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It happens on one of the many nights Lena Luthor stays at L Corp late to finish some final paperwork. She’s almost done, eager to go home and relax, when Jess knocks on the door of her office.
“I’m sorry for interrupting your work, Ms. Luthor, but have you seen the news yet?”
Lena, still focused on the laptop in front of her, shakes her head distractedly. “It’s fine. What’s going on?”
“The news, Ms. Luthor,” Jess repeats. “It’s all over the news.”
“Hmm,” Lena hums. “Okay.”
“Ms. Luthor!” Jess tries again. “It’s Supergirl.”
This gets Lena’s attention. Her head snaps up, and she completely abandons her work. “Did something happen to her?”
Jess gives her a pained look. “You should see the news.”
Without wasting another second, Lena grabs the remote from one of her desk drawers, switching on the television that hangs off the wall. She’s instantly met with Supergirl’s logo, and rushed voices talking about something blurry caught on camera.
“—looks like she lost the fight against an angry alien attack with weapons embedded with Kryptonite—”
“—Supergirl falling out of the sky after being struck by Kryptonite bullets—”
“—alien shot dead by FBI agents after attack on Supergirl—”
“—the crater she left in the street is surrounded by reporters and NCPD, all are trying to find out what happened in what might be Supergirl’s final fight—”
It feels like a punch to the stomach. Lena’s throat closes up, a violent burning behind her eyes, and tears threatening to spill. The images of Supergirl being carried away on a stretcher by a couple of agents bearing FBI on their badges prying open the cracks in her heart again. She tries to look away from the television screen, but she can’t. She needs to see every detail of what happened to Supergirl.
“Ms. Luthor…are you okay? Perhaps you should sit down.” Lena barely registers Jess’s voice. It’s like she’s underwater with weights around her waist, unable to breathe, struggling to swim to the surface.
“I—” Lena mumbles, suddenly realizing she’s gotten up from her chair as her knees threaten to buckle. She grabs onto her desk at the same time Jess rushes forward to grab her elbows, but Lena shakes her assistant off. “I need to get to Supergirl.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Jess says. “Do you want me to call your driver?”
“Yes,” Lena nods. “And I need to make a phone call. Please leave.”
Jess gives her a long look, before nodding. “Alright. I’ll be outside if you need me.”
Lena forces a smile. “Thank you.”
As soon as Jess leaves, Lena reaches for her phone. Her fingers are trembling against the screen as she searches in the contact list for one name in particular. She holds her phone to her ear, eyes closed, whispering the same two words over and over again: “Pick up, pick up, pick up…”
“Hey, you’ve reached Kara Danvers’s voicemail. I can’t answer my phone right now, but leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you ASAP. Beep!”
“Fuck,” Lena mutters, clenching her jaw. She calls Kara again, trying her hardest to ignore the voice in the back of her mind that’s telling her Kara won’t pick up the phone no matter how often she calls, because Kara is the one she just watched getting carried away on a stretcher.
A single tear runs down Lena’s cheek as she barely keeps herself from throwing her phone across the room, and she wipes it away furiously. She’s not going to cry over this. She’s Lena Luthor, for god’s sake. And Kara is gonna be fine, anyway. If it’s even really Kara.
She’s on the verge of screaming when the door opens and Jess sticks her head through the doorway. “Ms. Luthor? Your driver is here.”
“I’ll be right out,” Lena says, still wiping at her cheeks. She closes her laptop and grabs her phone, purse, and keys, and quickly glances in the mirror she passes to make sure she didn’t ruin her makeup too much. She definitely looks upset, though it’s not as bad as she feared.
Jess stays behind while Lena rides the elevator down alone, and she spends the entire ride touching up her makeup. She’s still the CEO of L Corp, after all, and she has to look presentable at all times. She straightens her shoulders, clutches her hand around her purse a little tighter, and takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down.
“Good night, Ms. Luthor,” her driver says, as soon as she steps out of the building.
“Hello, Damien,” Lena says. “Sorry for bothering you this late at night. I just need to be…somewhere with urgency.”
“Of course, Ms. Luthor. No need to apologize. Where are we off to?”
And just then it hits Lena. She actually has no idea where Supergirl and/or Kara is right now. Surely she’s not at the hospital downtown, where they’re certainly not equipped to take care of a wounded alien, and she knows too little about the local alien population to know where else they’d take her.
“I—” she starts to say, before an idea dawns on her. “Kara Danvers’s apartment.”
All the way to Kara’s apartment Lena wonders what the fuck she’s doing. If she got it right, and Kara is Supergirl, she definitely won’t be home. So why is she still hoping for the door to be answered?
She started piecing together the clues a while ago. Even when they first met, when Kara came into her office with Clark Kent, she thought the awkward smile looked a lot like the smile she’d seen all over the news for months. And when Kara blurted out that she flew to L Corp, things fell into place for Lena. But she never pushed the subject, because if it’s true, it’s not her place to ask about it. If Kara wants her to know, she’ll tell her. Lena’s certain of that.
And she never planned on forcing the truth out of Kara, or anyone else, but now that it’s possible that Kara is hurt, she can’t not do everything in her power to see her.
As soon as Damien pulls over on the sidewalk across from Kara’s building, Lena rushes out of the car. She barely pays attention to the traffic as she crosses the road blindly, her heart beating out of her chest.
She needs Kara to be there. She needs to be wrong about this.
But, of course, no one answers the door, no matter how hard she knocks. Her knuckles are raw by the time she finally gives up, sliding down to the floor dramatically with her back pressed against the door.
She checks her phone, suppressing the heart-stopping disappointment when there are no new notifications from Kara. It’s a little past ten, and Lena knows she should go home. Kara isn’t here, and she might not come back for a long time.
But she can’t go home. Not when she doesn’t know if Kara is alive or dead. So she stays right where she is, with her head in her hands, trying to figure out what to do.
Over the course of about an hour, ringing all doorbells in National City to ask if anyone is hosting Supergirl starts sounding like a progressively better idea, and Lena is pretty sure she’s slowly going insane.
She decides her senses are definitely off when she hears footsteps approaching the apartment. No one should be coming here. Kara’s apartment is on the side of the building, and the only one walking down the hallway that far would be Kara herself. But Kara is Supergirl, and Supergirl got riddled with Kryptonite bullets today.
Her hands start shaking again. Flashes of the amateur footage fill her mind until she wants to scream, and the only reason she doesn’t is because someone is definitely coming this way.
It’s not Kara. It is, however, someone she knows—kind of.
“Lena Luthor,” Alex Danvers says, her voice a mixture of surprise, anger, and weariness. “What are you doing here?”
Lena scrambles to her feet. If she remembers correctly this is Kara’s older sister. Which means— “Where’s Kara? You have to take me to Kara.”
Alex stops walking, a couple of feet away from Lena. Her hand slowly moves to where her gun is resting against her hip. “What are you talking about?”
“Kara. I saw it on the news, and I didn’t know where else to go, but—” Her voice catches in her throat then, because suddenly she’s staring down the loop of Alex’s gun.
“How do you know?” Alex’s harsh voice sends a shiver down Lena’s spine, more so than the fact that she has her at gunpoint.
“We—we’re friends, Kara and I,” Lena stammers, slowly raising her hands above her head. She doesn’t take her eyes off of Alex’s face, and the exhaustion that’s written all over it pretty much confirms Lena’s suspicions. “I didn’t know for sure, but—it’s true, isn’t it? Kara is Supergirl.”
Alex stares her down with piercing eyes, but Lena forces herself to keep looking into her eyes. She needs Alex to know she’s being honest; that she’s not here to finish the job of ending Supergirl, that she’s different from her mom and brother.
It seems to work, because after a long tense moment, Alex lowers her gun. “Yes, you’re right. Should’ve known you’d figure it out eventually. Kara told me you’re smart.”
Lena ignores the way her heart leaps because Kara told her sister about me. “How is she? Please take me to see her.”
“Ms. Luthor…” Alex says, putting her gun away and taking out a set of keys. “I’m sorry—I know you and Kara are friends—but I really can’t. She’s stable and at a secret location right now, but even by telling you that I’ve already said too much.”
Alex unlocks the door of Kara’s apartment, immediately disappearing into what Lena assumes is Kara’s bedroom. Lena, feeling a little lighter now that she knows Kara’s not dead or dying, follows her inside shamelessly, and through the half-open bedroom she can see Alex throwing a few outfits into a sports bag.
“You don’t understand,” Lena tries again. “I need to see her. I’m—Please, Agent Danvers.” Her voice actually cracks at that, and if this were about anyone else she’d think of it as nothing more than pathetic. But Kara is hurt. Kara. Awkward, funny, adorable Kara. Kara, who gave Lena’s heart a reason to beat again.
Alex comes out of the bedroom with the sports bag over her shoulder, her eyes a lot softer than before. “I’m sorry, Ms. Luthor. I really can’t allow that. I’ll let her know you came by, though.”
“That’s not enough, I need to—”
“Leave. I only came here to grab some of Kara’s things. I have to get back to the—to where she is, now.” Alex’s voice isn’t as harsh as her words, but they still feel like salt in the still-healing cracks of Lena’s heart.
As much as Lena wants to chain herself down in Kara’s apartment, she knows it won’t make Alex change her mind, and probably only lower her chances from zero to even less. She watches as Alex locks the door behind them, following her into the elevator.
Lena looks down at her purse. “Is it because I’m a Luthor?”
“What? No. It complicates the matter, sure, but you helped us a lot by getting your mother arrested. Believe me, I want to take you with me, because I know Kara would want that, but I can’t. It’s against protocol.”
Lena bows her head, then, not trying to fight any longer. She blinks until the burning is gone from her eyes, until it’s only sears at her heart, and she doesn’t say a word.
When the elevator reaches ground level, Alex turns to her. “I really am sorry, Ms. Luthor.”
Lena acknowledges her with a nod. She wonders if things would’ve been different if she had pushed Kara to talk about it. If she’d told her how she felt sooner. If she’d done anything that would’ve made Alex, or whoever was pulling the strings, trust her enough to let her come to wherever Kara is.
She follows Alex outside, watching her every move, as she climbs into her car. Damien has left, she told him so, but she has her own set of keys and a driver’s license she barely needs to make use of, and she’s determined to see Kara tonight.
She knows that if this goes wrong, she’ll have messed up big time. A Luthor tailing Supergirl’s sister would look suspicious to anyone who doesn’t know the full story, which, at this point is everyone but Lena herself.
Alex drives fast, too fast, but Lena doesn’t lose sight of her. She zigzags between cars and almost crashes twice, until eventually Alex pulls up in some sort of alley. Strange, Lena thinks, but there’s so much she doesn’t know about Supergirl she expects pretty much anything by this point.
She slouches in her seat when Alex gets out of her car, trying to hide, but her efforts are unnecessary. Alex walks straight up to her window and bangs her fist against the glass. She says something, but Lena’s car is not only bulletproof, it’s also soundproof, so she has to roll down the window before being able to hear her.
“Why are you following me?”
“I need to see Kara.”
“You’re impossible,” Alex groans. “Fine, I’ll take you to see her. But only because Kara trusts you, and I’m probably not gonna get rid of you. You’ll be searched upon arrival and any weapons and other possessions that could pose a threat will be taken from you. And you have to wear a blindfold so you won’t see where we’re going.”
Lena can’t believe her eyes when Alex takes her blindfold off and she’s not in prison. She’s surrounded by dark metals and the same logo of an eagle with the letters D.E.O. over and over again. Several people dressed in what looks like military uniforms give her a second glance.
“What’s D.E.O.?” she asks, unable to stop herself.
Alex gives her a long look, and Lena knows she won’t be getting an answer to that question.
“Oh right, never mind,” Lena says. It’s not hard to figure out that this place is headquarters of a hidden organization, probably keeping track of the alien population in National City. She wonders what Lex would say if he knew she was here. All the knowledge about the aliens inhabiting this Earth…all the info on Superman. “And Kara’s here?”
“Supergirl is a D.E.O. agent,” Alex nods. “Therefore, in case of injury, she is brought and treated her.” She frowns. “Also because she’s an alien and we have better equipment than regular hospitals.”
“Can we go see her now?”
“Yeah.”
Alex leads Lena to what she assumes to be the hospital wing of the D.E.O. where there are only few people in comparison to the rest of the building. Lena figures it’s because it’s around midnight, and most of the people working here have probably gone home for the night.
They turn a corner, entering a corridor with only one light at the end. Lena’s heart skips a beat—Kara’s near.
Lena quickens her pace, her heels clicking against the concrete floor, and when she reaches Kara’s room, she stops.
The walls are made entirely of glass, so she sees Kara before she was truly ready. The sight is devastating. Kara’s not wearing her Supergirl suit, which is hanging off a chair with multiple bullet holes scattered over the blue fabric, and she’s lying on a hospital bed with only thin sheets as a cover. A few inches of bandage reach up to her collar bones, and Lena realizes she’s entirely covered in bandages underneath the sheets, too. Even parts of her right arm are all bandaged up.
Unconscious and without her suit, Supergirl looks a lot more like Kara than Lena expected. She gasps for air, stumbling backwards a few feet. Alex gives her a sympathetic look, and Lena tears her eyes away from Kara.
“What happened?” she asks, her voice hoarse from the lump in her throat.
“We don’t know for sure,” Alex sighs. “From videos and eye-witness testimonies we’ve gathered only a few pieces of the puzzle: a yet unidentified alien with weapons that held traces of Kryptonite opened fire against Supergirl. We don’t know why, and we don’t know how they obtained these weapons.”
Lena nods, barely registering any of Alex’s words. Her eyes are back on Kara, and she’s now pressing her palms against the glass. “How is she?”
“Well, we—um—some of us thought she wouldn’t pull through. Even though there wasn’t a lot of Kryptonite in her body when we got her to safety, it hit some vital organs, and since we can’t cut through her skin to perform the correct surgeries, most of it was a waiting game. We were able to remove the bullets still in her body and thus removing the immediate threat weakening her, but she still hasn’t woken up and it’s been a good couple of hours since the attack. Tests show that she’s recovering, though.” Alex actually smiles at that, finally showing some of her caring side, and she blinks. “I knew she would make it, of course. I can’t—I can’t imagine what it would be like if—” She swallows audibly.
“Yeah,” Lena whispers. “I know.”
She flinches when Alex puts her hand on her shoulder. “You can go in, if you want.”
Lena nods. She does want that. She’s spent the entire fucking night wanting that.
Alex stays outside the room as she enters, although Lena can feel her staring. She doesn’t blame her. If it were the other way around, she wouldn’t even let anyone close to Kara. Certainly not the sister of Superman’s worst enemy.
(She realizes this means Kara has been talking about her, praising her, even, enough for Alex, and probably a lot of other people here at the D.E.O., to trust her.)
Lena sinks down on the stool at Kara’s bedside, and reaches out to grab Kara’s hand. It’s soft and limp and cold, and Lena hates that this is the reason she holds Kara’s hand for the first time.
She holds Kara’s hand between both of her own, and at the sight of Kara’s closed eyes and unsmiling mouth, she finally gives into the desperate feeling she’s been fighting ever since Jess came barging into her office.
She doesn’t fight the tears that are starting to stream down her face. She lets the quiet sobs shake her shoulders, lets her trembling hands clasp at what seems like the only still-healthy part of Kara’s body. She cries, succumbing to all the anger and fear and pain, until she can’t breathe and her lungs feel like they’re on fire.
She calms down eventually, sort of. She can’t cry anymore. Her body is exhausted, and all she wants is to curl up next to Kara and hold her until she falls asleep, but she doesn’t want to push her luck.
“Please wake up,” she whispers, pressing her lips against the palm of Kara’s hand. “I still need you.”
She leans her cheek against Kara’s hand, closing her eyes. It’s easier to imagine they’re cuddling at home this way, both of them in pajamas, and Kara’s thumb tracing figures on Lena’s cheek and—wait a minute.
Lena’s eyes fly open and, surely enough, Kara is staring back at her. She’s even trying to smile.
“Oh my god,” Lena whispers, and she squeezes Kara’s hand. “You’re awake, you’re—”
“Kara!” Alex interrupts her. She comes rushing into the room, demanding attention from both Kara and Lena. “How are you feeling?”
Kara clenches her jaw, pain reflecting in her eyes. “Like someone just tried to make me into a sieve with bullets made of Kryptonite.”
Alex’s worried expression turns into a grin. “Well, you’re clearly on the right way back to being healthy.”
“Yeah, getting that Kryptonite out of me really helped,” Kara says, through gritted teeth this time. “Get some sleep, Alex. You look like you’ve been hit by a car.”
“Thank you. You look great yourself, too,” Alex grins. She lets herself fall into an armchair in the corner of the room Lena didn’t know was there, and shakes her head. She closes her eyes, but not before very obviously resting her hand on her gun.
Lena gets the hint. Don’t kill Supergirl.
“Hey,” Kara says. She waves her hand weakly. “Come lie down with me.”
“Will she be okay with that?” Lena asks, nodding her head in Alex’s direction.
Kara’s lips hint at a smile. “I got shot today. I think I’ve earned this one good thing.” She pats the empty space beside her, face contorting with pain as she attempts to scoot over. Lena wants to say something about it, but Kara’s right—if they both want to fit in the bed, she’ll have to move.
Eventually there’s enough space for the both of them, and Lena climbs onto the bed after kicking off her heels. Kara places her good arm so she can wrap it around Lena’s shoulder as she lies down. Lena wants to put her arm around Kara’s waist, but she’s not sure where exactly the bullet wounds are, so she just keeps it tucked against her chest instead, content with her face being only inches away from Kara’s.
“So you figured it out, huh?” Kara mumbles, softly brushing her fingertips over Lena’s upper arm.
“Yeah, I’ve thought it for a while now, actually,” Lena whispers back. “But I wasn’t sure until today.”
“Surprise,” Kara says, weakly. She has her eyes closed again, but now that she’s been awake, Lena isn’t as worried anymore. Kara is strong enough to fight through this. She’s just tired because she’s recovering from multiple bullet wounds. She’ll wake up if she falls asleep now. But she doesn’t fall asleep. She shifts a little, and then her eyes flutter open again. “I wanted to tell you. I’ve even already talked about it with Alex and J’onn and they both agreed to trust you. But it never seemed the right time, so…” Her voice trails off.
Lena ignores the way her heart skips a beat. “It’s okay. Really. I’m not mad at you for keeping a secret.”
Kara gives her another weak smile, struggling to keep her eyes open. “Didn’t think you were.” She pauses, almost falls asleep and stirs awake again. “You’ll have to tell me how you got Alex to take you to the D.E.O., though.”
“I will,” Lena promises. “Tomorrow. After you’ve slept for a bit.”
“I spent all evening asleep,” Kara protests. “I wanna talk to you.”
Yeah, Lena’s heart really doesn’t know what to do with that. For a moment, she’s worried it might stop beating altogether. “I’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Mm, ‘kay.” Kara relaxes almost instantly, her hand falling away from where she’d been caressing Lena’s arm.
Lena stares at the sleeping girl for a second or two, and wonders how this can look so different from when Kara was still unconscious because of the fight. Perhaps it looks the same, but even just the knowledge that Kara’s just asleep right now calms Lena’s mind.
Her eyes lower to Kara’s lips then, and she decides that as soon as Kara is back on her feet, she’s going to kiss her, because any day could be the last and she doesn’t want to spend a single one of those not kissing the girl she’s fallen hopelessly in love with.