Aaand now for the thing you've actually been waiting for since the very beginning: the lovely Lena Luthor :)


Chapter Seven

It was a good job Lena had finished that conference call when she did; it would have been really hard to explain to both the CEO and the CFO of Einmar Industries why she had suddenly squeaked aloud in shock when a large orb of liquid blue light appeared out of nowhere in her office.

As it was, Lena 'how-may-times-can-she-get-attacked-or-abducted-in-one-year' Luthor thought that she might a) be having a heart attack, b) have finally cracked and started hallucinating, or c) both.

She only just had time to scramble together enough thought to wonder what her mother and/or brother were up to now, before two figures appeared inside the blue light, quickly condensing into the forms of Agent Alex Danvers 'FBI' – or whichever identity fits her purposes at the time, I suspect – and a man Lena did not recognise.

What. The. Fuck?!

"Ms. Luthor," Alex said, marching up to Lena's desk, her face a storm of fear, worry, and desperation.

Oh god.

Kara.

Something's happened to Kara.

"Lena, sorry to just barge in like this but I need your help and I need it now."

The fact that Alex Danvers just called her by her first name surely meant that something was really wrong.

"Agent Danvers," she forced out, using every ounce of her will to keep her voice calm, collected and not at all like she was completely freaking out. "Where is Kara? I don't know how you got up here, but I-"

"I don't have time to explain," Alex cut her off, her clenched fists coming to lean on Lena's desk in front of her. "Supergirl doesn't have time." She stopped, her eyes searching Lena's face desperately for something. "Kara doesn't."

Holy fuck, what has happened?

Lena had known about Kara's other identity from the first week that they'd met but, to her knowledge, Kara didn't know that she knew and so presumably neither did Alex. Whatever had happened to Kara was apparently serious enough to make Alex Danvers, of all people, drop the curtain on that secret to Lena, a Luthor.

"Alex-"

"She's dying, Lena," Alex cut her off again, her voice cracking even as her words made Lena's whole body freeze. "She's dying and I think- I think she needs you to save her."

Lena's considerably high-powered mind apparently ran out of processing power.

"Look," Alex continued, urgency rising in her voice, "I know it's a lot to take in, but we really don't have time for more explanation now. She's literally got minutes, maybe less, and then she'll be gone forever." Lena could barely breathe at the thought. "I need you to just somehow trust me and-"

"I trust you," Lena interrupted this time, the pain and fear in her chest making her throw caution and dignity to the wind. "I trust you for this. Tell me what to do and I'll do it."

Alex stared hard at her for a second before she straightened up and nodded.

"Come with us then," she said, standing back and gesturing towards the orb of light. "Quickly."

Lena was up and trotting around her desk towards the light orb before her brain could form enough cohesive thoughts to warn her about the many ways in which this was insane.

"Hold on," the man that had come with Alex said as she approached, holding out his arm to her. She hesitated for a moment before a quick glance at Alex showed that the agent had taken hold of the man's other arm.

Good enough.

She grabbed hold, nodded, and the three of them stepped into the light.

If Lena thought she hated flying, it was nothing compared to how much she hated…whatever this was. It was like being violently tossed around whilst simultaneously being held completely still, unable to see or hear anything besides the roaring sound of air rushing from nowhere to somewhere.

And then suddenly the world was still again, quiet but for the hushed murmurs of voices in a large room and the invasive beep of medical equipment. She opened her eyes and saw a group of people huddled by a pair of gurneys, one bearing a man in a red skin-tight suit who was sitting up with one arm wrapped around the woman at his side while the other hand held onto that of the other gurney's occupant: Kara, who lay prone and unconscious, looking so vulnerable even in her super suit as she feebly twitched and jerked in apparent pain.

"Kara," Lena breathed the word, her whole body lurching towards her unconscious friend, her favourite person in the world despite all the secrets and lies she kept between them.

"Lena," the man in the red suit said, looking at her with a definite sense of recognition that Lena could not reciprocate. "She's still hanging on, she's holding on for you-"

"She doesn't know yet, Barry," Alex interrupted as she appeared at Lena's shoulder. "Lena, I'm sorry about this," she said, turning to speak to Lena directly, "but, you're going to need to trust me just a bit longer."

"I've already said I'll trust you for this, Alex," Lena cut her off, her need to save Kara making her impatient, "just tell me what I need to do."

Alex glanced almost helplessly at the woman by Barry's side who nodded and answered for her:

"You need to let Cisco vibe you into Kara's mind and tell her that you love her, show her how you feel about her."

Lena gaped at her.

Of all the things-

How do they know-

Kara and I haven't ever even talked about-

"Please," Alex spoke again, her voice shaking and one hand coming to tug at Lena's shoulder. "She- She'll die."

Anything for Kara.

There was no time to be embarrassed, no matter how mortified she currently felt; there was no time to wonder if this was actually too insane to be real.

"Tell me what to do."

"This way," the man who'd brought her here with Alex, Cisco presumably, gestured as he moved forward towards the head of Kara's gurney. "Hold onto my shoulder with one hand and hold onto Kara with the other." He nodded as Lena followed his instructions. "Ok, third time's the charm."

Lena blinked and suddenly the world changed.

She was no longer in a laboratory but in an almost deserted street lined with old fashioned cars and dim yellow streetlamps, but before her brain could begin to process the implications of this she saw her, Kara, lying alone, limp and bleeding on the ground a few metres away.

"Kara!" she screamed, shock and fear jolting through her even though she'd already known that Kara was injured and close to death. She ran towards her, falling to her knees at her hero's side, barely able to comprehend what she was seeing.

Kara. Kind, funny, beautiful, caring Kara; strong, courageous, wonderfully bullet-proof Kara, was lying in the cold, blood seeping through her lovely dress as it fled her weakening body.

"L-Lena?" Crystal blue eyes cracked open as Kara croaked out her name and Lena thought her chest would burst. "Lena…"

"I'm here," Lena answered, leaning over her fallen friend and trying to keep her conscious. "I'm here, darling; stay with me, please."

Her chest felt like someone was trying to cut their way out of it from the inside.

How many times had she imagined telling Kara how she felt? How many different ways had she imagined telling her friend that her heart longed for so much more than friendship between them? She'd always let something hold her back, whether it was the uneasy discomfort she felt on some level that Kara had still not confided in her about her other identity, or whether it was plain and simple fear of rejection, of losing the relationship with Kara that she did have. And now…

Now she was left with this, this train wreck of a moment in which to confess her love.

Because she did love her, she had no doubts about that.

She only wished that the first time she said the words they would not risk being lost in the rasps of Kara's dying breaths, that the first time she cupped Kara's cheek as she had imagined doing so many times, her hands would not be shaking with terror that it was too little, too late.

"Kara," she breathed, one of her shaking hands coming finally to caress the soft skin of Kara's cheek while the other pushed its way into Kara's rich golden hair.

"I-I'm sorry, Lena," Kara wheezed out with an effort. "I should have told you."

"Shh, darling, don't try to talk," she hushed her, stroking gently along her jaw. "You can tell me once I've gotten you out of here."

"I sh-should have t-told you because I love you, Lena," Kara was whispering now, her words beginning to slur as her eyelids seemed to grow heavier and heavier.

"No!" Lena practically whimpered, her heart roaring and shattering in her chest. "No, no, no! Kara stay with me! You have to hear me tell you that I love you. I love you, Kara! Kara!?"

The blonde was almost completely still now, her eyes unfocused and no discernible breath coming from her lips. Lena's terror ramped itself to 1000%.

'Tell her that you love her, show her how you feel about her.'

'Show' as well as 'tell'.

Oh god.

"I love you Kara," she whispered one last time, feeling tears tracking down her face as she leaned closer and pressed her lips to Kara's for the first time, trying to put every ounce of the love that she felt into that simple kiss.

Her heart ached and burst with broken longing as silence and stillness covered them completely.

And then the very air around them hummed and popped and suddenly she was leaning over Kara at her bedside rather than kneeling over her on the ground.

She began to pull back, needing to see Kara, to be certain of what had just happened, when those brilliant blue eyes fluttered open and met hers.

"Lena," Kara breathed, her eyes widening hazily for just a second before one of Kara's arms wrapped around her and pulled her back in.

Ohhh….

As much as she had felt terror and pain and fear in the last two minutes of her life, Lena now felt exponentially more joy and relief and a kind of disbelieving happiness that completely surpassed the bounds of what life had taught her to expect. There are no words to truly describe the emotions that clamoured for attention in Lena's heart as Kara Danvers not only clawed her way back to life from the brink of death, but celebrated this victory by pulling Lena in close and kissing her deeply.

"Ahem!"

It was rather a nasty shock to be reminded that there was a crowd of at least seven or eight other people in the room with them.

She pulled back from Kara, trying to hold onto some sense of dignity even as she felt the blush beginning to travel up her neck to sit glaringly on her cheeks. Kara didn't particularly help matters by refusing to completely let go of her, choosing instead to sit up, keeping one arm looped around Lena's waist and an increasingly bashful and totally adorable smile on her face.

"Kara," Barry said simply, grinning at her and reaching across the small space between their gurneys for her free hand and squeezing it when she gave it to him.

"Kara!" came the cracked and broken voice of Alex Danvers from behind Lena and Lena decided that this was definitely the moment to extricate herself from Kara's grip, making room for Alex to get closer, to check for herself that her sister really was back, that she was alive and sitting there grinning and blushing like a girl who had just had her first kiss with someone.

Because she has; she's just had her first kiss with me.

I just had my first kiss with Kara Danvers.

Who I also told about the fact that I love her.

Who also told me that she loves me.

Kara loves me. She just kissed me right here in front of all these people.

Kara just kissed me in front of her sister.

Lena tried to keep her personal little meltdown to herself as mass relief swept around the room at Kara's recovery, hugs and 'thank god's being exchanged while Alex Danvers held her sister close.

And then Alex Danvers, scary mysterious government agent and sister of the woman she loved, was hugging her. Lena did not know what to do or how to respond because Alex Danvers' arms were wrapped tightly around her in a crushing hug.

"Thank you," she murmured fiercely in Lena's ear and Lena hesitantly let her arms hang loosely around the agent. "Thank you for trusting me when I needed you to, for taking that risk for her sake. Thank you for bringing her back to me." The usually-gruff Alex pulled back, keeping her hands on Lena's shoulders as she looked searchingly into her eyes for another second. "I'll never forget this, Lena. I mean it. Thank you."

And Lena responded with the only words she could think of:

"It's Kara," she said with the slightest of helpless shrugs. "What else could I do?"

To her relief, Alex let out a slight snuff of laughter, clapped her on the shoulder once and then released her before turning back towards Kara. The beautiful blonde hero's eyes were wide and shimmering as she stared at Lena and Alex from where she sat at the edge of her gurney, that impossibly perfect smile of hers shining down on them like the sun, warming Lena to her very bones.

And then Kara moved to stand up.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Alex and Lena both shouted in unison, rushing towards the recently-nearly-dead superhero in an attempt to keep her on the gurney.

"Where do you think you're going?" Alex demanded and Lena gladly let her take point on this one as her brain decided to remember that she was not really in the habit of bossing Kara around in public just yet. "You need to stay on that gurney until you've been properly checked out. We don't know much about what that guy did to you, but we know he drained a lot of your solar radiation-"

"I feel fine, Alex," Kara protested, waving away her sister's hands gently. "A little weaker than usual maybe, but nothing a little blast in the sun wouldn't fix. What time is it on this earth? Is the sun still out?"

Lena was sure she must have misheard something there.

"'This earth'?" she asked, her tiny question dropping like a bomb into silence because, surely- surely that couldn't mean what she thought it meant.

"Uhhh-"

The collective guilty looks and uncertain noises from around the room were all the confirmation that she needed.

That orb of blue light that she had let Alex persuade her to walk through had been a portal to another dimension.

The Multiverse Theory is true.

I'm in a parallel universe.

A parallel. Fucking. Universe.

Lena's head began to swim and black dots appeared in her vision as her body battled with the fact that she'd not gotten around to eating lunch that day whilst trying to achieve some level of comprehension of all the enormous ways in which her entire world had shifted since she'd finished her conference call with Einmar Industries less than ten minutes ago.

But just as her legs began to feel truly unstable, a very familiar, very strong pair of arms appeared in time to catch her and she just about managed to look up into the concerned blue eyes of Kara Danvers, her very own Supergirl.

"Steady," Kara murmured quietly, ignoring Alex's shout of 'Kara!' and tenderly pushing some of Lena's hair back behind her ear. "They didn't tell you about the alternate dimension bit yet, did they?"

"It, uh, it hadn't cropped up in conversation yet somehow," Lena confirmed, her voice uncontrollably breathy, though she had no idea whether that was because she'd just found out she was in an alternate dimension or because Kara Danvers was holding her close and tenderly touching her face. "Although, in their defence, I suppose there hasn't really been much time for chit-chat, so…"

Kara let out a small snuff of amusement, ducking her head in that adorable way she did sometimes as a smile spread over her face.

"Ok," she said softly, meeting Lena's eyes again, "well I'm just gonna stand here for a moment if that's alright with you."

It was Lena's turn to duck her head, somehow unable to meet Kara's eyes as she nodded her grateful acquiescence.

"It was a genuine question though," Kara said, her voice louder again as she addressed the room at large. Lena noticed that while some people had been trying to give them some privacy by looking away, some, namely Alex, had not. "Is the sun still out? To be honest," she continued and the beautiful little blush on her cheeks intensified, "I could really do with having a moment to talk to Lena about a, uh, a few things without, uhm, all of you listening in, so if, I don't know, there happened to be some quiet sunny spot you could point us in the direction of, then that would, well that would be just great."

"The roof," Barry and Cisco replied in unison. Lena instantly felt her chest tighten; it wasn't that long since she had been thrown from the balcony of her office and, whilst she had been saved by Supergirl in the nick of time, she still wasn't wild about being high up in places that could be fallen from.

"The roof?" Kara echoed them and Lena could already hear the wince in her voice. "Is that the only place? It's just, well, Lena kind of got thrown from a high rise balcony the other day so that might not be ideal-"

But before anyone could supply an alternative, a man strolled into the room, his voice booming.

"Bravo!" he called, clapping his hands remarkably loudly. "Round of applause! Standing O. That was so good! I loved it; it was a hell of a show!" Lena looked around and wasn't certain how to take the looks of shock and anger on the faces of Kara's friends; she felt pretty good about the way Kara's arm tightened protectively around her though. "And you two," he continued, looking pointedly at Lena and the woman by Barry's side, "I guess your love really was strong enough after all." He paused, his face softening as he sighed. "Beautiful. I mean, you guys kind of left it to the last minute on getting Kara's beloved here to save her, but it did make for a thrilling climax!"

Lena felt Kara tense a little beside her and her own heart beat seemed to trip slightly.

Beloved.

I'm Kara Danvers' 'beloved'. I am beloved by Kara Danvers.

"Man," Cisco burst out, bewildered disbelief on his face, "how did you get out of the cell?"

"Cisco," the newcomer turned to him condescendingly, "do you really think that cell is gonna just, like, hold me?"

"No, I'm sorry," Barry cut him off, his face creasing with consternation and irritation. "What's going on? Why did you do this to us?"

"I did it because I believe in the good guys," came the reply that really made Lena question her sanity for the five hundredth time in the last three minutes. "I told you when we first met: it was to teach all of you a lesson. 'Cause I see everything, and I saw two people with two broken hearts, broken because they wouldn't allow themselves to be with the people they loved."

"So," Kara spoke, her voice hesitant, "the lesson was-?"

"Love, Supergirl," he replied with a gentle smile. "Love is about letting yourself be saved; it's not just about saving other people, even if you are superheroes. Love this strong is worth taking risks for." He looked from Barry to Kara and back again, pausing as if to press his own point. Lena wondered if she might be having a strange dream. "Anyway," he started again, his voice light and playful again, "I'm sorry that I had to, like, mess with you a little bit. I was just trying to get you to play the game, do the song and dance."

"Are you, like, from another Earth-multi-verse universe, something?" asked one of the many people that Lena did not know, this one distinguishable by the yet-unexplained fact that he was randomly holding a set of drumsticks despite the apparent lack of drum kit.

"Yeah," the supposed love-guru replied, blowing out his lips and grinning lazily, "you- you wouldn't even understand where I come from."

Arrogant, much?

Let's be real; these people are apparently completely unphased by interdimensional travel so if this guy seems exotic to them then his arrogance is probably well earned.

"Wait, I'm sorry, that's it?" Barry stopped him as he turned to go. "You're just gonna teach somebody else a lesson?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm gonna do," he replied, an excited grin on his face.

"Oh," Barry replied, apparently at as much of a loss for words as the rest of them.

And then the strange little man began to sing.

"Think of your fellow men," he grinned cheekily and pointed finger guns – Finger guns? Really?! Is this a finger guns kind of moment? - at Kara and Barry. "Lend him a helping hand. Put a little love in your heart!"

And, with nothing more illustrious than signing a heart towards them with his cupped hands, he turned and phased out of existence, the last echoes of his reverberating voice ringing in the room.

Because Lena needed another thing to add to the list of things making her feel like she'd lost her mind.

Silence rang in the room for a few seconds as everybody stared, dumfounded at the space where the singing love god or whatever he had been had mysteriously vanished. And then the words forced themselves from Lena's mouth, no longer able to be suppressed.

"What the hell just happened?"

"Uhhmm," came the chorus of hesitant replies after a long second's silence.

"This, uh, this is going to take some serious explaining," Kara said, guilt crawling onto her face as she looked down at Lena where she was tucked against her side. Lena nodded slowly, swallowing.

"I figured that much, darling," she said, squeezing Kara's hand gently in an attempt to make the guilt leave, but then winced as she realised what she'd said. Apparently, once you start calling Kara Danvers 'darling' it gets kind of hard to stop. Oh dear. She took a breath and leaned into Kara's warm, strong body. "How do we get to the roof then?" she asked, turning to Cisco and Barry.

"Are you sure?" Kara asked her before the others had time to reply, turning Lena bodily to look her in the eye. "I can wait for the sun until after we've talked if you'd rather-"

"I'll be fine," Lena replied, feeling as certain about that as she could feel about anything in that moment. "You'll be with me."

"I will," Kara nodded, that beautiful smile replacing the guilt-ridden grimace.

It's not going to be easy to remember my own misgivings if she keeps smiling at me like that…


Smiles and fluff, smiles and fluff, a little hint of gay angst, and smiles and fluff!

I hope it lived up to expectations – writing wry Lena was as fun as I thought it would be, I hope you guys liked my version of her!

Now…please forgive me, but I am going away for a few days *immediately ducks under a desk to hide from flying objects*. Hopefully I'll get the next bit up on Monday or, if we're lucky, Sunday night – depends what time I make it home. Anyway, this is part of the reason I kind of rushed the last two updates – I thought it would be just rude to leave you hanging without even any Lena to tide you over… :)

Anywho, I hope you liked it; as always, let me know what you thought either way!