#feeling like lillian luthor hoping someone will take a sip of poisoned tea

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

The last few days have been rough, for obvious american reasons. As with many others, I have extended family I highly suspect contributed to his win, which is a double-whammy.

It's been hard to get into a creative mindset in light of all this, but I'm going to try. For my sanity, if nothing else. For escapism, but also to continue to create queer art, which feels more important now than ever.

Just, bear with me for a bit...

[rudderless-in-an-ocean-of-stars]

of faults and fissures, part one

Find it on Ao3 here:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11206920/chapters/25031505

In the aftermath of the Daxamite Invasion, Lena Luthor thinks it’s time she came clean to her best friend about her role in it.

Some changes to canon- Kara did date Mon-el, but there was no huge declaration of love or anything like that when she put him in the pod. She took him back but wasn’t really into the relationship, slowly coming to the realization that she’d simply gone along with it because she felt like she owed it to him to not leave him alone the way she’d been abandoned by Kal-El. Basically, it was a pity-dating thing she was planning to break off before the untimely Daxamite invasion. And, oh yeah- she definitely does not give him her mother’s necklace. Lena’s under the impression Kara was genuinely dating him, though, so three cheers for the angst up ahead.

The first time Kara Danvers really sees Lena Luthor, she’s taken aback by just how small the other woman actually is.

Outside of work, stripped of her impeccable updos, perfect makeup, and six-inch heels, Lena Luthor is downright tiny.

She’s standing right on the Dr. Who-themed doormat that Winn had purchased for her last Christmas, dressed in a loose, oversized sweater, well-worn jeans, and honest-to-goodness scuffed sneakers.

To her credit, Kara manages to keep the gaping and stuttering to a minimum as she ushers her unexpected houseguest into the living room. Lena perches carefully on the couch, tucking her dark hair behind her ear as she smiles hesitantly up at her, and Kara instantly decides that she likes this look best for the typically designer-dressed C.E.O.

With her hair down and her face free of makeup, Lena looks younger than she ever has, appearing more like the untroubled twenty-something year old she should be and less like a woman carrying the weight of her entire family’s sins the way Atlas had shouldered the weight of the sky.

It’s still there, the invisible weight that never seems to allow Lena to sit perfectly straight for more than a few minutes at a time- she always retreats into herself ever so often, hunches inwards like she’s afraid to take up any space at all- but here, now, it’s less.

Like the burden has eased, somehow, or she’s found the strength to actually push back instead of simply allowing it crush her completely.

Kara knows a thing or two about guilt- surviving an entire planet’s destruction is bound to leave some scars, no matter how well the wounds may have healed over time- and Lena all but wears hers like a noose.

Lena virtually encourages the people of National City and beyond to treat her as their own personal whipping boy in Lex’s stead, and it’s something that’s disturbed Kara since their very first meeting, when she’d peered into her green eyes, emerald pools of desperation flickering with the barest hints of hope in their depths, and recognized a bit of herself shining back.

She’d been lost like that too, once.

The Phantom Zone had kept her trapped in the endlessly repeating memory of Krypton’s death for close to a quarter of a decade.

If it hadn’t been for the Danvers, if it hadn’t been for Alex…

She shudders at the thought and silently offers thanks to Rao for those blessings.

“Can I get you something to drink?” She asks, already moving towards the kitchen on autopilot. “I’ve got tea, coffee, juice… Though, mind, the tea is bottled and store-bought…”

“Really?” Lena teases, and Kara falls a little bit in love with the faint, little laugh she hears behind her.

Kara tosses a sheepish grin in Lena’s direction as she pulls open the fridge. “It’s raspberry Snapple. Don’t judge me- I know it’s 90% sugar, but their slogan doesn’t lie, it really is the best stuff on Earth.”

Lena’s eyes widen comically at the sight of the large plastic bottle Kara sets down on the coffee table along with a pair of mugs. “I didn’t realize Snapple came in quart-sized bottles.”

“Neither did I, until I stopped by the convenience store down the road from my sister’s apartment in search of ibuprofen and ice packs after she went and got her ribs bruised,” Kara says, fondness fairly oozing from her voice as she pours a liberal helping into both glasses. “It’s the only place that I’ve ever seen stock bottles this size, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

A cautious sip brings a bright smile to the brunette’s face. “Neither am I. This is great!”

Kara’s jaw drops open in horror as she clutches her chest, clearly affronted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tried Snapple before! It’s literally in almost every vending machine in National City!”

Lena ducks her head in shame, a weak chuckle issuing from the back of her throat. “I’ve seen it around, of course, but… We-e-ell,“ she says, drawing out the ‘e’ for several seconds as a blush begins to spread across her cheeks, “I just… I never…”

Her face clouds over as the silence between them goes from teasing to strained, something Kara notes as tendrils of apprehension begin to wrap around her heart and squeeze.

Lena can barely bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Lillian was always very conscious about my eating habits,” she finally mumbles, tongue nearly tripping over the words in her haste to get them out.

The slack-jawed expression on Kara’s face is burned away by a look of pure anger and fierce protectiveness as the implications behind Lena’s words sink in.

For a moment, Lena thinks, Kara looks very much like the Kryptonian whose presence she has found herself entertaining more and more on her office balcony. She pulls herself free from that particular train of thought with a vehement shake of her head.

No, Kara couldn’t possibly be Supergirl. Kara would never keep something as big as that a secret from her, would she?

The tiniest trickle of doubt bleeds into her veins as a tiny voice in her head snidely reminds her of her last name.

You’re a Luthor, the voice sing-songs almost triumphantly, sounding far too much like her brother for her to not be unsettled, why wouldn’t she?

“Lena?”

She looks up and shoots the other woman a practiced, apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. It’s just so easy to get lost in my own head sometimes. I just came over to see how you were doing, after… Everything.”

God, she can’t even bring herself to say it.

The Daxamite Invasion.

The one she had ultimately kickstarted.

The one she had helped managed to avert- at the cost of her best friend’s boyfriend, not to mention the innocent lives already lost in the first few waves of attack.

And it was all because Lena was too stupid to see past the façade that Rhea had so easily manipulated her into believing.

The price of Lena Luthor’s loyalty always had been and likely always would be love.

Love that she’d never had the time to get from her birth mother, love that had been wrenched away by her brother’s madness and the shame of being his sister, love that she’d never received from the woman she’d called family for over two decades…

Rhea had seen that easily, seen past Lena’s hardened shield of capable businesswoman right down to the unwanted orphan girl she was underneath.

Rhea had seen that easily, and just like everyone else in her life except for her secretary and the woman sitting in front of her, she’d used it against her.

“I’m fine, Lena, really. You didn’t have to come all the way here just to check up on me.” Kara actually laughs, then, and the sound of it pulls the breath from Lena’s lungs in a way that isn’t tingly, or endearing, or any of the other adjectives she’d come to associate with the feelings that Kara’s laughter usually induced.

How could she be so happy sitting across from the woman who had robbed her of someone she’d cared about?

“I-I…” Lena’s fingers tighten around the glass in her hand as she struggles to keep her tears at bay.

Spit it out, she rages, mentally shouting at herself. Tell her the fucking truth already. You came here for a reason.

“It was my fault.”

She closes her eyes before she continues, unable to maintain Kara’s unwavering gaze. “I built the portal the Daxamites used to get to Earth. I helped their queen transport her armies here. I built the device that irradiated the atmosphere with lead and poisoned all the Daxamites, including Mike- I mean, Mon-El. I did this.”

The words fall flat between them, landing somewhere in the invisible, gaping chasm that now somehow clearly splits the room apart.

“It was my fault,” she repeats, a little louder this time, as though an increase in volume could help her words make the leap over the miles stretched out between them, miles she hates but knows she’ll never make a move to cross.

Because she deserves this.

She deserves whatever look of hatred or betrayal or accusation that’s surely filling Kara Danvers’ eyes right now at her confession.

She deserves whatever words are going to come spilling out of Kara Danvers’ mouth at any second, probably laced with anger and disgust, all of which will be justified.

But again, for the umpteenth time in the past seventy-two hours, Lena Luthor finds herself mistaken about the people she thought she knew best.

She gets only silence.

Pure, pin-drop silence.

Lena doesn’t dare open her eyes to look at the woman sitting on the couch across from hers- and even if she wanted to, at this point, she’s not sure she even can.

Everything seems to be catching up to her now, at the worst possible time for the shock of it all to wear off and finally let her feel something other than the numbness that she’d managed to reach with surprisingly little aid from alcohol.

The world is shaking- or maybe she’s the one shaking- but either way, she can’t bring her limbs to move or her eyes to open or her lungs to breathe.

She can’t bring herself to do anything at all but sit there and silently beg the universe to simply let her disappear.

to be continued…

let me know what you think ;)