Warning for violence.
"You can't be allergic to kale," Lena scoffed. "You're an alien."
Kara pushed her heaping plate of horrible, horrible homemade salad around the table and started fiddling with her fork. "Well—well, exactly! The unique microorganisms growing on leafy greens on this planet—my, my body can't—haven't you seen War of the Worlds?"
"Kara, I have seen you eat fries that have been sneezed directly onto. You have rescued Ebola patients from a flooded hospital, maintaining sustained physical contact the whole time. Your cells regenerate so quickly you can't even put on henna. What microorganisms?"
"The… unique microorganisms growing on… uhh…" Kara noticed she'd been tearing her fork into little ribbons and immediately let go. The pieces clattered to the table with a series of loud clinks. Lena silently handed over her own fork.
Kara decided to shift gears. "You know, my complex Kryptonian digestive system just has a hard time with your Earth plant fiber. Tough cellular structure. Very inhospitable."
"Humans don't digest cellulose, either," Lena said with an annoyingly charming little smirk. "That's what shitting is for."
Kara looked at her in dismay. She would go to all the trouble of putting that stuff in her mouth and chewing and swallowing and then…? "Then—then—what is even the point of this torture!"
Lena openly laughed at her. "Kara, I get it. You don't like kale. You don't have to eat the salad."
Kara felt like she might cry. "Oh, thank Rao. Lena, I—"
"But don't worry!" Lena cut her off brightly. "I'm creative. I will find a way to make you enjoy one of Earth's most versatile superfoods, Supergirl."
Then she winked very very badly, and Kara really had no choice but to resign herself to her bitter, fibrous, leafy fate.
.
.
"Guess what!" Lena announced as she let herself into Kara's apartment, carrying a large Tupperware container. "It's dessert week!"
Lena had attempted to coax Kara into consuming a wide variety of deeply off-putting dishes over the past several weeks. From kale-eggplant parmesan to mac, kale and cheese; potato-kale fritters to French kale-onion soup. Kara had successfully dodged all of them so far, but Lena seemed completely undeterred.
"Can you figure out this week's secret ingredient?" she asked, opening the container to reveal an assortment of sickly green baked goods. Baked… somethings, anyway. "I'll give you a hint: it's loveable, curly, and contains several times the recommended daily value of vitamin K." She leaned forward and kissed Kara sweetly on the mouth. "Just like you."
"I really wish you wouldn't compare me to Earth's greatest abomination."
"Ha! Well, you might change your tune after you try one of these." Lena held out a muffin speckled yellow and green. "All original recipe."
Kara squinted at it. Were those raisins in there? "Lena, thank you for going to all this effort, but as I said, I'm deathly allergic, so…"
"Uh—but look, this one's a chocolate chip cookie," Lena said hopefully, rummaging around in her Tupperware. "You love those? And the flavor is barely noticeable. You might like it if you try it."
"I'm sure it's great, but, you know, needles—they can't pierce my skin, so, if I go into anaphylaxis we might not have time to get to the DEO, and—"
Kara was lying so badly, she knew that. She was a terrible liar. But a flash of uncertainty and concern still passed over Lena's face.
She put the cookie away. "Well, salicylate intolerance has been linked to sensitivity to kale, but that's more likely in people with asthma. Kale allergy specifically is rather uncommon, and caused by significant exposure. I doubt you've consumed large amounts of kale in the past?"
Kara silently shook her head. Could it be possible that Lena actually… believed her?
"Right. Then again, you're an alien from outer space, so who even knows. You could be sensitive to chlorophyll for all we know. You do eat mustard, so it's probably not the salicylate, come to think of it. A skin prick test would be impractical for obvious reasons, but I bet I can replicate it fairly easily, with L-Corp's resources. Hm…"
She was taking this so seriously. Guilt sat heavy in Kara's stomach like a lump of Rao damned kale. She had to confess. Even if it meant more… salad. "Lena, listen, I—"
"Is that a hair on your sweater?" Lena interrupted, already reaching for it. "Can I have it? Thanks. I'll just run some tests in my spare time, not a big deal. Ideally some blood work would be nice, but I don't want to impose—If there really are any bacteria or another kale-specific component causing an adverse reaction, I will isolate it, rest assured. Maybe a mouth swab? You know what, I'll just grab that coffee cup I saw in your trash earlier."
She kissed Kara's cheek, produced a sterile plastic baggie from her coat's inner pocket, whisked yesterday's used paper cup out of Kara's garbage, and whirled out the door.
Kara would be hard-pressed to say whether it was a force of nature she was dating, or a natural disaster.
.
.
A week later, Kara may still have felt a little bit guilty about her deception, but not guilty enough to abandon it in the face of Lena's newest green monstrosity.
"Lena—um—haven't we settled this? You know I'd love, really, would so happily eat anything, um, anything you made for me, but, I'm just concerned about my multitude of strange and confusing alien organs shutting down, and then where do you even find a Kryptonian doctor, last of my people and everything—"
"Ah ah ah." Lena held up her index finger, an insufferably self-satisfied expression on her face. "Look at this." She handed Kara a piece of paper.
Kara scanned over it quickly. Lab results. Concerning all sorts of interactions between various Kryptonian cells and brassica oleracea var. sabellica.
"You're out of excuses," Lena said smugly. "Now, please don't tell me I took a molecular gastronomy class for nothing and eat your damn spherified kale and salmon gel pellets floating in deconstructed truffle foam."
Kara made her very best beseechingly sad face, and when that had no effect except to make Lena coo, kiss her gently and push the plate closer, there was nothing left to do but to bite the damn bullet. Or more accurately, bite the damn spherified kale and salmon gel pellets floating in deconstructed truffle foam.
Kara would have preferred the bullet, all told. At least that would have had a bit of a crunch.
.
.
Later that day, a nuclear power plant was attacked by unidentified assailants dressed in heavy alien armor. It had been a long, drawn out fight, and Kara was… kind of losing.
Not, like, completely, or really even very much. Just a little bit.
One of the attackers shot her in the shoulder with their big weird round gun, and she felt the vibrations of it down to the bone. She had dull aches pulsing in her arms and abdomen, and now in her chest, and her vision was getting a little wonky. If this didn't end soon, it might not end well.
Kara went on the offensive. She grabbed the attacker's head and smashed it against her own. Ears ringing, she tore the weapon out of their hands and threw it into the ground below. She got a kick in the stomach for her effort. Her opponent used the momentum to push away from her, turned around and fled. She let them go.
J'onn kicked off another one's helmet, Kara punched through the third's breastplate, and they finally started to retreat.
Kara found herself staring at her fist in midair, watching it go in and out of focus.
"I've got you," J'onn said quietly in her ear. She wasn't sure how she'd ended up in his arms. "You're okay."
.
.
The next time Kara had any sense of her environment, she was on a very uncomfortable surface, surrounded by shadows. One very particular shadow was bent over her, touching her, making noises.
"Kara, Kara," the shadow begged in Lena's voice. "Kara, oh, please—please talk to me."
Kara blinked until the shadow resolved into a blurry, lumpy, red-faced version of her girlfriend, who sobbed loudly and cupped Kara's cheeks when she noticed her looking.
Kara tried to lick her lips. It didn't quite seem to work, somehow. Lena ran her hands over and over Kara's face, almost compulsively, wiping away sweat and whatever else, smoothing out her hair. Kara fought to keep her eyes open.
Her first attempt at speech produced only a groan. She felt Lena's tears drop onto her suit. Second attempt was more successful.
"See?" Kara croaked. "I told you I was… allergic… to kale."
Lena stared at her in terrible, frozen, weeping shock for one painful moment, and burst out laughing. "Damn, shit, hell and fuck!" she shouted. "You're never eating anything but junk food ever again, are you?"
"I wouldn't say… nothing," Kara offered, valiantly attempting an eyebrow wiggle, and Lena collapsed on top of her, laughter and tears intermingling, pressing salty kisses to her lips.
As she faded out of consciousness, one shining thought settled in Kara's mind:
No more kale.