A/N: Hi, guys.
This is like a week later than I had hoped but better late than never or something, right? The summer semester has been brutal and I've literally only had two classes. And in 12 hours, I'm going to watch the batch I started university with graduate live through the screen of a TV. Not gonna lie, it's gonna be rough; I'm so happy for them, all of my friends are graduating. But at the same time, I should have been there too, and it's just- yeah. Sorry.
Anyway. This is from a comment by a guest on FF asking for a Taken style chapter but since I've never seen that movie, I improvised. I kept imagining Sawyer pulling a Jack-Jack from The Incredibles on his captors though and just whipping out his powers and kicking some butt before his rescuers arrive. I must admit, it didn't come across in the writing though. Also, the style of this chapter feels different too, so let me know how you feel about this. And as this chapter shows, I do take your requests into consideration so please leave them in comments and I'll (eventually) get to them.
Also, I'm pretty sure I've read one of the characters calling Lena Bad Seed in a fic somewhere but for the life of me I can't remember, and honestly I find it hilarious so I'm adopting it as my thing too, but if anyone knows what I'm talking about, mention it in the comments, let's give credit where credit is due!
Read on and enjoy!
Lena's in the labs when it happens.
"It" being a gas released and the building going into lockdown.
Her last thoughts before she collapses on her way to the door are full of panic and Sawyer; her son is napping upstairs in her office all alone.
Then it all goes black.
She comes to under the dimmed lights of the med bay in the DEO, drawing Eliza Danvers' red-rimmed and tired eyes from looking over vitals and charts to herself as she stirs to sit up, slurring sluggishly through the haze of whatever drugs she inhaled in the lab as she tries to get out of bed to find Sawyer.
The weight of her mother-in-law's gentle hand on her arm laying her back in bed, Eliza's eyes rapidly filling, feels like the weight Atlas carries on his shoulders and it settles snuggly in the pit of her stomach.
She's told that she was the target – which wouldn't surprise her if she were feeling things, if she weren't so very hollow – but when the kidnappers went to grab her, she wasn't there.
But Sawyer was.
And what will earn a ransom bigger than Lena Luthor?
Lena Luthor's barely three year old son.
She doesn't see Kara anywhere, though Eliza tells her that her wife brought her into the DEO as soon as she got through L-Corp's defenses.
She doesn't see Alex either, but Winn's voice at his station draws her attention as he fires off coordinates to Alex over his comms.
Striding over with purpose, the clicking of her heels barely fazes Winn who simply pushes back the chair next to him, the work station adjacent to his fired up and suspiciously empty.
He doesn't say anything to her, eyes never leaving his screen, as Lena instantly settles in and starts typing away at the keyboard, putting on the comm left on the table.
He instead reaches over and covers her shaking hand with his warmer one, holding it there even as his eyes never stray from his screen until hers steadies.
Her voice is steady as she makes her presence known over the communication lines, her lips not forming the exasperated smile that usually forms when she calls out, "Bad Seed online" over the lines – the humorous code name Winn jokingly, lovingly, came up with sticking over the years – as Alex instantly gets her up to speed on the progress of their search for the kidnappers.
She's told that they had an inside man, a recent hire in security that had enough access to get them in – a man currently broken in a hospital room because Agent Alex Danvers got to him before the cops got on the scene, before Supergirl was busy getting Lena to the DEO for medical help.
She's also told that the DEO and the cops – led by Detective Sawyer, who was also currently on her way into the DEO to personally get Lena's statement – have already followed two leads that ended in decoy hideouts and various dead ends.
There has been one ransom demand so far.
It's a video that Maggie hesitates to show her, and when Eliza steps out of the lab where Maggie's pulled her into to talk, Lena finally looks away from the grainy image of her little boy lying in a corner of a dark dingy room, the tears rapidly filling her eyes blurring the already somewhat blurry video feed.
(Winn, standing right next to her with a firm hand on her shoulder, quietly murmurs that Kara flew out of her after that image, and has been radio silent since.)
Maggie holds her tightly through her body-rattling sobs; gently soothes her when she starts to have difficulty catching her breath; firmly and sternly denies it when Lena brokenly whispers that it's her fault, all her and her damned family's name's fault; promises her that they'll, "get Mini Me back."
Lena can't bring herself to believe her though.
Once she put herself back together, it was nonstop work from there.
Winn spent that first day at his station doing too much at the same time, Lena helping wherever she could.
Eliza went back and forth between them, making sure they at least ate if they weren't going to sleep.
(The eldest Danvers managed to force Lena into a bed for at least half an hour at some point after Lena hit the 12 hour mark, and then the two women tag-teamed Winn to take a longer nap once he hit the 25th hour of staring at a screen.)
Maggie went back and forth between hitting the streets, checking in on her other cases, and stopping by the DEO to offer and collect any leads.
(Lena was convinced Maggie hadn't had any more sleep than she or Winn had.)
J'onn spends half of the second day in a room with the inside man that was stationed in her company after having him moved to the DEO facilities, trying to forcibly pry any leads out of his mind before giving up and only barely remembering to mind-wipe him.
(J'onn's tension and frustration is beyond palpable, and it puts all agents on edge; Lena knows he's worried about his grandson just like the rest of them, but she also knows the bigger threat involved – Sawyer is half Kryptonian; if his powers were to show, he'd be exposed and, by extension so would, Kara. There was so much at stake here.)
Guardian is the only reason the city hasn't been overrun with crime yet.
(Lena swears she sees another red and blue blur that is distinctly not her wife helping Guardian around the city.)
She doesn't see Kara for the next day and a half.
(If it weren't for J'onn forcibly bringing Alex back to the DEO, Lena doesn't think she would have seen her sister-in-law either.)
Lena's head whips around so fast when she hears it she winces at the pain in her stiff neck; the tired and too heavy thud of Kara's boots as she lands, the swishing of her cape as it falls into place behind her.
Kara's been flying practically nonstop for 36 hours; Lena watches her sway a little on her feet as she stands there and surveys the crowd. J'onn strides over, Eliza not far behind him, both needing some kind of good news.
But Kara's hearing has zeroed in on Lena's racing heartbeat and nothing else, and her eyes have firmly locked onto Lena's, Kara's steel blues broken as they seem to shine with a building sheen of tears.
Lena swallows, getting to her feet and walks towards her wife, deliberately slow and (trying) to remain calm.
J'onn and Eliza get all the answers they need when Kara falls into Lena's arms with a shuddering sob, arms tighter than she usually allows herself, and buries her face into Lena's neck.
It becomes significantly more difficult for Lena to keep her calm when Kara's desperate mumbles of apology for not getting there fast enough or not finding him yet fill her ears and fall to wet her skin.
They're both barely standing on their feet by the time Kara's needless apologies – because on what world would Lena blame Kara for something she's convinced is her own fault? – turn into incoherent murmurs that Lena's glad she doesn't understand, because something in the back of her mind tells her Kara's talking about The Worst Case Scenario that she hasn't allowed herself to entertain just yet.
Lena's all but dragging Kara into Alex's lab, laying her gently under the sunlamps and crawls in next to her, the pair surrendering to hellish nightmares and restless sleep.
Kara's suspended in midair just past the windows making up her usual entrance on the balcony of the DEO.
Lena watches her with a tumbler of stiff liquor held against her chin, hips against Winn's desk holding her up, mind numb as she takes in the thunderstorm battering her wife; Kara's hair wet and whipping around her head, her cape snapping back and forth as Kara braves the elements with her eyes closed and her head tilted up to the raging heavens.
She's listening, Lena knows.
Listening for Sawyer.
For his scared cries for Mommy and Mama.
He's very afraid of thunderstorms.
10 million dollars.
The first ransom video had demanded 10 million dollars.
L-Corp has a strict rule that kidnappers and ransoms are not to be indulged, no matter the cost – Lena herself established this rule, and her board members were all too happy to agree; none of them want to part with their money after all.
Lena's ready to hand over the keys to her entire kingdom just to hold Sawyer again.
She's made the final preparations, dotted her I's and crossed her T's, and collected the suitcase of money like she's acting in some 80's action movie opposite Mel Gibson and Danny Glover when Maggie – grim and hesitant – strides into the DEO two days later with a tablet.
The conference table they're all gathered around buckles and bends and breaks under the strength of Kara's fingers as they watch Sawyer, seemingly unharmed, hovering two feet off the ground with his – Lena's – ratty teddy bear clutched under his arm.
Their price has gone up to 50 million.
The video would have ended with threats of harm – if Kara hadn't flipped the bolted down conference table into the opposite wall with an enraged yell.
Nobody even flinches.
Kara's gone before any of them can even blink.
They're yelling in the demolished conference room, have been for the past half an hour.
Lena's been trying to leave to get the money; their deadline is midnight.
Alex has been standing in her way.
"They're not going to hurt him! Not when they need him for leverage, Lena!"
"I'm not risking my son's life, Alex!"
"If you pay them, then they've gotten what they want; they won't have any reason to keep Sawyer safe and unharmed – they'll have no use for him! If they don't hurt him, they will at the very least expose him and Kara!"
"Do you think Kara or I really care about her secret right now?! Supergirl be damned, Alex, we want our child home, and I can get him back, all I need to do is shift some money around, and nothing in heaven or hell and all that is in between will get in the way of me getting Sawyer back."
In the background, monitors are flashing and alarms are blaring; Supergirl is tearing through every abandoned building that has even a fraction of lead in its structure.
J'onn lets her.
The deadline is getting closer, and Kara's trail of destruction has led out of National City.
Lena's finally made it past Alex when Winn's chair flies backwards with the force of him jumping out of it, exhausted and disheveled and yelling about finding Sawyer.
He's far too caffeinated to make sense, but Lena catches snippets among his rapid fire words like, "heat vision radiation signature," and, "extreme low drops in temperature in the middle of nowhere," and Lena holds her breath.
Alex assembles her team.
J'onn's already morphed into his true form and has flown out.
The sound of Kara breaking the sound barrier repeatedly fills the DEO communication lines.
Maggie drags Lena with her to the site – Eliza calls shotgun on that ride.
Winn holds down the fort.
It's an empty truck stop, with one single diner as its main feature – a single diner that has clearly been empty and abandoned for a while.
Maggie and Eliza hold her back from rushing through the entrance where the doors – now ripped clean off their hinges – hang limply, bent in half.
It's silent through their comms.
Until it isn't.
Alex is yelling orders at a rapid pace, and they can hear the sounds of struggle and things breaking.
(Though that could be Eliza's wrist in Lena's grip.)
And then, just as abruptly as it started, it was quiet again.
The seconds feel like an eternity, crawling their way through tar and quicksand.
(She's not sure whose grip gets tighter; hers or Maggie's or Eliza's, whose breath catches hasher when Supergirl's silhouette starts forming in the doorway.)
But she's hears his laugh, and Lena's knees all but buckle.
Kara's unclasped her cape and wrapped Sawyer in it so completely that all Lena sees – through the sheen of tears forming and falling down her cheeks – is his dark head hair, and for one absurd moment, all Lena can think about is how Sawyer needs a haircut.
She blinks, and he's there within reach, smile wide and hands slipping out of the cape, fingers making the same grabby motion that Kara makes around potstickers and cake.
If it weren't for Kara's arms around her, she would have already collapsed from the lightness inside her, the weight of the past two days evaporating so suddenly and wholly, Lena swears she could float right alongside her Kryptonian family.
She isn't aware of much else outside Sawyer, holding her tighter than is comfortable but oh so welcomed, his face tucked into her neck and his strong steady breathing washing over her collarbone.
(She vaguely registers how odd it is to see Kara dressed as Supergirl in the back of a cop car.)
Sawyer spent the rest of the night tucked into Lena's arms, Kara's touch not leaving either of them even when her attention was elsewhere.
Though shaken and a little scared from being alone during the thunderstorm, Sawyer's beaming and talking and he's unharmed – if a little hungry (even though he doesn't need the same amount of calories Kara does just yet, they still hadn't fed him enough. Lena found herself more furious about that than anything else) – he even giggled mischievously as he told them all about how he sneezed on one of the bad men's foot and accidently froze him in place.
(Alex beamed and high fived him as she confirmed that they did, indeed, find a guy stuck in his spot thanks to a half melted ice cube encasing his foot. She's pretty sure that foot's gonna get amputated from frostbite.)
He falls asleep, tucked into Kara's cape – looking remarkably like what she imagines baby Kal-El would have looked, Kara notes with a whisper – and held tightly in Lena's arms.
Wordlessly, Kara carries them both home, and settles them into her and Lena's bed.
They spend the entire night just watching Sawyer breathe, his thumb in his mouth and his other hand valiantly trying to hold on to both of them.
