Kara is not so naive as to think Krypton a unique planet. That the things found there couldn't possibly be mirrored on other planets. Granted, she'd had a rather grandiose view of her homeworld when compared to that of, say, Daxam, but that had been more to do with her upbringing and the prejudice of those around her than it had anything else.
There are many things about Earth that are different from Krypton, though. Different even from one side of the globe to the other, but there are also innumerable similarities. Many of which had chosen to reveal themselves by bit over time, so that things were constantly surprising her.
However, there was one thing in particular that stood out as perhaps the most surprising.
"Oh my god. Can we please not do this? Please?" Alex had refused to sit at first, choosing instead to make a firm, visual statement by crossing her arms over her chest and standing beside the couch Kara was already sitting on.
"What is wrong?" Kara, with her stilted English, had been confused and a little scared, but Jeremiah had laughed and his smile had soothed her nerves.
"Nothing's wrong," he'd said, his voice soft. "Actually, what we want to talk to you about might just be the most right thing in the whole world."
At that, Alex had groaned like a dying animal and finally collapsed beside Kara, defeated.
"Is this about sex?" Kara had been a bit more blunt back then and her foster parents had exchanged a look.
"No, Kara." Eliza's smile had been gentle and kind, and also a little amused. "Well, not exactly."
The conversation that followed had been lengthy, apparently nigh on insufferable for Alex, and it had been centred around something that Kara had thought lost with Krypton.
Soulmates.
Her family had always spoken of soulmates as though they were part of their Kryptonian heritage. Whether or not they had intended for Kara to accept their words as inarguable fact will remain unknown, but she had been young enough that she'd never questioned it or made note of anything similar on the other planets she'd visited with her parents.
But then Krypton had died and Earth had become her new home, and soulmates had been the furthest thing from her mind for a long while. It wasn't until Kara started school that Eliza and Jeremiah had asked Kara to sit down with them one evening.
It was something Kara had only been told about in bits and pieces as a child. How one day she would find her true love, the person she was fated to spend the rest of her life with, and that the bond between them would be instantaneous and unbreakable. Kara had always thought it sounded so wonderful. Seeing how happy her parents and her Aunt and Uncle were made Kara anxious and excited for the day when she would finally find her own.
After Krypton's destruction, she'd just assumed that day would never come.
Kara had exploded with excitement, pushing herself off of the sofa with enough force to send it back a few inches and pull a yelp from Alex. She'd started babbling in Kryptonian and gesticulating wildly with her hands until Jeremiah's laughter had cut her off.
"We aren't sure how it will work between Kryptonians and humans, or if it even can." He'd explained, as gently as he could. "Clark hasn't been able to help us out there. But… we wanted you to be prepared." He always had such a sense of calm about him, especially during more serious discussions. "You too, Alex."
Her foster-sister, however, had been anything but calm. "I know all this already! I don't need to talk about feelings and urges, or-"
"Ah," Eliza had smoothly interrupted, holding up a finger. "Urges. We should discuss those next."
Alex had pulled her knees to her chest and dropped her head down to muffle a scream into the material of her jeans.
As it turned out, Kara's parents really hadn't told her all that much about the bonding; a fact she would corroborate later with help from The Fortress of Solitude. Her people had called it Raozh, but humans didn't seem to have any set term for it. Instead, it was as if every city on the planet had their own name.
The bonding. The joining. The match. The meeting.
"It happens in a moment." Jeremiah had snapped his fingers for emphasis. "One single moment that could be preceded by, by fireworks or something so extraordinarily mundane. There are no rules and it doesn't give you a warning. When eyes meet eyes," he'd said, "nothing is ever quite the same."
"When that happens, you're laid bare to that person, and them to you." Eliza had cut in seamlessly, as though she knew exactly where her husband was going to pause. "You'll know every cell, every atom, everything that makes them who they are. You're made privy to the depths of their heart and soul in a way that no one else ever could be. You know their love, but you also know their pain."
Kara had learned, later, that it's a little different from Martian bonding. They don't see one another's memories, they don't walk down neural paths of old that don't belong to them. They feel those things, though. Humans and Kryptonians alike. All encompassing, endless.
Jeremiah had joked that, to him, it felt like flying and Kara already knew what that felt like. He also said that it was different for everyone and that's when Kara had asked about the names.
"What names?" Alex had asked her, wearing a look of confusion that matched her parents', and Kara had shifted on the couch to look at her straight on.
"On Krypton, when the Raozh began, they would…" Kara had trailed off, trying to remember what her parents had told her. "When it begins, you hear the other person's name, their real name, their soul's name." She'd stopped, struggling to explain the experience in human tongue. "Inside your head."
"Sounds crazy," Alex had scoffed, but quickly settled down after a stern glance from Jeremiah. "Sorry."
Kara had felt a little sad, a little small, as her foster parents told her how that wasn't part of the bonding on Earth - another piece of her heritage lost - but she was still so happy that something so wonderful transcended galaxies. Then, with access to the extensive archives in The Fortress, she'd learned that everything else about the bond was uncannily similar between Earth and Krypton, and had been happy about that, too.
Soulmates were for life, beyond life, and while it was a bond that could never be severed, it could be ignored. And some did want to ignore it, but there were consequences. Those who denied the bond would find themselves wracked with sickness, with a physical pain that sends fire racing under their skin and sets everything inside of them ablaze, and while the pain eventually ebbs, they're left with a hollow, empty ache that reaches out with broken, colourless hands to grasp at something that has been taken away.
It's an ache that's been there all along, only now they are aware of it. Now, it's amplified like the sun's rays through a magnifying glass and it never leaves, but that choice is worth it for some.
Because there are those who already have love in their life and have no desire to leave, to answer that call, no matter how heartsick it might make them. There are also people who find themselves the punchline of the universe's twisted joke, one that sees their soul tied to that of someone they hate.
And the other, the one being refused, be them stranger or friend, has no choice but to accept a fate decided by another. One that will force them to live through all those same ramifications brought on by the denial.
For some, a soulmate can be a terrible thing. A burden, a pain, a thorn in a thumb that cannot be removed. So, it's left to fester and to throb.
It's a downside that Kara had never considered before, the sad and tragic difficulty of it all, and she had found herself with many questions for her foster parents that night. Even Alex had asked a few before the night was through. It had been very illuminating and, for a while, it had been all Kara could think about.
Who and when and where.
But life has a tendency to go on and all too soon Kara found that she was suddenly an adult. One with goals and aspirations, who didn't have time for the fantasies of youth. It did, as it does for everyone, simply fade into the background of her everyday life. Now, she has the D.E.O. and Supergirl, as well as her job at CatCo.
She can't remember the last time she'd spent longer than a minute thinking about soulmates. She used to lie awake at night, dreaming up a hundred different ways she might meet hers. She's always been a bit of a romantic, especially as a teenager, and so her fantasies often involved a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger. Their eyes would meet across a room and her life would be changed.
Of course, real life doesn't tend to let things play out the same way they would in a romantic comedy.
Not quite, anyway.
The power has been out all over the city for the better part of the last six hours. At first, J'onn and Alex, and nearly everyone else at the D.E.O. had assumed it to be the first wave of an impending attack. But, as it turns out, not everything remotely suspicious is part of some large scale intergalactic event. After the Daxamite invasion, though, it was easy to see why jumping to that conclusion had become the go-to response to anything out of the ordinary.
Thankfully, the backup generators are in full working order, keeping their dangerous, alien captives contained and once they determine that the power outage is just a power outage, J'onn sends Kara and Alex home, as well as a number of others. Winn offers to stay behind to see if he can help get the grid back up and running, but the Danvers sisters take their leave.
Well, Alex requires a little coercing, which comes in the form of Kara lifting her sister into the air and flying out of the building with her.
"Alex, it's Sunday," Kara reminds her, needlessly. "Taking the afternoon off won't kill you."
"It's like you don't even know me." Alex has to shout over the sound of the wind whipping by them and Kara laughs but ultimately ignores her.
"Do you want to come over? Impromptu game night?" She uses her superior lung capacity to blow open Alex's windows and they touch down on the other side of the Juliet balcony. "I can call Lena and you," the pitch of Kara's voice shifts, adopting a teasing, melodic quality as she finishes, "can call Sam." Alex flashes Kara a withering stare as she makes her way further in, but Kara hears her heartbeat quicken and she leans back against the Juliet balcony with a giggle.
"Get out of my apartment," Alex gripes, grumpily. Kara just grins at her.
"Technically, I'm not actually inside." Kara toes the very thin invisible line separating the inside from outside. Alex reaches for the fruit bowl sitting on the island and grabs an apple, then pivots on a heel and lobs it at her sister at lightning speed.
Kara is quicker, of course, catching the apple in her right hand and brushing it against her suit before taking a bite.
"Call her!" Kara reiterates, floating a few feet off the ground. "And then call me!"
She shoots skyward, laughing as she hears Alex yelling, "Don't talk with your mouth full!"
Kara sails feet-first through the open window of her own apartment, one leg bent at the knee and the other stretched out to meet the floor. She changes in a blur of motion and then picks up her phone.
I need a partner for Trivial Pursuit!
She adds a string of alarm emojis to convey the seriousness of the situation and fires the text off to Lena. She taps her thumbs against the side of her phone and waits for a reply.
Well, that's lucky.
Kara's about to ask what she means when there's a knock at her door. She glances up from her phone and looks through the door, smiling brightly when she sees who's standing out in the hallway. She grabs her glasses and quickly settles them into place.
"Lena!" She's happily calling out her friend's name before she can even get the door open and so when Lena is fully revealed she has one eyebrow cocked, looking curious to say the least.
"How did you know it was me?" Lena asks, wasting no time in crossing the threshold and entering the apartment. It's a small thing, maybe insignificant to anyone else, but it's something Kara is glad to see because there's only so many times she can tell Lena that she doesn't need an invitation to visit. Then she comes back to herself and, for a second, panics.
"Oh. Uh…" She buys herself some time by making sure the door is properly and securely closed but when she turns around Lena is still wearing the same expression. "Well, I just, you-you text!" She holds up her phone, still clutched in her hand, like it's a flare and she's waving it around to try and signal someone to rescue her. She quickly realises that she's behaving rather erratically and tries to reign it in. "And you have a very distinct knock."
That last part is actually true, but Kara had been too excited by Lena's unexpected arrival to take note of it at the time.
"I do?" Lena seems surprised but when Kara nods she simply shrugs and lifts the reusable shopping bag she's carrying onto the kitchen table. She flicks her gaze to Kara and green eyes sparkle with mischief as they peer up at her through long lashes. "I brought doughnuts."
Kara's eyes widen and she lets out a quiet gasp, pressing her palms together and bringing her hands to her face. She drops her head until her mouth is resting atop her fingertips and Lena laughs at the reaction.
"I love you." Kara sounds awestruck and Lena rolls her eyes, gesturing towards the bag and silently giving Kara the go ahead.
Not a second is wasted and by the time Lena has taken off her coat and hung it up, Kara is holding an iced doughnut in one hand as she reaches for a sugar-coated one with the other, and has the remnants of what had clearly been one of the powdered variety all across her mouth and a little ways down her chin.
And Kara hears Lena's heartbeat falter or maybe flutter in its rhythm, but then Lena is talking and Kara is so often easily distracted in her presence.
"So, what's this about Trivial Pursuit?"
"Wait, wait. What? Alex, will you just-" Kara presses her phone against her ear but is cut off for the third time in thirty seconds and her frustration must show on her face because Lena is quietly laughing at her from across the room. "Alex!" Finally, there's silence on the other end of the line. "Slow down. I can't understand a word you're saying."
"It's a date!" Alex practically yells in her ear, loud enough for Lena to hear and Kara sees her straighten, her interest piqued.
"What?" Kara is utterly bewildered. "What is? What are you-"
"Sam! Sam, she-she-" Alex interrupts herself with an annoyed and unintelligible string of vowel sounds. "I called," she tries again, stating the words very pointedly as if to lay blame, "to invite her over for game night." She pauses to take a deep breath. "Only I didn't actually make it that far before she said yes."
Kara's mouth twitches and before she knows it, she's grinning. Her eyes crinkling at the corners.
"How far did you get?"
She can hear Alex breathing and for a few seconds that's the only way she knows that she's still there.
"I think I said, maybe like, 'hey, what are you doing right now? Do you maybe want to grab' and I was going to say 'snacks and go over to Kara's for games,' but she'd already said yes like, three times by then." Alex's voice is shaking, warbling like it does whenever she's flustered or nervous or, in this case, both.
Kara can't help it. She laughs, full and loud and right into the receiver, spinning a full three-sixty and briefly catching Lena's eye on her way around.
"This is awesome!" Kara bursts, giggles bubbling over the words as she speaks and begins pacing back and forth over a four foot distance.
"Really?" Alex sounds almost snappish. "Because I'm freaking out."
Kara hits an invisible wall and stops to gesticulate wildly, incredulous, with her free hand.
"Why are you freaking out? This is great! You've been crushing on her for weeks now-"
"I have not!" Alex sounds scandalised. Kara's eye roll could probably be seen from space.
"Oh, you have so," she bites back, like a petty teenager. "You've been crushing hard. And this means she likes you back! So stop being a dumb, stupid-head and go for it."
When she glances at Lena this time, she finds her sitting with her arm stretched across the back of the couch, bent at the elbow so that she can prop her head up against a loose fist. She's watching Kara, a small smile curving her mouth in a way that sometimes seems solely reserved for moments between just the two of them. Kara feels her chest tighten at the sight.
"Says you." Alex's rebuff is muttered quickly enough that Kara's momentary distraction almost makes her miss it.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Her brow creases under the weight of her frown.
"Nothing. Nevermind." Alex sighs, exasperated. "Kara…." She sounds lost now and Kara's heartstrings receive a firm tug.
"Hey. Alex, it'll be fine. It'll be great!" She forces an over abundant amount of peppiness into her words, hoping that it'll somehow seep through the phone and reach Alex on the other side.
"Kara, the city has no power! Where am I even going to take her?"
"Use your imagination. I know you have one," Kara says, like it's a secret. "Go for a walk in the park or down by the river. Bring her back to your place to make out." Alex lets out a squeak. "Oh! Wear that one shirt you have with the buttons that don't stay fastened!"
Lena barks a laugh.
"Kara!"
"What? You know I'm right." Kara smiles into the phone. "Now stop panicking and go sweep her off her feet."
"You have been no help," Alex gripes.
"I love you, too. Tell Sam we say hi."
"I will. Hi Lena!"
With a chuckle, Kara taps the 'end call' icon and sets her phone down on the table beside the empty plastic bag. She slips her hands into her back pockets and turns face Lena.
"Alex says hi."
"Sam finally asked her out?" Lena asks, eyebrow cocked again. Kara bites her lower lip around a smile and walks over to the couch.
"Not exactly." She sits down next to Lena and reaches for the two glasses sitting on the coffee table, handing one to Lena. Both hold Eliza Danvers' famous Midvale Iced Tea which Kara had prepared a pitcher of earlier, adding enough sugar for Lena to comment on it and if she's being honest, the "Aren't you sweet enough already?" jokes had gotten old years ago, but she doesn't mind so much when Lena teases her. "Alex was trying to invite her over here for games, Sam misunderstood and presto!" Kara wiggles her fingers mysteriously. "Accidental date."
Lena still has her head resting against her hand and the way she's sitting, twisted towards Kara with one leg tucked underneath her, makes it so their knees bump every time one of them moves.
Kara almost doesn't notice.
"Thank god for that." Lena blows out a breath and it stirs the long strands of dark hair framing the side of her face. "I was starting to think they were both hopeless."
"Wait, you knew?" Kara asks, her brain finally catching up, and Lena laughs, light and airy, as she absently runs her fingers through her hair.
"Well, I've been in a room with the two of them at the same time." Lena pauses just long enough to shape her lips into a smug smile. "So, yeah. I knew."
Kara's peel of cackling laughter tips her head back and she almost spills her tea.
"Alex is going to be so pissed when she finds out she's so transparent." She takes a sip of her drink and Lena hums, thoughtfully.
"Yes, well. I think if I value my ability to walk upright at all, I probably shouldn't mention it," she points out and Kara pouts but concedes that maybe teasing Alex is best left alone. For now, at least.
"So, looks like it's just us." Kara sends her gaze around her apartment, letting her attention idle on a few things before returning it to Lena. "Unless you want to leave?"
"You are pretty boring one on one," Lena droles, narrowing her eyes and setting her mouth into a thin line for all of two seconds before the facade cracks and leaves her smiling again. "Of course I want to stay."
Kara feels inexplicably shy then, as she thinks about how Lena smiles a lot more than she used to. Real, genuine smiles. Kara loves that.
After an hour and half, Kara has no less than six board games scattered around them and they've somehow ended up playing poker.
"Not that I'm not having fun, but this is less exciting with only two people." Kara pops a pretzel into her mouth and tosses three more chips into the pot. "Lower stakes, I guess?"
They're sitting on the floor on either side of the coffee table, a number of bowls filled with various snack foods all within arm's reach.
"Well. If it's excitement you're after." Lena matches Kara's three and raises her, flicking her gaze across the scant distance between them and letting it roam suggestively over Kara's body. "We should be playing strip poker."
Kara inhales sharply then starts coughing, a rather large chunk of salt being sucked down the wrong tube, and she sputters long enough that her eyes start to water.
It's also long enough for Lena to leave and return with a glass of water, and she kneels down beside Kara, offering it to her with what appears to be an apologetic smile. She still has tears in her eyes and so she can't be sure. She grips the glass, not too tightly, and sips at the water.
"Sorry," Lena says, her hand against Kara's back, rubbing small circles over the material of her shirt. Round and round in a manner that Kara thinks is supposed to be soothing. "I didn't know just the idea of it would send you into a fit." But Lena is very close to gloating and also just very close in general, and Kara drains the rest of the glass before speaking.
"You're just trying to sneak a look at my cards." She glances askance at Lena, who bites down gently on the corner of her bottom lip and then slides away from Kara to sit back behind the table.
"Worth a try."
They finish the hand they're playing and decide to call it quits after that. Kara insists that it has nothing to do with the fact that Lena keeps kicking her butt and argues that butt kicking is too strong a phrase.
They order Chinese take-out and half-heartedly watch a documentary about penguins on the iPad that is supposed to be reserved for CatCo work only, but since it's Lena's suggestion and she's the boss, Kara's pretty sure it's okay.
Kara eats enough potstickers for Lena to wryly mutter, "I don't know where you put it all." She manages to defend her eating habits around a mouthful of food by citing her fast metabolism and smiles to herself as she remembers Alex's parting admonishment from earlier.
The sun had started to set beyond the buildings of National City, buildings that remain without power and stand as tall, dark pillars against the pinky-orange hues of the evening sky.
As Kara cleans up the take away boxes, Lena busies herself by lighting a few of the candles dotted around the apartment. Their flames flick inky black shadows across the walls and provide what should be ample enough light to navigate the space once the sun is fully down.
"Is it bad that I'm kind of glad Alex and Sam didn't come?" Lena's voice pulls Kara around from where she's placing their washed and dried glasses into the cupboard and starts when she finds that they're much closer than she'd been anticipating.
"I mean," Kara reaches behind her to close the cupboard door and takes the side of her glasses between her thumb and forefinger to adjust them. "They're probably pretty glad they didn't come too." She smiles knowingly and crosses her arms over her chest.
"You're probably right," Lena laughs. "But I meant more because we got to spend time together. Just the two of us." And Kara doesn't know if it's the candlelight or something else, but everything about Lena seems to have shifted somehow. Like Kara is seeing her in a slightly different light. Her expression, her demeanour, her gaze; everything seems softer suddenly. "I feel like it's been a while."
Lena smiles the kind of smile that Kara knows carries more vulnerability that it does happiness. It's the kind of smile Lena wears when she's sitting quietly in a room filled with friends and she's watching them, uncertain as to how she managed to land herself in a place where she actually has friends.
Kara knows. Kara sees. And it hurts Kara to think that Lena Luthor feels herself so unworthy, but she's trying to change Lena's outlook on that.
Because Kara has known how amazing Lena is from the very beginning. Brave and strong, and loyal. She sees Lena for who she is, not for her name or her achievements, though there is a measure of pride for those as well.
She wishes with every fibre of her being, with every breath in her body that Lena could see herself through Kara's eyes.
"Yeah." Kara's brow furrows as she fiddles with her glasses again, pushing them up from the front this time and stepping towards Lena as she looks down towards her feet. "These last two weeks have just been-"
Crazy.
That's what Kara had planned on saying but for one inexplicable instant, as she's bringing her head back up and meets the eyes of the ocean, instead that's how she feels.
Crazy. Like someone has pulled the plug on her sanity and it's leaking from her in technicolour. At the very first glint of green-blue at the furthest edges of her vision, that's when the earth stumbles off its axis and rolls through the stars. Then the universe explodes and comes back together in the same moment, reforming into something that is so startlingly new and yet desperately familiar inside of her.
All the star systems knit themselves back together and send their dust swimming into Kara's veins. She feels it, like molecules of magic, lifting her until she feels as though she's floating.
Flying, Jeremiah had said.
Kara has never felt anything quite like this.
Her body feels like shards of crystals, reflecting all the light in the galaxy as she's reassembled among the stars, throwing out rays of what seem like pure light that catch Lena's face and make her eyes glitter.
Warmth washes over Kara, the same kind a person feels when truly content, and it melds the shards together, making her solid again. Making her whole. Perhaps for the very first time. And just like that, suddenly everything makes sense. Answers that Kara hadn't even know she'd been missing are now right there, standing before her.
She's overcome by a sense of strength, so unlike her own, and that of a love so fierce it steals her breath. There's the 'rightness' her adoptive parents had spoken of, taking an ethereal form in an all-encompassing sense of knowing that settles over Kara like a second skin.
And then, there's the longing.
Invisible threads stretching from one heart to another, urging them closer together with every beat in a way that makes Kara's skin hum and her fingers itch.
That's the first time she becomes aware of her own presence again in any kind of solid state. As her hands twitch and an ache begins to swell behind her ribs. And maybe it's something that has always been there but it's louder now, deafening in the momentum and it grows. Becoming hollow and black, and bleak, until she's falling backwards into a void. Darkness surrounding her on all sides, swallowing her.
But then there's Lena. Blistering and blinding against the dark, reaching towards Kara, calling out to her as though she can't see her through the shadows. Only, no words are spoken.
Kara feels Lena's presence in a way that defies description. Feels Lena's light fill her so completely, sparkling in shades Kara's never seen before, and for a second, Kara is sure it's too much. Sure that, even in the face of all her strength, Kara will splinter under the weight of this. That this will be the thing that finally breaks the Girl of Steel.
Only it doesn't.
Kara takes in all those colours and all that warmth, and somehow there's room for it. All of it. Room for Lena, because that's what it is. Every tiny, colourful, star-like speck is a part of the other woman and each one finds a home inside of Kara. Fills spaces she didn't know were empty. Soothes the ache, stops her fall.
And it's quite the difference, having Lena catch her for a change.
Kara Danvers had felt whole before, but this is different.
"Zhovi."
The sound of Kara's native tongue being spoken in Lena's voice cleaves the galaxy into halves, rocking Kara to her very core and throwing her back into her physical body so quickly that she stumbles.
Then she's back in her kitchen and even though the power is still out, things have never seemed brighter to Kara.
Because Lena is standing in front of her, shining like a star and speaking Kara's name and this, Kara thinks, surely this is too much.
"What does it mean?" Lena asks. She looks confused but not frightened, and her voice quiet and strained, like she's afraid to speak. "What is it?"
Kara isn't sure she remembers how.
"It's…" a feeling, a name, a bridge. "It's everything."
It's who Kara is. A name so close to her heart that it's her entire soul. A name she never expected anyone to speak after Krypton, had accepted the fact that her soulname would lie lost in shadow unless she decided to give it to someone. Which, while not unheard of on Krypton - those who chose their mate and went against Raozh would often exchange their names by choice - the giving was never the same. Would never be the same as one soul crying it to another and hearing an answer.
Lena feels it too, Kara knows. Can see it in emerald eyes that shine with new understanding and tears that are yet to fall. And Lena might not have a name to give to Kara in return, but Kara doesn't need it.
Every single thing that makes up Lena Luthor, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, flows through Kara like light through a prism and she sees Lena just as Lena sees her now. Every scar, every ache every vulnerability and fear. Everything that makes her smile or give her hope.
Kara sees herself in Lena, through Lena's eyes, and it's all she can do to catch her breath.
"I see you." Lena's voice is soft, dark brows drawn together in awed confusion, and Kara knows she has so many questions she'll need to answer.
But not before she answers Lena's silent call.
The Earth rolls back around and tips Kara forward until her lips brush Lena's. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object and the paradox stops time for a second or a century. Freezes them in place. Then time returns and a new ages begins as Kara's hands cup Lena's cheeks and a sliver of space appears between their mouths.
Lena gasps, her breath a warm whisper against Kara's skin, and then Kara is leaning in again.
This kiss is different. It's calculated and slow, almost as though there's a choreography to it that Kara is unconsciously following, and maybe there is. Or something like it at least.
If destiny and fate exist, why can't they extend to moments like these?
Would it matter if the sweep of Kara's tongue were predetermined? Or if the way Lena's lips part and meld so perfectly against Kara's was a set point on a one way path? It wouldn't make this mean any less, wouldn't change the impact of this moment.
Kara feels slender fingers curl around her wrists and, for a second fears the worst. In her mind she sees Lena pulling away, denying their bond, and it hurts. Like a brand being seared into her chest.
But Lena doesn't leave. Her hands remain, her hold on Kara's wrists loose and yet firm enough for Kara to know that Lena doesn't want either of them to move and every twitch and touch from Lena feels like it pulls back another layer of Kara's soul.
They stand there, in Kara's dimly lit kitchen, kissing with the slow certainty of two people who have known each other, loved each other, for a hundred years. They kiss until Kara hears Lena begin to struggle for breath and she breaks it but stays close, pressing their foreheads together as they both take heavy breaths.
"Kara." Lena's voices breaks across her name and Kara opens her eyes to find Lena's brimming with questions and tears.
"I know," Kara whispers, and she does. Knows she's never felt like this before and she feels a telltale stinging at the backs of her eyes. She smiles at Lena, moving her hands until she's anxiously palming the length of Lena's neck. Making sure she's real, that this is real, and as her smile lifts her cheeks, twin tears fall. Words thick and heavy, she says, "I always hoped it would be you."
Lena laughs, the sound wet and full of wonder, and Kara doesn't think she'll ever be able to stop staring at her.
And it is perhaps some kind of miracle, that this could happen between a Kryptonian and a human, but Kara doesn't feel the need to question it.
Instead, she feels something she'd thought she never would.
Complete.
A/N: The soulmate mythology used in this story is very, very heavily based on the mythology created by Wendy and Richard Pini, and used in their comic series 'ElfQuest'. There, it's called Recognition, and I highly recommend that any comic/fantasy lovers check it out. You can read everything online on their official website.