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natalievoncatte · 6 months ago

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There was a knock at Lena’s door, and it startled her awake. She was awake, but also wasn’t, sitting in a side chair beside her sofa with a glass of whisky still in her hand, loosely held by tired, nerveless fingers. It nearly fell from her palm when the sound jolted her from the twilight between fitful wakefulness and falling asleep sitting up. By her side was that goddamn picture, the glass still cracked. She grabbed it and forced it down so she didn’t have to see her grinning face, feel the ghost of a warm soft cheek lightly grazing hers.

The whisky made a fiery stab at her heart as she finished it and went to the door. She already knew who it was, the only person who’d dare disturb her at this hour, and who could get past her security.

Kara stood in the hall, clad in fluffy pajamas and disbelieved, tracks left by hot tears still cut into her soft rosy cheeks. There she was, the pretty little crying princess again.

It was an act. It was bullshit. The real her was hiding behind it, standing tall, appraising Lena’s faults with eyes that could burn mountains, the cold judgment of an extinct empire carved into her godlike, inhuman beauty. Lena made herself see that, refused to let her guard down.

“What, Kara?”

“Can I come in?”

Lena didn’t even answer. She began to close the door, only for her movement to be arrested by a single word.

“Please.”

Part of her made her stop. She seethed against it, hated it. She had carved icy knives of vengeance to carve it out herself. Alcohol had failed to drown it and the sharpest logic was dull against it. It was both too hard to crush and too soft to squeeze, this hateful thing that coiled around her heart and made her feel when she had sworn never to feel again.

Kara took a halting step forward. Lena threw out her palm and pressed it into her chests, stopping her.

She shouldn’t have done that. There was something heady and intoxicating in it. Kara froze in place, and Lena could feel her pulse along her collarbones. The pinnacle of alien might, strength so vast that nothing could stand as her equal, and she stopped from Lena’s lightest touch. That was power.

“What do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“I’ve heard your apologies. Don’t waste my time unless you have some new material.”

Kara licked her lips. “Maybe.”

They couldn’t stay like this. Resting a hand on her chest had too many possibilities. Touching her had too many implications. It would be so easy to let the soft thing win and bring her hand up and hold her palm to that soft cheek and seek to balm those tears, make it better, care.

She let herself remember that Kara’s pain was a shoeld for Supergirl’s judging wrath and pulled back, but she didn’t close the door. Kara did as she slipped inside.

Thee was a heavy pause of silence, where Kara just breathed, soft and ragged.

“Why are you here?” said Lena.

“I needed to see you. I needed to know you’re safe.”

“Nightmares?”

“Worse,” said Kara. “It was so much worse.”

The agony in her voice shook Lena.

Forcing herself to composure, she poured another three fingers of single malt and flipped into her chair, extending neither drink nor invitation to Kara. The drink was a bad idea. It was dangerous. The smokey, hazy heat of it burned the soft bitter taste of regret from her teeth. Lena didn’t look at her.

“It was the imp.”

“Excuse me?”

“It calls itself Mxy. It says it’s from the fifth dimension but I have no idea if that’s true or not. All I know is that it has vast powers, even godlike. The last time it… it tried to force me to marry it.”

Lena knew what darkness in her birthed the hot rage in her gut, the possessive jealous fury that welled within her at those worse. This thing, how dare he.

She took a drink.

“It… he came to me tonight and said he wanted to make amends. He offered to let me change the past. I could fix whatever I wanted.”

“Hmm. Must have been a trick,” said Lena. “Let me guess, restoring Krypton had some ironic Twilight Zone twist.”

Kara blanched, blinking. “No, I… I didn’t even think of that. I asked him to help me fix us.”

There is no us, Lena began to say, but the words died on her tongue. She washed the taste away.

Something in her twisted, a cold shiver like a water dumped over her head. She knew Kara’s bullshit super senses would pick up on it and steeled herself.

Rubbing her arms, Kara paced.

“I tried telling you at different times, so you’d hear it from me and not Lex or someone else.”

“What happened?” Lena said, trying to look more interested in her whisky than the answer.

It was purely an intellectual curiosity, she told herself.

“You died,” Kara said, blunt. “You died every time.”

“How?”

Every which way. Reign killed you five or six times. Mercy blew your brains out all over my chest. Lex… Lex could be creative. Poison, blades, fire once. He was fond of sadistic choices and clever tortures. Say, use red wavelengths to negate my powers and set up a sadistic challenge I could never pass, that sort of thing. It got so bad I stupidly wished I’d never met you.”

Her voice was ragged, breathing uneven. Fresh tears glittered on her cheeks and Lena felt herself lunge, start to stand. Kara’s pain called out to something in her, something beyond the physical or even the emotional. It was like something in Lena’s soul yearned to stop that terrible pain.

“The worst was when you drowned. Almost.”

Lena looked away, swirled her drink.

“Sounds like you kept trying.”

“I did. The timeline where we never met was one of the worst. I wasn’t there when your chopper crashed. Your mother… you tried to kill me and I couldn’t even fight back.”

“Is this where we segue into the ‘I would never hurt you’ lecture?”

“No. I did hurt you. I deserve your hate. If someone else did to you what I did, I’d snap their neck.”

Lena flinched. There was something cold in that admission, something brutal and beyond even Supergirl. Raw.

None of her rules matter for me.

A tiny voice in that darkness whispered to her: And if some poor bastard locked her in a Kryptonite cage the way you did, they’d be begging you for death. They’d know you’re a Luthor.

Lena shuddered.

“What do you do?”

“I kept trying. I thought… I felt… I had to keep trying.”

“Well, you gave up and came here eventually. You…”

Kara swallowed hard. “It thought it worked, finally. I picked the night I reached you from Corben. Remember that?”

“I remember,” Lena said, hesitant.

Kara Danvers believes in you.

“I told you when you asked me why I saved you. I took you home, made sure you were safe. Life went on. These… these timelines or whatever they were, Lena, they were real. I lived them. That one was, it was…”

“What?”

“A few days later after things calmed down we went to lunch. We were just chatting about something unimportant and you looked at me and our eyes met and it was like…”

Kara looked away from her, wrapping her arms around herself the way she did, not a smug Supergirl pose but a woman shielding her heart from the world that clawed at it.

“When I first arrived on Earth there was a night where my powers had just kicked in and I looked at the sky. I could see more than stars. There was an aurora that was invisible to humans. I could see invisible lines of energy crackling between the stars, the cosmic background radiation shimmering on the dark. Can you imagine that? I can see the remnants of the Big Bang when I stargaze.”

Lena’s had trembled, the dregs of her booze shaking in the bottom of the glass.

“It was like that,” said Kara. “I knew I’d never be the same. I was staring at you like a big goof and you just stopped talking and stared back. I blurted out ‘is this a date?’”

Lena clutched the glass so she wouldn’t drop it and forced the tears back with all her might, but she was weak. Always weak.

“I take it I said yes,” she managed to say, voice quivering.

“We got married three years later. Lori was born a year after that.”

“Kara,” Lena began.

“Then it happened.”

“Kara, shut up.”

“Kalibak killed you. My sister. My little girl. My everything.”

Lena hurled the glass and Kara snatched it from the air in a superhuman blur. Lena was already on her feet, stabbing an accusing finger.

“So what?” Lena demanded. “We’re star-crossed lovers, now? Is this your ploy to fix it? Make me realize how in love we are? It’s a sick joke, Kara.”

“I know I can’t fix it,” said Kara. “I don’t want to.”

Lena blinked, her rage momentarily cooled. “What?”

“I would rather live in a world where you hate me as long as you’re still in it.”

“Kara,” Lena said.

“We are star-crossed. I don’t know want I did to deserve this but I can’t fix it. There was never a right time to tell you. It was doomed from the start. I’m here to tell you to let me go, Lena.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I know about Non Nocere. I know what you’re trying to do. I’m here to ask you to stop. Please. Don’t do this. Don’t ruin you life over me.”

“Why couldn’t you just save me and leave?” Lena demanded. “That’s what everyone else gets. A quick rescue and a wave and a wink and you’re gone. Why did you have to drag yourself through my life and wreck everything?”

“I tried that.”

Lena screamed, bellowed at the top of her lungs.

“So what? So fucking what, Kara?”

Kara just stood there.

“I don’t know. I just… I just had to see… all I want is for you to be safe.”

Lena turned away from her.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry,” Kara choked out, behind her. “I did go back to Krypton one time. I told him I wanted to stay and die with my world, that it was the only way.”

“Let me guess, you did that and…”

“Car accident.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Lena cried. “You have to be kidding me.”

“He made me watch. Not just you, everyone else that died because there was no Supergirl. I… I think I’m in Hell.”

Lena blinked. She turned slowly. A memory came flooding back to her from another time, a closed casket in a small Irish church with Lionel Luthor lurking, waiting for her with an entourage. She’d asked the priest in her precious child voice, am I in Hell, Father?

A sob forced itself out of her. She let herself look at Kara, standing there bedraggled and teary eyed in rumpled Hello Kitty pajamas and felt sick, like she’d swallowed a belly full of rancid oil. All she could see was the hurting, and she wondered if that was it, if this pain was the source of the unbreakable quantum entanglement that had dragged this alien being across a gulf of stars to fuck up her life.

Or save it.

“Kara,” Lena whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I dragged you into my life.”

“I’m not,” Kara whispered. “It was a gift, every minute of it. I wouldn’t trade a single moment for anything. Even the ones that didn’t happen.”

“What the hell do we do?” said Lena.

“I leave. I keep saving you. You find someone else, live your life, be happy. I do everything I can to keep you in this world and watch you grow old. That’s it. I should go.”

Kara turned and Lena screamed, balling her fists.

“Don’t you fucking dare leave this penthouse, Kara Danvers.”

Kara froze.

“I went back.”

“Went back to what?” said Kara.

“I went back to let you out of the Kryptonite cage. I couldn’t stop thinking of you lying on that cold floor in pain so I had to go back, but you weren’t there. I… I… I don’t know what I’m doing. I want to stop this but I just keep going and I don’t know what to fucking do anymore. I’m so lost.”

Kara’s shoulders slumped.

“I would take it back if I could.”

Kara turned back to her.

“You don’t have to.”

Lena backed away, unable to look at her. Kara crossed the gap in seconds and tenderly rested her hands on Lena’s arms.

“I’m sorry. I mean it. I am truly sorry from the depths of my soul. I would fix this if I could.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” said Lena. “It makes my soul hurt, and I don’t believe in souls.”

Lena pulled her in, clinging to her as if she might disappear. Kara was tentative, testing with every movement.

God, they had a daughter. A child! Lena could imagine, almost see… what had she done?

“It’s going to be okay,” Kara said. “I think this is what I was supposed to learn.”

“What?”

“To own my mistakes, and if I don’t want you to be a villain, I shouldn’t treat you like one.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I should go home and let you rest. This is a lot, I know, and it’s late. I…”

Kara trailed off, and Lena looked up at her. Their eyes met, and Lena… knew.

“Will you come back?” said Lena.

“Always.”

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natalievoncatte · 24 days ago

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Lena crouched down and carefully undid the buckle, pulling the watch from Lex’s limp wrist. His cold hand fell to the floor with a soft flopping sound and his eyes stared at nothing, unfocused and dull. Lena had once read that a dead man stared as if trying to solve a complex problem, but Lena did not see metaphor in her dead brother’s eyes. She saw only an absence that was a presence, a nothing that was somehow something.

Lex finally had his father’s eyes.

The gun was still heavy in her hand, her palm and wrist tingling from the force of recoil, ears still ringing from the blast. A single hole marked the center of her brother’s forehead; the meat of his genius was splattered across a bank of screens all playing surveillance footage of Kara performing inhuman feats.

(Two to the chest, one to the head, he had taught her, teaching her to repeat the mantra as he held her wrist to guide her aim as she took her very first shot)

The world was starting to come back, sweeping in. She couldn’t be here. She’d have to figure out what to do with the body and the evidence. She had to get out.

The interface on the watch was simple enough. The portal flashed open and she stepped through into her apartment. That could be convenient.

The watch crystal was dotted with her brother’s blood. She threw it and it skidded across the kitchen counter and it fell on the floor. She looked at the weapon in her hand. She would have powder burns.

Looking up, she spotted her reflection in the stainless steel of her fridge, blurred but real. There was red on her.

Lena never wore red.

There was more than she thought. She was covered in blood. In a panic, she ran for her bedroom and began shedding clothes on the tile floor of her bathrooms, wrapping the gun in a towel before throwing it on the bed. Stupid, stupid. That revolver was registered to her in Metropolis, and like all guns sold in-state, the police had a spent shell casing from it, fired and then stored for police records before it was sold.

Fuck.

Hot water blasted her skin. She let her hair fall down around her shoulders in wet locks like streaks of ink smeared across her pale skin.

(Why must you be so pale? You look like a dead fish.)

(That’s enough, mother. Leave Lena alone.)

She wasn’t sure when the tears started, or when she began to sob. She scrubbed at herself with a wash cloth and soap until her skin was raw and beet red. She was still sobbing when she stumbled out of the shower and threw on a robe, choking back tears as she sat on the edge of the bed.

She reached for her phone on the nightstand, but who to call?

Not long ago she’d have called Kara, or perhaps her sister. She could have called Nia or Brainy but they had all fucking lied to her. Even James. James knew while he was… while they…

It was Kara. Kara has asked her boyfriend to spy on her, questioned her motives.

Kara… Kara had lied most of all.

She stared at the phone. There was Sam, but Sam was away from all this madness, busy with her work and her daughter. Lena would just be a burden to her.

She stared at her list of contacts- the only people she knew outside of her employees and associates were in Kara’s circle, except for Sam…

…and Jack.

Lena jabbed the call button and waited.

It rang, rang, rang again.

Finally, he answered.

“Lena?”

“Hello, Jack.”

“I must say I’m surprised- it’s rather late, and we haven’t spoken in a while. What’s on your mind?”

“I shot Lex in the face,” Lena said, shocked by her own hollow, distant voice.

The line was silent for too long a beat.

“Dear God, you’re serious.”

Lena choked out a sob.

“I had to, Jack. She was never going to be safe while he was alive. He almost killed her this time. He would never let her live if he knew how I feel.”

“Lena, darling, please, you’re not making sense. Look- I’m booking a flight out there now, but please, stay calm and try to tell me what happened.”

She didn’t know where to start, so she went back to the beginning, when she had learned how to trace Lex’s portals and followed him back to his lair.

She stopped herself before she gave it away.

“He showed me Supergirl’s real identity. He had proof.”

“I see.”

“I… she…”

“It doesn’t matter who she is. It hurt you, I know that. Listen to me, Lena- I’ve charted a flight and I’ll be there in six hours. Where is the gun?”

“I have it here.”

“Unload it, please. Let me know when you’ve finished.”

Lena flicked open the cylinder and dumped the shells into her hand, three spent and two unfired, then closed it again.

“Now, lock it up.”

Once it was in the safe she said, “done.”

“Now I want you to lie down. Stay in the apartment and wait there for me, I’ll be there presently.”

For once in her life, Lena did as she was told. Somehow, she fell asleep and didn’t wake until she heard the intercom buzzing.

Without thinking she pulled on sweats and a Midvale High Mathletes sweatshirt.

Kara’s.

When she opened the door she found a haggard Jack Spheer on the other side. He was a little older, beard salted with gray, but he was still him.

He swept into the apartment without a word, found the liquor cabinet, and poured drinks.

“Talk to me.”

Lena sat down and downed her two fingers of scotch in one motion. He poured her another.

“Kara Danvers is Supergirl.”

“The Kara Danvers? Your reporter friend? Your best friend?”

He took a drink.

“Your crush?” he added.

Lena stared at him. He met her gaze levelly.

“What you said on the phone before I left. That he would never let her live if he knew how you felt.”

Lena’s throat felt like sandpaper. She took another drink. It didn’t help.

“She’s not… I’m not… I don’t…” The words would not take shape. “She lied to me,” Lena finally choked out. “She did something I shouldn’t forgive and she used her double life to play both side against me. I don’t know what part of our relationship was real now.”

Jack studied his drink for a long time. He picked up the bottle and pretended to read the label.

“The last time we spoke she seemed quite taken with you. I assume that Lex knew all of this, or most of it.”

“He knew the broad strokes, I’m sure. I think he hoped that if he showed me, I’d join him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” Lena said, in a tiny whisper. “I killed him.”

“Your brother is dead.”

“Yes.”

He poured more drinks, another round for both of them.

“Tell me about him.”

“You’ve heard all the stories.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Lena considered that for a moment, then began talking, rattling off whatever popped into her head. She started with the first time she ever met her brother when he and Lionel had come to Ireland to take custody of her, then began jumping around in time from the treehouse he tried to build to the time he told Lillian he’d kill her if she hurt Lena to his college graduation to when he declared to her that he was going to kill Superman, as if it were the most obvious thing to do.

Eventfully she ran out of stories, and they were running out of scotch. There was enough for one more glass each.

It was The Next Day by now, and mid-morning sun filled the penthouse.

“Are you ready to tell me about her?”

She was. Lena began with the first time they met- the mousy little wannabe reporter who followed Superman into her office as he posed as a reporter, how the Man of Steel himself seemed unimportant compared to Kara, how even then her heart fluttered and she felt a hot pressure low in her hips and Kara seemed to feel spending too.

She told Jack all about it- not just Kara but Supergirl too, about the plane and the office full of flowers and the lunches and brunches and movie nights and how this woman had burrowed into her life and made a home there and gave a home in return, about all the times she had saved Lena’s life.

Again the words ran out.

“Do you want my advice?”

“Yes,” said Lena.

“Talk to her. The woman cares for you deeply, that much is clear. Talk to her and see where you stand.”

“But,”

He raised a hand. “I’m telling you this because I think you’ll listen to me. You want my real advice?”

Lena swallowed. “Yes.”

“Your psychopath brother is gone. You own and run a Fortune 50 company. You’re on a dozen lists, 30 under 30, most influential women… you have virtually unlimited wealth and, if I dare say so, a woman who loves you.”

Lena sucked in a breath.

“Take the money, take the girl,” said Jack, “and live your life.”

She looked down at the empty glass, feeling the cold austere minimalism of her stark penthouse around her, and the tears began to flow anew. She wrapped her arms around herself and didn’t flinch when Jack took her in a bear hug.

“I want what’s best for you, and right now I think what’s best for you is ignoring that little voice in your head that’s telling you to blow up your life because you think you can’t be happy.”

“I knew,” Lena finally admitted. “I knew the whole time. I knew she was Supergirl and I knew I was in love with her.”

Lena wept softly on his shoulder for a time. He ended up staying the day and slept on her couch before leaving to return to Metropolis.

She was still wearing Kara’s sweater when she made the call.

“Lena? Are you alright? I was worried about you,” Kara said.

“Please come over,” Lena whispered. “I need to see you, Kara. You can come in through the balcony. The door is open.”

There was a too-long pause, and then the double impact of Supergirl’s boot heels on the concrete.

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