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waytooinvested · 1 year ago

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Vengeance, Victory, and Undying Love - pt 7

Chapter 7 of my Supercorp fic in which Lena still creates something called Non Nocere to deal with her broken heart after finding out Supergirl's identity, but this time she gives the name to a different project. A more personal one. And now she’s coming for Supergirl.

This and previous chapters also available to read on Ao3

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Kara dropped the lump of kryptonite and leapt backwards, bracing for the wave of agony and nausea she knew would follow.

A beat passed.

Her breath continued to move easily in and out of her lungs. Her blood pumped painlessly, the usual acidic burn of kryptonite in her system entirely absent.

So… it… wasn’t kryptonite?

She dared to take a tentative half step closer and peered down at the thing Lena had given her. It certainly looked like kryptonite – the all-too-familiar sickly green glow making the hairs on her arms rise in anticipation of pain, but that’s where the similarity ended.

The pain never came.

She glanced from the lump of rock to Lena and back again, waiting for her to make it make sense.

‘Lena? What is it?’

‘Pick it up, have a closer look’.

She did so, a little tentatively. Even in the face of her undeniable lack of pain, her fingers flinched away from touching it, but she forced them to wrap around the stone and lift it anyway.

It felt warm, like a pebble that had been sitting out in the sun all day, but it didn’t burn her. The sensation would have been quite pleasant if not for the nagging, instinctive fear of touching the one thing on this Earth that she knew could kill her.

She tried rising a discrete inch above the ground, just to check that this wasn’t some new more subtle variation of kryptonite that caused powerlessness without the pain. But nope, she rose smoothly. When she focused in on her super hearing she found it undiminished. There was a cat purring three floors down. Someone blowing bubblegum and allowing the bubble to burst with a snap a couple of blocks away. Lena’s heartbeat, drumming a little too rapidly for her outward calm.

‘Okay, I don’t get it. Why would you make fake kryptonite? What’s the point?’

‘I didn’t. The kryptonite is real Kara, I’ve just made you immune to it. Non Nocere. It means no harm. No harm to you. You could swallow that piece if you wanted and it wouldn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t recommend it as it’s not exactly pill sized, but you could’.

‘Oh...’

Kara’s eyes filled with tears and she choked down a sob as she took in the truth of what Lena had injected her with. How was this even possible? She had never imagined anyone, even her bright, brilliant science genius friend, could do something like this.

‘Lena I- I don’t know how to thank you. This is amazing, it’s the most incredible gift. But… why would you do this? I know how you feel about me’.

Lena laughed, half bitter, half disbelieving amusement.

‘No you don’t. You clearly have no idea how I feel about you, or you never could have done what you did to me. Kara, you have hurt me more than anyone in my life, and coming from my family that’s really saying something. But I’m not a machine, I can’t just switch off caring whether you live or die, no matter how much I might want to. Not now I know that it’s you in that cape, risking your life every other day and completely, stupidly helpless against a shiny green rock that turns up all too often for something from another planet. So, I fixed it. Kryptonite can’t hurt you anymore, so now you won’t get hurt. And that means I never have to spare a moment’s thought for you again. Do you see now? This means I’m over you’.

There was a hint of desperation in Lena’s voice, gilding the edges of what she clearly thought was a reasonable, rational explanation for what she’d just done for her.

‘Wait… what do you mean, you’re over me? When were you… under me?’

Oh god, had she really just said that?

She must have done, because Lena’s cheeks had gone as pink as hers felt and they stood there in silence for a moment, sharing a look of agonised helplessness that felt almost like they had slipped into an alternate time line where all the hurt between them had never existed, and instead this was the moment when…

Without realising she was doing it, Kara stepped closer to Lena, her eyes flicking to her mouth of their own accord.

‘Lena, I…’

Lena had cured Kara of her physical vulnerability. It was only fair that Kara gave her a gift in kind and confessed her emotional kryptonite, for Lena to do with what she would.

Her teeth raked her lower lip and she swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. Heart thumping she took a breath in readiness to admit her deepest, still unspoken truth and give Lena the opportunity, if she wanted, to make Kara truly feel the depths of her pain. She just had to hope that they weren’t so very far beyond saving that she was about to have her heart crushed all over again.

‘I-’

Lena broke the eye contact that had been drawing Kara inexorably closer, and the walls that divided them slammed back into place.

The moment snapped like a dry twig.

‘Well, that’s all I came for. You can keep the kryptonite if you like. Consider it a parting gift. Goodbye, Kara’.

With that, Lena turned and swept out of the apartment.

Go after her!

But Kara couldn’t. She stayed fixed to the spot, lips parted around the confession she hadn’t managed to make, kryptonite still cupped in her outstretched palm like an offering.

Had that really just happened? Had all that business in the lab really been about this? Curing Kara’s one great weakness, and framing it as revenge?

Tears flooded down her cheeks.

Oh Lena.

Of course she hadn’t really believed that Lena would try to kill her, but she had never for a moment imagined this either. Her very best case scenario had been that Lena had injected her with something inert, just to make her feel the shock and betrayal of being hurt by someone you should be able to trust completely.

But this?

It was too much to take in by herself. She didn’t care what time it was, she needed Alex.

With the kryptonite still clutched in her fist, Kara leapt skyward and went to find her sister.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘ARE YOU KIDDING ME?’

It was the fourth time Alex had said this since Kara had shaken her awake at 1am to talk through what had just happened.

The first was a sleepy grumble at being disturbed on what was supposed to be one of the few nights when she wasn’t on call at the DEO.

The second an incredulous murmur when Kara recounted her conversation with Lena.

The third followed almost immediately when, to prove that no, she really wasn’t kidding, Kara had held up the chunk of kryptonite to show her.

Alex had slapped it right out of her hand and called her a moron for touching it with her bare skin all this time, because what if it was some sort of trick? What if Lena had just found a way to add a protective coating that would wear away over time and poison her once her defences were down? Did she even consider that possibility??

And Kara had to admit that she hadn’t. Ever since Lena had told her, she hadn’t doubted the truth of her words for a moment, and she still didn’t.

Now they were at the DEO, and Alex had just finished testing both the kryptonite and Kara to confirm the veracity of Lena’s claim.

And… it was true. The kryptonite was real, and Kara was immune to it.

‘I can’t believe it. She really did cure you! It’s incredible. It’s- it’s- but then what the hell was all that about? The ominous hints, injecting you by force when you were practically unconscious, letting us lock her up and interrogate her? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just tell you up front what she was making and hand it over to you like a rational human being? Why all the fake villain business? Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to her for making it, but this is just... ridiculous’.

‘No, I get it. If Lena had just given me the cure it would have looked like she was doing it for me. It would have been about our friendship and she doesn’t want that anymore – she didn’t want me to be grateful, so she delivered it in the worst way she could think of. This way she could make me feel the betrayal she felt when she found out I lied to her, and make it clear that although she was helping me, it was her way of ending things, not her letting me back in. I get why she did all that... What I don’t so much understand is why she would make the cure in the first place when she hates me so much’.

Alex dropped her head into her hands and groaned.

‘Kara, you know I love you but you can be the most annoying, oblivious person in the world sometimes. Are you and Lena ever going to just be normal about each other? Please? So I can get some sleep?’

‘Hey! I’m not oblivious, I’m a reporter! Noticing things is my whole thing!

...Why, what do you think is going on?’

‘I think that going to a huge amount of effort and, I assume, expense, to make someone invulnerable just so you don’t have to worry about their safety anymore is not how you express hatred’.

‘So... do you think she made it before she found out, then decided not to let it go to waste? But that doesn’t make sense. Lena and I clashed all the time when I was Supergirl, it’s part of why I never told her the truth, so I don’t see why she would have wanted to do that for her’.

‘… No Kara. That’s not what I think happened’.

‘Well then, what-?’

‘NOPE. I’m done. You’re going to have to figure this one out for yourself dingus. I’m going back to bed. DO NOT WAKE ME unless someone is dying. Goodnight’.

#supercorp fanfic #supergirl fanfiction #kara x lena #lena luthor #kara danvers #kara zor el #multi chapter fic #angst with a happy ending #this is it folks we made it #not to the end of the story but to the turning point #There will be more chapters

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