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Seven numbers. That's all she had to click. Seven numbers. The only seven she'd memorised since she got her first phone and had taken the time to learn her brother's off by heart - the last person she truly believed would always have her back and lied.
Just eight shifts of her thumb and she could have what she wanted.
It shouldn't take as much effort as it does. Usually it doesn't. But, then again, usually she had the number set to the first slot of her speed-dial and usually she wouldn't be sitting in a pool of her own blood, wondering at what point her coughs will start being wet with it.
She pushes through the pain that sparks up her arm with every movement. Seven numbers. Call. She pushes through a ninth tap to put the phone on speaker, unsure how long she'll be able to hold it up to her face.
It rings once. A single ring before a wistful voice all but breathes out, "Lena, you called me."
"I needed to hear your voice." She wouldn't usually admit it but she'd already established this wasn't usual. She'd been pushing the need down for weeks, told herself that she could live without hearing Kara's voice, that she had to learn how to live without it.
She's laughing at the notion now.
She wishes she'd just thrown herself back into the deep end and hoped that Kara wouldn't let her drown. She thinks drowning in Kara's ocean would've been preferable to this. Not being able to breathe around Kara was better than not breathing at all.
"Are you okay? Where are you? I can't hear your heartbeat." Each part more frantic than the last.
"Did you know I was in love with you?" There's silence then. Kara hasn't been so quiet since Lena threw her lies back in her face, since she broke down in a way she swore she would never give Kara the satisfaction. Kara had been nothing but words before then. Words of affirmation, and love, and respect, and promises to keep Lena safe, to always have her back. Kara had used up all the words in the world until Lena didn't have any left to describe the feeling in her chest when she was around.
But you don't need to verbalise love for it to rip through you.
That nail had sunk deep into Lena's coffin long before now, long before she decided to admit it.
"Was?" Kara finally asks, voice small, like a child trying to hide behind their parent’s leg.
"Am," Lena corrects and then there's nothing but her laboured breath mixing with Kara's gentle gasp.
"I didn't know. I-"
Lena cuts in, "I don't even know when it happened really. One day we were just sitting in my office and the light hit you at such a perfect angle it was like even the sun was afraid to be seen beside you, afraid it wouldn't look so beautiful anymore.
"I knew it then. That you were going to destroy me whether you wanted to or not because I'd never given myself so wholly to another person before - and you didn't even ask, you just laughed and smiled and took without realising."
Except maybe she didn't take. Maybe Lena has acted like a child playing a game. Piling rocks in Kara's pockets and the hood of her jacket and handing them to her painted in the form of friendly gestures when they were anything but and waiting to see how long it would take Kara to notice. Only Kara could bare weights Lena couldn't even begin to fathom. A single rock wasn't enough to make its mark. The hundreds of gestures she piled on were nothing but a spec of dust on her shoulder.
"Lena where are you?"
Lena looks around. It's dark and the phone on the ground is old. Old enough that there's no flashlight, that the hashtag doesn’t have quite the same meaning most people would think of and the only thing that's going to stop it from working is the battery dying (it's not too far from zero). "I don't know."
Kara exhales in a way that scares Lena more than anything else around her.
"Do you know that I listen to your heartbeat every night when I go to sleep? That it's one of the only things that can calm me down? That sometimes I feel like I'm drowning and my chest is heaving and heaving and heaving and there's so much air around me but I can't latch onto any of it and then I zone in on your heartbeat and everything falls into place again."
Lena lets a soft smile play on her lips, "I didn't know that."
"Lena, please tell me where you are," Kara begs.
"I don't know," she answers honestly. "It's dark and it smells like rust but that could just be all the blood. I'm losing a lot of it. It's why I called you, so I could say this one last thing." Lena knows who put her here. The only person who would think to leave her with a phone, and not because they were too stupid to think she wouldn't do anything with it, but because they were smart enough to know that there was only one thing she absolutely would.
Maximum damage, Lex once called it. Every piece has to align for maximum damage, Lena. There's no point in taking half swipes. Half swipes mean your enemy can come back and cause the damage you should have.
Killing her would be one thing, it would be satisfying, it would be a win. Watching Kara Danvers crumble on the other end of a phone call knowing she couldn't fix what was happening down the line would be thrilling, it would be the war and not just a battle.
She hated that she knew him so well.
She hated that he knew her so well.
She hadn't wanted to play into his hand but she couldn't have died not having said it, not having finally fucking said it.
"Do you remember how you got there?" Kara pushes when it's obvious Lena's lost track, that her mind is wandering - her breathing seems to be following suit, she wonders how long until it gets lost.
"There was something in my neck and then a van. Left, left, right, right, left, the smell of the ocean, left, right, a gunshot. The bullet is still in me I think - he's probably carved his fucking name in it." She can feel it when she shifts. Every movement making it harder to keep the pressure. She knows he avoided all major organs on purpose, so she could bleed out here as long as possible, feel herself lose all of the Luthor blood he never thought she was worthy of. Maximum damage.
"I'm going to find you."
"No you're not."
"I will find you," Kara promises on a sob.
"There's no time. Just enough time to tell you that I love you, Kara Danvers. That's why you hurt me so much. That's why I can't bear to look at you because I love you and it feels like I was nothing but a game."
"You're not a game, Lena. It was never a game."
"The first time you said my name my heart skipped a beat. It's skipping a lot now but I don't think that's completely down to you this time." Mostly it was Kara though. It was always Kara, always going to be Kara, from the second she saw her. She faltered in her steps and everything else had started to falter in time until her whole world just stopped and stared.
"The first time you said mine I had to stop my eyes from glowing. You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen - you still are."
Lena feels fresh tears starting to flow. "Why didn't you know? That I loved you?"
"I was too busy pretending I wasn't just as in love with you."
"That's nice. Fucking stupid but the idea of it is nice. Us in love." Kara sobs on the other end.
"Yeah, us in love is really nice."
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
"My phone battery is about to die."
"Just stay on the line a little longer okay, Lena. Please. For me. Just a little bit longer. Tell me again how you got where you are?"
They start together, "Left, left, right, right, left, the smell of the ocean, left, right," Lena finishes the last bit alone as Kara gasps for air on the other end, "a gunshot."
"I'm on my way, Lena."
"That's nice…"
She feels... floaty.
Like a cloud being whisked gently through the sky by the wind. Or maybe like a balloon a crying child accidentally let drift into the sky. Or like a rubber dingy bouncing across gentle waves.
For a second at least. Then the pain comes crashing in, alongside the realisation of where she is. White, sterile walls. An incessant beeping beside her head and the haunting smell of chemicals that she could really have done with never smelling again. Fucking Lex and his apparent obsession with putting her in the hospital.
At least it looked pretty private. Other than the guards she could see blocking the doorway, dressed in black tactical gear and definitely not her usual detail, and the blonde mass curled up on the chair beside her. Her cape wrapped around her like a blanket and her feet curled up onto the chair at an angle that didn't seem humanly possible - though Lena supposed, by very definition, she wasn't bound by things humanly possible at all.
She was incredibly beautiful though. Resting her head on her hand and looking calmer than Lena could remember her looking since that day in the Fortress of Solitude. She hadn't seen Kara's features in anything more than a pinched expression since then, a pleading one at most.
It was nice to see her like this again. Nice to remember half-asleep movie nights when Kara was just fully-asleep and Lena could take the time to memorise the shape of her face, the bow of her lip and the gentle memories carved into her brow.
She's thankful that Kara's by her side right now. As thankful as she is mortified by the reality of it all.
Kara's ears twitch. Lena wonders if she's listening to her heartbeat even now, if she's tuning into Lena's frequency even as her subconscious is existing in a completely different world. She wonders what it is that Kara dreams about. Would she dream about her?
Lena opens her mouth to say... something. Anything really. Anything is about right when nothing comes out but a croak. The croak in itself isn't nothing. It's an eruption of everything. It sends shock-waves through her entire body. Pain wracks through her chest, tingles through her fingertips, throws itself off the tip of her tongue in a quick gasp that ends in coughs overtaking her body.
"Lena." There it was again. The way she said her name. The way it made her feel so warm. So loved. "Rao, you must be thirsty. Here, have a drink." And there was the lie. The reason they fell apart in the first place.
Rao.
The smallest of indicators that Kara wasn't exactly what she said she was - in the end Lena realised it was always in the little things. Small mess-ups. Tiny misunderstandings of the world. Awkwardness where they should have been none and overcompensation in places there didn't need to be.
It's not the reason Lena stayed away though. If she's being honest she stayed away because she needed to protect Kara, because for the first time she really, truly could - not just believe she was.
She could protect everyone and make sure Lex stayed down when she shot him this time. Lex didn't seem to share her enthusiasm for her plan, though how he ever got wind of her real intent of waiting diligently by his side for the perfect time to strike she'd never know.
"Thank you," Lena says once she's gulped a little too confidently and immediately regretted the sandpaper way it slips down her throat. The thanks isn't just in regard to the drink. She knows Kara can see that.
"I thought I'd lost you." Kara brushes her fingertips gently along Lena's forehead. They're delightfully cold against her feverish face. It's a complete contradiction of them before this point. The words aren't only about the bullet wound. Lena can see that.
"I'm harder to kill than that. Cats are jealous of my amount of lives at this point," Lena jokes. Kara doesn't laugh. Her fingertips drift over Lena's cheek so softly Lena almost thinks she's imagining the sensation.
"You were so pale," Kara mumbles and then there's a shift. Lena can tell the smile she paints onto her face is as forced as it's ever been as Kara continues, "Impressive considering your normal complexion." Lena would hit her if she could move that much. Instead she just glares. She's not sure it has the intended effect when she was literally peeing into a bag.
"I wouldn't test me. You're not out of the woods yet."
Kara sobers as she says, "I'll do whatever it takes to earn the love you've already given me."
"That's embarrassing."
"What?"
"Well I didn't exactly think I'd have to look you in the eye having told you I love you." She didn't think she'd be repeating it right now. The thing about a dying confession is that you don't imagine you'll be around to deal with the consequences.
"Do you... wish you hadn't?" Kara asks nervously, retracting her hand from where it rests on Lena's face. Her fingers pick at the cuffs of her supersuit when she realises she can't push up her glasses. Lena wants nothing more than to put her hands on them to get them to stop. To just hold them instead. She doesn't.
"No it felt- it felt nice to say it."
"It was nice to hear it. But I mean it. I will earn your love, Lena Luthor." Lena wants to say that she already has. That she had a thousand times over. She wants to tell Kara that it's nice to see a smile on Kara's face again and know that, for once, someone was going to fight for her and not make her feel like she was shadow boxing for someone's love for the thousandth time in her life.
She wants to tell Kara that she's the first person to ever give her the love she deserves without making her feel undeserving in the process, like she wasn't good enough, like she wasn't loving quite right.
But they both need more time than that. So instead she just nods.
Kara smiles like she understands everything that went unsaid anyway.
It strikes Lena when her doctor asks if she’s bringing a partner (or maybe it was her partner) to her physiotherapy appointment, that she actually has options for the first time in her life.
There’s Alex who shuffled in through the door to her room with an apology and a bottle of scotch that her nurse quickly took from her with a berating look that they both stifled laughter at. Kelly who stands at her side and tells Lena she’s there if she ever wants to talk, completely off the record, nothing more than two friends finding a place to vent.
Nia who looked like she was about to start crying the second she stepped through the door and saw Lena lying beneath a beeping monitor and kept saying sorry she didn’t see it coming sooner, sorry she didn’t understand what the images in her head were telling her, sorry Lena was shot.
Brainy who says nothing at all but brings a chess set and plays with her until he’s told visiting hours are over and he needs to leave.
And Kara. Kara who she doesn’t even really ask to come with her. Lena just sort of mentions that she’s starting her physiotherapy the next day to get used to walking again and suddenly Kara is asking what time, and where should she be, and does she need to bring anything from Lena’s apartment for her in the meantime.
Lena doesn’t dispute it.
“You must be, Lena,” the physio greets as she walks into the room, looking up from her chart to smile at the woman before her. The smile widens when she notes the blonde beside her. “And you must be the girlfriend. Dr Bailey said she thought you’d probably be in attendance today. It’s great to have support at these things.”
“She’s not-“
“Kara. Happy to help.” Their voices overlap. Lena cuts off quickly when she realises exactly what Kara’s saying, what she’s so easily agreeing to. It wasn’t the first time their relationship has been misconstrued but usually Kara just blushed as Lena corrected them.
Not now. She’s still blushing though and avoiding Lena’s eyes like she couldn’t bear to see the question lingering in them, the one that asks why she didn’t just let Lena say no like usual, the one that asks if it’s because she couldn’t bear to say that they weren’t anything more than friends.
Lena wouldn’t say it either then. She wouldn’t belittle the thing hanging over their heads.
“Great, well, I’m Cass by the way and can I just say your x-rays are some of the most insane things I’ve ever seen considering how you came in here. The bullet seems to have missed anything vital and there was no real damage to your spine which is fantastic.
“These sessions are more to help you get back into the flow of it all. Build up some of the strength you lost being cooped up in your bed and the insane levels of blood loss.” She pauses to look back down at her chart at that, whistles lowly at what she finds. “Your chart looks like you’re extremely lucky Supergirl found you when you did.”
“I’m sure anyone would feel lucky to be wrapped in those arms,” Lena jokes just to watch Kara squirm, finds herself incredibly pleased with the response as Kara’s blush continues in full bloom.
The physio chuckles, “I won’t argue with that.”
Kara blushes harder. It only makes Lena laugh more.
In the end it’s Lena who’s blushing when they start doing the exercises and she’s up in Kara’s arms once again. It shouldn’t really be any big deal at all. All Lena’s doing is walking. All Kara’s doing is walking behind her with her hands gently gripping Lena’s hips in case she needs to take some of the weight off, in case she falls.
Lena blames it on her self-imposed I’m in love with my best friend celibacy that it becomes way more of a deal. It’s just that whenever she turns around to see how far she’s walked, she’s reminded that Kara’s only wearing a tank top and her arms are the most miraculous thing Lena has ever seen.
And it’s just that she keeps squeezing Lena’s hips in reassurance and whispering in her ear that she’s a good girl when things work out right and it makes Lena feel like her entire body has been dipped in gasoline and lit with a match.
And she can’t exactly ask Kara to stop doing it, can’t exactly admit the reason why. Not that she really wants to. She’s just sort of aware that every time it happens, Cass seems to laugh like she knows exactly what’s running through Lena’s mind whilst Kara remains as obtuse as ever.
Eventually she’s put out of her misery anyway when Cass claps her hands with an air of finality and lets Lena drop into the chair beside her.
“You guys were great today. Honestly I think we just need to schedule a few more of these in before I sign off on a discharge and then we can lessen appointments to maybe once a month with you back in the real world. But it’s looking really promising – you should be good as new.”
“Thank you,” Lena says.
“Oh and before I forget, there’s a date night thing for patients and loved ones happening down the hall tonight if you guys haven’t already heard about it. Slow dancing is a great form of physio.”
“Oh I don’t-“
“We’ll check it out,” Kara interrupts again with a smile.
“Great. I’ll see you both Thursday then.” They nod in odd unison; Lena’s a little more dazed than Kara’s sure one - still a little stuck on Kara’s answer.
She thinks maybe it was just to brush the other woman off. A quick answer that would leave her smiling, nodding and leaving without having to explain anything more complicated, without having to think of some excuse as to why they couldn’t attend.
Lena discovers it’s not that at all when Kara turns up later in the evening in black slacks and a white button up shirt, tucked in perfectly and deliciously rolled at the cuff. She places plumerias beside Lena’s bed and offers her a flowing dress Lena recognises from her own wardrobe with a smile that’s soft but leaves no room for argument.
The dress is easy to slip on without raising her arms too high and doesn’t stick to her in any of the places she immediately fears it might and it’s perfect.
Kara leads her down the hallway the same way they practised earlier in the day and she’s perfect.
She lifts Lena until her feet rest on Kara’s own and moves subtly around the dance floor for the both of them and she’s absolutely perfect.
And Lena’s never been more in love with anyone in her entire life.
Lena was elated stepping back into her own apartment. No more beeping machines and cautious eyes and men standing directly outside her door (they were just outside the building now). No more tasteless, and yet somehow the worst taste ever, hospital food. No more having someone change her bandages for her.
That last one seemed better in her head. Finally a chance to stop feeling so useless. Turns out she feels a lot more useless when she realises she can’t reach the spot on her back to bandage at all.
Suddenly all the effort the doctor put into explaining to Kara exactly what to do with the ointment and bandages made a lot more sense. So much for independence. She sighs as she picks up her phone. Her fingers tremble through Kara’s number a little more than she’d like.
Her mind feels still the second she answers. “Lena, are you alright?”
“Are you? You sound out of breath.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of-“ Kara cuts off, her voice becoming more distant. “Hey I’m on the phone here! Don’t be so rude.” There’s a sort of ringing then, followed by an explosion and then, “Sorry about that, you were saying?”
“Kara, are you in the middle of a fight right now?”
“Yeah just some Rannian though – it shouldn’t take too long. Did you need-“ Lena hears the wind expel itself from Kara’s lungs, the clattering of the phone on the floor and Kara shouting again and then… gloating. “Sorry again, did you need something?”
“Are you done with all that?” Lena asks.
There’s a pause. Lena can imagine how Kara fills it by cautiously nudging the passed out alien with her boot to see if it’ll flinch. “Looks like it. I just need to fly him to holding and then I’m all yours.”
“You’re busy, you don’t need to-“
“I’m never too busy for you, Lena.” Lena’s heart jumps into her throat. Kara says something mumbled to someone near her. How was that so casual for her? She was all hers and never too busy for her and Lena was going insane. “I’ll come straight to your apartment?”
“Yeah, okay. Yeah.”
Lena’s halfway through debating if she has time to clean the cups from her kitchen side when Kara strolls through the balcony door like it was the usual entrance, disappearing after a quick wave as she darts into Lena’s room to put some cosier clothes on.
It’s all very domestic as she reappears with a smile and a kiss to Lena’s cheek when she drops onto the sofa beside her. So domestic that Lena can’t even bare to look her in the eye. She feels like every emotion she’s having might just spill out at once. And every emotion really just feels like One.
“What can I help you with today, Miss Luthor?”
She should just rip off the band-aid immediately and say, “I need to change my dressings but I underestimated how difficult it was going to be to reach my own back even without the immense pain I’m in and I know it’s really gross looking but would you mind helping me?”
“It’s not gross looking, Lena,” Kara chastises, already pulling the supplies towards herself and lifting Lena’s top just enough that it won’t slip back down. “I almost forgot you have this.” Lena’s about to ask what she’s talking about when warm fingertips graze the lower portion of her back. The tattoo.
“I do too, sometimes. Mostly wishful thinking.”
“I think it’s kind of hot.” Lena hears the clack of Kara’s teeth as she snaps her mouth closed. She busies herself with opening packets and focusing on the actual task at hand as Lena does nothing more than bite her lip and hope laughter won’t find a crack to slip out of.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” she says and smiles at the distracted way Kara hums in return as she gets to work. There’s caution in her eyes as Lena watches over her shoulder. A timid tilt to her smile at knowing she’s being watched and a stare of her own that she can’t stop even if she can see that Lena is acutely aware that her eyes are caught like a broken record.
It’s odd - knowing that Kara is staring because she thinks Lena is attractive, even with the bullet wound. Odd knowing that her fingers are trembling because she’s in love with the very body she’s patching up and it’s the first time she’s ever been able to touch it like this, to be able to touch Lena at her most vulnerable.
The knowledge makes Lena tremble.
“There you go. All set.”
“You’re not going to kiss it better?” It’s a joke. It’s a joke. But Kara leans down and presses her lips to the dressing anyway and yes, theoretically, Lena knew scar tissue was more sensitive but she doesn’t think you’re supposed to feel anything like that. She’s never felt anything like that.
“Are you cold? You’re shaking.”
“Yeah. Cold.” Kara’s slipping her shirt back on before she’s even finished agreeing to the lie. Already busy jumping from the couch to grab Lena a jumper and a too thick blanket and stuffing her into both before pressing herself to Lena’s side like her own personal furnace.
God she was everything.
“Better?” Lena nods. “Want to order some food? A new Thai place opened up around the corner and I’ve been waiting for you to try it.” Lena wants to say is it really new if it’s been open for six months.
She wants to ask how Kara has had the restraint to keep saying no to trying it when she’d definitely heard the rest of her friends raving about how great it was just this week alone. She wants to ask why Kara bothered waiting when she thought Lena hated her. She wants to ask how long she dreamed of a stupid moment like this – if it was as long as she had (as usual, she doesn’t).
“Sounds amazing.”
“Great.” Kara grins like it’s the best day of her life as she pulls up the menu, spouting items down the phone as Lena points to what she wants to try and adds a ridiculous amount for herself, making jokes down the phone to the worker and laughing in return.
She makes goofy faces every time she catches Lena’s eye until Lena forces herself to turn on the television for some excuse to look away and finds a news report of Supergirl beating up a rogue alien criminal one-handed whilst she talks on the phone.
The tagline reads ‘should we be allowed to take personal calls at work’ and Lena can’t help but laugh at how dumb the whole thing is, how dumb Kara is – in the best way. The absolute best way.
Walking back through L-Corp makes Lena feel like she can breathe again.
It’s another piece of normalcy that slips back into her reality. A distraction for her daily life. She won’t have time to think about the fact that Lex was still out there and gloating about his freedom when she’s piled under the mountain of paperwork that’s sure to have built up in her absence.
“Miss Luthor,” Jess greets with her usual almost-not-there smile and Lena has really missed her too. She still doesn’t know how her assistant has put up with her all these years, how she hasn’t quit considering all the attempted assassinations that caught her in the crosshairs. The health insurance package her lawyers drew up must’ve been amazing.
“Hi Jess. I know I was gone for a bit but you can still call me Lena, you know?”
“Lena,” Jess corrects, far more confidently than the first time Lena told her that first names were fine. “You should know that-“ Jess stands up in warning but Lena’s already pushed the door open to see exactly what it is that she should know. Jess closes the door behind her with an I’m sorry, but also this was for your own good.
“Kara?”
“How do you like my new desk?” She spreads her arms wide as though Lena wasn’t already taking it all in. Kara sat on her couch, looking like she’d moved every knickknack from her desk at CatCo and deposited them all in Lena’s office.
“Your new…?”
“I’m commandeering this space for a while, just to make sure you’re safe.” A while. Kara planned to camp out in Lena’s office for a while. With all her pens and her wooden ‘K’ Nia bought her for Christmas and the plant she named Geoffrey for some ridiculous reason. “…if that’s okay?”
Lena finally starts moving towards her own desk, “You can’t distract me like you usually do.”
Not that the distraction was ever really Kara’s fault. Most of the time she wasn’t even doing anything when she caught all of Lena’s attention. She was just existing and Lena had a terrible habit of trying to memorise every inch of Kara’s face in case something changed, in case she never saw her again.
She found herself doing that now more than ever.
“No distractions. I promise. Except for lunch obviously, and to remind you to do those exercises the physio set you, and making you go home at a sensible time.”
“Any other conditions you have for invading my space, Miss Danvers?”
“No that’s about it,” she grins and Lena offers her a fond eye roll as she motions for Kara to focus on her laptop and pops open hers (if she sneaks a glance in a few seconds later, well then that’s nobody’s business but her own).
If she’s being honest, Lena enjoys the rhythmic tap of Kara’s keys as she sets about her work and the fact that every time she leaves for a Super emergency she kisses Lena on the forehead and promises she won’t be long.
She likes the presents she brings back too – like Lena’s favourite coffee, and the green tea she always has to order from one specific website, and the doughnuts she constantly pretends not to like in an attempt to get Kara to stop fattening her up.
It’s all pretty distracting.
Lena can’t bring herself to care.
She’s ripped from sleep by the frantic tapping on her door. Realistically it’s more of a smash. A pounding on the wood and then Kara calling her name. Calling, calling, calling. Each one more panicked than the last until Lena is rushing to open the door before it’s pulled off its hinges.
She’s in Kara’s arms the second its open. Tugged into a vice-like grip as Kara breathes her in.
“You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Lena pulls back just enough to catch Kara’s eye. Or attempt to anyway, they’re pretty preoccupied scanning Lena over. “Kara, what’s going on?”
“Lex is back,” Kara says plainly.
“Let me get dressed and I’ll come with you to J’onn’s.”
Kara shakes her head, keeps shaking it as tears start to slide down the side of her face. Lena can’t catch them quick enough with her thumbs. “Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe for anyone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The day Lex… the day he- the day he shot you. I couldn’t find you, Lena. I couldn’t hear your heartbeat but I didn’t have to, to know you didn’t have long left and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let you die. I couldn’t bear to lose you and then Lex got in contact. He told me he’d tell me exactly where you were and all I had to do was give him a little bit of my DNA.”
“Kara-“
“I know!” She interrupts before Lena can put words to the situation, before she can ask why on earth she would do that, why on earth she would put everything on the line just to save Lena. Her life versus what was sure to be thousands. “I know it was stupid but I couldn’t live my life without you, Lena. Even when you weren’t talking to me it was fine because you were there.
“You were still there behind the voicemail greeting I kept calling to listen to. You were still there in your office even if the door was locked. You were still there. Your heartbeat and the quiet mumbling under your breath in the lab and even just telling me to leave you alone. I still knew you were there.
“But you weren’t there, Lena and it terrified me. And then Lex was there and I didn’t have time to fight it. I didn’t have the time or headspace to think of another way.”
“What has he done with it?” She should’ve seen that the manipulation ran far deeper than just trying to hurt Lena, than just trying to make Supergirl crumble. He’d always wanted her dead. He was always going to want both of them dead - it was the only way he could call himself a winner.
“He made some kind of super serum – injected it into himself and left me a message proclaiming himself the rightful god of this planet. And now I can’t find him.”
“How very egomaniacal of him.” Lena sighs, grabs a jumper from the rack beside her door and slips it over her head, putting her keys into her pocket. “Let’s go kick his ass then.”
“Lena-“
“Don’t argue with me right now, Kara Danvers. If nowhere is safe then I might as well be by your side. Or, at the very least, in your earpiece. We can go to my lab – the security is as good as we’re going to get and it has all my equipment.”
Kara pauses like she wants to fight, then her shoulder slump with a nod, “Come on then.”
She calls Alex along the way, telling her sister to meet them at Lena’s lab and rattling off the address. Lena bemoans the fact that she’d once called it a ‘secret lab’. She’s sure at this rate she’ll probably be holding Games Night in it by next week. If they all live that long.
Alex is already there when they turn up and she doesn’t make a single snarky comment about the ridiculous amount of security measures Lena has to unlock for them to get inside which really just means things are more serious than she might’ve even thought already.
“I’m thinking some kind of red-sun serum, to counteract the power that comes from the yellow sun,” Lena says when they’re safe inside, already grabbing the things she’ll need. The ones she had already been tinkering with for reasons far different than this - thank god she had.
Alex nods, “It could work. Maybe mix in some of that synthetic kryptonite?”
That’s not something she ever thought she’d hear Alex suggest. She nods anyway. It wasn’t a bad idea. “He’ll have a hell of a hangover.”
“He deserves a lot worse,” Kara growls. There’s a glow around the rim of her eyes that speaks to the power simmering beneath the surface. A clench in her jaw that would make Lena worry about her teeth if they weren’t indestructible. A vein in her neck that Lena’s never seen before but looks like it might just burst under the pressure. “Make it. I’ll do a patrol around the city, see if I can find him-“
The static on the screen on Lena’s wall flickers until Lex’s face is boldly presented to them and the rest of National City. He looks like an idiot donning a green and purple supersuit that she’s half sure has probably sat on a mannequin in a locked warehouse for over a decade.
He really was obsessed with himself.
“Found him,” Lena says humourlessly.
“Greetings to all you lovely people of National City. Finally someone deserving holds the power in this place – me! Finally a real red-blooded human has the power we’ve always deserved over those… things. And finally it’s time to prove once and for all who the superior race is.
“So this is a message to Supergirl. Come challenge me if you’re brave enough.”
“Let’s be rational about th- Fuck.” Kara’s already gone.
“Make the serum. I’ll get back-up.” Lena nods as Alex starts the rest of their friends, telling them to meet her downtown and leaving Lena with one last nod that pretty much screams don’t fuck this up, Luthor. Lena nods the same way in response.
She sees them all boldly plastered across the news channels not much longer after that as she scrambles for the right formula. Watches beams shoot from Lex’s eyes and the maniacal laughter rip from his throat as he bends Brainy over his knee at an angle Lena’s almost not sure he’ll get up from.
She fights the tears from her eyes as Lex deploys a green gas that has them all falling to the floor unconscious. Everyone but Kara.
“Finally a fair fight. Time for the true titans to play.”
“You’re no titan, Lex. You’re just a jealous little boy playing dress-up.”
Lena almost cheers when she gets it right. Almost. Until she watches Kara spit blood from her mouth on screen. She shouldn’t be able to bleed. How did he make her bleed?
She actually does curse when she realises she’s going to have to wear the stupid Luthor war-suit her brother built if she wants to get there in time. If she wants to turn the tide.
The square is empty by the time she drops to the ground, climbing out of the suit. An eerie silence fills the air and then there’s a CRACK like the breaking of the sound barrier and streaks of colour above her head like a violently messy Aurora Borealis.
A streak of red and green, blue and purple colours the night sky all the way to the floor with a loud crash and then there they are. With Kara on top of Lex – one hand pushing his chest to the ground, the other smashing his face into it over and over again.
Lena can smell the iron of his blood from where she stands. She hears the gargling of blood in his mouth as he struggles to spit it out before more fills his lungs. She’s starting to not recognise the face of her brother and not because it’s overtaken with malice.
She rushes to place a gentle hand on Kara’s shoulder. “Kara,” she whispers. Kara’s hand halts in mid-air. Her body melts towards Lena’s touch, though not wholly, not enough. Her fist is still clenched. Her knuckles white. Her body wound like a wind-up toy just waiting to be released.
Lena won’t let go.
“He’s not worth your anger.”
Kara laughs mirthlessly, “He almost killed you.”
“Don’t let him kill you. You’re the kindest person I know. You’re not just powered by the sun, Kara, you are the sun and this isn’t you. Don’t let him take you from yourself.”
Kara slumps, her bloodied fist opening palm up so Lena can drop the serum into it. Kara says nothing as she presses it into his neck, as they listen to him scream for an instant and then go silent. She’s wordless as she stands, picking up Lex’s limp body and throwing it over her shoulder.
Lena reaches for her free hand to hold. The blood looks redder against her pale skin. She wonders if Kara takes note of that too as she stares at their joined hands before squeezing and pulling away. Lena makes sure to keep her hand close, lets them graze in the air.
“You should get that suit back into storage. I’ll take him to secure lock-up so we can figure out if the serum worked or not.”
“Come to my place after?”
“Okay,” Kara says.
It’s a few hours after in which Lena thinks Kara must’ve lied just so Lena would let her go, just said she’d meet Lena because she knew she wasn’t going to let her go otherwise. It’s a few hours after she starts to worry about her best friend and something more, until she starts debating blowing up her phone with an uncharacteristic number of texts.
It’s a few hours until all those thoughts are knocked out of her head by a knock on her apartment door. A lot less frantic than earlier. And unlike earlier, when Lena opens the door it’s her that pulls Kara into a hug the second its open as the superhero openly cries into her shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to see me like that.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Kara. You stopped. You stopped.”
Kara’s shoulder shake with sobs as she digs herself in closer, tucks her head closer into Lena’s neck like maybe she’ll disappear from reality if she just burrows deep enough. “I wasn’t going to. If you weren’t there I… I wasn’t going to.”
“You were protecting your friends, protecting this city. He’s not worth your guilt.” Lena convinced herself of that along time ago, when she stood at his trial and told the world he wasn’t sane enough to live free within it. Clearly she wasn’t wrong.
“I’m supposed to be good.”
“It’s not always black and white, Kara. The world is a thousand shades of grey but you still always fall in the light. Don’t let him make you think any different. He wins if you think any different,” Lena says softly. Feels Kara nod against her neck and watches it continue as she pulls back to wipe her nose on the back of her sleeve. It makes her look so much like a child.
“You looked good in your war-suit,” she tries to joke, the words a little too wet but Lena grins, twists her body this way and that so Kara can take in her appearance properly.
“I’m sure the pyjamas made all the difference.”
“I can’t believe you willingly left your apartment in pyjamas.” Lena can’t believe it either. There were undoubtedly pictures of her that would be splashed across newspapers tomorrow. It’d at least be preferable to the ones of Kara’s bloodied hands - at least they’d all laugh at how stupid she looked instead of just hope Kara didn’t break down.
“They’re still designer.”
Kara laughs, croaky but real. “Of course they are.”
“I have a pair for you too if you’d like to stay.”
“Okay,” Kara says and Lena leads her with gentle hands and soft orders until they’re pressed closely on a bed that was big enough to have no need to be in each other’s personal space at all.
They fall asleep in the early hours of the morning with Kara’s ear pressed to Lena’s chest, directly above the spot in which her heart pounds.
Lena tries to keep it as steady as possible, even if she feels a little like it could burst out of her chest at any moment, oversaturated with feeling. It pounds irregularly until she falls asleep. Kara doesn’t say a word the entire time.
Thankfully the next Game Night doesn’t end up being held in her lab. Instead they all cram their way into Kara’s apartment like usual and it makes Lena feel warm to see them all like this again.
It’s the lightest it’s felt in a while - mostly because Kara is laughing unabashedly again like she’d finally managed to wipe all the blood off her hands - figuratively and literally. Lena can still see the horror in Kara’s eyes as she explained what her super sight really meant, how every tiny crevice of her skin was filled with Lex’s blood no matter how hard she scrubbed and no one else could see.
But she seemed free now. No longer tethered by the gravity of her actions. At peace with her decisions and her reasons for making them.
Lena was just glad her smile had found its way back. The first thing she ever fell in love with about Kara was her grin. All soft lips and pearly teeth and an unashamed happiness that Lena had never managed to quite capture herself until Kara Danvers came into her life.
Falling in love with the rest of her didn’t take long after that.
“I think generally people pine before confessing their love, not after,” Kelly jokes, joining Lena at her spot at the kitchen island where she’d definitely taken too long to get the snacks she promised. She might’ve gotten a little sidetracked on the task.
“I think generally people sign-up and pay for therapy.”
“Did you? After the incident?” The incident. Everyone always called it that. Lena wondered if Kelly coached them all how to approach the topic. She thinks her friends find it harder to talk about than she ever has. It was always harder to be the one experiencing loss.
“Kara made me.”
“She’s very smart sometimes.”
“Persistent is the word I’d use.” Also: manipulative. Kara had figured out a long time ago exactly how much a well timed pout and a soft touch of her hand could get her. It was double that amount when she worked her magic on Lena.
“Is there a reason you’re holding back?”
“I told her I loved her when I thought I was going to die. What if she thinks I didn’t truly mean it? What if she only said it back because she thought it was the end anyway?”
“Does it feel like either of those things is true?” Kara looks up after a while, like she can feel Lena’s gaze boring into her skull. She grins, tilting her head in question of if Lena needs a save or not and, when Lena shakes her head, she realises it’s the answer to both questions being aimed at her.
“No. No, not at all.”
“So maybe what you’re really scared of is giving into the feelings you’ve been avoiding for, what, four years?” Four years. Four years of being in love with her best friend and watching her get her heart broken by someone else. Four years of being in love with her best friend and trying to cram those feelings into another relationship just to give them a vessel and watching it implode. Four years.
“I’m not afraid of giving in. I gave myself to Kara a long time ago. It’s just- what then?”
“Then you live your life, Lena. You finally just live your life with the person you love.”
Lena takes a large gulp of wine she’s sure she poured for someone else, “It sounds a lot easier when you say it like that.”
“Things are allowed to be easy sometimes, Lena. Even if life has been nothing but hard on you until now.” Kelly rests a hand on her forearm and Lena can see why Alex is so taken with her. She’s the kind of person who genuinely did her job for the love of helping people. Good for her that she’d found the perfect group of misfits that needed a good listener.
“Maybe I should pay you for this therapy,” Lena quips.
“Just get a few answers wrong during this next game and we’ll call it even. I was promised something spectacular if Alex and I win tonight.” Kelly wiggles her fingers in a wave when Alex looks up like she impossibly managed to hear her name.
Lena laughs like it’s a joke but she totally flunks some questions on Trivial Pursuit so Kelly and Alex take the win and, if Kara questions her wink to Kelly on their way out of Kara’s apartment, well then she has no idea what she’s talking about.
And that sudden amnesia was for Kara’s peace of mind as much as anyone else’s.
Someone attacks her office and it’s fine.
It’s fine.
Except she maybe has to call Alex to stitch up a gash above her eye because she really doesn’t want to go to another hospital so soon but she could also really do without blood dripping into her eye every time she so much as blinks.
She doesn’t know why she convinces herself that Alex won’t be followed by Kara. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t prepare herself for the second coming of the Danvers the moment Alex leaves her apartment - she imagines she was already dialling Kara’s number to dob Lena in before the elevator doors had so much as closed on her.
She knows it’s Kara when she hears the knock on her door in the same rhythm she always picks and she starts to prepare herself to explain to Kara that she’s truly, truly fine. It dies on her lips when she finds Kara looking so angry on the other side.
“Why are you so reckless?” She says before Lena can even get her greeting half out, before she can even invite Kara inside. She walks inside anyway. Her hands positioned imposingly on her hips.
“It’s not my fault there’s a target on my back.” She had hoped with Lex gone it might’ve stopped. Apparently his actions had only reignited some of the all Luthors must hate aliens flames. She’d worry about fixing that sentiment tomorrow.
“But you know the target is there and you still insist on putting yourself on the firing line. Can’t you just let someone else handle things?” So maybe she should’ve pushed the button in her watch instead of taking the alien down herself but she had it handled. She wasn’t some damsel in distress. She didn’t need to constantly call other people to fix things. She’d gotten this far alone.
“Like you?”
“Yes, like me. I’m indestructible, Lena and you’re- you’re-“
“Weak? Fragile and human?” she scoffs. “Why do you even care so much?”
“Because I love you!” Kara shouts. Softens. “I love you, Lena. We went through that as I listened to you threaten to take your last breath over the phone. I don’t want to relive that again because you can’t have a single fucking lick of self-preservation.” Fucking. Fucking. Fucking. It’s not the part of the sentence Lena thinks she’s supposed to get stuck on. But her brain keeps glitching and flicking back and playing it over and over and Kara has never sworn before.
Lena walks calmly over. Runs her thumb along the crease in Kara’s brow until it fades. Kisses her. Kisses her again as Kara presses back ever so slightly before pulling back an inch, her lips still brushing over Lena’s.
“I’m still angry,” she whispers. Lena kisses her again. “I’m slightly less angry.”
Lena’s laughter puffs softly between their mouths, “I promise to take better care of myself for you.”
“I want you to take care for yourself.”
“Well I’ll do it for you for now and I’ll figure out how to make it for me along the way. You can care about me for the both of us in the meantime.” She’s probably already cared enough for a lifetime. Definitely more than the lifetime that came before her.
“I love you,” Kara says. Lena would never get tired of that.
“And I love you.” She’d never get tired of that either.
“You have no idea how amazing it is to hear you say that without you being on the edge of death.”
“Oh yeah?” Lena asks. Kara’s nods make their foreheads gently bump, like she didn’t want to pull away enough to do it cleanly. It’s stupid that the gesture makes Lena’s body swell with emotion.
“I love you, Kara Danvers.”
Kara’s grin widens, threatening to spill off her cheeks. “Stop or I won’t be held accountable for my actions,” she threatens lowly, all the heat missing.
“I, Lena Luthor, am incredibly in love with you, Kara Danvers.”
“You’ve done it now.” A surprised scream tears from Lena’s throat as Kara sweeps her straight off her feet, bridle style in her arms and starts peppering kisses all over her face.
“Not what I thought you had in mind,” Lena manages to wheeze between laughs and Kara stops abruptly to gasp, faux affronted at the accusation.
“Lena! As a gentlewoman I would at least take you on a date first.”
“We’ve been on plenty of dates. Think of all the time we spent holding hands at my physio appointments. Not to mention all the lunches with the eye contact that had you telling people I couldn’t possibly be evil because you’d seen into my soul. That’s pretty romantic stuff.”
A blush blooms on Kara’s cheeks like flowers in the spring. She looks like she wants to question exactly how Lena knew that. Lena doesn’t think it’s exactly her place to disclose that one game night before all the drama went down; Alex had drunkenly told her she was glad she was the good Luthor and that Kara was right when she told them all she’d peered into Lena’s green, green eyes and seen the ultimate goodness in them. What was said between drunk buddies, stayed between drunk buddies.
“Excellent point, Miss Luthor. I can see how you got your PhDs but unfortunately PhMe is going to need to woo you a little more. You deserve it.”
“PhMe? Oh my god, put me down and get out.” Lena wiggles in Kara’s grip. It only serves to tighten the hold around her.
“No, you said you love me. No take backs.”
“I do love you,” she promises, sealing it with a kiss to Kara’s neck. A gentle graze of her teeth that has Kara shivering.
“I’m not changing my mind.”
“I’m not trying to change it,” Lena says but she also maybe sucks the skin into her mouth a little and bites down. Hard. She was still a Luthor after all and they’d been known to play a little dirty.
Kara whimpers, “Okay maybe some upper body stuff but that’s it.”
“Say that once you’ve seen my boobs,” Lena jokes confidently, until her smirk turns into a gasp when Kara’s grip tightens to the point that she knows she’ll have a delicious set of bruises tomorrow and Lena feels heat rush between her legs at the thought.
Kara sets her down; her legs feel as wobbly as Kara looks. “I have to go home.”
“Kara, I’m kidding.” Lena grabs her hand with a laugh, pulls her towards her couch. “We can watch a film. Least sexy film you can think of. I promise.”
That’s how they end up watching Cars. Lena thinks it was a pretty good choice until Lighting McQueen zones in on Sally’s tattoo and Kara asks Lena about hers and obviously it’s only logical for Lena to take off her entire dress in order to show her the tattoo properly.
And maybe she was wearing some of her best lingerie because she’d needed a confidence boost when getting ready for work that morning and maybe that seems to be the last straw for Kara because Lena’s off the floor with her legs wrapped around Kara’s waist in less than a second.
Kara has her panting in her bed not long after.
Chanting her name just that little bit after that.
Almost blacked out just that second after. Lena still somehow finds it in herself to smirk after Kara has picked her apart and put her back together again more times than she can count. When they’re lying side by side and basking in the moment of sated silence they’ve created.
“Stop laughing,” Kara says and it’s like she opens the floodgates on everything Lena was holding back as giggles erupt in her chest that she can’t quite stifle.
“Sorry, darling. I just didn’t realise that Cars was such an aphrodisiac.”
Kara flicks her should in retaliation, “You literally stripped in the middle of your living room dressed like you’d just stepped off a fucking Savage Fenty shoot and you expected me to just ignore that?”
“Kara Danvers,” Lena mock gasps, “Kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“I think you know exactly where my mouth has been.”
“Any chance it’ll be there again soon?”
“I think the chances are pretty high.” Kara rolls closer, runs her tongue down the length of Lena’s neck, groaning at the taste of salt. “Higher if Alex never hears about Cars.”
Lena pulls away ever so slightly and turns over in the bed, reaching for the light switch beside her bed. “I’ve probably had enough orgasms for one night.”
Kara slaps her hand before it makes its mark, “I hate you.”
“No, you love me. No take backs.”
Kara sighs and pulls Lena towards her, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “No take backs,” she repeats.
…
…
Laughter bursts from Lena before she can stop it. Kara groans and tucks her head beneath the covers. Her muffled reply comes a second later, “Lena, I swear, if you don’t stop thinking about Cars in the next three seconds.”
“You got horny over a blue Carrera.”
Kara pops back out to point an accusing finger at her, “You practically threw your dress at me before I’d even finished asking to see the tattoo!” It’s so cute and Lena can’t stop laughing and she’s never felt so happy in her life and Kara’s hiding her face in Lena’s neck but she’s laughing along too and she’s so in love with this dork it’s unbelievable.
Lena sobers for a second. “Just so we’re clear though – I practised an insane level of restraint because I was ready to throw my dress at you the second you stepped into my office.”
“You were wearing a skirt and blazer that day, with a red top,” Kara corrects her simply. No hint of a pause. No deliberation or question. Just fact. Like the memory was always on the edge of her mind, the tip of her tongue.
“Well it might have taken me slightly longer to take them all off but the point remains.”
“I would’ve had no control then either,” Kara admits. “After I’d kicked Kal out of course. That would’ve been super weird.”
Lena grins. “I’m glad it was now though. I know we took the long way round but it doesn’t feel like wasted time. I like that I got to fall in love with you first, earn your trust and have you earn mine. It feels… I don’t know. I think it’s what I needed.”
“I’m glad too. But I’m also extremely glad that I get to do this now.” Lena almost asks what that means before she spots Kara’s impish grin as she disappears under the sheets for a reason completely different to embarrassment and yeah, Lena’s pretty fucking glad of that too.
Super fucking glad.