#This is a load of filler to provide context for part 7 sorry not sorry

[oreoambitions]

Parts 1-3 // Part 4 // Ao3

Part 5 of 8

The shadows outside are growing long, the evening light burning a brilliant orange through the trees, and all is quiet at the little cabin in the woods but for Lena sprawled across Sam’s bed reciting the same handful of Kryptonian words over and over like a prayer. She’s mostly certain she’s got them down. In fact, she’s mostly certain she’s going to be reciting them in her sleep for the next thirty years if she isn’t dreaming about Sam’s exhaustive reminders of their meaning and significance and gravity. 

Sharing the cabin with Kara these last few days, Lena feels as though she’s come to a whole new understanding of gravity. She understands it in the way she catches herself leaning towards Kara even when she’s on the other side of the room. The way the world seems to quiet when Kara speaks. That inexplicable solidness to Kara’s body whenever Lena can excuse an innocent touch: a comforting hand on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek. She understands it in the weight of these unfamiliar words on her tongue, a promise thousands of years old entrusted now, improbably, to Lena.

“Kara’s back,” Sam says.

Lena falls silent mid-recital and sits up. She looks at Sam and she feels... too many things. Warmth. Anxiety. Inadequacy. Pride. A rush of contradictions held at bay by the repetition of the words and brought to the surface again whenever Lena has to actually think about what comes next.

“I think you’re ready,” Sam reassures her, and Lena knows that what she means is that Lena is able to say the words without sounding like a fool.

“I don’t know,” Lena replies, and what she means is that she isn’t sure she will ever be ready to be married to Kara, even if it is just a legal charade. Especially when it’s just a legal charade.

“You can always say the words in English instead if you get scared.”

Lena makes a face. Sam laughs and offers a hand to pull her up off the bed. They tease one another all the way down the stairs - not about the vows, not now that Kara is around to overhear them - and so it is that neither of them notices that Kara isn’t alone until they arrive in the kitchen. Clark is sitting at the table in his super suit, head in his hands, and when he looks up he fixes Lena with an expression so heavy that Lena knows at once that something is wrong.

Kara won’t even look at him. She’s standing with her back to the room, fiddling with her cape, worrying at the edge of it so intensely that Lena is concerned she’ll tear it with her fingers. “I don’t even know him,” Kara is saying. “He was an infant when I left Krypton, he- How could you even suggest such a thing?”

“I’m not suggesting it,” Clark says. “I’m just the messenger.”

Lena has crossed the kitchen before she realizes she’s decided to do it. She tugs the cape gently free from Kara’s fingers and, back still turned, Kara opens her hand for Lena to take.

“Any solution that doesn’t protect Lena is a non-solution,” Kara says, threading her fingers through Lena’s and tugging her forward. Lena nearly stumbles - Kara is too upset to be graceful in her strength - and catches Kara’s shoulder with the other hand to compensate. She’s shaking under Lena’s touch. Quickly, before she can think better of it, Lena presses in close and wraps her arm around Kara’s waist, brushes her lips against the back of Kara’s neck just inside the collar of her suit. Kara’s grip tightens around her hand, and the shaking stops.

“I understand that, but Argo is more concerned with the preservation of your bloodline-”

“I understand Argo’s concerns, but I think I’ve made myself clear: I won’t marry for duty.”

Lena’s heart jumps. If not for duty, then for what? And then something awful twists inside of her. Who is she marrying for duty if not Lena?

“I think you need to be honest with yourself,” Clark says. “I think you need to carefully consider what this is really about.”

Kara rubs her thumb across the back of Lena’s hand, squeezes once, steps out of the embrace, half turns to look at Clark over her shoulder.

“If I ask you to marry us tomorrow, will you still do it?”

There is a silence so long and so thick that Lena feels as though she might choke on it. And then Clark says, “Of course I will.”

Kara turns away again. She stares out the window for a long moment and then she says something in Kryptonian which Lena can’t understand and she sweeps out of the cabin without looking back.

“Where is she going?” Lena asks.

It’s Sam who answers. “Into solitude to commune with Rao. It’s- On Krypton she would do this for days. It’s meant to give Rao the opportunity to weigh in on the engagement before it ends.”

“Before it ends,” Lena repeats. She looks up at Sam, who reads the unspoken question in her face. How does this end? But Sam doesn’t answer this time. Lena rounds on Clark instead. “What is this about?”

What she means is what is this marriage about for Kara but if Clark catches her meaning he avoids the question.

“Argo is having second thoughts. You have to understand, very little of Krypton’s nobility still lives. Kara is one of the last; they want her to return home, marry into one of the other houses, ensure the survival of the bloodline.”

The thought of Kara ‘ensuring the survival of the bloodline’ with some Krpytonian boy makes Lena feel vaguely sick. “I notice they aren’t asking you the same.”

Clark makes a noncommittal gesture. “I’m not bucking thousands of years of tradition to play at a man’s role - Argo’s words, not mine - in a marriage that will never produce an heir for the House of El. Or, if Argo has their way where Kara is concerned, the House of Ar.”

So this is about nobility, and blood, and the preservation of the status quo. Lena wants to flip a table. She wants to run after Kara to tell her that she understands the tension that lives in the space between principle and duty, especially where family is concerned. She wants to run after Kara, period. She pushes the thought aside. “Is there anywhere in this shithole of a galaxy that isn’t overwhelmingly patriarchal and homophobic?” she asks.

“No,” Sam and Clark reply in unison.

It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing. Lena pulls up a chair across from Clark and snatches an apple out of the fruit bowl just to have something to do with her hands. “So what now?”

“Now we wait for Kara to come back and tell us whether or not there’s still going to be a wedding,” Clark says.

Lena’s stomach ties itself neatly into a knot. “And if there isn’t?” A pragmatic question, of course. If there isn’t a wedding then there’s little more than the implicit threat of Kara’s wrath to protect Lena from the consequences of lying under oath. But she can’t bring herself to think about consequences or about the law just now. She can think only of Kara’s hand in hers, of the way the world seems bigger, brighter, boundless when Kara is around.

Sam scoffs. “Don’t be an idiot; she’s still going to marry you.”

Hopefully Clark can’t hear the way Lena’s breath stutters or the butterflies that have suddenly burst into life inside her rib cage because frankly it’s a little embarrassing. He’s nodding along as Sam speaks. “The marriage is still her best shot at protecting you,” he says. Then, looking at Lena out of the corner of his eye, “I understand Sam has been teaching you the vows in Kryptonian.”

Sam and Lena both begin to deny it at once, stumbling over one another until Clark raises a hand to silence them.

“I swear,” Lena says. “Sam has been very clear about how important this is, and I mean every word. I wouldn’t say them if I-”

“I know,” Clark interjects. And then, eyebrows raised, “I don’t think Kara has caught on. Actually, I think she suspects the two of you are sneaking off to make out whenever you get the chance, which is funny but kind of painful to watch.”

“Oh my god,” Sam groans. She puts her head down on the table. “Oh that makes sense but oh my god.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say ‘oh my Rao’ now,” Lena teases.

Sam kicks her under the table.

Clark clears his throat. “I think it’s a sweet gesture. And I was thinking that if you were open to the idea there are a couple of other Kryptonian traditions we could arrange while Kara is out communing in the woods. This wedding matters to her; I want to make sure we get it right.”

Lena offers Clark a hesitant smile. “So do I,” she says. “What can we do?”

The smile Clark offers in reply is so genuine and so warm that Lena at once and for the first time sees his resemblance to Kara. “I know on Earth the bride traditionally wears white, but is there any chance you’d consider red?”

“For Kara, I’d consider anything,” Lena says, and she means it. The truth is, she’s always meant it.

Her tone must be a little too sappy, because Sam rolls her eyes. “Oh my Rao,” she grumbles. “Here we go.”