Patience is a virtue.
After having paced the main lobby of the DEO a few hundred times until two symmetrical markings corrupted the once immaculate marble stone, it was abundantly clear that Kara Danvers didn't possess such virtue.
It felt like hours of pacing. Hours of waiting. Hours of anxiety coursing deep within her steel frame and nesting in her unsettled gut. Hours, instead of the minutes that had truly passed. Ten to be exact. But in her mind, it was all the same. Ten minutes. Seven hours. It all felt like an eternity.
Kara was impatient, but she prided herself on being level-headed. Pacing kept her from acting out her true desire. With each passing second, the desire to storm every room of the DEO and completely tear it apart grew more and more from a low burning simmer to a full on boil.
She hated waiting.
Especially when waiting on information.
Information pertaining to someone she loved.
Closing her eyes tightly to keep herself from making the rash decision of blowing up the place with her heat vision, Kara inhaled deeply and exhaled her frustrations. The arctic chill of her breath that escaped her lips spilled onto the floor covering the ruined stone with ice.
The cool party trick would've been received without so much as a passing glance had in fact Alex not managed to stumble upon the foreign surface landing unceremoniously on her back with the several dozen files once tightly in her grasps landing with a loud crash around her.
Kara saw the whole thing and the chorus of laughter reverberating within the walls of the DEO's lobby was indication enough that so did every other agent in the room. The loudest laughter coming from the local detective with special clearance into the top secret government facility. One of the perks of sleeping with a beautiful high ranking agent.
"Nice trick, Danvers." Maggie chuckled as she slid expertly next to Alex; offering an extended hand to her fallen girlfriend.
Alex feigned indignation as she swatted Maggie's helpful hand, opting for Kara's who had finally taken a quick break from ruining the floor to aide her sister. "I'm so sorry, Alex."
"Don't worry about it. It was only my ass. Not like I needed it anyway," Alex replies sarcastically as she swats the slushy ice from her backside. "Hey, Gomez," she yells across the room to a fellow agent who, at the sound of his name, snaps out of his fit of laughter to give his full attention to his superior. "Get this cleaned up."
"Right away, Agent Danvers." He replies with a salute before taking off like a leer jet to collect the mounds of mixed up paperwork scattered in the fall.
"Damn, Danvers. You're kind of hot when you're authoritative," Maggie gushed as her eyes squinted when a smile of admiration spread across her lips.
"Can it, Sawyer," Alex grunted softly as she turned her attention back to Kara. "What's with the ice breath?"
Kara looked down at the damage she had caused. She closed her eyes and shook her head hoping that every thought assaulting her would disappear. Every question would evaporate with the bobbing of her head.
But nothing could silence the nagging.
Nothing would silence the questions.
Not when they were all centered around the thing she cared for most.
Not when they involved the person she loved the most.
Lena.
"Winn has some information on Lena," she choked out. Her words jagged as they poured out of her mouth threatening to shatter her into a million pieces.
"Kara," Alex groaned with the ache for her sister and her woes escaping the confines of her heart and bursting out into the open, "we've been over this. She's with Cadmus, now. You need to forget her. She's made her choice."
"You don't know that, Alex. They could've taken her against her will. Coerced her in some way," Kara defends with ferocity. She wills herself to see past the red flags; every bright neon sign pointing directly at Lena and labelling her a traitor.
"The evidence against her is staggering, Kar," Maggie chimed in. All smugness and laughter wiped clear from her sun kissed face. Empathy and compassion etched in her statement. She may have been new to the group and interacted with them on a few occasions, but she'd grown to cherish them all in their own way and it hurt her deeply knowing one of the members of her newfound family were in pain.
"It could've been fabricated." Kara searches for the smallest glimpse of hope in Maggie's eyes, but ultimately falls short. She turns her attention to Alex, "I mean, we do live in a world full of aliens, supernatural beings and occurrences, for crying out loud. Is it really beyond the realm of possibilities that someone could've tinkered with a few cameras and framed her?"
Kara held onto the notion of Lena's innocence like a security blanket.
A security blanket everyone around her had seemed to have outgrown.
One she couldn't afford to outgrow.
She believed in her innocence.
She believed in Lena now just as much as she did the day she disappeared.
Even when the world was against her.
Kara would always be there.
I promise I'll always protect you.
"She's been off the radar for the last four months. No sighting. No distress call. Not even a ping from her locator. Let's be real for a second here." Alex squared herself; giving her back to the agents in room and focusing solely on Kara and Maggie. "She's the only person aside from us who knows she's chipped. Don't you find it the least bit suspicious that the only device that can lead us to her has not sent out a single signal? She must've told them."
"I don't know, Alex. I don't know, but any information Winn has is worth something, right?" Kara was still hopeful. In the face of everything that has happened these last four months, the hell she lived day in and day out not knowing whether or not Lena was dead or alive, hope was the only thing keeping her from plummeting off the deep end.
"Kara-" Alex huffed extremely tired.
"Alex, I need to know!" Kara said rushed and a little louder than she had anticipated. Several agents turned away from their tasks as their necks automatically snapped towards their discussion. Kara took a deep breath in hopes of calming her nerves, leaning slowly into Alex and Maggie. "Whatever it is, good or bad, I need to know. The not knowing is killing me."
"Then let's go find, Tech Boy." Maggie pushed Alex lightly, breaking up their three person circle. She wanted answers; for Kara's sake. She couldn't imagine the Hell Kara had been through. Had it been Alex, she would've been pushing harder for answers. Lucky for them, Kara knew her strength.
"Kara! Kara!" Winn yelled coming around the corner of a long hallway. "Oh you're here." Winn ran up to the group of his favorite people before doubling over to catch his breath. Cardio really wasn't on the list of priorities for Winn although it should have been. The only thing he ran was either his mouth or his fingers across the keys of a keyboard.
"Winn, what's going on?" Alex jumped protectively in front of Kara trying to get answers and hopefully shield her little sister from anything and everything Winn was prepared to divulge.
"It's Lena." He wheezed bringing his hand to his hip in an attempt to get more air into his lungs.
"What about Lena?" Kara whined. She stepped passed Alex and grabbed Winn by the collar of his shirt with one hand; hoisting him in the air in hopes the scare tactic would get him breathing regularly and talking clearly. "Answer me!"
"She's here." Winn yelped flailing helplessly against Kara's strong arms. He grabbed her wrist with both hands to keep himself steadied.
"Here..." the attempted question came out more like a plea. Lena was inside the DEO. Kara had been pacing the lobby and stressing for the last eternity and Lena had been here the entire time. "Where?"
"Over here," a melodious voice cooed from the hall Winn made his grand entrance from.
A vision as ever, she wore her hair loose and care free, tendrils of jet black curving and highlighting the features of her porcelain skin. She wore a rather revealing form fitting red dress and her emerald eyes piercing as ever.
"Lena!" Kara shouted with excitement, dropping Winn on the ground and taking off as fast as a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun.
But in an instant, everything seemed to slow down.
"Kara wait!" Winn yelled before Kara was blasted several feet into a concrete column directly behind them. Her smile turning to a grimace as she landed with a loud thud on the floor; sending chunks of marble flying in the air and cracks spreading across in every direction
Lena's hand still outstretched aiming a red light directly at her now downed target.
Every head in the room turned towards Kara who laid on the floor trying desperately to sit up after the blast.
"Freeze," Alex and Maggie said in sync as they drew their weapons from their respective holsters; Alex brandishing a confiscated alien gun she acquired a short time ago and Maggie her state issued law enforcement firearm.
Lena took off into the air hovering a few feet above everyone, completely disregarding Alex and Maggie's assertive command, before taking a fighting stance. "Time to die, Last Daughter of Krypton."