#◜ lena ‣ save .

[akynoctua]

Got to draw supercorp for this lovely ff on ao3, check it out!!!

[sleepyagent]

If this aint homo, idk what is.

[natalievoncatte]

| This is an act of pure self indulgence, because this one made me sad.

This was a new thing, fragile and beautiful. These moments had always been awkward before- Kelly wasn’t often at the Tower, but when she was she would give Alex the classic gift for luck and Nia and Brainy would have their little moment and Lena would awkwardly stand there and wish Kara good luck or something before they all ran off to fight the alien or… whatever.

Now it was Lena’s turn and she was going to savor it. She sauntered up to Kara, enjoying the look of surprise on everyone’s faces as she placed a soft, chaste kiss on her lover’s lips. Kara deepened it, bracketing Lena’s waist with her powerful hands. Standing there in her boots and cape, Kara was like a storybook night, even grinning like a teenager.

“What the hell was that?” Alex blurted.

“You all do it. Can’t I give my girl a good luck kiss?” said Lena.

Alex gaped at her. Nia began to giggle and Brainy nodded slowly, a secret smile on his face.

“How long?” Kelly asked.

“About five years,” said Lena, “it just took a while to figure it out.”

Kara nuzzled her nose into Lena’s hair and a deep rumble buzzed in her chest as she purred in delight.

“Is she purring?!” said Kelly.

“She does that,” Alex sighed. “Come on everybody, cowboy up and let’s get this guy bagged and tagged. I want to be back here for our victory dance in twenty.”

Lena stood next to Kelly and watched them leave.

“Have you ever thought about going with them?” said Kelly. “You’re a billionaire witch, you could probably-“

They were both cut off by the resounding boom behind them, and Lena whirled as a portal opened right in the middle of the Tower.

Lena watched in shock as Kara walked out. Not her Kara, another Kara from another timeline, a sickly, wounded woman with half her face and her arm and leg missing, replaced by sleek blue metal, and a blazing chunk of Kryptonite where her heart should be.

Kelly let out a shocked yelp and danced back, but Lena stepped forward.

“She won’t hurt us,” said Lena.

Then, she saw what Kara was carrying. Who she was carrying.

The Lena in her arms was not a mirror image. She was older, thinner, short hair streaked with gray and a patch over one eye, and she hung limp in Kara’s arms.

“Help her,” Kara rasped in her mechanical growl. “Please, Lena. Don’t let her die.”

“Come on,” Lena said, to Kelly. “You’re a doctor, you can help me.”

“I’m a psychologist, Lena.”

“Fine, you’re smart and you have hands. Kara, bring her to the medbay.”

“You’ll have to show me. We didn’t have one of these in my world.”

Lena nodded and led them down to the level below and directed Kara to lay… Lena on one of the beds and waved for Kelly to bring her instruments.

“What happened?”

“There was another me there,” said Kara. “She was wrong, broken… not like me. She took over her world, her Lena died, she kept mine like a pet.”

Lena looked at her.

“The Kryptonite has its uses,” Kara said, coldly.

Lena pressed a hand to her other self’s shoulder, shaking her gently.

“Lena,” said Lena. “Lena, can you hear me?”

“She has a pulse,” said Kelly, “but it’s faint. She’s breathing.”

“The Other,” said Kara. “She said she implanted some kind of device in her chest, triggered it before I…”

The Lena on the table convulsed, foamy spittle spraying from her mouth. It took Lena and Kelly to keep her from bucking off the table as Kara clutched the side of her head and wailed in rasping torment.

“Please don’t let her die, I can’t live without her. Please not now please.”

“She’s not going to die,” said Lena.

At that very moment, Kara -her Kara- walked into the medbay with Alex. As she approached, the protective Kryptonite suit formed and snapped into place around her.

Alex drew her alien pistol and aimed at the Other Kara.

“Get away from them.”

“Alex, no,” Lena shouted, stepping between them.

Her Kara gently pushed Alex’s arm down, sweeping her aim away.

“What happened to you?”

Other Kara rasped, “Lex. Killed me. Metallo protocol. Sent Lena to the phantom zone. Help her.

Alex holstered her weapon and rushed over, gently moving Kelly aside.

“Fuck, she’s not breathing, something is choking her. We need to get a breathing tube in.”

“Lena, do you have your watch?” said Kara. Her Kara.

“Yes.”

“The Fortress. Now.”

Lena nodded and stepped away from the table, activating her portal watch. The portal boomed open and Kara gently shouldered her cyborg doppleganger aside and took the dying Lena in her arms, and rushed through the portal, and Lena followed.

The cold was a shock but Lena didn’t care as the adrenaline roared in her veins.

“Follow me,” Kara said, before blurring away into the Fortress.

Lena ran after her, Alex and Kelly in tow.

“What is this place?” Kara rasped.

“The Fortress of Solitude,” said Lena. “Kara’s cousin built this place with Kryptonian technology from his pod.”

“Cousin?” said the cyborg. “Pos?”

“Don’t you have all this stuff on your Earth?” said Alex.

“No. I was teleported to my Earth, not sent aboard a pod. There was only enough energy for me… Kal-El was supposed to join me but…”

“He’s here,” said Lena. “In our world, he lived and became a hero like you. He’s the Superman.”

Cyborg Kara stumbled, skidding to a stop as she stared up at the massive statues of Jor-El and his wife, Lara Lor-Van. Clark’s parents.

They finally caught up to Kara, who placed Lena gently in one of the pods and pulled down the canopy. A soft hiss of air was followed by a hollow thrum as the machine came to life.

“She’s in stasis,” said Kara. “I’ll run scans and we can collect samples, find out what’s wrong.”

Cyborg Kara let out a strange, rasping sound, pained and guttural. She was sobbing.

Kara, still protected by her suit, stepped in and put her arms around her counterpart, pulling her into a hug.

“We’re going to save her. I promise.”

“Please. Please just let me speak to her one more time.”

“We’ll do more than that. I promise.”

“Kara,” said Lena. “Let me look at her.”

Kara stepped aside. Lena stepped close to the cyborg, a deep pang of sadness exploding in her chest as the broken woman turned away.

“Don’t look at me.”

“I have to if I’m going to fix you.”

“Fix me?”

“I can replace the Kryptonite as a power source for your cybernetics, repair some of this damage. If you’ll let me.”

She looked at Lena uncertainly. Kara put a hand on her shoulder.

“Your Lena is going to need you, and you don’t deserve this pain. Let us help you.”

“…alright.”

“Alex,” said Kara. “Take the portal back to the tower. Call everyone. I’m going to send a message to Clark on Argo.”

Lena led Cyborg Kara away to another lab and motioned for her to sit down, then began going over her with the benefit of Kryptonian technology.

“My God,” Lena whispered.

The cyborg had to be in constant agony. Her mechanical components had taken damage her flesh would have shrugged off. When she took a blood sample, she found that the very Kryptonite that kept her alive was turning her blood corrosive, and her superhuman healing and a healthy dose of nanites were keeping it in balance, but did nothing to spare her the pain of the radiation.

It was a losing battle. She would eventually rot from the inside.

“I need you to lie down, and to trust me.”

She began by fabricating a new power source. The Kryptonite had never been essential to the Metallo Protocol- the point had been to make the subject deadly to Superman.

Once she had it online and modified to fit into the power plant on Kara’s chest, it was simply a matter of carefully lifting the Kryptonite core out and swapping out the connections. Once she had the wiring done, all she had to do was lock the power supply in place.

Lena sealed the Kryptonite behind a Kryptonian force field, containing its radiation.

Once she did, Cyborg Kara sucked in a sharp, shocked breath.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered, “it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m not done,” Lena said, gently. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s my own work.”

It took hours. She started on the most painful parts for Kara, carefully repairing and rebuilding joints and connections between her organic and mechanical systems. It really was a wonder. Her counterpart was a genius.

Obviously.

She fixed the speaker in her throat last, making her voice clearer if not perfect.

“Thank you,” Kara murmured. A tear of dark blood flowed down her cheek and her chest shook with relief. “Part of me was afraid I’d die before she wakes.”

“I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I left her alone, Lena. She was trapped in that awful place and the… other… me was a monster. She hurt my Lena.”

“Kara,” said Lena.

“I did something terrible. I had to, she made me. She made me.”

Lena gently dabbed the crimson streak from her cheek. “Hush. It’s okay. It’s over now, you’re safe with us.”

Cyborg Kara swallowed and looked at her, just looked at her, and Lena felt a jolt ripple through her. She looked just like her Kara, looking at her as if she made the sun rise.

“Come on, let’s see where we are with, um, me,” said Lena.

The mood was somber when they walked back into the chamber. Kara no longer needed her Kryptonite resistant suit, so it didn’t activate.

Lena’s counterpart lay in the stasis pod like some futuristic Snow White, eyes closed, frozen. Cyborg Kara pressed her intact hand to the glass.

Kara put her hand on it.

“I won’t give up on her,” Kara promised. “I swear it.”

“I know you won’t,” said the cyborg. “You’re me.”

Alex stormed into the room.

“Okay,” said Alex. “Kara, I called in a favor. Can we move this pod?”

“If we have to,” said Kara. “Why?”

“We’re taking her to Themyscira,” said Alex.

Yes, I will write a third one, and probably publish this on AO3. I can’t let it go, lol.

[everlastingdream]

The first time it happened, all agents took their weapons out the moment Lena entered the building like she owns it.

Alex considered firing everyone who let her past the guard post and then shoot her. In the leg. Maybe.

"Take it", Lena threw something at Brainy, who somehow was completely calm. It relaxed Alex too, since Brainy was an expert on calculating danger level of everyone.

And then Lena just turned around and exited the DEO, like she was dropping of their lunch or something. And she was still fighting with Kara!

"What the hell, Luthor!?" Alex shouted to her back, only to recieve resolute "Shut up!" in return.

Alex sputtered, because: excuse me, but you came to the secret underground goverment facility like to your own office! Brainy muttered something, tinkering with the thing Lena brought.

"It's anti-kriptonite suit", he said in wonder, already running some simulations on his tablet. "She shouldn't has figured this out for ahother five years".

"Brainy, test this thing in every way you can, and if it's safe, take it to Kara immediately", Alex grumbled, but her sister's safety was more important than Luthor's strange wims.

/ / / / / / / / / /

Next time everyone still grabbed their weapons, but wasn't ready to shoot just yet, as Lena angrily stormed into the building. Perhaps it was because despite her stare she complied with every security measure guards asked of her.

Which didn't stop her from slamming thick file into Alex's chest.

"What the hell, Luthor!?" Alex saw how Brainy grabbed Nia's hand to stop her from standing up.

"Shut up", Lena returned, as she went back without any explanation.

Alex was left with papers and strange sense of deja-vu.

Looking through evidence on their resent villain and drafts of some devices to counter his powers, Alex thought about how Lena always choose time when Kara was absent from the building.

/ / / / / / / / / /

When they reached fifth visit like that no one was surprised anymore. Because everytime they would be stuck, Lena will miraculously appear with what they need. But she still stubbornly refused to talk with anyone besides Brainy and only about science behind her inventions.

This time she confidentely walked into the building, but Brainy instantly stood up. Everyone around them tensed, powers and guns ready. Lena opened her mouth to protest but he forced her to sit under bewildered eyes of everyone in the room.

"She's injured", was the only thing Brainy said, as he pried another helpful thing from Lena's hands.

"Am not", Lena replied, and Alex noticed how she slurred her words a little. "Take this shit and let me go".

Nia was already out of the room, fetching medical supplies, when Alex moved Brainy to the side to check on her.

"Left side, one inch lower than her ribs", he told Alex. Nia, who put Alex's medical bag down, gently rubbed his back, even if it was almost invisible that he was worried.

Alex pressed her hand under Lena's jacket where he instructed, and her fingers returned covered in blood.

Lena was still swearing, when Alex cleared her wound - bullet hole - and dressed it.

"You need medical attention, Luthor", Alex said quietly. After everything she was still angry at the other woman but it didn't mean she wanted her dead.

"If I show it to someone, I'm as good as dead", Lena chuckled, cleary half-delirious from pain and pain-killers. How she managed to get there on the sole willpower was beyond understanding. "Even if you want it, I would like to live a little longer".

Alex didn't answer. Couldn't. Even if she knew it wasn't true, some part of her wanted Lena to believe it. To suffer.

It was a shameful, selfish thought.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"Lena?" Kara's weak voice sounded incredibly loud in the quiet of their usual exchange.

Lena stiffened and promtly turned to flee in the middle of her conversation with Brainy.

"Lena!" Kara could catch up to her in the blink of an eye, but somehow near Lena she always forgot she has powers.

Lena spent too much time talking over some sort of mathematical models and Kara wrapped up her mission early.

"Please, wait!"

"Leave me alone", Lena gritted through her teeth, but even Alex saw tears in her eyes, as she sped up.

"She's hurting", Brainy supplied from Alex's side, as they both watched this strange chase.

"She's injured again?" Alex asked with small pang of guilt.

"No, she's hurting emotionally. More than she shows."

He didn't add anything else. They watched door slamming into Kara's pitiful face.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"Why are you helping us?" Alex asked her about a month after Lena and Kara's dramatic meeting.

"Shut up", Lena answered, tired as hell after three all-nighters they pulled to rescue Kara from another dimension.

"It's getting old, Luthor. Spill the beans".

Perhaps it's exhaustion, perhaps it is somehow sisterly look in Alex's eyes, but Lena is silent suddenly, before almost pushing words out.

"You said you will turn over the world for your sister, didn't you? I had someone like that once. My big brother, who would be the only one to treat me like a person in the place that was supposed to be my home. Who protected me from everything he could. And whom I admired so much I wanted to be just like him".

Alex tensed, as always when talking about Lex. But Lena's voice was quiet, and her face already wet from tears she seemed to hold for so long, and Alex shut her mouth this time.

"When he did all that he did, I was disappointed. But I still loved my big brother. But when he first tried to kill me? I was heartbroken. The person who withstood father's beatings in my place tried to kill me", Lena chuckled through her sobs.

Alex never allowed herself to think about Lex past his atrocites. She couldn't afford any pity for the person who tormented her sister and her family. But right now there was another little girl beside her who lost her only family.

"You said you will turn over the world for your sister, didn't you?", Lena turned to her. "I killed my brother for her".

She didn't said anything after that. Just cried herself to sleep. And Alex was just sitting there, left alone with shocking news and even more shocking realizations. Lex was dead. Lena was the one who killed him. He told her Kara was Supergirl and she still killed him.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"Don't pity me, it makes my skin crawl", Lena said the next day, when she was given her own pass to the DEO. She threw it on the table right in front of Alex, and agent considered asking 'what the hell, Luthor' just for the fun.

"I'm not. But after what you did for my sister and what you continue to do, the least I can do is to give you free entrance".

Lena sat beside her, tired and feverish from overwork.

"Don't care about me either".

"When will you talk to Kara?" Lena scowled when Alex ignored her, but still took the pass.

"Never, perhaps. I look at her and see the dead body of my brother. It's not something a little talk can fix. And she will blame herself, burdening me with another endless boundle of her apologies".

"She will learn of his death eventually, and then she'll found out how he died. It will happen anyway. And yes, of course, nothing will be fixed just because you too will talk. But maybe you can relieve some of your burden, and maybe several small talks will help you both".

Lena didn't lift her head from the shiny surface of the table. But she nodded tiniest bit.

/ / / / / / / / / /

Lena kept coming to help. Kara kept trying to talk to her.

One day Lena conceded, and then she screamed at Kara for an hour in the empty conference room and stormed out.

They had reverse situation later, when Lena came injured once again. Kara screamed about her being reckless, and they eventually reached her past sorrows.

They screamed, then talked, then whispered. And slowly started to smile again. Later came tentative touches, lunches and game nights.

So when almost two years later Alex found them in the kitchen doing something she would prefer to erase from her mind, everything finally became as it should.

[fr-omis]

[starsandwriting]

So i think season 1 has made it clear that Alice is the only one in the oiar who would survive a classic horror movie. If we weren't in the doomed by the narrative genre Alice would've been winning this shit EASY

Gwen's trying her hardest to put herself in direct line of the horrors. So is Sam

Colin can't look away and has beef with computer ghosts

Lena was already in too deep before the story even started

Celia.

Alice queen of denial queen of minding her own business queen of going Oh Hell No and standing by it would have thrived in hollywood

[amyackxrs]

[karalovesallthegirls]

Lowkey feel like lena trusted supergirl the most during her evil era. Just picturing her little face when she said “supergirl will save me” whilst plotting her demise like….. 1.) sexy … 2.) she didn’t even question it. She just jumped

[waytooinvested]

Alex: Kara? What's wrong? You look like you're about to cry.

Kara: No, nothing. It's just... something that happened with Lena.

Alex: What did she do? Is she evil after all? Did she cheat on you? Do I need to kill her??

Kara: *sniffling* She just- she-

Alex: Woah, hey it's okay. Take a breath, then tell me what happened.

Kara: We were baking a cake for when Ruby and Sam come to visit. Everything was going great, we were having so much fun, and then I turned round and saw it...

Alex: You saw WHAT Kara???

Kara: The bowl! In the sink! Full of water!

Kara: I'd maybe have understood if she'd scraped it out herself rather than sharing it with me, but she didn't even eat it! She just... washed it up.

Kara: All that lovely cake batter, washed away down the drain like it was nothing. I'm not sure I can ever see her quite the same way after this.

Alex:

Alex: ...you eat the raw cake mix?

Kara: *clutching her heart dramatically* ET TU BRUTE?!

[akynoctua]

I need more supercorp vampire/werewolf ffs :((

[luthordamnvers]

[natalievoncatte]

“Wake up,” Lex snarled.

Kara’s eyelids were brutally heavy. She couldn’t force them open no matter how she tried, and everything sounded distant, as if she were listening from underwater. The loudest sound was the blood rushing in her own ears and the steady march of her pulse, like the distant rush of some animal moving across leaves.

“Whu?” she managed to choke out.

“Open. Your. Eyes.”

Kara finally managed to split them open, blinking away gummy eyelashes to take a blurred look around the room. She wasn’t sure where she was, only that they were underground. Her limbs felt leaden and her body ached. It was soon clear why.

The chunk of kryptonite in front of her glowed a paler green than normal. It was different somehow, hard to look at.

“What? What did you do?”

“I broadened my mind,” said Lex.

Kara managed to raise her head and look at him. He was stripped to the waist, a flabby early middle aged business executive, much softer than he would allow anyone to realize. He looked a little absurd, especially after all the effort he put into a public image of a physically fit, debonair, imposing man.”

“What is this?”

“That is a very special type of kryptonite. You wouldn’t believe what I had to give up to get it. It’ll be worth it in the end.”

“Where are we?”

“Oh this place,” Lex said, glancing around the stone walls, lit by flicker torches and glowing Edison lamps. “A castle, in Scotland. It was incredibly expensive, I assure you. The grounds are quite lovely, though you’ll never have a chance to see them.”

“Of course I won’t,” Kara rasped. “Can you finish your monologue without the dramatic pauses? I’m on the clock.”

Lex smirked at her.

“This castle was built on a conduit of energy- a ley line. Actually several, and they converge beneath our feet. That and the peculiar construction -sandwiched within these walls are layers of copper, cold-hammered silver, and pure selenium- make it perfect for my purposes.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Oh no no no,” Lex laughed, “not everything is about you, Supergirl. This is about Lena.”

Kara heard a muffled cry and looked around frantically.

“She’ll join us shortly,” said “Lex. I wasn’t finished.”

“You talk too much.”

“Oh indeed. You know, I’ve wondered what she sees in an alien freak like you. Why you’re so alluring to her. I’ve often wondered why you never made a move- I know you think about it. Fantasize about it.”

“Shut up,” said Kara.

“I’ve been watching, you know. Did you think I’d let you out of my sight?”

Lex walked to a table and began toying with a long dagger with a thin, blue-black blade, drawing the edge over his thumb with a wince. He let a thin bloppy stream of his blood trickle into a silver chalice on the table before staunching the bleeding with a towel.

He turned to Kara sharply, holding the dagger.

“Know what?”

“Your little secret? Or should I say, your big secret?”

“I haven’t told her.”

He stopped and regarded her with a smile.

“I don’t mean your real name, Kara,” Lex chuckled. “I mean the other secret, you moron. The one that made you switch from the skirt to pants.”

“What? No, of course not…”

“I know what you want to do with her,” Lex said, kneeling to look Kara in the eye as the heavy chains weighed her down.

“Fuck you,” Kara spat.

“Oh dear me no, I don’t play catcher. Anyway, as I was saying, I think I know what she sees in you. Turns out that rutting with inhuman monsters is in my half sister’s blood. On her mother’s side, obviously. Someone in the deep end of my dear sister’s gene pool interbred with one of the fair folk. The kindly ones. The fey.”

“The what?”

Lex lashed out with the knife and a hot red sting slashed Kara’s cheek. To her shock she felt blood running down her jawline and chin. Lex let it drop into the chalice, mingling with his own, then stood up.”

“Bring her!” he shouted. “Otis you oaf, bring her in.”

Kara’s attention snapped to the far end of the room. Otis Graves shoved Lena into the room. Kara knew it was her even with a black bag over her head. Lena was barefoot and bruised, her blazer and skirt torn from putting up a fight.

There was a thin chain of dark metal looped lazily around her neck.

“Once I learned about this, I did what I always do,” said Lex. “I decided to master my circumstances. I studied, I learned, I applied what I’d researched.”

He turned back to Kara, and as her vision cleared, she saw that Lex was drawn and haggard, thinner than she remembered.

“It took me almost two years to prepare this ritual. I have walked trails blazed by gods. I had to beg, borrow, and steal to piece together the forbidden lore I need. I even had to strike treaties with the pit.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Kara.

“Lex,” Lena panted through her mask. “Don’t do this. Let her go. Please.”

Lex barked out a sharp laugh. “Let her go? Come on, sis. That’s Kara’s line.”

Lena let out a sharp gasp, visibly tensing.

“Kara?”

“It’s me, Lee.”

“Lee?” said Lex. “You hate that nickname.”

“Not from her,” Lena said softly.

“Lena, I don’t know what crazy nonsense he’s talking but I will get us out of this. He has some kind of-“

Kara was cut off as Lex kicked her hard in the belly, driving the toe of his shoe up under her ribs. The world exploded in pain and Kara doubled over, almost retching in agony.

“As much as I’d like to spend the rest of the day making you feel pain, we’re on the clock. I have power to acquire, a world to master, and a deal with a devil to weasel out of.”

“Lex,” said Lena. “You didn’t.”

“I did. Promised my immortal soul upon death, but alas, I’m never going to die. Otis, get her in place.

Kara strained at her chains as the big oaf wrenched Lena around and bound her hands behind her back with ancient looking iron manacles.

“The iron keeps her from trying any tricks,” Lex explained.

Kara was tired of his bullshit. The only thing that mattered was Lena’s shocked cry of agony when Otis forced her to her knees on the stone floor, followed by the whimper as he yanked the bag from her head. Her right eye was swollen almost shut and she had a split lip.

Incandescent rage boiled in Kara’s chest with the fury of a newborn star. If not for the strange kryptonite sapping her powers, Otis Graves would burn, screaming in agony in the terrible wrath of a Kryptonian’s gaze.

He hurt her. He hurt her Lena.

“You know how this is going to end, Lex.”

He was leafing through the pages of a heavy book on his work table.

“Out, Otis.”

Graves withdrew, smirking at Lena. She turned to Kara, eyes soft with emotion.

“Not often we get kidnapped together.”

“I’d rather have had a movie night.”

“Ugh, can you two please save the tearful love confession? I’m gagging.”

“Why didn’t you ever ask me out?” said Lena.

“I’m stupid,” Kara sighed. “I thought about it. I was scared. I thought… I don’t know.”

Lex rolled his eyes. “Danvers, are you really going to pretend you didn’t know that my sister is a rug muncher? It’s the worst kept secret in the Luthor family history. Throwing her into a girl’s boarding school was like throwing a pig in shit, but then Mother has always been a dolt.”

Kara ground her teeth. “Don’t talk about Lena like that.”

“Or?” said Lex. “Alright, look. I’d love to spend a bit longer taunting you, but I’m busy. The forms have been observed. I monologue, we taunt each other, I kill you.”

“No,” said Kara. “You try and fail and I drag you to jail.”

“Not this time,” said Lex.

“No, not this time,” said Kara. “This time I break my biggest rule.”

Lena stared at her across the room, eyes wide.

“I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore.”

“How noble,” Lex deadpanned. “Hold still, sis.”

He grabbed her by the chin, dabbing a thin paintbrush in the chalice, and began to paint lines and sworls on Lena’s face in their mingled blood. When Lena tried to turn, her let go and backhanded her across the face. Lena almost fell to the floor and let out a pained yelp.

Kara pulled hard at the chains but the held fast. She felt like she was weighed down by an invisible force, unseen hands digging spectral fingers into her arms and legs.

“It’s interesting,” said Lex. “Everyone assumes you have one weakness- Kryptonite. But you’re just as vulnerable to magic as anyone else.”

“What?” said Kara. “You’re insane.”

“I don’t think he is,” Lena said, wincing at her split lip. “When I was a girl, there were rumors that my mother was a witch, and she did some… some things I didn’t understand.”

Lex smirked.

He propped the book open on his forearm, making a final study of the markings he’d drawn on Lena’s face.

“You know the most annoying part?” said Lex. “It’s that you can’t just do magic. The power source, as it were, has to come from somewhere. The most common place to get it is from ancestor fucking a dragon or a god damned fairy or some other absurd thing. I don’t have the spark. But she does.”

He looked at Lena, a feral, hungry glint in his eye, and began to chant, reading from the book.

Kara flinched. The words sounded wrong, twisting and turning unnaturally as they fell from Lex’s mouth. The air grew heavy, as if a coat of soot and oil fell over everything, and a hideous stink of rotten eggs filled the room.

Lena cried out, eyes flying open in shock. She tried to say something but choked.

Kara lunged, desperate to free herself, to break the chains, to reach Lena and spirit her to safety the way she always did, but she was helpless. A terrible certainty of her own death fell over her like an ebon cloak, and she felt a distinct certainty of things, other presences in the room just out of sight.

“Lex,” Lena pleaded, “Stop. Please. You’re hurting me.”

Kara let out a sharp snarl, a ripping sound of threat from deep in her chest.

Lex briefly broke his chant. “Yes, the ritual will most likely kill you. No great loss. The world has enough degenerates and alien-fuckers as it is.”

He resumed his chanting, and Kara felt a sudden wave of agony through her body. She tried to scream but no sound came. It was as if a giant’s hands had shoved into her chest and begun crushing her lungs from the inside. She fell boneless to the floor, writhing in pain.

Lena lay on her side, tears streaming from her eyes, tears that tinged pink with blood as she jerked and convulsed, teeth clenched.

And Lex… Lex changed.

There was a soft crack and the rhythm of his chanting changed. He grew taller before Kara’s eyes. His arms swelled, corded with new muscle as his paunchy belly flattened and tightened into a washboard.

“That’s right,” he snarled. “Soon it all be mine. All your beautiful power mine. I will be powered by the sun! Lex Luthor will fly faster than a speeding bullet, bend steel in his bare hands! I will be a god, and when I am I will finally lead humanity into its glory! My glory! Lex Luthor, the Man of Tomorrow! Invincible! Immortal!”

Kara could feel herself fading, the world irising shut as death stalked her from below, a hungry predator always waiting just beyond the edges of her gaze. Her hands were pale, the flesh drawn so tight to the bone that they seemed barely more than skeletal. Her hands actually slipped free of her manacles, but she might as well be buried beneath a mountain for all the good it did. She had no strength to move.

Yet she could speak.

“Lena,” Kara rasped out, “Lena!”

Lena forced her eyes open.

“You have to fight him.”

“I can’t,” said Lena, her face shattering into a mask of agony. “It hurts so much, and I’m too weak.”

“You are not weak!” Kara spat, with all her remaining strength. “You’re beautiful and powerful and… magical. You’re my Lena.”

“Kara,” Lena gasped.

“I love you.”

“Kara!”

“I love you, Lena. Please, I need you to know.”

“I know,” Lena choked out, pinching her eyes shut, tears of blood streaking her face as she clenched her jaw in tooth shattering pain. “Oh God I know, Kara. I love you too. I love you so much it hurts. I just wish we had more time. I…”

She went silent, and still. Kara stared at her for an awful endless moment of white hot pain as something ate her alive from the heart out, yet that pain paled next to the agony of watching Lena suffer. She was almost glad that death would take her first, but prayed to the god of a distant broken world that Lena wouldn’t have to see it. She felt a dim hope that somewhere past this, in fields beneath a crimson star there would be a place for them, that Rao would find a way to bring Lena home to Him, that He would not let her wander in the dark, forever lost.

Kara had fucking earned a little grace.

Then, Lena’s eyes shot open, ablaze with stunning, brilliant light. She wrenched from the floor with a sudden strength and arched her back, screaming.

Lex looked down at her as the iron manacles fell ruined from her wrists and she yanked the chain from her throat, her hands wreathed in otherworldly light as the links snapped.

Slowly she rose to her feet, eyes still blazing.

Lena screamed, a banshee wail that shook the walls around them, and her cry seemed to swallow Lex’s frantic chanting, opening vast shark-toothed jaws of music that gouged into his feeble warbling and bit down, devouring it.

He stumbled back, frantically turning pages in his book.

“Fuck you,” Lena snarled, and the words carried an intensity, a physical force just as Lex’s had, but where his sharp wrenching syllables turned the air somehow profane and tainted it with invisible filth, Lena’s burned, not as fire but as daylight burns, clear and bright to chase dark crawling things back into their hateful shadows.

With a soft cracking sound, the strange chunk of tainted kryptonite turned a dull gray.

It had become lead.

Kara planted her palms and pushed up to kneel. She could feel, see the vitality coming back to her. Her frame expanded from skeletal and deathly thin to its normal self, slabs of lithe muscle bunching beneath her colors and crest as she stood and watched Lex shrinking.

Lena sagged, suddenly winded, grabbing the table for support.

Lex silent and stunned, wasted no opportunity. He snatched the dagger from where it lay and raised it high to slam down into Lena’s back.

It clattered to the floor instead as Kara effortlessly grabbed his wrist, feeling her thumb drive between the bones of his forearm.

“I,” Kara said, “am tired of you hurting us.”

So she hurt him.

Lex screamed in agony as Kara closed her hand, pulling every bone in his forearm. She reached out and seized his throat, savoring the hate and terror in his eyes as red sun fire blazed in her own, savage loathing kindling a blaze in her chest. This ended now.

A soft hand fell on her shoulder.

“Kara,” said Lena. “Don’t.”

“Lena,” she rasped.

“Not for him. For you. He made his own grave. Let him lie in it.”

Kara turned and looked at her. There was still blood on her face- the mingled painted lines smeared with her own. She looked so small and fragile and soft and the furnace that burned in Kara was doused, and suddenly nothing mattered but making her safe.

Kara let the sniveling coward go and brought Lena into her embrace, sheltering her with all her might.

“We have to go. Now. Trust me.”

“Yes,” Lex gasped, “time to leave, take me to jail now.”

Kara looked down. Lena’s eyes hardened.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Kara raised her foot and brought out down, snapping Lex’s ankle in a single sharp motion. He screamed and collapsed, crawling for the door.

Kara heaved Lena into a bridal carry and walked past him.

“Supergirl!” Lex bellowed, “you can’t leave me here! You don’t know what’s coming.”

“I don’t care,” said Kara.

She shoved the door open with her foot, then turned to close it the same way. Lena clung to her, arms around her neck.

“Lock him in.”

Kara did more than that. A quick flicker of heat vision welded the heavy metal door closed. Lex screamed and pleaded from the other side.

Something was coming. Something ancient.

“Please. Get us out of here,” said Lena.

A crimson light blazed behind the door, bleeding through its edges. The stink of rotten eggs filled the corridor. Kara turned and carried Lena away.

“Wait!” Lex called. “Supergirl! You can’t leave me here!”

Kara ignored him and kept walking.

“No,” Lex was screaming, “no, wait, we can make another deal, a trade, there has to be something I can-“

“You tried to trick me,” something said in a voice like a hot knife dragged across a tombstone.

“What is that?” Kara whispered.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to,” said Lena. “Get us out of here. Take me home, Kara.”

Kara touched a soft kiss to her forehead, a promise of more and deeper to come. Once they were outside, Kara used the comm bead in her ear, and called Alex, told her what happened.

“Let’s go home, baby,” said Kara.

A year later, she flew back to the castle.

It was secluded, somehow forgotten, a tumbledown ruin. Heart thudding in her chest with uncharacteristic fear, she walked down the corridor into the underground and slammed the door open with her first.

No remains. No body. There was only one sign that Lex had been there at all. Scratches across the store floor, one with a fingernail still stuck in it.

As if he had been dragged.

Kara rocketed outside at supersonic speed, desperate to feel the sun and cleanse the oily, tainted feeling in that room. A cold, lingering dread welled inside her, twisting deep in her belly.

She had to be sure.

Part of her regretted what she did to the old ruin. It was history. Only part of her.

The rest of her flew fifth thousand feet up and came straight back down fast enough to destroy the stonework in massive shockwave that dug a crater where the building had stood seconds before. She then turned her heat vision on it, burning and melting. By the time she was done, by the time it no longer felt like she was being watched, as if she might be followed, there was nothing left but a smoldering, glassy crater. It looked like someone had dropped an atomic bomb.

It still felt like something slithered beneath, but whatever it was, it would not follow and that was all that mattered.

Kara flew. She had places to be. She’d already planned a date night with Lena.

Alex was watching their baby.

[heylemonboy]

saw this red dress on pinterest and all i could think about was lena wearing it

[jennywebbyart]

Blood warning.

She held her close, rocking back and forth as her mind raced with ideas to save her. The Hospitable, no-  If she was in the DEO. NO!- If she was in her lab. She could do something. It would be quick, too. She could save her. Lena knew she could do it. 

But it’s okay, she will just pick her up and-

Lena. 

Well, she can’t pick her up, but she could get a car- 

Lena. 

Well, I guess there are no cars around, 

Lena. 

She could get Alex! Yes! Alex will help them get to her lab. 

“Lena”

She looked down and saw the happiness in her lover’s eyes. “Lena, listen to me.” She spoke softly while a single tear rolled down her cheek. “You will find someone that will love you. You won’t be alone.” 

No. 

No. 

No. no. 

No. no. no. no. no. no. no.

[spooksnett]

There's only one thing that can save us TMAGP fans now...and it's the yuri magnus weevil.

amazing weevil drawn by @djornk and wonderful editing by yours truly