Screaming...screaming because yelling doesn't come close to describing the volume Lena is managing. Kara is standing wide-eyed on trembling legs, her body shaking like a newborn doe's. She knew Lena would be upset. She worried Lena would be angry. She feared Lena would be hurt. This though...Kara doesn't know what this is. This isn't Lena. When Kara reaches out, Lena slaps her hand away. It's shocking. Lena never NEVER raises her hand or loses control. This isn't Lena. But then again, Kara isn't Kara anymore. Now, Kara is Supergirl. Now Lena knows.

The most powerful woman on the planet stands powerless while her girlfriend rages. Words like betrayal, untrustworthy, and liar are hurled around. Bullets bounce off of Kara, but these utterances sink through her skin. They'll leave scars. Lena's complexion may be flawless porcelain, but the woman has wounds that don't show even with Kara's x-ray vision. Lena has been taught by the best how to hurt someone, but Kara has never been on the receiving end before. Now that Lena finally sees Kara, Lena has become unrecognizable.

Turning on her heel, Lena strides for the door only pausing long enough to pull on her heels and grab her purse and coat.

"Wait!" Kara is there, hands all nervous energy as she stops herself from grabbing the door, from touching Lena, from pushing up the glasses she took off when she...yeah, that. "Where are you going?"

"Home." Lena's voice is flat now, her eyes dead.

"Oh, well...I'll call you?"

"Don't."

Kara steps back, blinking, before stepping in closer this time. "You don't mean that."

"I know what I mean."

"You're just angry."

Lena's eyes are the color of kryptonite, and the looks she gives Kara is reminiscent of that. "Oh, I'm angry, but I'm not just angry. I know exactly what I am."

Kara doesn't want to ask. "What?"

The silence stretches between them. "Leaving."

"Wait." Kara's hand is on the door, and her arm is rebar. "We have to talk. When will we talk?"

"You don't interview me anymore, Miss Danvers."

Brows furrowed and head shaking, Kara frowns. "Not professionally. I'm talking about our personal relationship."

Lena approaches, and where in the past Kara would have wrapped her arms around Lena, the hero recedes. Three steps forward equal three steps back.

One eyebrow raised, Lena asks, "What personal relationship?"

All the air leaves the room. "Lena, no. You can't—"

"I can't?" It's a challenge, and it isn't met. With a hand behind her back, she turns the knob and opens the door. As she leaves, Lena doesn't look back.

Kara knows Lena doesn't look back. She watches from the doorway. She uses her x-ray vision to watch through the walls. She watches through the window and is halfway out it, her heart pounding in her chest when she turns back. It's just a fight. She'll be back. Lena will be back. She'll be back.

Four nights later, Lena hasn't come back. Kara hasn't changed the sheets, and she curls up around the clothes Lena had dropped on the floor the night before she left, the last time they made love. She works as much as she can and falls asleep crying and exhausted at night. Still, dreams of Krypton haunt her. Kara's world was destroyed in front of her eyes when she was twelve. It happened again four days ago.

When the apartment door opens, Kara's tears stop.

"Kara?" It's Alex.

Kara's been avoiding her, but to be fair, Kara's been avoiding everyone. Talking means talking about it, and talking about it means admitting what's happened. Kara's not avoiding her sister; she's avoiding the truth.

"Hey, are you…? You're not all right. Is it Lena?" One look in her sister's eyes answers that question. "Is she...okay?"

"She...she...she...she's gone."

"Gone?" Alex scans the room with her eyes before grasping her sister's shoulder. "Did you two have a fight?"

"I…" Kara swallows hard. "I told her."

"You told her." There's no response even though it wasn't a question, but Alex catches on quickly. "Oh, Jesus, Kara. You told her? I take it she didn't handle it well."

"She left."

"Okay, well...when?"

"Four days ago."

The sympathy flows off of Alex, and Kara curls in on herself. Alex lies next to her sister, wrapping the young Danvers in her arm and love. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted her to come back. I didn't want her to be gone."

"Okay, sweetie. Come here." She pulls Kara closer trying to scare away the distance between them, emotional as well as physical. "Have you reached out to her at all? Called or texted or-"

"She's blocking my number."

"Oh, baby girl." Alex sighs, "I'm sure you still have things at her place. You could—"

"She sent them over. The next day they were all here, all boxed up." Kara lifts her head from where it's buried in Alex's shoulder. "She even sent a freezer box of my food. Who does that, Alex? Who?"

Alex combs her fingers through Kara's hair. "Someone who's hurt. Someone who needs time. Hey, let me try calling her."

"Yeah?" There's hope in Kara's voice. It's small, a timid creature peeking out from where it's been hiding away for days, but older siblings can make you brave. Kara's always has.

Alex smiles as she rises, pulls her phone out of her pocket, and dials. "I'll just make sure she's okay. I care about her too so…" The smile falls away.

"What is it?"

"She's not taking my calls either." As she slips the phone back into her pocket, Alex adds, "That's okay. I'll go see her in person. It will be better that way anyway."

"Alex, don't."

"This is a matter of national security. Someone needs to. It should be me."

"Lena's trustworthy. No one needs to."

"Kara, you know someone needs to. There are rules."

Kara sits up, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes and sticking out her chin defiantly. "Not for Lena."

Alex's mouth opens in preparation for an argument, but it dies on her lips. Lena Luthor has been making her sister redefine the rules since day one, and Kara hasn't been wrong once. "Okay. I would like to know she's okay."

"Me too."

"What do you need?"

"Lena."

"Kara, I can't—"

"I know. Will you stay here tonight?"

"Of course," Alex says crawling back into bed. She holds Kara while her sister cries again. It won't be the last night.

Lena Luthor is someone who has grown used to betrayal at least as much as someone can. Starting on a new diet of love and trust felt uncertain and unwelcome at first. Even unpleasant things that are familiar are let in more easily than unaccustomed joys. That's just how the human mind works, the human psyche. Once our body has been bent and twisted a certain way for so long, we become stuck, and it takes time, manipulation, and pain to put us back into a semblance of order. We don't go easily, and we'll never look untouched by the past. Though she stands straight and proud, sits with a stiff spine and perfect posture, Lena Luthor has many a twist in her past. Nearly a year into a relationship with Kara, many had started to smooth out, and then this. The weight dropped on her, and something turned. Now she sits at her desk at L-Corp under that pressure again, seemingly unaffected on the exterior, but inside she's a coiled spring pulled in three different directions. That's not how the machine is meant to work.

"Miss Luthor?" Jessica stands in the doorway to the office. "Agent Danvers is here to see you and—"

"No." Lena doesn't look up from her computer.

Hands smoothing imagined wrinkles in her skirt, Jessica lifts her head slightly and sticks out her chin. "Miss Luthor, Agent Danvers—"

"What part of no confused you Jessica?" Though her tone is fairly civil, Lena's head turns this time, and an eyebrow raises.

With a single nod, Jess replies, "She has a legal document. Do I need to ask exactly what this is?"

Lena's jaw flexes slightly again and again in a way she usually saves for meetings with her mother. She rises and makes her way to the bar, pausing in front of the whiskey she instead pours herself a glass of water and drains that glass. There will be plenty of time for whiskey tonight. There's been plenty of time for it every night for the past week. Maybe that's what did her father in. Was it love, betrayal, the weight of someone else's secret, perhaps—

"Show her in." Lena turns, twists her head just slightly. There's a bit more pressure on that spring. How long until she snaps?

Just outside the doorway, Alex and Jess exchange small smiles, their hands grasping briefly in comradery. In their own way, they're both caretakers of the two most powerful women in National City when their emotions get the better of them. This past week, that second job has kept them busy.

"Lena." Alex offers up a small smile as she watches her friend return to the seat behind the desk. It's a position of power, and Alex nervously taps the papers she has rolled up into a tube in her hand. "I came to uh…"

Leaning back, Lena's gaze lands on the papers in Alex's hand and grows heavy before returning to the other woman's. "No."

"No?" Brows furrowed, Alex leans forward before she follows Lena's gaze to the papers again and nods. "Oh, these? No, these are nothing. I mean they're literally nothing, see?" Alex unfurls the blank sheets of paper stapled together at the corner. "You're not taking visitors, so I figured I needed an official reason to come and see you. My badge and a handful of paper looked official."

"So you lied," Lena says acidicly. "Well, that's shocking coming from a Danvers."

Alex winces. How could she not? Obviously, she hasn't thought that through. Lena is a tough woman to reach. Scratch that. Lena is a tough woman. The only person who's ever really gotten through is Kara, and right now Lena's built the walls against that entry high and wide.

"Look, Lena—"

"Agent Danvers, I have a busy schedule, so if you don't have an official purpose to be here…" She gestures toward the door.

Alex crosses her arms. "Right. I'm not here officially, so call me Alex. We are friends." She pauses, waits for a reaction. "We are friends, Lena."

"Friends don't lie to each other."

"It was national security."

"I was sleeping with her in every sense of the word," Lena fires back as she rises, fingertips steepled on the desk.

Again, Alex winces. Her arms relax at her sides, and she drops the papers on the desk. They're useless like her defenses right now.

"How would that have made you feel, Alex? How would it have made you feel to know the woman you loved, were sleeping with, lied to you about who she was, her real name, where she was from? What if you found out the woman you wanted to marry lied to you every time she canceled a date or ran off for a family emergency in the middle of the night?"

"You want to marry Kara!?"

"Past tense but not the point. The point is she lied. She lied as easily as she breathed." Lena sighs heavily, emotion leaking through. "Hell, she's a Kryptonian. For all I know breathing isn't even necessary."

"They need to breathe."

"Again, not the point. I grew up in a household of liars, Alex. I grew with people around whom you were afraid to leave the room for fear of what they'd say behind your back because it sure as shit wasn't the same thing they were saying to your face. I thought Kara was different. I trusted her. She destroyed that."

Palms on the desk and her weight shifting heavily, Alex allows everything she's feeling to show on her face. "You love her."

"But I don't trust her."

"You can. She lied about her name but not about who she is. Those are two different things."

"Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?" Lena snaps. There's a beat, and then the calm is restored. "You can see yourself out."

"You two love each other Lena. I didn't see it at first, didn't see you, but Kara has believed in you since the moment she met you. She's believed in your unwaveringly. No matter what anyone has ever said, no matter what evidence has ever been presented against you, she's believed in and defended you. I've never seen her love anyone like she loves you. I've never seen her fight for anyone like she fights for you." Alex pauses, but the only response is silence. Silence is good. Silence is listening. "She couldn't tell you day one. She couldn't tell you day two. And then it was three, four, five...It just happened, Lena. Without anyone meaning for it to happen it went from too soon to too late with no time in between. There was never a time that she didn't trust you. Maybe there was a never a time that she didn't love you. Just give her a chance. Give the two of you a chance. You both deserve that."

"What about you, Alex?"

"I...What about me?" Brows furrow and Alex waits.

"Do you lie to women that you date, or do you lead with 'Agent Danvers, FBI'?"

Like a fish out of water, Alex's mouth opens and closes but no sound comes out.

Lena knows. "Oh, my God. You're not in the FBI."

"Look, Lena—"

"Get out."

"Just let me—"

"Get. Out." She's pointing at the door, her spine rigid and her face a practice of determination.

Alex snatches the papers from where she dropped them on the desk, holds them at head level as her hands are raised at shoulder height. She's surrendering. "I'm leaving." She backs away slowly. "I didn't come here for Kara, though. I came here for you. I've learned to see you through Kara's eyes this past year, and she's not the only one who loves you. For your sake, your happiness, talk to my sister. Sit down, stand, yell, rage, hell, throw stuff if you need to get it out of your system, but don't keep it inside. You deserve happiness, and you have a chance at it if you don't run away now. Be selfish and talk to Kara." Before Lena can reply, Alex turns and leaves the room. It's rare to have the last word with a Luthor. Here's hoping it's not the last word.

Lena drops her heels by the front door, her purse and coat hung up on the hook nearby. It's late verging on early, another long day, but if she works into exhaustion, drinks into a stupor, sleeps it off, and then rises and takes the hottest shower she can in the morning, she almost feels like a person. It's getting better. It's getting better she tells herself. It's not getting better. Whiskey is no substitute for food and sixteen hour days are no substitute for love. You can't go back to being a Luthor when you were the love of Kara Danvers life. There's not enough anything to numb the pain of that loss though she tries again and again. Now she's not either of them, the person she was before Kara or the one with Kara. She's working and drinking her way to being a shade of the combination of them, a sorry creature made of misery and regret. As she pours herself a whiskey, tips it back, and sees her reflection in the mirror above the bar, she sees her father's eyes staring back at her. It explains so much.

Her phone buzzes unheard in her purse across the apartment as she makes her way into the bedroom. She finishes up her first of many drinks as she passes the bed, trips slightly on another pair of heels she left out from the night before and curses rather colorfully. The whiskey glass slips from her hand landing safely on the plush carpeting but rolling under the bed.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." She sighs heavily and kneels down to retrieve it, reaching under the bed to scoop it out. It comes free with an article of clothing in tow, something that had gotten lost under there at some point. At first, her brow furrows at the unfamiliar cloth. Then she unfurls it, turning it over in her hands and her breath catches. A deep blue to match the owner's eyes, Lena pulled it off the woman herself before attacking with her lips abs that were...inhuman. Jesus. She pulls the shirt closer, taking in the scent of apricots, rainwater, and somehow...sunshine. She could smell it fifty years from now and still know it. "Kara." For the first time in a week and a half, the floodgates open and tears begin to slide down Lena's cheeks. Somewhere deep inside, the spring that's been coiled so deeply breaks free and so does Lena.

Kara floats high above National City, above where the clouds would be if there were any tonight. She stares up at the stars, at the deep recesses of space, and feels no less alone. Far below her is the one person whose presence she craves and who's shunning her. She is adored by millions, probably billions, and hated by the person she loves most. Kara's face screws up in emotional pain.

"Why did I live?"

It's not the first time she's asked herself that question since Krypton exploded. It's not the first time she's asked herself in the eleven days since Lena left. She expects it won't be the last.

"Supergirl!"

Instantly alert, Kara is vertical with a hand to her ear as her sister's voice comes through the com. Her heart rate ticks up slightly at the hint of alarm from the normally clam agent. "Alex, what is it?"

"We're already moving out, and I don't want you to overreact, but we have an alert of an imminent threat. We don't have anything in visual, but I haven't been able to reach her to verify her status. That doesn't mean anything right now though, okay?"

"Oh, okay I…" Kara's breath catches in her throat, and every muscles tenses as a chill runs up her body. "Did you say...her?"

"Supergirl, don't overreact."

She goes from breathless to panting with nothing in between. "Is she home? Is she at L-Corp?" Her head swivels left and right. Which way to turn. Which way to go.

"Supergirl, we don't have a visual on her or...hold on."

"Alex!"

"Hold on. I'm getting a report."

Tense seconds feel like agonizing hours.

Finally, Alex's voice returns. "L-Corp is clear. Repeat, L-Corp is clear. Miss Luthor is not within the building."

Kara is already on the move. "I'm on my way to her apartment." The glass of buildings tremble in her wake.

Kara rips the balcony door open, not even bothering to check for heartbeats or x-ray the interior. Something's wrong. Lena isn't answering, but beyond that, there is a sense of wrongness all about. It's something in the atmosphere inside. Lena's space always feels like serenity, like control. There's chaos here someplace. As soon as she drifts down to the carpet and her boots settle in, she listens...panting, sniffles, tears.

Kara's heart shudders, her voice barely above a whisper. "Lena?"

Kara pauses at the bedroom door. Part of her is trying to understand what she's seeing, and part of her recognizes a threshold she's no longer welcome to cross. Lena's not unconscious, or bleeding, or held at knifepoint. Those would all cause a hero to damn boundaries and rush to the rescue. Lena is sitting on her bedroom floor, her expensive work clothes rumpled, leaning against her oversized bed while makeup-matted tears run down her face and she clutches a...oh!

Carefully, oh so carefully, Kara creeps into the room and crouches down a few feet away from the woman she loves. "Lena?"

Lena lifts her face, Kara's t-shirt still pressed close to her heart as she croaks out, "You lied to me."

"I…" Kara nods her head. In its most basic form, it's as simple as that. Now at least she can be honest. "If I could take it back, I would. If I could go back to that day and change it so that when you said, 'And who are you exactly?' my response would be, 'Kara Zor-El of the House of El' I'd do it. I'd do anything to make you not look at me like that because that would mean you don't feel whatever you're feeling. I'm so sorry."

"You lied."

"I know I—"

"No!" There's volume there, power in a way that stands in opposition to the frail being Lena seemed a moment ago, a reminder that she's still Lena Luthor, still a force with which to be reckoned, and that's not to be forgotten. As suddenly as it came, it's gone. She holds one shaky arm out, perhaps spent by that fit of temper, likely worn out by everything, and points. "You lied to me. We don't do that, Kara. You said you loved me, and I trusted you. I slept in your bed, not just had sex in it, but fell asleep with you, and I felt safe. I told you things I was afraid to admit to myself out loud. I let myself hope in a way I'd given up since I was a child since before I called Lillian Luthor mother. I gave you everything. I gave myself away to you, and you took me. You took me, Kara, and now I'm…" She shakes her head, eyes like the sea after a storm, or maybe the storm is still coming. Maybe the storm has always been raging out past the horizon, and Kara called it to land.

"I'm sorry." She reaches out but pulls back just short of touching Lena. "That's not enough to tell you how I feel. I don't think there are words in any of this planet's languages to tell you how I feel about hurting you, how I regret it, but I do. What I can tell you is if you give me another chance, I'll never lie to you again. No matter what, no matter what it means, I'll never lie to you again. Not for a surprise party, not to try and save your feelings, not for national security, not for anything."

"Kara, you can't promise—"

"I promise." Kara nods, deadly serious as she holds eye contact and scoots a bit closer. "I promise. If you'll give me a second chance, give us a second chance, I promise you'll never need to give us a third chance. I promise."

"Kara I…" Lena breaks their gaze, studies her hands, what's in her hands, then holds it up. "I found your shirt."

It's only a hint of a smile, but it's the first one Kara's found in over a week. "I see that. Is that why…?" Hesitantly she reaches out, her confidence building when Lena doesn't pull back. Her thumbs wipe tears away from the other woman's cheeks even as her own breath leaves in a shudder at the contact.

"I've been fine, but I found your shirt."

"I've cried every day," Kara admits. "I don't know how to be me without you anymore."

"Oh, I…" One nod. "I haven't been fine."

"Really?" Kara sounds far happier than she should. She slides in next to Lena, her hands curled up in her lap. "Come home."

"I am home."

"No, a home isn't a place, it's the people who love you. Come home to me, Lena, please? I thought I lost my home when I lost Krypton, but then I started to piece it back together when I made my family here. Then I found you. Please, Lena, please come home."

There's a single loose thread on Kara's shirt, and Lena picks at it aimlessly. "I can't be with someone I don't trust, that I don't know. I'd rather be alone than—"

"Lena."

It's the intensity in that one word, the warm pressure of a hand on her shoulder; it's how much she's missed this presence that makes Lena lift her head and meet an azure gaze with her own.

"My name is Kara Zor-El Danvers, daughter of Zor-El and Alura and the last daughter of Krypton, and I love you with every ounce of strength in my body. I want to spend every moment I have on this planet with you. I want to marry you, get a dog, and raise our children together."

"Children?"

Kara nods seemingly unfazed by Lena's obvious surprise. "I want little Danvers or Luthors or Luthor-Danvers. It doesn't matter what so long as they're ours and they know they're loved. They'll know they're loved. Do you know you're loved?"

"I...do. I do, Kara. I love you too."

"Then come back to me. If Supergirl is the problem, I'll stop being her."

"You can't!"

"I will."

"Kara, no." Lena scowls, a hand on Kara's cheek while the blonde leans into the touch. Kryptonian metabolism requires a lot of food, a lot of calories, and she needs a lot of love. She's been starving. "You help so many people, save so many lives. People need you. This city, this whole world needs you."

"But you're my world, Lena, and I need you. Tell me you'll come back to me."

"No more lies." Lena shifts, shoulders rub together before heads bump and lips touch ever so slightly. In the way of kisses, it isn't much. In the way of kisses, it's epic.

"No more lies ever," Kara agrees when she remembers how to breathe again.

It's minutes later when three DEO agents come storming in, Alex at the lead. They caught their men, three anti-alien radicals intent on taking down the Luthor who doesn't stand with Cadmus. While the other two agents scour the rest of the apartment, Alex is the one who finds Lena and Kara. They sit together on the floor, Kara's arm wrapped around Lena's shoulder while they both smile.

"Krypto!? Kara, there is no way I'm naming a child Krypto."

Kara laughs. "No, Lena, our dog. We'll, name our dog Krypto."

"Oh." Lena nods as she obviously considers the origin of the name. "If it would make you happy, of course."

"You, Lena Luthor, make me happy."

They kiss, and Alex's grin grows, a knot that's been in her stomach for a week beginning to unloosen.

"The children's names will begin with L."

Kara laughs, but it's short-lived. "What, all of them?"

Lena cocks her eyebrow, her voice playful and a bit dangerous in the way that she has. "Of course, I am a Luthor after all."

"But, I—" The second kiss is deeper, and Kara's protests disappear as she pulls the woman she loves closer.

Alex tugs the bedroom door closed as she steps outside into the hallway. The truth may hurt, but true love is a wonderful healer.