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natalievoncatte · 3 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.”