking. When the waiter returned for their plates, they ordered port and he withdrew. Finally, Lillian said, “My daughter is going to marry that female reporter in a month or two.”
Adelle blushed, needing to apologize for accidentally kidnapping Lena that one time, but really there was nothing she could say.
Lillian continued, “I’ve more years behind me than ahead. I’m not sure I care to spend them fighting old uphill battles.”
“Or dealing with men?”
“There is a lot of overlap there…”
The waiter brought their small glasses of port and a small leather folder in which Lillian signed her name (or alias, rather). Then he withdrew.
“So,” said Lillian slowly, holding her port up to see it catch the light on the crystal edges. “I find myself uncertain. Am I—Are these feelings just about Cat? Have I functionally changed in something so basic…? I just don’t know.”
Suddenly, Adelle realized that this dinner, this fairly expensive dinner that her friend was paying for, this just might be an awkward and sort of lovely… date. Quietly, she said, “Well, there are ways to test that theory.”
Lillian set the glass down without drinking any of it, just sat looking at it, running her fingers along the short stem.
Adelle inched her way down the plank. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Would you like to come by the house, perhaps stay the night?”
“That wouldn’t be… an imposition?”
“Lillian, we’ve known each other for decades. You are a beautiful, accomplished woman—regardless of your son’s transgressions. And I am… a lot of things, some good, some quite likely terrible. But I do not consider my bisexuality to be one of the bad things.” Adelle felt the urge to say more, but Lillian Luthor in the midst of a gay crisis would absolutely not respond well to a declaration of love. She was businesslike, pragmatic, and quite likely a trifle terrified. “I’ve got a new hollandaise sauce recipe I’ve been meaning to try. In the morning, I can make us Eggs Benedict.”
Lillian huffed a surprised laugh and raised her port glass again. “Touche. And thank you, Addy.”
“What are friends for?”
Chapter 144: When We from Dreams Awaken
Chapter Text
Livewire woke from dreams of thunder and lightning and opened her eyes immediately to see the beige walls of her small room in the boarding house, heaving a small grateful sight that she had, for at least one more day, woken up inside her body. She threw off her covers and eased her body down onto the navy blue throw rug to do her stretches and rehab exercises. She as almost due for the monthly injection of bone glue into her rebuilt leg, a life-saving discovery from another Earth, apparently where vibrating metahumans had also dealt with shattering their own bones. Rising with a sigh, she dressed in black tacticals and boots.
Downstairs in the dining room, she poured some coffee into her thermos, thankfully without having to talk to anyone, and walked to the DEO. She wore the black “Acme Security” jacket that served as all the camouflage she needed to attract no attention as she entered the black-budget high rise. Crazy.
Her days were filled with eating and training, then more testing, but that mostly got squeezed in between several super high caloric meals, often shared with Kara and Astra. Livewire and Astra got along well. The two of them sat side by side, eating methodically in silence, until Kara zipped in to join them, chattered away about the news of National City and then inevitably her head snapped up like a bird dog and she zoomed away to go save… something. Then the silence returned. The two finished eating, brought their trays and dishes to the rack outside the dishroom, gave each other a brief nod, and parted.
Sometimes Livewire thought she might be the only DEO agent that Astra didn’t consider a complete idiot.
Well, not the Danvers sisters. Not Vasquez. Not the Martians or Lucy Lane. But everybody else? Probably.
Since the Covid vaccines had rolled out, the energy around the DEO had changed. Just the other day, Vasquez had briefed about three dozen elite agents about an upcoming mission and had been greeted with grins. At first Livewire had been surprised that Finn, Holtzy, Jordan and Chen weren’t among the agents trooping into the briefing room, but then she remembered that they had been pulled out weeks earlier for “special training.” Gossip in the training room speculated on what exactly “special” meant. Flying alien vehicles? Shooting plasma weapons? Livewire suspected it was just something Earth-normal like sniper training. She was well out of it. She had only joined the DEO because a girl had to pay the rent. Hiding her electrical abilities while working at the diner had been a pain, and if she had to pay for her own food six times a day, she would need at least as many jobs, especially if they were all minimum wage.
So when Vasquez had sought her out after the special briefing with the other agents, Livewire showed her surprise.
“What’s the what, Agent Vasquez? Coffee machine on the fritz again?”
Unsurprisingly, Vasquez frowned. Livewire was tempted to check her cheatsheet, but letting the Assistant Director know that it existed was extremely verboten. At a guess, Livewire thought this might be #13: uncertain, but that seemed unlikely. Vasquez said, “I need your opinion, Agent. Would you mind coming down to Supergirl’s training room with me?”
“Sure. I mean, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”
The ghost of a smile crossed Vasquez’s lips right before she turned sharply and led Livewire to the elevator, where she inserted a key, turned it, and hit the button for one of the off-limits floors. When they got off, they stepped out to a dark grey wall with two sets of eye and hand sensors.
The door slid open to Vasquez’s biometrics.
The far corner showed broken concrete hastily cleaned up. Livewire had heard how Supergirl took out her frustrations somewhere at the DEO and understood the need for the biometrics. A lost agent didn’t want to blithely walk in when Supergirl was blasting things with her laser eyes.
On the other side of the room was what looked like the skeleton of an igloo: a dome twenty feet in diameter, ten feet high, built of iridescent hexagonal tiles. Standing in a small knot in front of it were Alex, Lena, Winn, and J’onn. A moment later, the door slid open again as Astra walked in carrying a large heavy-looking black box.
Winn’s eyes got big. “Wait, Astra, I thought you were just going to bring us the specs, not the whole generator!”
“This… seemed more efficient,” said Astra, as she set the device down on the floor, showing a little strain.
“Aunt Astra!” said Supergirl. “If you needed help carrying it—”
“I would have asked. But this is the portable one. Minimal dwarf star.”
Winn’s jaw dropped. “Min—"
“When I returned to Krypton after bringing the other gladiators home to their planets, I asked the Science Guild to help me miniaturize our ship’s backup generator. This runs on a single nanobot.”
Lena and Winn immediately started asking questions, but their speed and the way they were overlapping each other and the fact that they were apparently talking in Science while Livewire was listening in English meant that she found herself more interested in the pile of concrete dust in the far corner. She knelt and drew in the dust, making a stick figure with long hair and a cape before J’onn ambled over. She brushed her hand across the figure and stood.
“So, Livewire,” he said. “I understand Lieutenant In-Ze recommended you for this mission.”
“Is that so? Can’t think why. What’s the mission anyway? Giving the Eskimos indoor heating?”
Supergirl strode over and crossed her arms. “They’re going to be at it for a while. Didn’t Vasquez tell you anything?”
“She said she wanted my opinion on something. But I gotta tell you, chica, this is starting to smell like a suicide mission.”
To her surprise, Supergirl sighed. “I wish I could say it’s not. The problem is a smooth flow of energy to support the generator. If we had it here, we could plug it into the nuclear reactor, but that would make it not a portable generator. We’re going to test it on this prototype of the force field, but this is barely a third the size of the barn we’re going to need to cover with the hexagons.”
Livewire studied the igloo curiously, absently letting trickles of energy jump from one hand to the other. “So this mission that I’ve been hearing about. This is where you get hitched to the hot Luthor chick?”
Supergirl blushed scarlet.
“Huh. I was right about the sapphic vibe.”
Suddenly, Lena shouted, “Winn! I think it’s going to work!”
“Lena,” said Winn, “yes, I admit the ElectroCore is awesome, but there is still that hiccup when the reciprocator switches at the end of the Phase 5 power redistribution that we added to avoid the overheating the actuator—”
“Right, I know, but Phase 5 probably won’t be needed. Vasquez predicts a battle of less than six hours—”
“But those discs we found—”
Astra had her hands on her hips and looked pissed off. She snapped, “The whole point of the force field is to protect the noncombatants and the medics. I’m just saying that my generator should be able to handle your force field as long as you keep the electrical attacks away from the barn. And the best person to do that is Livewire.”
Supergirl frowned. “Wait, I thought they wanted you to power the generator.”
The others were murmuring similar things.
Lena and Winn looked at each other. “Winn, you tested those discs, didn’t you?”
“Of course. With Al—Agent Danvers.”
They turned toward Alex. She was wearing her Winn Schott supersuit and scowling like Vasquez. “We practiced shooting them down but—”
Quietly, Astra said, “But what if you didn’t need to? Maybe it’s time to practice with somebody who is more… well equipped for the mission.”
Lena opened her mouth and closed it again. Everyone fell silent as they watched her enormous brain work through the problem. “Lex designed rifles that shot out huge copper nets…” She turned to Livewire. “Could you electrify them in the air?”
Livewire smirked. “Sounds like a blast.”
Chapter 145: Crisis on Other Worlds: Skip Preview: Y/N?
Summary:
Okay, so I've been struggling to figure out how to get from vaccinations to the wedding. Supercorptober only got me so far, so I decided to use crisis on elseworlds to (also and not apologetically) fix the crises that destroyed all but one world, when the answer was relatively easy. So here is my Crisis on Elseworlds fix-it fic.
Chapter Text
It had happened, just as the wily dragon had foretold: that Morgana would be forced, not by gods or spirits but by forces of the universe itself, to work with her enemies, the people she had most loved and so now most loathed, to save their world from something far vaster and more evil than she had ever imagined, even in her prophetic fever dreams.
Fortunately, Uther Pendragon had led the first charge out of Camelot, leading four hundred knights on horses to contend against a fire from heaven and the gods and beasts of this earth. The Lucifer who rained down the fire and doom had called Earth “Ninety,” as if there might be other Earths, numbered, as if there could be more than the mortal world and the immortal. As if the stars were just torches the gods used to light the plays playacted by the mortals they toyed with and tortured.
She crawled through the blasted earth, away from the bodies of Arthur, Merlin and Gawaine, to where that terrible book lay on the side of the hill. Surely, if she could not unwrite this day, she could destroy the book?
But even as her bloodied hand came down grasping mere inches away from the book’s metal clasps, strange boots stepped between them and that demon bent to pick it up.
“You failed.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You did this to yourself. And now all of you will perish.” He flipped the clasp and let the book fall open in his hands. A fierce spray of light hurried up to the sky.
Wrapping the magic around herself like a spray of ivy lit on fire, she ran on the winds of enchantment to escape the ending of her world.
///
Lex Luthor had long thought that his Kryptonite-powered submarine was Kryptonian-proof, tamper-proof and pirate-proof, so that morning when he made his way to the bridge yawning, he was awkwardly introduced by Mercy Graves to a tall, broad-shouldered, copper-haired young man in Roman armor, causing him to reassess his assumptions.
The man seemed pleased that Lex did not show his surprise—
(shock, horror, head-splitting brain explosion, realizing that he, Lex, had been wrong about something so basic)
--and even shook the man’s hand at the introduction.
“Mr. Luthor, although my group understands that you never actually finished your PhD on account of taking time off before writing your dissertation to turn the sun red in the interest of disempowering,” he looked down at a handwritten list in his hand, “Superman, your sister Lillian, your mother Lucretia, and the entirety of the Gotham police department, do I have that right?”
Lex opened his mouth and closed it again, fussed with his bright red pocket handkerchief in the breast pocket of his black Italian blazer. “In specific, no, you don’t. In essence, sure, let’s go with that.”
“Um, good? Well, sir, I’ve been asked to invite you to Star City Polytechnical Institute (SCiPI) to give a lecture on,” he glanced at the list again, “’Global Catastrophes, Their Origins and Aftershocks.’”
Lex looked at his watch. “I’ll have to dock somewhere the American police won’t be looking—”
“Um, no, sir. You don’t. I am authorized to take you there directly. And by there, I mean SCiPI on Earth One.”
Lex looked at the earnest man and thought, Skippy? What the hell? He turned to Mercedes. “Hold the fort for me?”
Then the strange man set off a transmat portal and they walked from the submarine into a tired looking lecture hall with amphitheater seating. The lights were dimmed so that he could see the first few rows clearly, but the students in back were in shadow. He glanced at the blackboard behind him. He generally preferred premade PowerPoint slides. It had been quite a while since he had needed to lecture (or gloat or testify) impromptu. Didn’t matter. He was the man when it came to catastrophic machinations, global or not. This would be a piece of cake.
///
The student sitting in the back row, in the far-left corner, watched the Luthor presentation with a sneer. He could easily have presented his ideas about trans-morphic solar collocational e-pigmentation without ever mentioning eugenics, but of course, the whole point of his red sun “experiment” was to level the playing field between him and the male Kryptonian. But even Olympic athletes on Earth, even apparent geniuses, didn’t have what it took to do that. Barry Allen had warned his opposites that this sort of test was coming: aliens from across the multiverse seeking out heroes and villains to do their bidding on the many Earths, which were known to be ripe for colonization. And because the other Earths were in so many ways wildly different from Earth One and Thirty-Eight and the others, their definitions of “hero” and “villain” were… different from those of the humans on the Earths they were “testing.”
She squeezed a scarlet Bat-a-Rang in her black-gloved hand, but by the time she had made up her mind to take the lecturer out, all the audience members had left in disgust and the man, shocked and appalled, walked out looking like a failure. She didn’t have to do a thing.
///
Lex staggered out to the wet parking lot, his hands shaking. Surely, if he was a genius on his own Earth, he was a genius on them all. Surely.
A voice came across the wide empty parking lot. “Mister… Lex… Luthor!”
Lex turned to see a formerly unlit lamp light up to show another man in Roman armor, not as big, not as impressive, with a dented helmet, a thick five o’clock shadow, and a cigar between his teeth. The figure said, “I need your help, Lex.”
Lex snapped, “Go find someone else to prank.”
The figure stepped closer, wearing a waxed leather cape and carrying a thick book with locked clasps. He spit out his cigar and the flare of ashes turned into a dragon the size of a Corgi that spat fire at Lex and disappeared into sparks.
“What the hell are you?”
“A stranger to your world. I’ve traveled far to this place and time to lay this precious burden at your feet. My colleagues think it’s a good idea for you to use this book to reshape this world as you see fit.”
Hesitantly, Lex inched forward and took the heavy book from the man, who somehow had another cigar clenched between his teeth. “So,” said Lex. “You believe in me? In my vision?”
“Oh, no. I was on the minority side. I think you’re going to totally muck it up. But the Timelords are a democracy of sorts. So here we are. Use it wisely, Mr. Luthor. The universe is in your hands. All you have to do is open it.”
Lex cracked open the book and a bright light shone in his face. “I can see… I can see everything…”
Chapter 146: Crisis on Other Worlds: Can You Imagine an Alternate World?
Chapter Text
The sheets were warm and soft, and though sunlight peeked in the chink between sheet and forehead, still the warmth was comforting.
A woman’s voice called, “Breakfast is ready.”
The blankets were pushed away, to show a large room with ice-blue paint and white bookcases filled with thick books. A decidedly unfamiliar room.
“Kara? It’ll get cold!”
Oliver Queen pushed the covers off to find himself in a purple t-shirt with a row of Care Bears, each with symbol on their… tummies: a Super symbol, a rainbow, a raised fist, and an anti-Nazi red circle. He stood up to see he was wearing dark green sweatpants with LCorp written in white letters across his ass.
“What the—”
He wandered out of the bedroom, down the hall to see a white living room with a white couch and armchairs, a state-of-the-art entertainment system, and more white bookcases filled with thick books. Broad windows looked out on an unfamiliar city from very high up.
“Oh, good! There you are, love! You might need to reheat the waffles!”
He turned to see one of the most beautiful women he had ever laid eyes on: straight black hair, expressive green eyes, pale skin. He was a man for blondes for sure, but this woman was definitely high quality.
She said, “Weird dreams again?”
“Um, yes. Very.” He rubbed his eyes, and she came over and ran her hand up and down his back. He felt the electricity that only Felicity—dear God, he was rhyming. “Did you say waffles?”
“That’s my girl!” She turned and scooped up a plate piled high with waffles, a bowl of blueberries and a pitcher of syrup and placed them in front of him on the island between the kitchenette and the living room. “Eat up!”
She put her hand behind his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. He blinked, lost. “Waffles?”
She laughed. “I know my girl. Eat up.”
He sat at the island and picked up his fork, pushing berries on the waffles and pouring syrup over them. He had no idea where he was—or apparently who—but he was a champion eater, so he just dug in and ate for at least fifteen minutes straight before coming up for air. He had only decimated half of the stack, but he was full. “Um, that was great!”
The woman looked surprised and concerned. “Were they not good? I thought I got the batter recipe down…”
“They were perfect, um, like you. But. My dreams were about… dead… villains. I mean, it was just…”
“Oh, honey. Were you dreaming about Lex again? You know I do trust our friends to come up with plans to thwart him.”
“Thwarting!” he said. “Yes! We will… thwart! But dreaming about bloody dead bodies…”
“Okay, well, I can put them in Tupperware and you can eat them for a mid-morning snack.”
Oliver just nodded. He looked around at the walls and saw pictures apparently of him with this gorgeous woman, eating ice cream, eating sushi, eating Big Belly burgers, even though this woman was thin enough that he could almost believe she never ate at all.
Her phone went off and she frowned, reading a text. “That’s Alex. DEO emergency. See you there?”
“I will… see you at… the DEO.”
The woman hurried out the door and Oliver found himself superspeeding back into the bedroom to find Kara Danver’s supersuit on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“What the bloody hell?”
///
As Oliver supersped across the city, he got a comms message from an unknown male voice. “Kara, we’ve got a break-in at LordTech, two armed men going after diamonds, the ones they use for conductors. Hey! Supergirl, pump the breaks. You passed LordTech by about eighteen blocks.”
Oliver did a U-turn and ran back to Lord Tech, tugging the entirely too-short skirt down as he hurried into the lobby. “Just eager to get to work!”
“It is too early for this…”
Oliver entered the lobby, finding it hard to stop and left skidmarks on the white marble floor. He took in one armed assailant pushing a woman to the floor and running toward the door with a heavy carpet bag.
The other fellow was pulling the cover off a glass display case and turned his machine gun on Oliver, shouting, “Not one more inch, Supergirl! We’re leaving with the diamonds or this guy dies.”
Oliver reached behind him for an arrow, but there was nothing there. Stalling, he yelled, “You have failed this city!”
In his ear, the man said, “Supergirl! Just hit him with your laser eyes. What are you waiting for?”
The thieves shot machine guns at him. He ducked but then realized that none of them had hit him yet and he stood and saw them hanging in the air. He supersped around them, batting the bullets back at the criminals, who got hit and fell bleeding.
“Yeah, Supergirl, your adrenaline is off the charts! Let’s just leave this for the NCPD to clean up. Alex is going to want to check you out and Vasquez is going to want to debrief you.”
“Roger that,” said Oliver and sped off.
///
Two frowning women agents in black tactical gear met him in the medbay, which apparently was the twenty-eighth floor of a skyscraper in midtown National City. Hadn’t these people ever heard of secret lairs?
The woman with the red highlights in her hair ran a scanner over his body, grunting at the readouts.
“So he’s fine, Alex?” asked the shorter woman with the short hair and the deeper frown.
“All clear. How do you feel, Kara?”
“I’ve felt weird since I woke up. You sure there are no anomalies? No brain tumor?”
“You’re in perfect shape,” said Alex.
Footsteps came through the door, and he turned to see the woman from this morning, in a black pencil skirt and heels, holding a clipboard to her chest, wrinkling the pale green silk blouse. “I’ll say. Those abs, darling!”
“Er, uh, yeah,” said Oliver helpfully. “I’m going to go…see someone who might know more about what I’m going through. I’m going to go see Oliver Queen.”
And he zipped out the door.
///
Unknown to the DEO, the thief who got away with the diamonds raced back to his laboratory deep in the Warehouse District. Now he had what he needed to put the Red Tornado back together again, along with some… new abilities…
Chapter 147: Crisis on Other Worlds: Teamwork
Chapter Text
Supergirl woke up fighting the way dogs sometimes wake up running. The fact that it wasn’t Alex she was fighting, although she felt as depowered as she’d always felt when sparring in the Green Octagon of Death, was less surprising than that she was fighting John Diggles and he was whooping her ass.
“Dig, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m kicking your butt, Oliver. What’s it look like?”
He came at her again, but she dodged and weaved and landed a punch to his ribs and then an undercut that threw him off the mat. She stared at him, whispering, “I’m Oliver Queen?”
“Yeah, I’ll say.”
“I’m the Green Arrow? Holy crap.”
A call came in and Diggle threw the Green Arrow suit at her. “Bratva in the Glades. I’ll go in low, you go in high.” He hurried off.
“Um, do I need help putting this on?”
///
Usually, when the mafia had a deal to do in this town, they did it by day, wearing inconspicuous business suits and flew under the radar of the city’s Super Equivalents. Doing a deal in a dark alley was like waving a red flag. But they would have expected something flashier from the Arrow, like incendiary arrows, not him picking them off, one arrow, one man at a time. Unfortunately, that worked just as well, if not from their point of view.
///
Oliver had never been patient with Supergirl before, and he was not starting now just because they had apparently swapped bodies. She leaped up and went up and down the salmon ladder while Oliver laid out how he wanted to figure out who was responsible.
“Supergirl, would you mind? I was talking!”
She jumped down grinning. “Sorry! This is some cool Freaky Friday! No, wait. More of a Quantum Leap--”
“Can you just focus?”
“It is a little cool, though, you gotta admit!” she said, unable to wipe the smile off her face.
“I… will undoubtedly find it… way cooler… when I wake up tomorrow in my own bed.”
Supergirl’s face fell. “Wait. You woke up with Lena?”
Oliver nodded.
“We have to fix this right now.”
///
It took a few tries, but with a careful explanation of the aerodynamics involved and the relative unbreakability of her—his—Kryptonian body, Supergirl eventually convinced the dour vigilante to fly them back to National City, back to the DEO where her sister, Alex, and Kara's genius girlfriend, Lena Luthor, would undoubtedly sort them out.
They landed on the DEO balcony, well, it was sort of a three-point landing when Oliver stumbled, but they made it to the command center relatively whole if not in the greatest of spirits.
Winn jumped up from his post, yelling, “Oh my god, Oliver Queen! Dude, I have always wanted to meet you!”
To his surprise, Queen pulled back and Supergirl growled, “Give him some space, would you?”
Standing around the round computer table, Alex, Vasquez, J’onn and M’gann, turned and looked surprised, but not concerned at first. J’onn and M’gann turned toward each other, frowning but saying nothing. Oliver hurried forward to them while Supergirl stayed behind looking of all things… cautious?
Vasquez drew her weapon. “Who are you and what have you done with Supergirl?”
Alex said, “You only just left to get him—”
J’onn said, “I think we have a misunderstanding here—”
Supergirl pointed to Oliver. “She’s me. I’m him. We don’t know why. But he can fly and I just got real good at archery, so we haven’t lost our powers, we’re just not the ones in control of them.”
J’onn and M’gann nodded at each other. “That’s accurate. What did you do—”
“WE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”
Winn stared at them until an alarm when off at his station, and then he said, “Guys, remember Red Tornado?”
Supergirl looked confused but the rest looked resigned.
“Um, he seems to be back, out in Supreme Court Plaza, tearing up the pavement and throwing cars.”
Alex said, “Vasquez, prep a team. Finn’s your pilot. Supergirl—”
She and Oliver turned together and hurried to the balcony. Oliver picked her up and they flew away.
Alex said, “Seeing that? That is just weird.”
///
Oliver wasn’t prepared to fight a laser staring war with a big red robot with hands rotating so fast he could barely see them, but he fought the machine backwards across the plaza and from the roof of the building, Kara put arrow after arrow into the thing’s articulated joints.
Finally, snarling, “You have failed this city,” she sent “Fahrenheit 451,” his best incendiary arrow, into its head through its eye, and its head and body exploded in all directions.
Oliver was fast enough to round up the people anywhere near where the shrapnel was landing and move them further back. When Finn landed the DEO chopper in the center of the plaza, agents jumped down and started collecting debris. Oliver flew up to Kara’s perch on the court roof, standing looking down at the mess they had made, but also standing differently as the red cape whipped out behind him.
Kara grinned. “Cape’s kinda great, isn’t it.”
Oliver nodded seriously. “And you learn fast. Those arrows were well placed.”
“Well, we had archery at Midvale High. I kept putting arrows right through the targets, so they only let me do it for two weeks. But I really enjoyed it.”
They both heard the voice on comms. “Guys, we need you back at the DEO. We may have a clue.”
Oliver reached out for Kara, and she stepped up next to him, saying, “Up, up and away!”
///
Back at the command center, they found M’gann sitting at Winn’s station, looking vaguely ill. J’onn handed her a cup of water and she drank gratefully.
“Was it a premonition?” he asked.
“No,” she answered slowly. “It didn’t feel like the future. It felt… old.” She glanced at the humans. “We’re a few hundred years old by your Earth standard. This was far, far older.”
“What did you see?” asked Alex. Vasquez sat at her post nearby, scribbling in a small notebook.
“A strange man, human I thought at first. With battered armor and a bad shave. He was holding a huge book like he was offering it to me.”
Kara asked, “You think this person has something to do with our switch?”
“I don’t know. I felt it when you two showed up an hour ago and again when you flew off to handle the robot. It felt like something important.”
Oliver said, “We need to see it. Can you show us?”
“I can try. Put your hands on my shoulders. Close your eyes and relax.”
Oliver and Kara stepped up and lay their hands on M’gann’s shoulders. Instantly, they saw a blue-lit parking lot at night, with a strange soldier looking down on a bald man, who was staring at a book that seemed to light up his face. He said, “My God, I can see everything.”
Slowly, the soldier turned away from the man and stared directly at them. “Fascinating. The Time Lords really didn’t see you folks coming. You shouldn’t be able to see me. Doesn’t matter. You can’t stop what’s been put into motion. I mean, the odds against it are at least a million to one.”
M’gann pulled away, her nose bleeding. J’onn offered her a handkerchief.
“Are you okay?” asked Kara.
“No, I’m really not.”
J’onn nodded to them and then led her off in the direction of the medbay.
Oliver picked up a piece of paper and a pen and used superspeed to draw a picture of the two men, one turned to look at them, the other staring rapturously at the pages of the enormous book, which seemed to be lighting up his face.
“What did you see?” asked Alex.
“Lex Luthor,” said Kara. “But I don’t recognize the other person.”
Oliver said, “Doesn’t matter. I know where they are.” He pointed to the Wayne Enterprises building in the background of the picture. “We’re going to Gotham.”
Chapter 148: Crisis on Other Worlds: Confrontations
Chapter Text
You could tell a lot about a city from its nightscape, Supergirl thought, as Oliver flew them quickly but carefully to Gotham. National City glittered silver at night. Star City had a burnished golden gleam. But Gotham… Gotham always looked like it was bleeding. Sure, downtown had some class, with the rare big buildings from its heyday during the Roaring Twenties, when Art Deco and bathtub gin were all the rage. But the Depression had hit Gotham hard and it had never entirely recovered, even during the years when Batman strove to be a one-man vigilante clean-up crew (although she was pretty sure that he would never have thought of it like that).
Oliver landed them on the broad shoulders of a building shorter than the Wayne building, a long flat roof where the maintenance crew didn’t have to fight big winds just to change the lightbulbs that faced the grand tower and lit it so dramatically.
Oliver stretched his arms and back.
Supergirl said, “Hey! This is exciting! We’re gonna meet Batman!”
Oliver stared. “The Batman. You believe in the Batman. Do you also believe in Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?”
She laughed, “Yup and Spider Man too. C’mon. How can you not believe in Batman? He cleaned up Gotham for years?”
“The Gotham police worked to clean up Gotham, using him as a symbol, a threat for the lowlife to fear. But he’s a myth.”
“Okay, whatever. But how do we find one person in a city of 1.6 million?”
Arrow looked happier. “There is a radio personality named Vesper Fairchild. She knows everyone in Gotham, and I know her. She was doing an expose on white-collar crime back in the day, and I wanted to persuade her that Queen Consolidated was above board.”
Supergirl took that in, thought about it the way she suspected Alex would and then coughed. “Wait, you slept with her?”
“No. I… I don’t know.”
“Gosh, you really got around back in the day, didn’t you?”
“I just think she might be able to help us.”
“Wait, what’s that?” Supergirl strode over to a large object covered with a dirty grey tarp. She reached up and pulled it off to reveal an enormous light with a black bat in the center. “So. You still think he’s a myth?”
“Of course, I do!”
Supergirl muttered, “He’s real.” Then she hurried after him. “Well, lead on to your ex, Oliver!”
///
When “Vesper Fairchild” answered the door of her condo to see Supergirl and the Green Arrow standing there talking about interdimensional travel, unknown supervillains and their need for help to find an individual whom one of their team had apparently dreamed of standing across the river from the Wayne building, she said, “Huh, must be Wednesday. C’mon in. Let’s sit out on the balcony. My wife just got the kids to sleep.”
She followed them through the glass sliding door with two bottles: one of scotch that she handed to the Green Arrow and one of Aldabaran rum that she handed to Supergirl. They looked at the bottles, looked at each other, and switched bottles, turned to the table where rocks glasses sat, poured and drank.
“Well, now,” said the radio personality. “Clearly, there’s a story here. So you,” she said pointing at Supergirl looking like the Green Arrow, “are her, and you,” she said pointing at Oliver in a little red skirt, “are him.”
“Oh, thank God!” said the real Supergirl.
“And we need your help, either to identify this person,” Oliver handed her a pencil sketch, “or maybe to find Bruce Wayne. We need to sort this out. I thought, considering our past—”
“Gold star here, Robin Hood. She’s more my type than you are.”
“I, er, yes, and.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t help. Can’t say I recognize the old soldier. Surely, you’ve recognized the other fellow as Lex Luthor. He doesn’t swing by Gotham much, but I did hear that he recently gave an invited lecture and was booed out of the auditorium. Gothamites have had too much close personal experience with villains doing ‘selective breeding’ to want to have anything to do with any plan even remotely eugenic.”
“Makes sense,” said Oliver.
“But the book looks like it’s lighting up his face. What do you know about the book?”
“Um, nothing?” said Kara. “What about Batman? Do you think he might have run into this guy in his adventures?”
“Wouldn’t help. He disappeared a few years ago.”
“Damn,” said Supergirl.
“He’s a myth,” said Oliver.
“Mm, nope. If you dig through the archives on my website, I did an interview with him right before the police set up those bat-lights all over town to call him in. He was real. Then, I suspect, he got really depressed. Bugged out. Left the city to fend for itself.”
Oliver and Supergirl both picked up their glasses and drank.
“Although…”
They both looked up, surprised.
“Just recently, someone seems to have taken up the dark mantle.”
///
The wind was harsh as they crossed the bridge over to the Gotham River, always guided by the bright lights hitting the Wayne Building. Immediately upon walking off the bridge, they noticed boarded up buildings and garbage in the street.
Kara said, “Wow, I wouldn’t have expected Bruce Wayne to put his HQ on the bad side of town.”
Oliver shook his head. “You’re thinking Vesper lives on the good side of town, but that side of the river isn’t Gotham City. And it’s cute you think there is a good side of this town.”
As they walked down an alley, a black armored Crows Security truck pulled up to the back of a building and a well-dressed couple carrying shopping bags stepped out, covered by black-clad Crows… well, soldiers, really. Normally, security guards didn’t carry large automatic weapons.
Oliver grumbled, “See this is why people never talk about Gotham. City might as well be dead.”
A deep voice behind them said, “Sounds like you guys aren’t from around here.”
Five men in an assortment of camouflage tactical clothing came strolling toward them. “Probably don’t know that the Tourist Bureau collects a tax on out-of-towners. So phones, wallets, watches. Now.”
The man they saw before them said, “You know what, fellas? Maybe we can just talk this out, okay?”
The man pulled his Glock and pointed it at Oliver’s head. “Sure. I’ll talk first.” He fired, but nothing seemed to happen.
Then the woman opened her palm to reveal his bullet casing, crushed. She flicked the casing at the man’s head and he dropped like a log. Then she took another one’s gun and flipped him over her shoulder. Two men fled and she held the gun on the last one, but sirens were getting closer.
The Green Arrow turned to Supergirl. “Maybe we should—”
And there was a gust of wind. They were gone by the time the Gotham police came to pick up the muggers.
///
Agent Vasquez stood with her arms folded behind Winn sitting at his station and coding madly. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the way Kara would ask him about his progress every five minutes or Vasquez standing like a statue behind him, her perpetual frown disguising her thoughts and/or possibly feelings.
“Pattern recognitions algo is locked and loaded!” he said.
Vasquez stepped over to her station and typed in her security clearance. “Bringing it online now.”
“Um, you realize that this may not work, right? Like there may be no pattern for the algorithm to recognize…”
“Is there a suggestion bound within that dose of pessimism?”
“More like a question.” He pointed to the screen above his head. “Does the pattern of that lightning look familiar to you?”
Vasquez bent down and shuffled through the files in the cabinet under her station. “Oh, sh--. Uh. Hm. That looks quantum. Like a dimensional breach…”
“Exactly. We’re going to need Lena’s help.”
A pair of heels sounded behind them and they turned to see Lena, who smirked slightly. “Speak of the devil and she appears.”
Loyally, Winn said, “Or the angel!”
Lena said, “I wrote a code to piggyback yours, Winn, because those weird weather patterns have been hopping around in a way that weather fronts just don’t do, I mean, sure, they started here, but then were showing up in Star City and then back here, and now they’re in Gotham: red skies, strange lightning, civilians freaking out, meteorologists flummoxed.”
Winn grinned, turned to Vasquez and said, “We actually know an actual human who uses the word flummoxed in a sentence. When she is actually talking. Lena Luthor, you are totally my hero. If anybody can fix Kara and Oliver’s body—”
Vasquez broke in, “Lena, that’s great. Where’s Alex, she will totally want to be here when—”
But Lena had completely stilled, her green eyes boring into Winn’s increasingly worried brown ones. “Kara and Oliver’s body what, Winn? What needs to be fixed?”
Vasquez said, “We didn’t want to bother—”
“… Winn?”
“Uh, um, well, they. And I didn’t see it. Even Alex didn’t. I mean, the Martians, because of course. But Vasquez immediately—”
Lena turned the stare onto Vasquez who Winn was sure knew when it was time for the better part of valor. Sighing, Vasquez said, “Body swap,” as if that was all she needed to say, and Winn thought, well, maybe it was.
He had played chess with Lena two or three times, and he had invented with her a bit more than that. He knew the signs that the world had slowed for Lena just as her enormous brain had sped up, was working through the implications much the way a computer would. When she blinked, he realized that she was functionally reentering their timestream.
“So,” she said slowly. “When did this--?”
“This morning,” said Winn.
“This… Huh. He’s not super. He wouldn’t need the full super-serving of waffles.”
And Winn hoped fervently that waffles were the worst of it.
///
Oliver landed them right in front of the enormous Wayne Enterprises world headquarters. They looked up. It was easily taller than the forty-plus-story CatCo Worldwide Media building, LCorp building and DEO building.
Oliver said, “If Bruce Wayne has been gone for three years, who’s manning the shop now?”
Shrugging, Kara went ahead of him through the revolving doors. The lobby was broken and overgrown with some kind of dead ivy, but the bones were beautiful, just as Art Deco on the inside as it was on the outside, all hard geometric forms and gold overlay.
Oliver said, "Vesper said that a lot of the abandoned properties have been sold, or donated to the city for NGOs and low-income housing.”
“But not this one?” asked Kara.
From the balcony two stories above them a deep woman’s voice said, “Not this one.”
Chapter 149: Crisis on Other Worlds: Anchor Magnet Quantum Thing
Chapter Text
Oliver said, “Vesper said that a lot of the abandoned properties have been sold, or donated to the city for NGOs and low-income housing.”
“But not this one?” asked Kara.
From the balcony two stories above them a deep woman’s voice said, “Not this one.”
Supergirl put her hands on her hips somewhat awkwardly. “Well, that is definitely not Bruce Wayne.”
The woman had short black hair and minimalist makeup. She wore a cranberry blazer over a black shirt and pants. The blazer’s sleeves were rolled up and tattoos wrapped around her lower arms. “Oliver Queen.”
The Green Arrow looked at Supergirl and then back upwards. “Yeah, yeah. I’m Oliver Queen. Yeah. And you are?”
“The rain on your parade. If you’re visiting Gotham to compare grappling hooks with Batman, you are out of luck. No one’s seen him in years.” She turned and walked away.
Below Kara muttered, “Told ya!”
“Myth.”
The woman came down the marble side stairs, still looking grim.
The Green Arrow said, “I would never compare myself to a total badass like Batman. But we could use your help.”
“You got it.”
Supergirl said, “Wait, what? Why would you help us if—”
“Gotham’s got enough problems. It doesn’t need a guy in green leather showing off his arrows to everyone. So the faster you find what you’re looking for, the sooner you can get the hell out of my city.”
The Green Arrow asked, “Uh, but what should we call you? Rain? Ms. Parade?”
“Kane. Kate Kane.”
They followed her into a shiny Art Deco elevator. When she put a special key in the wall and turned it, the elevator shot up, and kept going after it seemed to have passed the highest floor.
///
Lena had asked for some time to read up on the types of quantum breaches the DEO had previously experienced and overcome, and Alex gave Lena access to all of those mission reports and the use of her office to sit and read them. When she returned to command central with her tablet, Winn had already come back with takeout Thai food and Jess Huang to translate LenaSpeak into normal-speed English.
Lena had looked a little surprised. “Oh! Jess, yes, capital idea. And Pad See You, perfect. Now. If the lightning strikes are attempted dimensional breaches, there might be a way to stabilize the quantum flux to allow whatever is trying to get through to get through--and yes, Jess—” she said as Jess raised a hand, “I have considered the odds that this might be a malicious entity or at the very least that odious imp with the alphabet name, and yes, Winn—”
He had barely opened his mouth.
“I do recognize that all of our names contain alphabet but you and I both know that you are splitting hairs and that does not currently matter, since the odds of enemies coming through a time space breach rather than a simple space breach—”
She paused and grabbed chopsticks and ate some noodles while Jess repeated what she had said at a much slower pace. “Mm. Wow. Delicious. Yes, so let’s get to stabilizing, shall we?”
///
Vasquez sat at her station in the command center, completely ignoring Winn’s long ramble on the history of body swaps. This was after all by no means her first rodeo. She suspected that Winn was at an impasse personally, unsure who he was more jealous of, Supergirl or the Green Arrow. Didn’t matter. Winn wasn’t the one Vasquez was worried about. Regardless of what he thought about himself, his moral compass, and his assumption that he was but a long walk off a short pier away from turning into a supervillain, Vasquez didn’t worry about him.
Now, Lena, on the other hand…
Vasquez tried to be a good person, she did. And if from time to time, she wished silently for a quick death for the last Luthor male and a few right-wing politicians, at least she kept her mouth shut and her hands away from any triggers.
With a sigh, she headed down to Winn’s lab, where Lena was currently working while Winn was at his station in the command center. She poked her head in to see Jess sitting at one of the lab tables, typing away at her laptop while Lena paced back and forth, dictating… code?
Lena turned again and saw Vasquez, and she held up one finger to her to pause while she finished dictating. Then she said, “Agent Vasquez, what can we do for you?”
“Just checking on your progress.”
Lena raised the Eyebrow. “Surely, that is something you could have texted to ask.”
“Honestly? Winn’s driving me crazy. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of body swaps in American history, including one, fairly famous among people who care about such things, that happened in the late 1990s to two FBI agents—”
“Scully and Mulder? I’m familiar.”
“You, right, of course. Because.”
Jess looked up. “No worries, Agent Vasquez. I briefed her on that earlier today. She’s not normally like Winn in those ways.”
Lena shrugged. “Well, at least one good thing about all the crap that’s been going on is that I have something to distract me. Look at this.” Lena turned her laptop toward Vasquez.
“That looks like—”
“A quantum flux anchor. I’m pretty sure if we build it, whoever’s trying to breach through will come.”
Vasquez felt her ubiquitous frown slide right off her face. “Well, then. Let’s get to work.”
///
Kate Kane led them out of the elevator into a large, high-ceilinged office, its left and right walls floor to ceiling with built-in oak bookcases, its far wall, a wide window looking out on Gotham by night lit harshly in yellow and red. The floor was black and white marble tile in an Art Deco pattern. Every flat surface had cardboard boxes open and—half-empty? Half-full?
She turned back, watching them take in the scene. Weirdly, the Green Arrow seemed quite taken with the décor, and Supergirl was all business.
“Thank you, Ms. Kane, but we really need to speak with Bruce Wayne.”
“Not gonna happen,” she said. “He’s been gone for years.”
The Arrow turned to her. “Was it the city’s slow demise that wore him out? Or maybe always having to fight to keep his identity a secret?”
“His identity?” said Supergirl. “Wait, Bruce Wayne—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Supergirl, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Oops!” said the Arrow.
Kate had started to speak again, but then she stopped, looking back and forth from one to the other. Tiredly, she said, “Just great. First, I find out that the multiverse is real. Fine. But now you’re saying that body swaps are a real thing too?”
“I never said that!” huffed the Arrow.
Supergirl said, “Why is everybody so much smarter on this Earth than on either of ours?”
Kate rubbed her eyes. “Just. Tell me what you need. I will help you as much as I can and then I will ask, no, beg you to get out of my hair. Gotham is a laugh a minute at the best of times, and I’m sensing that this is not one of those.”
“We just need to build a quantum—”
“No, nope. Do not finish that sentence. Will the roof do? Here’s a key for the elevator to bring you up there. Go. You do your thing, and I will go do mine.”
“And what exactly is your thing?” asked Supergirl.
Kate smiled angelically. “I’m turning my cousin Bruce’s building into a real estate development company.”
The Arrow shook his head. “Okay, so, um, one more question. You know Lex Luthor?”
“Not personally. I’ve heard of him. Actually, he gave a lecture at Gotham U yesterday. Fellow named Deegan, I think, maybe John Deegan, introduced him. Everybody hated his lecture. Walked out. Big embarrassment for Deegan.”
“You think he might still be with this guy? Do you know where we could find him?”
“He’s a doctor at Arkham Insane Asylum.”
“Well, maybe he can help us with our inquiries…”
“Good luck with that. He’s just as problematical as the patients he works on.”
Supergirl grabbed the key from the Arrow and strode into the elevator. “Coming?”
///
Finn and Holtzy hurried down the corridor to Winn’s lab, Holtzy saying, “Five bucks they need your brains and my brawn!”
Finn didn’t bother to reply. When Holtzman was in one of her moods, it didn’t pay to engage.
They walked in to find Winn’s lab full of people. Winn was at a table near the wall, typing madly at his laptop. Alex and J’onn were arguing about blueprints on the central table. M’gann sat on the other side of the room, looking exhausted. Finn and Holtzy looked from the blueprints to the strange object a few feet away where Lena was hard at work in a steel mask, working a blowtorch on the seam of the shaft coming out of the heavy-duty steel tripod.
Holtzy’s eyes shone. “What the blue blazes have you built here, oh my goddess, Lena Luthor?”
“Looks like a telescope,” said Finn.
Jess said, “No offense, but you’d need five PhDs just to get the dumbed down version.”
Finn said, “How about the very dumbed-down version?”
Lena said, “It’s a quantum flux anchor that utilizes wave theory to fire nano-particulates across an Einstein-Rosen bridge to create a secure claxon field.”
Holtzy nodded knowledgably, but Finn asked, “Um, how about the very, very dumbed-down version?”
Jess said, “Lena made a magnet that will draw whoever’s trying to breach through to us.”
Finn muttered, “You could have just said that.” Aloud he asked, “How can I help?”
“Wapow!” said Winn. “Field’s stable. All readings are in the green. You guys are good to go.”
Alex pointed Finn to a heavy cart with caterpillar treads. “We need to get this baby to the roof.”
Holtzy dug in her pocket and pulled a five-dollar bill from her wallet and handed it to Finn. “Okay, I was wrong. Is it so bad to be aspirational?”
Chapter 150: Crisis on Other Worlds: Some Battles Are Physical…
Chapter Text
Lena’s heart was in her mouth as they rode the cargo elevator to the roof with Finn in charge of pulling the cart with her baby… her quantum anchor… in it. She was taking a risk, after all, it could be jostled and then her hyper-specific engineering, if it was off by so much as a fraction of a millimeter…
Red lightning split the sky around the skyscraper.
Winn said, “I’m reading multiple quantum surges.”
Finn yelled, “I don’t think this is working!”
Alex was bouncing on her toes. “This is what working looks like!”
Red lightning split the sky in all directions. Suddenly a huge blue cloud opened, and a dark-haired woman was yelling in a foreign language, a language that sounded strangely familiar to Lena, though she could not make out the meaning. Then the blue cloud disappeared.
Winn was typing madly at his computer. “Booyah! Old English! ‘Get the book. Only book can correct here thing! If you get the book, you can maintenance this!’”
But Lena stood there, stunned. “Who was that woman? She looked so familiar…”
///
Kara and Oliver flew to the back door of Arkham.
Kara asked, “Why are we here?”
Oliver said, “What would you rather do, go in the front door and ask to see the good Dr. Deegan?”
“Or I could pretend to be a patient, and you can bring me in—”
“This way’s easier.” He pulled out his cell phone. “9:55. Just about time for a smoke break.” He paced back and forth in the poorly lit alley.
“Must you pace?” asked Kara.
“Just trying to get my steps in.”
The steel door opened and two men in white shirts and pants stepped out with cigarettes and lighters in hand. Oliver stepped forward, putting his hands on his hips—well, putting Supergirl’s hands on her hips—and saying, with much gravity, “Excellent. Good timing. We have a secret meeting with the good doctor. Don’t tell anybody we came in this way. He… won’t like it.”
The two men looked at each other and then shooed the superheroes in.
The last thing Kara and Oliver heard before the door shut behind them was “more than my job’s worth—”
The asylum looked like it should have been condemned years ago, with rusty steel doors and paint peeling off the walls. Down the patient corridor, they stepped around rusty puddles, with the screams of the patients ringing around them. They turned a corner and saw a door with the word Restricted on a dirty sign, and they stepped through that to see another corridor in not much better shape, but here above each door was a light encased in a protective metal cage. Below those showed names of doctors. The third door down on the left said Dr. Deegan.
Kara pushed the door open. They stepped into what had to be a laboratory, but Kara half-expected a stooped Igor to walk in and greet them with a bad German accent. Instead, they saw a man with greasy hair wearing a white lab coat and a bald man wearing a $5000 suit.
“John Deegan,” said Oliver. “And Lex Luthor.”
“The Green Arrow,” Luthor replied. “And your lovely assistant,” he chuckled at Kara in Oliver’s green leather suit. “Now that’s an idea. Why didn’t I become the Green Arrow? Or Superman? It seems that changing reality itself has a bit of a learning curve. Ha. This actually explains a lot… Oh, don’t mind my friend here. He has almost nothing to do with this.”
“Wait, Lex, you’re up against legitimate superheroes?” asked Deegan. “I thought you’d learned that lesson.”
Lex sighed. “Everybody should have a hobby.”
Oliver growled, “You did this to us. You can undo it.”
“Well, that is true, but I think the question is why would I want to?” Lex pushed a button under the desk and an alarm started blaring out in the corridor. He threw a flash grenade at them and scrambled past them and out the door. Kara had an arrow knocked in her bow, but he hit another switch on his way out the door and disappeared. They ran after him, back through the restricted door and saw all the doors on both sides of the corridor click and open wide.
“What did he do?” asked Kara.
“Bought himself some time.”
Red alarm lights lit and dimmed, lit and dimmed as the claxon continued. “I’ll get the crazy bastards back into their cages. You go find the book!” He zoomed away.
Kara hurried forward after the orange-jumpsuited inmates who were dragging the white-clad attendants outside and beating on them. Without a thought, she followed them out the front door and started shooting arrows into the inmates, grateful for the ease of identifying good guys and bad guys. A red light zoomed around her grabbing the downed inmates and disappearing inside, but two had already hotwired a van and were speeding toward her as her back was turned to shoot three inmates with three arrows at the same time.
There was a crash, a squeal of brakes, and the tinkle of breaking glass. A bumper smacked into her calves, and she turned to see, atop the van—
Well, it wasn’t Batman, with that lithe body and that long wild scarlet hair coming from out of the cowl.
And the scarlet lipstick.
One convict jumped out of the van, screaming, “Batw---aaah!” as a Batarang knocked him unconscious and returned to the woman’s black-gloved hand. The other jumped out and ran in the other direction but she shot the Batclaw at him and then the grapnel wire pulled him back at her still screaming. He crashed into the van’s windshield, shattering it, and rolled unconscious off the hood to the ground.
She leaped down and Kara stared. “You’re… not Batman.”
The woman growled, “Kate Kane told you to get out of Gotham. You should have listened to her.” She shot her Batclaw up to the roof of the building and let the wire fly her up, where she disappeared in the darkness.
And Kara thought, Heroes go up, but villains go down.
She hurried back inside and shot her way through the building to the basement door at the end of the maintenance corridor. She could hear cell doors slamming and then a flash of red light turned into her, well, Oliver, gosh this was confusing. She said, “He’ll go down—” but Oliver was gone in a blast of wind.
“Wow, Maggie is right. That really is annoying!”
By the time she got down to the storage room, Oliver, still looking like her, had a huge old tome in his hands and Lex Luthor was nowhere to be seen.
S/he shrugged. “He’s slippery.”
///
The moment the strange blue cloud disappeared, everyone started talking at once.
“Hey, now, if that woman really was speaking Old English, and I can get the computer to figure out from her accent more precisely where and when she was from, then I can optimize the universal translator with her specs for when, if—No. When she comes back, and we’ll be able to understand better what she—”
“I feel like I’ve seen her in a dream, but I don’t normally dream about myself, but she really looked kind of like me, but what would me be doing speaking old English and trying to maintenance a book—”
“Vasquez, what do you have on different Earth scenarios or that alien who kept insisting that reincarnation was a real thing right before he/she/they turned into a porpoise and got away from us, do you remember that one? Do you have a file on—”
“Ms. Luthor, maybe it’s me, but if this device you all have built is pulling people through different dimensions or Earths or something, then maybe it doesn’t actually need to be outside.”
Everyone stopped to look at Jess, who stood shivering next to the quantum anchor. “What?” she asked. “I just think we can work downstairs where it’s warm. Not likely to change things if we’re bringing people through wormholes, or whatever it is you’re doing.”
Winn and Lena looked at each other and then looked at Alex and Vasquez, who turned to J’onn and M’gann. “Sounds right to me,” said J’onn.
Finn sighed as Alex hit the elevator open button.
///
Back in Winn’s lab, Lena asked Alex to help her do a diagnostic on the quantum anchor, to try to detect where and when and from what Earth the strange woman had been pulled. Then she frowned. “Except where assumes an Earth, doesn’t it, Alex, I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
Alex rested a hand on Lena’s shoulder. “It’s fine, Lena. I knew what you meant. We can probably test the trace tachyons. At the very least, we should see what kind of radiation signature it has, so we can figure out the level of technology of the time/place/Earth thingy.”
Lena laughed, but even she could hear a tiny bit of hysteria leaking out. “Right. And I know what you mean, but, but I mean, who was that woman?”
Vasquez turned to look at M’gann who said, “Well, Lena, it kind of looked like you.”
“Shit. It really did. But how will we be able to tell if it’s a bad me or a good me?”
Alex asked, “Why would you assume there might be a bad you?” Everyone nodded.
“Why would you all assume there would only be good you’s in an infinite multiverse?”
Winn piped up, “That would be like ‘Mirror, Mirror’ in the old, original Star Trek, where they all got switched with their opposites from a parallel—”
“Winn…” warned Vasquez.
“Right! Universal translator upgrade almost complete and that is the only thing that made me think of Star--”
“Winn…”
“South central England, maybe the year 900? 1000 AD? Or possibly Ireland. She didn’t talk long enough to give us a statistically significant sample.”
Alex looked at the readout on Lena’s laptop. “Earth 90? Do we know anything about Earth 90?”
Vasquez hurried up and handed her a grey folder. “It’s out of date, pre-pandemic, but unless there has been some kind of time travel or other weirdly induced change, Earth 90 was medieval, feudal: lords and serfs, that sort of thing, at least in its northern hemisphere. That was the only place Stark’s probe managed to breach through to—”
“Vas, Stark is Marvel. We’re DC—”
“Yes, ma’am, but you know I will take any information I can scrape up to protect our Earth from those who would choose to do it harm.”
Lena watched Alex melt at seeing Vasquez’s earnest frown.
“Okay,” said Lena, “people! We need information on Earth 90, on Old English, on quantum flux experiments in whatever world or on whatever Earth seems to have accurate data. Now, go do what you do somewhere else. I need to retune this thing to more accurately breach from 90 to here. Jess, please stay. Winn, work on the translator. Alex—Oh, wait. You’re actually the one in charge…”
Alex laughed. “Yes, and I am sending everyone else up to the command center to make sure the DEO keeps on track while you help us save the world,” she sighed. “Again.”
Chapter 151: Crisis on Other Worlds: Other Battles Are of the Will
Chapter Text
Alex tracked the tachyons and found that they were coming mostly (53%) from Earth 90, but also 26% from Earth 37 and 14% from Earth 13. Winn cross-referenced that data with his and found that the Earth 37 tachyons were from a 2021-adjacent Australia, maybe Melbourne? The Earth 13 tachyons were from a 1970s New York City. They found a few other minor quantum entanglements: 1990s Moscow; early 2000s Buffalo and London; some others that seemed insignificant. She passed the information to Lena, Winn and Vasquez.
Lena said, “I don’t know how strong my anchor is, whether it’s strong enough to bring more than one person here, presumably the possibly-me from Earth 90.”
“Good point,” said Vasquez. “And anyway, we don’t know if any or all of the people trying to get here have our best interests at heart. Better to fight only one enemy at a time.”
They heard a commotion outside. The door opened to show Supergirl handing Green Arrow an enormous tome.
“Well, look who finally came back,” said Vasquez.
“With what looks like a fairly old book,” said Winn jumping up to see it better.
“With a cryptographic lock on it,” said Supergirl.
The Arrow handed Winn the book. “Can you get to work on opening it, please?”
“The Green Arrow says please? Oh, wait. You guys are still swapped.”
“Yes, Winn, we’re still swapped. So get to work, hm?”
“Okay, geek squad! Form up on me!” He took the tome and hurried out of the room, followed by Alex, Jess, and some techs.
Lena looked at the swapped heroes. “So, I suppose I need to talk to Oliver Queen here if I want to talk to Kara Danvers?”
“Yeah, sorry about that, Lena,” said the Green Arrow quietly.
Oliver asked, “Is there somewhere I can go to get out of this skirt?”
Vasquez said, “Follow me.”
They left. Lena rubbed her neck, started to say something and then faltered into silence.
Kara asked, “Would it help if I changed too?”
“You’d still be a man.”
Kara took her hand and led her to two chairs. “Sit, Lena. Close your eyes and picture me. I’m still Kara inside this body. Talk to me. Talk to Kara.”
Lena sat and took Kara’s/Oliver’s hands. She shook her head and closed her eyes. She said, “I didn’t realize he wasn’t you. I got up and made a pile of waffles and he ate maybe half of them, and I didn’t get it, thought you were just having an off day. He said you’d had some violent dreams, and I thought you’d lost your appetite. But I don’t know when you switched. I think I woke up with him holding me, and I thought it was you, and sure, it was your body, but it still feels really wrong.”
Lena, we’ll get through this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I’m hopeful.”
“Why? How?”
“Because Bruce Wayne’s cousin is taking over for Batman and she is, well, I think you’d say she’s queer as fuck, but probably only after you’d had two or three glasses of scotch. And I think she’s going to help Gotham a lot better than he could. But that’s not the main thing. That part is just me feeling hopeful in general.”
“There’s something that makes you feel hopeful specifically?”
“Yes. The woman who is trying to get to us? I’m betting that she is that world’s version of you. And you’ve helped us save the world, or just saved me, how many times now? Can you imagine what two of you could achieve together?”
“Well, Lillian would say—”
“Jackshit. Seriously, Lena, your stepmother is an evil bitch most of the time. Can we just leave her out of this?”
Lena’s eyes went wide. “Um, so how much of that is Kara’s long-suffering annoyance and how much is this body’s testosterone?”
“Huh. Dunno. Maybe 50/50? Or 65/35, like polyester and cotton?” She rubbed his eyes. “The point is I believe in you, Lena Luthor. And until Winn’s been proved right about some mirror or alternate or parallel universe, I will believe in anyone who shares your body. Oh, shi—Sherbert. That came out much differently in my head.”
Lena smiled. “Well, although I fear that your belief in my alternate selves is unfounded and dangerous, I have striven to live up to your belief in me. It’s made me a better person.”
“And you do the same for me. We’re in this together, Lena, whatever I become, whatever you become.”
She leaned in and started to kiss Lena, but Lena pulled away. “Ew, beard burn! Oh! Sorry, Kara!”
Kara opened her mouth to reply when an enormous blue cloud opened up and spat out a woman dressed in a medieval style long green dress, with her long dark hair plaited and coiled on her head. She carried with her a leather-bound box. Thunder rolled as she stepped into the lab and looked around with fear and fascination.
She was the spitting image of Lena Luthor.
Kara tapped her ear, saying, “Winn, she’s here. Bring the translator on the double!”
The cloud vanished.
The woman took a breath, but she looked around the room with wide eyes, only noticing Kara and Lena as Winn came racing into the room, followed by the rest of the superfriends.
She said, “Hwaer am ic? Hwa eart thu?”
Lena said, “You’re in the present, in National—In the United—We’re, we need--”
Winn translated, “Where am I? Who art thou?”
She stared at them both. “Hwaet spraecst thu?”
“English,” said Lena, “but not your English. It’s been about a thousand years.”
Still catching up, Winn said, “What speakest thou?” Then he looked at Lena. “Wait, how do you know this?”
“It sounds like German mixed with Geoffrey Chaucer.” She shrugged.
Winn typed away at his tablet. Awkwardly, he said, “Englisc ac naes thin Englisc. Hit haefde beon thusend gear.” Then he took the souped up comm out of his ear and set it on the table, tapping his tablet. “There, how’s that?”
“What is this marvel?” asked the strange woman.
“Um, technology?” said Winn.
“Magic,” said Kara.
Lena turned to her. “There’s no such thing as magic, Kara. Only science we don’t understand yet.”
The woman looked faint, and Alex stepped forward to offer her a wheeled computer chair. She gave it a pained look, but sat, saying, “Yes, magic is wisdom we cannot understand. But some of us, we understand enough. My people fell victim to a brutal warrior with a book our ‘king’ did not know how to use, to his sorrow. Well, to all our sorrows. So many people in his kingdom were slaughtered by this warrior and he took back the book before I might unbind the slaughter.”
Alex said, “I am Alex. Who are you?”
“I am Morgana, sister to Arthur, daughter of Uther Pendragon and last living heir of Camelot.”
Winn stared, looking like he was going to start squeeing, but Alex gave him a dirty look.
Lena said, “I am Lena Luthor, sister to Lex, daughter of Lionel and Chief Executive Officer of LCorp. I abjure thee to help us.”
The woman raised an Eyebrow, exactly the way Lena always did, and everyone in the room except those two gasped. “I suspect we can help each other. I want my world back, and I suspect you simply want your world to survive.”
“So what do you suggest?” asked Alex.
“First, we must find the book.”
“We found it,” said Kara, still in Oliver’s body.
“Then we need at least one more of us, maybe two.”
“More—” started Alex.
“Of us,” said Lena confidently. “I agree.” She turned back to the anchor and the woman jumped up and walked around it, staring, but keeping her hands clutching her box. Lena said, “Do you know which Earth we need to search?”
“Yes, scan for thirty-seven, not far from you.” She lifted her box slightly. “I can help.”
Vasquez asked, “Forgive me for asking, but abundance of caution here. What are we bringing in you and your person to do exactly?”
Morgana looked pale and went and sat down in the chair again. “Your pardon. Your technon and wisdom made me forget myself. I traveled from the ninetieth earth to warn you. There is a group that call themselves Time Lords or Watchers, and they have sent their mightiest warrior. He’s been unleashing the Book of Destiny across the multiverse to test different earths.”
“Test them for what?” asked Oliver.
“A crisis he believes is coming. He thinks the Elseworlds created by the Book of Destiny approximate the collision of realities that we’re facing. But I’ve figured out a way to stop him, stop the crisis, bring our worlds back to the reality they should enjoy.”
Winn said, “Wait, what’s the Book of Destiny?”
Alex said, “You say that. Can you prove that what you say is true?”
Lena asked, “How will this other person help us change anything? How can you?”
Morgana looked disgusted with them. She took a breath and talked through her gritted teeth. “I am Morgana, Master Sorcerer from a long line of sorcerers. The Book of Destiny rewrites reality, but only if it can find one strong enough to write in it and press their words into the book with their strong will—I am she—and only if she writes the correct words. The woman we seek has knowledge of wards and bindings. She inhabits an earth nigh to yours. Her name is Saskia, of the clan Merindol. With her help and yours, I, Morgana Pendragon, can save you all!”
Chapter 152: Crisis on Other Worlds: The First Three Parts to a Contract
Chapter Text
Offer
While it sucks to be madly in love with your best friend—for years—it‘s worse when she is clearly, horribly, and inescapably in love with her husband. But that sort of thing does make one resilient, Saskia de Merindol thought grimly, as she completed her final argument in a civil case of contract malfeasance, for which she had methodically researched, tiredly tracked down dozens of needles from the haystacks of potential evidence, and confidently built her argument like a general’s ramparts: solid, unbreakable, undefeatable. The court adjourned while the jurors considered their verdict.
She strolled outside to the court steps and lit a cigarette, mentally reviewing her argument, but her mind was not totally on it. Well, she’d been working sixteen-hour days for a few weeks, hadn’t gotten laid since she didn’t know when. She needed a break, a vacation, and a one-night stand, not necessarily in that order.
But what she needed most was a challenge.
She inhaled deeply, held the warm smoke in her lungs and then turned to see her doppelganger, wearing a form-fitting slinky green dress, absolutely the sort of thing Saskia might wear when she was anywhere but at work, at court. The woman’s eyes were just as blue-green as hers were. They met hers and winked.
At that moment, they were called back into court to hear the verdict.
///
Morgana Pendragon glamoured her way past the security guards and their little metal detectors, to follow her other self into the court. She sat in back and, with a smirk, listened to the serfs proclaim the local baron guilty of breaking his contract on their hovels, or some such thing. She still wore the strange translating talisman given to her by Agent “Friend of Hills” (these people in the future had strange names with old derivations from her own language). So she had a decent understanding of the things people said, even if their clothes and attitudes gave her a different message. No matter. She had gotten the woman’s attention. And once this trivial litigation was concluded, she would make sure her attention was undivided.
///
Saskia took her time organizing her papers and sorting them into the dividers of her briefcase, after of course congratulating her clients on the win she had gotten them. When they invited her out for a celebratory drink, she declined, citing a very real looming headache, and after insisting, they went off without her. By the time she got herself to the stairs of the court again, the woman was waiting for her.
“Do I know you?” Saskia asked.
“Depends. Inasmuch as you examine your visage in a mirror, yes, quite well. In every other way, you and I are from… very different worlds.”
“Why do you seek me out?”
The woman looked angry but pulled herself together. “I need… to make a contract that will bind the parties involved… until the end of time.”
Saskia stared. “Well, that’s…”
“Impossible?” asked the woman with a raised Eyebrowä, one that Saskia knew down to her core.
“No,” Saskia said, smirking. “I’d say that’s very interesting.”
///
Acceptance
Alex was in the medbay, examining the sample of Morgana’s DNA she had given them against the sample from Lena. They weren’t 100% the same, of course, but they showed a familial relationship. She suspected that no one really know how to recognize relatives who lived a thousand years apart. But she was pretty sure that Lena would find the results intriguing. Not enough to trust Morgana or whoever she brought back from the other Earth. Lena had learned caution around the age when she had learned how to add and subtract. Alex printed out the result and strode to Winn’s lab. As she neared, she heard loud upset voices, and she burst into the lab at a run, dropping the paper and pulling her alien pistol, shouting, “Stand down!”
What she saw was three Lenas shouting, with Agent Finn in the middle in his black tacticals, holding them off from potentially throttling each other.
Lena Luthor raised her hands over her head. “They’re right, Morgana and whoever you are. Let’s just step back and cool off and figure this out.”
The new Lena-lookalike took one look at Alex’s pistol and also raised her hands. “Don’t shoot, okay? I haven’t done anything!” She turned to Morgana and snapped, “Hey, you don’t get to say, ‘Come with me if you want to live’ and then just expect me to create a contract at the snap of your fingers. That’s not how this works!”
Lena Luthor sighed, “It’s really not, Morgana. For you, your magic happens very fast, but our science and technology, they take time. And writing up a contract like the one you want is going to take time, maybe a lot of time.”
Morgana pulled the pins that held her hair up and tossed them on a lab table, shaking out her long dark wavy hair. “You must comprehend! We have not time!”
Alex slowly holstered her gun, trying to think like Vasquez. “Okay,” she said. “Can we break up whatever tasks we need to do, so each of us can do our tasks while other research is still going on?”
Lena clapped her hands and pointed at her look-alikes. “That’s the answer! A contract has to have at least six parts. If one of us works on the offer, and another on the acceptance, while you, Morgana, figure out the language we need to use to make your concept, fine, your magic work—”
The new woman cut in, saying, “That’s it! Who are the parties of the contract? You mentioned a soldier representing these groups. Who is he? Can we contact him? We’re going to need him or someone to sign on their side, to accept and to validate the awareness element, and of course negotiate the considerations—"
They all turned back to Alex, who said, “Okay, we will put Winn on finding that soldier. We’ve got the best facial recognition programs on the planet. You guys, you, you ladies, do what you need to do.” She turned to the new woman. “Hi, I’m Agent Alex Danvers, Director of the Department of Extraordinary Operations. You look… a lot more than ordinary. How do you do?”
She held her hand out. The woman glanced at her hand, then glanced up at her face, then smirked. She took Alex’s hand in her warm hand. “And hi, you. I am Saskia de Merindol. I am going to need a lot of paper, access to the best and most up-to-date lawbooks you can find, and a laptop. I’m guessing that cybersecurity is something you’re quite good at.” She winked. “Agent Alex Danvers.”
Morgana looked pissed, but that might have been her go-to facial expression. Lena, in contrast, had turned away so Alex couldn’t see her face. Probably, it would have told Alex in no uncertain terms that she, Alex, had just succumbed to Lena’s lookalike’s feminine wiles.
Bloody hell. She needed to get Vasquez and Lucy Lane to build an emotional firewall—as well as a legal one—between this woman and all of the DEO operatives who were known to be attracted to women.
So basically everybody.
///
Awareness
It didn’t take long for Ankh-Morpork’s Superintendent of Police, His Grace, Sir Sam Vimes to follow the trail of the Book of Destiny. It stank like skunkweed, from a metaphorical perspective he didn’t quite understand. He suspected that the wizards at Unseen University could have explained it to him, but he didn’t really need to understand the thing to know that it was dangerous on its own, not even considering the dangers caused by the worlds it proffered as answers to the queries all the hoped-for heroes had written into it.
He slid a new cigar from the silver case Sybil had given him and lighted it. This section of the city was oddly peaceful, with trees and flowers and wooden benches to sit on and for some reason, nobody being shaken down by the Thieves Guild. The whole city seemed far more peaceful than he would have expected from the Extreme Future. Of course he was a pessimist, but the peace seemed… genuine.
Maybe he had gotten it wrong, taking the book from Uther Pendragon and giving it to Lex Luthor, since they were both men who assumed that the world was violently chaotic and could never be anything else. Maybe overt military or genius male power wasn’t what was needed to solve this crisis and save the multiverse. Maybe, this time, the best man for the job was a woman, or a group of women, supported by a few bright young men willing to take the kind of unnoticed jobs that made the world—well, worlds really--turn.
Apparently, this Morgana had managed to achieve escape velocity from her Earth’s universe to come here to Earth 38, where superheroes and the DEO (probably just another acronym for this world’s Guild of Assassins, say Deaths for Essential Occasions?). He decided not to breach this immensely tall building and take away the book, even though that had been his first instinct. Well, being married to Lady Sybil Vimes and working with a female werewolf and a dwarf willing to be out as a female in notoriously bigoted Ankh-Morpork… it had made him more attentive to the highly capable women he came across in his duties.
And it interested him greatly that this Morgana, with the help of this Lena Luthor, had managed to breach another Earth and bring its version of Morgana/Lena here. Smoothly, too. He doubted that the Monks of Time had even noticed a glitch.
A young man approached him diffidently. Vimes turned to look at him, puffing on his tired cigar.
“Sir? Um, sir?”
Vimes took the cigar out of his mouth and blew a smoke ring to his right and behind him. “Yes?”
“Well, um, sir. This park is, you know, you can’t smoke here. The signs are posted at all the entrances… Sorry, sir…”
Sighing sadly, Vimes rolled his cigar against a stone pillar. “Sorry about that. I’m just visiting your lovely city. Didn’t notice the signs.”
The man rubbed his hands together as if he were nervous, but Vimes couldn’t make heads or tails of his outfit: a tartan shirt and a wool jumper.
The young man said, “Um, I know. Because, um, we were kind of looking for you. Because of the Book. Your Book of Destiny.”
Vimes heard the capital letters: it was the first time anyone had referred to it appropriately out of visits to almost 45 Earths. That alone suggested to him that this Earth’s reaction to the problem might be… different. He felt mildly hopeful.
///
Lt. Colonel Lucy Lane hadn’t worked as a law clerk for a long time, tracking down seldom-remembered lawbooks to search for precedents and copy the pages for the lawyer she worked for—over and over and over again. She hadn’t missed it, but she found she didn’t mind working for this woman, with her sharp mind and tantalizing perfume. And legs for days…
She would never act on this attraction, of course, because she was with Maggie and Lucy considered loyalty to be a cardinal virtue, even when events weren’t hurtling them forward because the world needed to be saved.
Again.
DEO agents with the training of Navy Seals were down in the archives, digging up the texts she called for and copying the ones she needed. Finn was sorting everything she gave him, and Jess was cataloging it all on her tablet. Pretty soon they were going to need a bigger conference room.
Oliver and Kara had led Morgana to the training room Supergirl used, because it was the most solidly constructed space in the entire building. Just in case. Saskia sat in Director Danvers’ office typing madly on her laptop, trying to synthesize it all.
Lucy tried not to let her confusion, anxiety and hope slow her down. She was pretty sure that what Morgana was proposing was impossible, but then this woman and the strange soldier had gotten to this Earth with no apparent portal or vehicle, and Morgana had brought Saskia back here in the same way. Was this magic? Lena said no, but Kara Zor-El Danvers thought otherwise. But even if it was—and the reality of Lena’s doppelgangers made that seem more and more like a real possibility—how on Earth (literally) could anyone write a magic contract that would permanently and in all times and places (again, literally) prevent some kind of magic-using Titans from destroying the multiverse, one universe at a time, or all at once, or any other mix of possibilities.
The crazy thing wasn’t the magic. It was trying to have a scope and spread that would cover all of matter and all of reality. When Alex came in to check on their progress, Lucy muttered to her, “It’s impossible, Al. Law doesn’t work like that.”
Alex crossed her arms and frowned (Vasquez’s Frown #126, serious consideration). “Well, here’s the thing. Lena’s helped us do some seriously impossible things. This? This is Lena cubed. They just might do anything.”
///
Winn took Commander Vimes in through the underground parking and up through what he always thought of as the Visitor’s Labyrinth. When the Agent on the front desk looked behind Winn at the tall, older soldier, in a sort of Roman style armor with short pants on beneath what was not at all a skirt, with tough leather boots and a waxed cape and battered helmet that had all seen better days, his jaw dropped. “A lanyard for who now?”
“A consultant,” said Winn. “For a mission.”
“And was time travel involved?” asked the young man in the black tactical uniform.
“Your clearance isn’t nearly high enough for me to even frown at you for asking that question, Agent. Just make a lanyard for him.”
The black lanyard looked far less out of place on the soldier than Winn would have expected. He had looked at it and sighed before lowering it over his head, “Bureaucracy?”
“Pretty much. Do all Earths have it?”
“Almost. The three I brought the book to that didn’t have it only lasted a few hours. Your Earth has done quite well. You’ve lasted two days. And a bit. That’s a record.”
Winn stared at him. “You seem much nicer than the soldier Morgana described destroying her Earth.”
“I’m not a soldier. I’m a cop.”
“And you’re enforcing what, the laws of time and space?”
“Exactly.” He looked surprised. “Hm. You are all… taking this quite well.”
Winn rubbed his face tiredly. “We’re kind of cops too, and it’s like somebody is always trying to break those laws. Like, every year. After a while, it’s gets harder to be surprised.”
“WHY IN HADES’ NAME IS ONE OF THEM IN HERE?”
They turned to see Morgana storming in, with Kara and Oliver scrambling to catch her and hold her back, but Oliver supersped right past everyone and Kara was waving her bow around.
Saskia hurried out of Alex’s office. “Who the hell are you?”
“Commander Sir Sam Vimes, originally from the Night Watch of Ankh-Morpork on another Earth,” he waved his hand past the window, then turned to Oliver. “Miss, do you realize what speed you were just going at?”
“I really don’t. This isn’t actually my body.”
“Mm, well. We’ll let it go with a warning this time.” He turned back to the people trickling out of offices and conference rooms.
Morgana stood quivering with rage. “That soldier!”
“Mm, yes. Sorry about that. My colleague has an outsized trust in kings, unlike me. He really thought your father, Uther, would make more responsible choices.”
“YOU gave him the power to almost destroy all magic anywhere COMPLETELY!”
“Again, that was my colleague, and we did what we had to do to counter his spell. Only an enormous sacrifice could give us the power to undo what he tried to do.”
Lena walked in, saying, “Because that would have taken away any hope that the multiverse could be saved by the magic in the book and in my friend here.”
“Yes,” said Vimes. “It was touch and go.”
Morgana was still fuming. “Do you do absolutely no research on the people you offer this book to? It was Uther. He sees every problem to be caused by magic and you gave him the power to be the hammer that destroyed them all!”
Winn frowned, trying to untangle her metaphor, but Lena said, “Yes, and Lex sees every problem as aliens and then you hand him an alien problem. Are all the people you’ve handed this book to men?”
“Er, no. No, of course not.”
“But most were,” muttered Saskia. “God, I need a smoke.”
Lena walked up to Vimes, “Can I borrow one of your cigars for my friend here?”
He looked at her incredulously.
“You smell like you just had one about twenty minutes ago. It’s more noticeable in a building where no one is allowed to smoke.”
Nodding, he pulled a silver cigar case out of his breast pocket and slid one out for her, and held a match up to light it as she puffed on it. “Mm. Good quality.” She handed Saskia the cigar.
Alex said, “The smoke alarms are going to go off—” just as alarms started blaring.
Above the din, Morgana shouted, “We don’t have TIME for this!”
When the alarms stopped, Saskia took a few more puffs and then put it out against the sole of her four-inch heel. “Actually, we do. So are you the one who will be the signatory for your organization?”
“I… Sign what?”
“The contract I’m helping put together to prevent harm to the multiverse.”
“You’re putting… But that… Huh. The odds of that working would be… a million to one.”
Simultaneously, Morgana, Saskia and Lena said, “Never tell me the odds.”
Chapter 153: Crisis on Other Earths: The Other Three Parts to a Contract
Chapter Text
Consideration
Agent Vasquez sat at her station under the command center computer feeds, idly watching the city not burn to the ground just yet. In fact, she was listening to the conversation that the lawyer was having the medieval cop, talking about the limits of quantum entanglement that Lena had outlined for them previously. The lawyer seemed to intuitively grasp the issue, but Vimes just shook his head. “Quantum,” he muttered. “Quantum is never good.”
Earlier, Morgana had argued that they needed to disentangle the Earths from each other, to make it harder for one Earth’s destruction to cascade through the multiverse, but Lena had pointed out how hard it would be to just disappear even one quantum entanglement, much less an infinite number. She suggested instead piggy-backing on the endless links to more strongly bind the Earths to each other, making the contract infinitely stronger. There had been what sounded like a huge fight but apparently it was just a discussion. Then Morgana went back to Supergirl’s training room, Lena went back to Winn’s lab and Vimes had settled himself in Alex’s office with Saskia. Vasquez hadn’t quite caught what he’d said about her: maybe the sane one? Or the safe one?
Vasquez grabbed Winn’s yo-yo from his workstation and played with it for a while, trying to wrap her mind around what Lena had described as a fractal multiverse, endlessly repeating at different scales. Way beyond her paygrade. Instead, she thought about what Vimes had said about the sacrifice necessitated for them to stop Uther’s attempt to wipe out magic with magic. Hadn’t Morgana said she was the only survivor? So what kind of payment, or “consideration” as Saskia called it, would they need to make their contract work, always assuming they figured out how to word it to account for infinite details and unending time?
She typed a query into her tablet and got an estimated world (Earth 38) population of 250 million in 950 AD. Was that the level of sacrifice? Why were none of the Lenas talking about this? Why wasn’t Vimes?
She got up and went and rapped her knuckles on the office doorframe. They looked up at her blankly. “Is there anything you need?”
“More coffee,” said Saskia, looking back down at the lawbook she was making a list from.
Vimes said, “I really need to take a walk. Can’t stand sitting around. Are there places in this city where a man can smoke?”
Vasquez went and liberated the coffee machine from the breakroom and plugged it in on Alex’s file cabinet. Then she turned to Vimes. “Walk with me.”
After taking the Watchman to the men’s locker room and getting Agent Finn to lend him a pair of jeans, a UC-Sunnydale sweatshirt and a leather bomber’s jacket, they left via the subbasement parking lot, the way Winn had brought Vimes in, and wandered down the street, with Vimes lighting another cigar as they went. “You have questions,” he said.
“What’s the cost? I’m assuming a sacrifice will be necessary.”
“Hard to say. Magic wants to happen. If we get the parameters right, and that is a mighty big if, it might not come to anything so severe.”
“But if we don’t? I like to think several steps ahead if possible.”
“Well… I’ve been thinking about something Morgana said, back on her Earth. When the ripples started, and my people realized what Uther was trying to do, my people sent me to Camelot to stop it. As I got there, Uther was bragging about telling the book to destroy magic, and Morgana yelled, ‘Nooo! Wait, but did you write it in blood?’”
“Blood,” said Vasquez with no expression. “And had he?”
“No, and that might be one reason why we were able to stop him at all.”
“So… He wrote it in ink?”
“Yes, like most of the others. Someone tried to use a pencil on one Earth, but that didn’t go well: the changes they tried to make were fragile and temporary.”
“So we’re going to need blood? Possibly a lot if it’s a long contract? Whose?”
Vimes shrugged. “Ask your sorcerer. I just try to keep the peace.”
///
Legality
With some trepidation, Saskia picked up her notes and asked one of the helpful agents to take her to Winn’s lab, where Morgana and Lena were having a very fast conversation while Lena scribbled on the white board on the side wall: Eight Forces of Magical Physics: Expansion, Contraction, Deflection, Multiplication, Erasure, Reflection, Severing, Conjoining.
“Okay, so the potential wave of destruction could occur as an expansion or as a contraction, right, so I could see contraction concentrating the multiverse down into something so small as to erase it, but matter cannot be created or destroyed and there is no way I can see that contracting all of the matter in all of the universes, I mean that’s far far more of, well, everything than even the biggest black hole could contain, right, so that seems highly unlikely, if not impossible.”
Morgana shook her head. “It does not have to be completely accomplished to be completely destructive.”
“Good point. Hm. Expansion still makes more sense, since the universe—I mean, presumably, the multiverse--is already expanding, just slowly. Could they speed that up somehow?”
Supergirl frowned. “Most destruction I’ve seen, or done, comes down to severing or conjoining. You cut someone apart or blow a building into its basement.”
Lena said, “So, what, they try to cut the multiverse apart? Separating the fractals? But we already saw how hard it would be to reverse the quantum entanglement of each pair of universes. Biverses?” She turned to look at Saskia. “Found anything?”
“A few things. I thought we’d have the best luck with the legality and capacity parts of the contract if we modeled your, um, spell on actual Earth laws and legal ideas or instruments: the sovereignty of individual nations to manage their destiny, protective custody for endangered prisoners, restraining orders and the like.”
Morgana and Lena looked back at the board and simultaneously said, “Deflection.”
“And NATO,” said Saskia. “Mutual protection.”
Supergirl paced back and forth across the room, her red cape swaying gently, belying the crinkle on her forehead. Saskia’s Earth had comic book and movie versions of the Supers, but standing in the presence of the real thing was mesmerizing.
Supergirl stopped. “But NATO’s protections are based on promises and decisions. In theory, Rao help us, one country could choose not to fulfill those promises. It’s not built in, an automatic response.”
“Or reaction,” said Lena, grabbing a green marker and circling Deflection, Multiplication and Reflection. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
Alex said, “But equal—” just as Supergirl said, “So how can multiplication—”
Together, Lena and Saskia answered, “Multiplier effect.”
Morgana said a word in Old English that the Universal Translator couldn’t translate. The rest of them looked at her blankly. She hurried forward, grabbed the red marker and tried to draw but hadn’t taken the cap off. Lena handed her the uncapped green marker. She drew a triangle, point-up, then a curved arrow toward the point, and then scribbled out the top half of the triangle and down the side and below the base.
Lena and Saskia barked, “Avalanche.”
Supergirl sighed, “Gravity,” like someone who had experienced its worst effects many times.
Morgana hurried to the lab table where a large flat book lay open. She flipped pages, muttering words in Latin.
Saskia repeated one she recognized, “Reciprocity?”
Morgana snapped, “Yes, we’re going to need another of me, of us. A powerful ward like this will require four catalyzers. And I know where to find her. Earth 13.”
Chapter 154: Crisis on Other Earths: Reciprocity
Chapter Text
Cormac O’Connor dug into his meal with gusto to cover his anxiety. He took his position as the top mafia don in Metropolis very seriously. Rumors about the Kingpin having left Gotham and set up in Hell’s Kitchen worried him, in part because people said that this was not panicked retrenchment but a confident extension of his operations. An encroachment, in other words, on Cormac’s own.
At the beginning of the year, Cormac had been at the top of his game, consolidating the operations of the Mangione and O’Brien families, paying that Wick bastard a gold coin each for cutting the heads off those two vipers. During the cleanup and reorganization over the passing months, it was true that he had… taken his eye off the ball. And then the coin press had been stolen, and he had received a cryptic note from the High Table to expect an important guest at the Continental. But that had been weeks ago.
He cut another piece out of his steak, but a shadow fell over his table. With his focus on his stilled knife and fork, his peripheral vision took in black all the way down to the floor. Slowly, he lay knife and loaded fork to his plate, forcing his face to be blankly friendly. Slowly, he braced himself. Slowly, he raised his eyes.
The visage he took in was… hybrid. The top of the woman’s head, with the complicated knot of silky dark hair on top, and pale white forehead, dark eyebrows above glinting green eyes. And below--
In its sickly sweet/cute Betty Boop femininity, the ceramic mask with the blood-red rosebud lips was mildly terrifying. And he had heard…
Well, people talked, didn’t they? And every member of every mafia everywhere on Earth was superstitious. It came with the job. And the stories about how this Adjudicator had lost… the bottom half of her face ran from the grisly prosaic—rats had chewed off her lips when her negligent mother had been distracted by drugs—to the campfire gothic cartoonish—the devil’s kiss had burned her lips away.
Slowly, one perfect dark eyebrow rose.
He tried not to squirm.
She sat across the table from him and took off her black gloves to reveal perfect hands with perfect black nails.
Well, of course she never actually conducted executions herself.
“There’s work to be done, and yet here you are, stuffing your face.”
He shrugged and picked up his fork with its piece of rare steak. “Comfort food.”
“Comfort? Do you think the legends of history who battled their way back from defeat did so by comforting themselves? Or was it the threat of starvation, the eradication of their bloodline that motivated these men to pull themselves back from the brink?”
She bent her head and took her mask off, and he focused his eyes on his fork. She reached out and took it from him, raised it to her… His eyes flashed back down to his plate, as he could hear her chew—without lips—swallow and put the mask back on to cover the grisly skeletal—
She said, “People who were born to wealth as you were often seek comfort in the face of adversity. Perhaps it’s time for you to feel uncomfortable.”
She stood, putting her gloves back on. “Enjoy your meal.”
He still sat there, his meal unfinished and cooling, for a long time after she left.
///
At the windows of the swinging doors to the kitchens, Lena, Morgana and Saskia watched, increasingly appalled, and then ducked away as the masked woman swept off. Lena and Saskia were trying not to gag, but Morgana just said, “So she’s a leper. What of it? There are charms that can protect us from her disease.”
“Or antibiotics,” said Saskia, “if that’s really what… that was about.”
Lena shook herself and said, “Somehow, I’d imagine that in 1970s Metropolis, leprosy is probably not the problem here, but in a terrible way, this is good news for us. There have been a number of successful facial transplants in the last few years. Reciprocity, right? We do something for her and she does something for us.”
Saskia glanced back out the plastic window and the powerful man who had apparently lost his appetite. “That’s assuming she wants help. She seems to be… leveraging her… disability? That kind of horror show could be very useful in the right circumstances.”
Suddenly Morgana startled and snatched a crystal dome the size of half a golf ball out of her decolletage. The crystal rippled orange as though with flames, and Morgana shifted it from one hand to another until Lena grabbed a dishcloth from one of the metal kitchen shelves and threw it into her hands. Muttering untranslatably, Morgana wrapped the crystal in the stained white towel and stared into the flames.
“What is it?” asked Saskia impatiently.
“The woman. She has not long to live.”
“Wait,” said Saskia, “are those flames?”
“We’re not concerned with her afterwards! We need to get her before!”
“Well, can you see when is before?” asked Saskia.
Morgana chanted the same cold blue aura around them and their surroundings shifted from inside the Continental’s restaurant kitchen to the entrance of the flatiron-shaped building.
Standing on the steps outside was a dark-haired young man, and he turned away from them at the sound of a black towncar, a Mercedes-Benz by the look of it, turning to park before the building. Morgana immediately started chanting as Saskia and Lena ran to the car, crowding the door to the back seat as it opened and the Adjudicator swung her legs around and rose from her seat. Saskia and Lena tackled her to the ground as a gunshot sounded. Then the blue aura rose about them again and the push-pull of quantum time travel tumbled them through non-space and whizzed them down a quantum entanglement like a cosmic zipline until they landed in a pile at the DEO command center. Saskia’s arms were covered with blood, though her black cape-coat had caught most of the shattered glass from the car window.
The Adjudicator swept her mask off the floor and fit it into place, then yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Lena yelled for a medic, but Vasquez was already running in with a med-kit like the ones Lena routinely had on hand in every room in the LCorp building. James was on her heels and automatically picked up Saskia bridal style and strode quickly down to the med-bay with Vasquez turning to Saskia, Lena and Morgana.
“Is anybody else hurt?” she asked.
The new version of Lena, with the strange ceramic mask, looked furious. “I had a job to do!”
“Yes!” shouted Lena, “and it was about to get you killed with a bullet to your head!”
Morgana unwrapped the crystal and stepped over to show the woman the image surrounded by flames.
“What strange animation is this? And who are you? And where am I?” She slowly turned to look around the room, seeing the computer stations, with the feeds coming in above Winn’s head.
Agent Alex Danvers strode in and the two locked eyes, halting the Adjudicator’s turn and slowing Alex’s stride.
Together, they said, “I know you…”
All the Lenas stared at each other and at the agents. Vasquez turned to Lena and Morgana, saying wearily, “Do not tell me that this is an example of Turner’s Paradox.”
But Morgana was swearing in Old English again (there was no mistaking it for any other form of communication) and Lena said, “That’s one I haven’t heard of…”
///
Vasquez put in a call for J’onn and M’gann to come in for an emergency and hurried everyone down to the medbay in part to check in on Saskia, and in part because every hundred yards or so, Alex and the strange masked woman were vomiting into trash baskets, one breakroom sink, and two actual toilets before they reached anyone who could wrestle them each onto an exam bed and attach them to the medical scanning equipment.
Both of them were showing sharp fevers of 104 degrees and were starting to talk wildly as if they were hallucinating. James and Finn helped strap them down at Vasquez and Dr. Hamilton’s commands, though they didn’t look happy about it.
Didn’t matter. Vasquez knew exactly how dangerous Alex could be under the wrong circumstances, and knowing Lena, she had to assume that the masked woman was also someone she shouldn’t underestimate.
Lena grabbed Morgana and a bandaged Saskia and closed the three of them into a conference room on the other side of the medbay. Vasquez had sent Winn to check if they needed anything. After he had worked it out with the quartermaster and delivered what they needed, he scurried back to Vasquez with an invoice to sign off on. She took the tablet and glanced at the first list:
Saskia: Coffee, Columbian, 3 pounds; coffee filters, coffee machine
Morgana: Hearty burgundy, 1 liter; fresh loaf of bread; ½ pound cheddar cheese; grapes, white
Lena: Dry erase markers, 2 dozen, at least 4 different colors; water, 1 gallon; croissant; cup of yogurt; Jess Huang; batteries for Universal Translator
Vasquez nodded, having expected something like this. There was a note that all had been delivered already to the conference room. The second list was a bit more unusual, spell ingredients, she supposed, and Winn was setting out to find the things from the National City Botanical Garden. She sent Finn with him. Finn would keep him calm and on task.
By the time the Martians arrived, Alex and the Adjudicator were both raving. Vasquez explained what she understood to be the situation, admitting that she might be way off on some of the particulars. Then she suggested that J’onn settle with Alex in a private room on one end of the floor and M’gann with the new woman on the other end.
Then she recommended that Dr. Hamilton requisition Dr. Torres from the Luthor clinic and went to take something for her headache and then sit at Winn’s station in the command center, watching the feeds and occasionally jotting down questions and ideas in her ubiquitous Moleskine notebook.
Somebody had to consider the contingencies.
///
J’onn J’onnz had entered Alex Danvers’ mind maybe three times since he had known her, always with her complete understanding and consent. This time, that was not an option. Now he sat in the plastic chair next to the hospital bed where Alex was strapped in, straining against the straps and raving about… her daughter.
Martians were not a time traveling species, but J’onn had taken the opportunity during the summer after the World Killers’ fiasco to sit down with Barry Allen, and later with Sara Lance, to talk about the vagaries of time travel to get at the rare and complicated topic from their lived experience, not just his (admittedly thorough and wide-ranging) reading in his spare time.
As he understood it, the two most important paradoxes time travelers had to watch out for were changing your ancestors’ experiences (which might mean you were never born) and meeting yourself in another time (which might drive one or both of you insane).
What no one had mentioned, because they hadn’t been thinking interdimensionally, was if a version of yourself from one universe met a relative of yours from another universe. On Earth 38, Alex Danvers was no relation to Lena Luthor. But apparently on Earth 13, the woman he knew as Alex Danvers had been the Adjudicator’s mother.
The mother who had overdosed on heroin when her daughter was four, leaving her child to cuddle up against her mother’s cold body, only being rescued when her screams from the rats chewing on her face and her mother’s body brought the neighbors running.
That mother, being dead, never knew the depths of trauma she had caused her daughter.
But Alex, already nurturing habitual guilt from her Earth 38 mother’s disappointments, suddenly was overwhelmed with visions of her own Earth 13 self’s… well, sins. There really wasn’t another Earth word for it, at least not in English, or most of the other Earth languages he knew.
J’onn sat in the chair, wearing his usual human-casual jeans, shirt and leather jacket and his Hank Henshaw face, but he realized that this, what he had to do now for Alex, would take every bit of his energy, his physical and psychic strength, his whole self.
His truth.
There could be not a micrometer of leeway, not an atom of dishonesty, if he were to get through to Alex and ground her in her Earth 38 reality. Her sanity.
He sighed, letting go his human façade, the face, the skin, the clothes. A human peeking in through the narrow window of the hospital room door, Agent Vasquez perhaps, would see only a Green Martian acolyte priest in his humble black robes, eyes squeezed shut, meditating, praying, reaching out across the void of time and space to H’ronmeer, to protect and defend him, to purify him, to make him worthy to help Alex, his Earth daughter.
Chapter 155: Crisis on Other Earths: Turner’s Paradox
Summary:
Sorry for the delay. It took me time to figure out where to end the chapter.
Chapter Text
M’gann M’orrz had escaped Mars on a trade transport, taking on the form of an Omblegg, a small drone worker species not known for their brains. She labored with the other drones, carrying heavy parts to the engineers always engaged in putting the elderly transport’s several engines back together again, as the owners never stayed on any planet long enough to do proper repairs or a full overhaul. Well, most of their cargo was black market: weapons, drugs, embargoed materials and the like. Many of the transport workers were, like her, planetless souls: refugees, criminals or orphans of war.
She stayed on the transport for a long time, watching, learning, and doing hard labor for little pay, by instinct enacting a duty that she would someday learn names for in other languages, most recently in English, penance. By the time she had learned to speak passably in ten languages, she eventually impersonated a Daxamite engineer who had gotten careless and fallen into the trash compacter. His bones got ejected into the cold dark abyss of space, but no one except the drones had seen it happen, so no one noticed anything odd when he walked back into the most recently burnt-out engine room, a bit more clumsy and forgetful than before, but still a quick learner.
When M’gann had learned all she could on the transport, she left, much older and wiser and used to the Daxamite form. She wore it as she stepped off the transport for the last time and walked into the bloody light of the red sun that shone over Daxam and Krypton and other planets in the system, blending in and learning what she could.
Then she heard of a system with a yellow sun, just as her own home system had. Homesick after a hundred years without what she still thought of as proper sunlight, she turned her personal transport toward Earth.
But she got the angle of entry just a little bit off and crash landed just outside of a place the locals called Philadelphia, a backwards place with no technology to speak of for the first hundred years or so of her residence on the planet. So, when M’gann looked down at the young woman who looked so much like Lena (except for the lack of lips around the skeletal mouth, she felt great sympathy.
Even if you had found yourself dropped by great good fortune into a much better world, with a much sunnier future ahead of you, reentry could still be a real bitch.
///
When Dr. Callie Torres got the message from Jane Hamilton that her expertise was going to be needed, she immediately packed her DEO go-bag, with the meshes for growing human tissue seeded with a patient’s DNA and an extra pair of scrubs. Everything else she might need, the DEO could provide.
She went directly to Jane’s office, expecting to drop her bag there and then find Jane herself in the medbay. But instead, she found Jane sitting at her desk behind two stacks of medical journals. When Callie knocked on the doorframe, she looked up wearily, but grinned as she saw something behind Calle, and said, “Come in! Come in!”
Callie strode in, smelled fresh hot coffee and turned back to see Winn Schott carrying two extra-large green LCorp mugs. They stared at him even as they both reached greedily for a mug.
“Vasquez,” Winn explained. “Front desk reported you’d arrived. She said I’m to ask what you’ll need for the current Crisis, and I thought I’d get ahead on your Item One.”
“Thanks, Winn,” said Jane, as Callie settled herself in one of the chairs in front of Hamilton’s desk. She handed him a scribbled list.
He sighed. “You don’t ask for much, do you? No, it’s okay. I’ll see what I can do. And hey, I can read your writing, Doc!” He hurried out.
Jane huffed, “Stereotype based on twentieth-century male physicians. Thanks for coming, Callie. Got a challenge for you. How do you feel about transplanting a face?”
///
Alex had been to Metropolis only once as a child, long before she found out that her father knew Superman. It was summer and Jeremiah and Eliza had saved up for a long weekend in the Big Apple: museums, a Broadway show (Annie), the Empire State Building. They had all looked forward to it for weeks. But when their plane had finally landed at JFK, they discovered the the city had been hit by a series of electrical storms that had led to a total blackout—no trains, no lights, no elevators—in most of the five boroughs. Their hotel was one of the buildings that had been hit by lightning, along with three electrical substations, so they had nowhere to stay, and the sanitation workers were on strike, so the city stank. The car rental agencies had no cars because New Yorkers had fled the city. They had tried camping out in Central Park, with a lot of other perfect strangers, many of them also tourists, but the MCPD officers came in riot gear every few hours to force them out.
It was true that, as an adult, Alex Danvers had spent time in Metropolis on chilly autumn days with the shiny skyscrapers piercing the bright blue cloudless sky, practically making her eyes water and the normal city hum of cars and pedestrians a musical backdrop to a city smelling of sausages and onions. But the memory of that first trip had carved itself into her brain--as traumatic memories loved to do—refused to be replaced, and often came back in her dreams.
She hurried down Broadway, as faceless people in ragged clothes pushed by her going in the other direction. She kept yelling for her father, even though part of her knew he was dead. She had to find him. She had to get away from the brown sky above and the piles of garbage below. She heard someone call her name.
“Dad? Dad! I’m over here!”
About a block away, she saw her father, dressed all in black, pick up a child—
But she had been too old to be carried on the trip to Metropolis—
He pushed toward her through the thickening crowd, heavy bodies surging between them. A dark-haired little girl clung to him, wailing, but Alex had never cried much as a child, fear (on the rare occasion when she’d felt it) always making her go silent instead.
“I’ve got to get you to the hospital—” It was her father’s voice pushing toward her through the Emergency Room doors of Seattle Grace Mercy Death. She grabbed her stethoscope and ran toward him where he carried the little girl in. She was clinging to his neck with one arm and holding a white towel to her face with the other. The towel had been white, Alex was sure of it. Now it was dark red, sopping with blood, and when she reached up to take the towel away, she saw a small face with lips hanging in bloody shreds. She looked up at her father, appalled, but the man looking back at her was green, and the child was her and not her.
The Green Martian reached out with his free hand and rested his fingers against her temple. “Alex, may I read your mind?”
“J’onn! Where’s my dad? Where’s Jeremiah?”
“He is not here, but this little one is, and she needs your help.”
She reached blindly to a metal tray of surgical instruments and picked up a syringe. The child wailed louder.
A voice behind them shouted, “That’s mine!”
Alex’s eyes snapped to the woman staggering in behind the Martian, a woman who looked very much like Lexie Danvers had once, after Seattle and before the DEO: drunk, desperate, and longing just to feel numb.
Suddenly, the Green Martian stepped in front of her, saying, “Actions have consequences.” He handed the woman who was not Lexie the bloodied wailing child, turned her around and sent her down the hall after some disappearing doctors.
Pale cold hands took the syringe out of Alex’s hand and set it down on the tray. Alex looked up into Lena’s green eyes.
Together, they said, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
J’onn J’onzz took each of them by the hand and walked out through the emergency room swinging doors into the DEO’s Green Octagon of Pain. Gone were Alex’s pale blue scrubs and Lena’s green pencil skirt and white blouse. Suddenly, they were both dressed in DEO agent black. Alex’s hair was in a short pixie cut and Lena’s was braided and tightly pinned to her head, as it had been when they went to the Valley of Jiru, when Alex had poked Lena with a stick that was not in fact ten feet long.
Alex and Lena circled each other, each looking for an opening. In the background, J’onn intoned, “The warrior who knows his enemy will be victorious in a hundred battles.”
Lena threw a punch at Alex’s face, but Alex’s arm went up inside Lena’s arm, simultaneously blocking the punch and landing her own hand on Lena’s shoulder just as she stepped in and planted a foot behind Lena’s ankle and took her down to the floor. Lena went down, but used her momentum to pull Alex down with her and roll over her onto her feet. Alex sent a leg out to sweep Lena’s feet, but the scientist jumped with both feet up and landed in a spinning back kick that Alex just barely missed as she jumped to her feet.
“Point to Lena,” growled J’onn.
“What? She didn’t touch me!”
Lena grinned. “My sneaker tapped your nose. You’ve got a red mark there.”
Alex rubbed the offending bit, muttering, “Stupid nose!”
Lena softened and Alex had her down on the floor in a heartbeat.
“Two points to Alex.”
Lena sat up. “I see what you did there. Imitate Kara to distract me.”
J’onn snapped. “Up. Begin again.” The two women circled each other once more. “The warrior who knows himself will be victorious in a thousand battles.”
Lena blinked and suddenly she was throwing punch after punch and Alex was scrambling to block, block, block and then suddenly Lena dipped down and kicked Alex in the face. Blood spurted out of her nose and she staggered back to the wall.
“Two points to Lena.”
Lena said, “J’onn, I think we’re done, don’t you? I do know my Sun Tzu. The warrior who knows his enemy and himself will be victorious in ten thousand battles.”
“Yes,” said J’onn. He turned to Alex. “Who are you?”
Alex looked at the blood on her hands, her own blood, then stood with her hands on her hips and snarled, “Agent Alex Danvers, Director of the Department of Extra-Normal Operations and sister-in-law to be to this bruiser.”
“Have you ever given birth to a child?”
“I have not.”
He turned to Lena. “And who are you?”
“I am Lena Lutessa Luthor (Alex, you’re not allowed to laugh), Lillian and Lionel’s adoptive daughter, Lex’s adoptive sister, with a stack of academic degrees the length of one arm and a stack of patents the length of the other. I am the CEO of LCorp and a valued consultant to the DEO. I am engaged to this tiger’s sister. I have never been chewed on by a rat.”
“Okay. I think we can wake you up now.”
The Green Octagon drifted away and Alex opened her eyes to find herself in the DEO medbay, strapped down to the bed with thick black restraints. J’onn said, “Good morning, Director. Shall I unrestrain you?”
“Yes, and quickly if you know what’s good for you.”
J’onn grinned and worked to undo the straps and let Alex sit up. “Where’s Lena?”
“Down in the women’s barracks with Vasquez, Morgana, Callie and Dr. Hamilton. You’ve been out for a while. The Adjudicator—we still don’t have a name for her—agreed to the procedure and it took three days for Callie and Morgana to, well, I suppose grow is the word? Grow a face, based on the woman’s DNA which Callie seeded into a dissolvable 3D printed mesh—”
“That’s impossible!”
“Mm. Hence Morgana’s contribution. The facial reconstruction took nine hours. It still remains to be seen if it will take, be successful. But they were hopeful when they hit the hay, as Vasquez put it.”
“Vasquez…” Alex blushed. “So, wait, what is that thing she mentioned, Turner’s Paradox?”
Chapter 156: Crisis on Other Earths: Facing Consequences Isn’t Always Bad
Summary:
Another late one, alas, but one of my academic semesters is done as of tomorrow and I'll have more time to write!
Chapter Text
The woman who for many years simply thought of herself as the Adjudicator, less a person than a role, lay in a warm dry place, her head wrapped tightly, her mind wandering back and forth between past and present and further past.
So many nights, she had stood above that little arena in the sub-basement of the Continental while this or that sadistic brute had beaten some truth out of this or that hapless little man, not out of loyalty to those who sat around the Head Table, not exactly loyalty.
Not exactly to them.
Certainly, those men or men like them had sent the Adjudicator, her teacher, to her hospital bed all those years ago, when she had lain, small and helpless, the devil’s orphan with her face wrapped tight like this, her green eyes wide as the woman in black handed something gold and shiny to a woman in white.
So many coins over the years. Delivering a coin and an ultimatum. Receiving a coin and a murmur of impatience, desperation, relief.
Not gratitude. Never gratitude.
In the early days, from time to time she had collected a deidentified pistol wrapped in brown paper (always wearing the black gloves), delivered the lead, left with the copper casing, delivered the brown paper package on one side of the city, collected a coin on the other.
Gloved. Always.
There had been different masks over the years. It had taken those men and her teacher several years and many coins before they found a mask-maker who could create prosthetic lips inside the mask so she could—first, at all, and eventually, clearly, speak. Only then did she inherit the title, the role, the destiny.
And now… what?
Now, here, she had seen women who looked like her but had kinder destinies, less complicated faces. They claimed to be from different universes, and she would have laughed at the thought had she been the kind of woman who laughed.
Who could laugh.
These women and their colleagues had offered to give her a face and she didn’t believe them, but the one with the wild hair had shown her her own death, shot in the forehead point blank of the front steps of the Continental in broad daylight. So, wherever she was, she was living on borrowed time.
There had been forms to sign, permitting the doctors to act, and they had balked when she had signed The Adjudicator, but it was the only name she had known for so long.
She’d had a name once. Maybe… Alice? Something inane.
The woman shrugged, took the papers away, prepared her for surgery.
She had drifted into a long sleep like a little death and much later, slowly drifted back with her face tightly wrapped in bandages. She clenched, suddenly thrust back in her memory to her hospital bed all those years ago, when she had lain, small and helpless, face wrapped tight like this, her green eyes wide as the woman in black handed something gold and shiny to a woman in white.
Those coins.
All those brute men, all those hapless men, the men of the High Table, the men from the lowest depths of the Metropolis sewers. They were behind the moment just before and just after the last moment of her life, when the crack of she gunshot was the last sound she would ever hear.
But it wasn’t. She heard her body fall to the ground, her mask tumbling away. And she had heard every sound and every word since because of these women:
The strangers—the surgeons, the spies, the soldiers.
The triplets she might have resembled once—the lawyer, the scientist, the sorceress.
All of these women, orbiting around her like celestial companions exerting gravitational pull on her destiny…
Suddenly, for the first time in thirty years, hands touched her face—hands wearing gloves, but thin blue gloves through which she could feel warm fingers gently unwinding the bandages, pulling them away to leave no pressure on her face. Cautiously, she opened her mouth, closed it, felt her lips meet. Lips! She swallowed saliva and none of it went down her neck.
A mirror appeared before her eyes, as much witchery as the glass that had shown her lifeless body falling to the muddy street, but this time…
No longer the devil’s orphan, she looked into the mirror to see herself and then past it to see her sisters, just as alike as the mirror image.
The lawyer looked shocked, the scientist pleased, and the surgeons behind them exhausted and relieved.
The sorceress, unsurprised, said, “They say your given name was Alissa. That’s no better than Adjudicator. You may take Morgana, if you like, or Morgan.”
But behind them, a blonde with deep blue eyes looked at her, her cheeks wet with tears, a look she could only think of as… love?
“Um, miss, ma’am… It’s up to you of course. Names are deeply personal and maybe you like your old name and we don’t want you to think we don’t like your name, because after all it’s a perfectly good name—”
The scientist cleared her throat, with a fond look at the blonde.
The blonde stopped her ramble with an act of will power. She took a breath. “Er, well. Have you considered, maybe, Victoria?”
There were not enough gold coins in this or any other universe to express the gratitude she felt for these women, her selves, her sisters.
///
Jess was being run off her feet. Normally, when Lena was in inventing mode, Jess was called in to translate her boss’s sped-up speech for the poor mortal scientists and engineers who had to work with her. Normally, those poor souls drank cup after cup of highly caffeinated coffee and Lena drank only water, to keep her from achieving liftoff. Today was… extra-normal.
Today, everyone was drinking coffee out of green LCorp mugs, except for Morgana, who insisted on a hearty burgundy, which she grudgingly drank out of a Marine Corps mug, and the Adjudicator (who was still trying out names for herself) who was drinking from a bottle of Diet Coke through a straw. More whiteboards had been rolled into Winn’s lab. Saskia had typed up fifteen pages, single-spaced of legal language and was now sleeping it off in the women’s barracks, while Winn put the document through a program that was translating the whole thing into Latin. They weren’t the problem, Jess thought.
Morgana and Lena, on the other hand…
Lena was talking a mile a minute, but it turned out that Morgana could listen at that speed as well, so Jess was doing her best to translate for the Danvers women and the Martians.
Jess still wasn’t sure what had happened to Alex and the newest Lena-analog, but both J’onn and M’gann looked exhausted. The severing spell that Morgana had devised and then hastily written into the Book of Destiny had apparently been a trial run–-done quickly to save the women’s quickly disintegrating sanity—for unswapping Kara and Oliver.
Winn had pulled a calligraphy pen and bottle of ink from the bottom drawer of his desk (What? I can’t be well-rounded?) when Morgana had expressed strong opinions about ballpoint pens and then they had watched her write three lines of Latin into the Book, trickles of blue light rising from the black letters as she wrote and the white page absorbed the ink.
Since then, Oliver had been pacing around in Kara’s supersuit with pants, insisting that they apply the severing spell to him and Kara, but Morgana had launched into a supersped explanation that even Jess couldn’t follow, but Oliver in Kara’s body had heard enough.
“Fine then!” he snapped with her voice, “I’m going out to patrol!” and zoomed out.
Alex sighed with relief. “So that’s Oliver without testosterone. Huh.”
Morgana handed Lena Vasquez’s mug filled with burgundy and Lena sat on a rolling stool, staring at the eight forces of magical physics and sipped thoughtfully. Slowly, she said, “It’s not severing, is it.” It didn’t sound like a question.
“No,” said Morgana. “Probably reflection. They need to see their own visage in a mirror, see the truth. I have read what this Lex wrote in the book and it is a simple lie that would have been easier to undo on the day it happened. Now their souls are settling into these other bodies. We need to separate soul from body and send their souls to their corporeal homes.”
“Conjoining,” said Lena.
Alex frowned. “Couldn’t that kill them?”
Morgana nodded. “It will be perilous. But it is easier for magic to confirm a truth than maintain a lie. I once maintained an aging spell for a week, but only during the day. It fell away while I slept. At the end, I had to recuperate for several weeks from the effort.”
“But the glamour you did to retrieve Saskia without the people in the court seeing how similar you are…” said Lena.
“A short-term thing. Easy to fool people with them because most people don’t really see what they look at. They effect the spell themselves, with their shoddy attention.”
Winn looked up from his laptop. “Um, at the risk of someone hitting me upside the head, might I insert a pop culture reference here?”
J’onn rolled his eyes. “Star Wars or Star Trek?”
“No. Oz. ‘You had it in you to return home all along.’”
The Green Arrow’s mouth gaped and then Kara said with his voice, “There’s no place like home!”
“Hysteresis!” shouted Lena. “The way a stretched rubber band snaps back to its original shape.”
Morgana reached for the pen and ink, but Alex laid her hand on the sorceress’s arm. “Let’s get him back here first. We don’t want to change him back if he’s flying.”
///
Kara and Oliver stood in the command center of the DEO, palm to palm, as Morgana carefully ascribed a page of the Book of Destiny with more lines in Latin. Blue sparks of energy rippled across the room like a stiff wind, gently pushing people off their feet. When everyone had regained their footing, Supergirl and the Green Arrow were grinning and looking at their own hands with awe. Alex whooped and pulled Kara in for a crushing hug, the Martians grinned tiredly, and Saskia turned to give someone a high five, but Morgana and the Adjudicator just stared at her.
Lena strode over and high-fived her waiting hand, saying, “Good show, everyone! Now we just need to figure out how to save our worlds.”
And all the Earth 38 heroes groaned, “Again!”
Chapter 157: Crisis on Other Earths: Gathering the Ingredients
Summary:
Late again, but school is out for almost two weeks so I will have several hours a day to write (she said optimistically...).
Chapter Text
Winn and Finn split the list of spell components between them, wearing white cotton gloves and using sharp scissors to snip and drop flower blossoms or bits of leaves into little glass Mason jars, plastic being detrimental to the working of ancient magic. It was tedious work. Winn squatted on the gravel path at the Botanical Gardens, the sun warm on the back of his neck. Open the little jar, snip the delicate petals, count them carefully as he dropped them into the jar, close the jar, return it to his leather satchel, pull out the next jar. They managed to find most of the first choices on their lists, but in some cases had to gather acceptable alternatives to the British herbs Morgana had described. After a while, Winn stood up, stretched, and ambled over to where Finn knelt dropping a green seed pod into a jar. They were both in civilian clothing: jeans, sneakers, collared shirts and lightweight spring jackets.
Looking up, Finn said, “That’s the last of mine. Are we done?”
Winn flipped through his small Moleskine notebook. “Hmm. Check. Check. Check. Oh… That’s going to be… interesting.” He groaned. “Squid ink.”
Winn drove them in his Mini Cooper to the National City Aquarium. He parallel parked out front, grateful for his small car’s easy maneuverability in and out of small spaces. They got out and Winn opened the trunk and Finn pulled out Morgana’s leather box, which Lena had packed with “necessaries for aquarium”: opening it, they discovered glass tubing and several Erlenmeyer flasks of different sizes. There was also an envelope addressed to Loretta Chin, Director of NCA. Winn took out the envelope and closed the box, slamming the car hatch and saying, “Allons-y!” Clearly, he had spent too many years working for Cat Grant.
Finn followed, carrying the box. They avoided the public entrance where families stood in line for tickets and went around to the east side of the modernist concrete building to a grey door with a modest blue sign, saying in white letters, Aquarium Administration Only. No Public Access. Winn sighed, holding the door open for Finn, saying, “Here goes nothing. After you.”
A bored security guard on the other side of the door asked them to sign their names, time of arrival and who they were there to see. The guard then pointed them to an ordinary elevator. “Fourth floor, sixth door down on the right.”
As the elevator slowly rose, Finn said, “He didn’t even ask if we have an appointment.”
The hallway they stepped out into had pale grey-blue walls and each office had a glass door with names stenciled in black. The sixth on the right said, Loretta Chin, Director. Sarah Tessmacher, Assistant Director. Winn and Finn grunted in comprehension and entered. A young man with curly blond hair looked up with interest. “Hello! Are you the couriers from LCorp?”
“Um. Yes,” said Winn. “Yes, we are. The couriers.”
The man opened one of the two doors behind him. “Ms. Chin. The LCorp couriers for you.”
An Asian American woman rose from her mahogany desk as they entered. Her shiny black hair was in a pixie cut and she wore a purple floral dress and black heels. She greeted them with pleasure. Winn handed her the envelope and she took out a folded letter, only for a pale green rectangle to flutter to the floor. Winn bent to pick it up and saw that it was a check with more zeroes on it than he would have thought could fit on such a small piece of paper.
She took it from him with a nod. “Excellent. Dr. Escobar will meet you at the medical tank. Luke here will show you the way.”
The young man led them down the hall to a set of stairs and led them up one flight and through double doors to a labyrinthine set of corridors that went this way and that, past administrative offices and then to mini-labs and finally down a different hallway that acted as a bridge between the aquarium building and another building. After a few more dizzying corridors, he led them to a lab clearly marked Medical: Saltwater.
They entered a low-lit room to see an enormous water tank, easily eighty feet wide and they couldn’t tell how long. An older man with salt and pepper hair was standing by the tank, writing something on a tablet. His white coat was embroidered with his name, Dr. Luis Escobar, and the stylized waves that served as the NCA’s trademark.
Luke cleared his throat, and the man looked up. “Oh! They’ve come, have they? Excellent. Thank you, Luke, you may go now.” When the young man had left, the doctor said, “Ah, you’ve brought your own equipment. Excellent. I made sure that Ms. Luthor understood that we would not give her ink directly from an animal, you see, just a sample in water.” He waved at the tank. “So the sample you collect for her experiments will be dilute.”
They nodded as if they had known this.
“You see that ladder there? That’s where we feed them from. You can set up to take your sample there. The tank’s aerator will push the ink that way first.”
They climbed the ladder vertically up the tank’s side and knelt on a metal platform, barely wide enough for them both and set up piping to all five flasks.
They waited ten minutes before the tank’s inhabitant, an orange and white squid easily sixteen feet long drifted toward the doctor curiously. He stepped out of sight, and they waited another another minute, with the squid swimming around, before a bright light suddenly flashed and the tank turned black, and the squid disappeared.
The flasks filled with inky water.
Winn and Finn both rubbed their eyes, still seeing the shining metal structures around and beneath them as electric blue negatives.
Finn asked, “Do you think that will be enough?”
“It’s everything Lena gave us, so it should be. Stopper carefully. Let’s not lose any.” Carefully, Winn settled the flasks in the pockets of his messenger bag and climbed down the ladder. “Okay, let’s blow this thing, kid, so we can all go home.”
Finn laughed, sliding down the outside of the ladder without using the steps and intoning, “The force will be with you, Luke. Always.”
///
Beyond grateful to be back in her own body, Kara had stripped out of her Super suit and thrown on blue chinos, a white buttoned shirt with little royal blue whales alternating with red octopi and yellow starfishes, and black loafers. She stood in the women’s barracks bathroom, brushing out her blonde hair and realizing that Oliver had just let it do whatever it would, snarls be damned. Seriously? The man couldn’t pull a comb through it even once over the course of a whole week?
A clack of heels sounded behind her and she glanced in the long mirror to see Lena ambling up behind her, a faint pink tinting her cheeks.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are back in your own body.” Lena shuddered. “I am absolutely not used to accidentally lusting after a man.”
Kara squinted into the mirror. “Um, I think that’s a compliment?”
Lena chuckled. “Yes, darling, if you like.”
“Gotta say, it’s been weird seeing so many versions of not-exactly-you.” She turned to face her fiancée and held out her arms. Lena stepped into them gratefully and they stood just holding each other tight. Kara nosed Lena’s neck, inhaling her faint perfume and sighed deeply. “So, are we finally at the last stage? Is this it? Do you all know what you’re doing?”
“Maybe, hopefully, doubtfully. Saskia is exhausted, the Adjudicator has more pressing things to think about now that she has her own face back, I’m still trying to figure out the science behind writing a thing in a book and it becoming real, for a given value of real. Morgana’s the only one who is treating all this like a normal day at the office. Hm. So to speak.”
Kara kissed her. “A normal day at the coven maybe?” She took Lena’s hand and they left the barracks, making their way through the DEO, with agents in black tacticals hurrying to and fro with very serious expressions.
“Oh, is that what we are? Wouldn’t Mother just detest that.” She spoke wistfully, then shook her head. “I read the previous fifty or so pages of the Book of Destiny. The writers had no style, just wrote down what they wanted like a grocery list. Even Morgana’s father, King Uthor, only wrote let there be no more… M-word.”
Kara chuckled, “As long as it wasn’t L-word.”
That made Lena smile. “There was no attempt at applying magic to the magic book. Each writer wrote in their own vernacular, and what do I know, maybe on other Earths they don’t have languages that shimmer with mysticism, magic, religion, science, the way Latin does.”
They stepped into the main elevator and hit the button for the command center.
Kara frowned. “Or maybe the kinds of people they were handing the book to didn’t have that kind of knowledge to draw on.”
“So, what?” asked Lena. “We steal the Book from Lex, and this Vimes fellow lets us get away with it because we might just be the right set of people with the right skillsets to pull off preventing the destruction of the entire multiverse? That seems like an enormous coincidence.”
As she said it, they stepped into the crowded command center. At the computer table, Alex, Vasquez and Sam Vimes were discussing something with J’onn while M’gann was watching Morgana, Saskia and the Adjudicator interact with a look of amused fascination. Their appearance struck the rest silent and Lena’s last words rang into the sudden quiet.
Vasquez, of course, frowned, saying, “No such thing as coincidence.”
Vimes grunted. “All things strive. The universes want to continue existing.”
Down the hallway, they saw Winn and Finn hurrying in, Winn carefully carrying their messenger bags and Finn the box that Lena had packed for them. Both were making small clinking noises as they drew to a halt. Kara strode in front of them and opened the door for them.
They turned toward the men and hurried over to examine the small Mason jars that Winn was carefully transferring from the messenger bags to his station, saying, “Who the man? We the man!”
Ignoring him, Finn lifted out five Erlenmeyer flasks filled with an off black liquid. Morgana lifted one up to the light and grinned fiercely. “Your knights have done well, Alex.”
Kara looked at her sister quizzically.
Alex murmured, “Special Agent doesn’t translate well, apparently.” To Morgana, she said, “Now that we have all your spell ingredients, can we finally get this going?”
“Magic should not be rushed, but yes, I will start on the binders now, while you craft a pen for me. You, sir knights. Come with me to the potions lab!”
Alex translated, “We set up the LCorp chemistry equipment in my old lab. Have fun.”
Kara watched the men repack the jars and follow Morgana out. Alex blew a small sigh of relief. “What’s wrong?” asked Kara.
“That woman!” Alex growled. “Alternately telling tall tales about her attempts at world domination and flirting with me.”
“Pretty sure they’re true,” said Lena, “and at least she has good taste.” Eyebrow.
Alex blushed and pointed to the sketches on the white board in green ink. “It turns out that Winn’s pen isn’t pure enough for a piece of magic this monumental—her word. We need an inkwell, pen and nib that are pure, no mixed substances that might taint the ink. Inkwell is going to be in continuous contact with the ink, so that has to be 100% natural. The nib has to carry the ink accurately so they aren’t any blobs that might mess up the spell, and the pen has to be strong enough to stand up to being used for maybe an hour, even with the heat of Morgana’s hands. Turns out her resting temperature is about 99 degrees.” She turned as Saskia and the Adjudicator quietly stepped up to join them. “Thoughts, ladies?”
Saskia said, “Glass for the pen and nib.”
The Adjudicator reached her black gloved hand into her pocket and pulled out three gold coins. “Will that do?” she asked. “They’re 92% pure, that’s 22 Karats. Any purer and it will easily deform. But the other 8% is silver, zinc and nickel.”
Alex’s jaw dropped but then she just sighed. “Thank you very much, ma’am. Okay, children, looks like we have our work cut out for us.”
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BellamioneForever2023 on Chapter 1 Wed 03 Feb 2021 10:24AM UTC
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dnmann on Chapter 1 Wed 28 Jul 2021 01:48AM UTC
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FlyingPigPoet on Chapter 1 Thu 30 Jun 2022 02:17AM UTC
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sonic (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sat 19 Oct 2024 12:15AM UTC
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BellamioneForever2023 on Chapter 2 Sun 07 Feb 2021 11:22AM UTC
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MyLittleAngel on Chapter 4 Sun 14 Feb 2021 09:48AM UTC
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FlyingPigPoet on Chapter 4 Mon 15 Feb 2021 12:20AM UTC
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