As she sits watching Kara sleep she is reminded of how they got here, how her beautiful caring girlfriend eye up in a hospital bed at the D.E.O.
Her mother was never the nicest of people, her anti-alien sentiments well known, especially after Lex had been sent to prison, but Lena had always banked on a small part of familial affection, after all even crocodiles won't harm their own young. She was wrong in the most spectacular way.
After she had helped the NCPD arrest her mother she had thought she was home free, for the first time in years she didn't have to look over her shoulder every second of every day and so she let her guard down. She went about her life like a normal person, she woke up in the morning, went to work, even made a few friends. On weekends, she actually started to have a life, often hanging out with Kara and her friends. It took several months but eventually she managed to forgive Kara for that night in her office and for disappearing afterwards. And slowly but surely, they had been moving forward, she had been the first one Kara told when she came to the conclusion she might not be totally straight, and for some reason her heart had been straining out of her chest.
For weeks, they worked back and forth Kara accompanying Lena to several nightspots to explore her new way of life. And often they would end the night Lena sleeping on the couch back at Kara's apartment. Alex, Maggie, and Winn never seemed to entirely understand though, at first, she had assumed it was the usual, they were waiting for her to do something Luthorish and betray Kara, but after about a month she finally pins them down and asks them during Sunday brunch, the answers she got were not those she expected.
Namely they thought she and Kara were dating, and damn if it wasn't the most awkward shovel talk she had ever gotten, all three competing to threaten her, Winn threatening to delete every aspect of herself and her company from the Internet, Alex threatening to black bag her and throw her in the same hole they kept her mother and brother in, and Maggie, well Maggie apparently has some unique ideas regarding the use of a tensor field gravity canon and a melting vat of lead.
When she tells Kara about it all later that day over lunch at CatCo she swears she has never seen the blonde blush so hard, or for that matter look so determined to punish her friends, especially if the texts she sent them were any indication as for once they completely lacked any, and all forms of emoji or exclamation points, instead as plain and as business like as Lena has ever seen. It is obvious ten minutes later that the others have realised he truth of this as well, because it only takes that long before a number of delivery people arrive carrying stacks of Kara's favourite food from all over the city.
About three weeks later the slowly building tension between them comes to a head, in these last few weeks the thought of what had happened over brunch had been on Lena's mind so much so that she struggles to concentrate during the day, instead her mind being filled by memories and thoughts of a certain blonde reporter.
When it finally comes to a head it is a Friday evening and all week Lena has been trying to figure out a way to ask Kara out for dinner without either ruining their friendship or being seen as only a friend. But when Kara walks, well stumbles in, while playing with her ponytail Lena's well laid plans go out the window and for once she is the stuttering, rambling mess as she asks Kara out for dinner.
The night goes better than Lena could ever have dreamed, for the first time in forever she actually enjoys herself on a date. They go to a little mom and pop Italian restaurant only a few blocks from Kara's apartment. By the time, they leave the restaurant is closing for the evening. The moon hanging high in the sky above their heads as they begin to walk hand in hand through a nearby garden.
The last thing they expected was to come under attack, Cyborg Superman attacking as soon as they were out of sight of the main road. Lena is terrified until she sees something that's she swears has to be her imagination, Kara standing before her shedding the dress she had worn, instead in a Supergirl outfit. Kara manages to fight of Cyborg Superman but not before he leaves with one final victory. He jabs Lena with a large needle injecting her with a bright golden serum.
As soon as he is gone Kara turns wide eyed to Lena and quickly moves to take her into her arms and fly to the D.E.O. terrified of what this might mean, but as soon as she does she crashes to the ground, a bright gold halo erupting around her. Lena terrified calls the only person she thinks might be able to help, she calls Alex. Not an hour later they are in the D.E.O. as Alex and another doctor check them both over. The scans are conclusive, that serum, it was Kryptonite.
At first Lena was terrified, terrified because it might hurt Kara, what if she was never able to see Kara again, what if she killed Kara, she was just about to get up and make a run for the door, to turn away and never look back determined to protect the woman she has come to love when Alex drops the next bomb. This was not normal Kryptonite, instead they called it gold kryptonite, and its abilities explained why Cyborg Superman had given up so easily.
It takes weeks and weeks of testing but it becomes apparent Kara's abilities everything she had possessed since her arrival on Earth, be it flight, or super hearing all of them were gone, and according to Kal-EL it was permanent.
Kara disappeared for weeks, no matter who tried to call her, no matter who showed up at her door, she didn't answer. It takes a while, but eventually Lena decides enough is enough. It had only taken the D.E.O. a few hours to remove the Kryptonite from Lena`s system, but by then the damage has been done. She gets a message from Kara asking for some time alone, but finally she can take it no more, she will not allow the woman she loves to fall into the depths of despair she had felt when she had thought she lost everything.
It takes her less than ten minutes of work to break into Kara's apartment, but the sight she finds chills her to the bone. Kara lays on the couch slumped and just crying her eyes out. It takes almost three hours before she gets Kara talking, she learns how Kara feels adrift, as if she was being thrown around in a maelstrom and her anchor is gone, that without her powers she doesn't know who she is.
Lena refuses to leave her side.
Days turn into weeks, weeks, into months as Lena stays with Kara, by now she has taken a sabbatical from L-Corp leaving Jess to watch over things for her as she cares for Kara. She had bought the apartment next door so she didn't have to leave Kara alone and slowly but surely, she was beginning to see traces of the Kara she had once known. She sees small smiles, hesitant little glimpses of who Kara had been before, and when Kara kisses her again after nearly a year she feels her heart swell with the love she feels.
Kara may have lost her powers but she will never lose Lena