#everyone look at astras right hand pls. the one under. i did those fingers so good i think

[cimicherrychanga]

Little Star

[unicyclehippo]

oh gosh PLEASE expand the accidental marriage AU PLEASE. it's so good PLS

they say that rao created the suns and stars and planets to keep him company, that he loved his creations for their beauty and order so much that he made krypton, and its people, to delight in it with him. they said—they said—he was so pleased with his children that he gave to them everything he had: wisdom, and passion, and strength, and intelligence, and within all of these gifts, his love.

she knows rao made order. a delicate, incredible dance. that rao set the rules of it all and made the music and the room to dance in, and the costumes, and the decorations, and the love and rhythm of their heartbeats—all of that, everything that exists, and somehow he couldn’t account for his tiny children running amok. couldn’t account for them making up their own rules, or for their countless missteps.

there was a stretch of time—a considerable stretch indeed—when kara hated him. because if rao had brought order to the universe, he missed a step. didn’t look far enough ahead to consider the end of his jewel, his love, his krypton.

kara read a lot when she came to earth, about religions and gods, both the divine and the fallible, but mostly she read about people. she was only thirteen when krypton—when it happened—but she remembers the quick thrum of her mothers pulse, fearful, and the way her father smiled at her with so much love in his eyes it burned, like he knew it was the last thing he would ever get to do and he wanted it to leave some kind of mark. well, it was, and it did. and she thinks a lot about choice and self and people and how it might have been easier for her if she hadn’t seen them right there. right next to her. how it still felt cruel to have seen them, and to have been made to leave them.

and the what ifs, that loud, endless wave of what ifs: what if one of them had gone with baby kal, what if they had made those stupid, stupid pods with room for two, what if her mother had never sent astra to the phantom zone, if non had never killed a guard, if kara had never called astra home, if someone had spoken up sooner, louder, more insistently, if her mother had just agreed to try, if generations ago the house of el had never even been formed—and everything stacks up on everything that came before and kara gets lost in it.

but there’s no point. there’s no point, because krypton is dead and left far behind, and that’s where it will stay.

all that remains of krypton is a fortress of toy relics, a man with her blood but the heart of a human, and shards of her dead planet. and her, still her. and there is no point in hating a god who died with the rest of her world.

//

years later, standing on the roof of national city’s tallest building—which isn’t catco, as much as cat might like to think it is—she hates him again.

the rain is so cold even she is shivering. head tilted up to the sky, she doesn’t both wiping away the torrent drenching her face, her hair. her cape drags heavy on her shoulders, a sopping weight, and she whips it to the side when it tangles around her ankle. the move flicks water off it like a spray of diamonds, shattering against the concrete where the rest of the water, the rest of the world, trembles at her step. she paces the roof of the building, eyes fixed on some distant point, the heart of the storm.

there comes a sound that only she can hear, and she pauses at the corner of the building. poised there, lightning cracks and illuminates her against the backdrop of a broiling, immense storm. it cloaks the whole city in shadow, clings to everything with its misted tendrils, and she is no exception. she would be engulfed in it, but for the power gathered behind her eyes—white-hot and furious.

and when the thunder drums again, like a call to war, kara’s edges are sharp enough to be a war all by herself.

lightning cracks the sky wide open. thunder follows it instantly in a boom. the wind that comes tearing flings back kara’s hair, her cape, shudders against the windows stories far below her feet.

kara clenches her jaw, braces herself against it. her eyes flash hotter.

she saw diana catch lightning in her hands once, knows better than most that many things in the world are more than they are given credit for. this storm is more than crashing particles—this is her challenge, her fight, and by everything that exists in this world, rao will hear her!

“DUAHZ VOIEHD KRYPTAHNIUM,” she yells up to the clouds.

the thunder rolls. grumbles, shatters into itself.

“TA-RRIV RRAOP-RAO RAOGRYHS PAHDH IRSTUN OSH KHAP!”

she gets no answer save the lightning that zips down toward her and kara’s eyes flash. she grits her teeth around a scream and launches herself right at it, catches it on the bands diana gifted her and doesn’t stop, punches right up through the clouds to the heart of the storm. she winds the lightning around her, grips it tight.

“rao,” she yells, voice dragged raw.

the wind is stronger here and it whips her hair across her face, stinging, and everything tastes like hot metal and salt water. she holds tight to the lightning just to feel it burn. feels the answering sting in a line down her chest, sternum to navel. “rao, ta-rriv rraop-rao pahdh voiehd? khap eiahm,” she whispers. the words are tugged from her, ripped from her lips. she wills it out, up, to the right ears. the right heart. “khap eiahm, ewuhsh gehd.”

1. a formal introduction; or, skulir: verb, the active form: to look, to examine.

//

kara is six years old when she finds out that she will have a husband. she considers it for two days, silently, before bringing it up to anyone.

a tall figure in blue—that’s all kara can see under her thin blanket—stands in the doorway of her bedroom. “your mother says you’re not well. do you want to come out from under that blanket?”

“no.”

“no?”  the bed creaks as she sits on kara’s bed. “then perhaps i shall sit here with you. is that alright?” kara murmurs her assent, scoots over a little to make space in the bed. “i brought your stars, little one. are you sure you don’t want to see them? we were only partway through the primaries.” astra waits a moment for kara’s response. when it doesn’t come immediately, she offers, “you may hold the star jar, if you wish.”

kara kicks her feet under the blanket as she considers that.

finally, she pulls down the covers. “just the stars?” she asks, fixing her aunt with a suspicious look.

astra leans over, presses a kiss to her forehead. “just the stars,” she promises, and kara rolls around in her bed, bundles the blankets around herself, and thumps down into astra’s lap. her aunt pulls her close, strokes her hair back from her forehead.

“there is my darling star,” she murmurs. she activates the holo-reader—kara’s ‘star jar’—and scatters the stars across the ceiling. once it’s active, she allows kara to hold it in her little hands.

kara stays there, tucked up into astra, listening to her explaining the primary stars and astra cards her fingers down her long hair until kara’s nervous gut unclenches and she asks what has been bothering her.

“does everyone get married?”

astra’s voice falters, and then stops. she looks down at her niece, bemused by the topic change. “married?”

“fardhogh-cheh says that everyone gets married. that parents pick someone and then you have to spend your whole life with them.”

“did he put it like that?” astra crooks a finger under kara’s chin, tilts it up to look at her. “hmm, little one?” she tickles under kara’s chin and astra’s eyes, so clear and fond, are brighter than rao’s midday light. kara cuddles into her, ducks her head again. “have you been concerned about this?”

“...no.”

astra tickles at kara’s shoulder, makes her squirm. “for how long?”

“…two days.”

“i see. you do like to keep things to yourself, don’t you, little one?” kara shrugs. “well, it is nothing to be concerned about. marriage is a union between families.”

“who will it be?”

“he will be of good standing—”

“will he be nice?” kara asks, and with it comes the flood of questions that have blinded her for the last few days. “do i know them? how long do i have? what happens? do i have to get married? do i get to choose him? why do i have to get married? what does it do? is it scary?”

“these are a lot of questions.”

“i have a lot of questions,” kara agrees quietly.  

“a curious mind can be dangerous, little one,”

“questions are good!” she argues, struggles to sit up and away, and astra nods. she helps kara, tries not to laugh at the bundle of a girl who wriggles away, irate at the suggestion that questions might not be a good thing.

“always. but you should share them with your family or else you may get lost in them.” astra strokes  down her cheek. “and i would not like that.”

“oh.” kara waits a moment. “so?”

astra glances away, tries not to smile. “your betrothed,” she tells her niece, “will be chosen by your family, we who love you. we will not let you be bonded to someone unworthy, not when you are more precious to us than all else.”

“but what’s the point?”

“marriage is a union. do you know of shokh?”

“truth,” kara nods impatiently. “the first virtue.”

“the primary virtue, yes, on which we base all dealings. shokh is the virtue all unions are based on. a family would never agree to a union without first knowing who their beloved shall be bonded to, just as one would never agree to an alliance or business without knowing who extends their hand. it is a virtue that persists throughout a union—shokh is constant. unwavering. it is about learning and knowledge and discovery. sharing.” she hugs kara to her, strokes her hair again, out of her thoughtful eyes. “does that make sense, little one?”

“yes. but,” kara smiles, a little shy, when astra laughs. “i have more questions.”

“of course you do. share them with me,” she encourages, sets the star field aside for another night.

alura joins them later, knocking gently on kara’s bedroom door. she peeks in, relaxes against the door when she sees them curled there.

“you are feeling better then, kara?”  kara nods—sheepish, small in her aunt’s arms, but she nods. “i’m so glad. you’ve had us worried. we had to call in reinforcements.”

“reinforcements?” kara sits up quickly, looks back over her shoulder at her aunt. “you’re reinforcements?”

astra laughs, throws her head back. “your parents were worried.” she lets kara go when she wriggles away from her, goes to stand defiant in the centre of the room, her little frown stern and her little arms crossed. “do not be displeased with me, little one.”

kara considers the request for a time, before she flicks her hair back over her shoulders and walks out of the room. she makes her way out of their home and down the long corridor before loud steps follow her and she breaks into a run before zor-el plucks her clean off the ground and carries her home.

“i’m mad at you.”

“it was your mother’s idea,” he tells her, in that low rumble of a voice she loves so much. she leans back into his chest—but keeps her arms folded to show her displeasure.

“zor-el!” alura is waiting for them at the doorway to their quarters and she shoots him an unamused look before she cups kara’s face, drags her thumbs over her cheeks. “we were worried,” she tells kara. when her daughter just pouts, she nods for zor-el to take her to the table. they sit her at the table and kara swings her little feet, plops her chin down on the edge. alura turns to her sister. “astra, will you join us?”

“if the little one will have me,” she agrees, and kara huffs but doesn’t disagree. she’s pretty sure she doesn’t get to disagree—astra sounds far too amused for kara to have any real say in the matter.

it’s alura’s night to cook and kara waits to be served. her little feet swing under the chair and she holds her cutlery in a clumsy fist, prods at the food in front of her.

finally, she heaves a great sigh.

“who will you choose for me?”

her father looks up from his comms, peers across at her. “choose for what?”

“to be my husband.” she pouts a little, bottom lip jutting out with a stubborn, stubborn chin. “if he’s not nice, i’m not gonna say yes.”

“he’ll be nice, my sweet,” her mother laughs. kara frowns over at her and alura reaches out, draws a finger down the crinkle in her forehead. “why are you so distraught? he will be your companion, your most trusted friend.”

“because of truth?” kara rolls her eyes, plops her fork in her food, swirls it around. “what about…love?” she stumbles over the word a little. it’s not said often. she’s only heard it twice before; her aunt and uncle, in love, and once by her tutor when kara asked him to explain it.

“love?” zor-el blinks twice before he smiles at his wife, and astra. “you have a few years before we’ll start looking. at least two.”

“zor-el!”

“i’m joking, i’m joking!” to kara, whose pouting has doubled, he smiles, leans down to press a kiss against her soft, sweet-smelling hair. “if you find someone,” he tells her, “let us know.”

she wears her outfit like armour, black and red, and her smile is like a serpent—quick and striking.

kara knows who she is—she wasn’t allowed out of the house the day alex found out that lena luthor had moved to national city—but it’s not the same as standing in front of her. which she only gets to do for a split second because lena luthor moves surprisingly quickly in her heels.

“i won’t ask how you got to this level without an escort,” she says with that smile again, “if you promise to make this quick. i’ve a meeting in fifteen minutes, one i really can not miss.”

her eyes linger on kara longer than clark.

“i know what you’re here for,” she says, and she flicks her hair back over her shoulders with a quick gesture. strides into her office—kara glances around at the sleek modern lines, the white, the small touches of any life. this isn’t an office to relax in, this isn’t a place to hide in. she follows the lines back to lena. “you’re here to find out why i wasn’t aboard the venture yesterday.”

she doesn’t give an inch the entire conversation—only stumbles over her words once when she looks at kara again, curious, and this time kara is able to catch the look, to hold her gaze, and then kara gets to introduce herself.

it’s…clumsy.

clumsy is really the only word for it. she stumbles over her words and it’s not polished or smart—and it makes probably the worst impression for catco not to mention herself—but lena listens before throwing out a little tidbit clark’s way.

kara can’t get a firm idea on who she is though—clark thinks he knows, clark always thinks he knows, but kara waits and waits and then lena is looking right at her and that’s the moment. she looks her dead in the eyes and it’s the chink in the armour: “i’m just a woman trying to make a name for herself outside her family”, lena tells her, and when she asks if they can understand, kara says yes. before even thinking about it. it was just a glimpse but...she’s seen her.

she can’t stop seeing her.

she’s dynamic, and brilliant, and quick, and she’s built herself up again and kara isn’t able to recapture that moment—that moment when she’s sure, absolutely, of who she is seeing—but each time she gets close enough to open another door, it confirms what kara has already seen.

lena, who builds hospitals for children. who defies her mother. who works late into the night, who says she will change her company for good and follows through, who dares and pushes and fights, who has something sharp and fierce and dangerous inside her and keeps it locked up tight. someone who fills her office with flowers, who crosses into kara’s life briefly, gently, like she’s afraid she’ll be overstepping should she stay too long. someone who leans in and admits with a quirk of a laugh that she only has one friend, and kara wants to take her hand when lena’s eyes tell her not only that it’s true, but that she’s not sure she even has that many.

“oh my god,” lena whispers, and kara buckles under the weight of a truck for a split second before she stands—it’s not that it’s heavy, it’s really not at all, it’s just that she’s holding a truck in her hands and lena is standing two feet away and staring. “oh m-you’re her,” she breathes, and there’s something small and pained and shaky in her voice, in her eyes, and kara is afraid.

she’s afraid, standing in jeans and flats and her favourite bright yellow sweater and holding a truck over her head. her glasses are sitting askew on her nose, the woman she thinks is her best friend looks like she doesn’t recognise her, and the box of donuts she’d been holding is on the road. splattered.

she’ll hate you for it, lillian had said, and the words spread like ice from her sternum and out, freezing her chest and making her breath come brittle and sharp.

“lena,” she starts, and it snaps them both out of the frozen moment.

lena glances quickly around, hisses at kara to put the truck down.

kara catches it before it hits the ground, lowers it gently. she checks on the driver, who is unconscious, and with a nervous look lena’s way, kara lowers her glasses to check him over. because, what the hell, right? lena knows. lena knows. lena already knows so kara can use her x-ray vision around her and free him from the crumpled cabin where he had crashed before the truck careened toward them.

she lays him out on the pavement, calls the ambulance for him and, when she looks over at lena to decide on their next move, lena takes her by the hand and kara follows.

“lena,”

“don’t.”

kara bites down on her tongue all the way back to her apartment. her hands are shaking badly when she tries to unlock the door so lena does it for her, and kara opens and closes her hands but they still feel cold right to the tips.

lena shrugs out of her coat, hangs it on the hook. she drops her bag on the floor.

kara stands in the centre of her living room and closes her teeth around her tongue and- “look at me,” lena requests, and kara shakes all the way down her spine but lifts her chin and opens herself up for lena to see. to see her.

“lena,”

“it’s too late to say it was adrenaline,” lena tells her, voice thick. “or a doppelgänger. or whatever it is you’re about to say so just save it.”

“i wasn’t—i wasn’t going to make an excuse,” kara whispers. “i was just going to say t-that i’m sorry.”

lena purses her lips, pulls her brows into a harsh frown, but what makes it so, so bad is that kara can still see her. see how she’s doing it—letting herself get angry, get cold and harsh, because this whole thing is hurting her and it’s easier, better, less shitty to be cold, to be angry, than have someone you trust hurt you.

“what was it?” lena asks. kara makes a tiny sound of incomprehension. “what convinced you,” lena clarifies, voice so clear and steady, “of who i am? that i couldn’t be trusted?” kara blinks. “shall i guess?” she slaps her phone down on the counter, stalks over to closer to the door. she faces away from kara for a moment before spinning back around, a parody of a smile in place. “it was beth, wasn’t it? see, i thought that was too good to be true. you listening to me, holding me. i should have known you were hearing how easily i could become a true luthor.”

“lena, no,”

“or did i have no chance at all? dear lex,” she sneers, top lip curling. “my dear brother. he didn’t stand a chance, you know. not with lillian for a mother. that’s how it goes, isn’t it? we all become our parents? it’ll be me next, i suppose,” she laughs.

“stop it,” kara whispers. lena’s words are too prepared to be new. she’s showing more of herself to kara now than maybe she even knows. or maybe there’s no reason now to hold back these fears. or maybe it’s better to say them when lena knows they’ll hurt kara the most.

“stop?” she laughs, a brittle sound. “why? why should i? i saved the world with you!”

“i know.”

“but it doesn’t matter what i do, only what i become. and everyone’s made their mind up about that already.”

“no,” kara tells her, steps toward her.

lena steps quicker away, toward the kitchen to put the island between them. kara stops.

“i refuse to believe that is true,” she insists. “i see you, lena,”

“you and everyone else,”

“i see you! not your parents. not your brother. i see you.” lena scoffs. kara reaches out, not to lena since she won’t allow it, but presses her fingers to the hard wood of the counter. “we are not our parents. and you are not this cold, hard person you pretend to be! i won’t let you use that excuse!”

“excuse?” lena’s eyebrows shoot up.

“to leave! to give in, give up. whatever you want to do! i won’t let you, i will fight for you,”

“right,” she scoffs.

“you are my friend and i am not losing you over this,” kara insists, nods firmly.

“friends. a super and a luthor,”

“kara and lena,”

“oh please,”

“you please,” kara snaps, tries to mimic lena’s scoffing tone. she flings her hands up, frustrated. “stop making this into that.”

“we can’t escape it that easily, kara,” lena says, forcing more of that drawling edge into her tone in a way kara knows is supposed to make her feel stupid and childish and little. “we are what we are made to be—”

“then guess what,” kara bites out, narrows her eyes. “i’m a soldier. i’m a warrior, made only to follow orders. i was built. i was chosen specifically to be fast, and strong, and smart. the perfect soldier. that’s who i was made to be. or, or if i’m to become my parents like you think then guess what. my parents lied to their entire planet. my father built a bomb to kill everyone except for people like him. the one your mother found?” kara smiles, humourless.

lena stares, eyes dipping to that smile.

“he made that. and my mother? she cast judgement on her own sister and put her in the depths of space. it’s an awful place.” her voice dips, wavers. “there is no light there, and no hope. and my mother put her there to let her rot. my parents were proud and stupid and selfish,” kara tells her, and her voice shakes. she’s distantly aware that she’s crying but lena…lena can never let herself be soft, kara knows that about her, so she’ll do it for her. she’ll melt, she’ll cry, she’ll be soft, and give and give and give. she’ll do that, if that’s what needs to be done.

kara pulls on every scrap of el courage to push her shoulders back and do just that. keeps her eyes steadily on lena, open. she sniffs, wipes at her cheek, but doesn’t look away.

“they built a spaceship in secret and they saved me, but they lied to everyone there and let them all die. just to save me and my cousin.”

lena blinks.

her lipstick is a dark plum today. kara watches her hesitate, pull a corner of her bottom lip into her mouth and suck away some of the colour.

“and, and maybe i am going to be like them. but i want to believe that i will be their best qualities. we, kryptonians, we came from people who had forgotten how to love so much so that my cousin was the first natural born child in generations. i don’t understand how that can be,” she says quietly. her gaze goes a little fuzzy and, for a moment, she thinks she can see them standing there with lena in her kitchen. “they loved me so much that they did everything they could. every selfish, horrible, secret thing they had to do to save me. and my father was proud and protective and he made an awful ting in the defence of his planet and i won’t do what he did. but his decisions? i am the only one left who knows them, and i will bear that. because if i don’t, then maybe one day i will become that alien your mother is so afraid of. i am my parents child, but i will be me first. and i,” kara swallows. her eyelashes flutter and she finally closes her eyes, leans in against the corner of the kitchen island. presses the blunt edge of it against her palm. “i just wanted you to see her. me. not telling you was never, ever about you not being good enough, lena,” she insists. “i just wanted to be me.”

she thinks she hears lena sigh, hears the faintest “oh” escaping on the back of that breath, but when she opens her eyes lena still looks cold and unmoved. the longer lena stares, the more kara wants to pull away.

but she doesn’t. or can’t. not when she remembers lena curled into that couch telling her about a woman in prison she wants to kill, and about how afraid she is, and about the paths laid out ahead of her and how she’s paralysed. because down each path is more fear, or madness, or death, and she wants so desperately to pick the right path.

and kara remembers how lena had let kara hold her.

she sees her.

and lena stares right back. it hits her, in a lurching way that feels like falling without powers, that lena sees her too. sees someone.

kara desperately wants to know what lena sees, who she is to this woman. feels herself crack a little when she realises what she’s done. what she’s tried to hide, the secrets she’s laid out, whatever hope there was behind them, to pretend to be a person lena could like.

lena, who has had to live with artifice and secrets her whole life.

“i’m sorry,” she says into the silence, and lena jerks her chin up slightly. kara sags. lifts an exhausted hand up to her glasses, apparently still sitting askew. huh. she hadn’t noticed. “i’m so sorry. i just, i wanted,”

“what were their names?”

lena looks as surprised about the question as kara feels, if the way she plucks at her fingers means anything.

“names?”

“your parents.”

“oh. i,” kara blinks a few times, quickly. “alura, my mother. and zor-el, my father. and me, kara zor-el.”

lena nods. folds her arms over her stomach, nervous fingers clenching around her arms. “you took your fathers name.”

“we aren’t so different,” kara jokes, and lena’s lips quirk upward very, very slightly. “they would have liked you. intelligence was one of our most admired traits.”

lena doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, and kara doesn’t know what to do at all.

all the tension has seeped out of the moment, leaving the corners of the room hollow and making each breath and nervous step sound louder than they are. finally kara reaches up, shakes her hair out of its plait. tosses her glasses onto the couch. after a moment, she goes after the glasses and places them instead on the coffee table because she has twelve pairs of broken glasses as historical evidence that she’s going to forget they’re there and sit on them.

she runs her hands through her hair, plucking out the bobby pins.

“can i see?”

kara yelps, bobby pin yanking at her hair, surprised by the question. “huh?”

“the,” lena unfolds an arm, gestures toward kara who stands frozen. “the…i mean,” she laughs quick, nervous, eyes flick over kara like she’s suddenly realising she’s been fighting with a superpowered alien. “you held up a truck.”

“it was going to hit you.”

“you can fly.” there’s the slightest edge of hesitation, like lena is about to say screw this, it was adrenaline after all, and kara steps up into the air before she can. touches her fingers to the ceiling. floats back down. she’s not going back, she’s not running away from this. she can’t. not anymore.

“i can.”

“you saved my life.”

“you’ve saved mine too.”

“that’s true enough,” lena agrees, lips snaking into a satisfied smirk. kara is enraptured by the way her eyes soften, though. she feels her jaw drop open a little, can’t help it, and something shifts and settles in her chest.

kara shivers.

lena knows, finally. everything is out in the open.

lena sees her too. what she does with it now, kara doesn’t know, but after all this time...it’s a beginning.