You knew this was coming. I had to do an Identity reveal for 3x17 because well, that's kind of my thing now I think.
Written fast and edited not because it's after midnight here but I wanted to get this out.
There are things we never tell anyone.
We hold onto them so long we forget what it is to live without them.
One day these things become a part of us.
They become the scars we hide.
The reflection we cannot face.
Even when they are not our own we bear the weight of them still.
Sometimes out of love.
Sometimes out of sacrifice.
Always out of fear.
They are meant to be unspoken.
They are meant to be unknown.
So what happens when they are no longer these things?
Lena watches Kara as she walks among the remnants of what is left of both their secrets and she thinks how there can be no going back to them now.
How too much has happened and too much will be said.
She picks up the piece of glass at her feet and turns it over in her hands.
The edges bit into the fragile skin of her palms.
They had tried so hard to be careful, missed so much because of it, and still the things they had tried to protect were broken.
She wonders now what will be left.
Wonders if it will be enough.
Kara's voice is quiet and hesitant —disbelieving.
Lena tries not to look at her.
Thinks that if she does than she will not be able to say the things she needs to now.
Knows that if she does that she may say the things she cannot yet admit.
She looks around the room focusing on every detail she can find.
She goes through the motions of her interrogation.
Gives answers to questions when they're asked but never saying more than that.
They ask her what she knows.
They ask her how.
They ask her why.
She recites the words like findings; cold, clinical, detached.
But then Alex asks her how she missed it.
"When I examined her, I found nothing out of the ordinary."
"Then you were looking for the wrong things"
Asks her how she knows.
"So what did you find?"
"After sequencing her DNA and comparing Sam's blackouts to Reign's attacks, I came to the conclusion that Sam and Reign are one and the same…"
And she has to give the one answer, the one truth, she cannot disconnect herself from.
…Sam is Reign."
She realizes then that it's the first time she has said the words aloud, admitted them even to herself, and there is an anger she finds in them.
Anger for the things she's lost.
"So for three weeks, you've been harboring and abetting a mass murder"
Anger for the things she has left to lose.
"I helped a friend."
"And you didn't think to bring this to our attention?"
Anger at a world that demands reparation for her family's sins.
"The attention of a clandestine organization that has never formally acknowledged its existence to me? No. I am not your employee. I have not signed a contract nor sworn an oath."
Briefly her eyes find Kara's and she finds anger there too.
"I conducted an L-Corp experiment using L-Corp technology on L-Corp property."
More than just her own.
"What did you discover?"
She tries to retreat to the comfort of detachment.
"I was hoping to isolate the spark that turned Sam into Reign, but I didn't get a chance to finish"
She sees the tears in Kara's own eyes and tries not to be the one who breaks first.
"Weeks with Reign… Do you have any chance of tracking down the Worldkillers?"
"No"
The questions drift to the others in the room, but neither she or Kara pay attention to them.
Lena knows Kara is looking at her, knows she is putting it all together, and soon her voice interrupts the others.
"How, how did you keep her contained"
Lena looks up at the ceiling, trying to keep the tears from falling. She knows what this revelation will mean, how it is more personal than all the others, how it will hurt them both.
"Lex kept a vault in the Lab, When I took over L-Corp, I inherited all of its assets, for good or for ill"
Lena pauses, looks at Kara despite everything telling her not to.
"I used Kryptonite."
And it's then the anger becomes something else.
Disappointment.
Distrust.
Guilt.
It becomes all the things they each feared their secrets could mean.
I know it's short, but the next chapter would be longer. Let me know if you think it's worth continuing.