Chapter 1: Captive

Lena

This isn't the first time this has happened. Or even the second. Or third. You know what you have to do now, sitting on the edge of the bed, sheets clutched over your body in attempts to keep the chill from tearing at your naked skin. Rain starts to beat against the windows of your eerily quiet apartment. Your phone is in your hand, your fingers poised to make the call, yet you just can't seem to force yourself to dial. You look over at her instead, breathing, calm and steady. The rise and fall of her perfectly muscled back as her lungs pull air in and force it out again. Her golden blonde hair is a halo around her head as she sleeps, the imagery so disjointed and wrong, you can't help but admire the irony.

Even now, you see the faint lace of red trace its way across the mask of her face and you sigh. She's cruel like this; she is cold. But she is yours. In the midst of this bliss, this wanton heat, what's a little cruelty? Better to take her at her worst than not at all. Or, rather, let her take you.

The first time it happened, she burst into your office, splintering the door as it burst off its hinges. You were terrified, taking her in, dressed not in her stalwart crimson and blue, but stealth black. A dark figure advancing, slightly menacing, until you found your back pressed against the stark white paneled wall. You tried to question her, your eyes wide, panicked, but she told you to shut up and covered your mouth with hers.

It wasn't as if you hadn't imagined kissing her a thousand times, but even in your wildest dreams, it had never been like this. Her lips were soft but her movements hard. Frantic, forceful. She pressed into you, her lips leaving yours only to suck plumb colored bruises along the pale skin of your neck. Each one stung, sharp and dull all at once, but the pain was forgotten as soon as her lips found yours again. You had to consciously remind yourself to breathe, wrapped so thoroughly around the eternity of her lips, her tongue as it pushed into your mouth, her teeth as they played over your bottom lip.

Your concentration snapped sharply back into focus, though, as her hands pulled at the fabric of your blouse, tearing it as though it were little more than tissue paper. She covered your body with her own, her fingers lighting fires along the bare skin of your back, your hips, your thighs as one hand trailed down and down and down.

Her mouth wandered freely, dipping to taste the salt pricking up from your skin, hot under her attentions. It found the soft skin of your breasts and lingered there, teasing you mercilessly until your breath came ragged and rushed, pushed forcefully from your distracted chest.

And, oh, that hand, it wandered as well.

Dexterous fingers drifted along the hem of your skirt, pushing it higher then slipping under in one fluid motion. She smiled then, wicked and wild, having encountered your body's completely obvious response to her ministrations. She did away with any barriers and you gasped at the sensation of her fingers tracing patterns against such sensitive skin.

She asked permission – even in this altered state she maintained some vestige of respect – but it came dressed in the threat of withdrawal.

"I can stop, right now. Or you can tell me what you want." She pressed into you, her hips grinding against yours, her fingers slick and poised, waiting for your consent. Her blue eyes flashed and you flushed with more heat than you thought you could bear as she dragged her lips close to you ear and whispered sharply, "I want to hear you beg."

And you did. You crashed into her, all scrambling hands and wanting mouth and begged her to touch you, to take you, to fuck you, oh god, please. Over and over until she pushed inside you, until she ripped her lips from yours and they followed her fingers, lower and lower. Still you begged. Until she culled the screams from your throat with a few strokes of her devilish tongue, pushing into you with a strong, steady rhythm all the while. Until your fists clenched and your body seized and you couldn't stand any longer.

And then she left you, weak and waning, alone in your office.

You collapsed into your desk chair and, with shaking fingers dialed the number you were given strictly for emergencies. You took a few cursory breaths to calm before pressing the phone to your ear.

"Agent Danvers, it's Lena Luthor. I think," the words stick in your throat and you swallow, hard, "I think there's something wrong with Supergirl."

Red Kryptonite, the agent explains, alters her brain chemistry.

It's the reason she wants you, lets herself want you. Every dark thought or secret desire she's ever had rises to the surface under its influence. She loses herself, taking a silent backseat to this seemingly drunk and reckless red devil.

Are you alright? the agent asks. You're not, but you tell her you are.

You don't tell her what happened, just that something is wrong. You know more than you let on, so you say less than you could.

Two days later you sit across from your closest friend, and the demure reporter, who still thinks her secret identity is a mystery to you, won't quite meet your eyes.

The second time it happens, she catches you at home. First you scream at the dark figure looming on the balcony of your penthouse, thirty-seven stories up. Then you smile, hand still pressed to your heart, when you recognize the bright eyes, the blonde curls – but the smile falters when you notice the cracks of red light crawling across her soft skin.

She takes you, shuddering with cold and rapture, there on the balcony, and this time she lingers for a moment after you're spent. You thread your fingers through the waving hair at her temple and watch a single tear squeeze from her startling blue eyes before she shakes you off and launches into the night.

Another phone call, another awkward lunch where Kara refuses to meet your gaze.

It happens again, keeps happening, and you almost manage to convince yourself that she loves you. Somewhere, in the dark recesses of her heart, Kara loves you. Why else would she seek you out, if some unspoken part of her didn't desire you? True, her love wasn't kind; it was often silent, and when it wasn't, it was cruel. But she kept coming back to you, this broken, beaten thing with red poison at its heart.

Once she pushed you back on your bed so gently, her hand cradling your head as you sank down. She kissed you over and over; soft, achingly deep kisses that made it feel as if the world were ending not in a blaze, but with a sigh. She ran light fingers over your body, then laced them delicately with yours, and when her velvet tongue drew shudders from your ecstatic frame, she crawled back up and held you 'til they subsided.

Another time she said she only came because she loved the way you bruised so easily for her, the way the mottled maroon and indigo stood out against the ivory of your skin. She was an artist, painting you with blood under the skin. And you would have been upset, but each bruise was a remembrance of her lips on your skin – proof that she had been there even after she had fled.

She began staying after, holding you longer each time even on the nights where kindness had no home with you. She started letting you touch her, moaning as your lips kissed their way down to her breasts, as your lithe fingers found slick, undiscovered places. Her sapphire eyes flashed the first time you sank to your knees before her, teasing her until she came, almost angrily, against your mouth.

Tonight, she stayed.

Tonight you drew your name from her lips more than once.

And you look at her, spent and sleeping, and you can't bear to dial. You can't listen to the agent on the other end of the phone ask you if you're alright.

You're not.

You can't stand another awkward lunch where Kara shies away from your gaze, your touch, out of guilt and secrecy that's already worn threadbare. You pine for her when she sits next to you – feigning ignorance of the intimate map of your body – carrying on as if she hasn't run her hands over every possible inch of your salt-slick skin. You can't survive like this and wonder if the pain and heartache might actually kill you.

But it's not about you, that's the point. That's why you call every time.

She's a hero. And when she's here, with you, with red poison in her veins, she's no longer the patron saint of the city; she's the demon holding her hostage. Agent Danvers, Alex, once told you that being under the affects of Red Kryptonite was like watching the worst version of yourself pilot your body with no way to stop it.

It's this version of Kara who loves you. The dark twisted heart of a hero has tangled with yours and you can't keep it for yourself. You have to let her go. You have to give her back to herself.

And then you'll sit across from her – back in control – you'll smile and so will she. But, your smile won't quite reach your eyes and neither will hers.

You can't hope for this to keep happening, it's cruel to both of you and you don't want that for her, can't want that for her. She needs to be whole, happy, free of poison, of you.

So you listen to the sound of her steady breathing, barely audible over the patter of rain against your penthouse windows.

You dial.

You put the phone to your ear.

"Agent Danvers? She's here."